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Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “HP Slate Officially Launches for $799”

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Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “HP Slate Officially Launches for $799”

HP Slate Officially Launches for $799

Posted: 22 Oct 2010 04:09 AM PDT


We all but gave up on the Slate, but Hewlett-Packard’s tablet computer was destined to reach the market after all, albeit in a slightly different flavor than it was originally envisioned.

The HP Slate 500, now officially announced by HP, is a Windows 7-based tablet PC with a 8.9 inch, 1024×600 resolution screen, a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, a Crystal HD accelerator that should ensure smooth playback for HD (1080p) videos, 2 gigabytes of RAM (recent rumors predicted 1 GB), and a 64GB SSD.

It has a USB port and two cameras: a 3-megapixel one on the back, and a VGA camera on the front for making video calls. It also has Wi-Fi but, quite disappointingly, no 3G connectivity.

Still, these specifications make the Slate one of the most powerful tablets on the market, but the price of $799 also make it more expensive than its chief rival, the iPad. However, HP has envisioned the Slate as a device aimed at business customers.

“It’s really like a full-function PC, it runs Windows, it will run your office applications, it just so happens to be in a slate form factor,” said Carol Hess-Nickels, director of business notebook marketing at HP.

What do you think about HP’s decision to make the Slate a Windows 7-tablet, aimed at business customers? Is the price right, and is there a place on the market for such a device? Please share your opinions in the comments.


HP Slate





HP Slate





HP Slate





HP Slate




Reviews: Windows

More About: computer, HP, Slate, Tablet, Windows 7

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Microsoft to Launch Browser-based Game Store

Posted: 22 Oct 2010 01:12 AM PDT


On November 15 Microsoft will launch Games for Windows Marketplace, an online store that will let users buy digital copies of games directly from the browser.

Besides online access from any computer, key features of the store are “ultra-fast” downloads, search by titles or by genres, clean navigation as well as deals and discounts, including “Deal of the Week” and other recurring and seasonal offers.

Users will be able to purchase games with their Microsoft Points or a credit card.

The Games for Windows Marketplace is, in a way, a browser-based version of Microsoft’s Windows Games on Demand store, which is a part of its Games for Windows Live online service. By placing the store in a browser, Microsoft eliminates a couple of steps needed to purchase a game.

“With Games for Windows Marketplace, we set out to create a digital store built for PC gamers end-to-end. And by integrating with our existing Xbox LIVE and Windows Live services, we’ve made it easier than ever for millions of gamers to see for themselves how easy buying PC games can be”, said Kevin Unangst, senior global director of PC and Mobile Gaming at Microsoft.

At launch, there will be about 100 games available at the store, including Grand Theft Auto III, Dead Rising 2, Lost Planet 2, Max Payne, Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition, Flight Simulator, Gears of War, Halo, Zoo Tycoon, Fable III, Age of Empires Online and Microsoft Flight.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

More About: browser, games, marketplace, microsoft

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How Yammer Won Over 80% of the Fortune 500

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 10:07 PM PDT


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.

Yammer is the enterprise social network that launched in September 2008. Initially a Twitter clone for the corporate world, the startup has since graduated from microblogging to offer a more Facebook-like platform for businesses.

Along the way, Yammer has faced stiff competition from dozens of replica services. Still, it has managed to secure $15 million in Series A and B funding rounds to tackle the internal social media needs of its enterprise clientele.

Today, we know Yammer as the opposite of a flash-in-the-pan service, sitting pretty with more than 90,000 customer companies and organizations — amounting to 1 million users in 135 countries using its information network. In an interview with Mashable, Founder and CEO David Sacks explains how Yammer’s attracted a client base that includes more than 80% of the Fortune 500.

Basic Bait

Yammer is designed in such a way that anyone can sign up for the basic service with their work e-mail, no fees or strings attached. The free plan includes just the basics, so should the new user then want to introduce a more robust experience to their business peers, he will need to upgrade to either the three or five dollar per user per month paid plans.

This approach has proved profitable for the two year-old startup — it converts 15% of customers from the basic version to a premium option. “The biggest driver to growth so far has been our freemium distribution model and the ‘democratization of software’ aspect that it brings,” explains Sacks.

In fact, it’s this bait-them-with-basic strategy that Sacks attributes to Yammer’s success. “Any employee in a company can come to our website and sign up for Yammer, thus creating a Yammer network for his/her company. That is how we have gotten into 90,000+ companies and organizations in just over 2 years,” he says.

A Product That Markets Itself

“Because of the viral nature of our product, we do not have to do a lot of traditional marketing,” Sacks says.

When Sacks speaks of Yammer’s “viral nature,” he’s pointing to two distinct side effects of the network: Yammer users are anxious to share how the network has helped their businesses and the network invitation process makes for perpetual sharing.

The startup harnesses the vocal nature of its clients to then attract and secure new business. “We engage with customers to capture their Yammer stories so we can share with potential customers the value that leading companies are deriving from our solution,” explains Sacks.

Fad or Future?

Social networking is the buzz word du jour and Yammer has done an excellent job associating its product with big industry trends. But one has to wonder, is Yammer merely capitalizing on a fad that will soon fade? By this we mean, social media is fast becoming baked into all enterprise software, so is Yammer at risk of providing a feature as opposed to a business platform?

We’ll need to give the social enterprise space a few years to shake out before we can know the answer to those questions, but Yammer’s designs around its recently released application platform point to an awareness of the situation at hand.

“We recently introduced an application platform so that partner companies can build new applications on the Yammer platform and tightly integrate existing products,” Sacks describes. “Companies already use a slew of enterprise applications, 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.”

Proving his point, Yammer just announced integration with SharePoint; users can access their Yammer feed from directly inside the Microsoft product. Crocodoc, Zendesk, Box.net, Expensify and Lithium are also integrating their applications with the startup’s enterprise social network.

Images courtesy of magerleagues, Mr. T in DC, Flickr

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.

Reviews: Box.net, Facebook, Flickr, Mashable, Twitter, Yammer

More About: enterprise, Enterprise 2.0, social network, yammer

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49% of Small Business Owners Use Smartphones [STATS]

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 08:19 PM PDT


Over the past few years, it seems that a few mobile devices have become ubiquitous among businesspeople: laptops, Bluetooth headsets, and increasingly, smartphones. The days of the pager are gone.

Small business owners seem to be outpacing the rest of America in smartphone adoption, according to a recent survey of nearly 10,000 small business owners. While only 17% of Americans own smartphones, according to a recent Forrester study, a whopping 49% of small business owners are reported to own smartphones.

Of those smartphone owners, 35% own BlackBerrys, 33% own iPhones, 25% own Androids, and 7% own Windows Mobile devices.

While the study didn’t include a comprehensive look at how small business owners are using their smartphones, we suspect that merchants are turning to mobile devices to stay on top of everyday business needs through e-mail, scheduling, and calls. We’ve heard success stories from business owners who also tweet on the go, see the importance of location-based services, and are investing in mobile advertising.

While only 12% of respondents said that they currently market their businesses through mobile — via mobile ads and apps, for example — other reports point towards an upward trend in mobile advertising budgets. In fact, spending on mobile advertising is set to grow nearly 50% to top $1 billion in 2011, according to eMarketer.

Here’s the exact breakdown of smartphone usage among the small business owners surveyed:

Which mobile devices does your small business use? Let us know in the comments.

More Mobile Resources from Mashable:

- Why Smartphone Adoption May Not Be as Big as You Think
- Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends To Watch
- The Average Teenager Sends 3,339 Texts Per Month [STATS]
- 5 Fun Products to Personalize Your iPhone
- 5 Futuristic Concept Phone Designs

More About: android, blackberry, cell phones, iphone, mobile phones, mobile usage, small business, smartphone, smartphones, trending, windows mobile

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Both Nook and Kobo E-readers to Hit Walmart Shelves

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 07:25 PM PDT


Just in time for the insanely early holiday season, a pair of e-readers will be making their way to Walmart stores beginning next week.

Barnes & Noble’s device — the Nook — will hit shelves at 2,500 stores as soon as October 24, while Borders’s Kobo will rock into as many U.S. shops next week. The Nook will be available in two models — Nook 3G as well as Nook Wi-Fi — and many stores will have e-reading areas where folks can get their hands on the goods.

These two devices join Apple’s iPad, which recently arrived in Wal-Mart stores.

We’ll just have to wait and see who comes out on top this holiday season when it comes to the ever-escalating e-reader wars.

More About: books, e-reader, ipad, kobo, nook, tech

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Mozilla Wants You to Build Your Own Browser

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 06:23 PM PDT


Mozilla has officially revealed “Chromeless,” an experimental project by the Firefox creator that lets developers create their own browser interfaces using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web technologies.

Currently, Mozilla’s Firefox browser utilizes XUL (XML User Interface Language) to implement much of its interface. It also serves as one of the primary tools for constructing Mozilla extensions. The result is a somewhat customizable browser interface, but XUL presents certain limitations and barriers in the path to full customization (they can’t access privileged XPCOM objects).

In addition, only the Gecko engine fully supports XUL, meaning that applications built in the framework aren’t accessible on WebKit-based browsers (Chrome and Safari) or Trident-based browsers (Internet Explorer). This is where the term “chrome” comes from — it is not a reference to the Google browser, but to XUL applications that run locally.

Mozilla sees a problem in all of this. It believes that it should be easier to customize and create a web browser. Thus the company has decided to start an experiment in Mozilla Labs codenamed “Chromeless.” According to Mozilla’s Marcio Galli, one of the leaders of the Chromeless Project, “we intend to create an experimental toolkit which will allow developers to build their own web browser using standard web technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.”

