Curated Stories September 9, 2010

Nelson Minar / Nelson’s Weblog:
Stop making social networks, Facebook won — Are you starting a social media company? Stop! Dont build a new social network, please. Just use Facebook. Yes, it suck…

Bill Zielke is senior director of Merchant Services at PayPal, which recently announced the initial rollout of Mobile Express Checkout. Bill is responsible for the development and marketing of product strategie…

This afternoon Facebook announced a number of upgrades to their Facebook likes. The changes will impact developers, page administrators, and users. Below is a list of the things that you need to know about th…

Apple has shown interest in creating a system of cross-platform widgets that could be accessed and shared in a variety of manners, including on a Mac, an iPad or through a browser.

If you’re into health care consumerism, you’ll enjoy my guest blog post at CDHC Solutions magazine. CDHC Solutions focuses on consumer-driven health plans. Consumer-driven plans are a form of “high deduct…

Facebook has taken a step closer to establishing Credits as the exclusive payment system for virtual goods on the social networking site, wrapping up a deal with the biggest social game company, Zynga.

Zynga,…

If Google wasn’t already scared of Facebook, this ought to do the trick.
Time spent on Facebook was greater than time spent on Google sites in the U.S. in August for the first time in history, acc…

Web hosting company Rackspace has taken down two websites run by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor staging a massive Koran-burning this weekend, CNN reports.
Jones has protested, calling the move “an indirect att…

Google has just released an update to its Google Voice Android app that seeks to make it easy for users to access voicemails as well as change their Google Voice settings.The biggest change to Google Voice for…

Google Instant. SEO is dead.
Yes, I’m sick of hearing about it too.
But, Greg Boser alerted me via Twitter today that TechCrunch had made a blog post that showed a clear misunderstanding of Google Instant in…

Mobile is a new exciting format for many businesses, opening new opportunities for paid content and increased viewership. But are mobile sites and apps poaching viewers that might normally interact with a comp…

When we first heard about AOL’s latest inspirational slogan — “beat the Internet” — we called it “cringe-worthy and embarrassing.” And that was before we saw this at AOL HQ.
This would be great inspiration fo…

I’m not in the this business to make art; I’m in it to make money to buy art.
–Producer Joel Silver
More similarities between publishing and its West-Coast cousin, the movie business:

They have a star sy…

Some of the most innovative brands have already begun to experiment with lesser known social platforms that cater to targeted audiences and test the waters of new advertising models. Many of these campaigns are…

Last week, I attended Samsung’s Free the TV Developer Day in San Jose, California. It was a well-organized, day-long event focusing on Samsung Apps technology and app development. All the talk of “smart…

Social check-in app GetGlue has been making significant strides in the mobile space lately with the release of an Android app following success on the iPhone earlier this summer. Today, the popular app which al…

Google may be working to make search faster and more predictive with Google Instant, but do those elements actually make search better? Of course, that depends on how you define “better.” One underground st…

The command line isn’t just for wise Linux beards. It’s actually an awesome tool with almost limitless functionality. Here’s a primer on how it works, and how…

I await my copy of Mark Twain’s autobiography with slightly more excitement than trepidation. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the related site This is Mark Twain.

Continuing with our series of interesting Facebook infographics, we’ve decided to produce an image representing the numerous controversies that Facebook has run into since it first was founded. From lawsuits…

For the first time ever, after 250,000 apps have been developed, Apple finally decided to release some guidelines for developers to help them understand the app review process. The document is not only inform…

I know that some developers have been waiting to get access to Office 2010 PIA Restributable. Although we can create our own IA some developers prefer to use the officially PIA from Microsoft.
Today when I chec…

I would like a social media credit card.
Faceboook $fbook should have one, Twitter $twit should have one and maybe Stocktwits $stwit should have one too. There is one company I know working around the edges of…

A DEPRESSING tale from ABC News’s investigative unit: a former employee of a contractor that provides translators for America’s army in Afghanistan says that the forces are being had by fraudulently incompetent…

A new report released today from mobile media provider Myxer examines the current trends among “check-in” applications, that is, the particular group of location-based mobile social networks that allow users to…

If you have ever pulled your hair out over maintaining SQL statements intermingled with your PHP project code you might not be alone. Perhaps you considered abstraction or wished your database had an API. You…

This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the Bi…

In business school we teach students about game theory, which entails understanding payoff structures and making rational decisions in situations of conflict. But in the real world, all too often personalities…

Microsoft has released a free—and lengthy—ebook covering a wide range of security topics. Although intended for teenagers, the book offers a solid enough l…

Say what you will about Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, but the man speaks his mind.
According to an unnamed former employee in a brutal profile at SF Weekly, Mark once set his idealist employees straight by saying:
I d…

Attention T-shirt fans: Bag those deep discounts now because come January, stores could have you paying more for your favorite clothing.

