Home � � Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Julian Assange Loses Case, Is to Be Extradited to Sweden”

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Julian Assange Loses Case, Is to Be Extradited to Sweden”

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Julian Assange Loses Case, Is to Be Extradited to Sweden”


Julian Assange Loses Case, Is to Be Extradited to Sweden

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 03:45 AM PST


The results of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing are in, and the news aren’t good for the Wikileaks founder: he has lost the case, and is to be extradited to Sweden in 10 days. Assange has seven days to appeal the verdict.

Assange is accused of sexual assault by two women Assange had met in Sweden during a business trip to the country in August 2010. Although the charges of rape were initially dropped, the case was later reopened and an appeals court has upheld the original accusations.

In December 2010, Assange surrendered to the police and was arrested in London, where he was been fighting a legal battle against being extradited to Sweden.

Assange's arrest is just one of many problems for WikiLeaks and its founder. Since it started releasing secret embassy cables, the site itself has been the victim of DDoS attacks, and several companies, including Amazon, PayPal, and its DNS service provider, EveryDNS.net, have denied WikiLeaks service.

The full ruling can be found here.

[via Guardian]

More About: extradition, julian assange, sweden, wikileaks

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Apple Store Down – New MacBooks Pro On The Way?

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 03:20 AM PST


After weeks of speculation and some seemingly genuine leaks about the new MacBooks Pro, which were rumored to be launched today, the Apple Store is currently down.

We’ll be monitoring the store closely for any changes; if Apple indeed launches an update to its current MacBook Pro line, this is what you can expect: Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture, faster memory, an SDXC slot and a Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort, meaning that it’s both a display port and a high-speed I/O connection port. Stay tuned!

More About: apple, macbook, Macbook Pro, Store

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Motorola Xoom Now Available at Verizon

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 01:49 AM PST


As previously announced, Motorola Xoom is now available for purchase at Verizon. Later today, the customers who’ve pre-ordered the device will be able to pick it up at Best Buy stores.

Sans contract, the Xoom costs a hefty $799 at both companies; if you’re willing to sign a 24-month contract with Verizon, the price for the device drops to $599.

It’s an important event because the Xoom is the world’s first tablet powered by Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), a branch of Android aimed specifically at tablets.

While the tablets powered by earlier versions of Android, such as the 7” Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Dell Streak, have had some success on the market, Google has always been quite clear about the fact that Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.3 (Gingerbread) are best suited for smartphones and not tablets.

Honeycomb, on the other hand, is the version that should help Android tablets reach their potential and become a serious alternative to Apple’s iPad. Of course, we’ll find out what Apple thinks of all that on March 2, when the company has scheduled a special iPad 2-revealing event.

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Map Your Facebook Friends In a Few Clicks

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 09:34 PM PST


You know who your Facebook friends are, but can you visualize where they are? You might be surprised when you see “Where My Friends Be?,” a Google Maps mashup with all of their locations pinpointed, showing you just how far-flung your friends really are.

We’ve seen other Facebook/Google Maps mashups before, but this one’s different from other friend-mappers. It’s fast, it takes just a few seconds to click into, and suddenly it’s dropping little pins all over the globe, showing you precisely where your pals reside. Says one of its developers, Ajay Mehta:

“Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of apps like this. There were a few that were very poorly developed and eventually canceled years ago. They weren’t this visual either, most had a lame loading bar or something similar and the mapping was laggy/slow. We have friends pop onto the map in a cool, interactive way (which was the hardest part to hack together).”

Written by college freshmen Ajay Mehta, Wesley Zhao and Dan Shipper, the mashup gives you a quick way to remind yourself that you’re not in Kansas anymore, and neither are your friends. Unless, of course, you all live in Kansas.

The enthusiasm of these frosh is infectious. Future Zuckerbergs?

More About: apps, development, facebook, Google Maps, mashups, trending, Where My Friends Be

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New Startup Aims to “Make Paper Sexy” With Crowdsourced Designs

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 08:01 PM PST


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

Name: Chirply

Quick Pitch: Chirply asks its community which user-submitted designs it should print.

Genius Idea: We didn’t see it coming, but Chirply claims it has found a way to “make paper sexy.” The Y-Combinator startup asks users to submit their own designs, and then leaves it to a popular vote to decide which of the designs it prints on notebooks, greeting cards, and wrapping paper. The winning designers get $300 upfront, and then a $.10 royalty on every card Chirply sells.

“There are a lot of companies that do print on demand, and the downside is that if the designs aren’t curated, the quality is all over the map,” explains Gagan Palrecha, who co-founded the crowd-curated printing company with his brother Neel.

Decidedly not sexy, we’ll admit. Traditional card companies don’t do much better. It’s hard to find what you’re looking for, you have to lug yourself to a physical store, and many of the designs aren’t really, in Palrecha’s words, “something you love.”

The startup’s theory is that drawing from a wider pool of talent will result in better designs. Meanwhile, it can afford to sell them for less than other upscale paper product vendors because it doesn’t incur the cost of a physical storefront or full-time designers.

Chirply’s founders cite craft marketplace Etsy and crowdsourced t-shirts design company Threadless as its inspiration, but it also has features that remind of us of other established tech companies. Like Digg, user votes aren’t taken at face value. Depending on your past behavior on the site, your vote might have more or less influence (this prevents designers from getting all of their friends to vote exclusively on their design, for instance). Like Hot or Not, rating designs from one to five turns into a game. Once you rate one, another pops up.

While the startup is too new to have answered all of the questions that it will need to (Can users buy prints that they like, but haven’t won the monthly contest? What about posters?), it’s off to a decent start. In the two weeks since it launched, about 90 designers have participated in the contest. Some of them have been voted on as many as 300 times.

Image courtesy of gregoryelang


Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark


Microsoft BizSpark

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

More About: Chirply, greeting cards, paper, startup

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Spotify Closing In On Deal With Largest Record Label? [REPORT]

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:38 PM PST


Spotify might have just negotiated one of the last obstacles to its arrival in the United States. Now, the popular European music service is just “a few weeks away” from obtaining the U. S. rights to the music owned by the world’s largest music company, Universal Music Group, according to sources who spoke to Reuters.

As soon as that deal is sealed, according to one source who spoke with Reuters, the company might proceed with its United States launch, even though it still hasn’t signed the number three music label, Warner Music Group.

Things are starting to happen quickly for the London-based Spotify. Last week, according to CNET the company signed another one of the major record labels, EMI, and last month, it made a music deal with Sony for its U.S. music rights. If it succeeds in adding Universal Music Group to its stable, it will have three of the four major music labels on board for an American launch.

What’s the holdup? The U.S. record companies are reportedly not overly enthusiastic about Spotify’s “freemium” business model, where the company gives away ad-supported music in hopes of signing paying subscribers to its ad-free version. That premium service lets users choose and replay their music.

Beyond that, the record companies are concerned that current digital music sales by outlets such as the iTunes Store might be adversely affected by free music from Spotify. In an interview with StrategyEye, Spotify’s business development head, Faisal Galaria, says the launch delay has to do with the profitable relationship between record companies and Apple:

If you're the digital team [at a label] and 80% of your revenue was coming from one place, how much are you going to piss them off until someone else can guarantee all that revenue from a new source?”

How about it, readers? What’s keeping Spotify from U.S. shores?

More About: music, spotify, universal, warner music group

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American Idol Voting On Its Way to Facebook

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:48 PM PST


You’ll soon be able to use a dedicated page on Facebook to vote for your favorites on American Idol.

