Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Angry Birds Maker Rovio Plans an IPO” |
- Angry Birds Maker Rovio Plans an IPO
- Mint Founder Invests in Semantic Text Startup
- LivingSocial’s Newest Deal: Matching Donations for Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Relief
- HOW TO: Get Started with the Less Framework
- One Startup’s Quest to Reinvent the Banner Ad
- Microsoft Outranks Google in Ethics
- Groupon’s Ambitious Plan to Change How & When We Eat
- U.S. Military Developing False Online Personalities to Counter “Enemy Propaganda”
- Take Mashable’s State of Location-Based Services Survey
- Movie to be Released Simultaneously on BitTorrent and DVD
- Delta Airlines Lets Customers Check In & Get Flight Status via Facebook
- What Responsibility Do Social Media Users Have During a Crisis?
- Mike Tyson Can Cure Your Angry Birds Addiction [VIDEO]
- Facebook for BlackBerry 2.0 Arrives in Beta
- TeleNav Reveals Exactly How People Are Using GPS [INFOGRAPHIC]
- Why Curation Is Just as Important as Creation [OPINION]
- Groupon: A $25 Billion Company?
- Who Won the “Battles” of SXSW? [CHARTS]
- SmartGiving Lets Your Credit Card Choose Your Charity Causes
- 5 iPad Apps That Rival Their Desktop Counterparts
- EvoMouse Pet Offers Multitouch Control, Looks Like a Cute Dog [PICS]
- The Rise of the Preemptive Checkin
- Internet Fans Project Syracuse, Duke, Kansas & Wisconsin in Final Four
- Will You Pay for the New York Times Online? [POLL]
- How JavaScript & HTML5 Are Remaking the Web
- Neiman Marcus Launches Nationwide SCVNGR Challenge
- New E-Commerce Platform Lets You Offer Rewards for Social Sharing
- Porn Industry Could Get a “.xxx” Domain This Week [REPORT]
- What Makes the Modern Media Agency [INFOGRAPHIC]
- New York Times Reveals Paywall Plan
| Angry Birds Maker Rovio Plans an IPO Posted: 18 Mar 2011 03:53 AM PDT      Rovio, the company behind the mobile gaming megahit Angry Birds, has big plans for the future, and those plans include going public in New York. “We’re aiming to be as large as Facebook or Google”, said Rovio Board Chairman Kaj Hed to Finnish business magazine Talouselämä. While those words seem overly ambitious for a company that specializes in mobile gaming, Rovio’s recent $42 million funding round give them a fair amount of weight. According to Talouselämä, the VC firms that participated in the funding round – Accel Partners, Atomico Ventures and Felicis Ventures – have acquired about 15% of the company, which puts the valuation at around €200 million or $281 million. According to Kaj Hed, getting the funds wasn’t very hard, as Rovio was able to chose the investors and set their own terms, which also tells a lot about Rovio’s success. As far as Rovio’s financials go, the company generated over €5 million ($7 million) in revenue from July to December with a profit of about €3 million ($4.2 million). What do you think? How long can the Angry Birds franchise keep generating profit? Can Rovio replicate its success? Is an IPO a realistic option for Rovio? Please, share your opinions in the comments. [via Arctic Startup] More About: angry birds, gaming, ipo, Mobile 2.0, rovio For more Business & Marketing coverage:
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| Mint Founder Invests in Semantic Text Startup Posted: 17 Mar 2011 10:34 PM PDT   Topicmarks, a startup that uses semantic text technology to extract the most important information from any document, has raised $700,000 in seed funding in a round led by Mint.com founder Aaron Patzer, Mashable has learned. Patzer, who sold Mint.com to Intuit for $170 million last year, is very smitten with the company. “These guys have tech developed over the last three years, a team of strong engineers, deals in place with Evernote and ShareVault already,” Patzer wrote on AngelList. “Also, I’ve done a dive into the algorithms behind the system, which are impressive and being patented.” We believe this is the first time Patzer has led a funding round. He has existing investments in Milo.com and HealthTap. Topicmarks has developed a technology that reads the text of uploaded documents, analyzes them, and essentially creates a CliffsNotes version of them, complete with a summary, key points, keywords and the most important facts. The startup’s technology can read almost any form of text for analysis, so while its focused on documents today, it could potentially be used to distill the important information from RSS feeds, social streams and overflowing inboxes in the near future. The technology is shockingly accurate. Here’s one anecdote about the service from our previous article about the company:
Check out Topicmarks’s winning pitch at the Founder Showcase (where, interestingly enough, Patzer was a judge) to learn more: More About: Aaron Patzer, funding, machine larning, mint.com, semantic analysis, startup, topicmarks
