Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Social Media Will Tear Your Family Apart [Parody]”

Facebook and social media have been blamed for a lot of ills of late — divorce, teens run wild and even asthma attacks. Good thing YourTango is out with a PSA warning us all about the hazards of social media addiction.

In case the campy outfits didn’t tip you off, this PSA is a parody of the anti-drug films we were all forced to watch back in the ’80s and early ’90s. YourTango — a lifestyle brand focused on love & relationships — put out a similar video in 2009, "Facebook Manners And You,” which was a Webby Honoree for best comedy short and best writing.

“Given how ubiquitous the social media frenzy has become, we were eager to address its impact on users’ relationships – YourTango’s raison d’être is to filter life through the prism of love and relationships, after all,” says YourTango CEO and Founder Andrea Miller. “We couldn’t resist the opportunity to have fun and go a little over the top by parodying the phenomenon."

Despite the potentially over-the-top format, this vid is rather entertaining — watch as @CoolMomKaren gets hooked on Twitter, FarmVille, and the like and alienates her husband, @MustacheDanny, and son @DarrenSpaceCamp. Something to think about when you pull out your Android to play Angry Birds at the table this holiday season.

More About: humor, pop culture, social media, viral video, yourtango

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The new feature launches today on SoundCloud’s online platform, as well as in its updated, free iPhone app [iTunes link]. We haven’t had a chance to play around with the in-browser experience, as it wasn’t available at the time of this writing, but SoundCloud gave us a peek at the app, and we have to say that it’s pretty slick.

When you open the app, you’re greeted with a hard-to-miss, red “Record” button. Simply push said button to record your newest jam, podcast or senseless ranting, then click “Save.” The app then makes it extremely easy to add a picture to your recording — either taken on the spot with your phone’s camera or from your library — and add a location via geo-location (which is actually super accurate).

You can then upload the track to your account, which syncs with the browser for in-the-cloud storage. You can see a track I made with Mashable’s Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow below.

Upon trying this app out, I was instantly struck by how useful it could be to journalists and other professionals who do a lot of interviews. One can record interviews with one’s phone, and then store them all in one place, neatly marked with photos and locations (you can make tracks private to keep them from the masses as well).

For more casual users — say someone keen on doing an audio diary or something of the sort — sharing options will definitely be key. After recording and uploading a track, you can also share it on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and with friends.

You can also check out and comment on tracks uploaded by people you’re following on SoundCloud. Check out the video below for a more detailed look at the app.

Usability was key in the making of this app, according to SoundCloud Co-founder Alexander Ljung. “We want to create something that’s similar to Instagram, but for sound,” he says. “This year we’ve had really tremendous growth. We just passed over 2 million different sound creators on the site, and we’ve been really strong within professional music. But what we’ve seen now is that people start using it for casual sound creation and that’s helped our growth quite a bit, so now we want to make it even easier for anyone.”

Since its inception back in 2008, SoundCloud has been a destination for musicians and music lovers, teaming up with The Hype Machine and integrating with Creative Commons. SoundCloud users are also privy to 100 third-party applications for mobile, desktop and the web (created on its open platform), which make it easy for musicians to both make, promote and polish their music.

While we imagine that the “Record” feature will be attractive to the more casual user, we can also see bands taking advantage of it in conjunction with the site’s suite of applications.

Image of courtesy of Flickr, bredgur

Amidst the whirlwind of acquisition rumors, Groupon decided to stir the pot some more by announcing the next (possibly the most important yet) step in their long-term strategy: Groupon Stores.

Groupon’s basic idea – offering one deal per day per city – has done tremendously well in the past, garnering as much as $20 million of monthly revenue for Groupon, but it obviously has to hit a plateau at some point.

Groupon Stores are a solution to that problem. With this new feature, shop owners can set up virtual stores with Groupon and create as many deals as they want.

Deal Saturation? Here Comes the Deal Feed

This, of course, creates another problem: with so many deals, the one day/one deal/one city model seems to lose value. This is why Groupon created the Deal Feed, which presents a personalized stream of deals, updated throughout the day. There, you can see deals posted by all the merchants you follow, your featured daily deal, as well as recommended deals based on what Groupon knows about your shopping habits.

Groupon also plans to add other features to the Deal Feed, such as connecting your feed to Facebook and see what your friends are doing, which merchants they’re following and what deals are they buying.

Groupon’s Long-Term Strategy

“We originally designed Groupon to account for the constraints of being a small company. Since we didn't have any merchant relationships, we limited ourselves to one deal per day. Today things are different – our biggest problem is that demand is so high, merchants often wait months to be featured,” Groupon explains their motivation for creating the Stores and the Deal Feed in a blog post.

This is a huge step for Groupon, shedding new light on the rumored acquisition deal from Google, which may be valued at as much as $6 billion dollars. Besides growing amazingly fast right now, and having relationships with thousands of local merchants (which is of huge value to Google), Groupon obviously has a clear long-term strategy which may redefine the way we buy things online.

More About: commerce, deals, Google, groupon, groupon stores, trending

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Google Editions will have a significantly different sales model from most competitors, such as Amazon's Kindle store or Apple's iBookStore. Instead of purchasing books through a single online store, Google will let users buy them either from Google or from independent bookstores and then tie them to a Google account, which will enable them to read the books anywhere and on any device they please.

Originally, Google Editions was supposed to launch even earlier in 2010, but that didn’t happen; in May, Google's Manager for Strategic Partner Development Chris Palma said the launch is slated for June or July 2010.

Now, Google product management director Scott Dougall claims everything is set for a launch by the end of 2010 in the U.S. and in the first quarter of 2011 internationally. “Because of the complexity of this project, we didn’t want to come out with something that wasn’t thorough,” said Dougall.

Google’s partners for the launch, as well as the revenue share Google will offer to publishers and independent bookstores are unknown at this point.

More About: book, book store, e-books, Google, google editions

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In a world where it seems perfectly natural to tend to a virtual farm or manage a village of Smurfs, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised that a game where you get to throw your own Playboy-tastic party exists, yet we are.

After getting over the initial shock and realizing that, “yes Virginia, there really is a Playboy Facebook game,” we did the only logical thing: We played the game for 45 minutes.

Combining the social elements of FarmVille and some of the mechanics of a game like The Sims, Playboy Party can best be described as what would happen if Darren Star (creator of such television classics as Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210) had a Facebook game. It’s over-the-top, trashy and a lot more entertaining than it should be.

You begin the game by choosing and customizing your avatar and then going through a solo mode that shows you how to play the game. The goal is to basically create a kick ass party, making sure that the music is lively, the alcohol is flowing and that guests are taken care of. You can invite celebrities and Playmates to the party, which will help increase your popularity.

If people get too wasted, you need to ask them to leave so they don’t bring down the vibe. Likewise, if the paparazzi, out of control frat boys or the creepy guy from across the street crash the party, it’s your job to bounce them.

As you greet guests and get rid of unwanted people, you earn coins and fame points. Fame points propel you to the next level. When you move on to the next level, you are rewarded with extra items and collectible photos (that are basically bikini shots) and classic Playboy magazine covers. I ask you, in what other game is a 200 pixel copy of the March 1986 issue of Playboy (featuring Sally Field!) a reward?

As far as the “social” elements of the game — you can invite friends to your party and you can visit the party of other friends. You can also send gifts or prank your friends. Pranks mean you send frat boys, creeps or paparazzi to their shindigs.

The game is ridiculous and clearly more than a little sexist, but we have to say, we’re still a little bit impressed. It’s not that the game is fun or addictive to play; to be honest it really isn’t and it certainly is not addictive in the same way as other social games like FarmVille or Smurf’s Village. No, what makes the game work is that it recognizes how utterly inane and stupefying the concept of having a Playboy Party Facebook game actually is. It’s that sort of self-acceptance of its kitschiness, of the campy nature of the game that makes it succeed.