The pre-alpha experiment focuses on a few major changes to the browser as a platform. Instead of running on XUL, the chromeless platform utilizes iframes. Instead of loading XUL, the application is executed from an HTML file. By making the browser’s basic functionality accessible via HTML, developers can use standard web technologies to essentially create their own browser. Mozilla’s example of this was a browser application utilizing page thumbnails as browser tabs (shown above).

The project has a long way to go, though. From the Mozilla Labs blog post:

“Currently we have a functional pre-alpha prototype that is capable of loading an HTML page and rendering browser UI. In the coming months we will add specific APIs to allow for more meaningful browser construction. We'll investigate how we can integrate security features to keep Web content in a minimally privileged sandbox. Finally, we aim to wrap this exploration up into an accessible SDK to make it easy to get started with remixing the browser.”

We expect to hear a lot more about the Chromeless Project in the next few months as the platform develops. If you’re a developer interested in getting started with this project, you can start by grabbing the source code at GitHub. Be warned, though: this is a pre-alpha project, and a lot of things will change very quickly.

Reviews: Chrome, Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer, Safari

More About: chrome, Chromeless, CSS, Firefox, Google, google chrome, html, HTML5, internet explorer, javascript, mozilla, safari, web browser

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Amazon Web Services Offers Free Cloud Access

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 05:12 PM PDT


Amazon.com just revealed a free usage tier for its Amazon Web Services (AWS). The announcement was just a footnote to its Q3 2010 earnings call, but it has broad implications for Amazon and the future of the Internet.

Starting on November 1, new AWS users will be able to take advantage of the following services for a year for free:

  • “750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month”
  • “750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer plus 15 GB data processing”
  • “10 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage, plus 1 million I/Os, 1 GB of snapshot storage, 10,000 snapshot Get Requests and 1,000 snapshot Put Requests”
  • “5 GB of Amazon S3 storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Requests”
  • “30 GB per of internet data transfer (15 GB of data transfer "in" and 15 GB of data transfer "out" across all services except Amazon CloudFront)”
  • “25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage”
  • “100,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service”
  • “100,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service”

Amazon Web Services already has far reaching influence. Its suite of products is deeply integrated into everything from web services like Tumblr to products from software companies like AutoDesk.

America’s largest online retailer is be best known as, well, a retailer, but a free AWS tier signals an increased interest in web technologies. It’s an obvious statement, but by hooking developers early, Amazon is expanding its footprint on the web. Free Amazon Web Services will create a lower barrier of entry for many budding ideas that could eventually lead to fully realized companies.

What’s not so obvious is that this step is very much in the direction of expanding Amazon’s footprint as a technology company and not just a retailer.

Reviews: Tumblr

More About: amazon, amazon web services, AWS, cloud, free

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Hey, Entrepreneurs: The $250 Million Poem

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 04:13 PM PDT


When Facebook, Kleiner Perkins, Zynga and Amazon launched their $250 million sFund earlier today, Kleiner Perkins partner Bing Gordon had a message for all entrepreneurs: our help could be yours.

The sFund is designed to provide companies in the social space funding for their endeavors. It’s a very broad fund; investments can be as low as $100,000 or as high as $100 million. In addition to Zynga, Amazon, Kleiner Perkins and Facebook, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company are also committed investors. On top of funding, these companies will provide guidance, advice and “relationship capital” for anyone funded by sFund.

At the very end of the press conference, Bing Gordon (sFund’s lead manager) took some time to pitch entrepreneurs on his new fund. Oh, and he made his pitch in rhyme.

We have a complete copy of his poem, thanks to Gordon. So without further ado, here is his message to all entrepreneurs. Let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Hey, Entrepreneurs

Hey, Entrepreneurs

We are convened in the “House that Friends Built”,
Where the tipping point is in full tilt,
Where brilliant devs are told to be bold but rash,
And everybody likes to Flash.

I never thought I’d be on stage
With Zuckerberg, Pincus, Bezos & Doerr.
It sounds more like the name of a law firm,
Than where the Internet is going toward.

I don’t have Zuckerberg or John Doerr’s genius,
Pincus’ intensity or Bezos’ laugh,
Hey, entrepreneurs, their help could be yours,
If you add them to your company’s social graph.

We’re sitting on a quarter of a billion George Washington’s,
And our enthusiasm is unchecked.
For sFund team to help you build your Internet treasure
Using AWS, virtual goods and Connect.

There will be billions of people on social every day,
For their work, health, education, whatever they do.
So come build an awesome new company,
And maybe they’ll make a movie about you, too.

Birth of the sFund.

Reviews: Facebook, Internet

More About: amazon, Bing Gordon, comcast, entrepreneurs, Entreprenuership, facebook, farmville, jeff bezos, John DoerrZ, Kleiner Perkins, Mark Pincus, mark zuckerberg, sFundF, ynga, Zynga

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“Zoolander” to Make a Comeback as Web-Based Cartoon

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 02:55 PM PDT

Ben Stiller

Brace yourselves for the return of “Blue Steel.”

That’s right. Ben Stiller’s Derek Zoolander character, of 2001’s big-screen comedy Zoolander, will be making his comeback as a web cartoon. The New York Times reports that the actor will resume his role as the clueless male model, and that he hopes to include former supporting cast members like Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell in the series.

Stiller will also star in a second live-action web series, Billy Glimmer: Entertainer of the Century, in which he will play a Las Vegas voice imitator and comedian. Both projects are part of a two-year deal Paramount Digital Entertainment struck up with a new digital division at Red Hour Films — a production company run by Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld.

The animated Zoolander will be accompanied by a social media game, and there is some possibility that more online social properties, TV shows or full-length feature films could develop as a result.

This isn’t the first time Stiller has participated in digital entertainment projects. Late last year, the actor launched the social media-driven viral video campaign, Stillerstrong, to help raise money to build a school in Haiti while also providing some aid to earthquake relief efforts. Red Hour Digital is also behind Stiller & Meara, a series of online videos featured on Yahoo Video, starring Stiller’s parents.

According to the Times, Stiller views his current projects as a chance to do something creative without prolonged studio interference.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming Zoolander and Billy Glimmer webisodes?

Image courtesy of Flickr, Cineando

Reviews: Flickr, Yahoo!, video

More About: ben stiller, web series, zoolander

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One-Third of iPad Owners Have Never Downloaded an App [STUDY]

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 02:29 PM PDT

ipad cat

According to a recent study from Nielsen, a whopping 32% of iPad owners have never downloaded an app on the device — which begs the question, what exactly do they do with the thing?

The study surveyed more than 5,000 owners of connected devices (a category that includes netbooks, e-readers, connected game consoles, etc.), 452 of whom own an iPad.

Don’t despair yet, developers — the good news is that the overwhelming majority of those who have downloaded apps have also been willing to pay for at least one of them. Of the 63% of iPad owners who have paid for an app, 62% of them have paid for a game and 54% have paid for an e-book, followed by music (50%), shopping (45%) and news (45%) apps. A full 41% have paid for a magazine.

iPad users are also spending more time with these kinds of apps — particularly those that display more “traditional” forms of content, such as news, books and movies — than users of other devices. For instance, roughly 8 in 10 iPhone owners spend less than 15 minutes reading news on a weekday in a single session, whereas most (57%) iPad owners spend between 16 minutes and two plus hours reading news on the iPad.

The survey also found that iPad owners tend to skew younger (63% are under 35) and male (65%). By and large, iPad owners are more receptive to in-app advertising, seemingly because they like the interactivity many of these ads offer.

You can see further highlights from the study here.

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Veronica Belmont

Reviews: Flickr

More About: ipad, ipad apps, Mobile 2.0

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The Million Dollar Question: Why Does the Web Love Cats?

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 01:30 PM PDT


If you haven’t noticed, cats are big on the Internet. Even though the occasional panda, turtle or slow loris gets a slice of the viral action, cats are, and always have been, the prevalent species to be found online.

So why is it that the collective web is a “cat person,” so to speak? Why are there so many kitty pics and videos cluttering up the Interwebs? And what is it about feline-themed content that makes it so weirdly shareable?

In the quest for answers to these important questions, we’ve talked to cat-themed content creators, viral experts and other commentators from within the industry to try and solve one of the most pressing quandaries of our time.

Because They’re Cute?

Does the popularity of cats really come down to their inherent fluffy cuteness? Images and videos of cute cats were popular before the advent of the Internet, as Elspeth Rountree, the co-founder of Know Your Meme, points out. She suggests we’ve always adored the feline species, it’s just that the Internet provides a modern, one-click way to share such content.

“There are a few constants not only on the Internet, but throughout modern culture — an interest in all things ‘cute.’ Starting in the 1870s with Harry Pointer and his carte de visite’s featuring cats with amusing captions, to our modern day incarnation of LOLcats, popular culture has taken interest in kittens, cats, babies, and puppies,” says Rountree.

“They’re the perfect distraction from our hectic lives. You don’t need any explanation or prior knowledge to understand the slapstick humor that animals provide. Cat videos and images are a quick hit of pure, unfettered ‘cute.’ They’re also entertainment in easily digestible doses.”

Because They’re Not Cute?

The cute explanation alone is too simplistic, as although many of the cat memes have been cute or funny, there are just as many that portray cats as sinister creatures, plotting against man.

Cory Alder, the creator of the popular iPhone app CatPaint, modestly describes himself as “mostly just programmer who’s into cats.” He also doesn’t buy into the cute argument.

