Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Apple Launches Online Store in China”

Apple has launched its online store for Chinese customers. The store offers the iPhone 4, iPad, iPod and Mac computers, together with options such as custom configuration for the Mac, free personalized engraving on any iPod or iPad model, and free shipping.

Also, the Chinese Apple store is the only place online where you can buy the iPod nano’s (PRODUCT) RED variant.

This is another effort by Apple to strengthen its position in China. A couple of months ago, Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi criticized Apple for neglecting the Chinese market, but Apple is definitely showing improvement in this department. In addition to launching a Chinese version of its online store, Apple also translated its App Store to Simplified Chinese. Furthermore, Apple recently announced its plans to open 25 retail outlets in China by the end of next year.

The Chinese Apple store is located at apple.com.cn.

More About: apple, china, online store

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Many users currently cannot change their profile picture on Twitter. Usually, the option resides under Settings – Profile, but right now it simply doesn’t exist.

The change due to an issue Twitter is working on; Twitter has removed the option to change the background and the profile picture while it resolves the problem.

Hopefully, Twitter will restore this option soon. With Halloween around the corner, many users might want to change their picture into something more scary, and Twitter itself might soon be overwhelmed with reports from users who want to change their profile picture.

Update: one of our readers notified us that Twitter informed the users about the issue, which still hasn’t been fully resolved.

More About: profile picture, social media, social network, twitter

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The launch of the new MySpace begins today; it marks not only the release of a completely overhauled design, but the start of fundamental shift in focus for what was once the world’s preeminent social network.

MySpace will roll out a completely revamped interface to its users starting today, but the rollout won’t be complete until the end of November. That’s because so much has changed that we can’t possibly cover every aspect of the new website and mobile experience in a single article. Everything from the homepage to profiles to the new Topic Pages focus on transforming MySpace from a social network into a “social entertainment destination.”

The site is now focused exclusively on the 13 to 35-year-old demographic — Generation Y, in other words. Its new goal is to become “the leading entertainment destination that is socially powered by the passions of fans and curators.” This is in contrast to its old goal of being “a place for friends.” It reduces the amount of design bloat from 152 templates and 81 button styles to just seven templates and two buttons. And that’s only scratching the surface of the changes to the website, not to mention the new mobile experience that will launch next month.

We’ll be posting several deep dives into the overhauled MySpace over the next few days, but we want to start by introducing you to some of its key aspects. The following is a collection of videos and screenshots that should give you a basic idea of the look and feel of MySpace’s new interface.

What do you think of the new interface? Does the company have the right idea with its new focus and mission? Is MySpace’s new focus on social entertainment the right move? Will the website’s users revolt? Check out the media below, then let us know your thoughts.

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Screenshots: The New MySpace

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MySpace Homepage

This is the new MySpace homepage. Notice the focus on entertainment content as well as the website's new block format

Profile Page

The new MySpace Profile 3.0

Topic Pages

The new Topic Pages, which help collect and display entertainment information around a specific topic. In this case, the topic is the TV show Glee.

User Homepage: Grid View

Users can view their news feeds in three ways: stream view, grid view and playback mode. This is a screenshot of the grid view.

User Homepage: Stream View

Users can view their news feeds in three ways: stream view, grid view and playback mode. This is a screenshot of the stream view.

Celebrity Hub

Since the new MySpace focuses on entertainment, the company has build Celebrity Hub pages for seeing what's hot with your favorite celebrities.

MySpace's New Logo

This is MySpace's new logo. Sometimes the blank area contains nothing, sometimes it contains images, and sometimes in includes the phrase "space."

MySpace Logo Iteration

One of the many iterations of the new MySpace logo.

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The New MySpace: An Introduction

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The New MySpace Logo

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More About: gallery, myspace, screenshots, trending, videos

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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 inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: AisleBuyer

Quick Pitch: Use AisleBuyer at select retailers to avoid waiting in line when making in-store purchases.

Genius Idea: Last holiday season, online retailers did more than $27 billion of business. And with good reason. Who wants to battle long Black Friday lines when they can research products and painlessly check out online?

AisleBuyer believes it can make the in-store experience more like its online counterpart. Its recently launched iPhone app enables customers to scan product bar codes for further information, reviews, and coupons. They can add items to their carts as they shop and check out with a click before they leave the store.

In August, a pilot of the product launched in a small chain of baby supply stores. According to CEO Andrew Paradise, the retailer benefited by not losing customers to long checkout lines, giving cashiers the opportunity to instead assist customers and improved merchandising by providing analytics the app collects as users shop. Stores can also text message their customers special offers after they leave the store, which saves them the cost and environmental impact of printing sales circulars.

The app draws its data from the store’s website, which makes it an impractical option for small retailers that don’t already embrace e-commerce. But AisleBuyer has made a smart move by targeting larger companies with robust e-commerce websites first.

Watching customers bag merchandise as they walk through their stores might give some retailers pause. Although Paradise sites a 2008 IBM study that showed self-checkouts reduced theft by employees, theft is still a concern that the company will need to quell in order to win early adopters.

On the consumer side, downloading a separate app for every store may be one impediment to adoption. Though the company is working on diversifying platforms now (the Android version is set to launch in the near future, Blackberry is set for Q1 of next year), it might look to create access to all AisleBuyer stores through one app in the future.

If AisleBuyer can persuade retailers that sharing a percentage of checkouts made using the app is worth the improved customer experience and efficiency, then we think they’re on to a potentially huge idea that could change what customers expect from a brick and mortar store.

We seem to be in good company with this opinion: Last month, PepsiCo bet on the idea’s success by selecting it for the inaugural PepsiCo10, an incubator program for digital media and social marketing companies. AisleBuyer reports that it has also convinced venture capitalists that the idea is a winner, though it hasn’t yet announced the size of its first round or backers. And with about 8,000 stores signed up to implement the program, the company is already off to a healthy start.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, lisegagne

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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Reviews: Android, iStockphoto

More About: AisleBuyer, Andrew Paradise, bizspark, spark-of-genius, startup

The fabled PlayStation Phone has finally surfaced, and it is definitely packing Google’s Android OS.

A few months ago, rumors surfaced about the existence of a PlayStation Phone, a hybrid mobile and gaming device with a 5 megapixel camera, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, slide-out gaming pad and the Android Gingerbread OS. While those reports contained several details concerning the device, there wasn’t much in terms of proof.

Now Engadget has delivered strong evidence that the device exists. The technology blog has posted a series of crisp pictures of the device, and unless someone went to extreme lengths to create a false prototype, it looks legitimate to us. Engadget reports that the PlayStation Phone sports 512 MB of RAM, 1 GB of ROM and a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon chip. It includes a multitouch touchpad, trigger buttons and microSD card support. The device is being built by Sony Ericsson.

The Android-based gaming phone is still a prototype according to the report, so it’s unlikely to arrive before the holidays; we’d bet on a Q1 or Q2 2011 release.

We’re itching to get our hands one of of these bad boys. We want to find out if the PlayStation Phone can make Android into a gaming powerhouse on par with the iPhone, or whether the device will go the way of the N-Gage.

Images courtesy of Engadget

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Reviews: Android, Google

More About: android, gaming, gingerbread, Google, playstation, PlayStation Phone, PSP, sony, Sony Ericsson, trending

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Gmail has just added a new "Labs" feature that should save you some time if you're the type of person that tends to plow through your e-mail inbox in bunches.

As the name implies, the new "Auto-advance" option (that can be enabled under "Settings" > "Labs") lets you automatically move to the previous or next conversation after Archiving, Deleting or Muting an individual e-mail message.

While that might sound like expected behavior, up until today, Gmail simply took you back to your inbox after taking any of those actions, meaning you essentially needed to scroll back down to wherever you were in your attempt at e-mail triage.

Thus, you can see how "Auto-advance" might save you some time – and probably not an insignificant amount of time if you get a lot of e-mail and aim to keep your inbox clean through the use of archiving, deleting and muting.