Plus, think about how much grief you can give your friends who do wind up playing the game. That’s a party right there.

More About: facebook, facebook games, playboy, playboy party, social games

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The report, released every year by the Internet giant, determines what queries topped user interest based on search volume and search growth to figure out what was hot in 2010.

Last year, Michael Jackson and Twilight topped Yahoo’s search rankings, while Megan Fox was the queen of Yahoo mobile searches in 2009. This year though, Michael Jackson and Megan Fox didn’t even make their respective lists. Replacing them instead were searches for the BP oil spill and, on mobile, the NFL.

The top ten searches on Yahoo in 2010 include six celebrities (Miley Cyrus clocks in at #3), one gadget (the iPhone at #6), one TV show (American Idol at #9, one sporting event (the World Cup at #2) and one manmade disaster (the BP oil spill at #1).

Mobile searches shared five of the same top ten, but also included the NFL (#1), Rihanna (#3), Sanda Bullock (#4), the NBA (#5) and the Winter Olympics (#9).

There were a lot of other interesting tidbits of information that we gleamed from Yahoo’s massive array of top searches. For example, “how to tie a tie” tops the list of most searched questions on Yahoo (beating “how to kiss” at #3 and “what’s the world’s only immortal animal” at #5). Oh, and Yahoo users are searching for the lyrics to Justin Bieber’s “Baby” more than any other song in the world.

In fact, there’s so much search data in this year’s list that the company commissioned JESS3 to create a nice infographic to summarize the company’s findings. In case that doesn’t satisfy you though, we’ve also included the full list of top searches in an embedded document below. Let us know if any piece of Yahoo’s report surprises you in the comments below.

(by the way, if you were wondering about the answer to “what’s the world’s only immortal animal, it’s the turritopsis nutricula.)

Infographic

Click on the image for a full-sized version

Yahoo’s Year in Review 2010

More About: BP Oil Spill, miley cyrus, Search, world cup, Yahoo, year in review

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Name: HowAboutWe

Quick Pitch: HowAboutWe is an online dating site — once New York-only, now national — that lets users propose unique date activities, making the experience more about meeting up and doing cool things than scrolling through pics and profiles.

Genius Idea: If you’re a tech-savvy person in your 20s and 30s, chances are you’ve been on an online date or two. And chances are, you’ve been on a horribly awkward — or downright awful — online date or two. The whole process can be overwhelming — scrolling through pages and pages of photos, sending messages into the ether, receiving countless borderline revolting epistles from dudes who only display photos of their torsos.

HowAboutWe seeks to alleviate that daunting experience by putting the focus on the date, rather than the hassle of getting there. Upon signing up for the site, users are asked to express their levels of interest in a series of dates, beer tasting, concerts, walks on the beach — that kind of deal.

This information — along with data from your profile — is plugged into an algorithm that determines what kinds of dates you’re sent via e-mail (every user gets a daily e-mail detailing dates that he or she might be interested in) and which show up on a stream on your homepage.

After answering said questions, users can create a rather barebones profiles (based on quirky questions like “What I would bring to show and tell?” and “One thing my mother would want you to know about me?”) that focus more on their personalities than their looks, and then propose dates that they would like to go on.

This injection of novelty into the dating scene seems par for the course for Co-founders Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout. The two met in kindergarten, and have since been collaborating on everything from a spaghetti business at a hippie festival the summer after high school to teaching; before founding HowAboutWe, both worked as teachers.

“For most of our careers as teachers, we taught courses that focused on self-knowledge, using the humanities as subject foci and big public projects that gave students chances to express themselves and share their knowledge,” Schechter says.

“We’re talking having students write their own versions of Plato’s Apology and perform them in front of large audiences, creating massive hip-hop operas about the history of labor and segregation, or taking parents and students on weekend retreats to talk about everything they need to say before they go to college.”

When they turned 30, the pair decided to create an online dating site — one that they would use. Hence the creative nature of HowAboutWe, which just scored $3.1 million in series A funding round led by RRE Ventures (syndicate includes Founder Collective, Thrive, FF Assets and individual angel/entrepreneurs like George Kliavkoff and Scott Kidder).

Schechter shared a few intriguing dates from around the country with us to give Mashable readers a better sense of what the site’s users are like:

• “How about we…ride bikes wearing our shortest shorts then get a malted milkshake.” (Los Angeles)
• “How about we…bike along the lakefront and have a progressive picnic at each beach, starting way north.” (Chicago)
• “How about we…buy bingo scratchers at random liquor stores. If we win, we move on to the next?” (Boston)
• “How about we…go to the National Portrait Gallery and make up back stories about the historical figures in the paintings?” (DC)
• “How about we…throw Twinkies at Marie Antoinette on Bastille Day at the Eastern State Pen?” (Philly)
• “How about we…try the new Indian street food restaurant then go to UO and make fun of ourselves in skinny jeans!” (San Francisco)

If any of the above (or myriad other dates on the site) strike a user’s fancy, they can indicate that they’re interested by clicking “I’m Intrigued,” and then, hopefully, start dating. “The date someone wants to go on provides an ideal digital first impression,” Schechter says. Also, the process aims to cut down on the penpal-like discourse so common on other dating sites: You propose a date, someone accepts, you go. And, even if the person is super lame, at least you got an interesting date out of it.

Largely, HowAboutWe is a free service. You can propose dates, browse dates, receive daily dates e-mails, create a profile, look at other profiles, indicate that you’re “Intrigued” and read messages for free, but if you want to send messages, you’ll have to pony up the cash (12 months cost $8 per month. Six months is $12 per month. Three months is $18 per month. One month is $28). Which means that you only have to pay if you actually want to go on a date.

The more active one is, the more the site will work in his or her favor — one could score a $100 check (for dating purposes, of course) for racking up 1,000 points, which are earned by proposing dates, getting friends to join, etc. The latter impetus will also help HowAboutWe grow its base of users. Pre-national launch, it had 25,000 users in New York City.

HowAboutWe could also be a boon to businesses and advertisers. The site features a storehouse of dates called “The Datetropolis,” where businesses can propose dates at their locations, which can then be proposed by users. Right now, this is the only way businesses can advertise on the site.

We like that HowAboutWe is simple and creative. The old practices of online dating — what with the MySpace shots and general penpal-age — were getting stale, and the site injects a new kind of life into the business. Also, the site itself is friendly, clean and attractive, which makes a big difference. One wants users to feel comfortable in an online space: Think about it, would you rather meet someone in a tacky dive (not the good kind) or somewhere well-lit and welcoming?

Naturally the secret behind any successful social network or dating site is having a large user base. Until now, this has been the main drawback of HowAboutWe — its limited, hyper-local pool of daters. Now that it has expanded to the rest of the U.S., it will be interesting to see how it grows and, potentially, flourishes.

Would you use HowAboutWe to secure your weekend plans?

Image courtesy of Flickr, Meagan

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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.

More About: howaboutwe, online dating, social media, spark-of-genius

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Effective January 4, 2011, Motorola, Inc. will become two separate companies: Motorola Solutions, Inc. and Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. Following the split, the company’s current co-CEOs, Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha, will head up Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility, respectively.

This company restructuring comes along with a stock restructuring. Current shareholders will get one share of Motorola Solutions stock per seven Motorola, Inc. shares and one share of Mobility stock per eight shares. Motorola Solutions will be home to the infrastructure businesses while Motorola Mobility will be the one focused on mobile phones and consumer devices.

A split like this has been in the works since at least 2008.

We’re going to make a wildly speculative guess and suggest that the blockbuster success of the Motorola Droid has had something to do with the company’s growth in the mobile sector.