Viewers and fans will be allowed to cast their ballots up to 50 times, as long as they vote during that broadcast’s designated voting period, according to Entertainment Weekly.

This new method of voting won’t replace the traditional toll-free telephone call or text message, but for Facebook users, it certainly sounds a lot easier than dealing with the plague of busy signals or spam texts we’ve experienced when using the other two voting methods on American Idol.

While this is the first direct online voting method, you might recall last year’s “Idol Fanatic” Facebook voting routine, which used Ribbit online telephony to automatically dial in votes submitted via its Facebook application. That looks to be a thing of the past — a visit to that Facebook page today showed it to be defunct, with no activity since May 18, 2010, a week before last season ended. Too bad, because the page’s users had an uncanny ability of predicting who would be voted off the show before it was over.

According to the report, online voting will be implemented soon, showing up on next Tuesday’s (March 1) American Idol.

More About: american idol, facebook, ribbit, trending, voting

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Viral Stars Collaborate on Meme Movie “The Chronicles of Rick Roll” [VIDEO]

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:04 PM PST

Antoine “Bed Intruder” Dodson, Bear “Double Rainbow” Vazquez, Gary “Numa Numa” Brolsma, Ben “Leeroy Jenkins” Schultz and a handful of other viral video stars are making a movie.

Never has any group of people so conspired to create Mashable bait. We’re practically speechless.

This meme orgy is to be called The Chronicles of Rick Roll. Also appearing are Brian Collins, a.k.a. Mr. “Boom Goes The Dynamite,” and Stephen and Jack Quire, a.k.a. The Freakout Kid and his brother.

The film is being produced by Andrew Fischer of Colorado-based media agency NURV.

Have a look at the snippet above and the behind-the-scenes interview below (the full-length trailer is “coming soon,” and there’s no word on when the film will be released), and tell us in the comments whether this is a film you’d pay to see.

More About: Meme, rick roll, viral, youtube

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New Firefox 4 for Android Available Now

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:41 PM PST


Firefox 4 for Android and Nokia Maemo devices is now available in a new beta version that’s made huge leaps in terms of stability and performance.

Our mobile team has had mixed experiences with earlier versions of the Firefox mobile browser, so the improvements and bug fixes are most welcome.

Some improvements include more pan/zoom responsiveness, faster booting and better page load times, the latter specifically due to JavaScript enhancements. The beta also includes features such as Firefox Sync (which lets you seamlessly carry your tabs, bookmarks and history between devices, whether those devices be mobile or desktop), tabbed browsing, Firefox add-ons and more.

Firefox for mobile is a developing area of the browser sector we’ve been following with great interest over the past year.

The browser originally launched with the codename “Fennec.” The alpha version hit the Android Market last August, and the first beta came out last October.

Sadly, iPhone and iPad users will have to stick to Firefox Home for iOS for now. The Firefox Home app isn't a browser itself, but it will help Apple mobile users get access to their Firefox bookmarks, browsing history and open tabs — all from within Mobile Safari.

Expect more (and frequent) beta updates before a final tested-and-approved version is released. In the meantime, take the browser for a spin, and let us know what you think of its performance fixes in the comments.

More About: android, Fennec, Firefox, Firefox 4, mobile browser

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The Future of Your Wireless Home Network

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:22 PM PST

house image

David Henry is a senior director of product marketing for NETGEAR where he works on high performance, dependable and easy home networking, storage and digital media products to connect people with the Internet and their content and devices. You can follow NETGEAR on Twitter @NETGEAR.

The future of home networking will see multiple devices connected to the Internet and to each other. At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the emphasis was on target="_blank">Internet-enabled everything. Recent market studies also confirm this trend. The penetration of connected consumer electronic devices such as TVs, Blu-ray players, and smartphones are projected to grow 400% between 2010 and 2015, as shown in the chart below.

The introduction of so many new tablets is another indication that the demand for connected consumer electronics is surging. Consumer expectations about the quality of their connectivity is increasing as more and more of the devices are used for entertainment such as streaming movies or online gaming.

As these connected devices become part of future homes, home networking products will have to be ready to support them, with new features that enable the best possible experience.

Powerful routers, home gateways, centralized media servers, powerline network adapters, and wireless add-ons like Wi-Fi range-extenders will soon become the norm for the connected home. The future home network will have to be smart enough to adapt to changing priorities, dedicate more bandwidth to certain activities and switch between devices readily.


Building Your Future Home Network


devices graph

When looking for an interruption-free Internet experience in the home, consumers should keep an eye out for a router with dual band. These routers provide the kind of bandwidth required by the devices connecting to the home network and Internet. Dual band functionality provides twice the Wi-Fi bandwidth, giving the consumer two completely separate wireless networks within the home. The most used frequency is 2.4GHz, as it is ideal to support web surfing, e-mail and chat. However, having another band to select from (the 5GHz band) enables better video streaming. Fewer devices connecting on this band avoids wireless congestion and renders video streaming without jitters and lags. Consumers should look for this dual band capability from their wireless router at home especially if they are streaming video from sites like Netflix, YouTube or Hulu. Some dual band wireless routers even come with a special “Video Mode” that not only makes it easier to set up wireless for this type of video streaming but also uses video-centric algorithms that reduce video jitter and frame loss during streaming.

Built-in Quality of Service (QoS) is another feature being integrated in modern wireless routers. This feature allows prioritization of devices to deliver maximum Internet bandwidth and performance. This prioritization allows the dedication of more bandwidth to HD movies for flawless viewing. Once the priority is set in the router, the router recognizes the type of Internet traffic and prioritizes it, automatically. Some modern wireless routers come with the most popular applications already set up, auto-assigning priority to activities such as voice calls versus web surfing, e-mail or downloads.

The growth of high quality HD-video streaming is just one of the many reasons consumers need to understand the crucial role their home wireless router plays. As the number of activities occurring over wireless increase, better performance will be required from home Wi-Fi connections. Fortunately, home networking companies are rolling out the features that ensure high quality video streaming and other Wi-Fi activities almost daily.


A Look Into the Future


By 2015, the average bandwidth to the home from DSL, cable, or wireless providers will grow exponentially. Consumers will continue to enjoy video content on various sized screens including flawless streaming to handheld devices. CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs will be used mostly by those who cherish physical media. However, streaming video from the Internet and from home media servers will more likely become the norm.

Consumers can see this trend today in the modern network attached storage (NAS) device that supports media serving capabilities. Advanced wireless routers have media servers built in, and have the ability to stream and share media stored on any connected external USB hard drive. As customers wish to have instant access to all of their media all of the time, whether at home or on smartphones and tablets, NAS devices and wireless routers need to support remote access. The most advanced NAS products today support this “anytime, anywhere” type of access as do advanced consumer wireless routers.

Home control and security monitoring will also be accessible from any Internet connection, and manageable from a smartphone, PC or tablet.

In today's modern home, consumers are already seeing the growing trend of everything being connected to the Internet. In many cases, the amount of Internet-connected devices in the home outnumber the people in the household. This means more and more is demanded from home wireless networks and Internet connections. Thankfully, home networking companies are answering the call by innovating new wireless solutions and home router features that facilitate the connected entertainment experience people expect.


