Curated Stories September 19, 2010

How do you know when a Facebook PR person is lying? When their lips move (or they issue a statement!) ba-dum ching!
We’ve been taking a beating today on our story about Facebook working on a branded mobile p…

TweetGuest post by Noemi Pollack, CEO Founder of The Pollack PR Marketing Group, a 25-year old integrated PR and marketing agency in Century City, CA. Inevitably, when corporate America seeks a PR agency to su…

Plane Finder AR adds a layer of augmented reality to its previous (and free) Plane Finder app, now charging $3 for the privilege of seeing the flight number, s…

Here is an absolutely delightful new little (but really huge!) feature in Google Analytics that should make anyone interested in improving their web business results smile from ear to ear. It’s called Weigh…

What if you could shortcut the time it takes to be known as a thought leader or an expert or get elected to a position of authority and power or chosen for that important job that you want so desperately.
Just…

Short stories are hard to write. At least the good ones are.
If you’re writing a short story in the hope of publication, know this: only an outstanding execution of an idea stands a chance. It won’t…

Following up on today’s previous piece.
There’s an assumption built into every Internet debate that anything that comes from Apple must be easier than anything that comes from anyone else. It’s not true, of…

As Facebook enters into the location market with Facebook Places, the world’s largest social network will help to make the edgy concept of checkins and location-sharing a mainstream practice.Facebook is just…

The Web is not television, and I would like online advertisers and publications to stop treating the Web like it is. Interruptive ads such as this one at Salon…
… are meant to get 100% click-through rates,…

FormEntry Touch, a recent release from WidgetPress (makers of ModelBaker), makes setting up form-based systems on iPads and iPhones easier than ever. The universal app is static, in that it requires no coding;…

It’s looking more and more like I was right about Google.Me. It’s sort of good to be right (particularly in the face of all the internet hype about how Google.Me is going to reinvent the internet and so…

Twitter is great for short, 140-character snippets, but sometimes you don’t have a chance to click on everyone’s links and read full articles. To make it easie…

In 2007, Chris Hughes left Facebook, the social network he co-founded with Harvard roommates Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, to work for the man who would become America’s 44th President. As the Direct…

It’s probably no secret that those of us who report on and curate content about storytelling follow the #storytelling Twitter hashtag as one way of keeping up.

Yesterday, I saw that the #storytelling hashtag…

Earlier today rumors / news broke of Facebook building a phone (more thoughts to come). See TechCrunch, AlleyInsider, Gizmodo, etc.

Without input or verification from Facebook, these remain rumors. And because…

Facebook has responded to today’s news about its mobile phone plans with a classic non-denial denial.
“The story, which originated in Techcrunch, is not accurate,” Facebook rep Jaime Schopflin said in a stateme…

Running a growing business, I read tons of resumes daily. It’s impossible to tell what a candidate is really like from a resume, so we probably overvalue the signals that we can actually pull out — fancy co…

I’m shooting for improving my success in all areas of life: business, relationships, finance, health. This morning, I started back in on my physical fitness. The night before, for the first time in my life,…

Honestly, I thought everyone knew that Facebook was working on a hand-held device.
Flip it around. What if someone told you they weren’t working on one? They’d be nuts.
Just look at what Facebook is….

Earlier this summer, Facebook mobile boss Erick Tseng slammed today’s smartphones as not being social enough, in a conversation with my colleague Nicholas Carlson.
“We’re far far away from having a truly soci…

If Facebook is going to build mobile phone software that makes phones more social, it had better have someone with platform experience running the show.
Luckily, it does!
In July, Facebook stole Erick Tseng fro…

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made some comments last week about the company’s plans to get more social, and more than anything else they showed how little the web giant really understands what it is up against. D…

You’ve been on your diet for two days … and you’ve already given in and eaten a giant slab of chocolate cake.You’ve told yourself you’ll tidy out the garage this weekend … just like you’ve been saying for t…

A guest post by Adam from Things To Learn.
I’ve been blogging for over two years now and I will be the first to admit that I haven’t been the best blogger in the world. Far from it. There were several str…

That’s what Mike Arrington’s sources claim and it’s something that we’ve also been speculating about for months now. As I wrote only a few weeks ago, Facebook is becoming increasingly at risk of compet…

Facebook is “for sure” using Google’s Android operating system as the basis for its phone software, according to a plugged-in Silicon Valley source.
This means that Google is now essentially helping Facebook at…