Various models of the Droid have been so popular they’ve been hard to find in stores. Over the summer, the company’s Android-powered devices were selling faster than they could be built.

In fact, the Android platform has been a huge boost to Motorola’s success ever since the original Droid launched almost one year ago, when the company moved a healthy quarter of a million units during the first week of sales.

Motorola hadn’t had a device that big since the pre-smartphone Razr from 2004. With its robust and successful line of Android devices — and who knows, possibly a tablet or two in the future — we’re looking forward to what Motorola Mobility will deliver in 2011.

More About: Mobile 2.0, Motorola

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The rumor mill has been out of control. Most media outlets now agree that Google has submitted a $5.3 billion acquisition offer for Groupon with an additional $700 million earnout based on performance. It would be by far the search giant’s biggest acquisition to date.

Today’s report from The Wall Street Journal doesn’t reveal a lot of new details, save for one: Groupon’s board “will meet by conference call Wednesday to decide how to proceed.” In other words, the fate of the Chicago-based company could be decided as soon as tomorrow.

Groupon has nine directors on its board: Peter Barris of New Enterprise Associates, Kevin Efrusy of Accel, Jason Fried of 37signals, former AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis, John Walter of AT&T, Harry Weller of NEA, and Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky (its initial investor), Brad Keywell and Andrew Mason.

While we bet there will heated debate tomorrow whether or not to accept Google’s money, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will actually vote on the standing offer. Still, if a consensus does arise during tomorrow’s meeting, we might be hearing from Google and Groupon very, very soon.

More About: acquisition, Google, groupon

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The notice, issued earlier today, targets Julian Paul Assange, listed as a 39-year-old male from Townsville, Australia, for sex crimes. The warrant for his arrest that sparked the Interpol listing comes from the International Public Prosecution Office in Gothenberg, Sweden.

The warrant stems from accusations of sexual assault made earlier this year by two women he met in Sweden during a WikiLeaks-related trip. When the more serious charge of rape was dropped, he called the accusions a smear campaign.

However, the case against Assange was reopened and upheld by an appeals court. Swedish authorities intend to interrogate the WikiLeaks founder and have issued an EAW (European Arrest Warrant) to get him.

WikiLeaks has been the center of media and political attention for its recent leak of the Afghan War Diaries and sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables. The result has been an unprecedented look into U.S. diplomacy, including discussions surrounding Pakistan relations, a plan of action for North Korea, and the hacking of Google’s servers by China's Politburo that caused an international uproar.

For his part, Assange has been unusually quiet, given the recent release of the diplomatic cables. According to The Guardian, Assange is laying low somewhere outside of London with his supporters.

More About: Interpol, julian assange, trending, wikileaks

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One factor that stands out to the Linux Foundation is the growing number of large mobile tech companies supporting Linux development by employing developers who work on the FOSS software.

Typically — and understandably — many Linux committers have come from enterprise-focused IT companies. And those companies, including Oracle, Intel and IBM, still rank high on the list of Linux supporters.

However, this year, the Linux kernel is also seeing a lot of support from companies (and developers embedded at companies) in the mobile page, including TI, Analog Devices, Qualcomm, Nokia and others.

What we’re still missing, however, is a strong showing from companies in the web space. Google shows up as the 14th greatest corporate Linux development supporter, but other large web-focused companies, such as Microsoft and Yahoo, are not present in the ranks of companies that support Linux.

Overall, since 2005, around 6,100 individual developers and 600 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel. Here’s the breakdown (by kernel version number):

More About: developers, development, foss, Linux, linux kernel

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That means that your typography will be consistent across all media without having to use inconvenient, unsearchable, untranslatable image files instead of actual text. Custom fonts on the web haven’t had news this good since Google launched its most recent efforts in that area.

Here’s how Typekit for custom fonts works. If you’re a font designer, you purchase a license from a foundry that works with Typekit. Then, as Typekit’s business development head Don Loeb writes on the company blog, “In one click, you can bring the font into your Typekit account at no additional charge.”

If you’ve had a custom font made for your organization, Typekit also supports bringing your typeface to the web. In fact, they’ve already done so with The New Yorker:

Granted, the type isn’t perfectly rendered on this site; it’s a bit too sharp and pixelated. But it’s a darn sight better than discrepancies in branding or — worse yet — having to create an image for every single headline.

What do you think of Typekit’s new offering?

Image courtesy of aldoaldoz.

More About: font, fonts, typekit, typography

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Were you one of the many swooning over Frank’s iPhone app-assisted, Central Park proposal to girlfriend Kasey the other month? Well, sorry to tell you, folks, Frank’s undying love was a lie! That is to say, it was a hoax.

Frank’s Marriage Proposal in Central Park hit YouTube at the end of October to the delight of many an Internet denizen and news outlet — so popular that we’re still receiving tips about it over here at Mashable.

According to the YouTube description, the elaborate proposal was orchestrated by a team enlisted by Frank (whose real name is Doug Darwin — Kasey’s real name is, in fact, Kasey). The whole thing — which included a live band and a row boat — was said to be filmed using a bunch of hidden cameras, which were “streamed live into the team’s iPhones so they could watch the whole thing from a safe distance. A behind-the-scenes camera guy videotaped the team in action,” according to the YouTube description.

Whatever app the description is referring to, it doesn’t exist, but it did prompt some commenters to speculate that the whole thing was an elaborate Apple commercial.

It turns out the commenters were wrong — the video was not a shill for Apple. It was made to promote Michael Krivicka’s and business partner, former Saturday Night Live producer James Percelay’s, newest venture, Thinkmodo. Thinkmodo, which will launch on January 3, 2011, focuses on mining the marketing potential of viral videos.

If Krivicka’s name sounds familiar, you may be familiar with his other moniker, The Bald Guy, under which he has come out with such stunts as parody AR iPhone app NUDE IT, as well as a campaign to get Jimmy Fallon to follow him on Twitter.

“Since viral videos are both art and science, we wanted to merge both elements to introduce predictability to the videos’ success,” Krivicka tells us. “As part of our ’study’ we staged an elaborate marriage proposal in Central Park and fused tech and romance to see how well each would be received if merged.”

“Would men be drawn by the awesome iPhone app (which unfortunately doesn’t exist) or would women cry and wonder why Frank threw the ring (which was never in the box)? Since our video was covered by outlets like Glamour as well as CNET, we learned that, contrary to conventional wisdom, content can be made to appeal to both sexes without lessening the appeal to each.” (Note: It seems CNET was suspicious from the start.)

As for what Krivicka plans to do with these findings: “The field of viral videos is constantly changing and new trends are born every day,” he says. “With these particular findings we want to show advertisers that one video can target men and women. Separate campaigns are not needed.”

Krivicka certainly picked an effective theme for his video; tech-related wedding proposals are always a crowd-pleaser — see The Old Spice Guy delivering a proposal during his viral campaign, a proposal packed with Twitter, Foursquare and Qik, and even an Apple Store wedding.

What do you think of Krivicka’s highly effective, yet false, viral video? What function do you think videos like this could serve in a marketing arena? Have you lost your faith in true love? Let us know in the comments.

More About: humor, MARKETING, social media, viral video, youtube

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The investigation is in response to allegations that Google has used its dominance to discriminate against where competing services appear in search results and that Google prevents some websites from using ads by Google search competitors.

In the preamble of its statement, the European Commission said:

“The European Commission has decided to open an antitrust investigation into allegations that Google Inc. has abused a dominant position in online search, in violation of European Union rules (Article 102 TFEU). The opening of formal proceedings follows complaints by search service providers about unfavourable treatment of their services in Google’s unpaid and sponsored search results coupled with an alleged preferential placement of Google’s own services. This initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of any infringements. It only signifies that the Commission will conduct an in-depth investigation of the case as a matter of priority.”