“I can say it’s not just because they’re cute. That would be a huge over-simplification. If it was just because they were cute I would have made KittenPaint or PuppyPaint, not CatPaint,” says Alder.

“Cats are awesome and enigmatic. They even have a hint of the danger about them. I read somewhere that scientists say cats ‘domesticated themselves.’ Like, we domesticated dogs, and we made them into what we thought we wanted, but cats made themselves into what we actually wanted.”

Because They’re the Perfect Canvas for Human Projection?

“Cats have very expressive facial and body expressions, so they are a perfect canvas for human emotion, which makes them awesome for captioning and anthropomorphization,” says Ben Huh, CEO of The Cheezburger Network.

Cats get themselves into all kinds of amusing predicaments, and when there’s a human on hand to capture the moment, whether in a photo or on video, that’s raw material just begging to be shared. And because lots of people have cats, that’s lots of content.

“There are also an almost infinite number of pictures of cats or great bits of cat footage because so many people have them, meaning an abundance of raw material for meme creation,” says Matt Smith, director of strategy at The Viral Factory.

“Juxtaposing surprising meanings over cat images, a la the LOLcats phenomenon, allows us to engage in an activity humans have long been doing: projecting our thoughts onto the mysterious countenance of felines,” says Sam Ford, director of digital strategy with Peppercom, research affiliate with the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium, and co-author of the forthcoming book Spreadable Media.

But the ready availability of imagery and film can’t be the only reason for such widespread popularity. After all, there must be equally as much canine content, right?

So Why Not Dogs?

While dogs have had a few notable successes online, they nowhere near match their feline counterparts for popularity. Jack Shepherd, community manager at BuzzFeed has a theory why.

“Dogs are the equivalent of a creative professional trying to manufacture ‘the next viral sensation’ to advertise a brand – sure, they’ll have a hit now and again, but unless it’s really exceptional work, you’ll just ignore it, because you know they’re doing it to get your attention,” says Shepherd.

“When a dog gets in a box, it’s because he desperately wants you to think he’s cool. When a cat does it, it’s because it suddenly felt like the right thing to do at the time. More often than not, it totally was. I think it’s the very aloofness of cats that makes us want to caption their thoughts, or put them in front of a keyboard and see what happens. The many Keyboard Dogs were a failure not just because they came second, but because they were enjoying themselves far too much.”

Sam Ford, meanwhile, suggests that dogs are just too easy to read: “Throughout the history of civilization, humans have had a deep fascination with cats. While dogs’ forms of communication — and understanding of language — are more closely aligned with humans, cats are particularly fascinating because they are not necessarily as easy to read.”

“Thus, watching a cat’s exploits on YouTube can be all the more surprising, because we all know it’s harder to train cats to do something. Seeing video of The Moscow Cats Theater leads us to marvel, ‘How’d they do that?’” says Ford.

Because Cats are Jerks?

Cats ignore us, vomit on our carpets, drag in horrible things, demand food, want affection on their terms and stay out all night. Is sharing undignified cat content online our way of getting our revenge on the species?

Despite many of us calling ourselves cat lovers, one theory that’s worthy of consideration (although many of us might not like it) is that we enjoy seeing cats virtually humiliated.

“Most of us who have dealt with cats know that cats are jerks, and while outright abuse is never popular, I think a lot of people just like to see cats get their comeuppance,” says Brad O’Farrell, writer for the Daily Squee, and creator of the Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat video.

“That’s probably why LOLcats are so popular. It’s both funny to pretend that a cat is actually riding an invisible bicycle and it’s enjoyable because the cat is being subjected to an acceptable range of humiliation — it’s funny but not abusive.”

Tom Cox, owner of four cats and author of Under the Paw – Confessions of a Cat Man and the upcoming title Talk to the Tail agrees on the comedy aspect:

“Cats have a combination of incredible dignity, but also comedy about them. Cats can be so ridiculously pleased with themselves — and you don’t get that with dogs. Because they are so proud and so aware of that dignity, when it is punctured it’s the funniest thing in the world.”

Matt Smith also concurs with how amusing it can be when a cat is brought down to size.

“Cats are the perfect vehicle for Internet humor because they are cute and very self-possessed, but also rather arrogant and pompous,” says Smith. “Since there is nothing the web loves more than puncturing pomposity, they are a great target because they can easily be made to look foolish.”

Because Geeks Own Cats?

If you buy into the argument that geeks control what’s trending on the Internet, then it follows that anything geeks are fond of will be prevalent online.

“Cats have an independence and playful inventiveness that appeals to the solitary geeks who spend their time writing computer code,” says Jack Schofield, freelance technology journalist and author of the Ask Jack Guardian blog.

“Cats require relatively little maintenance (no baths, no walks) and are basically nocturnal animals, so they’re a perfect match for the Internet geek/coder/hacker lifestyle.”

From his viewpoint from within the developer industry, Alder’s experience is that in addition to comic relief, cats offer cubicle-dwellers a glimpse of the wilder world.

“The people I know who are most into cats on the Internet are the people who work all day on the computer. So cats, for them, are an intrusion of wilderness into a somewhat sterile technology-filled workplace.”

Because It’s All a Cat Conspiracy?

Jack Schofield shares a favorite quote with us on the topic of a cat-dominated Internet. “David Burge once said that ‘When John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry developed the first digital computing machine at Iowa State University in 1937, little did they know that their invention would become an integral part of a sophisticated worldwide cat picture distribution system.’ This is funny because it’s true.”

There’s certainly some comedy to be drawn from the fact that we have an amazing, potentially world-changing resource available to us in the form of the Internet, and so much time is spent on it giggling at ninja cat clips. Is this rational? Or are we all unknowing victims of some kind of conspiracy, yet to be revealed?

“The reason for the continued and overwhelming popularity of cats on the internet is because the Internet is actually an enormous social experiment in which we humans are merely unwitting pawns,” jokes Matt Smith.

“Cats have been domesticating and harvesting humans for at least two millennia, albeit slowly, generation by generation. With the Internet, they are moving much faster, and in only two or three more generations, we will be completely incapable of sustaining a line of thought for more than half a second, and therefore effectively be zombies in the service of our feline masters who will use lame Photoshoppers to communicate with us.”

Conclusion

We’ve considered cats’ cuteness, non-cuteness, popularity among geeks, blank canvas qualities, personality issues and the fact that dogs just don’t have “it.” So are we any closer to a definitive answer?

Not really, no.

We can all draw our own conclusions about why cats are so prevalent online (and please share your thoughts in the comments below) but in the meantime, we’ll leave you with with our favorite theory from Burnell Yow!, Nora The Piano Cat’s personal assistant:

“Cats seem totally comfortable being exactly what they are, and they are totally alive to the moment, which is something we, as humans, have lost sight of, though we are trying to get back to that enlightened state,” says Yow!.

“Why do you think so many people meditate and practice yoga? We are seeking to be more cat-like, and perhaps our embracing of cats is simply the embracing of what we know to be essential in ourselves.”

More Internet Meme Resources from Mashable:

- Top 10 Funny Cat Videos on YouTube
- 10 Memorable Viral Videos of 2010
- 9 Essential iPhone Apps for Cat Lovers
- Our Favorite YouTube Videos This Week: The Cat Edition

Images courtesy of Wikimedia, icanhascheezburger, CeilingCat, TheMadLOLScientist, Polygondesign, Wikipedia

Reviews: Internet, Wikipedia, YouTube, cat

More About: cats, ceiling cat, icanhazcheesburger, internet memes, keyboard-cat, lolcats, memes, nora the piano cat, viral videos

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New Twitter Disappears for Many Users

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 01:29 PM PDT


The new Twitter web interface, which was officially rolled out to everyone just over a week ago, has suddenly been turned off for many users.

Twitter users (myself included) are instead being shown the prior version of Twitter. No word yet as to what the issue is, though the company posted to its status blog about an hour ago that it was performing database maintenance and that “there may be brief periods of elevated errors.”

We've contacted the company for more details and will update when we know more. In the meantime, get your nostalgia hat out and enjoy the old Twitter.

Update (4:58 p.m. ET): A Twitter spokesperson tells us, “Problem solved. New Twitter is back for everyone.”

Reviews: Twitter

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GE Campaign Turns YouTube Videos and Flickr Photos into Clean Energy

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 01:10 PM PDT


GE (together with BBDO, SocialVibe and SpeedShape) has launched a new digital campaign to get you thinking about the environment with a photo project called Tag Your Green. GE hopes the project will inspire people to share new “green” ideas and connect with others by watching, commenting and uploading photos and videos on Flickr and YouTube.

GE will make a donation every time a user uploads a photo of wind, water, or light to Flickr. For every wind photo, 4.5 kilowatt hours of wind energy will be donated to Practical Action; every water photo will trigger a donation of 480 gallons to charity: water; and every light photo will yield 175 hours of solar power to d.light Lighting Oecusse Project.

GE’s goal is to raise 4.8 million gallons of clean water, 1.7 million hours of solar power and 45,000 kW hours of wind energy.

The project is part of GE’s 5-year-old Ecomagination campaign, designed to demonstrate how GE is using its resources to help solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. And together with Howcast, the project also includes the Ecomagination YouTube Video Challenge, for which 15 popular YouTubers (like iJustine, below) were invited collaborate with their fans and come up with videos that brings the notion of “green” into different locations, contexts and situations. The goal is to reach 10 million views and help charity: water bring clean and safe drinking water to developing nations. The campaign runs until mid-December and with 7 million views already, is well on its way to reaching that goal.

