The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: GoldRun

Quick Pitch: Using augmented reality app GoldRun, advertisers create scavenger hunts for virtual goods in physical locations.

Genius Idea: Buzz has been big around augmented reality, but few companies have figured out a way to turn it into an effective marketing tool. We’ve seen brands invoke everything from Iron Man Masks to musical cheese snacks in efforts to incorporate augmented reality into their marketing plans. But none of these ideas exactly created the AdWords of augmented reality.

GoldRun, which launched in November with a campaign for H&M, comes closer to creating a marketing platform that will be useful across multiple industries. The app allows brands to create virtual scavenger hunts. When consumers download the free GoldRun app and sign up to follow a campaign or “run,” they can collect virtual goods from physical locations using their phone’s camera. During the H&M campaign, for instance, users could collect a different virtual item from the brand’s fall/winter collection by snapping a photo of it in front of each of its 10 Manhattan locations. Doing so resulted in an instant 10% discount on any H&M purchase.

The platform’s agility is its greatest strength. AirWalk used the platform to build virtual pop-up stores in locations in Washington Square Park and Venice Beach at which app users could purchase a special edition shoe from its website (VP of Business Development Shailesh Rao calls it “V-Commerce”). The NBC’s Today Show ran a scavenger hunt for virtual items in Rockefeller Plaza. Esquire Magazine is planning a campaign that will virtually place their February cover model, Brooklyn Decker, in more than 700 Barnes and Noble stores. Other planned campaigns range from the Sundance Film Festival to Gwen Stefani's perfume line.

GoldRun provides a more interactive and customizable approach to location-based advertising than check-in games like Foursquare and Gowalla. Campaigns, in addition to distributing special offers, include an option for users to create interesting photos (items in the H&M campaign, for instance, were positioned in a way in which they could be virtually “tried on”). Users share these photos through their Facebook profiles, which is more valuable for the brand than shared check-in information.

Given how eager brands have been to adopt location-based marketing through check-in apps, it’s not a surprise that many are eager to run campaigns on the GoldRun app. Rao says that more than 40 companies from various industries have approached the as of now self-funded startup about running a campaign. It will be interesting to see if consumers respond with equivalent enthusiasm.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, 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: Augmented Reality, esquire, GoldRun, MARKETING, mobile app

Tumblr founder David Karp showed up yesterday to christen his company’s new office in Richmond, Virginia.

At the opening celebration, the popular blogging platform’s founder spoke extensively about the startup’s plans for the future — plans that definitely set it apart from the product-focused startup scene on the West Coast and plans that will make the most of the company’s recent $30 million round of funding.

In an interview with local writer Johnny Hugel, Karp said that community — a huge part of Tumblr’s success so far — would play a larger role than product in the near future.

He’s even making community management, especially in creative communities such as fashion and film, a central goal for Tumblr.

“You look in fashion, creative writing, photography, music, so many of these creative circles,” said Karp, “and we have these really substantial communities that now live on Tumblr.

Tumblr has, in the past, put on events like concerts and film festivals around those groups. “They did wonderful things for the communities… resonated through the industries and brought attention to all of the stuff that was happening on Tumblr,” Karp continued.

“So that's something that we want to get better at doing this next year… I imagine that by the end of this year, that'll end up being maybe be half of our team.”

One new hire who will be working extensively in events and community is Rich Tong, Tumblr’s fashion director. We’re not aware of any other startup outside of the fashion world that has a fashion director; but we suppose that’s the point: Tumblr doesn’t see itself as being outside the fashion world or any other creative community.

Tong founded Weardrobe, a social fashion site that was acquired by Google mid-2010. In addition to being a good product guy with an entrepreneurial bent, Karp says, “He also has the fashion vocabulary, so unlike everybody else at Tumblr, he can go into that community and say, ‘Well, why do you use Tumblr? What could we be doing better? What's the most interesting stuff that's going on right now, and where do we find it?’”

Karp said he expects to make as many as 70 new hires before the end of 2011 — a move that would more than triple the startup’s current staff.

As far as product goes, Karp says engineers are still focused on creating the best experience possible. Soon, he said, “directories are getting a major overhaul.” In keeping with the company’s focus on community, Karp also expects to release some custom tools around film festivals and major fashion events.

We’ve also have a shiny new iPad app to look forward to, and mobile apps will also continue to be a focus of the company, whose mobile dev team all reside in Richmond and will be holding court at the new offices.

Can a strong focus on the creative communities help Tumblr continue to compete against forces like WordPress and Posterous? This NYC-based startup’s approach to community is quite different from what we’ve seen in other corners of the world, but for this product and this platform’s users, it just might work.

More About: blogging, community, david-karp, tumblr

The Social Analyst is a column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

Google is preparing for war with Apple and Microsoft over the future of web video, and the rest of will be caught in the crossfire.

Earlier this week, Google quietly announced that it would be phasing out Chrome support for H.264, the video codec and standard supported by Adobe Flash, Blu-ray, Internet Explorer, Safari and others. Instead, it will be supporting WebM and Ogg Theora, which are supported by Mozilla and Opera.

What Google hoped would be a small footnote turned into a tidal wave of criticism. Google was chastised for turning its back on “open innovation” by dropping a more widely used codec for a lesser-used one. Compounded by the fact that Google is a strong supporter of Adobe and Flash, and it’s easy to see why the firestorm started in the first place.

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Why Is Google Against H.264?

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After several days of being slammed in the media, Google finally responded and wrote the post it should have written in the first place.

First, Google’s Mike Jazayeri clarified that Google Chrome would only stop supporting H.264 in HTML5, not in Flash or other forms of media. Then he dove into the problem surrounding the HTML5 <video> tag:

“As it stands, the organizations involved in defining the HTML video standard are at an impasse. There is no agreement on which video codec should be the baseline standard. Firefox and Opera support the open WebM and Ogg Theora codecs and will not support H.264 due to its licensing requirements; Safari and IE9 support H.264. With this status quo, all publishers and developers using the <video> tag will be forced to support multiple formats.”

Google has come to the conclusion that there will never be agreement on H.264, since it is proprietary technology owned by MPEG LA, a firm that forms and licenses patent pools. Thus the search giant decided to draw a line in the sand and double down on the WebM. WebM, for those of you who may not remember, is the open codec/standard for web video created by Google.

Unlike H.264, WebM/VP8′s patents have been released royalty-free. Apple and Microsoft are part of H.264′s patent pool, as are companies like Sony, Sharp, Cisco, LG Electronics, Hp, Toshiba and Dolby. Absent from the list: Mozilla and Google.

The tech titan also addressed the criticism that it should have selected H.264 as its baseline codec because of its wider adoption:

“To use and distribute H.264, browser and OS vendors, hardware manufacturers, and publishers who charge for content must pay significant royalties—with no guarantee the fees won't increase in the future. To companies like Google, the license fees may not be material, but to the next great video startup and those in emerging markets these fees stifle innovation.”

Google also argued in its response that a community development process is superior to one where multiple parties have incentives to collect patent royalties.

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Neither Side Will Budge

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While Google may not have intended to start a war, it has essentially drawn the battle lines and made it clear that there will be no compromise. On the one hand, you have Google, Opera, Mozilla and and its WebM allies, which include WinAmp, Skype, AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Logitech and Nvidia. On the other hand, you have the participants of the H.264 patent pool. There isn’t a single company that is part of both WebM and H.264.

The final paragraph of Google’s response may be the most telling thing in this whole affair, though:

“Bottom line, we are at an impasse in the evolution of HTML video. Having no baseline codec in the HTML specification is far from ideal. This is why we’re joining others in the community to invest in WebM and encouraging every browser vendor to adopt it for the emerging HTML video platform (the WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support in Safari and IE9 via the HTML standard <video> tag). Our choice was to make a decision today and invest in open technology to move the platform forward, or to accept the status quo of a fragmented platform where the pace of innovation may be clouded by the interests of those collecting royalties. Seen in this light, we are choosing to bet on the open web and are confident this decision will spur innovation that benefits users and the industry.”

Google says that it hopes that the other browsers will adopt WebM, but it’s clear they already know that won’t happen. Why else would Google build Safari and IE 9 plugins to add WebM support into those browsers?

The inability for both sides to compromise will almost certainly stifle the growth of innovation surrounding HTML5 video. Why would anybody invest time and money into a technology that will only work in some browsers, when Flash is guaranteed to work in all browsers (except Mobile Safari)?