The commission will investigate three separate areas. The first is whether Google has manipulated its unpaid or “algorithmic” search results to penalize Google competitors or promote Google products.

Earlier this month, Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, published some interesting data showing the so-called “hard coded bias” implicit in Google’s search engine.

This information, including Edelman’s comma test search tool, seems to run counter to many of Google’s public statements about the bias and preference of its own services.

The second part of the European Commission’s investigation will focus on whether Google forces exclusivity contracts with advertising partners. This is in response to allegations that Google bars the placement of ads from competing companies on a partner website.

The final part of the investigation concerns the portability restrictions of online advertising campaign data. In other words, does Google restrict the way that campaign data can be migrated to a competing platform?

As the commission notes, there is “no legal deadline to complete inquiries into anticompetitive conduct.”

More About: Antitrust, European Commission, European Union, Google, legal, policy

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Coremetrics data shows that online spending on Black Friday this year was up 15.9% compared to last year, and up even more on Cyber Monday. That is a great start, but it is too early for online retailers to rejoice. While it is good news that more holiday dollars are being spent online, most online retailers will fall short of achieving their full revenue potential this season.

For those of you who are committed to maximizing revenue during the holidays, here are 12 ways — for 12 days — to do just that. If you can address these 12 important opportunities in the next two weeks, your holiday revenue could dramatically surpass your expectations.

Day 1: It's All About Quality Control

Check for major bugs, code errors, security errors and long load times on browsers, new and old, including IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome, and Safari. Also, ensure your site is highly usable by making sure the following elements are present on your site:

• A highly visible "View Cart" button on the top right of your site (this is where consumers expect it to be)
• An "Add To Cart" button that sticks out like a sore thumb on your product page
• A "This Site Is Secure" promise above the fold on your shopping cart
• Product review stars that accompany product thumbnails on your section pages (not just your product pages)

At my company, we've run scientific conversion tests on these elements and, for most sites, they should have a significant impact on conversion rates.

Day 2: Check for Content Thieves

Dozens of shopping portals have emerged this year as popular destinations for shoppers. Most of the traffic that goes to these shopping portals, however, comes from search engines. Quite often, these shopping portals have a search engine optimization strategy that relies on literally copying unique product descriptions from a merchant's site and then using the descriptions to outrank the merchant.

The first sign that you may have been a victim of content theft is an abrupt, seemingly unexplainable drop in your traffic at some point in the past 12 months. Try searching for snippets of your unique copy in Google (one or two sentences at a time, with the text in quotes), and if you find shopping portals ranking above you with your copy, you'll want to take action. For example, it is usually helpful to ensure that the public XML feed of your products does not include your unique copy.

Day 3: Map Promotions for the Holiday Shopping Season

Many online retailers leave holiday promotions until the last minute. This year, plan your promotions well in advance to ensure that your website, paid search campaigns and e-mail campaigns are all in sync. There is nothing worse than promoting a free shipping offer to a shopper through e-mail or paid search advertising, and then having that shopper abandon your site because they can’t find the details of the offer on your site.

Day 4: Build and Promote Clearance Pages

I hereby dub 2010 the year of the "daily deal." Many online shoppers are hyper-focused on finding time-sensitive, extraordinary offers. Don't ignore this huge source of revenue. Create a clearance center, promote it aggressively on your homepage, populate it with deals that are truly too good to pass up and swap the deals out on a regular basis.

Make sure you encourage shoppers to sign up for a special mailing list or to join you on Facebook and Twitter to be notified of new deals. Tools like the DailyDealBar will help you to time deals in advance and automatically post them to your Twitter and Facebook Page each day.

Day 5: Show a Pulse

If you operate an online store that is not backed by a well-known brand name, shoppers will be immediately skeptical of you. They’ll wonder if you're a real company, and if you are, whether you care about customer service and helping them give gifts this holiday season.

One of the best ways to overcome this angst is to show a pulse. Update your site's header to reflect the colors of the season or to showcase holiday promotions and/or promises. Go a step further by beefing up your “About Us” page by writing content that talks about your mission, your commitment to your shoppers and showcases pictures of your employees that are accompanied by their personal commitments to serve shoppers well.

Day 6: Promote Specific Products on PPC

Many online merchants spend significant time and money chasing clicks from shoppers who are very early in the decision-making process. Such shoppers may be searching for very general phrases like "gifts for Dad" or "golf gifts." During the holiday season, however, you have a better chance to drive profitable sales on searches that relate to a specific product that shoppers have already decided to buy. Invest time in creating campaigns in AdWords and AdCenter that promote specific products that have the potential to be big sellers.

Day 7: Analyze Bounce Rates to Re-merchandise Key Pages

Identify the most highly trafficked pages on your site (likely homepage and section pages), and assess the bounce rate for each. Once you've identified pages that don't encourage shoppers to browse deeper on your site, drill down further to identify the bounce rate for each of the keywords sending traffic to that page. Then, re-merchandise your products on that page to ensure the inclusion of products that shoppers intended to find on this page when they originally clicked into it from a search engine. This will help conversion rates and SEO.

Day 8: Clear Your Cart of Distractions

“Yes, Mr. Shopper, I understand you would like to purchase a leather briefcase, but before you do, I'd like you to first browse through our catalog of jewelry boxes, money clips, and fanny packs…”

Is that the message you want to send to shoppers? Probably not. That is the message you’ll send, however, if your "View Cart" page (the page a shopper sees after adding an item to their cart) has your standard left-hand navigation on it. My company has run countless tests on shopping carts, and quite often our testing leads us to make the following recommendations:

• Remove your standard navigation from your cart page (except for shipping/return policies)
• Make the proceed-to-checkout button more visible than anything in your cart
• Highlight the fact that your cart is secure
• Include only relevant cross-sell items
• Simplify your cart pages as much as possible

In the meantime, you can easily install tools like The Cart Closer that are proven to prevent shoppers from abandoning your shopping cart.

Day 9: Create a Shipping Calendar, Communicate Milestones

If I buy it today, will it arrive by Hanukkah or Christmas? That's the question on the mind of many of your shoppers this time of year. FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service have posted holiday shipping guidelines on their sites. It is important that you review these guidelines early, use them to create your own internal shipping deadline calendar, make it easy for customers to find and update your site regularly in order to keep your shoppers informed.

Day 10: Schedule Rating and Product Review Requests

Let's face it: online shoppers love reading reviews. The two reviews that matter the most are reviews of your store and reviews of particular products purchased from your store.

To get more reviews of your store (the kind of reviews that show up in Google next to your site's listing), schedule e-mails to go out to your recent shoppers after their merchandise has arrived and ask them for reviews. Give them a direct link to your page on several sites that collect reviews for you, such as BizRate and PriceGrabber.

To get more product reviews (the type of reviews that will show up on your website), pre-schedule an e-mail to holiday shoppers that they will receive on the afternoon of December 25 or sometime on December 26.

Day 11: Update Your Return Policy

Many shoppers have disciplined themselves not to buy from an online store that doesn't have a clear return policy. Make your return policy easy to understand, and include all of the specific information that shoppers will need if they decide to return merchandise after the holiday.