This is one of growing number of social good campaigns designed to engage people online and help save the planet. Last week, Change.org held its annual Blog Action Day, where more than 5,600 bloggers from all around the globe blogged to raise awareness about around clean drinking water.

Reviews: Flickr

More About: clean water, Ecomagination, environment, flikr, GE, green, Photos, social good, tag your green, youtube

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In-Ear Headphones Deliver Highly Detailed Sound and Maximum Comfort [REVIEW]

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 01:01 PM PDT


When it comes to headphones, I think we can all agree that their selection comes down to two factors: Comfort and sound quality.

Well, despite Altec Lansing’s rather painful-sounding slogan — “We Bleed Music” — its Muzx Ultra MZX606 earphones combine the above factors quite admirably.

Comfort

Perhaps most importantly for a blogger/music lover who spends 12 hours a day with earphones jammed in her ears (seriously 12 hours — I counted) the Muzx Ultras are comfortable. They come with four different silicone tip sizes, which makes finding the perfect fit for your canals easy.

A self-proclaimed cheapskate, I was formerly rocking a pair of in-ear freebies, whose hard plastic tips frequently left me with both an ear- and headache. The same can be said for the ‘phones that come with your iPod — try fitting those into your ears when you have the tiniest ear canals in all the land. Not fun. And who uses those little foam covers? No one, that’s who.

Nicely balanced and decidedly unwieldy given their larger size, the earbuds rest easily above your lobes, with minimal cramming and adjusting. Still, the unique design of the buds — with a thin plastic arm supporting the cable (to reduce the wear and tear, no doubt) is super easy to catch and pull on, especially when one has long hair.

Sound Quality

The Ultras are purported to be “noise-isolating earphones,” but, sadly, at this very moment I can still hear Assistant Editor Lauren Indvik typing from the next cube over, and Community Manager Vadim Lavrusik chatting on the phone in the conference room. So, basically, they don’t really isolate noise. At all. So if you’re looking to use these babies as earplugs, you’re out of luck.

Still, when it comes to sound quality, the Ultras knock my now-departed and dangerously fraying freebie headphones out of the water. Every day, I’m forced to descend through at least three levels of the Inferno on my commute home, the worst being having to wait next to that dude who drums on the subway next to the L train. He always manages to drown out whatever it is I’m listening to — even when cranked up to tinnitus-inducing volumes.

Not so with the Ultras. I was still able to hear every note of Yo La Tengo’s “Autumn Sweater” (a rather quiet song) as well as every nuance in Low’s “Hatchet,” which very obviously splits different instrumental parts between headphones (a hazard when you’re buffeted from all sides by city sounds).

These buds are all about detail — the stick hitting the snare during Man Man’s “Top Drawer,” the theremin whine in anything by Neon Indian. If you’re into focusing in on any one instrument or layer of a song, these are the headphones for you.

For an audiophile, I’ve been pretty lax about sound quality, but since finally hearing my copy of Fever to Tell in all its screaming glory, I’m not going back to the fuzz — I’ll save that for Best Coast.

Extras

Also — score — the Ultras come equipped with an inline remote and mic that let you control a bevy of Apple products (iPod, iPhone and iPad). I really dug being able to blast, skip, pause, rewind and fast-forward tracks without fishing my Nano out of my pocket. Still, being an Android user, I wasn’t able to test out the phone features, which let you answer, end and decline calls, as well as put people on and off hold.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, these headphones get the job done — you can rock them for hours on end with no pain or strain, and the sound quality’s awesome. Still, they will not function as earplugs, no matter how much the packaging touts their “noise isolating” abilities.

At nearly $100 a pop, this is a pricey pair of headphones for the average music listener (you know, folks who don’t drop $1,500 on headphones), but given its sturdy gold-plated input connector and spring-loaded PVC suede carrying case, I’m guessing even I (murderer of electronics) will have a hard time demolishing it. The same cannot be said for their now-sparking predecessors… RIP.

You can pick the Muzx Ultra MZX606 earphones up via the Altec Lansing website.

Reviews: Android, iPhone

More About: Altec-Lansing, gadgets, Hardware, Headphones, music, Muzx-ultra, review

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Shazam Now Available on Windows Phone 7

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 12:33 PM PDT

Shazam on Windows Phone 7

Music discovery app Shazam is now officially available for Windows Phone 7, just in time for the mobile operating system’s launch in many parts of the globe, including New Zealand and Australia, as well as Europe and Asia. (Windows Phone 7 devices are expected to arrive in the U.S. before the end of the year.)

Windows Phone 7 users will be able to download a free version of Shazam from the Windows Phone Marketplace. As part of the initial launch offer, consumers will have access to unlimited tagging — the feature that identifies titles and artists for unknown tracks playing at any given moment. It will also be possible to purchase tagged tracks directly from the Zune marketplace.

“We expect the number of Shazamers to grow exponentially as new handsets built on Windows Phone OS 7.0 hit the global market,” said Alex Musil, Shazam’s vice president of product marketing, in a prepared statement.

The company has been expanding the app’s presence and taking part in a number of collaborations in order to attract a greater audience, which is currently at more than 75 million. Musil told Mashable that the company is focused on reaching the 100 million user mark by the end of this year.

“We’re on target to achieve that, and so a big part of that is obviously being on as many platforms as possible,” he said.

Shazam has been available to Windows Mobile users since 2009 and is also on other mobile platforms, such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. It’s even out on the iPad, where it’s designed to encourage users to tag music heard on TV. Shazam has also formed partnerships with other services like Last.fm, and just last month, it teamed up with cable channel SyFy for the season finales of Eureka and Warehouse 13. One can only wonder where Shazam will pop up next.

View some images of the Shazam app for Windows Phone 7 below:


Home Screen





Tag List





Sort Tags





Tag Result




Reviews: Android, BlackBerry Rocks!, Last.fm, Mashable, Shazam, iPhone

More About: shazam, windows phone 7

For more Mobile coverage:

5 Tips for Startup Success From a Co-Founder of HootSuite

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 12:15 PM PDT


The Digital Entrepreneur Series is supported by Egnyte. Egnyte Hybrid Cloud File Server delivers critical business infrastructure — online storage, file sharing, collaboration and backup — at LAN speeds. Visit www.egnyte.com to learn more.

Digital agency Invoke has a habit of creating products instead of purchasing them. HootSuite, a third-party client for accessing social networks like Facebook and Twitter, is the most successful of the in-house tools that the company has launched as products.

When Dario Meli, David Tedman, and Ryan Holmes launched the company in 2006, they weren’t necessarily planning on selling products. But as they developed the tools that they needed, they discovered other agencies needed them as well. Today more than 800,000 people use HootSuite.

In 2010, HootSuite spun off of Invoke to form an independent company. We talked with Dario Meli, a co-founder of both companies, about his advice for identifying opportunities, the importance of maintaining focus, and what he’s learned as a founder of a constantly evolving company.

1. Address a Real Problem

HootSuite1

Meli says Invoke toyed with the idea of getting rid of the agency and focusing only on the products. But ultimately, the work that the company did with clients was their most important tool for discovering opportunities for new products.

"All of our products stem from client needs…We created HootSuite because we needed those tools ourselves, as an agency…[We've been successful by] listening to our clients, figuring out what they needed and then just identifying that opportunity.”

2. Work with the Right People

HootSuiteInvokers and Owly, the official HootSuite mascot, show the love

Meli knew Tedman for years before they co-founded Invoke, but he met Holmes for the first time face-to-face at a Vancouver coffee shop. They spoke for half an hour, and, says Meli “after that we were pretty much immediately talking about partnership.”

This gut feeling alignment of personality and objectives is something Meli says is important when choosing whom to work with. When Invoke searched for venture funding for HootSuite, it’s one thing that he considered.

"It's troublesome if you find yourself in a space where you [and your partners] aren't on the same page, and that goes for partners in general.” he says. “David, Ryan, and I — the three partners at Invoke — we have different skill sets, but our goals are aligned. And that's enabled us to grow quite rapidly.”

3. Division of Labor is Your Friend

office_lobbyThe lobby of Invoke’s Vancouver office

“Don't be afraid to partner — division of labor is core,” Meli says. When they started the company, he and David were more design-focused and Ryan was more tech-focused. Bringing their respective talents together helped them build a better company.

Invoke now employs a team of about 20 and HootSuite has a team of about 35 who also add their talents to the mix. Meli, unlike many entrepreneurs, says he doesn’t experience a reluctance to relinquish responsibilities as the company grows.

"I think it's important to realize as an entrepreneur that you can't do everything — that you need to hire the best people and not be afraid to give them that responsibility, not be afraid to let go, and not be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you,” he says. “It doesn't mean they're going to overrun your business. It just means the business is going to run that much better.”

4. Stay Focused

arrow

“If you're reading blogs all the time in the technology space, there's always somebody doing something cool,” Meli says. “And you can drop everything and jump on that, but you're going to be doing the same thing the next day and the next day, and you're never going to get anywhere."

Invoke has learned this the hard way. He says that the company has probably had about five ideas that were 90% complete when the team realized that they were working on a distraction that wasn’t going to pan out.

It’s not as though Invoke has extensively narrowed its scope. The company does client work with iPhone and Facebook apps, runs contesting platform memelabs, is experimenting with geolocation, and only recently spun off HootSuite. But Meli says the company is better able to silo teams to focus on specific projects than it was when it first started.

"It doesn't mean you can't modify [your project when a distraction pops up],” says Meli, “But if you're looking at building the best contesting solution, and then Facebook comes along, don't just stop doing it. Build your contest into Facebook. Or build it into the mobile landscape. You can make adjustments as things pop up.”