More Tech Resources from Mashable:


- 4 Predictions for Connected Devices in 2011
- 5 Predictions for Online Data in 2011
- Constantly Changing Technologies: What's a Software Developer To Do?
- Tough Tech: 10 Rugged Gadgets That Will Go the Distance
- 5 Predictions for Game Mechanics in 2011

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alengo

More About: connected devices, gadgets, home network, routers, social media, tech, technology

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:


SEC Investigating Private Markets Where Facebook & Twitter Stock Trades

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 03:08 PM PST


The SEC is investigating conflicts of interest in the marketplace for stock in private companies like Twitter and Facebook, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Secondary marketplaces like SecondMarket and SharesPost connect people who want to sell stock in private companies (often former employees) with potential buyers. Since private companies are allowed to remain, well, private and are not required to file an IPO until they pass 499 shareholders of record, buyers of this stock have little information to go on when deciding how much the stock is actually worth.

Meanwhile, the same secondary marketplaces that are selling the stock are often cited in valuations that have little else to go on. When stock sells, these brokers collect a small percentage, so it’s to their advantage if the stocks sell for a higher price. Some question whether the marketplace could play a role in inflating these valuations in order to fetch a better selling price.

A spokesperson from SecondMarket said that third parties create the valuations based on prices that are negotiated between buyer and sellers on the platform, and called the company “an objective marketplace.”

SecondMarket is already regulated by the SEC as a broker-dealer operation. This means, among other things, that all of its investors must be accredited (read: meet a minimum income requirement) and the deals are subject to SEC oversight. Other marketplaces like SharesPost are not regulated in the same manner. But the SEC, according to the Wall Street Journal, is thinking that maybe they ought to be.

The SEC’s interest in the private stock exchange isn’t new. Its interest was reportedly piqued after Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook last year and then proceeded to create a “special purpose vehicle” that allowed its clients to invest in the social networking site indirectly. After the SEC started looking into the deal, Goldman Sachs closed the option to its U.S. clients.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, webking

More About: facebook, goldman sachs, Private Stock, SEC, SecondMarket

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The Latest Social Media & Digital Marketing Job Openings

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:55 PM PST


If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable‘s Job Lists section gathers together all of our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success and How to Find a Job on Twitter.

But we’d like to help in a more direct way, too. Mashable‘s job boards are a place for socially savvy companies to find people like you. This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions in the web, social media space and beyond. Have a look at what's good and new on our job boards:


Mashable Job Postings


Events Sponsorship Manager at Mashable in New York, NY.


Executive Assistant at Mashable in New York, NY.


Associate Design Director at Mashable in New York, NY.


VP Product at Mashable in San Francisco, CA.


Ruby on Rails Developer at Mashable in San Francisco, CA.


Regional Sales Director at Mashable in San Francisco, CA.


Regional Sales Director at Mashable in New York, NY.


Events Content Coordinator at Mashable in New York, NY.


Ad Ops Manager at Mashable in New York, NY.


Mashable Job Board Listings


Integration Engineer at BlueCava in Irvine, CA.


DataWarehouse/BI Architect at BlueCava in Irvine, CA.


Acquisition Marketing Director/Manager at GAIN Capital in Bedminster, NJ.


Promotions Manager at New Media Strategies in Arlington, VA.


Project Manager at Jobs2web in Hopkins, MN.


Sales and Marketing Specialist at TriNet Group, Inc. in San Francisco, CA.


Data & Systems Assoicate at Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) in New York, NY.


Web Design/Developer at NAS Recruitment Communications in Cleveland, OH.


Research Analyst/Social Media at Blueocean Market Intelligence in Issaquah, WA.


Social Media Manager at Village Voice Media in Phoenix, AZ.


Online Marketing Specialist at OpticsPlanet in Northbrook, IL.


Merchandising Specialist at OpticsPlanet in Northbrook, IL.


Search Engine Optimization Marketing Specialist at OpticsPlanet in Northbrook, IL.


Web Developer at Finer Solution, LLC in Littleton, CO.


Manager, Project Management at Digitas Health in New York, NY.


Integrated Project Manager at Digitas in New York, NY.


PR and Communications Professional at Beck Media & Marketing in Santa Monica, CA.


Online Marketing Manager at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts in Orlando, FL.


Director of Web Product Marketing & Analytics at RightsFlow in New York, NY.


Senior .NET Software Engineer at Kaleidoscope, SponsorScience in New York, NY.


Senior Database Developer at Kaleidoscope, SponsorScience in New York, NY.


Digital Content Writer at Rodale in Emmaus, PA.


Freelance SEM & Social Media Marketing Professionals at a confidential consultancy in New York, NY.


Account Assistant at Beyond Marketing Group LLC in Irvine, CA.


Community Manager at SENSA in El Segundo, CA.


Business Intelligence Operations Engineer at Demand Media in Santa Monica, CA.


Business Intelligence Application Engineer at Demand Media in Santa Monica, CA.


Sr. PHP Developer, Cracked.com at Demand Media in Santa Monica, CA.


Paid Search Manager at QVC in West Chester, PA.


Part Time Contract Digital Marketing Manager at Pillar Data Systems in San Jose, CA.


WordPress Rockstar at Media Revo Corp in Edgewater, NJ.


Executive/Personal Assistant at Robinson Lerer & Montgomery in New York, NY.


Community Managers at Affinitive in New York, NY.


Front End Developer at Teach for America in a flexible location.


Quality Engineer at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.


Account Manager at Affinitive in New York, NY.


Web Architect at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.


Community Manager at Spring Creek Group in Seattle, WA.


Performance Test Engineer at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.


Vice President of Project Management at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.


Vice President of Engineering at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.


Sr. MySQL DBA at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.


Account Executive, Social Media at Rebel Industries in Los Angeles, CA.


SMO/SEO Marketing Manager at PayScale, Inc. in Seattle, WA.


Account Supervisor at GolinHarris in Los Angeles, CA.


Web Producer at THQ in Agoura Hills, CA.


Sr. Social Media Strategist at VML in Atlanta, GA.


Online Marketing Associate at Mochi Media in San Francisco, CA.


Senior Software Engineer at Eventbrite in San Francisco, CA.


Developer Advocate/Evangelist at Eventbrite in San Francisco, CA.


Lead Generation at Eventbrite in San Francisco, CA.


Web Engineer – Analytics at Eventbrite in San Francisco, CA.


Account Director at Fanscape in Los Angeles, CA.


Sr. R&D Engineer at Fox in Los Angeles, CA.


Strategy Manager at Heartbeat Ideas in New York, NY.


Marketing Manager, Social Media at Horizon Media in New York, NY.


Associate UX Designer at Buddy Media in New York, NY.


Reporting Coordinator at Buddy Media in New York, NY.


Data Analyst at Buddy Media in New York, NY.


Lead Software engineer at The College Board in Reston, VA.


Mashable‘s Job Board has a variety of web 2.0, application development, business development and social networking job opportunities available. Check them out here.

Find a Web 2.0 Job with Mashable

Got a job posting to share with our readers? Post a job to Mashable today ($99 for a 30 day listing) and get it highlighted every week on Mashable.com (in addition to exposure all day every day in the Mashable marketplace).

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, YinYang

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Sprout Social Picks Up $10 Million To Help SMBs With Social Media Management

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:37 PM PST


Sprout Social, a startup building social media management tools for small and local businesses, has raised $10 million in a Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Money will be allocated toward growth and product development.

Businesses can use Sprout Social to manage, monitor and track their presence on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn and Yelp.

By specifically serving small and local businesses with low-end monthly subscription plans, Sprout Social has squeezed out a middle market in the social media management space. The product offering is meant to be robust enough for a small brand or agency; it’s a bit meatier than the likes of HootSuite, but not as pricey as Vitrue or Buddy Media.