Day 12: Build Your Q1 Strategy

It sounds counter-intuitive to spend a lot of time thinking about Q1 of next year while you are in the middle of this year's busiest shopping season, and I agree with that sentiment. That said, it would be a mistake to ignore Q1 all together. January, February and March are big months for many online retailers. Think about how you can convert Q4 customers into Q1 customers, and how the lessons you are learning this holiday season can be applied to next year's big holidays that fall early in the year.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- Why Your Business Should Consider Reverse Mentorship
- 4 Misconceptions About Marketing in Social Games
- Small Biz Checklist: 5 Important Tasks for the End of the Year
- HOW TO: Boost Holiday Sales With Commonly Overlooked Marketing Strategies
- How Social Media Can Make Online Shopping Less Lonely

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, rubenhi, danabeth555, sjlocke

More About: adCenter, Adwords, business, Cart Closer, conversion rates, e-commerce, ecommerce, Exclusive Concepts, holiday revenue, holiday sales, List, Lists, online shopping, SEO, small business

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Before the turn of the century (a.k.a. the Wild West of file sharing), Winamp reigned supreme for MP3 playback on Windows. Now I haven’t used a Winamp product since I learned about foobar2000 back in 2002, but it’s often nice to see the resurgence of a familiar face in tech.

Despite all its fancy features, Winamp is a winner because it’s just a very solid audio player. This isn’t to say that the features aren’t nice. Winamp for Android supports wireless desktop syncing (via Winamp 5.6 for PC), so you can simply beam tracks to your device over Wi-Fi. It also has Last.fm scrobbling support and particularly good play queue management.

But don’t take my word for it, check out the free download yourself by scanning the QR code below:

More About: doubletwist, mp3, winamp, winamp for android

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Our goal is to connect with 500,000 of you through our Facebook Page by New Year’s Day. There’s still time left to participate. On January 1, we will work with Social Printshop to print a giant poster of all our fans’ profile photos, which will be a fixture in our new office.

If you’re not currently our fan on Facebook, simply hit "Like" below to have your profile honored among other Mashable fans in our office. If you are a fan, help us spread the word to your friends or fellow Mashable readers that would be interested in participating.

How to Participate

It’s as simple as clicking "Like" on the widget below. If you’re not already connected to our Facebook Page, you’ll be able to connect with the Mashable community and more easily keep up with the latest social media and tech news and resources on Facebook.

Help Us Spread the Word

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2. Share this post on Facebook with your friends, letting them know you’ll be on the World’s Largest Facebook Wall.

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We appreciate your readership, community and support for the past five years, and this is a small way of saying “Thank you.” Here’s a rendering of what part of the wall might look like with the Facebook profiles on it.

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Responsibility for Sunday’s attack was claimed by a single hacker, the Jester, though many are skeptical that it was the work of just one person.

Today’s attack, which was initially focused on http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/, has been much more intense. At 9:00 a.m. ET, WikiLeaks tweeted, “DDOS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.”

As Fast Company notes, that’s much stronger than the 2 to 4 gigabits per second of Sunday’s attack. Security firm Netcraft has been following today’s attack, noting that it was expanded to include the main wikileaks.org domain as well.

In North America, access to the site has been relatively unencumbered. Fast Company details that the bulk of the attack took place during the European business day.

The decentralized nature of WikiLeaks and the fact that the documents in question are available on the web via torrents makes the impact of these attacks largely one of annoyance. In other words, even if hackers do manage to take down the website itself — the information is still accessible via alternative channels.

Some nations are bypassing the DDoS attack and just banning the site outright. China officially blocked access to WikiLeaks earlier today.

More About: ddos, DDoS Attack, security, wikileaks

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It’s easy to plan a squeaky clean social media strategy for your business when it’s on paper. But executing all of the day-to-day tasks involved in that strategy can be a different story — and a giant, tangled mess — without implementing processes to manage it.

Thankfully, there are plenty of tools and strategies that can help community management teams communicate with each other, stay on the same page, schedule posts and cooperate with other departments.

Before you launch your strategy, consider how you will manage the execution. These six steps can help get you started.

1. Define Your Content Mission

Don’t start your social media process without thinking about what you’re trying to accomplish. Select your content accordingly.

International development organization Community Lab is striving to be a hub where supporters can learn about how they can make a difference. Therefore, its community engagement coordinator, Phi Pham, says he feels comfortable posting any content that has a relationship to some sort of cause or issue related to international development or international relations.

At local recommendation search engine Bizzy, however, the goal is to promote the brand and its full relaunch. Community manager Emily Hurley says she focuses on early adopters and tech-savvy consumers. On Facebook, however, the company tries to be accessible to a wider audience. The company includes announcements and tries to create brand awareness on both accounts, but is careful to not use the platforms merely as broadcast mechanisms.

“One unofficial guideline is to be real people online. No one likes to follow a corporate Twitter bot,” Hurley says.

2. Explore Social Media Management Tools

There are a slew of quality tools that can help you manage your social media accounts, and many of them are free.

HootSuite, one of the most popular tools for scheduling, posting and monitoring multiple accounts from one spot, recently surpassed 1 million users. Despite the popularity of this dashboard, Pham discourages social media managers from relying on it as their only management tool.

“The biggest mistake I have seen is that people get too lazy with their content posting,” he says. “They’ll want one main tool to post on all their social media accounts, and I don’t think there is one main tool to do that.”

Community Lab uses a variety of tools, including HootSuite, to maximize the capability of each network. For Facebook, Community Lab posts directly to the site and uses a spreadsheet in Dropbox to schedule and aggregate content.

3. Keep Track of Who Is Posting

Having multiple people on your corporate accounts can create a situation ripe for double posts, mistimed announcements and general confusion about who is doing what when.

One solution is to have just one person post to all accounts. For Josh Pelz, the sole in-house social media person at Gansevoort Hotel Group, this is his only option. While it clears up any confusion, he says it can also be a bit overwhelming and takes up a lot of time that could be spent on bigger projects.

Another option is to divide the posting responsibility into shifts. Community Lab has one person who is responsible for posting during the weekdays and another person who is responsible on weekends.

Bizzy divides its local accounts among its community managers, making each person responsible for one account. Hurley oversees the main Twitter account and the Facebook Page. She says that this strategy is helpful in metering out content, so that multiple people don’t flood an account and that each person can maintain conversations. In some cases, however, she says that it might be more appropriate to use a “divide and conquer” strategy like Community Lab’s.

“The one caveat perhaps is that you make it a high priority to make sure conversations don’t get lost in the shuffle,” she says. “When one person is engaged with another user, that person owns that conversation as it continues.”

4. Be Cohesive

Even if multiple people post to your accounts, it’s important that what one person is posting doesn’t contradict or clash with what another person is posting. This has been especially important for Bizzy because it has multiple local accounts, as well as national accounts, that are run by different people.

Here’s how they stay on the same page, according to Hurley: “We have one main Twitter account that acts as a feed to our localized accounts, so we can maintain some control over when we release or link to certain things. Our local community managers use that stream to trigger announcements that they can then propagate across their own accounts. With that methodology, we can maintain some cohesiveness as a brand, but still allow our local folks to go make their localized accounts their own, with their own personality.”

5. Measure Success

Tools like Tap11 and HootSuite can help you compile social media analytics. But depending on how you define success, these numbers might not be the most important factor in your strategy.

“We ask ourselves questions like, ‘Are we learning from our users?’ ‘Do our users talk about us to their friends?’ ‘What are the positive things they say?’ ‘What are their most frequent concerns or questions?’” Hurley says.

This sort of information can only be gathered and measured through successful social media monitoring.

6. Report Your Results

Decide how often you will report on your social media activities and what you’ll include.

The report should include specifics — Pham compiles graphs of growth rates, summaries of the data, and explanations of why any data that stands out occurs during her weekly reports. But broader explanations of trends are also useful — Pelz says his reports take the form of a conversation with the rest of the marketing and PR department.