DataSphere Technologies, which has developed a hyper-local news and advertising software platform for publishers, today announced that it has closed a $10-million Series C financing round led by OVP Venture Pa…

Yesterday Google implemented their new search experience, Google Instant and the SEO and Tech blogs lit up like a Christmas tree. It’s nice to see something get these folks excited for a change. While the not…

Tablets have the potential to topple stacks of textbooks, but it can’t happen until publishers start cramming entire curricula into apps. Houghton Mifflin Harc…

If you’ve been using Google Search on your phones, pat yourselves on the back—youve given Google another reason to smile this week. Their director of product management revealed the news yester…

You type it in here, and it comes out there
Security watchers are concerned that scareware scammers may quickly adapt to the introduction of real-time search technology from Google to develop even more potent s…

Have you read the classic post from the Copyblogger archives explaining why you need to leverage social proof on your blog? If so, then I don’t need to convince you how important social proo…

Are you traveling for business or pleasure? This commonly echoed phrase is the start to many trips at the airport. From guides and trip advisors to the best deals, we have have you covered. We have gathered ten…

Blogs may be vastly different in their scope and purpose, but overall they share certain similar traits: an informal, first-person writing style and content laced heavily with the opinion of the blogger. Neithe…

As Google’s Chrome browser celebrates its second anniversary, we thought it appropriate to commemorate the occasion with some handy tips and tricks.Here are 10 tried and tested hints that will help you to ge…

A mysterious person called “Gina Loudon” who allegedly lies about everything also allegedly lied when she claimed to know the reporter who wrote the new Vanity Fair Sarah Palin story, which claims (for the…

Apple today has relaxed development requirements for iOS devices, allowing programmers to use non-Apple tools to create mobile applications. This easing still prohibits iOS applications from downloading any add…

We all spend much of our days engaged in social networks, whether it’s online, at work, or out with our friends, and we have a tendency to pick up new habits through these connections….

Most e-mails sent at work are “irrelevant,” a survey for cloud company Salesforce.com has found.

Computerworld: Apple last week helped create a brand-new $15 billion business when it introduced its new AirPlay music streaming system, which it is licensing to third party developers — and which it created…

image from the series Macro Economics by Kevin Dooley
Hi all!
In case you hadn’t heard, I’ve been asked to give a keynote address next month at Sibos – “the world’s premier financial services event,�…

For those of you still trying to wrap your head around the meteoric rise of social networking over the past decade, this post might hurt a little bit. Because just as you and most of the world were getting a ha…

Many champion niche as the definitive factor for producing successful digital media. Nothing could be further from the truth. In a recent post at SmartBlog on social media, Jesse Stanchak shares a poll of h…

by Patty Azzarello

On a recent flight I had a fun conversation with a top sales executive about the profession of selling.

The best sales people have some fundamental things in common:

They put…

Lookout, a company that offers security data backup services for smartphones, is growing rapidly. Less than two months after the startup surpassed one million users, the company has crossed the 2 million regis…

Loyalty is what we call it when someone refuses a momentarily better option.
If your offering is always better, you don’t have loyal customers, you have smart ones. Don’t brag about how loyal your customers ar…

There was a time when Twitter looked like it could become as mainstream as Facebook, Yahoo and Google are now and America Online was back in the 1990s.
It’s time to lower our expectations.
Three reasons:

Inves…

Google’s new Instant feature, which refreshes search results while people type queries, presents big changes for users, publishers and marketers.

How do businesspeople interact with online ads? Women click on them, men act on them, and both genders do so at vastly differing times of the day (and night).
Online ad targeting firm Bizo undertook a survey of…

As web designers we can only do so much for you the client. You can have the best website in the world, but if your customer service stinks users won’t come back.

I went to meet with a new client yesterday and…

The Nike+iPod system has been a great idea from the get-go: Use this music machine not only to play tunes while you run, but also to measure your time and distance, provide audible updates on your stats and…

Today, Amazon Payments, the company’s PayPal competitor, has made its payments feature on third-party sites much more streamlined. Checkout by Amazon, which allows anyone with an Amazon.com account to make pu…

Yesterday I got up before 4am to catch the earlier train to New York city from Philadelphia. Little I knew I’d get on a train that had been having power/engine problems since it left Washington, DC. How did I…

While recently Stumbling around the interweb, I encountered a webpage that wouldn’t load properly – a pretty common occurrence when you spend as much time online as I do. What made this particular web error…

Having already launched a mobile commerce offering through an app on Nokia’s Ovi platform, retail giant Tesco has launched an iPhone version of its grocery app today.