"Sprout Social is embracing an increasingly powerful segment of the market in online commerce — the local business," says Harry Weller, NEA General Partner. "Sprout Social's powerful platform will allow those businesses to manage and extend their relationships with customers across a range of social media channels."

Sprout Social’s Series B represents a larger trend: Investors continue to remain enamored with startups working to solve social media management challenges for businesses of all sizes. Vitrue also just closed a $17 million round, for instance, and Buddy Media and Involver have completed sizable rounds of their own.

More About: NEA, series b, small business, social media, social media management, sprout social, startup

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How Social Media Is Having a Positive Impact On Our Culture [OPINION]

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 02:08 PM PST


This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.

Josh Rose is the EVP, digital creative director of ad agency Deutsch LA, who — when time permits — moonlights as a photographer. Follow him at @joshrose.

Two events today, although worlds apart, seem inextricably tied together. And the bond between them is as human as it is electronic.

First, on my way to go sit down and read the newspaper at my coffee shop, I got a message from my 10-year-old son, just saying good morning and letting me know he was going to a birthday party today. I don't get to see him all the time. He's growing up in two houses, as I did. But recently, as I handed down my old iPhone 3G to him to use basically as an iPod touch. We both installed an app called Yak, so we could communicate with each other when we're apart.

The amount of calming satisfaction it gives me to be able to communicate with him through technology is undeniably palpable and human. It's the other side of the "I don't care what you ate for breakfast this morning" argument against the mundane broadcasting of social media. In this case, I absolutely care about this. I'd listen to him describe a piece of bacon, and hang on every word. Is it better than a conversation with “real words?” No. But is it better than waiting two more days, when the mundane moment that I long to hear about so much is gone? Yes.

I guess one man's TMI is another man's treasure.

Moments later, I sat down and opened the paper. A headline immediately stood out: "In China, microblogs finding abducted kids" with the subhead, "A 6-year-old who was snatched when he was 3 is discovered with a family 800 miles away." Apparently, the occurrence of reclaimed children through the use of China's version of Twitter — and other online forums — has become triumphant news over there. I'm reading about the father’s tears, the boy's own confusing set of emotions, the rapt attention of the town and country, and I'm again marveling at the human side of the Internet.


The Paradox of Online Closeness


I recently asked the question to my Facebook friends: "Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare … is all this making you feel closer to people or farther away?" It sparked a lot of responses and seemed to touch one of our generation’s exposed nerves. What is the effect of the Internet and social media on our humanity?

From the outside view, digital interactions appear to be cold and inhuman. There's no denying that. And without doubt, given the choice between hugging someone and “poking” someone, I think we can all agree which one feels better. The theme of the responses to my Facebook question seemed to be summed up by my friend Jason, who wrote: "Closer to people I'm far away from." Then, a minute later, wrote, "but maybe farther from the people I'm close enough to." And then added, "I just got confused."

It is confusing. We live in this paradox now, where two seemingly conflicting realities exist side-by-side. Social media simultaneously draws us nearer and distances us. But I think very often, we lament what we miss and forget to admire what we've become. And it's human nature to want to reject the machine at the moment we feel it becoming ubiquitous. We've seen it with the printing press, moving pictures, television, video games and just about any other advanced technology that captures our attention. What romantic rituals of relationship and social interaction will die in the process? Our hearts want to know.

In the New Yorker this week, Adam Gopnik's article "How the Internet Gets Inside Us," explores this cultural truism in depth. It's a fantastic read and should be mandatory for anyone in an online industry. He breaks down a whole slew of new books on the subject and categorizes it all into three viewpoints: "the Never-Betters, the Better-Nevers, and the Ever-Wasers." In short, those who see the current movement as good, bad or normal. I think we all know people from each camp. But ultimately, the last group is the one best equipped to handle it all.


Filling in the Space With Connections


Another observation from the coffee shop: In my immediate vicinity, four people are looking at screens and four people are reading something on paper. And I'm doing both. I see Facebook open on two screens, but I'm sure at some point, it's been open on all of them. The dynamic in this coffee shop is quite a bit more revealing than any article or book. Think about the varied juxtapositions of physical and digital going on. People aren't giving up long-form reading, considered thinking or social interactions. They are just filling all the space between. And even that's not entirely true as I watch the occasional stare out the window or long glance around the room.

The way people engage with the Internet and social media isn't like any kind of interaction we've ever seen before. It's like an intertwining sine wave that touches in and out continuously. And the Internet itself is more complex and interesting than we often give it credit for. Consider peer-to-peer networking as just one example, where the tasks are distributed among the group to form a whole. It's practically a metaphor for the human mind. Or a township. Or a government. Or a family.

The Internet doesn't steal our humanity, it reflects it. The Internet doesn't get inside us, it shows what's inside us. And social media isn't cold, it's just complex and hard to define. I've always thought that you really see something's value when you try to destroy it. As we have now laid witness to in recent news, the Internet has quickly become the atom of cultural media; intertwined with our familial and cultural bonds, and destroyed only at great risk. I think if we search our own souls and consider our own personal way of navigating, we know this is as true personally as it is globally. The machine does not control us. It is a tool. As advanced today as a sharpened stick was a couple million years ago. Looked at through this lens, perhaps we should re-frame our discussions about technology from how it is changing us to how we are using it.


More Social Media Resources from Mashable:


- Why Social Media Is Bringing Back Our Grandparents' Values [OP-ED]
- 12 Ways to Use Quora For Your Job Search
- 7 Ways Print Magazines Are Using Social Media to Engage Readers
- Why Virtual Worlds Play an Important Role in the Changing Arab World
- How Social Media Will Make the Smart Energy Grid More Efficient

Image courtesy of iStock, RichVintage.

More About: communication, culture, facebook, social media, twitter

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WordPress 3.1 Goes Live: Here’s What’s New

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 01:52 PM PST


The WordPress team pushed out version 3.1, code name “Reinhardt,” on Wednesday, bringing a host of new and updated features to users and developers.

WordPress 3.0 was released back in June 2010, along with its own set of new functions and features. The 3.1 release cycle was originally expected to be completed before the end of 2010, but bugs and various changes pushed that date back.

I have been using the various beta and release candidate versions of WordPress 3.1 since November and am especially excited about a few of the new additions and improvements.

From an interface perspective, WordPress 3.1 shares the same look as WordPress 3.0. A few minor changes have been made to give the WordPress dashboard a cleaner look, but the overall design remains the same. The one exception is for users of the blue admin theme. The colors and stylings for the blue theme have been refined and improved across the board.


Post Formats, At Last


My favorite new feature in WordPress 3.1 is the addition of Post Formats. Not to be confused with the similar sounding Custom Post Types, Post Formats can be used by theme authors to customize the way a WordPress post is presented on the web. Post Formats is not a required feature, but it is something that theme designers can implement to better show off certain content types.

Post Formats are especially useful for users who want to create a Tumblr-like experience on their WordPress blog. That means that users can designate a post as an aside, link, video, image, quote, status, audio, chat or gallery. That designation can then help a theme determine how content should be displayed.

That means that a post formatted as a quote might display a quote in a big italicized font, whereas a video post has a custom width.

Over the past few months, a number of WordPress theme developers have instated their own versions of Post Formats into themes, but with the new standardization, we expect to see the feature crop up in more places. Adding support for Post Formats requires theme authors to add a few lines of code to their templates and stylesheets.