Have your own Gmail productivity tips? Let us know in the comments.

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Reviews: Gmail

More About: e-mail, gmail, Google

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The rumors are flying about the potential existence of the Nexus Two, the unicorn-like successor to the Google-branded Nexus One smartphone. Is it real though? And why would Google build it?

The rumors apparently derive from a report by City A.M., a London-based daily newspaper. It reports that the Nexus Two will launch before the holidays exclusively on Carphone Warehouse, an independent mobile phone retailer. The report suggests that it will run version 3.0 of the Android operating system, AKA Gingerbread.

Frankly, we’re skeptical of the Google Nexus Two report. While the original Nexus One launched to strong reviews, it was ultimately discontinued due to a failed distribution strategy and poor sales. Google also has a lot of wireless and hardware partners that might be angered with a new Google-branded smartphone stealing the spotlight.

Still, there are a few reasons why Google might take another crack at its own phone, and most of them concern the fragmentation of Android. While the company publicly embraces the fact that there are so many version of its operating system (giving users plenty of options), privately some people inside Google are concerned about Android’s fragmentation. While Android continues to grow at a ridiculous pace, fragmentation can make the experience of using Google’s mobile OS so wildly inconsistent that users eventually become frustrated. At least that’s the argument Apple is making.

We were fans of the Nexus One, and we bet a Nexus Two would be one of the best Android smartphones on the market. Given the history of the Nexus One though, we’re going to label this rumor as unlikely.

Would you buy a Nexus Two?

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Reviews: Android, Google

More About: android, Google, nexus one, Nexus Two

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

There’s no substitute for experience. Many successful entrepreneurs learned how to run a business as they built one, and they had the educational benefit of being able to make mistakes and learn from them as they went along.

But if there’s something close to a substitute for experience, it’s probably somebody else’s experience — which makes other small business owners the perfect people to ask for advice about your own business decisions.

These nine websites will help you track down the appropriate entrepreneurs. If you’ve found success on similar sites, let us know about them in the comments below.

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1. OnStartups

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Created by the same folks who run the popular programming Q&A site StackOverflow, this site is a perfect place to crowdsource all of your small business questions. After you post a question (let’s say, “How do daily deal or coupon websites handle marketing?”), anyone can post an answer. You and other users can vote the different responses up or down so that the best answer floats to the top — at which point, if you decide to, you can mark one response as the “accepted answer.”

The site is managed almost entirely by the crowd (none of whose members need to register to participate). Anyone in the community can edit posts and frequent users are allowed to vote irrelevant questions off the site.

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2. Focus

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Focus differs from other Q&A sites by maintaining a core group of experts who answer many of the questions on the site in exchange for the opportunity to promote themselves. This feature makes it more likely that you’ll receive prompt and useful responses.

Topics are divided into IT, marketing, sales, finance, customer service, operations and human resources sections, which makes it easy to search for the latest discussions on your interest area.

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3. MicroMentor

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Q&A has its value, but a deeper one-on-one relationship with a seasoned businessperson can be a greater asset to your business. MicroMentor helps you find a mentor online. Simply fill out a profile about yourself and your goals, and then search the mentor profiles that match your needs. If your selected mentor agrees that they’re a good fit, you can exchange contact information and start learning from each other.

The site is run by Mercy Corps, which intends to help “small businesses grow faster, generate more revenue, and employ more people.” More than 1,000 matches have been made to date.

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4. Entrepreneur Connect

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Entrepreneur Media, the parent company of Entrepreneur Magazine, hosts this online network of entrepreneurs. The site’s broadly defined “groups” where you can post questions, makes it useful for asking for advice. The replies are less frequent than on some of the other sites, but they tend to be of high quality. You also have the option to create your own private group.

The directory of other entrepreneurs, browsable by industry and name, is also helpful for locating someone who might be helpful regarding a specific issue.

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5. PartnerUp

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If you have a question that can be expressed in fewer than 140 characters, the PartnerUp community will likely have an answer. You can also search for contacts with different skills in different industries or “PartnerUp” with people who have made comments you appreciated so that you can stay in touch. Like OnStartups, questions and answers can be voted up or down so that the best ones — at least theoretically — remain on top.

Thankfully responses aren’t restricted with a character limit.

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6. EFactor

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The authors of business networking book The N Factor venture up the alphabet a little bit to bring you the EFactor. This social network for entrepreneurs can help you answer your questions in a handful of different ways.

First there’s a Q&A feature that shares your questions with other entrepreneurs on the site. There’s also a traditional forum where you’re likely to find a thread that answers your question and where you’re welcome to start a new one if you don’t. And finally, there’s an option to search for a mentor by their expertise and the assistance you’re seeking.

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7. MeetTheBoss TV

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This site gives you the opportunity for personal access to the world’s most innovative and influential business leaders. Although the rest of us probably won’t be able to get our questions for business leaders answered directly, there’s likely a video on MeetTheBoss TV that is relevant to your issue. They’re all targeted specifically for entrepreneurs and intended to expand a skill set. You’ll need to use the search bar to find a video that answers your specific question, but the quality of the advice more than compensates for this slight effort.

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8. SCORE.org

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A resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration, SCORE gives free advice to entrepreneurs. The organization has 370 office locations offline and about 1,200 “counselors” offline. By typing in a couple of keywords about what business issue you’d like to discuss, you can browse a list of these counselors — mostly other small business owners — and e-mail them directly for advice.

If you prefer a face-to-face conversation, there’s also an option to search for a mentor by your zip code.

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9. LinkedIn Answers

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What sets LinkedIn Answers apart from the others on this list is that people have a couple of strong motives to help you. First, people are always looking for ways to stay in touch with members of their professional networks. Answering your question is a perfect opportunity to refresh a connection. Second, people who give the best answers to questions are featured as “experts” on the Answers homepage and in each category of questions.

LinkedIn’s giant network of professionals is another advantage. You can allow this entire network to search and answer your questions, or if you prefer, select individuals from your network who you want to answer your question. There are also advanced search options that allow you to browse the database of previously asked questions.

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More Business Resources from Mashable:

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- Social Media Marketing 101: In-House Team, Agency or Consultant?
- 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora
- 5 Tips for Startup Success From a Co-Founder of HootSuite
- Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Foursquare
- 5 Popular Startups and How They Got Funding

Image courtesy of Flickr, Travelin’ Librarian

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Reviews: Flickr, LinkedIn

More About: e.factor, entrepreneur, Entrepreneur Connect, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, focus, LinkedIn Answers, MeetTheBoss, MicroMentor, Networks for entrepreneurs, OnStartups, PartnerUp, score, small business

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Next time you want to inject some hilarity (or at least some mild amusement) into your design comps or rough drafts, direct your browser to Lorizzle.nl.

Billing itself as “the gangsta lorem ipsum generator,” this site is the delight of our developer/design backchannel today. It generates an “-izzle” and “yo mama”-spiked version of standard Lorem Ipsum text, and a different version is generated each time you refresh the page.

Ahem:

Lorizzle ipsum dolizzle sit amizzle, consectetuer adipiscing hizzle. Nullizzle sapizzle velizzle, mah nizzle volutpizzle, suscipizzle fo shizzle, gravida vizzle, my shizz. Pellentesque bling bling tortizzle. Sed own yo’. Fo shizzle izzle ghetto fo shizzle mah nizzle fo rizzle, mah home g-dizzle turpizzle tempizzle fo.

-Izzle is actually recognized as a form of cant and, according to Wikipedia, its origins are much less “gangsta” than one might suspect. It was partially developed by young African American girls playing jump rope.

Other alternative-to-lipsum dummy text generators we like spit out placeholder text in “hillbilly,” binary, technobabble, TV show theme lyrics and a headache-inducing post-modern lit crit.