Unless both sides find a way to compromise, the future of web video will continue to be in Adobe’s hands. We doubt either side is going to budge anytime soon. The citizens of the web will end up being the losers of this affair.

More About: chrome, Google, google chrome, h.264, HTML 5, HTML5, Opinion, trending, video, webm, youtube

What’s the best way to find great links on the web? Is it algorithmic search engines like Google, people-powered decision-making, or a combination of both?

This has been the perennial question online ever since Yahoo’s human-organized directory of web links lost the battle to Google’s automated crawlers. And yet now, in some circles at least, the pendulum appears to be swinging back: Google is broken, say some technologists, and people-power is the best fix.

That’s the topic of my CNN column this week.

Read the full column on CNN.com >>

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Reviews: Google

More About: Google

Modern commercials are a funny thing. Ad agencies are trying to figure out how to give their commercials viral appeal while balancing that against providing company or product information.

The Old Spice guy campaign is more or less universally lauded as an example of how to reboot a company’s image and turn a commercial idea into a viral phenomenon. However, the videos, and the campaign’s subsequent expansion onto Twitter, focused on entertainment and branding: We knew what kind of brand Old Spice wanted to be and we laughed at (most of) Isaiah Mustafa’s quips and sound bites. Old Spice prioritized those elements instead of explaining how its products work or even what they smell like.

That worked for Old Spice, because most people can intuit how deodorant works; the company wasn’t reinventing the wheel, it was reinventing its brand. Old Spice didn’t need to provide detailed product information to make its campaign successful. Other companies, like Google, don’t have the same luxury.

Google’s products are often less obvious to an everyday audience. Google Goggles? Do you wear them? Are they on your phone? Is that some Mountain View euphemism? Google has the task of both explaining its new tech and providing a viral kick with its ads — that’s not easy.

Despite the odds, the technology giant has done a great job with its latest round of marketing campaigns by applying some basic principles in some very creative ways. Read on for a look at what Google did right and what it could do better.

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Make Your Audience Feel Smart

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Google was not a company known for its commercials until last year’s Super Bowl “search” ad that simultaneously showed the narrative arc of a budding romance and the vast possibilities of Google’s core product all via search terms.

The next batch of commercials focused on the speed of its web browser, Chrome, by testing how quickly Chrome could load a page compared to a (usually silly or messy) science experiment, such as lightning hitting a small boat or shooting a potato gun.

The real gem is Google’s latest commercial focusing on Google Instant. While Google still handily owns the market for searches, it’s had real competition from Microsoft’s Bing. Google Instant was supposed to tip the balance by letting you see search results as you were typing — no need to hit enter. The idea is technologically complicated but not especially awe inspiring. To make the technology more compelling, Google put together a commercial that emphasized how much we take that instant gratification for granted while at the same time making the viewer feel smart (the video is embedded above).

People enjoy repeating patterns, and people especially like being able to recognize those patterns and start to solve them. “Humpty… ” “Fee Fi Fo… ” Both phrases are relatively simple to complete, but there is a certain satisfaction in being able to figure it out, as simple as it may be. That’s the concept behind the commercial: display a list of recognizable phrases that the viewer can piece quickly together as they watch. It’s an incredibly smart way of congratulating the user and making the case for Google Instant at the same time.

As smart as the commercial may be, it doesn’t have the same entertainment value or viral capacity as some of Google’s sillier campaigns. With just 22,000 views, the ads seem to be geared toward selling their product rather than making it onto sites like Reddit.

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Make Your Audience Care

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It is difficult to get people to care about things on the Internet. The Internet has a lot of things on it, and the average attention span is depressingly low. Still, there is one way to guarantee that people sit up and take notice: Put them in it. People are more likely to care about a product if they had some hand in its development.

The Google Demo Slam challenges users to come up with the funniest or most creative videos showcasing new Google technologies, like the aforementioned Google Goggles. It’s a total win for Google, combining the viral ridiculousness of dressing up like Mount Rushmore to test Google Maps, for example, while getting real people to demonstrate how the technology actually works.

There are some celebrity spots (like Maria Sharapova pelting helmeted reps with tennis balls), but many of the submissions come from independent groups (like Sony) or everyday people trying to out-do their competition. Submissions are screened by Google and then randomly paired against one another where users can vote for their favorites.

The interactive, gaming element helps draw the viewer into the competition (champions will be eventually named). The format of the Slam also necessitates that people spend some time on the site, creating stickiness and enticing people to watch more and more videos (each of which essentially is a commercial for a Google product). Google has started using the some of the videos as stand alone commercials, but they don’t necessarily play as well without the competitive aspect of the site.

By putting its faith into users to come up with interesting and genuinely funny videos, however, Google is potentially assuming some risk. It’s also hard to believe that all the videos submitted to the campaign are purely user-generated given their professional look and feel.

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Offer Value in More Creative Ways

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It may not take a lot of creativity to make your RSS feed into a mobile app; it does take some thinking to quietly sponsor an experimental music video that, by virtue of its complexity, showcases the power of Chrome. “The Wilderness Downtown” is a Chrome experiment directed by Chris Milk. It uses Arcade Fire’s song “We Used to Wait” and interactive HTML5 elements, synchronized pop-up windows and a spinning panorama using Google Maps. Not only was it an inventive and touching video, but it was an excellent showcase of Google products.

Of course, the video can be run on other browsers, and if you don’t like Arcade Fire or the chosen song, the video experiment won’t have much of an impact. So clearly not every view was a win for Google.

Google is far from a perfect company, but its marketing campaigns are often an intelligent blend of viral goodness and thoughtful product showcases. What do you think? What commercials or campaigns did you find memorable or smart? What were some of Googles major flops or missteps? Let us know below.

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More Marketing Resources from Mashable:

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- HOW TO: Create a World-Class Online Community for Your Business
- How Social Data & Mobile Tech Can Improve the Retail Experience
- Making Data Relevant: The New Metrics for Social Marketing
- Why Marketing Threatens the True Promise of Social Media
- Why Every Brand Needs an Open API for Developers

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Reviews: Bing, Chrome, Google, Google Maps, Internet, Twitter

More About: ad, business, case study, chrome, Commercial, demo slam, Google, MARKETING

The latest beta of Firefox 4 — beta 9 for those of you counting at home — is now available to download.

The latest beta version of the venerable web browser features faster start-up, improved bookmarking and history functions and smoother complex animations. The Firefox team released the first Firefox 4 Beta back in July. The final 4.0 release is expected as early as next month.

The release notes for Firefox 4 Beta 9 are pretty sparse, which may indicate that major bugs notwithstanding, the next version offered might be a release candidate.

A few tightened user interface tweaks aside, Firefox 4 looks largely the same as it has the last few releases.

One of the issues that has prevented me from using previous Firefox 4 Beta releases on my main computer has been the lack of support for certain plugins and add-ons. With each release, developers are updating their wares for better compatibility, but there are still a few standouts (like Firebug) that aren’t yet supported.

Those quibbles aside, the new Firefox is significantly faster than its predecessors. Over Christmas, I installed Firefox 4 Beta 8 on my MacBook Pro and was impressed at the improvements in speed and performance. What little time I have spent with Beta 9 on my iMac indicates that the speed increases have continued.

One note for Mac users — if you are running Mac OS X 10.6, it’s likely that Netflix will not work in this release. There is a conflict between the 32-bit Silverlight plugin and the 64-bit Firefox 4. Use Chrome or Safari instead if you don’t want to go back to Firefox 3.6.x.

Firefox 4 is an important release for Mozilla. The open source browser may have surpassed IE in usage share in Europe, but it’s facing increased competition on all fronts. Google’s Chrome browser is approaching 10% market share and Microsoft is coming on strong with IE 9.

Moreover, the modern mobile browsing space — which is largely dominated by WebKit — is gaining in importance. Getting out a solid version of Firefox for the desktop and the mobile is crucial for Mozilla.

If you want to do your part to help, you can download the latest Firefox 4 Beta and put it through the paces. The new Feedback button makes it easy to report any problems or crashes and you can take the new interface for a test drive if you haven’t already.

What are your thoughts on Firefox 4 Beta 9? Let us know in the comments.

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Reviews: Firefox, Safari

More About: browser, Firefox, Firefox 4, mozilla

More details are surfacing about the next generation of iPhone and iPad, including that both devices will feature Qualcomm chipsets and that the iPad 2 will have an SD card slot.

The Verizon iPhone 4 utilizes a Qualcomm chipset instead of the Infereon version used in the AT&T/GSM iPhone in order to connect to Verizon’s CDMA network. However, Engadget reports that the Verizon iPhone 4 is just the first of many Apple devices that will use Qualcomm as its primary chipset.