WordPress contributor Otto wrote a great post about Post Formats several months ago that is definitely worth the read.


Internal Linking


Internal linking is a new feature in WordPress 3.1 that makes it easier for publishers to find and link back to previously published content. At Mashable, we often use internal linking to refer back to earlier coverage or give additional insight into a topic or idea.

Most of the time, the process of finding the link requires either searching the site or doing a custom Google search to get a specific URL. I use TextMate for all of my writing and have a custom bundle that actually lets me search the Mashable archives by entering a keyword or phrase without having to leave my editor.

WordPress’s internal linking tool isn’t quite that slick, but it does make the process of finding and linking to content much faster. Simply click on the link button in the writing panel and enter in a word or phrase. Related entries will show up and clicking on an entry will fill the link field with the correct URL.

For sites with lots of content, we can see this feature being very useful.


The Admin Bar


WordPress.com users are probably familiar with the admin bar that appears atop every WordPress.com-hosted site when they are logged into their accounts. The menu provides quick access to various tools and lets users quickly create new blog posts or access back-end features.

The WordPress.org admin bar will only work when users are logged into their own sites. When they are, visiting the site will display an admin bar that will then provide easy access to comments, the dashboard and other assorted tools.

I personally am not a fan of the new admin bar — and I dislike that it is enabled by default. I can see how it can be useful, especially for administrators of large blogs, but for me, it’s a hindrance. Fortunately, the WordPress team listened to some of the complaints and added the option to turn the bar on or off in the dashboard’s “Users” panel.

For individuals that want to disable the admin bar entirely, Joost de Valk has a great guide.


Update Now


WordPress 3.1 is available for download and existing WordPress users can perform the upgrade from the dashboard.

Is the admin bar a useful tool? Let us know what you think of WordPress 3.1 in the comments.

More About: blogging, WordPress, WordPress 3.1

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Let Your Friends DJ a Party Via SMS, Twitter or E-mail

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 01:45 PM PST

Have a ton of musically inclined friends (read: music snobs) who are always trying to wrest away control of the stereo at parties? Well, now you can let everyone pick the jams with a hack called DJTxt.

“Good music is crucial to a successful party,” says Dan Maynes Aminzade, who created this hack during Music Hack Day this month in New York City. “Every time I hosted a party, I’d spend a long time trying to assemble the perfect party playlist. I thought it would be fun to provide a simple way to crowdsource the playlist creation process and let my party guests select the music.”

You can check out the service pretty easily via a free demo (also see the screencast above to see it in action). Simply visit the website, add the bookmarklet to your bookmarks, surf over to Grooveshark, and click on the aforementioned bookmark. From there, you can either control the playlist via SMS (by texting !demo Your Name to 313-346-5483 and then texting song requests), Twitter (by tweeting @djtxtme Song Request #demo) or e-mail (!demo Your Name to dj@djtxt.me).

You can then add songs to the playlist and skip those you dislike by texting “skip” (texting “oops” will cancel a request).

The general demo is a public session, which means anyone can add music to the playlist if they have the number, but you can also host private sessions with your friends. Free private sessions lack SMS control, so if you want to use text messages as well as Twitter or e-mail to request tunes, you’ll have to shell out $2 per hour for premium service.

Aminzade used a slew of services and APIs to create this hack, including Twilio, TinySong, Grooveshark, Last.fm, Twitter, MusiXmatch and The Echo Nest, and it actually runs pretty smoothly. Granted, it is a hack built in one weekend, but DJTxt is definitely worth trying at your next party.

Image Courtesy of Flickr, Robert Agthe

More About: design-and-dev, djtext, music-hack-day-nyc

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HOW TO: Change Your Business Model From Paid to Freemium

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 01:07 PM PST

free image

Umberto Milletti is the CEO of InsideView, the social CRM application which brings comprehensive sales intelligence gained from social media and traditional sources directly into any CRM platform for increased sales productivity and revenue.

Much has been written on the pros and cons of the freemium model by Mark Cuban, Malcom Gladwell and Chris Anderson, among others. Rather than debate, this post is a guide to how you can actually implement the freemium model for your business if and when you get to a point of serious consideration. I can share some of the unique experiences from our own business and how we switched from paid to freemium and whether it makes sense for your company.


Yes, You Should Consider Freemium


First question: Does freemium make sense if you already have a healthy paid-only revenue model? The answer is almost always "yes." I know you’re thinking time is precious and often limited, but ask yourself, "What position would I be in if someone offered a free product that competed with mine?" If you are in the software or information business, the odds that it will happen are pretty good. Sure, it might not be as good as your product, but is it good enough to siphon customers?

We've seen this movie before, with enterprise software vendors ignoring SaaS and open–source technologies under the belief that they would not penetrate the enterprise. (Ten years ago PeopleSoft's CEO famously declared "Marc Benioff is trying to get in the big leagues with a Wiffle ball and plastic bat." That bat is looking a lot like maplewood now.) The freemium model is creating similar disruption in the enterprise software and information markets.


What Are the Make-or-Break Factors?


Upfront, it is much harder for a company moving from a paid product to go freemium (Paid2Freemium) than it is for a company that initially offered a free product. For the latter it's a matter of survival, while the former usually has a solid business and thus, much more to lose. It is analogous to traditional software companies having a very difficult time shifting to SaaS because of the revenue-recognition impact to their existing model. But in addition to protecting a business from the above-mentioned attacks by a competitor with a free offering, a well-tuned enterprise freemium model can actually bring tremendous sales and marketing benefits: Low-cost, potentially viral adoption, and upsell starting points.

Here are some areas that prospective Paid2Freemium companies should explore:

Is Free Too Expensive?

You can't afford to have a free version of your offering if it'll cost you an arm and a leg to support those free users. You need to think about the delivery costs (including IT), support costs and any setup costs incurred by your organization. If you realize free will cost you too much, you have the option to define the free version of your product to be cheap to delivery, easy to support and set up (free users don't expect a complex application anyway).

Do People Love Your Product?

If your product doesn’t have momentum, you should probably wait before introducing a free product. You don't want lots of free users out there bad-mouthing your product because the user experience wasn’t so great. The bar for product quality is actually higher for free products than it is for paid products (which might seem counterintuitive). Some end users might be forced into using a paid product because it's company mandate. Those same users will not engage with a free product unless they like it, since there is no one to force them. One of the great side-benefits of having a free product is that it really forces you to focus on the user experience.

Differentiating Your Free Offering From a Paid Offering

This is probably the hardest part, and probably one that will take a number of iterations to get right. You might always be tweaking the location of the upsell points that entice a free user to pay for your premium offering. Start with putting these upsell points in places where there is some value for the free user to need more and it's evident there will be an increase of value if they turn into a paid user. A good example is Skype, which allows you to freely make calls to other Skype users, but upsells you to a paid call when you want to dial physical phones.

Will I Encounter Internal Resistance?

You should, otherwise your management team and your board are asleep at the wheel. One of the main areas of concern will be the potential cannibalization of your revenue stream. Your sales organization is likely to be concerned about this point. There might be questions about marketing ("Will free diminish our brand?"), product development and IT ("We need a bazillion dollars to create a highly scalable product and infrastructure"), finance ("You can't make money with free, it's just a cost-suck.")

This transition will require strong leadership and a core belief at the top (usually, the CEO). Otherwise the internal organizational antibodies will kill the free product before it's had a chance to grow into your successful new business model.