5. Be Visible

Meli opened an Invoke branch in New York City so that he would be more visible to the companies that buy Invoke and HootSuite’s products. He says that being in the Big Apple has been integral to Invoke’s success.

“We create tools and sell them to agencies,” he says. “Every agency in the known universe has an office in New York City, so that's the place to be."

Invoke has also recently started to make their first PR efforts.

"We've been able to stand out [through products and client work], but a lot of people didn't know who we were,” Meli says. “So at that time we thought it might be good to start talking about what we've been doing…it wasn't just talk — we could point to the work. I think that’s important. Nobody likes hollow talk. It just doesn't work."

Disclosure: Mashable is a HootSuite Pro Partner

Series Supported by Egnyte

The Digital Entrepreneur Series is supported by Egnyte. The Egnyte Cloud File Server allows organizations of any size, from small businesses to large enterprises, to deploy online file storage, backup, sharing and collaboration, in one secure, centrally-managed and easy-to-use solution. Egnyte employs a hybrid cloud model that enables fast local edit capabilities and offline access to files. It also offers mobile access to provide users with secure file sharing capabilities from their smartphones. For more information, please visit www.egnyte.com or call 1-877-734-6983 (1-877-7EGNYTE).

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora
- Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Blip.tv
- 5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed
- Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Foursquare
- 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Images courtesy of Kris Krug, Invoke Media, Flickr, U.S. Archives

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, HootSuite, Mashable, Twitter, iPhone

More About: Dario Meli, David Tedman, Digital Entrepreneur Series, hootsuite, invoke, Ryan Holmes, small business tips, startup, startup tips, startups

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Here’s the First Startup Getting Money from sFund

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 11:57 AM PDT


And the money goes to… CafeBots, a friend relationship management company that will be receiving $5 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers as part of sFund, a $250 million fund to back social innovation that was announced earlier this afternoon at Facebook’s headquarters.

CafeBots was founded by a group of folks from Stanford and purports to be the first company dedicated to “Friend Relationship Management.” We’re not exactly sure what that means yet, but we’re interested to find out.

Facebook, Zynga, Amazon, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company are all contributing to sFund, in addition to KPCB. "This investment from such a luminary in tech investing is an outstanding vote of confidence for our young company," says Yoav Shoham, CEO and founder of CafeBots in a statement. "Social is the new search, and it's a category ripe for innovation. Kleiners' new S Fund will be a great launch pad for companies like ours that want to bring groundbreaking innovation to the social media space."

Reviews: Facebook

More About: facebook, Kleiner Perkins, sfund, venture capital

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Geolocation + Food = 400,000 Users for Foodspotting

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 11:48 AM PDT


Foodspotting, a geolocation guide for foodies, reached a pretty sizable milestone today, announcing that it now has 400,000 members.

Foodspotting was launched in 2009 by Alexa Andrzejewski (Adaptive Path) and Ted Grubb (Get Satisfaction). Soraya Darabi (Epicurious, The New York Times, Drop.io) advised the project, and then joined full time in 2010 as a co-founder.

According to Andrzejewsk, “We bootstrapped from September 2009 to August 2010, when we closed our first angel round of 750k and began expanding the team beyond Ted, Soraya and I. Now we’re up to seven people, in both NY and SF.”

Foodspotting not only released an iPhone/iPad/iPod touch app [iTunes link] in March of this year, it also launched version 2.0 in August and ramped up activity significantly — integrating with Zagat’s iPhone app a few months ago and expanding its guides program with experts like Anthony Bourdain via a partnership with the Travel Channel.

Geolocation services are really taking off of late; Scvngr is set to hit 500,000 members this week, Gowalla reported 450,000 members in September, and checkin king Foursquare is now up to about 4 million members. It’s interesting to see niche services keeping the pace. “We’re hoping that Foodspotting will continue to demonstrate the value of location-based services to the mass market by applying it to practical problems that everyone can understand — like deciding where to eat, at home or when traveling,” says Andrzejewsk.

Image courtesy of Flickr, SweetOnVeg

Reviews: Flickr, Get Satisfaction, foursquare

More About: apps, Food, geolocation, ipad, iphone, iPod Touch, Mobile 2.0

For more Mobile coverage:

Netflix Goes Down (in the Middle of the Workday?)

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 11:23 AM PDT


Generally Netflix outages occur during the evening, when people are home from work and enjoying a film or TV show. However, this afternoon the service is inexplicably down for users trying to stream content, and has been for at least a half hour or so according to frustrated users that are discussing the outage on Twitter.

No word yet on the cause for the downtime; at the moment (2:20 p.m. ET) Netflix is either not loading or rendering a message "Site Error — We were unable to process your request." The outage appears to be both on the Web and on the many settop boxes and consoles that now stream Netflix.

Update (2:27 p.m. ET): Netflix acknowledges an issue on their site, writing, “We're sorry, the Netflix website and the ability to instantly watch movies are both temporarily unavailable.”

Update (5:10 p.m. ET): Netflix has tweeted that, “We’re aware of the issues that are occurring and are working diligently to get everything up and running again. Thanks for your patience!”

Did everyone take the day off to watch movies, or is something else afoot? We'll update here when we know more.

More About: Movies, netflix

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“FarmVille” Lands on the iPad

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 11:17 AM PDT


I have a confession to make: I have never played FarmVille. I know, I know, I write for Mashable, you would think it would be in our contract. In my own defense, I’ve always had better things to do and couldn’t really find an excuse to give in to the game that has turned into such a worldwide addiction.

However, just moments ago, Zynga released FarmVille for the iPad [iTunes link]. And just like that, I am no longer a FarmVille virgin. I now know what everyone is talking about!

FarmVille for iPad, or FarmVille HD, is a free download from the App Store.

Zynga has actually been kind enough to make FarmVille a universal application, so the same file can run on an iPhone/iPod touch or an iPad. The graphics have been enhanced to take advantage of the iPad’s display.

Steven Chiang, the president of Zynga studios, said in a statement:

“We want to reach people wherever they want to play the games they love, and deliver the most fun and social experience on every platform. The iPad is a spectacular gaming device, and the new FarmVille app leverages its larger touch screen interface and enhanced graphics. FarmVille on the iPhone was an instant hit and now we are giving people another Apple device to play on.”

Users can get iPad notifications as to the status of crops to make for easy farm management. The size of the screen also makes it easy for players to zoom in and out and view different plots of land.

Like FarmVille for iPhone, the iPad version has support for Apple’s Game Center (assuming you are running one of the iOS 4.2 betas), a feature all iPad owners will be getting in the next few weeks.

Let us know what you think of FarmVille for iPad. I’m off to harvest more crops!

Reviews: App Store, Mashable

More About: facebook, farmville, games, ipad apps, Zynga

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Facebook, Amazon and Kleiner Perkins Start $250 Million Fund for Social Innovation

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 10:59 AM PDT


Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers partner John Doerr just took the stage at Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters to announce sFund, a $250 million fund to back social innovation.

The sFund is a collaboration between Kleiner Perkins, Facebook, Zynga, Amazon, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company. All are investment partners in the fund.

“If you can’t invent the future, the second best thing to do is to fund it,” says Doerr.

Together the partners will provide financing, advice and “relationship capital.” Amazon will offer up one year of Amazon Web Services to the entrepreneurs, Facebook will provide early access to its platform and APIs, Zynga plans to host sessions for sFund companies for advice on technology and business management, and Comcast will make available its resources and relationships.

Four startups were specifically mentioned during the press conference, one of them being Flipboard, the acclaimed iPad application for social news consumption. The other three startups are Cafebots, Jive Software and Lockerz. Cafebots is in the only sFund project the partners have invested in to date.

Facebook has already shown interest in social innovation. The world’s largest social network recently partnered with Y Combinator to inspire the next wave of social innovation around Facebook.

Kleiner Perkins is the same firm that started the $100 million iFund to finance iPhone application development, which was later doubled to $200 million to spur app development and innovation on the iPad.

More to come …

Reviews: Facebook, Lockerz

More About: amazon, facebook, Kleiner Perkins, Zynga

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How the Fashion Industry Is Using Digital Tools to Increase ROI

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 10:58 AM PDT


Yuli Ziv is the founder & CEO of Style Coalition, a network of independent online publishers in the fashion and lifestyle vertical, based in NYC. She blogs on social media, entrepreneurship and tech at YuliZiv.com. Follow her on Twitter @yuliz.

The fashion industry has deep roots in traditional business practices and has been late to adopt new technology. Nearly every aspect of the industry relies on people rather than machines — everything from hand-sketched designs to the buying process, where an individual buyer’s personal tastes can dictate an entire department store’s orders.

In the past few years, we’ve been seeing all aspects of the industry suddenly affected by new technology, increasing efficiency and providing much needed data analysis and tracking components. Instead of relying on people to analyze, project and improve, fashion brands now have the digital technologies to meet these needs in a much faster way.

1. Buying Process: Crowdsourcing Styles, Better Projections

Until recently, fashion retailers relied on the expertise of merchants and buyers to use their best judgment to identify which designs have the most commercial potential. Historical sales data never resulted in consistently better merchandising decisions, because it doesn't add much value in making forecasts for trend-driven product categories. In fashion, what merchants and buyers require is information or data about what's going to happen, not what already happened.

These days, companies like StyleHop are allowing fashion merchants and buyers to leverage crowdsourcing to get forward-looking, fast-turnaround, predictive analytics that dramatically improve their style picking capabilities. One collective intelligence company in the fashion space has conducted pilot research that shows, when done correctly, crowdsourcing can improve product selection by more than seven times. Leveraging collective intelligence helps retailers pick more productive inventory, leading to lower markdowns, higher profits and a better selection for fashion-hungry consumers.