The Social Media Marketing Series is supported by Webtrends Facebook Analytics, which provides comprehensive tracking and measurement solutions to help you maximize your ROI. To keep up with Webtrends Social products, follow its blog.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- Why Your Business Should Consider Reverse Mentorship
- 5 Ways to Sell Your Expertise Online
- 16 Handy iPhone Apps for Better Blogging
- 35 Essential Social Media & Tech Resources for Small Businesses
- 4 Misconceptions About Marketing in Social Games

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PeskyMonkey, Kolbz, AndrewJohnson, RBFried Flickr, George Eastman House, Wenzday01, George Eastman House

More About: business, enterprise, hootsuite, Managing social media, social media, social media analytics, social media execution, social media marketing, Social Media Marketing Series, social media monitoring, social media processes

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In addition to using points for game cards or virtual currency, American Express members will be able to use their points on unique and exclusive virtual goods in Zynga games like FarmVille. This is the first time that American Express has added virtual goods to its roster of member rewards. This type of partnership further dispels some of the misconceptions about marketing in the social games space.

With a recent study indicating that more than 56 million Americans are playing social games, it seems natural that financial services companies like American Express want a piece of the action.

An estimated $2.2 billion was spent on virtual goods in 2009 and that figure is no doubt already higher this year. Last year, the primary payment method for many of these micro-transactions was done via PayPal or a major credit card, but in the past eight months, that has started to change.

Facebook, the mecca of social gaming, started to heavily push Facebook Credits at the beginning of 2010. In March, Zynga added Facebook Credits as a payment option for FarmVille.

Retailers have also embraced Facebook Credits, with gift cards for the virtual currency available at chains like Walmart, Best Buy and Target. Some online retailers are even offering Facebook Credits as shopping incentives.

For American Express Membership Rewards members who are also FarmVille fans, this is pretty cool situation. After all, chances are you paid for some of FarmVille cash with your Amex card anyway (which means you earned reward points). If you can then use those rewards to get more Farm cash, that’s just gravy.

Disclosure: Mashable is a contributor to the American Express OPEN Forum.

More About: american express, amex, farmville, social games, virtual currency, Zynga

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This brings the company’s total funding to $40 million, including a $10 million Series B earlier this year and a $5 million Series A at the beginning of 2009.

Yammer may not be something the average social media user would encounter on a daily basis; however, the average social media user isn’t Yammer’s target audience. The company has instead chosen to focus on the entities that have the willingness and ability to pay for the social tools they use: large businesses.

Yammer’s enterprise-level social networking tools have landed them 1.5 million verified corporate users — including 80% of the companies in the Fortune 500.

Its white-label product looks and feels a bit like Facebook or Twitter, with users posting short updates and continuing threaded conversations. While other enterprise-level tools are stuck in an ugly, boring and old-fashioned aesthetic, Yammer is moving in another direction entirely, something Mamoon Hamid, principal at U.S. Venture Partners and newly appointed Yammer board member, called “the consumerization of the enterprise.”

“Yammer's growth has been explosive,” Hamid said, “and they've proven the value of the freemium model. The new infusion of capital will help the company scale to meet the considerable market demand.”

Yammer CEO David Sacks also recently told us about the company’s new application platform, which allows partner companies to build new apps on the Yammer platform and integrate existing products.

“Companies already use a slew of enterprise applications,” he said, “such as HR, SFA, and ERP, to help operate their businesses. All of those application areas can be enhanced with a social component, and we think the combination with Yammer is very powerful and valuable to customers.”

What do you think of Yammer’s model and product? Do you think more businesses will take a shine to — and write a check for — this user-friendly business communication tool?

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The Digital Entertainment Series is supported by the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10, the seriously entertaining smartphone that knows how to have fun. Check it out here.

Today, the photo sharing category of sites and apps is largely dominated by the two big players, Facebook and Flickr. Both services are a great way to share photographs and video with family members, friends, online acquaintances and even the random Internet visitor. However, the world of photo sharing sites and tools goes far beyond just these services.

Here are four of our favorite photo sharing alternatives for the photo lover in us all.

1. SmugMug

What It Is: SmugMug is a site with a central focus on making it easy to showcase and organize your photographs — whether you want to sell them or not.

How It’s Different: SmugMug is really focused on making sure your photos are safe, secure and easy to access. There are no bandwidth caps and no limits on the number of photos you can host. You can choose to password-protect all or some of your photos or galleries, add custom watermarks and share photos on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

How Much It Costs: SmugMug Basic is $5 per month or $40 per year. For $60 per year or $8 per month, you can upgrade to SmugMug Power and get more customization options and the ability to upload and embed 1080p video. SmugMug Pro is $20 per month or $150 per year and includes tons of e-commerce options for the professional photographer.

Other Tidbits: SmugMug has apps for iPhone, iPad and Android and has plugins for iPhoto, Aperture and Adobe Lightroom 3. That means you can easily and seamlessly upload your photos directly from your camera or from your photo app of choice.

2. picplz

What It Is: Picplz is a photo sharing app that makes it easy to share your photos to Facebook and Twitter, while also checking in to Foursquare.

How It’s Different: While not purely a photo sharing app — you can browse, comment and upload photos using the website — mobile is the big focus with picplz. The app and the website also let you apply filters to your photos, stuff like toy camera, ’70s and cross-processed.

How Much It Costs: Picplz is free and available in the App Store or the Android Market. You can also sign up for a free account at picplz.com.

Other Tidbits: Picplz has already closed a $5 million first round, led by Andreessen Horowitz.

3. Instagram

What It Is: Instagram is an iPhone app that lets you take photos and share them with your friends on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare. You can also apply various filters and transformations to your photos.

How It’s Different: Instagram is most similar to picplz, but it has a hint of Hipstamatic in it as well. What sets it apart is its ease of sharing, browsing and commenting.

How Much It Cost: Instagram is free.

Other Tidbits: Instagram had more than 100,000 downloads in its first week of release.

4. Path

What It Is: Path is a website and iPhone app that lets you share your photos with a select group of people.

How It’s Different: Path limits you to 50 network connections, based on a theory that states that humans can only sustain 150 social relationships. By limiting users to a smaller network, Path hopes that the sharing and capturing experience can be more personal and more special.

How Much It Costs: Path is free.

Other Tidbits: Path has a high-profile list of founders and investors, including Shawn Fanning, Kevin Rose and Ron Conway.

Your Picks

What are some of your favorite non-Flickr/Facebook places to share photos? Let us know in the comments!

The Digital Entertainment Series is supported by the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10, the seriously entertaining smartphone that knows how to have fun. Check it out here.

More Photography Resources from Mashable:

- 10 Unique iPhone Photography Accessories
- iPhotography: 10 Pro Tips for Snapping Perfect iPhone Photos
- 10 Amazing Android Photographs
- 10 Essential Websites for iPhone Photographers
- 10 Wonderful Wildlife iPhone Photographs

More About: Digital Entertainment Series, facebook, flickr, instagram, Path, photography, Photos, picplz, smugmug

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The organization was founded in 2007, and its name stands for “I’ve got information technology, too.” It currently operates in Brooklyn, where community members were attempting to make sure everyone in the area had access to technological tools — tools that can sometimes make a huge difference in access to services and quality of life.

The two iGotITtoo co-founders began teaching community center computer classes to address this need; their efforts were met by a growing demand, and iGotITtoo now boasts a staff of 30 volunteers teaching two to three classes and labs per week at each of the organization’s three locations in Brooklyn.

CEO Santana Kenner said in a statement on Tuesday, “It is our mission to end digital inequality by building communities' capacities to leverage technology to improve educational and economic opportunities — a pattern which affects social capital in both the physical and digital domains.” iGotITtoo is planning a citywide launch in 2011.

Do you think more cities and neighborhoods could use programs like this one? Let us know what you think of Google’s grant and of iGotITtoo’s programs in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, kaptainkobold.