The Freemium Journey


If you do decide to experiment with a freemium model, it's important that you view it as a long journey — not a project with an upfront start and a finish line. It is an experience that will either modify the DNA of your company, or will fail (which is fine, at least you'll know the pitfalls that your future freemium competitors will encounter.) The DNA of a freemium company is quite different from that of a traditional B2B company and evolving will make you stronger. Have you experienced the successes or challenges of a freemium model for your B2B company? If so, please share your experience with us in the comments below.


More Business Resources from Mashable:


- HOW TO: Use QR Codes for Event Marketing
- HOW TO: Grow Your Sales and Revenue Using 2D Codes
- 2D Codes: The 10 Commandments for Marketers
- How The iPad Is Helping Businesses Go Green
- HOW TO: Jump-Start Your Career by Becoming an Online Influencer

Image courtesy of Flickr, inggmartinez

More About: business, freemium, MARKETING, paid2freemium

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Google Donates $2.7 Million To Fund Innovation in Journalism

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 12:09 PM PST


Google announced Wednesday it has awarded $2.7 million to the International Press Institute to foster innovation in journalism.

The Institute, based in Vienna, will use the grant for its IPI News Innovation Contest, which will fund both non-profit and for-profit projects related to the development of digital news platforms, new business models for journalism and training in digital reporting throughout Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

The $2.7 million makes up a significant chunk of the $5 million Google promised to donate to non-profit organizations working to further development in digital journalism in October 2010.

At the time, Google awarded $2 million to the Knight Foundation in the U.S. and pledged to spend the remaining $3 million in international news efforts. Like the International Press Institute, the Knight Foundation funds open-source projects related to innovation in digital and mobile reporting, new economic models for news and community development.

Applications for the IPI News Innovation Content are due June 1, 2011.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ProfessorVasilich

More About: Google, international press institute, ipi news innovation contest, journalism, knight foundation, media, social good

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YouTube Video of the Day: Enthusiastic Boy Sings Hold It Against Me

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 11:40 AM PST

Welcome to day two of our new series, “YouTube Video of the Day,” featuring Timmy, a boy who first burst on the scene last year for his rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”

I promise you, readers, this series will not always be replete with the antics of precocious children, but given that Timmy racked up 3 million views for his “Bad Romance” vid to date and nearly 10,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel (not to mention the immense popularity of “Hold It Against Me,” Britney Spears’s new jam), this video seems ready to become viral.

This should serve as a challenge to all you cat owners out there — teach kitty some new tricks, so as to vanquish the rising tide of adorable, semi-embarrassing children aiming to make YouTube their kingdom.



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More About: viral video, viral-video-of-day, youtube

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Pandora + Rdio = Soundtrckr [PICS]

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 10:54 AM PST


Want to make your music-listening experience more social, without paying a cent? Well, then, Soundtrckr is right up your proverbial alley.

Soundtrckr, which launched a few months ago and had its official send-off recently, is a service for the desktop, iPhone [iTunes link], iPod touch, Windows Phone 7, Google Chrome and Nokia that marries music discovery with social and geolocation.

Once installing the free app on one’s phone, a user has access to 10 million songs from indie and major labels (that’s comparable with MOG’s offering), as well as the ability to interact with friends.

Music subscription service Rdio‘s major selling point has been its social aspect, allowing users to follow friends and their listening habits. Soundtrckr kicks that feature up a notch — allowing you to chat with friends in-app, share music on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, as well as check out stations created by folks in your vicinity.

Still, unlike Rdio, one is not privy to on-demand listening nor offline caching, which makes the service closer to Pandora or the current iteration of Slacker Radio (although Slacker does have offline listening) when it comes to music itself.

According to founder and CEO Daniele Calabrese, the service will soon be available in eight languages, as well as on Android, BlackBerry PlayBook and the HP TouchPad.

The iPhone app is a little on the crashy side (although the desktop version is super slick), but it’s still a pretty fun way to discover/listen to music. Check out the gallery below for a closer look at the user interface — which is rather clean and simple to navigate.


Radio Station





Home Screen





What People Are Listening to Nearby





Chat With Christina Warren




More About: App, music, Soundtrckr, startup

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Photo Sharing Fan? Send Your #TechLife Digital Collage to Mashable & CNN iReport

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 10:39 AM PST


The next generation of digital photography is here: built-in cameras, photo-splicing apps and image-sharing communities such as Instagram and PicPlz. It’s inspired many to turn their smartphones into miniature picture-editing and collage-making studios.

Now, in partnership with CNN iReport, we’re challenging you to get creative. Use your digital photo tools to make a collage showing the role technology plays in your life.

Build a composite image out of three to four photos; splice them together using a photo app like Diptic. If you don’t have access to such apps, other photo editing methods work just as well.

Upload your collage by using the assignment page or e-mail it to iReport. Instagram users, we encourage you to post your images there, too, and tag them #techlife. Please submit your collage by Friday, February 25.

As with other iReports — which range in topics from the unrest in Egypt to the Verizon iPhone — your photos could be featured on CNN, as well as here on Mashable.

Are your creative wheels already turning? We encourage you to brainstorm in the comments below.


Submit Your #TechLife Digital Collage to CNN iReport and Mashable!


Image courtesy Flickr, N-Sai



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More About: citizen journalism, cnn, diptic, instagram, photo, photography, picplz

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Ruby on Rails: Scaling Your App for Rapid Growth

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 10:07 AM PST


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Gowalla CTO and co-founder Scott Raymond knows a thing or two about Ruby — and about Cocoa, scaling, handling huge amounts of location data, mobile apps and NoSQL.

Gowalla is a Ruby shop, and as the captain of that particular ship, Raymond has had quite a bit of experience building a popular web app from the ground up using Ruby on Rails.

In a recent e-mail interview, we found out what Raymond had to say about those experiences and what he has learned from them over the past three and a half years.

Much has been made of Ruby/Rails’ perceived flaws when it comes to scaling. In your experience, what are the unique challenges of working with this language and framework and trying to scale an app for a nation-wide consumer audience?

Most of the “Rails can’t scale” noise is outdated or was misguided in the first place. In general, the question of scalability applies at the level of architecture and systems, and not really at the level of languages and frameworks.

That said, languages and frameworks do definitely have performance and efficiency characteristics that need to be considered. Ruby’s standard interpreter doesn’t have a great reputation for being fast, but as part of a larger, well-architected system, it is very rarely the bottleneck.

So, as a developer for a popular service, the challenge becomes trying to foresee which actions will be the most frequently requested, which data types will be the fastest growing, and which actions are the most performance-sensitive. In my experience, it’s harder to predict these things than you would think. I have spent many hours trying to “pre-scale” parts of the app that never became a problem, which often leads to maintenance headaches.

You guys collect and store a massive amount of location data for your app. How do you use Ruby and Rails for this type of data in these amounts?

We use a variety of storage systems for different purposes. Our biggest database is PostgreSQL — it currently stores the canonical records for most of our data, including users, spots, and checkins.

We also rely heavily on Redis for all kinds of things, like friendships, counters and queues. We use lots of memcached for ephemeral things, Varnish for HTTP caches and Solr to keep fuzzy spot searches fast.

Increasingly, we’re using Cassandra to store a lot of stream-like data — things like activity feeds and audit logs. I expect that our usage of Cassandra will grow a lot this year, and that we’ll also start relying on Hadoop to help us understand our data better.

Here is a simplified example of how we store and retrieve checkins, using a custom-build timeline service, called Chronologic, which is backed by Cassandra:

When you’re not coding in Ruby, what other languages/tools do you use? Or, if you had to choose another language for Gowalla, what would it be?