The Ocado iPhone app has already proved t…

Charlie Huston used one of his books (no longer free) to get me hooked on the rest of the series. Get one free, buy three. Backwards but effective.
Another: To spread an idea you believe in (where money is not…

After Google’s search event this morning, TechCrunch TV got a chance to catch up with Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, in the demo pit.
In our brief video interview, an e…

Google made it clear at its press event today that Google Instant will not change way that company will rank ads or show ads. From the Google blog:
“We recommend monitoring your ads’ performance the same w…

I don’t know why but I just can’t stop re-reading this exchange. Poor ATT shoots itself in the head today by emailing customers and asking them to provide feedback in one centralized place. Customers promp…

Google Instant launched today. It’s rolling out to a Google web search box near you, very soon. If you missed the memo, it goes a bit like this:
Google shows results as you type now, in real-time.
If your acc…

Considering that our government has regularly abused requirements for oversight and due process in getting private data about people, it’s always nice to see the courts push back at least some of the time. The…

An Intimate Look at One Writer’s Feedback
One of the things I do in my writing life is provide personal story analysis and coaching. The result of this process is a document that offers my thoughts on wh…

Advertisers have long talked about the mystical possibilities of using real-time location data to target customers. The technology existed; most cell phones have a GPS receiver in case of emergency. But real-ti…

Ryan Tate / Gawker:
The Google Ad That Steve Jobs Will Hate — Google sure knows how to push Steve Jobs buttons. This advertisement for Googles new instant search system is bound to get under the Apple…

I’m a little late on this, but what kind of self-respecting applied-storytelling blogger would I be if I didn’t give a shoutout to Eric James Wolf’s new project — Applied Storytelling, “a seven minut…

My friend Drew is pushing out his offerings as a blog consultant. This came after a conversation about being really clear on what the offering might be, plus his realization that he has something great to offe…

Few will think badly of you if you don’t know, say, whether it’s St James’s Park or St James’ Park, but if you write something like “its important to get word’s right” you’re inviting derision….

Our very own Christian Heilmann has posted a tutorial on creating a fancy sticky note effect using CSS3 and HTML5:

He breaks it down in five easy steps to produce the final following demo:

Understanding the ways the social graph changes and influences decision making is something marketers and scientists are frantically trying to figure out. According to a new study out of MIT, people are more l…

As many anticipated, Google launched major changes to the Google search
experience yesterday. That, of course, set the blogosphere ablaze.A big topic of debate: the impact of Google Instant on SEO. Not
surpri…

The full introduction of Facebook Credits, and their availability (in
the US at least) as gift vouchers in offline retailers, opens up a
whole new world for brands on Facebook.
The early adopters are, as
ex…

Someday everyone in the world will have email, and when they do, I don’t want six billion emails a day as everyone shares what’s on their mind. Since half the world will probably have their own businesses, and…

One of the early concerns about Flipboard — the beautiful reading app for Apple’s iPad — was that it pulled lengthy excerpts of content from web publishers, without paying them or pulling in their ads.
It tur…

The challenge with the fast moving social media marketing landscape is to know where your customers are hanging out so you can be where they are.
I am often asked “what social media channels should I be usi…

Contrary to popular belief, Pete Cashmore doesn’t have an obsessive love for potatoes. Rather he dubbed his blog “Mashable” because the original site covered tech “mashups” — web projects created by…

Earlier today ATT sent out a “Special Message From ATT” email highlighting a 18-19 billion dollar investment in their network as well as plans for other improvements. The email provides a link to their Face…

Over time, we’ve scooped things ranging from Facebook Places to various Chrome OS features simply by digging through code put out there in public. What’s great about doing this is that it negates the inevit…

Stephen Hood / unique hazards may exist:
Google Instant is an example of how Yahoo could have won in search — Today Google launched Google Instant, and make no mistake: this is big. Its far more than…

Last year’s Super Bowl champions, the New Orleans Saints, will kick off their season with a home opener against the Minnesota Vikings Thursday night. In anticipation of the game, running back Reggie Bush is g…

Everyone wants to get the top dollar for their home but setting a high price and expecting potential buyers to haggle you down to a reasonable one is a sure fi…

Facebook is used for a lot of things. Family contact, business advertising, non-profit planning and municipal information among others. Drag queens, belt buckle artists and the Catholic Church all use it.

Now…