FashionStake is solving the same issue with a different approach. It allows customers to invest in a designer or a brand by pre-ordering the items. That way, the company allows the designers to produce to order, instead of pushing quantities that may not sell later. This minimizes the risk and allows informed planning of the produced quantities.

2. Online Shopping: Smarter Tools Mean Fewer Returns

One of the major challenges that most online retailers face is the high percentage of returns; things don’t fit right, the quality of the material is off, or the customer just doesn’t like it. But there are a few companies in the space who are trying to solve the issue by providing more accurate measurement tools and personalized user profiles.

MyShape, one of the pioneers in the space, developed a patented technology that matches shoppers with items that correspond to their personal measurements and preferences, solving the age-old problem of finding clothes that fit and flatter for millions of women. In 2009, MyShape introduced Sizeless Dressing which allows women to skip the size labels with the assurance that each piece of clothing they purchase will fit and flatter them. With vanity sizing so prevalent in today’s market, it is often near impossible to guess what size you are from brand to brand.

The newly launched Estonia-based Fits.me is getting lots of buzz these days, after launching with the retailer Hawes & Curtis. Fits.me is a Virtual Fitting Room that helps to solve the single biggest problem for apparel e-commerce: that consumers can’t try the clothes on before they buy. The site’s shape-shifting robotic mannequin takes your body measurements and mimics your shape so that you can see exactly how clothing would fit you. The site has been such a success that online German retailer Quelle saw three times the clothing sales and reduced returns by 28%.

3. Online Shopping: Customization Yields Better Sales

When it comes to the actual shopping experience, customization and personalization seem to be the one area where fashion retailers are lagging. But companies like Amadesa are providing a set of solutions targeted at increasing ROI, or simply saving the number of clicks until purchase. From shopping cart optimization to relevant product recommendations and end-to-end testing, Amadesa is helping online retailers convert online window shoppers into actual paying customers. New technologies such as A/B and Multivariate Testing, which didn't exist in retail stores, let customers' online actions determine what works best. Now retailers can test images, promotional copy, offers, and a myriad of other elements to improve ROI.

4. In-store Shopping: Collecting Data to Maximize Purchases

Just like Amadesa is tracking and analyzing online shoppers, other companies are taking on the challenge at the actual stores, with the help of new mobile technologies. Until now, stores had very little data about shoppers and their experiences, unless a transaction had been made. With the increasing popularity of location-based mobile technologies, retailers are able to track their customers, virtually communicate with them, and of course offer promotions. The two main players in this space offer different approaches.

Novitaz created a complete platform for tracking and managing in-store customer experience by offering a unique device with an active-RFID chip embedded into a credit card or loyalty card, which shows consumer location. It also requires a mobile phone to communicate with the consumer. The platform provides session metrics about consumer preferences, which can then be compiled into a customer profile so later offers can be tailored individually.

Another company competing for the personalized offers offline is ShopKick. Instead of supplying the customer with a special device, it relies on their existing mobile phones. In this case, the main implementation is done on the retailer’s side — ShopKick installs devices in-store, similar to Wi-Fi access points, and the device sends inaudible audio signals, which interact with a phone’s microphone. The offers get sent to the phone, which include the ability to earn points, Facebook currency, song downloads, and instant gift cards that can be redeemed in-store.

5. Media Coverage: Tracking Influence on Sales

All of the solutions above are optimizing the customer ROI, but what about tracking and optimizing media and press? Historically, media coverage has been a major catalyst of retail sales, with magazines dominating the trends for years — making or breaking items simply by featuring them on their glossy pages. Today, the landscape is more complicated, as online press and the proliferation of fashion bloggers are now just as responsible for a major spike in sales. The question is, how do brands keep track of all these media outlets and how do they measure the influence of one versus another?

Fashion GPS is addressing the issue and is truly revolutionizing the space by allowing brands to manage and track all their media connections in one dashboard. Recently, by becoming the official partner of IMG and Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, the company brought the analytics into more than 80 runway shows produced in New York last month.

By integrating bar coded invitations, Fashion GPS was able to track ROI for quality (and track loyalty) of attendees compared to the cost of show production. Brands were able to automatically track media members and the fashion shows they attended, thus keeping a record of their attendance for future reference. In the future, the company plans to add an option to also track media output per media attendee. This will help brands understand which media players are most valuable to their brand image.

This system creates a loop in the fashion show cycle by determining where the dollars should be invested: who should be invited to shows based on their value to the brand (their editorial output or publicity created) and who should receive priority both in terms of invitations and honoring sample requests in the future.

More Fashion Resources from Mashable:

- How Social Media Has Changed Fashion Week
- HOW TO: Follow Fashion Week Online
- HOW TO: Score the Best Fashion Deals on the Social Web
- 14 Sites Changing the Way We Shop
- 10 Essential Accessories for the Fashionable Geek

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Brainsil

Reviews: Facebook, iStockphoto

More About: amadesa, business, crowdsourcing, fashion, fashiongps, fashionstake, fit.me, myshape, novitaz, online shopping, ROI, shopkick, sizeless dressing, stylehop

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Tech Heavyweights Convene at Facebook to Launch sFund [LIVE BLOG]

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 10:30 AM PDT


Facebook and prominent venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins are set to make a major announcement, along with Amazon, Zynga and more.

We’re here at Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto for the company’s press conference. The room is filled with journalists, Facebook staff and a slew of tech executives. The company has just put up posters for something alled the “sFund” with Zynga, Amazon, Comcast, Liberty Media, Allen & Company and Kleiner Perkins as partners. There are also demo stations for companies like Flipboard around the room.

What exactly is the sFund? We’re about to find out. Here are my live notes:

Live: Facebook Launches sFund

All times are in Pacific Standard Time

10:30 AM: Jennifer Van Grove and I are here at Fcebook for the sFund launch. A lot of partners are in the room mingling. Facebook’s famous “Launch” lever is present to the right of the stage.

10:35: I see demo stations for Flipboard, Cafebots, and one or two others in the room.

10:40: Mark Zuckerberg, John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Mark Pincus (Zynga) and Bing Gordon are on stage. Doerr is presenting.

10:59: Doerr: “What has inspired you to be the CEO of this amazing company?” Pincus: It’s about learning to be a CEO at scale. The issue of scaling a fast-growing company. The thing that has helped him out most is seeking out coaches, advisors, etc. He’s looked to Jeff Bezos the most for CEO advice.
10:45: The speaker system’s breaking up as Doerr discusses Cafebots, Flipboard and some other startups that are innovating the social web.

10:47: Doerr is talking about Jive and Lockerz. Lockerz is a membership website for “Generation Z” — aka teenagers. All four startups are announcing something today.

10:48: They all use Amazon’s cloud-based hosting to power their growth.

10:49: The sFund is announced. It’s a $250 million fund. Wow.

10:50: Mark Zuckerberg is speaking. He’s discussing social innovations, starting with social games and social interactions. “Games have been an early adopter.” In the next 5-10 years, more industries will become social and launch social products, and the sFund will be a great way to fund it.

10:51: From the press release:

“Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced the sFund, a new $250 million initiative to invest in entrepreneurs inventing social applications and services. Amazon.com, Facebook, and Zynga, the leading companies defining today's social and online environment; entertainment and media leaders Comcast and Liberty Media and Allen & Company, LLC, have committed to invest in the sFund and serve as strategic partners. The sFund will provide financing, counsel, and relationship capital for a new generation of entrepreneurs to deliver on the promise of the social web.”

10:53: Facebook will help companies with support on its platform — things like Facebook Credits, etc.

10:54: Mark Pincus is speaking. “It’s one of the few times in history when venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are behind the curve.” There are some thing that haven’t been built that should be. An example Pincus mentiosn is travel — he wants one that knows you’re at the airport, it knows your flight is cancelled, etc.

11:59: Pincus looks up to Bezos the most for CEO advice.

11:00: Bezos is excited to be investing in this fund because he hopes they’ll be using Amazon Web Services. *cue laughs*

11:01: Zynga uses AWS — Pincus: “There’s no way we could have scaled FarmVille if we weren’t on AWS.”

11:02: Bezos: “Truly heroic growth.” — he’s describing Facebook and Zynga.

11:04: “This probably is the golden age of social apps.” ~ Bezos.

11:05: Even more talk about AWS. He’s good at pitching his products.

11:05: Now Bing Gordon is speaking. He’s on the board of Amazon and Zynga and the former Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts. He will be leading the sFund.

11:07: Now Gordon is talking about some of the other partners. “Comcast is a great strategic partner.” Liberty Media understand the Internet, Allen & Company is the best connector and financial advisor for new media companies.

11:09: Zynga: “On top of Facebook, we’re going to have these vertical dialtones.” The team is talking about their predictions five years out.

11:11: Zuck: “Five years out, social will blossom and the world will look more like Zynga and the apps we build.”

11:16: Most of this is just advice for entrepreneurs at this point. We’re waiting for Q&A.

Q&A

Q: Why did it take so long to launch this?
A: Zynga really made them aware of the opportunity in this space.

Q: Partners?
A: Hoping that more will want to get on board. There are finance laws about how to add new partners, but is a quarter of a billion dollar party, so let’s get people on board.

Q: How to keep social responsibility?
A: CEOs run their own businesses. They want companies that have their values though — users control their own data and privacy, etc. It’s a big challenge going forward?