Of course, these kinds of tools can only come from the mind of a truly bored designer. You can thank a handful of designers and developers at Dutch digital creative agency Zicht for Lorizzle, and you can thank web consultancy Bust Out for the Lorizzle TextMate bundle and developer/designer Colin Loretz for the Lorizzle WordPress plugin.

All we need now is an app that turns Facebook into -izzle… Anyone feel like writing that?

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Reviews: Facebook, Wikipedia

More About: dummy text, lorem ipsum, lorizzle

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The new TRON: Legacy trailer from Disney doubles as a music video for Daft Punk’s “Derezzed,” a track from the film’s soundtrack.

Much of the footage appears in the earlier TRON: Legacy trailer, but there is some new stuff here, including an actual in-movie cameo by the always costumed Daft Punk; yes, they also wear those costumes when performing.

One YouTube commenter wrote, “Probably the first time I’ve been more excited about a soundtrack than the movie it’s in.” I’ve heard similar buzz elsewhere, but you have to admit that Daft Punk and TRON are an outstanding match.

The film will hit theaters across the U.S. and Canada on December 17, and the soundtrack will arrive on store shelves both real and virtual November 22, but filmgoers in select markets will be able to see a 20-minute preview the 3D film in IMAX at Thursday night’s “TRON Night” presentation.

Mashable will be attending the screenings in both San Francisco and Atlanta. Unfortunately, tickets are already sold out for the U.S. screenings but some international viewers still have a shot over at the official TRON Night website.

Anyway, without further adieu, here’s the TRON: Legacy trailer featuring Daft Punk:

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Reviews: Mashable

More About: Daft Punk, disney, Film, music video, trailer, TRON, tron legacy, viral videos, walt disney pictures

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It’s no secret that in this age of burgeoning social media, cyber bullying is also on the rise. In response to this issue, MTV has launched an interactive visualisation tool called “Draw Your Line” to help kids band together to fight online abuse.

Draw Your Line is a part of MTV’s larger campaign, “A Thin Line,” which focuses on keeping kids safe in an increasingly digital world, and was launched as a part of National Bullying Prevention Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month with support from Blue Shield of California Foundation.

In essence, the tool is a kind of interactive map that lets kids post ways in which they are fighting abuse, find resources if they’re suffering from bullying, and see where and how others are doing their part. They can also suggest resources that might be missing from the map.

As kind of an incentive to take part, MTV has also announced that anyone who posts an action between now and 2011 can enter for a chance to win a trip for two to the MTV Video Music Awards.

Draw Your Line — which was designed by 24-year-old Michael Bastianelli as part of MTV’s "Redraw the Line" Challenge — isn’t the first digital tool in the network’s arsenal against abuse. Earlier this month, MTV launched an iPhone app called Over the Line?, which lets teens submit stories of abuse and harassment to be read and rated by their peers. Kids can weigh in on whether or not the bully in question went “over the line” in any given situation.

Cyber bullying has been a term that’s been bandied around quite a bit lately, especially in light of events such the abuse of college student Tyler Clementi, who killed himself after a roommate posted footage of his romantic life online.

In response to this suicide and other tragedies, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has teamed up with Facebook to fight abuse on the social networking site, and sex columnist Dan Savage has created a YouTube channel called “It Gets Better” to help and support gay teens (U.S. President Barack Obama even submitted a video).

Still, the issue isn’t just exclusive to gay teens — according to an MTV-Associated Press study, 50% of
14–24-year-olds claim to have been the victim of digital abuse.

How effective do you think campaigns like this are when it comes to fighting the dark side of the online realm? Are we doing enough? Head to the comments section to weigh in.

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Reviews: YouTube

More About: a-thin-line, cyber-bullying, draw-your-line, mtv, web apps

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A new iOS app called iDOS runs programs originally written for the old Microsoft DOS operating system from the 80s and 90s, including thousands of classic PC games and early versions of Microsoft Windows. The powerful app was approved by Apple late Monday night but it was just pulled from the app store — tragic, since it’s a vision of just how awesome a DOS emulator could be on the iPhone or iPad.

iDOS is based on DOSBox, a very popular DOS emulator for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. While there are many potential uses for it, the most popular use is for playing classic computer games like Wing Commander or King’s Quest that don’t run on today’s computers. The legality or illegality of downloading these old games that are no longer for sale is a bit sticky, and DOS itself is the property of Microsoft, hence our surprise that the app was approved to begin with.

Apple has been wary of approving emulators for admission into the App Store, but it recently eased up its approval requirements. In some cases emulators have been approved with no problems, but we can’t say the same for other attempts such as a few classic Nintendo emulators.

The app is very short on included programs or tutorials. It simply comes with playable versions of Ms. Pac Man and Dig Dug. If you want to install other applications or games, you’ll have to figure out how to do it on your own — but that’s all part of the old-school DOS spirit, isn’t it? Still, the lack of some basics such as the EDIT or PRINT commands in the command line ensures that you’ll spend some extra time getting set up as compared to one of the desktop versions of DOSBox.

But otherwise it’s a beautifully designed app, especially on the iPad, which surrounds the DOS emulation with delightful graphics depicting retro computer gear and the like. Customizable on-screen keypads are ideal for tailoring your experience to specific programs and games, you can force programs to run in their original 4:3 aspect ratio, and with a little technical know-how you can get most any old program working.

Mobile gaming blog Touch Arcade actually has screenshots of an old version of Microsoft Windows running on the iPad version, and users are sharing their experiences with different programs in forum threads around the web.

It would be nice to see a great app like this stay in the App Store for more than a few hours.

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Reviews: App Store, Linux, Windows, iPhone

More About: App, app store, apple, DoS, dosbox, emulator, games, gaming, iOS, ipad, iphone, iPod Touch, microsoft, Windows, windows 3, windows 3.0, windows 3.1

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Microsoft has released Office for Mac 2011. The latest version of the Office Suite aims to bridge the divide between the Mac and PC, and it packs a ton of new features, including Microsoft Outlook, collaborative sharing and editing, and an updated interface.

Microsoft decided to forego upgrade pricing this year, charging everyone the same regardless of whether they have a previous version. Are the new features and additions worth the price? Read our hands-on review to find out.

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Outlook 2011

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With Office for Mac 2011, Outlook makes its triumphant return to the platform. The last time Microsoft made Outlook available on the Mac was with Office 2001 — and that version was only for Exchange users. Instead, Microsoft introduced Entourage.

Three years ago, when I switched to OS X full-time, not having Outlook was a large barrier for me to overcome. Apple Mail was a chore. Since then, Mail.app has improved, gaining native Exchange support and native interoperability with Gmail and other IMAP services. My e-mail needs have also changed and I no longer find myself in need of full Exchange server functionality — and I know I’m not alone. The need for robust Exchange support has dwindled as more businesses continue to move from managed domain-based e-mail to services like Google Apps.

When Office for Mac 2008 was released, many questioned whether Entourage was as good as Outlook 2007. The answer was no. Two years later, the question has shifted only slightly: Is Outlook for Mac as good as Outlook 2010? The context on the other hand is dramatically different.

After several weeks of testing, I feel confident in saying that Outlook 2011 for Mac is the first Mac e-mail client that is on par with its Windows counterpart. Not every feature of Outlook 2010 is in Outlook 2011 for Mac, but it’s extremely close.

So how is the transition from Apple Mail to Outlook? To test Outlook 2011’s prowess, I did something I wouldn’t recommend doing under most circumstances: A bulk import of all e-mail messages, accounts and signatures from Apple Mail.

To be clear, I’m a heavy e-mail user. I maintain three active e-mail accounts, each with intricate sets of rules and filters and large volumes of messages. During past attempts, Entourage simply froze, so I was curious whether Outlook would be up to the abuse.

To its credit, Outlook managed to import gigabytes of data without crashing, while keeping my rules intact — though I did have to run them on my various inboxes after the process was finished. I was also able to sync my address book with Address Book for Mac and it pre-populated my work calendar using e-mail invitations.