Both the iPhone 5 and the iPad 2 will utilize a dual CDMA/GSM chipset from Qualcomm, assuring that both devices work on Verizon and AT&T simultaneously. There won’t be a need for two different versions of the same device.

According to Engadget‘s sources, the new iPad will be slimmer and sleeker, but will retain its 10-inch screen. It will have two cameras (something that we’ve often heard) and a “super high resolution” screen much like the Retina Display in the iPhone 4, though it won’t have the same pixel density.

The most surprising revelation though is that the iPad 2 will have an SD card slot built into the device. And contrary to previous reports, it will not have a USB port. Still, the ability to load and unload media and documents via a traditional SD card is a surprising but welcomed addition. The iPad is on track for an April release, once again in line with previous reports.

There is no word about what new additions will be made to the iPhone 5, but it is going once again be a complete redesign of the device. It will run on Apple’s A5 multi-core CPU. One thing it won’t have is support for 4G LTE connections, though.

While we have to classify all of this information as unconfirmed rumors, all of this information lines up with previous leaks and reports about Apple’s upcoming 2011 line of iOS devices. We want to stress though that Apple still has a few months before the release of either device, so they could easily change designs or features before their eventual releases.

More About: apple, iOS, ipad, iPad 2, iphone, iphone 4, iPhone 5, qualcomm, trending

Posterous co-founder Garry Tan has bid adieu to his startup and is heading to Y Combinator, where he will serve as designer-in-residence.

The move is something of a shocker for several communities, especially considering Posterous’s aggressive marketing throughout 2010 and product roadmap.

In a blog post, Tan wrote, “Effective today, I’m ending my day-to-day development with Posterous and moving into an advisory role.

“Though my day-to-day may change, my faith in the team and the product is unchanged and unwavering. Posterous is in good hands and on the right track to fulfilling its potential. I am proud of what we’ve built together and look forward to the future.”

In his new role at Y Combinator, Tan will be acting as a sort of UI guru to the batches of early-stage startups and projects that come to the incubator. As DIR, he’ll be instrumental in “the early stage of building world-changing consumer products.”

It’s a similar position to those being created at a few VC firms in Silicon Valley; similar to EIRs (entrepreneurs- or executives-in-residence), the DIR works closely with portfolio startups, giving them world-class product direction and advice. There’s some risk of burnout, as Tan and others in his position will be asked to work with a revolving door of startups year after year.

Still, we’re sure that any startups Tan coaches will benefit greatly from his experience and advice. And who knows where that kind of exposure and reach will put Tan next in his career.

However, what we’re now unsure about is Posterous’ future. In spite of its “convert or die” importing campaign, Posterous remains something of a tech scene darling that has yet to grab the mainstream adoption that some of its competitors, such as Tumblr and WordPress, have seen. And a founder leaving a startup before profitability or an exit has been achieved is rarely a good sign of the business’s overall health.

We’ll see what the future holds for Tan and for Posterous. In the meantime, let us know your opinions in the comments.

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Reviews: Posterous, Tumblr, WordPress

More About: blogging, BLOGS, designer in residence, dir, garry tan, posterous, y combinator

Evernote’s multi-platform note-taking service really took off in 2010, but 2011 is shaping up to be the startup’s biggest year yet, especially given the big boost it just got after debuting in Apple’s Mac App Store last week.

Evernote CEO and founder Phil Libin tells Mashable that because of the new marketplace, Mac has outstripped Android and iPhone as the biggest platform for new user acquisition.

The Evernote team hurried to ready an app store compatible version of its Mac app in time for the store’s launch, an effort that has paid off nicely in downloads and new users. On day one, Mac registrations were up 1800% over a normal day, resulting in 40,000 new Mac users and 90,000 total downloads.

Compare the 40,000 figure with Evernote’s 30,000 average daily new users metric (across all platforms) — remarkable on its own — and it highlights just how instrumental the store was in bringing new users. Evernote was previously adding very few Mac app users per day, Libin says. Now Mac is the biggest driver of new growth.

Libin estimates that for the first full week post-Mac App Store launch, Evernote saw 300,000 total Mac app downloads. Roughly 50% of these downloads came from users who had never previously registered for an Evernote account.

The popularity of the Mac app is also contributing to an uplight in downloads of Evernote’s other apps, according to Libin. Users are now discovering the note-taking service on Mac and learning that they can use it on other platforms as well, he says.

Libin recognizes that these early numbers are likely not sustainable, but he does believe the Mac App Store will help the startup hit the 10 million member milestone — it hit six million before the end of 2010 — sooner than originally anticipated.

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Reviews: Android, Evernote, Mashable

More About: evernote, mac, mac app store, macintosh, startup

After a successful campaign last summer, Levi’s is once again turning to Facebook to find the next online face and voice of Levi’s womenswear, a.k.a “Levi’s Girl.”

This time, the search has been extended to the UK as well as the U.S. Interested individuals are asked to submit a short video detailing why they should be chosen for the role, which involves engaging with Levi’s fan base on Facebook and Twitter on a day-to-day basis. To qualify, videos must be submitted via the retailer’s Facebook Page by February 2.

From the video submissions, Levi’s will select five candidates for a public voting round between February 16 and 23, which will test each candidate’s ability to mobilize her personal network on her behalf. It’s a clever strategy that is sure to win Levi’s many more Facebook “Likes”, whilst giving existing fans a hand in the selection process.

The winner will be announced on March 7 and receive a six-month paid position at Levi’s San Francisco headquarters to work alongside the more permanently situated “Levi’s Guy.”

What do you think of the contest? Have you ever competed in something to win a job?

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

More About: facebook, fashion, levis, MARKETING, social media

Apple has reportedly told several European newspapers that they will no longer be able to offer print subscribers free access to the iPad editions of their publications.

The publishers told Dutch newspaper deVolkskrant (translated version) that Apple has issued “stricter rules” to ensure that it controls subscriber data and its 30% cut of revenue generated from those who want to access the publisher’s content in app form.

Online publication nrc.nl (translated version) said that the new rules will go in effect April 1.

Such rules, should they extend to the UK and elsewhere, would disrupt the current subscription models of publications like The Economist, which offers the iPhone and iPad versions of its publication to digital and print subscribers for free.

Apple is expected to unveil a subscription model to coincide with the launch of The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s forthcoming iPad-based newspaper. Numerous reports suggested that its launch was originally planned for January 19, but has since been pushed back.

Thus far, no U.S. publishers have reported receiving similar warnings from Apple.

[via Apple Insider]

More About: apple, ipad, media, The Daily

Two months after making their iTunes debut, The Beatles are setting some significant records in the digital music realm.

iTunes representatives say more than 5 million tracks and more than 1 million albums by the Fab Four have been sold worldwide. As Entertainment Weekly notes, 2 million of those songs and 450,000 albums sold in the first week alone. The Associated Press reports that the current best-selling Beatles album in the U.S. is Abbey Road, while the top song is “Here Comes the Sun.”

The Beatles’ music finally appeared on iTunes this past November after a decades-long dispute that prevented the catalog from being sold via the music service. Now, all 13 of the band’s remastered studio albums appear on the site, along with the “Past Masters” set and the “Red” (1962-1966) and “Blue” (1967-1970) compilations.

Meanwhile, even though The Beatles’ music is still popular in the form of digital files, the band’s works also continue to thrive in old-school formats. As Consequence of Sound points out, Nielsen SoundScan reports indicate that in 2010, Abbey Road was the best-selling album — on vinyl — for the second year in a row.

More About: itunes, itunes sales, music, the beatles

Rumors of an Android-fused Google music service have been building for more than six months; if a new leaked screenshot is to be believed, that rumor just might become reality with the next Android OS release.

The website GizmoFusion has posted the data and synchronization panel from what is purported to be a build of Gingerbread. This is the standard Android settings panel, except alongside the options for syncing contacts, Gmail and Picasa Web Albums is a new designation: Sync Music. Could this be a sign that Google is planning on rolling out its own music service, a la iTunes?

Google has reportedly been working on a cloud-based music service — subscription or a la carte — for quite some time. In a marketplace that is already crowded with options, having solid integration at a device level with Android could give Google an edge.

Of course, even without a specific music store, over the air synchronization could still be a compelling feature. At Google I/O back in May, Google showed off some technology that would allow Android users to stream music from their desktop computers directly to their phone. Presumably, this sort of feature could also double as a way to sync music and playlists.