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| LivingSocial’s Newest Deal: Matching Donations for Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Relief Posted: 17 Mar 2011 09:21 PM PDT   LivingSocial, Groupon’s largest and most prominent competitor, has launched a new daily deal across its entire network to raise money for relief efforts in Japan. The offer is $5 for a $10 donation to the American Red Cross’s Japan Earthquake & Pacific Tsunami fund. For every $5 donation the Red Cross receives through LivingSocial, the daily deals company has pledged to make a matching donation. With more than 13 hours remaining before the deal expires, LivingSocial’s users have donated over $1 million, meaning that the American Red Cross is guaranteed another million in a matching donation from LivingSocial. It took less than 13 hours for users to raise the first million though, so we expect the final donation number to be much, much bigger. We’ve never seen group-buying used for social good at quite this scale before. It’s rather impressive that over 200,00 LivingSocial users have donated to relief efforts in just a few short hours. Matching those donations is also a powerful gesture on behalf of LivingSocial. Then again, the Groupon competitor is about to have a lot more money in the bank, so this may still end up being a drop in the bucket. More About: groupon, japan, Japan Tsunami, LivingSocial, red cross, social good, tsunami, video search summit For more Social Good coverage:
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| HOW TO: Get Started with the Less Framework Posted: 17 Mar 2011 08:36 PM PDT
One of my favorite CSS grid systems of late is Less Framework. Now in its fourth revision, Less Framework takes the power of a CSS grid system and adds in support for CSS media queries to support multiple design and typography layouts. In May 2010, Ethan Marcotte’s “Responsive Web Design” helped spur a movement of building websites designed to fluidly adapt to various platforms and device sizes — think mobile optimized sites and tablet-specific layouts — without the need for an entirely different design or special URL. Less Framework is, in my opinion, one of the best ways for web developers without lots of experience in designing responsive websites (or media queries in general) to take advantage of this new trend. I am currently in the process of redesigning my own very out-of-date website and am using Less Framework as my base. Here are some tips and tricks that I’ve come across for newcomers looking for a way to get started using Less Framework or just testing the waters of responsive web design. Knowing the BasicsCreated by Joni Korpi, Less Framework is built on a single grid and includes four layouts and three different typography presets. The default layout is a 10-column, 992-pixel grid. This layout is what larger screens or browser windows will display, and it is also the layout that older browsers lacking support for CSS3 media queries will use. There is also an 8-column, 768-pixel layout for iPad and other tablets, as well as two mobile layouts. When you download Less Framework, you can also choose to include a retina media query that targets devices — like the iPhone 4 and iPod touch fourth generation — that use a device-pixel ratio of 2 or more. Visit LessFramework.com and resize your browser to see the implementation in action. Text, images and columns adapt to the needs and size of the web browser or device. It’s a really great way to create a design that can be optimized across platforms. Guides and Templates
Less-Ready ThemesA number of themes and templates are already available for platforms like WordPress that take advantage of Less Framework. They include:
What do you think of responsive web design and frameworks and grids like Less Framework? Let us know in the comments. Series supported by Rackspace  The Web Development Series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why. More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:
More About: css3, HTML5, less framework, responsive web design, web design, Web Development, WordPress For more Dev & Design coverage:
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| One Startup’s Quest to Reinvent the Banner Ad Posted: 17 Mar 2011 08:06 PM PDT   In the summer of 2009, LinkedIn approached widget maker Widgetbox with an idea. The professional social network, already jimmy-rigging Widgetbox widgets to create dynamic ads on its site, was anxious to create its own independent ad platform and turned to Widgetbox for help. The conversation continued and eventually, with LinkedIn’s guidance, Widgetbox released a cloud-based ad platform to allow publishers to sell their own compelling and dynamic ad units. 