The one thing that kept the process from being seamless was importing/exporting other calendar events. If you already have calendars setup through Google, MobileMe or iCal, you have to export the calendars and then manually import them into Outlook. Still, any invitations from your inbox will populate themselves in a calendar associated with that account.

The default presentation is three vertical columns, but you can switch to two columns or to a split-column view similar to what Mail.app uses. You can also check the status of sending/receiving mail, and you can view local folders and IMAP mapped folders with ease.

The integration of alarms and alerts for upcoming appointments or events is a really nice touch. I also like how you can have a tear-off “Today” column for to-dos and upcoming events.

The threaded conversation view is really nice — but it isn’t fool proof. It groups together all items sharing the same subject. The problem is that sometimes it confuses itself with the same subjects from different threads. It would be nice if this could be more granulized.

Outlook 2011 is fast, though I’m not sure it’s as fast as Apple Mail with the same accounts setup. It also has support for Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 accounts worked without a hitch, even over a VPN. Plus, Microsoft has fixed the way Time Machine backups and Spotlight indexing works, meaning that you don’t have to worry about backups taking six times longer (like you did with previous versions of Entourage).

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Word 2011

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Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac was a solid offering. The improvements to Word 2011 are less visible than the inclusion of Outlook, but they are noticeable.

There are now more templates and document types available, and many of the features from Microsoft Publisher are added directly to Word 2011.

You can now use the Word co-authoring tool that was introduced in Office 2010 for Windows. It allows teams to collaborate by sharing files using Windows Live SkyDrive or SharePoint.

Microsoft has also improved its Automator support for creating Automator Workflows in Word and other Office 2011 products.

Perhaps the best feature, though, is the new distraction-free writing mode, which long-form writers may enjoy.

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PowerPoint 2011

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We’re just going to come right out with this: Keynote is better. Having said that, the professional world runs on Powerpoint, and there are some promising additions in PowerPoint 2011.

For instance, the ability to collaborate and access files from various locations is a huge win — especially if you are a SharePoint user. This also makes it easy to broadcast presentations online.

Apple has toyed with some of these features in iWork ‘09, but it hasn’t taken it as far as Microsoft with Office 2011.

We would love to see some iOS options for PowerPoint, because the ability to control a presentation from an iPhone or iPad and make edits on the go has become a key feature for Keynote. Microsoft already has the cloud computing aspect with SkyDrive, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to release an app.

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Excel 2011

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Excel 2008 removed some of the macro support for files created in Excel for Windows, specifically those created with Visual Basic. Visual Basic support is back for Excel 2011 and there are new features that work across platforms.

Like Word and PowerPoint, you can access files using SharePoint or Windows Live SkyDrive.

There are also new tools for managing tables and conditional formatting. Like Word, Excel is just more polished than its already shiny offering.

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Performance

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The first time you run an Office program, it might take a few seconds to launch, though subsequent program launches get faster. Every time you logout or restart your computer, the process starts over, but launching remained quick. For us, it was a big improvement over Office 2008.

As we said, Outlook did seem a bit slower than Apple Mail, but it wasn’t slow and we didn’t have any crashes.

Excel and Word seem on par with Pages and Numbers, though we would still give a speed/performance edge to Keynote over PowerPoint.

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Interface

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Call me crazy, I like the Ribbon. I think Microsoft nailed the concept in Office 2011. It managed to take the best elements from the Windows version but still keep the Mac functionality that makes a Mac a Mac.

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Overall

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Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is not only a great Mac release, it’s a great Office release. It seems that finally as much care has gone into creating Office for Mac as goes into Office for Windows.

Despite the move to the cloud, many of us still use an office suite to do much of our work. Office for Mac 2011 is a great way to get more done on your Mac.

Office for Mac 2011 is $149.99 for the Home & Student edition (three installs), which does not include Outlook 2011. Office for Mac 2011 for Home & Business users is $279.99 (also three installs).

Reference: Our testing conducted on a late-2009 27-inch iMac with an Intel i7 and 8GB of RAM, running Mac OS X 10.6.4.

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Reviews: Gmail, Google, Microsoft Outlook, MobileMe, Windows, pages

More About: mac, mac apps, microsoft office, office, Office for Mac 2011, reviews, software

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Not content to let the Kindle or iPad own the e-book space, Barnes & Noble has just announced its successor to the Nook, the NOOKcolor.

The NOOKcolor is, as the name indicates, a color e-book reader and touchscreen tablet. It’s going to retail for $249 and is expected to start shipping on November 19.

The NOOKcolor features a 7-inch backlit IPS display and capacitive touchscreen. It weighs in at just under a pound and comes with 8GB of built-in memory, which can be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card. It also features a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and a micro-USB port. It also has built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi.

Barnes & Noble rates battery life of up to eight hours with Wi-Fi turned off. While primarily an e-reader and web browser, the NOOKcolor can also playback audio files and *.MP4 video. It supports EPUB, PDF and TXT files, as well as Microsoft Office file formats.

Like the original Nook, NOOKcolor is built off of Google’s Android OS. It doesn’t look like the device will be able to access the Android Market directly, but Barnes & Noble has announced a NOOKdeveloper program. The NOOKcolor SDK is based on Android 2.1, so if you have an Android app already, porting it to the NOOKcolor shouldn’t be too difficult.

Already Barnes & Noble is touting the inclusion of apps like Pandora and built-in games like chess, Sudoku and crossword puzzles.

Undoubtedly seeing the success that children’s books have found on the iPad, the NOOKcolor will also support the new Nook Kids platform.

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Kindle Beware

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While the original Nook was mostly a response — albeit with a few extra perks, like 14-day lending — to the original Amazon Kindle, we think it’s safe to say that with the NOOKcolor, Barnes & Noble has really upped the game.

It’s clear from the featureset that the true target of this device isn’t the new Kindle, but instead the iPad and other tablets.

Ultimately performance will dictate how well the NOOKcolor will stand up to devices like the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab, but as it stands right now, the NOOKcolor looks like one of the most impressive e-readers to hit the market this year.

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Reviews: Android, Android Market, Pandora

More About: barnes & noble, e-readers, ebooks, ereader, ipad, Kindle, nook, nookcolor

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If you’re a die-hard concert attendee — the kind of guy or gal who likes to stand right up next to the speakers and groove your little heart out from support band to encore — you should probably invest in a good pair of earplugs. My suggestion? EarPeace’s nifty reusable pair.

Confession time: I have always been extremely reluctant to wear earplugs. My oh-so-scientific reasoning? They’re dorky. Well, after one week of rocking EarPeace’s set of plugs during New York’s CMJ music festival, I changed my tune. Why? Well, because of two factors: enhanced sound quality and decreased hearing damage.

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Better Sound Quality

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To best test this pair of plugs, I hit up one of my favorite bands, French Horn Rebellion, who was playing at a small venue last week. I’ve seen the band before — sans earplugs — so it was pretty easy to compare and contrast experiences. During FHR shows, I’m likely to stand right up against the speakers.

With the plugs in, the sound was much more focused, less encumbered by reverb. The show was particularly bass-heavy this time around, but instead of feeling the bassline humming in my head, degrading the jams, I now merely felt it in my chest and toes.

Added bonus: You know that old trick? The one where, when in a loud environment, you half-plug your lobes in order to hear your friends as they shout a question into your ear? Well, EarPeace functions in pretty much the same way. It was much easier to hear my friends talking to me while in the venue, which makes for a lot less shouting.

As for aesthetics: EarPeace come in a variety of fleshtones, so it was not apparent that I was wearing them. Translation: If I looked dorky at all that night, I have myself to blame for wearing jorts. However, EarPeace comes with a little carrying case that you can attach to your keys, which — while handy — is not the coolest addition to the chain. It’s kind of like rocking a cellphone holster: functional, yet not wholly attractive.

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Tinnitus, Be Gone!