That could mean, for instance, that rather than relying on third-party apps like DoubleTwist or manually managing a device’s memory card for adding/updating music, transfers could take place over the air. (Add a new song to a playlist on the desktop, get that new song instantly on your smartphone.)

GizmoFusion surmises that this is a feature that other versions of Android (including Froyo) could get as well. If this is something that is tied directly to a Google-hosted offering, we’re inclined to agree. Of course, it could also end up being one of the features planned for Android 2.4, codenamed Ice Cream.

Assuming the screenshot is real, are you interested in either a Google-based music store or the ability to sync music wirelessly? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: GizmoFusion

[via Engadget]

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Reviews: Android, Gmail, Google

More About: android, gingerbread, Google, google music, music

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein visited Groupon’s Chicago headquarters to make a case for hiring his firm for a possible share sale this year, according to Bloomberg.

The visit came just as Morgan Stanley is also in talks with Groupon to arrange an IPO, according to the report, which cites “a person familiar with the matter.” A Groupon rep could not be reached for comment.

Goldman was also behind a recent funding round of $500 million for Facebook, which is expected to go public in 2012.

The report of the visit is the latest bit of intrigue around Groupon, which rebuffed a $6 billion takeover offer from Google in December. Sources say Groupon is preparing for a spring IPO that would put the startup at a valuation somewhere between $15 billion and $20 billion.

The company, which offers group-based discounts via e-mail and social networks, also raised $950 million Series D funding this month from Morgan Stanley, Greylock Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

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Reviews: Facebook, Google

More About: facebook, goldman sachs, groupon

DailyBooth released a new, slightly more complex version of its popular photo sharing site on Friday. The update is the largest of its kind for the two-year-old face-focused startup.

The latest version — referred to as #dbv3 — brings several design changes and adds long-overdue notifications for comments and other site activity. The startup has also introduced private group messaging to all users, added a “sticky” comment bar that remains permanently affixed to the bottom of each page and provided users with a new way to view profile pages called “quilt view.”

Apart from the design tweaks, quilt view is the most visually arresting update. Users can now select the option atop profiles to view the last 50 photos posted by a user, stitched together in a quilt-like fashion. The photo thumbnails offer users a bird’s eye view of their friends’ DailyBooth activity and make it easier to revisit photos from the past.

The group messaging feature now lets members start private multi-party conversations with their DailyBooth friends using the @username syntax. The feature will likely be a welcome addition for avid users who have developed on-site photo cliques.

Today’s updates have been mostly well-received by DailyBooth users, though some have noticed that the search bar is now hidden, while still accessible, in the new design. Some users have also reported issues uploading photos in certain browsers, but it’s a bug that will likely be fixed shortly.

What do you think of the new DailyBooth? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Reviews: DailyBooth

More About: dailybooth, photo sharing, startup

Yes, texting and walking is downright rude (we’ve told you time and time again), but now we have proof that it’s actually harmful. Well, at least to one’s ego.

Check out the above video, which has been making its way around the web today. In it, mall employees watch security footage (over and over again) of some oblivious girl falling face-first into a fountain whilst tapping away at her phone.

Somehow, this footage is endlessly amusing to us. Can you tell that it’s Friday?

[Via The Daily What]

Image courtesy of Flickr, lierne

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Reviews: Flickr

More About: humor, Mobile 2.0, texting, trending, viral video, youtube

This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what they’re doing to grow.

No matter what your religious persuasions are, it’s hard to name a book that has had more influence than the Bible. Literature, wars, customs and geography have all been inspired by its content, and there’s good reason for scholars of just about every liberal arts topic to have a copy on their bookshelves.

But what most people don’t see when they look at the Bible is an opportunity for high tech entrepreneurship. Nelson Saba, the CEO of Immersion Digital, is an exception. In 2002, he led the development of a digital interactive Bible that was purchased by about 600,000 people. In 2008, the company raised $7 million in angel funding to launch a new version, which aims to not only supplement — but replace — the paper version of the Bible.

Saba recently spoke with Mashable about creating a platform that not only enhances an ancient text, but also has the potential to revolutionize educational texts across every topic.

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Beyond Scholars

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Immersion Digital was not the first company to create a Bible software, but most Bible software that came before it targeted scholars rather than families. The first product, Illumina, was designed for families to use as a Bible. And Glo, the version the company released in 2009, is even more so.

“We started to realize that there were now several generations that were digital, and now it’s not just a matter of creating a powerful way of communicating the Bible,” Saba says. “We thought it was necessary to have something that could be literally a digital alternative to the paper. Something that you, as someone who belongs to that digital generation, would favor over paper.”

The current version has a beautiful zoomable user interface that allows users to “dive into the content,” and it’s easy to browse the Bible from a variety of angles. You could, for instance, search for everything about marriage. You just as easily search for everything that happened in Jerusalem or everything that happened in a specific time period. Every topic also has interactive components like an atlas, videos, time lines and photos.

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Beyond Software

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In 2010, Glo won the Superbowl trophy of Bible publishing: The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association‘s Bible of the Year award. It was the first digital product to win.

“It was kind of a validation for us, that digital is not seen anymore as a software,” Saba says. “Digital is really seen as a media that can be used to deliver books, in this case the Bible…we don’t even use the word software that much, because… we really don’t want to be perceived as anything other than a Bible in a digital form.”

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Beyond Desktops

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Much of Glo’s strategy for becoming more of a book replacement rather than a desktop program relies on breaking out of the browser.

“This new product was released for both desktops and laptops at first, which we knew was not our target, but that’s what we had so we launched with what we had aiming at where we are getting at…which is really the mobile platforms,” Saba says.

Microsoft highlighted Glo’s app for a Windows 7 tablet at CES, and the freemium model app will be released along with a similar iPad app later this month.

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Beyond Bibles

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What Immersion Digital has created in Glo is not only a Bible, but a platform that highlights the potential of digital books to be more than electronic copies of their paper counterparts. The ability to have context and visualization of concepts at your fingertips is something that nearly any textbook could benefit from.

“This product is an educational product focused on teaching people about the Bible, that’s what our vocation is as a product,” Saba says. “The combination of the experience and exploration that you can have with interactive media, with the text itself, it lends it naturally to this very engaging and active learning experience — you are navigating, you’re leading it, and as you do so you’re learning.”

Immersion Digital’s plan is to apply the platform to other topics. It is planning a prototype for subjects like history or geography that it will market to publishers of textbooks.

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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: Mashable, Windows

More About: bible, bizspark, e-books, Glo, religion, spark-of-genius

It might look like a far-fetched timepiece from a sci-fi flick, but this design concept by Jonathan Frey uses E-Ink technology that’s becoming commonplace today. Not only is E-Ink breaking sales records inside Amazon Kindles and other e-readers — it’s making its debut in watches as well.

This two-display beauty uses E-Ink on both screens. The bottom screen shows its striped numerals over a sinister black background, while the top display’s day and date peek through a grid of shiny black metal. Everything is controlled with buttons on the side.

I’ve worn and reviewed an E-Ink watch, and it proved itself to be more energy efficient than conventional watches with LCD displays. An E-Ink watch drains its battery the most when it’s changing its numerals; the rest of the time it simply keeps time while it displays the results of the electronically charged rearrangement of its particles.

Another advantage: Designers love it. E-Ink displays can be configured in radically different ways from their LCD forebears, including curved surfaces that really do look like something you might see on the wrist of Captain Picard on the deck of the USS Enterprise. And later this year, color E-Ink displays will become available.

There’s no telling when this watch might see the light of day, but given the rapid expansion of E-Ink technology, watches like this can’t be too far off.

E-Ink Watch of the Future

E-Ink Watch of the Future

E-Ink Watch of the Future

Images courtesy of Yanko Design

More About: Design Concepts, Display tech, e-ink, galleries, Timepieces, watches

After some disappointing initial sales, magazine publishers are looking to offer their own digital storefront for tablet-based magazines, just as Apple is set to announce a subscription model for tablet and iPad-based magazines, according to two separate reports.

According to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Next Issue Media, a joint venture between five media companies, will launch a service for distributing digital publications on tablets. The story quotes Morgan Guenther, NIM’s chief executive, who adds that NIM will likely go live with two titles from its four magazine owners — Conde Nast, Hearst Corp and Meredith Corp — by the summer.

The offerings could include versions of newspapers from News Corp, the fifth member of the consortium. The service will initially be Android-based, but eventually will be platform-agnostic. The main benefit to publishers, according to the article, is that they would be able to recognize current print subscribers and offer them special deals.