18 months later, Widgetbox officially rebranded as Flite to focus on the ad platform, securing $12 million in Series C funding led by General Catalyst Partners in the process. Mashable spoke with Flite CEO Will Price on how the company is now building the banner ads of tomorrow. Banner Ads of Tomorrow Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts that the online display advertising business, now a $17 billion industry, can grow to become a $200 billion business. The rise of online advertisements that update in real-time are part of the reason he projects such a big spike in online display ad spend. While Google owns DoubleClick Studio and plans to push aggressively in the real-time ad direction, Flite believes it can carve out a thick slice of this potential $200 billion pie. Price calls the startup’s ad units “miniaturized websites” and believes them to be the banner ads of tomorrow. The startup’s dynamic units can incorporate combinations of video, polls, forms and a brand’s social media content from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These ads are elastic in nature and can be shared out to social networks. The units can also live on web, mobile or inside Facebook. An ad shared with Facebook keeps its original form, and they look more like widgets than ads, a sign of Flite’s Widgetbox roots. Price says Flite tracks ad impressions as usual, but also measures ad shares and the reach of the individuals who share the units. He suggests that Flite customers see eight to 20 times improvement in ROI over traditional flash-based units. Fight or FliteFlite owes its existence to LinkedIn’s pain point as a publisher. The social network wanted to go the independent ad route, but to skip the middle man ad network it needed to develop ad units that would give brands a compelling reason to work with the company directory. Enter Flite’s cloud-based ads. The publisher problem is not unique to LinkedIn; Flite customers now include IDG, Digg, MTV, Yelp, Yahoo and even Federated Media. Flite customers then sell its ad units to their direct brand buyers — Google, Sony, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, IBM and FedEx, to name a few. More recently, Flite has also started to sell directly to brands and is currently running campaigns for L’Oreal and Microsoft Kinect, Price says. Onward and UpwardFlite believes it can ride its latest $12 million round of funding to profitability by 2012. The startup was anxious to raise funds and attack the market right now, says Price. The current 60 person team will double in size this year, he says, with new hires split evenly between sales, marketing and engineering. Flite ad unit activity is also trending upwards. In December 2010, it saw just under 150 million ad impressions, up from 100 million in November and 40 million in October. With Google as a competitor, though, the startup may encounter a few potholes and flat tires on its road to profitability. More About: advertising, display advertising, flite, spark-of-genius, widgetbox For more Startups coverage:
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| Microsoft Outranks Google in Ethics Posted: 17 Mar 2011 06:35 PM PDT   When it comes to ethical actions that go beyond slick marketing and corporate mission statements, Microsoft might be outperforming some of its rivals in the tech space. Microsoft, Adobe, eBay, T-Mobile and Salesforce were a few of the tech companies that made Ethisphere’s annual unranked list of the world’s most ethical companies. These companies have been recognized for their “real and sustained ethical leadership” across various industries. Google, whose “don’t be evil” motto and highly visible social good activities give the company a friendly public face, wasn’t on the list; the company was present on the list in 2010, 2009, 2008 but has since dropped off for reasons unstated by Ethisphere. As far as we can tell, this is the first time Microsoft has been recognized by this group. So, what could have put a tarnish on Google’s ethical reputation? The ad network acquisition that raised eyebrows in the FTC? The huge lobbying budgets in a year of increased user privacy regulations? The patent lawsuit wherein Oracle claimed that parts of Android were not authorized for such use? The ongoing lawsuits over Google Books’ copyright violations? Or the $8.5 million settlement of a class action lawsuit over Buzz and its violations of users’ privacy? In corporate America, issues like the ones we’ve stated above are rather run-of-the-mill — and Microsoft, Adobe, et al. certainly face similar and sometimes identical troubles. But as far as Ethisphere is concerned, Microsoft’s combination of corporate philanthropy, responsibility, innovation for social good, and compliance with standards makes the grade for truly ethical corporate behavior. Ethisphere contends that these more ethical companies not only have more sustainable businesses, but that they also financially outperform their competitors in the S&P 500 and other indices of publicly traded companies. Image courtesy of Flickr, bfishadow. More About: ethics, microsoft, study, survey For more Business & Marketing coverage:
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| Groupon’s Ambitious Plan to Change How & When We Eat Posted: 17 Mar 2011 05:19 PM PDT   Groupon is fervently preparing for its most ambitious venture yet: the launch of a new mobile application that the company hopes will change when and how society chooses to eat, shop and play. The application, known as Groupon Now, is remarkably and elegantly simple, yet it’s a radical departure from Groupon’s current deal-a-day business model. When a user opens up the smartphone app, he or she will be presented with just two buttons: “I’m hungry” and “I’m bored.” Clicking either button will open up a list of time-specific daily deals, based on his or her location. The familiar $10 coupons for $20 worth of food are still there, but they’re not one-time offers. Instead, businesses can choose when they want these deals to be available. Say a restaurant is incredibly busy on Saturdays but could use more business on Wednesdays. With Groupon Now, that business can fill its seats during slow business days using time-specific deals. That’s the beauty of Groupon Now: local businesses have never really had a simple way to manage their perishable inventory, especially labor and food. Why waste those resources during slow periods when you can bring savings-savvy consumers through the doors with a highly targeted Groupon deal? “For merchants, the daily deal is like teeth whitening, and Groupon Now is like brushing your teeth. It can be an everyday thing to keep your business going,” Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason told Bloomberg Businessweek in an extensive interview on the new product. The daily deals company has been on a tear recently — in fact it is the fastest growing company in history — but it faces stiff competition from companies with increasing muscle. Groupon is reportedly preparing for a $25 billion IPO just months after famously rejecting a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google, but its biggest competitor, LivingSocial, is preparing to raise half a billion dollars in funding. Not only that, but the #2 daily deals service has an app similar to Groupon Now already on the market. Groupon clearly believes Groupon Now is the future, so much so that its employees call the current iteration of its daily deals service “Groupon 1.0.” While the market has made it clear that the group-buying business model is easily replicable, the coupon giant believes that its new offering will provide it with a unique technology and value proposition that will keep it ahead of the pack. With 70+ million subscribers and growing, Groupon will also have a big head start. It won’t be long until we find out if Groupon Now is the future of local commerce; the mobile app launches in April. Image courtesy of Flickr, GmanViz More About: daily deals, groupon, Groupon Now, LivingSocial, trending For more Business & Marketing coverage:
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| U.S. Military Developing False Online Personalities to Counter “Enemy Propaganda” Posted: 17 Mar 2011 03:55 PM PDT   The US Central Command (Centcom) has purchased software that creates false online personalities for what it calls “information operations.” Using the software, one member of the U.S. Military can control up to ten different fake accounts that appear to belong to civilians living in other countries. The government purchased the software from California-based Ntrepid for $2.76 million “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US,” Centcom spokesperson Commander Bill Speaks told The Guardian. Operations that the software could be used for include countering either disininformation campaigns, military deception, computer network operations or hacking according to the Washington Times . According to a government document about the “Online Persona Management Service,” each fake profile is “replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent.” Profiles are also masked with IP addresses that make them look like they are being posted from one of several designated locations. Speaks told the Washington Times that the military would refrain from using fake personalities on platforms that, like Facebook, ban fake profiles in their terms of service. More About: centcom, fake personalities, social media, U.S. Military For more Social Media coverage:
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| Take Mashable’s State of Location-Based Services Survey Posted: 17 Mar 2011 03:22 PM PDT   As most of our readers know, we’re doing our best to keep up with advances in location-based technology. But in order to do so, we need more than just news bulletins from prominent location services — we need your feedback, too. We’ve created a four-question survey to find out how our readers use location-based services — if they use them at all — and, more importantly, what makes these services interesting or valuable to the average user. Please take a few moments to look over this survey, and we encourage you to share it with your friends, including the hardcore geeks in your social circle, along with those who aren’t as technologically inclined and everyone in between. And if you’ve got more insights to share, we’d love to get your views and wish lists for LBSes in the comments. Stay tuned for interviews and analysis about the results next week. Image courtesy of Flickr, lululemonathletica More About: apps, foursquare, gowalla, lbs, location, loopt, scvngr, shopkick, whrrl For more Mobile coverage:
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| Movie to be Released Simultaneously on BitTorrent and DVD Posted: 17 Mar 2011 02:53 PM PDT   Here are some strange bedfellows: Paramount and BitTorrent. That’s right, the pirate-fighting studio just teamed up with producers who are hell-bent on using the pirates’ favorite peer-to-peer sharing software tool to release The Tunnel on May 19. At the same time, Paramount will release a DVD version of the horror film. The DVD will contain content that’s supposedly compelling enough to lure those who downloaded the movie into buying the hard copy. The movie won’t be in theaters — it’s another one of those straight-to-video titles. But this is a first: The BitTorrent version, while full-length, serves as a tease. So if you buy the DVD, you’ll get alternate endings, along with extra material that won’t be available on the BitTorrent feed. Another element of the unconventional monetization scheme is the sale of individual frames from the movie to fans and collectors for $1 apiece. The frames are offered as individual frames, or in groups of 1 second (25 frames), 2 seconds (50 frames) or 1 minute’s worth of the film or more. So far, the film’s producers have sold 30,000 frames, with more than 100,000 still available. Are the film’s producers giving up the fight against movie piracy by taking a stance of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”? The movie’s producer/editor Enzo Tedeschi told Torrentfreak: “From day one we've maintained that The Tunnel is not supporting or condoning piracy, but instead trying to incorporate a legitimate use of peer-to-peer in our distribution strategy internationally.” The Tunnel‘s official website offers more insight:
If nothing else, this is certainly a creative distribution plan. I’m just wondering this: Why do the film’s producers and backers think the DVD’s content won’t also be immediately placed on BitTorrent? Perhaps like locks, this scheme is designed to keep the honest people out. So, commenters, will this work? Is this a new way to distribute films, or a fool’s errand? Take a look at the film’s teaser: More About: bittorrent, distribution, dvd, Movies, Paramount, The Tunnel For more Media coverage:
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| Delta Airlines Lets Customers Check In & Get Flight Status via Facebook Posted: 17 Mar 2011 01:54 PM PDT   Delta Airlines customers can now check in to flights on the company’s Facebook app. From the Ticket Counter application, Delta customers starting today can now check SkyMiles and preview what amenities are available for various flights, too. Delta launched its its app back in August, at which time it was the first airline to allow users to book flights through the social network. Delta also has mobile apps for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry that let users check in for flights, or get the status of a flight or gate number. However, the integration with Facebook means that it’s one less place some users will need to visit.  Boarding passes can be printed from the Facebook app, just like on the website. Delta also lets users share details about their travel plans or itineraries with users over Facebook. For people who check Facebook more often than e-mail, this is a great way to share flight or trip details. We really like the fact that you can log in to your SkyMiles account, buy tickets and print boarding passes from Facebook. But we would love to see true integration between a SkyMiles account and Facebook — in other words, an option to connect the two systems. I almost never remember my SkyMiles number, but if the two were linked, I could log in with my PIN and last name and be on my way. Do you like the idea of checking into a flight using Facebook? Would you check in to a flight on Facebook? Image courtesy of boltzr via Flickr More About: delta, delta ticket counter, delta ticket window, facebook For more Social Media coverage:
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| What Responsibility Do Social Media Users Have During a Crisis? Posted: 17 Mar 2011 01:12 PM PDT   Peter Shankman is the founder of HARO and is generally regarded as one of the top social media consultants and marketing speakers working today. His clients include Saudi Aramco, NASA, The U.S. Government, Haworth, Disney, Foley-Hoag, American Express, and countless others. He blogs at shankman.com. From the moment the first jolt was felt in Tokyo, there was no doubt — the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent tragedy was going to play out first on the social web, and second on television. Within an hour of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake, which occurred on a bright afternoon in Japan, Twitter updates were flying out of Asia at the rate of over 1,200 per minute, while Facebook posts, photos, videos, and blog updates were streaming in just behind. As my CNN News alert hit my