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When I say I like to stand close to the band, I mean close to the band. I’m including the above photo to demonstrate just how near I was to Rob Perlick-Molinari, one half of FHR, during the show. (For inquiring minds, the photo was taken with FxCamera for Android in Polaroid mode.) Needless to say, after seeing these guys play, my ears are usually ringing.

This time around, though, my ears were completely tinnitus-free after the show — thanks to the earplugs, which were pretty comfortable, as well. They’re fashioned from hypo-allergenic silicone and fit snugly in the canal. So while it may not be the coolest look ever to sport, I’m pretty sure my EarPeaces are going to be the newest addition to my concert attire.

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The Bottom Line

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EarPeaces are functional, comfortable and really enhance your concert-going experience. If you go to as many shows a week as I do — and want to be able to hear the sweet, sweet voices of your grandkids in years to come — I recommend picking up a pair. You can order them through the company’s website for $14.95 in a variety of skin-toned colors.

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Contest

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Ready to test out some earplugs yourself? We have four sets of EarPeace plugs and two pairs of tickets for French Horn Rebellion’s next concert on November 6 at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. If you’re not familiar with the band, check out the video above to hear one of their best jams.

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How To Enter:

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• In the comments below, tell us about the loudest show you’ve ever been to AND
• Like this post on Facebook
• Submit your comment and Facebook Like by October 27, 12 p.m. ET

We’ll choose two winners. Each will receive one pair of tickets and two sets of earplugs. Please use your real identity in the comments and on Facebook so that we may contact you to let you know that you’ve won. The contest ends October 27, 12 p.m. ET.

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Reviews: Android, Facebook

More About: earpeace, earplugs, french-horn-rebellion, Gadget, music, review

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As more and more kids are toting iPhones and iPod touches, we thought we’d take a look at the child-friendly accessories that are now available for the new gadget-loving generation.

We’ve found five fun products that will suit a wide age range of kids, from the toddler borrowing Mom’s iPhone right up to older children with devices of their own.

And with news from the Duracell Toy Report that the iPhone and iPod touch are currently dominating children’s Christmas wish lists this year, it’s a market that we expect to see growing rapidly.

Do your kids have their own gadgets? Do you loan yours out to them? Should kids even be playing with iPhones and iPods? Have your say and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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1. Woogie

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Billed as the answer to the question — “Can I play on your iPhone?” — the oddly named Woogie is a fun way of child-proofing your precious Apple handheld. Boasting built-in speakers, a screen protector to guard against sticky fingers, and plushy limbs to cushion the inevitable fumble, it’s the wise parent’s way of turning an iPhone into a toy before handing it over to junior.

Cost: $19.99

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2. Buzz Lightyear iDance

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Assuming your offspring likes Toy Story (which is a pretty safe bet), this eight-inch Buzz Lightyear will be a big hit with your kids. Buzz spouts pre-programmed phrases, and there is a line-in to hook up an MP3 player to blast your music through his speakers. When the music hits the airwaves, Buzz busts a move, which will keep your kid dancing alongside him for hours.

Cost: $39.99

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3. MyPhones

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You can protect your child’s delicate hearing with these specially designed headphones. The MyPhones have an automatic volume minimizer that caps the audio at a sensible 85 decibels so kids don’t harm their eardrums listening to Raffi’s blistering guitar solos. MyPhones come with three colorful ear cap designs and there’s also the fun option to design your own.

Cost: $39.99

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4. iHome Portable Speaker Case

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This is a great option for older kids with their own gadgets, or as a way to protect yours if you’re going to be handing it over to smaller children to play with. As a case, it offers robust protection, with shoulder straps and a splash-proof design. The iPod or iPhone can be controlled via the see-through window while the battery-powered, built-in speakers are a great for boosting the sound when sharing the screen with a buddy.

Cost: $79.99

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5. iHome Desk Organizer Lamp and Speaker

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We think this would make a great gift for an older child. This desk organizer holds pens, pencils and other clutter neatly, offers some desktop illumination and boasts a built-in speaker that will work with iPods and iPhones. Best of all, it’s available in a range of bright colors to match the bedroom decor.

Cost: $29

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BONUS: Seat Buddy

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Although not the most exciting-looking present for a child to receive, we think the Seat Buddy could become an indispensable part of a traveling parent’s arsenal. The Seat Buddy will hold an iPod or iPhone securely against a car (or airplane) seat to help keep young ones entertained on long journeys.

Cost: $20, or two for $30

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More Family Resources from Mashable:

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- 10 Adorable Apple-Themed Baby Accessories
- 5 Fun and Safe Social Networks for Children
- HOW TO: Help Your Child Set Up a Blog
- Social Media Parenting: Raising the Digital Generation
- The Case For Social Media in Schools

More About: accessories, apple, Children, griffin technology, hedphones, ihome, iphone, iphone accessories, ipod accessories, Kids, speakers

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Google has announced a donation of $5 million for innovation in digital journalism — $2 million will go to the Knight Foundation and $3 million will go toward international news efforts.

Though the details of Google’s international news donation are to be announced early next year, the $2 million for the Knight Foundation — an organization that focuses on advancing and funding journalism in the digital age — will be broken up by $1 million to help fund the Knight News Challenge and another $1 million for general grant-making for journalism innovation.

The Knight News Challenge is a worldwide news innovation competition that will be distributing $6 million in awards to contest winners. It’s currently looking for submissions with a focus on mobile, sustainability, authenticity and community, and one of the requirements is that they have to be open source, which aligns nicely with Google’s goals in the space. Last year, the Foundation awarded $2.74 million in grants that ranged from real-time ads, to crowd-funding, to reporting using social media. It’s also supported the likes of DocumentCloud, Spot.Us and Everyblock.

“This is an enormously important vote of confidence by the industry leader. We welcome Google’s support,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president of the Knight Foundation in a statement. “Already, more Americans get their information from the Internet than from newspapers. That trend will only intensify, making it imperative for our democracy that we find ways to effectively deliver the news and information people require on the new, digital platforms.”

As media companies struggle to find a sustainable model while more news consumption takes place on the web (with much through the social web), there’s a great need for innovative ideas and approaches to news. So why donate the money? In part, it is policy for Google to donate 1% of profits toward charity, but it’s also a peace offering of sorts to news organizations that have often blamed their woes on the technology giant.

As Megan Garber of Nieman Journalism Lab points out, despite years of having a dysfunctional relationship with news organizations, Google’s donation comes as a “multi-million dollar olive branch.” For years, some news organizations accused Google of stealing their news, but recently Google has been reaching out to news organizations for partnerships on projects like Living Stories, which it collaborated on with The New York Times and The Washington Post. Despite working on such partnerships recently, Chris Gaither told Garber the donation is an effort to “encourage innovation at a more grassroots level.”

Going forward, with major news organizations cutting back on international resources to produce news, it will be crucial to help fill in a gap.

Thumbnail courtesy of iStockphoto, fotosipsak

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Reviews: Google, Internet, iStockphoto

More About: Google, innovation, journalism, knight foundation, media, News

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Justin Bieber, tween idol and YouTube sensation, is getting his own movie. Save your laughter, it gets better: It’s in 3D. I pride myself in being pretty up on my film news (I am film_girl after all), but this one managed to slide past my radar. The best part? The title: Never Say Never. Wow. Just. Wow.

The trailer for the video has just been posted and frankly, I’m a little speechless. I’m torn between feeling bad about laughing hysterically at this latest pop culture phenomenon and feeling guilty at laughing at a child.

From what I can tell, it looks like this movie is a mix between a concert film and a biographical sketch of the young artist, juxtaposing screaming fans with poor quality home videos. Seriously, looking at his home movies, you’d think this kid was born in 1984, not 1994. Did Canada somehow miss the 8mm video revolution?

Really though, you just have to see this ridiculousness for yourself:

Hear that kids? “He’s living an extraordinary life, but he’s just like you and me!” Riight. Because you and I have our own rack of dedicated servers for our Twitter activity.