When I’m coding at work these days, it’s usually on our iOS client — so Cocoa/Objective-C is where I’m spending most of my time.

But for server-side work, I see us gradually moving toward a more services-oriented architecture. We are always looking at our application today and trying to identify pieces of functionality that can be isolated into services that have their own data storage and deployment patterns. So far, all of those services are written in Ruby, but I won’t be surprised if some of them end up being written in Scala, or with Node.js, or something else. But when it comes to the central web application that powers gowalla.com, I’m very happy with it being Ruby/Rails.

Here is a section of one of the view controllers in the Gowalla iPhone application. This code handles authenticating with a third-party service.

From a fan via Twitter: Was the traditional ActiveRecord modeling enough or did you have to use an NoSQL alternative?

Every Rails app that I’ve ever worked on has had to break away from the “ActiveRecord way” at some point, for some part of the app. But it’s not an all-or-nothing question. Most of the time, the standard relational/ActiveRecord approach works perfectly well, and the convenience of following the Rails golden path is completely worthwhile. But most interesting apps will run into at least a few points where the standard tools break down, and you need to access your data differently.

Fortunately, it’s a wonderful time for alternative data stores. Just look through the Heroku add-ons page — you’ve got Redis, MySQL, CouchDB, Memcache, MongoDB, Solr and more — all available as hosted services. It’s incredibly freeing to be able to tinker with these tools without worrying about up-front installation and configuration.

The example from the second question is a prime example of this. Scaling activity streams with a relational database in fairly real time is tricky — it often breaks down when one user has millions of followers, or when one user follows millions of others. To make it work, we created a service called Chronologic that manages any kind of timeline, and exposes a relatively simple interface to the Rails application. Under the covers, Chronologic uses Cassandra for most of its storage.

What kind of gem testing do you use, if any?

We use Shoulda, Factory Girl and FlexMock for testing our Ruby/Rails code. After each commit, a local continuous integration server runs the test suite and notifies the developers via Campfire of any failures.

What side project(s) are you working on right now?

Most of my “side” projects these days are tangentially work-related — small experiments to learn about a new database or library, to try out a new web service or as a proof-of-concept for a new technique. My work directly is littered with dozens of tiny re-writes of our iPhone client, each exploring some new UI idea, networking optimization, etc.


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More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:


- HOW TO: Transfer Your Blog From WordPress.com to WordPress.org [VIDEO]
- A Beginner's Guide to Integrated Development Environments
- 10 Chrome Web Apps to Check Out
- HOW TO: Make Your WordPress Blog More Like Tumblr
- 10 Tools for Getting Web Design Feedback

Image courtesy of Flickr, Robert Scoble.

More About: gowalla, node, programming, RoR, ruby, Ruby on Rails, Web Development, web development series

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Apple iPad 2 Event Confirmed for March 2

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 09:04 AM PST


Reports circulated Tuesday that Apple would be holding an event on March 2, 2011, to unveil the iPad 2; now it’s official. Apple has issued an invitation to members of the press today for its upcoming event.

Any doubts about the nature of the event should be assuaged by the graphic accompanying the invitation.

The text accompanying the image reads:

Please join us for an invitation-only event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on March 2 at 10:00 a.m. Registration begins at 9:00 a.m. Please arrive early. RSVP to rsvp_media@apple.com.

You’ve got to love the double-meaning of the number “2.” The actual details concerning the iPad 2 are still under wraps, but that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from cranking into overdrive. You can read some of the latest rumors in our iPad 2 rumor guide.

Now that we know the date of the big event, we can all settle in and enjoy “stage 5″ in the Apple rumor cycle, “the silence before the storm.”

More About: apple, apple events, iOS, ipad, iPad 2, tablets, trending

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Snoop Dogggg Goes 4G in Samsung Galaxy Indulge Promotion

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 08:49 AM PST


How many Gs are too much when you’re a rap star? Well, we’re about to find out.

In the world of mobiles, fast 4G data transfer is currently what everyone wants, so Snoop Dogggg added two extra Gs to his name and teamed up with MetroPCS to promote its newest 4G LTE Android smartphone: the Samsung Galaxy Indulge.

To do that, Snoop Dogggg is starring in a series of YouTube videos called The G-Connection, a spoof of the popular dating show The Love Connection.

The spoof also features Warren G as host, and — to show that they really mean business — the MetroPCS folks hired the “golden-voiced” Ted Williams as narrator.

The Samsung Galaxy Indulge, which has a short appearance at the end of the video, is an Android 2.2-based smartphone with a 3.5-inch, 800 x 480-pixel screen, a 1GHz CPU, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 3-megapixel camera and a 32 GB microSD card slot, and it is one of the first LTE-supporting phones on the market. MetroPCS offers it on a $50 to $60 per month data plan with no contract.


More About: 4G, Samsung Galaxy Indulge, smartphone, Snoop Dogggg

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13-Inch MacBook Pro Specs Leak: Light Peak, Sandy Bridge & More

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 08:37 AM PST


New information surrounding the anticipated MacBook Pro update surfaced Wednesday, shedding light on the specifications and new features for at least one model in the series.

As reported by Fscklog and Macs4Ever and then confirmed by MacRumors, photographs of marketing materials and the box of the base-level 13-inch MacBook Pro are now hitting the web. From what we can glean from the spec sheets, this is a significant update, complete with a few genuine surprises.

As rumored, the new machines will feature Intel’s new Sandy Bridge architecture. The box photo that MacRumors obtained confirms this with the listing of the “Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor” on the spec panel. This is one of the new integrated graphics solutions that Intel is using in its Sandy Bridge series of chips.

Spec highlights include:

  • 2.3Ghz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (Sandy Bridge)
  • 4GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 SDRAM (faster than the old MacBook Pro)
  • 320GB hard drive (no SSD on the base model)
  • Intel HD Graphics 3000 with 384MB of shared memory
  • 1280×800 resolution (unchanged)
  • FaceTime HD camera (iSight has been re-branded completely, it appears)
  • 8x SuperDrive (unchanged)
  • SDXC slot (the slot now supports the SDXC format)
  • FireWire 800 port
  • 2 USB 2.0 ports
  • Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort (this is Light Peak)

The big surprise for us is the inclusion of what Apple is calling Thunderbolt. This appears to be the Light Peak implementation that was rumored earlier this week. Light Peak is Intel’s next generation connector technology that offers super-fast data transfer speeds, while also working with a multitude of different devices.

It looks like Apple is integrating Thunderbolt into its standard Mini DisplayPort, meaning the same port can power displays and act as a high-speed I/O connection.

I was extremely skeptical that Light Peak would make its appearance in this MacBook Pro revision; I was wrong.

These specs are just for the base-model 13-inch MacBook Pro, so the specs for the larger models could be different.

If everything goes according to plan, these machines should be available on Thursday, February 24 — which incidentally, is Steve Jobs’s birthday.

What do you think of the new MacBook Pro? Will you be opening up your wallet? Let us know.

Photo courtesy of MacRumors



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More About: apple, light peak, mac, Macbook Pro, Sandy Bridge

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Apple Cuts Starting Price of iAds [REPORT]

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:53 AM PST


Apple has cut the entry-level price of an iAd from $1 million to $500,000, according to a report.

The price cut is reportedly a done deal. "This new minimum buy is a great step forward and a necessary one, I think," Mark Read, CEO of WPP Digital, told All Things D. "Lowering the minimum buy to $500,000 from $1 million will certainly make the platform more appealing."