iPad, my first inclination wasn't to turn on the TV, but rather go to the Facebook walls of my many friends in Tokyo to see if they were alright. The immediacy of the information flowing out of Asia took on a much more personal tone, as I was able to know instantly that eight of my nine friends had checked in to let their friends and family know they were OK. This cultural shift can be seen throughout the web connected world, and every future "felt around the world" moment will bring us closer to this event horizon, where the news on television becomes secondary to finding out if our personal network is intact. In essence, we're moving back toward a community model, where news comes not from a stranger on television, but from people we trust because we know them personally. The phone call that used to take days — the "I'm OK, we just got phone service back" moment that felt like it took forever — has been shrunk to minutes, if not seconds in some cases. While it's painfully obvious that the level of "global connectivity" hasn't truly been reached in every part of the world yet, no one can deny that the proliferation of even the most basic mobile phones, even to areas without full electricity or plumbing, has made the ability to get critical information out that much faster, to a much more global audience. With that awesome ability, however, comes responsibility. With everyone having the power to be their own "Anderson Cooper," the job of getting out information to the world comes with clearly defined rules and objectives. Family and Friends FirstFor hundreds of thousands of people, the simple act of pressing "send" on an "I'm OK" text message was the start, and a good one at that. One of the biggest problems with natural and man-made disasters is the immediacy of "aloneness," as it were. "Do people know I'm here?" "Does my family know I'm safe?" If you speak to survivors of natural disasters, almost all of them list that feeling of isolation as the key psychological barrier, even more so than the pain of losing their belongings. As the communication networks get stronger, the first message of our survival will be able to reach those closest to us, and the connection will provide information, updates, and yes, even companionship, digital as it might be. Knowing "I'm not alone" has saved many lives when those lives had nothing else to live for at that moment. Report What You Know, Avoid What You Don’tThe odds of finding a cell phone in an industrialized nation without a camera in it are extremely small. This means that everyone can generate content with the push of a button. But we must be careful of the content we generate, and that which we pass along. Confirm your information. A steam pipe explosion, like the kind that hit midtown Manhattan a few years back, can look to the untrained eye like a massive bomb has just decimated the entire block. Remember that what you post will be reposted, and there is no "Back" button once you hit send. The latest updated information is critical, and should be shared, but it's our job to do so responsibly, to check our sources, and to confirm our facts before we post with reckless abandon. Not only can posting inaccurate information do great harm to those inside and even outside of the crisis zone, but it will also greatly diminish the level of trust people have for your future updates. Lose credibility, and you will simply be ignored. In January 2010, an unattended bag was left in Grand Central. For New Yorkers, that was called "Wednesday." But thanks to the over-zealous tweeting of a few people in Manhattan, the bomb squad was called, Grand Central was evacuated, and "Explosion and fire in Grand Central" flew around Twitter at the speed of light. None of it was true. Be aware of what you post. Think Before You ShareWhether you like it or not, you're now a historian, as well as a part of history. Remember that before you hit "share." How do you want to be remembered? Whatever you share can be taken out of context. Something non-relevant — a sarcastic comment, even something you find humorous — while accepted by your "network," can scale to huge proportions and reach a massive group of people who don't know you, but only know what you sent. We've all done it, but now we need to be smarter. You simply must pause and think before you submit content to the world, no matter how innocuous you think it might be. In a crisis, people are hungry for information. What you feed them will determine your destiny as well, whether in the middle of the fight, or thousands of miles away.  Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.Image courtesy of iStockphoto, oblachko More About: crisis, facebook, social media, trending, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| Mike Tyson Can Cure Your Angry Birds Addiction [VIDEO] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 01:00 PM PDT Mike Tyson offers a one-step cure to Angry Birds addiction in the promo above for his new Animal Planet show, Taking on Tyson. Speaking uncharacteristically softly, the former champ exhibits some tough love to an iPad-toting geek in the throes of a Birds binge. For those interested, the cure is also available for the iPad 2. Tyson and the Animal Planet may seem an odd fit, but Tyson enjoys pigeon racing, a passion that the show explores in some detail. Tyson, who had a well-received turn in The Hangover, appears to be making a George Foreman-esque image change from scary and unhinged to approachable and friendly. You can also see the kinder, gentler Tyson in this interview with Mashable Editor-in-Chief Adam Ostrow at South by Southwest. More About: advertising, Animal Planet, MARKETING, mike tyson For more Business & Marketing coverage:
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| Facebook for BlackBerry 2.0 Arrives in Beta Posted: 17 Mar 2011 12:43 PM PDT   Research In Motion (RIM) has just announced the first beta release for the next major version of Facebook for BlackBerry, which features a redesigned user interface and incorporates a host of new features, including Facebook Chat. The new Facebook Chat feature integrates with both the app and the unified mailbox. As long as your status is set to “online,” friends can send you notifications even if you aren’t using the app. Even better, within Facebook for BlackBerry 2.0, users can still get alerted about new BlackBerry Messenger messages or see when a new e-mail hits the inbox. The team at RIM has also put a lot of work into improving the News Feed and how users can interact with it. Posts can be shared or liked from the feed and users can also publish their own photos and status updates or check into a Facebook Place directly from the News Feed.  Perhaps the biggest overhaul is the overall look and feel of the app. The navigation control panel now mimics what you see on iOS and Android. A drop-down navigation bar has now also replaced the static bar in the old app. BlackBerry says this will make it easier to add new features in the future. The Facebook notifications panel has also been redesigned to mimic the Today View in BlackBerry OS 6. This provides a great overview of everything that is happening within the Facebook application. It’s actually the kind of implementation we wouldn’t mind seeing in other mobile versions of Facebook. Overall, the new Facebook for BlackBerry looks great. It’s clearly a major upgrade that helps close the gap between the BlackBerry client and those on other mobile platforms. If you want to check out the new beta, head to the BlackBerry Beta Zone. There are a limited number of spots available, so be sure to check it out. Right now, only BlackBerry 6.0 users can use the beta — however, subsequent betas will support BlackBerry OS 4.6 and higher. What do you think of the new Facebook for BlackBerry? Let us know in the comments. More About: blackberry, blackberry apps, facebook, facebook for blackberry For more Mobile coverage:
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| TeleNav Reveals Exactly How People Are Using GPS [INFOGRAPHIC] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 11:57 AM PDT   If you want to know what kinds of things people are searching for on their GPS systems, wireless location-based services company TeleNav is a good group to ask. The company has mined anonymous usage data from more than 20 million subscribers to its GPS products, providing us with these graphics and analysis. What was the result? First of all, for the second year in a row people don’t quite know how to get to Walmart. In fact, searches for Walmart were double the number of the second most-searched business, Target. There’s plenty of infoporn in here, satisfying even the most curious GPS aficionados with facts about which city’s residents needed to avoid traffic the most, what their most searched-for food was and what the most-searched destinations are. Dive in, and see if your GPS usage matches those of your fellow wanderers, foragers, adventurers and commuters. Don’t forget to check out the gallery below, with even more info. Reroute Business Searches Food Categories Gas by Price Most frequent users Search by City Graphics courtesy of TeleNav More About: gps, infographic, Telenav, Usage Data For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
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| Why Curation Is Just as Important as Creation [OPINION] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 11:35 AM PDT