This thing comes out in February, so for your own sanity, you may want to avoid Twitter and Facebook that weekend. Somewhere, David Cassidy is laughing hysterically and Leif Garrett is crying profusely.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how excited (or unexcited) are you for the Bieber movie? Let us know.

[via Videogum]

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

More About: Film, humanity is doomed, humor, justin bieber, movie trailers, Movies, why is this popular

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The size of Twitter's staff has more than doubled since February, with the company announcing this afternoon that it has hired its 300th full-time employee.

That still makes the company a fraction of the size of some other quickly growing web companies — Facebook has more than 1,700 employees and Groupon is pushing 1,000 — but it does represent a fairly significant hiring spree in the seven months since Biz Stone announced employee number 140.

Twitter's still hiring for dozens of positions across engineering, operations and sales. We imagine the latter will become more important over the next few months as the company continues to scale its advertising business.

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

More About: twitter

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At the PayPal X Conference today, Appcelerator — makers of the cross-platform mobile development tool Titanium — announced that it has just entered into a partnership with PayPal to bring a mobile commerce solution to both PayPal merchants and Titanium developers.

Along with the new partnership, Appcelerator also announced that it has just closed a $9 million Series B funding round led by Sierra Ventures; eBay Inc. has also come on board as a participating strategic investor. Appcelerator has seen rapid growth and adoption of its Titanium development platform in the past eight months. Appcelerator says it is now the second largest publisher in the App Store. The new partnership with PayPal should only fuel this growth.

We spoke with Scott Scwharzhoff, VP of marketing at Appcelerator, about the new mobile commerce partnership with PayPal.

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Make Mobile Commerce Simple

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In the past year, PayPal has invested heavily in making mobile commerce and mobile payments more accessible to merchants and developers.

PayPal rolled out its Mobile Express Checkout system today, and its PayPal X Developer Network has been offering developers and merchants more ways to integrate PayPal into their own web and mobile apps for roughly a year now.

The Appcelerator partnership takes this to the next level. The product is called Titanium+Commerce and it will be available in beta today. Think of this as a toolkit that will let merchants build cross-platform apps that include mobile commerce features and hook directly into PayPal.

A store owner can now, for instance, create an app that can make it easy for someone to buy a real or virtual good or a service directly from their phone or tablet, and connect directly with PayPal for payment and processing.

You can check out this demo video here:

The beta phase starts now, but in early 2011, there will be a library of ready-made templates that merchants can use to customize their own branding and goods.

Check out these screenshots of an app Appcelerator built using the templates and libraries:

As you can see, merchants can include specials, coupons and loyalty program items in their apps.

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Geolocation Ready

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The mobile commerce stuff really starts to pop — for developers and for merchants — when you add in geolocation. A few weeks ago, Appcelerator announced Titanium+Geo, which lets developers add a location layer to their apps. This can be used for social interactions, to offer special deals, to target advertising and more.

There are a lot of possibilities when you combine commerce with location, as the success of Groupon and Foursquare have shown. Making the technology accessible to developers and merchants means that consumers can start to benefit from these types of technologies more quickly.

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iPhone Now, Android Coming

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Titanium developers can also start to integrate PayPal libraries into their apps. This is especially cool if you want to offer a way to order photos from your camera app or donate funds to a charity or something else.

The first iteration will have support for iOS, but Android and BlackBerry support is coming soon.

PayPal has a very large global reach and the ability to plug in to that ecosystem and userbase is a huge win for a lot of developers. We expect to see mobile and commerce continue to intersect and evolve.

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Reviews: Android, App Store, Foursquare

More About: app development, appcelerator, mobile commerce, mobile payments, paypal, paypal mobile, titanium

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Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made a “surprise” appearance on the stage of PayPal’s Innovate Developer Conference today to announce its new integration with PayPal. During her short speech, she dropped a few interesting tidbits of information related to Facebook’s growth.

The first interesting stat surrounded social games. According to Sandberg, more people play games on Facebook than on the top three gaming consoles combined. In other words, there are more FarmVille addicts than Xbox, Wii and PS3 fanatics. Combine that with the news that Zynga is now more valuable than Electronic Arts and it’s clear that social gaming has grown to monstrous proportions.

The other stat Sandberg revealed on stage was that 10,000 websites integrate with Facebook every day. That’s 3.65 million new websites per year, and you can’t forget that tens of millions of websites are already utilizing Facebook Connect or the Facebook Open Graph.

Can anything slow Facebook’s accelerating growth?

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Reviews: Facebook

More About: facebook

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Cloudera has signed and sealed a $25 million Series C led by Meritech Capital Partners. Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, who had previously invested in the startup, also joined the round.

Cloudera’s $5 million Series A led by Accel and its $6 million Series B from Greylock both came in 2009. This most recent round brings the company’s total funding to $36 million.

Cloudera is in the business of Hadoop-based data management software and services for the enterprise. In working with “big data” (i.e., datasets that are so large that storage and interpretation become difficult) Cloudera attempts to make the large amounts of data held by large companies easier to analyze and more useful.

Hadoop is a top-level, open-source Apache software framework for handling big data. Cloudera is a leading Hadoop-services provider to the enterprise, including companies such as Facebook, Bank of America and the University of Phoenix. The funding will be used to support the startup’s growing customer base.

Cloudera CEO Mike Olson said in a statement:

“Hadoop adoption among enterprises is strong and accelerating. This year, we released major upgrades to our open source platform and introduced Cloudera Enterprise, our subscription offering with the tools and support necessary for mission-critical Hadoop deployment.

As customer interest intensifies in the U.S. and around the world, we need to increase our capacity and reach."

While there have been rumors of a possible acquisition, Olson told GigaOM earlier this year that he instead wants do an IPO.

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Reviews: Facebook

More About: business, cloudera, funding, series c, startup

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Paypal announced a two-click mobile payment system called Mobile Express Checkout today at its developer conference in San Francisco.

Mobile payment processes have long been the bane of would-be mobile commerce titans. The balance between security and ease of use has been difficult to achieve, but Paypal’s beta partners for Mobile Checkout Express have seen great results from using the product so far.

Starbucks, one initial partner for Mobile Checkout Express, will use Paypal’s newest mobile payment product to let customers quickly reload their Starbucks Cards from within the company’s iPhone app.

Mobile Checkout Express will allow users to opt into the service and stay logged in between various mobile apps.

Paypal says the new product is also easy to use for existing merchants who already use Paypal Express Checkout on their web-based stores.

Many of Paypal’s beta-tester merchants for Mobile Express Checkout have reported double-digit sales growth on their mobile stores since adding the feature. Paypal plans to give Mobile Checkout Express merchants the ability to accept credit card payments in addition to PayPal (through a VeriFone partnership) in early 2011.

In other mobile news, Paypal is introducing new location-based features for the 3.0 version of its iPhone app, allowing users to find nearby businesses that accept Paypal. The feature, called Paypal Local, will initially be available in the San Francisco Bay Area and will roll out to other locations soon.

Paypal has had a few notable successes on the mobile front this year. Its iPhone app debuted quite successfully in April. And this fall, the company’s new iPhone check-depositing app made quite a splash, racking up $100,000 in deposits in its first day and a half in the App Store. The company also rolled out a second version of its Android app over the summer.

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Reviews: App Store, iPhone

More About: iphone, mobile payments, paypal, paypal innovate, paypal x

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Mashable reported last week that Barnes & Noble would be holding a special event today. From the beginning, we’ve speculated that the event would focus on a revision of Barnes & Noble’s e-reader, the Nook.

Since then, a few unverified details have emerged. David Carnoy over at CNET caught this image on the Barnes & Noble website. It was posted by a company that sells screen protectors, and was quickly taken down.

Further speculation has indicated that, like the current Nook, the new version will be powered by Android. The key difference seems to be that the device may feature a 7-inch color touchscreen.

We’ll have to wait till the event for the full scoop. Mashable will be on hand to get a first look.

In the meantime, what do you all think will happen at Barnes & Noble’s press event?