Q: Why isn’t this called an fFund? What about an aFund for Android? Etc.
A: We don’t control these ventures, it’s beyond Facebook.

Q: Are you announcing new investments or just folding the first startups into the sFund?
A: Cafebots announced today, $5 million.

Q: Are these media or technology investments? (by the way, I love Doerr’s efficiency with questions — he collects three questions then answers them all in rapid-fire succession.)
A: Both

Q: Monetization models advice?
A: Pincus: We are massively underinvested across-the-board in this first generation of web services.

Q: Customer service from Facebook and Amazon?
A: “In favor of it,” says Bezos. Since Amazon is a paid service, customers expect great customer service. Zuckerberg: “A lot of what we do is just help people with their accounts.”

Q: Is Amazon launching an app store?
A: Stay tuned.

Q: Are these businesses going to be advertising-based? Monetization models?
A: “There are going to be lots of different models,” Zuckerberg says.

Reviews: Android, Facebook, Internet, Lockerz

More About: facebook, Facebook Fund, fbfund, Kleiner Perkins, live, venture capital

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The “Angry Birds” Have Halloween Spirit

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 09:48 AM PDT


Rovio has launched a special Halloween edition of its popular mobile game Angry Birds. Besides informing us about a new version of the immensely addictive game, the announcement is significant for two other reasons.

On Wednesday, Angry Birds publisher Chillingo announced that it had been acquired by Electronic Arts (EA). Despite a statement from Rovio reiterating that it owns the game, the acquisition led many to question what it would mean for the future of the Angry Birds franchise.

The latest release should dispel any lurking doubts on that matter; Rovio is self-publishing the title and declaring it “will only make [the games] better. No dependency on Chillingo.”

Angry Birds Halloween also indicates how Rovio might continue to develop the franchise beyond the free, ad-supported version of Angry Birds for Android released last week. (It has already been downloaded more than 3 million times.)

Rovio has also released purchasable in-game items. The Halloween edition suggests we may see incremental and seasonal updates that add various forms of ambiance to the game. Unfortunately, this seasonal update is available only for iOS devices.

Angry Birds Halloween in action:

Reviews: Android

More About: angry birds, EA, electronic arts, Halloween, mobile gaming, rovio

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Following Data Leak, Facebook Proposes Encryption for UIDs

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 09:46 AM PDT


In response to a discovery earlier this week that some Facebook applications were inadvertently sharing user information to third parties, Facebook engineers are proposing that Facebook UIDs become encrypted.

Under the new proposal, the parameters that are passed back to iFrame-based applications will be encrypted using an application’s secret key, meaning that only the actual application will be able to read the information and accidental disclosures over HTTP headers will no longer be possible.

This proposal follows Facebook’s acknowledgement earlier this week that some applications, including popular games by Zynga and LOLapps, were inadvertently passing on user ID (UID) information to advertisers and other third parties. LOLapps was briefly blocked from Facebook, but its games were restored by Monday afternoon.

True to form, Facebook both acknowledges and dismisses the significance of this data leak in its blog post announcing plans for new UID encryption. Facebook’s Mike Vernal calls early press reports “greatly exaggerated” but adds that Facebook “[recognizes] that some developers were inadvertently sharing [user] information.”

The technical details involved in the new encryption proposal have been posted to Facebook’s developers site; developers are welcome to offer their feedback and comments.

As Facebook noted on Monday, knowledge of a UID doesn’t mean that someone can have access to private user information without explicit consent. However, that doesn’t make the information contained within a UID worthless. The very fact that Facebook has policies explicitly blocking applications from sharing UID information with third parties and advertising networks makes that clear.

Frankly, we think that encrypting the UID parameters within an iFrame is a good idea and a good first step towards accountability. Our big question is: Why is this only happening now?

With all of the privacy missteps in Facebook’s past, why should users be forced to rely on third-party developers to encrypt their information? Why hasn’t Facebook been doing this all along? The impact from this particular event was relatively minor, but it serves as yet another reminder to be aware of how much information we share with Facebook.

Reviews: Facebook

More About: facebook, facebook applications, facebook privacy, lolapps, privacy, security, uids, Zynga

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Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 09:07 AM PDT


The Small Business Round Table Series is supported by the British Airways Face-to-Face Program, which offers U.S. entrepreneurs and small business owners critical tools for building business relationships abroad. See ba.com/contest before October 21.

Twitter is used by businesses of all shapes and sizes for customer service, lead generation, public relations, marketing, crowdsourcing, sales and sharing up-to-date information. Successes aren’t universal, though. Many businesses find it difficult to overcome the learning curve, learn the Twitter lingo, gain a following and sustain interesting conversation while providing value for followers.

For this installment of the Small Business Round Table Series, we brought three small biz insiders together to talk about the ins and outs of using Twitter for small business growth, in hopes of nailing down a few notes on best practices. Our knowledgeable round table attendees included:

The attendees shared their thoughts on starting, maintaining and growing a Twitter presence. Read on to see what they had to say.

From left: Alexandra Moskovitz, Lev Ekster and Chanel Huston

1. Why did your business join Twitter?

Huston: “I started using Twitter in October 2009. My boyfriend was the one who kept pushing me to use it, because he works at a record label, and they were using it to promote their artists, and he thought it was a great way to reach fans and interact with people. So, he kept pushing me to get it and helped me set it up. I was on a message board for natural hair first, called Black Hair Media, and it turned out that a lot of the girls were on Twitter. Once I got on Twitter, I found out that there was a big natural hair community that would meet and give tips and secrets to each other.”

Ekster: “For me, it seemed like a no-brainer, because we had a mobile food truck that was changing locations and menu items, so I just wanted to update people on where we’d be. Now, every food truck is on Twitter.”

Moskovitz: “I used Twitter with another wine shop at my previous job, and now it’s kind of just a no-brainer for restaurants and hospitality — it’s really another method of hospitality, not only for updating on what dishes and special events we have, but responding to and engaging with our customers. We can reach out to new people and follow other restaurants to see what’s going on. It’s a new level of interaction, and it also pushes the restaurants to more than just the [in-restaurant experience].”

2. What’s the top reason your business uses Twitter?

Huston: “My shop is on Etsy right now, and I get a lot of direct traffic from Etsy, but not necessarily my target market. Twitter helps me find the people who are actually going to be interested in my products, who have the disposable income to spend on them and have the hair type that’s going to be appropriate for my products.

“Finding people on Twitter is actually easy, but tedious to set up. I started by making announcements on the message board that I frequented to let everybody know that they could now follow me on Twitter. And then, once I was on Twitter, I’d find [Twitter accounts for] websites, like Naturally Curly, who have a target audience similar to mine, and I’d follow their followers. Or I’d add people who were following natural hair blogs like Afrobella. [My following] just kind of grew from there.”

Ekster: “I don’t know if there’s a single, main reason [why I use Twitter], but I guess it all comes down to having a rapport and dialogue with our customers, an ongoing conversation with them. But then, things stem from that. So, you’ll get reviews — either positive and negative — and menu and flavor suggestions, for example.

“It all just boils down to having a face and a voice to the company, where the customer feels that you’re reachable. With a bigger company, you don’t know who the owner is, you don’t know how to reach them, you feel like beyond the suggestion box in the store, there’s nothing else you can do. But [with social media], you get an instant response.”

Moskovitz: “We want to establish a dialogue and level of engagement with everyone. Each [of our Twitter accounts] has its own personality, so you almost feel like you know the restaurant as a person, or the people behind it.”

3. How do you choose when to respond to a tweet?

Ekster: “If [the tweet] is a direct question to us, I’ll respond 99% of the time. And I like to follow people. We have 14,500 followers, and we follow 12,000 people, just so I can pick up on comments, views, and everything.

“Sometimes it’s not really appropriate to get involved, so you have to pick and choose when it’s really relevant without badgering people and being annoying. For example, if it’s two people talking saying that they’ll meet at Cupcake Stop at 3 p.m., I don’t want to be like, ‘Yes, please come!’ But sometimes I will. It’s just a spontaneous decision on my part sometimes. But at the same time, you don’t want to overdo it.”

Moskovitz: “I like to respond to everything at this point, and we’ve been pretty lucky that we pretty much have [only] positive responses. We just try to be as relevant as possible.”

Huston: “I respond to everything now. It’s at a manageable point right now — I have a little over 3,000 followers. For the most part, anything that someone tweets to me, I respond personally to.”

4. Who tweets from your business’s Twitter account?

Huston: “It’s just me. I’m the only one — I don’t have any employees.”

Ekster: “From day one, it’s been me. Everybody always tries to convince me to give that responsibility up to somebody else, but I just think it’s so important . I like to think that there’s a voice, where when you get that response, you kind of know that I wrote it. I’ll involve other people — sometimes I’ll walk through our bakery and take a photo of our chef making something, and I’ll name him. But the comments and responses have still been all me.”

Moskovitz: “We had it handled by PR before, and we just brought it all in-house, because it’s harder to have someone who’s not there all the time doing it. Now we have someone designated at each restaurant to feed me material. And also, I’m there all the time — I do make laps every night.

“We also have @dellanimom, one of our owners’ Mom. She’s very involved with the restaurants, but one of the great things about her is that she’s also really involved with the Twittersphere and other restaurants… She’s constantly feeding us content. She does fresh content, and she’s really on top of things. And I’d also say that our followers that are tweeting at us are also another stream of content, with their pics, for example.”

5. How do you interact with the Twitter community?

Huston: “Generally, I post pictures of what I’m working on or where I am, new listings, and some personal tweets, just because it’s a handmade shop — people don’t want to feel like they’re buying from a company, they want to know that there’s a person behind it…They become personally invested in the business and want me to succeed. It’s just finding the balance of not getting too personal. I try to stay away from any tweets that are too polarizing — I don’t want to talk about religion or politics.”