Meanwhile, Adweek reports that Apple is close to announcing a magazine subscription model for the iPad. The story quotes an unnamed publishing executive who says, “People are pretty confident” that Apple and magazine publishers have ironed out an agreement. Until now, iPad-based magazines had only been available as single copies.

The move comes as publishers report weak end-of-the-year sales for the iPad editions of their magazines. Vanity Fair, for instance, sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from 10,500 for its August issue. Wired’s digital edition sales fell from 100,000 in June to 22,500 in October and November. The lack of a subscription option in the App Store is often cited as a cause for their collective decline.

Since single-copy prices of $3 to $4 are seen as a barrier, the notion of a “Hulu for magazines” has been bandied about for some time. One sticking point is that magazine publishers want to handle subscription and pricing themselves, without going through iTunes.

Image courtesy of Digital Trends

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Reviews: Android, App Store, Hulu

More About: apple, ipad, magazine publishers, media

As president of Geben Communication, Heather Whaling provides public relations and social media services to small- and mid-size businesses. She's also a public relations blogger, speaker and co-moderator of #pr20chat on Twitter.

Quora — the community-driven Q&A repository — is certainly getting a lot of buzz right now. Even though it’s known as a "social network for knowledge," Quora isn’t just for the tech elite. Outside of the tech-centric or off-beat topics, there is an abundance of resources that appeal to a range of tastes.

In fact, businesses and non-profits can glean a wealth of information from Quora. Here are a few ways organizations large and small can tap into this active community.

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1. Strengthen Customer Experiences

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Monitor mentions of your company on Quora. Start by searching for your company's name. If it's already a Quora topic, follow that topic to receive alerts as new questions are posed. If you answer a question about your company and its services or products, disclose your company affiliation and answer with facts.

Companies can deliver customer service via Quora by responding to complaints and criticisms. Additionally, company representatives can serve as resources, as illustrated by Instagram's CEO, Kevin Systrom, who has answered questions about the app's origins, name and URL.

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2. Research the Competition

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A quick search on Quora can help you keep tabs on the competition: what they're up to and what others are saying about them. Just ask Bulx.com's Matt Russo, who explained: "I used Quora to find information on a competitor's web-based company. The answer was provided by someone who had obviously worked with the company in the past, as illustrated by the in-depth information he shared." The Quora community is even sharing valuable insights about specific companies' business models.

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3. Connect With Journalists

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Want Mashable or other news sites to cover your company? Quora can help. A number of tech reporters and editors –- including Mashable's own Ben Parr and Christina Warren –- are offering advice to those seeking media coverage. Before pitching a media outlet, see what intelligence can be gleaned from Quora responses.

Andy Carvin, senior strategist at NPR, says it won't be long until non-tech journalists leverage Quora as a reporting tool: "It can be used for research purposes by reporters, following threads on different subjects to get story ideas and the like. And it’s probably just a matter of time before reporters start using it more directly as a sourcing tool, posing questions related to whatever topic they’re reporting on."

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4. Embrace Long-Form Dialogue.

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Networks like Twitter and Facebook have conditioned us to communicate in short bursts of information. Quora embraces long-form communication. The site's value is in the depth and breadth of knowledge, so think outside the 140-character box when answering questions. Just don't ramble.

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5. Expand Your Network

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If you want to connect with new people who share similar interests, follow topics that reflect your own personal interests. Whether you like discussing baseball, technology, politics or gardening, there are like-minded people on Quora for you to "meet." Just click on the green "Follow Topic" button located at the top of the sidebar on the right.

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6. Establish Expertise

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Writing intelligent, relevant answers to key topics on Quora can strengthen how others perceive your expertise. Strengthen your credentials by developing a reputation as a subject-matter expert. You may notice that people will begin to request your input on related topics.

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7. Shorten the Learning Curve

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If you want to research venture funding opportunities or learn how to grow your users from one to 1 million, who better to ask than people with first-hand experience? Multiple conversations on Quora focus on growth strategies and funding (venture capital and angel investing).

Ev Williams, Twitter's co-founder, offered advice to a Quora questioner looking for information about maximizing South by Southwest (SXSW) opportunities -– extremely valuable intelligence for startups.

But it's not all tech, all the time. The Quora community can also help you learn how to tie a tie, roast coffee beans or travel with kids.

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8. Cultivate Existing Relationships

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Sending e-mails with links to articles or blog posts can be an effective way to cultivate relationships. Quora adds a new dimension to this relationship-building tactic. See an open question that fits the expertise of a prospect? Send them a link to the question along with a brief "touching base" e-mail. Stay top-of-mind without seeming like a pushy salesperson.

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9. Mine for Hot Topics

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Look for themes behind the questions being answered or followed by your Quora network. Identify popular questions relevant to your industry/experience that generate a lot of interest, and use those ideas as inspiration for blog posts, e-newsletters and other communication tools.

How else do you see people using Quora? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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More Quora Resources from Mashable:

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- Why Quora Will Never Be as Big as Twitter
- 10 Websites to Watch in 2011
- 5 of the Best New User Experiences of 2010
- 6 Promising New Companies That Emerged in 2010

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Zeffss1

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Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter, iStockphoto, instagram

More About: business, Guide, List, Lists, quora, social media, startup

Since the Internet would amount to 97% cats and 3% “Celebrities in the Surf” if you got rid of all that pesky information, this week’s YouTube roundup theme is: Cats (again).

That’s right, we’ve already had a kitty-themed collection of vids, but — being extremely intuitive beings — we knew that you were still yearning to see cats running, jumping, meowing and just generally being disgustingly adorable.

So here you go, folks. Take a break from this, the last day of your work week, to “hang in there” with our favorite furry beasts.

Cats Playing Patty-Cake

Meghan Peters: What the patty-cake cats are really saying.

Whack-A-Kitty

Ada Ospina: Do you lose points if the kitty escapes?

Luke Plays With Cubs

Radhika Marya: A lion and his cubs — or as I call them, Mufasa and SIMBAS! — play together at the Smithsonian National Zoo, proving that they're just big kitties too. No sound, but utterly adorable.

Cute Kitten Hugs His Teddy Bear (with Music)

Amy-Mae Elliott: This clip is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt just watching it.

iPad Game For Cats

Todd Wasserman: In keeping with our reputation for bringing you the latest and greatest in tech, here's a demo of some iPad games for cats.

Hermes's Favorite Activity

Zachary Sniderman: Who are we to judge how a cat should get its kicks?

大きな箱とねこ。

Evan Wexler: "Domo Arigato, Mr. Cat-O." Obviously, this is how cats roll in Japan.

"Toonces, The Driving Cat"

Brian Dresher: One of my fave reoccurring SNL features, "Toonces, The Driving Cat!"

Catdog Theme Song

Sarah Kessler: Does this count as a cat video?

Cutest Cat Capers

Ben Parr: If you can get through all 28 minutes and 28 seconds of "Cat Capers," I will buy you a cookie

Cat Drinks Out of Mashable Coffee Mug

Josh Catone: My cat just really loves Mashable... and water.

Hungry Fat Cat

Brenna Ehrlich: Just feed it already!!! Can't you see it's starving!?!

More About: cats, humor, pop culture, television, youtube

Ahead of the launch of Rupert Murdoch’s much-anticipated (and now delayed) iPad newspaper, many of us at Mashable have wondered exactly how the app-based publication will approach and utilize social media.

A source familiar with The Daily‘s social media plans has shared a few key items about its strategy, which is being headed up by Abigail Jones, a young woman with an impressive resume (dual masters degrees from Columbia Journalism School and the University of Edinburgh, bestselling co-author of the nonfictional Restless Virgins: Love, Sex and Survival in a New England Prep School), but little, we understand, experience with social media tools and strategy specifically.

Jones will concentrate much of her energy on The Daily‘s one blog, which will be hosted at blog.thedaily.com and powered by Tumblr. Like the Tumblrs of several established news media organizations, Jones will deconstruct stories covered by the publication, conducting interviews with staff about the reporting process on a particular story to entice the platform’s users to subscribe to The Daily in the App Store for a rumored $0.99 per week, or $4.25 per month.

Jones, we’re told, will also leverage Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and YouTube to promote the day’s content — the cover, links to top stories and behind-the-scenes coverage, etc. — and to engage in conversations with readers and prospective readers alongside staff, who will particularly focus on Twitter to engage with audiences. From what we understand, content from the app will be shareable across social media channels, although our source was unable to go into further detail about exactly how that will work. We suspect that — as seen with Food & Wine magazine — users will be able to link to a web version of the article (perhaps trapped behind a paywall) from the app.