More About: charity, Google, grant, social good

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Back in October, Verizon announced that its 4G network would be live by the end of 2010. What’s more, Verizon has said that it will launch in 38 cities, making it the largest 4G network in the U.S.

LTE is important for a number of reasons, but most of all, because it has the potential to become the first true global standard in wireless. By contrast, Sprint has embraced WiMAX as its 4G standard, which is mainly prevalent in parts of Asia. Regardless, both technologies are exceptionally fast compared to today’s mobile broadband standards — and let’s face it, that’s really the most important factor.

Mashable will be compiling all the information from Verizon’s 4G LTE news conference tomorrow, so be sure to check back for details on what’s to come.

More About: 4G, LTE, mobile broadband, sprint, verizon wireless, WiMax

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MapQuest.com launched in 1996 as an early pioneer of both location-based services and the interactive web — two fields that have since exploded. Barry Glick led the company as its CEO for eight years preceding its sale to AOL for a stock deal valued at $1.1 billion.

Since then, he has served as partner or CEO to a number of location-based service companies including mobile GPS navigation company Webraska, real-time geospatial data company ObjectFX, and geo-encryption company GeoCodex.

The company at which he is currently chairman, SmartRealm, is a departure from much of his previous work in that its specialty is in mapping social networks, not geographical location. Glick recently spoke with Mashable about how SmartRealm’s new “maps” will change the way brands advertise, the future of location-based services, and how what he originally thought was a product demo ended up becoming MapQuest.

• 1. What trails do you think MapQuest blazed and how do you think it contributed to the Internet as we know it today?

  MapQuest was a little bit unique…because in the very early days of the world wide web, if you were Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, you put out basically a brochure on the web, and you took your other stuff that you may have had in print and converted it to HTML, and people could go through pages of it as you would a brochure. It was not truly interactive.

  Mapquest was, I think, one of the very first things on the web that was truly interactive in the sense that we did not have predetermined pages. There were no pages. Everything was generated when people wanted it. So when people said, “I'm interested in a map of 1631 W. Wellington, Chicago, IL,” that map would be generated on the spot and delivered to you — personalized and done in real time.

  People were kind of like, “Wow, that sort of opens the door to so much other stuff that you could do on the web.” We were proud of that, because of that transition from brochure to truly interactive media. I think that was sort of the meta thing. But the more concrete thing, in terms of pioneering, was of course the beginnings of location-based services and the idea that maps and directions and other things related to a location could be delivered very effectively via the web. That sort of changed the landscape of mapping, which has of course evolved a lot since then, too. But it was kind of an important step in the process.

• 2. I noticed that you have a PhD in geography. When you were getting your PhD did you know that you would be working with location-based information on the Internet?

  No, certainly not on the Internet. That didn't exist, or only existed in laboratories, and I was not aware of it.

  I actually had done a lot of work in computer science as well as in geography, so the application of computers to geography, where geography is really the science and art of location, was what I was interested in. Early on, that was computer graphics, which was basically, “How do I use a computer to…draw maps? How do I analyze the data related to location and produce a map in software?” So that's kind of what I was into. That was not the Internet, but it translated pretty well once the Internet, and especially the world wide web in the early 90s, came out.

• 3. With MapQuest, was there an "a ha moment?”

  No, it was more evolutionary, and also a little bit more a matter of recognizing that it could be an “a ha moment” once it already was happening, rather than ahead-of-time thinking about it and saying, "a ha."

  This software we had developed was running on computers, but not of course connected to the Internet or the world wide web. So we were out showing the software to potential clients or customers — and these were people like the big airline reservation systems or the big real estate multiple listing systems — and telling them, “Hey, you can do this mapping stuff on computers.”

  We wanted an easier way to demonstrate to them remotely. Some of the engineers said, “If we put it onto the web, people could kind of access it themselves and look at it and play around with the results and get a feel for it.” And I said, “That's a fantastic idea, let's do that as long as it's not too big of a deal, and it wasn't.”

  Consumers just used it so much, they brought down the servers, and then we had the “aha moment” that this is something that isn't just a demo for our customers, this is something that everybody needs and let's go as fast as we can and make it as big as we can.

• 4. If MapQuest was the beginning of the location-based service space, where do you see future opportunities for location-based services?

  The biggest opportunity for location-based services is basically location-based services going away as a concept … Location is going to be in the background, working with people as an added dimension along with people's interests and their friendships and how those relate to the physical world where location is important. I think that certainly in social networks and in search — those are the really big ones and then there are all the minor and specific things like real estate or travel — but all of those are going to build on the foundation of searching things by location, finding people by location, and all of that being kind of searching the whole web of knowledge with location as one of the keys that you use to search, and make that accessible as you're mobile.

• 5. What made you want to be the CEO of SmartRealm?

  I'm kind of a sucker for things that are potentially game-changing and especially when they relate to a mega trend like social media and social networks. And SmartRealm has a technology that I think goes a little beyond what's available. And it just seemed like a way to take things to the next level.

  I've always been involved in information and analysis. And this was basically trying to take the huge amount of information that's now being generated through social media and making it useful to people in a specific way. That's at a very broad level what SmartRealm does.

• 6. Useful to whom?

• I think starting with brands. That's where there's immediate interest and basically the ability to justify with a return on investment why companies should use some of their scarce resources to do this.

  But I think it goes beyond brands to human resources, to product management…Governments are interested and universities are interested, so it does go beyond brands.

• 7. How does SmartRealm work?

  It's hard to do, but it's simple to explain… Our focus is on activities on social networks. We take those that are relevant for a specific brand –- to use the brand example — and then we keep track of who is taking other actions, like re-posting something or “Liking” something or rating something. We keep track of all those relationships so that we can kind of create the network. So we start with the social media, which is the actual postings and content, and then we generate the network, sometimes called a social graph, and then basically the brands use that to be able to tell who are the –- and here I'm very careful about the term, but I'll just throw the term out –- influential people for my specific purpose…and I want to know who, based on activities, not just on their demographics, who are the most likely people to be my advocates or word-of-mouth people for a specific purpose.

• 8. How does this change the way that brands run a campaign?

  [Brands] want to know, “Who do I reach out to with the initial interaction, engagement?” I may want to send samples out…and we're trying to target those to the key people to create the buzz and the effective word of mouth.

  Instead of viewing the audience as one big mass of people and having this old-fashioned one-to-many type of marketing, or even just dividing it up demographically, it allows you to really zoom in on people who have specific interests and also to reach parts of your network who can reach some hard-to-reach people who haven't been engaged…So basically it gives you — from my background it’s easy to put it in these terms — it's sort of like a map of your social network audience, and it allows you to do targeted marketing.

  ---

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  - WordPress Founder on the Key to Open Source Success [INTERVIEW]
  - 7 Questions With AOL Co-Founder Steve Case
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  Reviews: Internet, Mashable

  More About: Barry Glick, interactive web, Location-based services, MapQuest, maps, MARKETING, SmartRealm, social media, social media marketing, web apps

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Gap and Foursquare's love affair has taken a new turn this morning, with the retailer debuting an ad campaign featuring interactive "Add to Foursquare" buttons integrated within online ads.

The ads — which are running on a wide variety of sites including Mashable, Gawker and Conde Nast properties — feature Gap holiday fashions and deals along with the Foursquare button, which when clicked, adds a Gap to-do and enables a 30% discount on one regular priced Gap item.

The ads are location-aware too; users will be able to associate the to-do with a nearby store and be reminded of it when they're nearby and pull up "Places" within Foursquare. Gap will also be donating $1 for each add to Foursquare's charity of choice — Camp Interactive — as part of the campaign.

We're starting to see more and more social integrations within banner ads — most commonly perhaps in the form of Facebook "like" buttons — but this is the first time we've seen it with Foursquare as the call to action. Foursquare may have a significantly smaller userbase, but given the ads can directly drive foot traffic with a discount, we imagine the results could inspire others to emulate the format.