Joe Hewitt, one of the Facebook guys supposedly working on its secret phone project, has quietly pulled down his blog. Hmm…Join the conversation about this story »

The helpful advice from designer and executive director John McWade from Before After is one of the most useful websites out there. I’m a huge fan of John’s simple, straight forward approach to graphic desi…

We’re back with a cause-themed weekend roundup in anticipation of the Mashable Social Good Summit this Monday, September 20.Below you’ll find a section dedicated to our recent slew of Social Good resources…

Facebook already has over 150 million mobile users and is likely the most popular iPhone app of all time.
But if Facebook is going to have as much impact on the mobile world as it has on the web, it needs to be…

Back in the spring, Layton Payne wrote a blog entry declaring that Visual Storytelling [Is] Now Mainstream. The blogger was specifically referring to visual storytelling in the form of graphic novels, which are…

I kind of dig space—especially the unexplained—so today Im in a bit of a tizzy. Pioneer 10, you see—which left our solar system in 1983—is slowly being…

At a recent engagement, I was asked to list out the benefits and risks for companies to participate and not, as you know, from our research on how companies connect with customers, the Engagement DB research fo…

If you google the headline to this post, you are taken to this Google Voice support page which says:
Although you cant currently port your existing number to Google Voice, we hope to offer this option in the ne…

Or how, in the words of Dr. Peter Sandman, ignorance can lead to enthusiasm as easily as to panic. He was the first to define how risk in this context equals hazard plus outrage. In other words, people are…

Blockbuster’s experience shows the challenges in adding an online strategy to traditional bricks-and-mortar stores.

Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re searching for something. Not searching as in Googling – I mean really searching – for a way to describe and display your unique gifts…

Let’s assert that marketing works.
The money and time and effort we put into marketing goods and services actually works. It gets people to change their minds. It cajoles some people into buying and using and…

The results are in, and as befits any good crowd-sourcer, I wanted to share them.
Yesterday I asked TechCrunch readers for some advice. Having quit Twitter, I’m looking for a new blogging platform that will a…

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week. If you’re looking for a particular topic, just plug in your keyword into the search box at the top left-hand corner of the blog (on the…

John Lounsbury submits:Steven Hansen says retail sales are actually down, in spite of the official press release from the U.S. Census Bureau that reported August retail sales were up. The difference appears to…

Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which…

Shane Snow is a writer and entrepreneur in New York City, and founder of the online printing site PrintingChoice.com. A graduate in digital media at Columbia Journalism School, he’s fascinated with all things…

I spent a little time over at GitHub where I could watch in fascination as an unborn social network called Diaspora can be seen in its late development stages. It reminded me of the sonograms I’ve seen before a…

Boy Genius Report:
GV Mobile + hits the App Store, finally — We have been waiting for this day for a long time. Not just because we love GV Mobile + so much, but because it shows that Apple has finall…

Artists are incredible people. They can take even the simplest and most mundane things from everyday life and create something intricate and beautiful. However I am betting that most people wouldn’t think o…

Six months ago, Google launched its very own app store for enterprise apps, the Google Apps Marketplace, at the search giant’s Campfire One event. The idea behind the marketplace was fairly simple—using a s…

So, you’re not content with just using the social web; you want to be part of building it, too.As a budding or beginning web app developer, you’ve got a difficult but rewarding path ahead of you. You have t…

I’m trying to get off the topic of fatness, but just when it seems right to move on to something less hopeless, we hear that even doctors can be felled by obesity’s resilience.
To the Physicians Committee…

Apple has just a dropped an update for their Apple Store app to the App Store. The Apple Store app allows customers to access the Apple Online Store from their iPhone and iPod touch and purchase any product.

T…

Back on July 31 I posted The Data Bubble in response to the first of The Wall Street Journal‘s landmark What They Know series of articles and Web postings on the topic of unwelcome (and, to their targets, mos…

Apple is rumored to be creating a new digital storefront for newspapers and magazines that, like iBooks does for print books, will serve as a standalone iPad app for purchasing repurposed print content.