All of that sounds fine and well, but it’s not yet clear how Jones or the rest of The Daily‘s staff will keep pace with the real-time, 24/7 news cycle of the real-time social web, given that the publication does not plan to add content or push updates to the edition it releases to the App Store every morning. We’re also curious if The Daily will allow comments in the app and/or on its site, what the site’s paywall structure will be like and how it plans to cultivate its initially small community of core readers.

The Daily‘s early days will present a unique set of challenges for Jones, at any rate.

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Reviews: App Store, Facebook, SEX, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, love

More About: ipad, media, News Corp, rupert murdoch, The Daily, tumblr, twitter

You can thank Reddit user Neonnoodle for the inspiration behind this clever animation, “The Scrollwheel,” which first saw life as a comic strip.

We’ve all been there: The plaintive phone call, whining about something like “I can’t find my icons.” It all looks so familiar to me — well, except for the part where the innocent bystander keeps a poker face and remains patient throughout most of the frustrating proceedings.

Being the well-versed computer users you are, commenters, do tell us your tales of woe that stem from incidents when, for example, someone placed a mouse on the floor in an attempt to use it as a foot switch.

[Via Boing Boing]

More About: animation, comics, Computer Help, Luddites, The Scrollwheel

In the hallowed halls of video game greatness, there are works that stay with us — your Halos, your Legends of Zelda, your Barbie Horse Adventures (what?).

And then there are those games that, despite best efforts, don’t quite hit the marketplace with the same gravity.

This comic was illustrated by Kiersten Essenpreis, a New York-based artist who draws and blogs at YouFail.com. For more laughs, check out our previous Mashable Comics.

Hat tip to Dom Kerr for inventing Harpsichord Hero over breakfast that one time. Special thanks to World of Generateur for help with the WoW logo.

Seriously though, what’s the worst video game you have ever played? Leave your favorite stinkers in the comments.

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More Mashable Comics:

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- The Angry Birds Finally Get Some Help
- The Existential Trouble With Social Gaming
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Mobile Sales Rep [COMIC]
- The First Rule of Social Media: Know Your Audience
- We Hold These Tweets To Be Self-Evident

More About: comic, comics, farmville, games, gaming, guitar hero, humor, mashable comics, the sims, video games

Google asked users of Google Tasks to submit their most-wanted features a few months ago, and now the ballots are in. Google’s announced a list of the top five requests, which would be welcome additions to the to-do list, currently accessible via the Google Calendar and Gmail:

• 1. A Tasks API and synchronization
• 2. Reminders and notifications
• 3. Recurring tasks
• 4. Shareable task lists
• 5. Visual distinction for overdue tasks

A Tasks API and synchronization, which heads the list, would let users spread their task lists across their favorite to-do apps. With just this one update, Google Tasks would be significantly more useful.

Various nags might be handy, too. For instance, we wouldn’t mind being reminded from time to time that a task has been languishing, untouched. Nor would it be too emotionally taxing to have some sort of visual distinction for tasks left undone.

Google Tasks has already been useful, and these features could put it over the top, perhaps into indispensible territory.

Now if Associate Project Manager Dave Tattersall can spur the Google development team to implement these tasks, we’d be all set. Tattersall wouldn’t say exactly when we’ll see all five of these winners, only stating that changes would be made at undesignated points “throughout the year.”

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Reviews: Google

More About: gmail, Google, Google Tasks, updates

Nearly 10 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store worldwide, and Apple has put up a big counter to show it off.

To say that Apple’s App Store has been a huge success would be an understatement. At the end of September 2009, 2 billion apps had been downloaded from the store. In January 2010 the number was 3 billion. The number has more than tripled approximately one year later, showing the strength of Apple’s app ecosystem, which now encompasses three major devices: the iPod touch, the iPhone and the iPad.

To celebrate the occasion, Apple will give a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card to the person who downloads the 10 billionth app (don’t worry, it can be a free app). The rules of the contest, which ends after the 10 billionth app has been downloaded, are here.

[via Apple]

Thumbnail courtesy of iStockphoto, fpm, grybaz

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Reviews: iStockphoto

More About: 10 billion, app store, apple, apps, iOS, Mobile 2.0, smartphone, trending

Thanks to this week's advertisers and partners for enabling us to bring you the latest social media news and resources. Mashable’s sponsors are as social media savvy as our readers!

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This week, our valued sponsors are: Thinkstock, Telligent, SoftLayer, StrongMail, Site24x7, Atlantic.Net, SRDS, Webtrends Apps, Buddy Media Platform, Gillette, Clickatell, Microsoft BizSpark, MaxCDN, and Eventbrite.

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View Thinkstock’s four Thinkbursts, respond to the questions and enter the drawing to win up to $10,000. You'll also receive your Thinkstock image pack promo codes. Watch all four Thinkbursts to increase your savings and your chance to win big!

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Social is the new normal. Businesses are building a myriad of communities in an effort to engage customers and enhance business. But what defines a World Class Community? Read Telligent’s Rob Howard and Cecilia Edward’s whitepaper to find out. Download it now.

Follow Telligent on Twitter and Facebook.

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SoftLayer provides global, on-demand data center and hosting services from facilities across the U.S. it leverages best-in-class connectivity and technology to innovate industry leading, fully automated solutions that empower enterprises with complete access, control, security, and scalability.

Follow SoftLayer on Twitter and Facebook.

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StrongMail helps marketers forge meaningful, profitable and long-lasting connections with customers through e-mail marketing and social media. Our unique combination of technology and services offer distinct advantages, including easy access to customer data, low cost of ownership and groundbreaking strategic and creative services.

StrongMail supports Mashable’s Social Media Strategist Series. Check it out here and follow StrongMail on Twitter and Facebook.

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Site24x7, an online website monitoring service which allows users to monitor their website, web application and online web transactions. Users can get instant alerts when their website goes down. Site24x7 allows monitoring from across 25+ global locations. Site24x7 pricing starts from $1/Month/URL. Sign up for a 15-day Free Trial!

Follow Site24x7 on Twitter and Facebook.

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Established in 1994, Atlantic.Net is a global hosting solutions provider. Atlantic.Net assists organizations around the globe with their advanced IT needs including business e-mail, web, database, cloud, and dedicated hosting solutions. For more information, please visit www.atlantic.net.

Follow Atlantic.Net on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

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SRDS connects agencies, brands and media through its online database of media planning data. SRDS is committed to making it easier to buy online ad space and build integrated marketing campaigns. Sign up for a free 14-day trial of the SRDS consumer and business database at www.srds.com/trial.

Follow SRDS on Twitter and Facebook.

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Webtrends Apps lets you quickly create and publish Facebook, iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. Learn more about it here or keep up with all Webtrends Social products by following their blog.

Webtrends supports Mashable’s Social Media Marketing Series. Check it out here and follow Webtrends on Twitter and Facebook.

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Seven of the world’s top 10 brands drive their brand on Facebook with the Buddy Media Platform. What’s your plan? Visit buddymedia.com today.

Buddy Media Platform supports Mashable’s Facebook Marketing Series about how brands can advertise on Facebook. Check it out here and follow Buddy Media on Twitter and Facebook.

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Gillette is the best a man can get. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.

Gillette supports Mashable’s Better Profiles Series, which showcases way to improve your online profiles. Check it out here and follow Gillette on Twitter and Facebook.

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Clickatell was the first provider of Online SMS Gateway connectivity, and after 10 years, is still the leading provider. Clickatell can deliver your SMS text messages to over 818 mobile networks in more than 222 countries and territories.

Follow Clickatell on Twitter and Facebook.

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BizSpark is a program which offers new software businesses and entrepreneurs access to Microsoft design, development and production tools with no upfront costs for up to three years. Learn more or connect with a Microsoft BizSpark advisor here.

BizSpark supports Mashable’s weekly Spark of Genius series, which showcases promising startups. Check it out here and follow Microsoft BizSpark on Twitter and Facebook.

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Mashable uses MaxCDN – Content Delivery Network to deliver its static content such as pictures, helping Mashable load much faster. Try it on your site now, and get a 25% discount with this coupon code: mashable.

Follow MaxCDN on Twitter and Facebook.

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Eventbrite is an online events marketplace where tens of thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and sell tickets to their events. Make your event a success on Eventbrite.

Eventbrite sponsors Mashable’s weekly social media and marketing event guide. Check it out here and follow Eventbrite on Twitter and Facebook.