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Reviews: Android, Mashable

More About: android, barnes & noble, e-reader, nook

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PayPal has announced the launch of PayPal for Digital Goods, a checkout solution that lets users manage payments online with just two clicks. The company also announced a major partner: Facebook.

The new product was revealed by PayPal VP Osama Bedier at the company’s Innovate Developer Conference in San Francisco. The company calls PayPal for Digital Goods the “online equivalent of dropping a quarter in the slot to buy a newspaper or play a video game.” With a few lines of code, developers can integrate PayPal micropayments into their websites.

In order to spread its digital goods product, PayPal has done everything it can to lower the barrier to entry for its platform. Payment transactions cost 5% plus $0.05 per purchase under $12, lower than most micropayment transaction standards. In addition, it’s also focused on making payments as simple as possible; after logging in, it only takes two clicks to complete a payment, and PayPal will recognize repeat users.

To get things started, PayPal has a slew of launch partners, including Autosport.com, FT.com, GigaOM, Justin.tv, Ooyala, Plimus, Tagged, Tyler Projects and Ustream. However, the big partner is Facebook, which has agreed to integrate PayPal’s digital goods platform; in other words, it won’t be long until you can buy virtual crops through your PayPal account.

We’re here live at PayPal’s Innovate 2010 Developer Conference where the company will make even more announcements about its payment platform. We’ll bring you all of the news as it happens.

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Reviews: Facebook, tagged, ustream

More About: developers, ebay, payment, payments, paypal, paypal innovate

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Not satisfied to sit on the sidelines of checkin games, the NBA is releasing NBA Turnstile, a mobile checkin service that lives inside NBA Game Time.

NBA Turnstile is a combo service that allows users to check into physical locations, a la Foursquare and Gowalla (the app integrates with these two services for its place database, and users can optionally check in to one or both), and into virtual locations, like televised games.

Digital checkins enable fans to check into nationally televised games on ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV. NBA fans can also check into Turnstile through Fanvibe’s sports-centric checkin service.

The basic premise is that NBA fans can use Turnstile to check in to any game they watch, whether it be at the arena, a sports bar or from the comfort of their couch. The app, of course, also supports integration with Twitter and Facebook so users can share “shoutouts” to those social networks.

Turnstile replicates the game mechanics we’ve seen in other checkin apps, so at launch there’s points, badges — awarded for weekly, monthly and season-long checkins — and a leaderboard. Turnstile is both a national and regional effort; NBA Digital is working with each team to create official badges for their specific locations. Teams can also create their own badges and checkin promotions.

In speaking with Bryan Perez, senior vice president and general manager of NBA Digital, we get the sense that the NBA is taking a stab in the dark at location to capitalize on the popular trend, as well as shooting to catch up to MLB, which has made headlines for its impressive mobile applications.

Though we’ve seen the likes of NBA Turnstile before, it’s still noteworthy because it’s an official league application and will likely trickle down to individual teams, which means checkins and mobile location-based games will be introduced to new audiences. Plus, we’re told that Turnstile will be promoted as part of NBA Game Time television ads and in team arenas.

If checkins can motivate individuals to watch and attend more games, then the NBA will be playing the point guard position, validating the business opportunities surrounding these trends.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Rondostar

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Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter

More About: checkins, geo-location, location-based service, NBA, nba game time, nba turnstile, sports

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The Digital Influencers Series is supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE). To learn how to measure influence, visit http://waggeneredstrom.com/driveinfluence.

When Foursquare was starting up a little more than a year and a half ago, only a handful of people were checking in. It was pretty easy to hold down a healthy number of mayorships just by being one of the few people using the game. Today, it’s a different story.

Foursquare registered its four millionth member this past week. As the network has grown in popularity, it has evolved from a location-based game to a social media staple that has shown potential in civic engagement, education, and non-profits. It has also become much harder to beat out the competition for coveted mayorships and badge counts.

When IBM employee Eric Andersen took over the mayorship of a popular Boston ice cream shop, for instance, he had to stop in two to three times every week for ice cream or spiced butterscotch lattes (a Boston Globe reporter dubbed the not-so-painful battle the bloodless revolution). The mayor who ousted him checks in about 35 times every 60 days.

“One way to think of it is, for nearly every venue, whether it be a bar, a coffee shop, a laundromat, or a park, there is probably someone who owns a smartphone who is there almost daily,” Andersen says. “So as Foursquare adoption increases, mayorship battles will heat up as regular patrons of every location suddenly begin to adopt their new virtual status.”

When you find yourself in such a battle — or just want to get the most out of playing the game — you can rely on these five tips from Foursquare’s most accomplished players.

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1. Make Foursquare a Habit

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“I don’t know if I really have a strategy, but playing Foursquare has definitely changed my habits,” says Chris Preiss, who has checked into Foursquare more than 5,800 times, the third-most times of anyone on Foursquare according to Osnapz.com. “If I am in a mayorship battle, I will frequent that place a little more often. Or if there is a location that I know will help me earn a badge, I will go there.”

Adding Foursquare to your habits is a common theme among Foursquare champions. It seems obvious, but most people still don’t naturally check in when they arrive somewhere. Remembering to do so is a huge advantage, especially if you have a job like Preiss’s. His company provides CO2 to bars and restaurants, so he’s often in new places that he might not otherwise even know about.

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2. Pick a Strategy

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Gathering mayorships, badges, and checkins requires different and often conflicting strategies.

“In the past, many badges had clearly defined rules, and you could check venues’ tags to determine if a checkin there would help towards the badge,” explains Andersen, who currently has the second most number of checkins on Foursquare. “Now, most of the newer badges can’t easily be obtained by a concrete set of checkins. There are some sites like aboutfoursquare.com that can help guide you though – but these strategies typically involve checking in to new and different places, whereas something like [becoming] mayor involves going to the same place every day.”

In order to truly excel in a Foursquare power user category, it can be beneficial to define your strategy. Chris Radzinski decided to focus his efforts on badges.

“I am not a fan of going for mayorships — if you notice my account does not have many,” he says. “In terms of Foursquare, getting badges doesn’t really affect any other user specifically. But if I went around and had a thousand mayorships, some users would be irritated and would actually be affected.”

Radzinski is currently the Foursquare record holder with 131 badges. Those who wish to focus on badges, he says, should focus on the limited time badges first.

“Unlike mayorships, which can be taken, not everyone can say they have certain badges after they are inactive,” he says.

Preiss is less targeted. “For the most part, I just check in where I am and let the chips fall where they may,” he says. “Earning a badge unexpectedly can be more fun than working for one.”

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3. Know the Rules and Decide What is Cheating

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All checkins are not created equal. If you’re planning on being competitive, it’s important to know the rules.

“Many don’t realize that only checkins in the last 60 days count towards mayorship, or that only one checkin a day counts towards mayorship,” Andersen says. “Multiple checkins a day to a place aren’t necessarily mistakes, but someone might be doing it thinking it will help them become mayor more quickly.”

There are, of course, ways to bend the rules. You can check in on the mobile Foursquare website without actually being in a location, you can check in to a location as you pass it without ever actually going to it, and you can decide not to “share with friends” in order to unabashedly check in multiple times per visit to one location.

“I don’t really see the value in doing this more than a few times a day,” Andersen says about checking in off the grid. “You lose nearly all of Foursquare’s social benefits when you aren’t actually sharing anything with friends other than the fact that you’re accumulating points.”

Some people also consider employees who check in to their own business’s Foursquare page to be cheating.

But, as Preiss points out, “There aren’t really rules to the game, so cheating is kind of a touchy thing.”

Preiss says he considers checking in to places that he hasn’t actually visited to be cheating. He doesn’t do it, but, he says, “Foursquare hasn’t done anything to end this practice, so if they don’t have a problem with it, why should I?”