Ever wonder what we do inside Third Tribe?
We help people improve their marketing. We do this with all kinds of educational content (teleseminars and related materials), plus we drill down to specific reques…

“Heard 4SQ CEO last week. Wonder if he heard Facebook’s footsteps behind him? I think facebook places means 4sq is toast” — JetBlue marketing guy Marty St. GeorgeJoin the conversation about this story »…

Just so people know that when I say Apple is going to lose the battle with Flash (and I still think they will) that sometimes Flash is the worst thing in the world.
For example the Izod site. It’s a Flash…

The National Association of Scholars just published a list of brain-challenging books that they recommend for college reading programs, but which should be of interest to any passionate adult-level reader. Thes…

This post was originally written for the Likeminds blog. More about them here, and check out their Creativity and Curation event down in Exeter, UK, 28/29th October.
Ulysses The Sirens by Herbert Draper
Don’…

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Rednod, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete…

Several iTunes 10 users were less than thrilled with the new all-grey UI theme. I’ve gotten used to it, but I agree it was a bit prettier with the color icons in the sidebar. Here’s how you can replace the grey…

This Tweet is for illustration purposes. I got no problem with it.
My colleague Mike Calore has done a great hands-on with the new Twitter, which I’m also lucky enough to have received early. One feature that…

By BILL KRAMER During the Great Health Reform Debate of 2009-10, much of the public discussion and media analysis focused on the political battles, the legislative process and specific elements of the health re…

“David, you’re sounding like an old dude!” Matt Flannery, who runs social-lending website Kiva, couldn’t understand when I explained that, no, I wouldn’t be keeping in touch with him via Facebook….

Dear Andrew:
It was great sitting down with you on stage at the DEMO conference this week. We talked a bit about the challenges of your runaway growth and the difficulties of applying your innovative collect…

Chris Anderson of TED says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the…

As regular readers may or may not recall, I recently quit Twitter. My reasons for doing so were legion but one of the biggest was the fact that, as someone whose job it is to write about himself, I’d notic…

It’s starting. The inevitable “wait-a-minute-this-start-up-isn’t-the-second-coming-of-Christ-after-all” backlash has officially hit Groupon. First there was the dodgy fake deals in Brazil, then there wa…

Google is said to be preparing to distribute mobile devices to small businesses around the country allowing customers to check-in to these venues. This service is being produced to help Google compete with loca…

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for…

If you’re 25 or under, you can help kick off the International Year of Youth by “sharing something about your culture — and your wild imagination — with the rest of the world.” Youthink is running a…

Taxi drivers in New York were worried about adding credit cards to their cabs. The fee (5% or so) would cost them too much, they said.
It turns out that tips are up, way up. They’re actually making far more mo…

As a start-up it can be tough to know when you’ll get customers, how many you’ll get, and when they’ll show up. These problem plagues larger businesses as well, and one start-up just launched a service ai…

In the heat of the health reform debate, we overlook the size of the enterprise. You cannot turn around the Queen Mary on a dime. We will not be able to turn around the American health care system, now $2.5 tr…

In a QA conducted with users today from his personal Twitter account, CEO Evan Williams shared his company’s product roadmap details in the wake of the relaunch of Twitter.com. Perhaps most interestingly, he…

Cellphones are not the enemy.

Apple has been doing what it can to bring publications of a more periodical nature to the iPad and other iDevices, but hasn’t exactly offered a stunning portfolio of papers and such. That’s set to change accord…

Ten years ago this month, on the morning after I gave this speech in Lucerne, my wife and I were walking through the restaurant at our hotel across the lake when a friendly American gentleman having breakfast b…

Computers are a tool, not a solution.

In an effort to compete with services like Facebook, Yelp and Foursquare, Google is preparing to distribute millions of custom mobile devices to small businesses around the U.S., says a source with knowledge of…

Apple is working on a “newsstand” for its mobile devices that is separate from the App Store, Bloomberg reports.Join the conversation about this story »

Don’t want to approve that new friend request because you don’t know the person well enough? Rather than clicking “Ignore” as was previously the case, Facebook is switching the button to “Not Now”…

On Facebook, you have two options for processing friend requests — confirm or ignore. Today, we’re learning that Facebook is replacing the “Ignore” button with a “Not Now” button, that when clicked,…

When Apple unveiled its new iPods and related stuff a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t pay much attention to the new video-streaming option called Airplay. Over at 9to5Mac, Seth Weintraub is making the case (arg…

Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Lets You Mark Friend Requests with “Not Now,” then Decide on Them Later — Facebook is adding a new option to how people friend each other, trying to limit unwa…

According to Network World (via AppAdvice) Apple issued a cease and desist letter to Newsday regarding their iPad app commercial. The commercial essentially showed how the iPad can’t completely replace newspa…

waderoush writes Twitter has come out with some impressive new tools this month — the Twitter app for iPhone/iPad on September 1, and the overhauled Twitter website, or #NewTwitter, this week. But Twitter is…