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Additionally, thanks to the following partners for making Mashable happen:

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Since 2007 W3 EDGE has assisted with creative, web development, and search and social media marketing for Mashable.com and its other web properties and projects. Day-to-day maintenance and support is handled by Frederick Townes and his W3 EDGE team.

Follow W3 EDGE on Twitter.

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Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support® to its customers across a portfolio of IT services. For more information, visit rackspace.com.

Mashable.com is hosted on Rackspace, and Rackspace sponsors Mashable’s Web Development Series. Check it out here and follow Rackspace on Twitter.

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iStockphoto offers easy, affordable inspiration with millions of safe, royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash® files. Browse the best stock library of royalty free content at prices anyone can afford. Mashable readers save 10%.

Mashable sources many of its photos from iStockphoto. Follow iStockphoto on Twitter and Facebook.

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Dyn Inc. is a world leader in managed DNS, powering the best brands on the web including Gowalla, Mashable, Twitter, Wikia and more. For more information about Dyn Inc., visit www.dyn.com, e-mail hello@dyn.com or call +1-603-668-4998.

Mashable provides exclusive content on Dyn.com. Check it out here and follow Dyn on Twitter and Facebook.

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ConcentricSky offers web development and strategic consulting services with a focus on emerging technologies such as Social Media and iPhone Apps. From simple websites to integrated web applications, it delivers innovative solutions that exceed your expectations, not your budget.

Concentric Sky is Mashable’s trusted partner in the social media, strategic consulting, and rapid development spaces. Learn more here and follow ConcentricSky on Twitter.

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We can get your name out there.

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Contact us for more information about supporting Mashable’s growth and development. Alternatively, visit our advertise section for more details about:

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Reviews: Android, Apps, Facebook, Gowalla, LinkedIn, Mashable, Twitter, YouTube, blog, iStockphoto, social media

More About: Sponsors

Music lovers rejoice (tentatively); according to recent reports, popular European music service Spotify could finally be coming to America.

According to the New York Post, “two music-industry sources” report that Spotify is very close to signing a deal with Sony Music and has also linked up with another label, which the Post does not name. We’ve reached out to Sony and Spotify; while we’ve yet to hear from the latter, Sony offers no comment.

U.S. citizens have been waiting for a stateside launch with bated breath for a while now — we hoped for it during last year’s SXSW, saw it delayed back in July due to negotiations with record labels and finally saw 2010 roll into 2011, sans Spotify.

According to several sources, the rub is this: U.S. labels just don’t feel comfortable with the freemium model, therefore, they want high cash advances. Consequently, Spotify reportedly balked at fronting the money.

The labels’ hesitation is understandable — Spotify is not a straight-up subscription service. Users are privy to all-you-can-eat music for free, if they don’t mind dealing with ads (you can pay to nix the advertisements) — and, let’s face it, most of us would deal with ads to get unlimited free music.

Also, Spotify isn’t exactly raking in the dollars; it lost $26.7 million in 2009.

We’re interested to see if this deal actually comes to fruition, as it would pose a direct threat to services like MOG, Rhapsody and Rdio, which require a user to pay a monthly fee for on-demand content.

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Reviews: Rhapsody, Spotify

More About: business, money, music, spotify

The Web Development Series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.

The Ruby community and the language itself are a fast-growing phenomenon that plays an ever-increasing role in the ecosystem of web apps we all know and use.

If you’re a beginning Ruby dev, this post is for you. We have polled seven experts in the Ruby community — developers who have come highly recommended and respected by their peers.

This is the advice they give specifically to new Ruby developers. We hope you find it useful, encouraging and enjoyable.

If you’re a seasoned pro or an intermediate Rubyist, stay tuned. We’ve got lots more where this came from, and our seven experts have got tips, tricks and code snippets for you, too.

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Jacques Crocker: Learn As You Build

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Jacques Crocker is a Rails Jedi based out of Seattle who loves working on early-stage startup ideas and launching new products. He’s helped launch almost a dozen Rails apps this year including HeroScale.com (automatically scale your Heroku workers and dynos) and WordSquared.com (a massively multiplayer online word game). Next year, he’s planning on using Rails to launch 24 new web apps.

In an e-mail exchange, he told us new Ruby devs should “start building something and get it released to GitHub as soon as possible.

“You don't have to have a new or exciting idea to implement. When you are learning, just build stuff that has been done before. Build a scaled down version of Twitter. Or reimplement a blog.”

Crocker says he once ported a PHP-built job board to Rails — a thoroughly educational experience.

He continued, “I’d recommend finding a project that looks interesting on OpenSourceRails.com and getting up and running locally (and the tests functional). Then try adding a few new features to it. And get it upgraded to the latest Rails version while fixing the dependencies.

“Jumping straight into development work without experience will definitely be difficult and frustrating. However the amount of learning you'll receive will be enormous… Making yourself suffer through the pain of a new environment will help you learn faster than you ever thought possible.”

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Yehuda Katz: Dive Into the Ruby Community

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Yehuda Katz is a member of the Ruby on Rails core team, and lead developer of the Merb project. He is a member of the jQuery Core Team and a core contributor to DataMapper. He contributes to many open source projects, like Rubinius and Johnson, and works on some he created himself, like Thor.

He advises newer Ruby developers, “Don’t be intimidated. Take advantage of the very many robust community resources that exist, and make connections with community members through open source. The Ruby ecosystem is hungry for new developers, and if you make your mark, you won’t go jobless for very long.”

In fact, Katz says the community itself is one of the strongest points of the Ruby language. “Even though most of the web development community is focused around the Rails framework, there are standalone libraries for just about everything, like virtually every new NoSQL database and connectivity with services like Twitter and Facebook.

“There’s a spirit of experimentation in the Ruby community that makes it extremely strong.”

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Obie Fernandez: Start With a Clean Slate

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Obie Fernandez is the founder and CEO of Hashrocket, a Florida-based web consultancy and product shop. He’s a well-regarded blogger and speaker, and he’s also a series editor and book author for higher-education publishers Addison-Wesley.

He said, “Don’t try to bring over your old idioms and patterns, because they’ll just weigh you down.

“When I came over to Ruby from Java, my first instinct was to try recreating a bunch of concepts and architectural patterns that I already knew, such as dependency injection, instead of learning new ones more appropriate to Ruby. If you’re coming from a statically typed language like I did, you might have some trouble letting go of the perceived security of type constraints.

“There’s like this whole Zen aspect of working with Ruby where you have to let go of trying to exercise control over every possible interface for your objects.”

He also echoes Katz’s statements about the Ruby community. “We’ve got this amazing, creative and hard-working global community of people working to make Ruby the most enjoyable environment. There is no big commercial vendor getting all capitalistic on us and causing problems like you see with Oracle and Microsoft and their developer communities. Almost everything that gets done in our space, 99% is done for open-source love and passion and because it is useful to the person doing it.”

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Ryan Bates: Ask — and Answer — Questions

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Ryan Bates is the producer and host of Railscasts, a site full of free Ruby on Rails screencasts.

For beginning Ruby devs, Bates recommended, “You can learn a lot by asking questions, and you can learn even more by contributing, yourself.

“With every problem you run into, there are many others who will likely run into the same thing. When you find a solution, write about it to help others and to get feedback on better solutions. We’re all learning.”

Bates takes his own advice, as well, by contributing to sites like Rails Forum.

Disclosure: Mashable‘s features editor, Josh Catone, is the co-founder of Rails Forum.

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Desi McAdam: Learn From the Masters

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Desi McAdam is a Ruby developer at Hashrocket. She also co-founded and regularly contributes to the technical blogging group DevChix.

She said the thing that helped her most in her study and use of the Ruby programming language was “pairing with other masters of the language.” Since not everyone who wants to learn Ruby has one-on-one access to the masters, however, she has a few suggestions for beginning devs.

“I would also suggest reading books like The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton and Programming Ruby, a.k.a. The Pickaxe Book, by Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt.

“If Ruby happens to be the first language you are ever learning I would suggest Learn To Program by Chris Pine. My sister is a nurse who has never done any programming whatsoever and she was able to use this book to learn the fundamentals of programming and she did so at a remarkably fast pace.”

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Raquel Hernández: Three Steps With Four Tools

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Raquel Hernández is an experienced hacker/mathematician with a background that includes many programming languages and many work environments, from freelance and contract work to startups and larger companies. However, she’s made a particular focus of Ruby and Rails.

She came to us with a list of specific steps and tools for new developers.