Foursquare has, in fact, made an attempt to stop rewarding armchair mayors. It continues to permit people to check in wherever they are, but, as Foursquare puts it, "We're never going to NOT let you check-in –- you can checkin wherever you want, whenever you want — the idea is simply to not award points, mayorships, badges or venue specials if it looks like you didn't really earn them."

Before you get competitive, it’s good to set some boundaries for what you will count as fair play. Foursquare pride isn’t as much fun when accompanied by cheater guilt.

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4. Use Twitter

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Radzinski says Twitter gives him a competitive edge. “Following the right people is crucial because many of the badges are only valid for a few days if it is event based, and the news hits Twitter faster than anything,” he says.

These are some online resources the power users we interviewed recommended:

• @aboutfoursquare: “Lots of updates on new badges and brands that are part of Foursquare,” says Preiss.
• @4squareTips: Great for tips, how-tos, and swarm alerts
• @mattersofgrey: General Internet news, but often reports on Foursquare. Great for badge lists.
• @foursquare: Get Foursquare news directly from Foursquare
• @getOsnapz: The Twitter feed of social media leader board site Osnapz.com.
• @4squarebadges: Outlines the best strategies for earning specific badges
• @foursquarehelp: Get a guaranteed response to every Foursquare support issue.
• Andersen keeps a Twitter list of “Foursquare gurus” that collectively span anything you would want to know about the platform.

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5. Stay Social

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Foursquare is intended to be a game. It can get competitive, but it should still be fun. Even the power users say the most important parts of the game are the social aspects.

“As a social person who works in a very social industry, it’s nice for friends to be able to see where and what is going on,” says Radzinski, who works as a general manager at a Cleveland Heights restaurant. “I can’t even tell you how many times someone has stopped at a place I am or texted to see how long I am staying at a bar or restaurant because they saw me checked in. The badges are just icing on the cake.”

Preiss says that the badges he’s most proud of are not those that were hardest to win, but those that remind him of good times. One of them he won at a friend’s birthday party while visiting New York. Another is the Jet Setter Badge, which he is proud of because it shows his passion for traveling.

What are your tips for becoming a Foursquare power user? Add them in the comments below.

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Series Supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide

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The Digital Influencers Series is supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE). How do you measure your brand's influence in fast-moving online mediums? Winning and maintaining social influence demands ongoing measurement of conversations, trends and responses. Waggener Edstrom Worldwide finds the most influential voices that have the biggest impact on campaigns. To learn how to measure influence, visit http://waggeneredstrom.com/driveinfluence.

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More Foursquare Resources from Mashable:

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- Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown
- 10 Foursquare Apps You Can Use Right Now
- Foursquare: Why It May Be the Next Twitter
- 6 Foursquare Apps We'd Love to See
- 6 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Foursquare

Images courtesy of bkbooth!;iStockphoto, yuri_arcurs; Foursquare

More About: Digital Influencers Series, foursquare, how to, how tos, lbs, location, location services, location-based, location-based apps, location-based games, location-based networking, location-based social network, power user, super mayor

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The world doesn’t need yet another texting app or service, or does it? Newcomer TextSlide is exiting stealth mode today to offer up the most exciting text experience we’ve seen of late — random text chat.

TextSlide takes inspiration from Chatroulette and brings random and temporal connections and conversations, just via SMS. The service is entirely text-based, meaning it works on any mobile phone, and is as simple as they come: just use the #start, #stop, #next and #help hashtag commands to control the random texting experience.

On TextSlide there’s no usernames, no friends or followers, just two random and anonymous texters — you can set a generic name — communicating until one of them gets bored and types #next to move on to the next texter.

If you’re hesitant to try it, don’t be. TextSlide only exposes your area code (not your full mobile number), which adds a little context to conversations but doesn’t lift the veil of anonymity. It’s also SMS only, so the worst thing you could be exposed to is some offensive language, and a simple #next can solve that problem right away.

In using TextSlide for more than a week, I’ve found the service to be an addicting and delightful way to randomly connect with industry insiders — there’s only been about 10 of us who’ve had insider access. Of course, that will change with this very post, but I anticipate the service to become infinitely more interesting as it grows; you never know who you might end up connected with via SMS.

The private beta texting service was built by Matt Hunter in a single weekend using Twilio’s texting platform. Hunter will eventually go after funding and work to create mobile app experiences in order to combat the texting fees associated with Twilio’s service.

If you want in, you better act fast. Hunter will be gradually rolling out TextSlide to users who sign up at the site and promises to let in more than 50 would-be users beginning now. Apparently Hunter has also hidden a few easter eggs. We’ve yet to find them but we believe them to be hidden SMS commands — so good luck on getting in and happy hunting.

Image courtesy of Ron Wiecki, Flickr

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Reviews: Flickr

More About: Mobile 2.0, startup, texting, textslide

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The octopus that accurately predicted the outcomes of eight World Cup matches this year died peacefully on Tuesday in Sea Life Center aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany. The staff members responsible for his care say they’re “devastated” and are considering erecting a permanent monument to him on the aquarium grounds.

Named “Paul” by the media and aquarium staffers, the octopus achieved international fame by picking the winner of every World Cup match he was presented with. His caretakers would place two boxes in the water, each with a flag representing one of the teams in an upcoming match, and he would swim to one of the boxes. Every time, he swam to the box representing the team that ultimately won the match.

Paul ranked highly in Twitter trends and was the inspiration for several Internet memes, many of which Buzzfeed has listed in tribute to mark the occasion of his death. He even had his own iPhone app. It allowed you to enter two choices and see which one the digital octopus would choose.

The octopus died of natural causes at a ripe old age — for octopuses, anyway. Thankfully, none of the German soccer players who threatened him with death over his (correct) prediction that Spain would defeat Germany were behind his demise. Neither was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called Paul an agent of “Western propaganda and superstition,” according to the New York Post.

Images courtesy of Wikipedia, Tilla

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Reviews: Internet, Wikipedia, World Cup

More About: football, Meme, memes, paul the octopus, psychic, soccer, sports, world cup

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Everyone loves plush animals, everyone loves doing good and pretty much everyone loves Facebook. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has combined all three into Facebook’s first ever non-profit gift center.

Timed for the (always early) start of holiday season, the conservation organization has opened a gift center on its Facebook Page that allows supporters to purchase different packages aimed to look like an “adoption.”

While WWF won’t actually ship a tiger to you, these symbolic adoptions each come with an adoption certificate, color photo and a species description card. Packages range from $25 to $250; all packages more than $50 come with a soft animal plush chosen from a list of 100 different plush animals.

If that sounds a little steep, most of that money is going toward WWF’s on-the-ground conservation work. Depending on what package is purchased, the WWF puts an average of $0.82 from each donated dollar toward the cause.

The WWF has launched gift centers in the past, but the incorporation of Facebook marks a larger turn toward establishing Facebook as a fundraising and community hub in addition to its website. “Shares” and “Likes” will function much like a virtual wish list. Users will soon be able to friend a wide range of species to receive information and updates about WWF’s conservation work related to the species.

The organization will soon be launching an interactive feature called “Find Your Inner Animal.” The app will be similar to Facebook’s omnipresent “What Kind of Disney Princess Are You?” quizzes but with a social good angle. After answering some simple questions, you’ll be presented with your true inner-animal. (I am a sea otter.) You’ll then be given the opportunity to “adopt” your specific animal through a gift center package.

The soon-to-be-launched app is a brilliant tie-in for the gift center, both encouraging users to learn more and to give more. It’s as if Mattel allowed you to purchase your specific Disney doll after the princess quizzes, but with proceeds going to an incredibly good cause.

While the Facebook Page is centered around the Gift Center, there are plans to add more community elements like updates from the field, interviews with specialists, and expanding the list of friendable species, says David Glass, WWF’s director of online marketing.

What do you think? Are gift centers like this a good way to raise money and awareness? Is there a better way to support the cause? Will you “adopt”?

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Reviews: Facebook

More About: adoption, facebook, fundraising, gift center, non-profit, social good, world wildlife fund, wwf

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