The campaign also marks yet another hookup between Foursquare and Gap. Earlier this year, the retailer offered a one-day 25% discount to users that checked into their stores, and more recently, placed Foursquare co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in a print ad.

More About: advertising, foursquare, gap, MARKETING, online advertising

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When was the last time a search engine gave you results in photo, video and audio simultaneously? Enter Qwiki, a Bay Area-based startup. Qwiki’s goal is to redefine the search experience by allowing the user to obtain his or her information in the form of interactive multimedia clips.

We recently sat down with Qwiki’s CEO, Doug Imbruce, and got a firsthand demo of how Qwiki works. We also talked about how the search engine plans to integrate social media, and Imbruce’s personal motivation for founding the company.

What do you think of Qwiki? Do you prefer its format over that of Wikipedia, Google and other search engines? Let us know in the comments section below.

More Videos from Mashable:

- Startup Advice: Inside Tips From Expert Entrepreneurs [VIDEO]
- Outsourcing Our Love Lives: How Online Dating Works [VIDEO]
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More About: audio, multimedia, photo, qwiki, Search, social media, video

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In looks and in subject matter, it is very much a mix between Wired, Fast Company and GQ, minus some of the technicality and the extensive, in-depth features (the articles are all noticeably short) of the former two, and with a greater focus on entertainment. An article about emerging astronomers, for instance, muses about who would play them on screen.

Although the animated cover (below) and other special effects are fantastic, the design is otherwise not quite as clean as the app versions of the magazines produced by Conde Nast/Adobe and Hearst/Scrollmotion. It sports many of the same interactive features we’ve become familiar with through the iPad editions of Esquire and O: The Oprah Magazine, including embedded videos and sound clips, and tab-to-browse slideshows.

The magazine clearly wants to be social, but I question its execution. On each page is a link to a (as of yet unpopulated) forum for discussing, presumably, each of the articles and other topics of interest. It’s not yet clear how effective this will be, but it’s a nice idea. The only other sharing option is through e-mail; users can e-mail images of individual pages, but not full articles. These images cannot be shared automatically to Facebook or Twitter — a painful omission — nor can the text be selected and copied to share via third-party apps, although I was assured that all of these features would be included in future releases.

It’s a very decent start, but Project will have to push much further in terms of functionality and yes, content, to succeed against (or, rather, with) the established players in the space.

Project is available as a free download in the App Store [iTunes link]; issues are priced at $2.99 each. An accompanying blog can be accessed at projectmag.com.

More About: ipad, media, project magazine, virgin group

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The statistics indicate that small businesses with corporate blogs receive 55% more web traffic than small businesses that don't blog. That’s why it is so important for companies to explore the possibility of adding blogs to their marketing and social strategies.

Blogging isn't just writing posts. You have to choose images for your posts, monitor your blogging platform and analytics, market your blog and constantly think about new post ideas.

To keep your blogging activities flexible, there are several iPhone apps that you can use. This allows you to keep up with your blog no matter where you are.

These 16 apps will help you do just that. Add your favorite apps for blogging in the comments below.

Blogging Platforms

BlogPress ($2.99) provides complete mobile blogging, including text, images and video. It supports multiple platforms such as Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and many more.

If you don't need to have multiple platforms at your disposal, there are some apps for specific blogging platforms available. And many are free.

WordPress for iOS (free) allows you to moderate comments, create or edit posts and add images or videos. You can use this app with both a WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress.org site.

And if you have a Squarespace site, there's an iPhone app (free) to create and manage your Squarespace site entirely from your iPhone. It also offers "seamless importing" from WordPress, Blogger, TypePad or Movable Type sites.

Images and Video

Strong images or videos increase reader interest and engagement, so they're an important part of every blog post. And there are several apps that can help you find, format and insert them on the go.

Photobucket Mobile (free) allows you to upload photos and videos to your blog, Facebook or Twitter. The app also provides access to a searchable media library, with uploading capability and album management.

Adobe Photoshop Express (free) provides one-finger photo editing. You can crop, adjust, filter and add effects or borders on the go.

CellSpin ($1.99) offers the ability to capture video, photo, audio or text and upload it simultaneously on all of your social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. This could be an easy way to send out photos of the team at a company event to your entire network (at one time!).

Marketing Your Blog

Once you have your blog up and running, you have to start marketing it. Some of the best ways to market your blog are via other social media sites.

Twitter (free) provides you with the same real-time search and trending topics you enjoy on your desktop.

If you are looking for more organization, Tweetdeck (free) provides the ability to create groups, manage multiple accounts as well as sync to your existing desktop Tweetdeck account.

Facebook (free) gives you access to not only your personal Facebook account but any company Pages to which you're assigned administrator access, as well. So you can check your Pages and respond to comments.

Analytics

After spending time marketing your blog, it's only natural to want to see the traffic numbers. Analytics App ($6.99) provides complete mobile access to Google Analytics.

Analytics Pro ($6.99) also provides access to Google Analytics, along with features to export data into reports, as well as grouping and sorting of accounts. In addition, it provides an intuitive date picker for setting the date range.

For a quick check on numbers like subscribers, Twitter followers and page views, Ego ($4.99) offers a single dashboard to check the statistics that matter to you.

Idea Gathering

Evernote (free) allows you to create text, photo and audio notes that will sync with your PC, Mac or Web. A nice feature is Evernote's search capability, so you can store and catalog a lot of thoughts without losing them.

If you're already using Microsoft OneNote, MobileNoter (free) can be used as a standalone app or synced with OneNote. It allows you to create notebooks and share your information. This could be very handy if you have a multi-contributor blog and want to exchange ideas among several people.

As the name implies, Simplenote (free) offers a straightforward, easy note-taking app that syncs with your computer. It's a great place to jot down a list to reference later.

And while we're talking about ideas, don't forget to set up Google Reader on your iPhone so you can read your favorite blogs when you're out of the office. Other blogs are a great source of inspiration.

Writing a blog is hard work. But it doesn't have to be a burden. Finding a few apps that can make managing your blog a bit easier makes all the difference. What apps are you using to manage your blog? Leave a note in the comments.

More Blogging Resources from Mashable:

- 15 Excellent Corporate Blogs to Learn From
- 10 Tips for Corporate Blogging
- 10 Free Drupal Themes for Small Business
- 20 Free Social Media Icon Sets For a More Shareable Website
- 5 Hot Design Trends for Aspiring Bloggers

More About: Adobe Photoshop Express, Analytics Pro App, blogger, blogging, Cellspin, corporate blogging, evernote, facebook, google analytics, google reader, iphone, List, Lists, microsoft onenote, mobile blogging, photobucket, photobucket for iphone, simplenote, squarespace, tweetdeck, twitter, typepad, Wordpress

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Publishers can choose between three flavors of the share button: vertical with a share counter, a smaller, horizontal button with the counter, or a horizontal button with no counter.

Adding the button to a site or blog is as easy as choosing one of those options and pasting a couple of lines of code, available at LinkedIn’s Publishers page. You can see the result (that’s the vertical button with a counter) below.

Back in April, LinkedIn launched several new sharing options, making it easier for users to attach links to status updates, with the ability to re-share links as well as edit and delete posts. With the addition of the share button, LinkedIn has pretty much caught up with Facebook when it comes to content sharing options.

Of course, the competition is strong; many publishers already employ Facebook, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon and other sharing buttons. The question is whether LinkedIn users are avid enough sharers, at least to the degree that it pays off to publishers to spend valuable real estate on their pages to include the LinkedIn sharing button.

More About: business, linkedin, share, share button, social media, social networking, trending

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