Moskovitz: “We tend to go off of what our followers are talking about. We obviously want conversation around us, but we don’t want to be promotional. It’s awesome if we can get conversations going around [our recent endeavors] without being promotional. Otherwise, it’s trying to engage with everyone. The more you can get conversations going, then everyone else maintains those conversations around your business, and it’s positive, and you don’t have to worry as much about that transparency that everyone’s so scared of.”

6. Do you monitor relevant key words on Twitter?

Huston: “Usually the #naturalhair hashtag is a big one [that I follow]. On Sundays at 10 p.m. ET, there’s a big #naturalhair chat, that I’m generally a part of. And throughout the week, [the community] is usually carrying on conversations using that hashtag.”

Ekster: “I don’t do that as much now, but when we were starting out, we wanted to cater to bar mitzvahs and weddings. So, we’d go to Twitter’s Advanced Search and type in ‘bar mitzvah’ and a zip code within the vicinity, and try to join those conversations. At this point, it’s far less prevalent that I’d do that — I have to be really bored to do that.”

Moskovitz: “I use TweetDeck, because I monitor three accounts at once. Sometimes, if I’m following something for the day, I will create a new column for that. I then use TweetDeck on my phone, so that I can be with it at all times. Or, if a person because really active with us, I might follow them throughout the day to see what kind of activities they’re doing.”

7. What are the pros of using Twitter?

Moskovitz: “It makes you seem more approachable. For us, it’s a whole new level of hospitality. With that, it’s important to address the people who have problems with your business, as well, because that’s the whole point — to be transparent.”

Huston: “The personal aspect of it is really important for a handmade business. And I noticed that between the four-month period before I started using Twitter and the four-month period after I started using it, my sales tripled.”

Ekster: “It allows you to expose your company in a way that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. People see a food truck, and they kind of equate it to maybe a cliché view of the food truck. And then, maybe I’ll show a picture of our bakery kitchen, and you see all the chefs and the product, and you see how clean it is — it lets you into a behind-the-scenes look at the business.

“And I’ll track the views on photos to see what people are interested in and what people aren’t. And what better way to know? If I’m choosing between two products to put out, and I suggest two, and one just has such a heavier response than the other one — you’re pretty much ensuring positive sales before you put the item out.”

8. What are the cons of using Twitter?

Huston: “It was very tedious to set up for me. It was time-consuming to amass all the followers. But once I got it set up, it’s very easy to maintain. I’m not chained to a computer like when I was first setting it up, and I can tweet from anywhere with my BlackBerry.”

Ekster: “All of the exposure is a double-edged sword. You like it when you get positive responses, but you have to be able to accept negative ones, too. It’s important how you respond to that.

It also hurts your social life. Everywhere I go, people already know that if I’m looking down at my phone, I’m not being rude — I’m just responding to people. It gets to the point that when I go out to dinner, there’s a phone-in-the-car rule, where I have to leave my phone in the car. It’s hard, because you’re sitting there in the restaurant, thinking, ‘What am I missing right now?’”

Moskovitz: “It’s 24/7. People are always on Twitter. We get nervous, because people can put up anything they want. They could set you up if they wanted to. Hopefully people are good and they wouldn’t do that. But it’s complete access.”

9. Any final advice for small businesses starting out on Twitter?

Huston: “There’s a lot of temptation to follow everyone, but I would recommend following people who are going to be interested in your products. If you sell children’s clothes, for example, add people who are following parenting magazines or are in parenting groups.”

Ekster: “Figure out how you’re going to use Twitter effectively, rather than just sending out anything. Don’t over advertise — not every conversation should be business-oriented. When we started, I looked at people that were using it well, and I read up on people like Gary Vaynerchuk, for example. And then I would watch an interview with him, where he would speak about how to use it effectively and some of his tricks and tips. So, find someone who you think is doing it effectively, watch to see how they’re doing it, and pick up on those practices.”

Moskovitz: “Take your time. There are different levels of interaction. You don’t have to jump from step one, expecting that everyone’s going to be tweeting at you and following you. It’s such a dynamic world that it’s going to be changing every day. Even the platform just changed in the past couple of weeks. Figure out what you want to do with it, find the right people, find your space and it will all fall into place.”

Series supported by the British Airways Face-to-Face Program

The Small Business Round Table Series is supported by the British Airways Face-to-Face Program. British Airways believes face-to-face interaction with global stakeholders is a critical tool to help entrepreneurs and small businesses build relationships abroad. Therefore, it is awarding 250 U.S. small business owners who have a clear business need for international exposure free British Airways flights anywhere in the world, as well as free business consulting and education from renowned small business experts. Visit www.ba.com/contest for more information.

See the video below for a Face-to-Face success story.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- How 4 Small Businesses are Using Location-Based Services
- 5 Ways to Use Google Voice for Your Business
- 5 Big Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners
- Life After Microsoft: 15 Startups Founded By Ex-Employees
- 5 Beautiful Tumblr Themes for Small Businesses

Image courtesy of Flickr, Julia Roy

Reviews: BlackBerry Rocks!, Flickr, TweetDeck, Twitter

More About: business, engagement, small business, Small Business Round Table Series, social media, twitter

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What Kind of Geek Are You? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 08:59 AM PDT


Let’s face it: If you’re reading Mashable right now, you are likely a geek. Likewise, if you’re writing for Mashable right now, you fall under the same moniker. But what kind of geek are you, and who are your illustrious ancestors?

Flowtown has the answer in the form of the above infographic, “The Evolution of the Geek,” which gives both the history of the term (I greatly enjoy that it springs from the word “gecken,” which connotes an 18th century circus performer who bites the heads off of live chickens) and its various iterations.

Looking at the above, I would say I’m a Music Geek, a Pop Culture Geek and a Film Geek. What are you?

Reviews: Mashable

More About: geek, pop culture, social media

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LinkedIn for BlackBerry Gets OS 6.0 Support

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 08:54 AM PDT


LinkedIn for BlackBerry has reached version 1.5, bringing support for BlackBerry OS 6.0 devices, including the recently launched BlackBerry Torch.

The new LinkedIn BlackBerry app brings redesigned member profiles, which now have several new sections, including recommendations. You can also view other people’s connections on the profile screen directly on your BlackBerry, and you can check out what you have in common with another user with a single click.

Furthermore, it’s now easier to view detailed profile updates in Network updates. Tap on a connection’s name to go to the top of their profile or tap on any section to jump to that section.

LinkedIn for BlackBerry is available now.

Reviews: BlackBerry Rocks!, LinkedIn

More About: blackberry, linkedin, Mobile 2.0, RIM, smartphone, social networking

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Google Broadband Gets Its First Trial

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 08:23 AM PDT


Google's ultra high speed fiber network — which the company says can offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — is about to get its first trial outside of the Googleplex.

The trial is fairly small and not too far from home; the company will be deploying its network at Stanford University to "a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus. "

Google also points out that this isn't part of its call for small-to-mid-sized communities to submit proposals to get "Google Fiber" in their towns. That competition sparked an amusing social media battle earlier this year between dozens (if not hundreds) of towns ranging from Topeka, Kansas, to Huntsville, Alabama. Google says that they, "still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year."

That said, Google has again made it clear that it doesn’t plan to get into the ISP business, as many originally speculated it would when it first announced the initiative. Rather, it falls into Google's broader goal of making the Internet faster, an effort that also includes experiments with its own DNS and a potential HTTP protocol replacement.

Reviews: Google, Internet

More About: Google, google broadband, google fiber

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Nokia Cuts Jobs, Simplifies Platform Strategy

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 07:41 AM PDT


Nokia posted positive quarterly financial results on Thursday, but also said it will cut 1,800 jobs worldwide in an effort to streamline “certain corporate functions and corporate research activities.”

Also, Nokia announced it will consolidate and simplify its developer offering and focus on its Qt developer framework from now on.

Nokia’s operating profit in the third quarter of 2010 beat analysts’ estimates, jumping to €403 million from a €426 million loss in the same period last year. Sales in Q3 2010 also rose to €10.27 billion from €9.81 billion last year. Nokia sold 110.4 million mobile devices in Q3 (up 2% year-over-year), 26.5 million of which were smartphones, which represent a 61% year-over-year increase.

Perhaps even more interesting than the surprisingly positive financial results is Nokia’s decision to simplify things on the mobile software development front. Nokia claims it will “ensure that applications will continue to be compatible with future evolutions of Symbian as well as upcoming MeeGo products,” and promises it will support HTML5 for development of content and apps for both Symbian and MeeGo.

This means several things for both consumers and developers. Nokia will stop referring to Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 and focus on continuous evolution of the platform. Developers will be able to create applications with a single code base for Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo devices. In fact, Nokia itself plans to create its own applications and UI on Qt as well. Ultimately, users won’t have to worry which platform or version of the platform their phone is based on any more, and they’ll have more apps to choose from, regardless of whether their phone is running Symbian or MeeGo.

Commenting on the changes at Nokia, new CEO Stephen Elop said that the entire cellphone industry is going through a “a remarkably disruptive time,” and hinted at further changes at Nokia. “We must reassess our role in and our approach to this industry,” he said. He also confirmed that the first MeeGo device will come in 2011.

Nokia’s full financial report for Q3 2010 is available as a PDF document here.

More About: business, job cuts, jobs, Meego, Mobile 2.0, Nokia, profit, Revenue, Symbian

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