“I would suggest reading Programming Ruby 1.9: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide (The Pickaxe Book) in order to get familiar with Ruby.

“For Rails-specific stuff, I’d highly recommend Railscasts as starting point. Pick a fun project; complete the Getting Started with Rails tutorial; and deploy it to Heroku.

“After completing these three steps, you’re going to be having so much fun and getting lots of things done that there won’t be coming back.”

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José Valim: Focus on Best Practices and Testing

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José Valim is the founder of Plataforma Tec, a web development shop and consultancy. He’s also an open source developer and a Rails Core team member.

For beginners, he writes, “Ruby is a very powerful language… it is natural that when you start your first project, you get carried away by the productivity the language gives you and don’t worry about Ruby’s best practices.

“My advice is to control a little this initial amazement and read up on Ruby best practices. Ruby is an object-oriented programming language, so the knowledge of features like encapsulation and inheritance and principles like single responsibility are extremely important to have.

Valim also advises new Ruby devs to not leave testing out of the picture. “Ruby ships with a built-in test framework, and there are several others available as open source, all with plenty of documentation and books. It will reduce your productivity at the beginning, but it definitely pays off withs well-tested, organized and readable code.”

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Specific Questions or Tips?

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If you’re new to Ruby and you have a question, feel free to drop it in the comments! Our panelists are likely to stop by with more feedback.

Likewise, if you’re a more experienced Ruby dev and you feel like answering questions or passing on some great advice of your own, please leave a comment and school us all.

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Series supported by Rackspace

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The Web Development Series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why.

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More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:

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- The Top 8 Web Development Highlights of 2010
- HOW TO: Get More Out of Your Fonts
- 4 Predictions for Web Design in 2011
- HOW TO: Make the Most of TextMate
- 5 Free Annotation and Collaboration Tools for Web Projects

Image of José Valim courtesy of Flickr, levycarneiro.

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Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Mashable, PHP, Twitter

More About: beginner, developers, programming, rails, ruby, Web Development, web development series

Co-written by Christina Warren

The 53rd Annual Grammy Awards are just around the proverbial corner, and to herald their arrival, the Recording Academy is busting out with an innovative social media campaign involving geolocation, mobile, web, social media and even augmented reality.

This year’s campaign, dubbed Music Is Life Is Music — a joint effort between the Academy and the creative team at TBWA\Chiat\Day — centers around the idea that everyone has a musical journey with memories tied to certain songs and locations.

Mashable had the chance to speak with the Recording Academy and Chiat Day about the campaign, the use of social media and mobile technologies, and the potential beyond the award ceremony itself.

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Building on Last Year’s Success

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Last year, the Grammy Awards used social media as the basis of the “We’re All Fans” campaign. Television spots were created using fan-generated YouTube performances to celebrate a nominated artist. A website, WereAllFans.com, was also created, using real-time content from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr to build out a “living” composition of an artist or group.

How successful was this first brush with social media? Well, ratings were up 35% over 2009, and we’re sure social media and its role in the campaign and the award show itself played a part.

For 2011, the goal is to make the campaign more interactive. Whereas last year’s campaign used user-generated content, the experience was more passive. Yes, fans could view real-time updates being shared by others related to an artist or band, but directly contributing to that data in a tangible way just wasn’t possible.

Music Is Life Is Music is the natural evolution of “We Are Fans.” Rather than simply aggregating relevant content into a viewable stream, users can follow the musical journey of their favorite artists and share their own musical histograms.

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The Campaign

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The Academy and Co. kicked off Music Is Life Is Music with a Foursquare-esque app called the MusicMapper on both iPhone [iTunes link] and Android platforms. The app, which is a mashup of Google Maps, SimpleGeo (for the location-based API) and music subscription service Rdio, allows users to tag locations on a map of their current city with songs and notes.

For example, say you saw your favorite band play for the first time on your birthday at that old movie palace in town, and middway through the set you caught the drummer’s sweaty tank top — by searching for that location via MusicMapper, you can drop a virtual pin of the map, and tag that location with the aforementioned story and a track by the artist in question, pulled from Rdio. You can also share your tag via Twitter and Facebook.

The app also integrates Flickr and Foursquare data, highlighting concert venues via Foursquare, and using Flickr to add photos of local artists and nearby venues to augment the experience.

The app — which has been spreading through the Grammy network and picking up steam among interested artists — also has an accompanying microsite called Music Is Life Is Music that allows you to tag any location you like (using the mobile app, you can only search for addresses and tag your current location). It also features a timeline view where you can scroll through all the tags by other users, as well as your own tags and those of featured artists.

The Academy has selected several artists to track their musical journeys, which are demarcated on the map by special markers. Eminem — who the Academy and Chiat Day feel has an especially unique musical journey — is one of those chosen musicians, as you can see in the promo video below.

And that’s not all, folks, the Grammy crew has dreamed up a stage two for Music Is Life Is Music, which should be kicking off today/early next week. The app will now feature a QR code reader, which can be used to unlock exclusive Grammy content via codes on all print material and outdoor advertisements — all content will be specific to your location, as determined by SimpleGeo.

The content in question includes Grammy performances from the past, which is cool because the Academy very rarely releases full performances. Eight full performances will be available within the app, and the Academy was nice enough to let Mashable know about three of them:

• Ricky Martin – “La Copa De La Vida (Cup of Life)” from 1999. This is the performance that introduced Martin to American audiences and served as the catalyst for what would become the Latin-pop explosion of 1999.
• Radiohead – “15 Step” Radiohead at the Grammy Awards? In 2009 it happened and was spectacular.
• Mary J Blige – “No More Drama” Blige’s stirring performance at the 2002 Grammy Awards still gives us chills.

The app will also feature an augmented reality view, which, using the phone’s camera, allows users to see all the tags associated with a space when they enter said space — so, if you were to visit the old movie palace once more, you would be presented with all the other tags associated with the location.

If you’re a music lover, this is a highly addictive app that really plays upon a concept explicated by College Humor's CEO Ricky Van Veen at the Mashable Media Summit: Documentation is the new hot.

In addition to taking part in an experience, we’re becoming increasingly enamored of documenting those experiences in the moment. This concept is even more relevant for music fans — you know, the folks who compulsively hoard concert tickets, blurry cellphone snaps of their favorite bands and sweaty tank tops thrown into the crowd by their favorite drummers.

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MusicMapper: More Than Just a Tie-in App

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Having a mobile application at the center of a promotional campaign isn’t especially novel in 2011. What makes the MusicMapper app and experience innovative — and we think unique — is that it is a concept and an execution that could easily be useful and fun, even if completely unconnected to the Grammy Awards.

There is certainly no shortage of music apps available for the iPhone or Android — and many of these apps strive to be social in some way. What makes MusicMapper special is that it works, and it feels natural. Tagging a location with a song and adding a comment is the sort of thing that just makes sense. Not only is the process addictive, finding and reading the musical memories from other artists or music fans is a pretty cool experience.

Furthermore, the ability to play back one’s music journey is kind of like stepping into an aural time capsule. The combination of memory and music can conjure up some genuine emotions — just as Arcade Fire did with its groundbreaking music video for “We Used to Wait,” a.k.a “The Wilderness Downtown.”

MusicMapper unlocks the promise that music startups like Flowd have failed to fully execute (Refresher: Flowd is a new mobile social network for musicians and bands), partly because it has users pre-baked into the ecosystem at launch — i.e. Grammy artists.

Flowd et al. don’t have that advantage, given that they’re startups that lack the clout carried by a massive awards show like the Grammys. Yes, it is a branded app in a sense, but it’s also a damn good app.

Lest you think that MusicMapper will fade into obscurity after the last trophy is handed out, Academy CMO Evan Greene tells us he hopes to keep MusicMapper alive beyond the show.

We hope that’s the case, because with a little more polish, we could really see MusicMapper catching on.

The 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards will take place in Los Angeles at Staples Center on Sunday, February 13, and will air live on the CBS Television Network from 8 to 11:30 p.m. (ET/PT).

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Side Note

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We’d also like to point out that partnering with Rdio was a nice touch. As we’ve noted before, the streaming music subscription space (while burgeoning) is not exactly a slam-dunk when it comes to profitability.

Still, partnerships like these — which include Rhapsody’s integration with MTV’s Music Meter — could serve propel such services toward success.

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Reviews: Android, Facebook, Flickr, Google Maps, Mashable, Rhapsody, Twitter, YouTube, foursquare, iPhone

More About: AR, celebrities, features, Grammy, Mobile 2.0, music, qr, television, video