Apple rolled out iAd in April and charged advertisers a minimum of $1 million to use the platform. Since then, the demand for iAds hasn’t kept pace. According to the report, fill rates — the portion of advertising inventory being used — fell earlier this year.

In another move to broaden the availability of iAds, the company in December opened iAd development to third parties with iAd Producer, a tool available on Apple’s Developer Page.

More About: advertising, apple, iAd

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Tumblr Introduces Curation Feature That Encourages Users To Tag Posts

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:37 AM PST


Who here with a Tumblr blog tags their posts? Hands? Well, you might want to start sweetening up your SEO, as Tumblr has just added a page that organizes posts by tag.

The new Explore page was born due to the rather eclectic nature of many a Tumblr — unless you’re a fashion blogger or something of the like, chances are your content is all over the map, which can make it hard to be seen in the Tumblr Directory.

Explore makes the Tumblr experience more democratic, allowing any tagged post to appear on the page and therefore get eyeballs, according to a blog post. There’s also the Tumblr Wire at the top of the page — reminiscent of “Top Tweets” or trending topics — which displays top tags. You also can track tags to get notifications on your Dashboard.

While this move does add some level of curation to the blogging platform, we mourn the loss (or at least visibility) of the Directory. If there’s an easy way to uncover it, we don’t see it — right now typing in www.tumblr.com/directory seems to be the only way to access it. Moreover, this move still does little to make blogs more visible to those outside the Tumblr community.

Lately, we’ve seen the platform kicking up curation efforts with fashion week coverage and curated topic pages, but we think more could be done to make Tumblr blogs more accessible.

For instance, Tumblr’s homepage exists as wasted real estate — a blank call to sign up that offers very little to those not familiar with the service. Now, if — like Twitter — that page featured some of these popular topics, tags and blogs we can see more blogs gaining attention and more people drawn to the service.

What do you think of the new Explore page? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

More About: blog, tumblr

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Meet the Newest Member of YouTube’s Billion Views Club: Eminem

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:13 AM PST

eminem image

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant. Follow him on Twitter for more social media commentary.

Eminem is quickly becoming a digital force to be reckoned with. On Presidents Day, the rapper became only the third artist to reach 1 billion views on YouTube.

Last October, when Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber were racing to 1 billion views on YouTube (which Lady Gaga won by a margin of two weeks), third-place competitor Michael Jackson was hovering around 600 million views. Since then, the needle hasn’t moved much for the King of Pop, who now tallies more than 630 million views. Eminem sneaked in and beat Michael Jackson as well as other formidable contenders such as Rihanna, Shakira and Britney Spears to 1 billion views.

This accomplishment shouldn’t come as a surprise to industry watchers. Eminem, along with Nicki Minaj and Rihanna, topped Billboard’s Social 50 in 2010, a ranking of the most active artists on social media platforms. This week, he ranks No. 5. Furthermore, Eminem has more than 3 million Twitter followers and almost 29 million Facebook Fans, and was recently featured in multiple, well-received Super Bowl commercials.

2011 is already off to a good start, but 2010 was a banner year for Eminem both emotionally (he kicked his drug habit) and musically. Marking his return from a string of albums that were commercially successful but largely considered critical flubs, his latest album, Recovery, landed him yet another No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, selling 741,000 copies in its first week in the U.S. and more than 6 million copies worldwide to date. The album earned 10 Grammy nominations and two Grammy awards.

To celebrate this milestone, let’s take a look at some of the hottest music videos from the Detroit rapper. These three singles from Recovery are not only Eminem’s most viewed, but they also share a thematic element. “Love The Way You Lie” tells the tale of domestic abuse, “Not Afraid” deals with suicidal thoughts and “No Love” discusses bullying in schools (a point that became more topical with the recent incidents of gay-bullying).

Note: Video views are based on official counts and do not include numbers from video sites other than YouTube, or from channels other than the official Eminem YouTube/Vevo channel.


1. Love The Way You Lie (feat. Rihanna)


Topping the list is the second single off Recovery. Produced by Alex da Kid with a catchy chorus written by Skylar Grey (sung by Rihanna), the song has been a blockbuster hit. Not only did it hold the number one position on the Hot 100 charts for 7 weeks in a row, the song has sold over 9 million copies worldwide.

Official View Count: 292,198,077 views (174K Likes)


2. Not Afraid


While the first single off Recovery didn't perform as well, at over 200 million views and nearly 3.5 million downloads in the U.S. alone, it was a great way to start building the hype around his latest album. The single, which makes the necessary apologies for letting the fans down in the past, holds the distinction of being only the second hip hop single ever to debut at number one, after Diddy's "I'll Be Missing You."

Official View Count: 203,290,494 views (10K Likes)


No Love (feat. Lil Wayne)


Recorded and filmed before Lil Wayne headed off to serve his prison sentence, the third single from Recovery is the third time the two rappers have collaborated and starred in a music video together. While not commercially as successful as the first two singles, "No Love" gained critical support as its release coincided with a string of bullying-related teen suicides. The message offered hope to struggling youth.

Official View Count 46,712,695 views (147K Likes)


More Social Music Resources from Mashable:


- 5 Predictions for the Music Industry in 2011
- How To Make Your Music Video Go Viral: 10 Tips From Cee-Lo, OK Go & More
- 4 Ways Bands Can Cash in Online Without a Label
- Top 10 Twitter Tips for Bands, By Bands
- 5 Great Ways to Find Music That Suits Your Mood

More About: eminem, music, music video, social media, vevo, web video, youtube

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The Mark Zuckerberg Comic Book Has Arrived

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 06:50 AM PST


The biographical comic portraying the life of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg hits shelves today.

Canadian comic production company Bluewater Productions released the “giant-sized” 48-page issue, which freelance journalist Jerome Maida wrote Sal Field illustrated.

“Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire on the planet and created something that has already had a profound impact on the world. Yet hardly anyone knows much about him. It’s amazing,” said Maida, adding that he’s trying to give context to a complex public figure in his portrayal of Zuckerberg.

“Rightly or wrongly, Mark dealt harshly with some people on his way to where he is today. As we see, he left many people feeling betrayed. I try my best to be fair here,” Maida said.

Thanks to his billionaire status and the many lawsuits surrounding Facebook, Zuckerberg was already an (unwilling) star of David Fincher’s movie The Social Network, which is up for several Academy Awards. And thanks to the comic, Zuckerberg also may become an animated character, as the production company Hayden 5 Media optioned the script to create an animated film based on it.

The comic costs $6.99 and is available at comic book stores.

More About: biography, comic, facebook, mark zuckerberg, social network, trending

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The 3 Biggest Stories in Tech, Dev & Social Media This Morning

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 06:44 AM PST

Social Media News

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. We're keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.

Apple To Unveil iPad on March 2?

Apple is holding an event in San Francisco on March 2, and sources say that the company is getting ready to unveil the newest version of its highly successful iPad tablet.

Android 3.0 SDK Now Available to All Developers

The full software development kit for Android 3.0 (a.k.a Honeycomb), the branch of Android aimed specifically at tablets, is now available to developers.

WikiLeaks Opens Up a Gift Shop

Aiming to raise funds for both the controversial website and leader Julian Assange's legal defense fund, WikiLeaks has opened an online gift shop.

Further News

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

More About: android 3.0 sdk, apple, first to know series, honeycomb, iPad 2, wikileaks

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