The personal web publishing boom has led to an information explosion. It's a data free-for-all, and it's just beginning. Andrew Blau is a researcher and the co-president of Global Business Network in San Fransisco. Blau has foretold the changes in media distribution and content creation. Now he's watching this new, historic emergence of first-person publishing. Today, publishing tools have been set free, Blau says. Cost, ownership, and barriers to entry are all gone, almost overnight. "The ability to amplify one's voice, to amplify that beyond the reach of what we have had, reflects a change of course in human history.” He pointed to the difficultly of sorting through the riot of voices online. What that chaos needed was curation — a way to get value out of the information flood. But the role of the curator has been a contentious one, and not everyone has been on board with the concept. Who Gets Heard?All big changes have unintended consequences. Blau says that the old problem — limited access to the tools to amplify speech — has been fixed by the Internet. It used to be that making and moving information was so expensive that the question of who was going to get permission to speak was a central social and political issue. But now speech is more democratic. That development, not surprisingly, creates a new problem. "The problem is who gets heard," Blau says. "The real issue that remains is access to an audience. Because that's hard. Access to technology has become trivially easy for most people in the industrialized world, and increasingly easy for people in the emerging economies around the world." Blau is right: Speech is easy. Being heard is hard and getting even harder. Computers can't distinguish between data and ideas or between human intellect and aggregated text and links. This lack of aesthetic intelligence in a storm of data changes the game. Are Content Aggregators Vampires?Okay, let's get this part out in the open: Creators don't like coloring inside the lines. They're fueled by a passion to make original work. But there's a reason why painters don't rent a storefront, hire a staff clad in black clothing, and throw endless cocktail parties with white wine and fancy hors d'oeuvres. That's called a gallery, and a gallery owner is a curator. These are the people who enjoy the process of choosing what to hang, how to price it, and how to make sure painters have enough income to pay the rent and buy more paint and canvas. Hopefully. The web doesn't work that way. At least not yet. The folks who run the online galleries — the curators — aren't asking permission or giving a revenue share, which means that content creators need to get comfortable with the idea that in the new world of the link economy, curating and creating aren't mutually exclusive. Exhibit A: Seth Godin. He is one of the web’s best-known marketing wizards. He's a speaker, author, website owner and entrepreneur. And he says that content creators can't ignore curation any longer. "We don't have an information shortage; we have an attention shortage," Godin said. "There's always someone who's going to supply you with information that you're going to curate. The Guggenheim doesn't have a shortage of art. They don't pay you to hang paintings for a show — in fact you have to pay for the insurance. Why? Because the Guggenheim is doing a service to the person who's in the museum and the artist who's being displayed." As Godin sees it, power is shifting from content makers to content curators: "If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power.” This change is leaving folks who used to control distribution with less power to dictate terms. One of those folks is Mark Cuban. Cuban is a content creator. Or, more accurately, he owns assets that create branded content. He owns the Dallas Mavericks. He owns Magnolia Pictures. He owns HDNet. And he's got a stake in a whole bunch of other stuff. "The content aggregators are vampires!" said the always colorful Cuban. "Don't let them suck your blood." Cuban points to sites like Google News and The Huffington Post as the most aggressive content criminals. He tends to see no value in folks who gather, organize, summarize, or republish. He only finds value in content creation: "Vampires take but don't give anything back.” Not surprisingly, Godin wrinkles his nose at Cuban's vampire metaphor. Simply put, he says it's all wrong. "When a vampire sucks your blood, you make new blood," Godin says. “The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There's an exception for business information and super-timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win. I'm not talking about plagiarism; I'm talking about the difference between obscurity and piracy. If the taking is so whole that the original is worth nothing … that's a problem." Robert Scoble also disagreed with Cuban's horror-movie metaphor. "That's ridiculous. Cuban is fun to argue with, but it's ridiculous. I mean come on, The New York Times is an aggregator of a thousand people's work. More than that if you include letters to the editor, opinions, and guest posts and contracted posts and contracted articles. The New York Times has been doing aggregation for a hundred years. To say that's a vampire is just totally ridiculous." The Billion Dollar Opportunity Scoble has declared curation as the next "billion dollar" opportunity and wonders aloud as to whether he should "create or curate" as tech news breaks in Silicon Valley. Scoble says a curator is "an information chemist. He or she mixes atoms together in a way to build an info-molecule. Then adds value to that molecule." "I used to drink from the real-time fire hose, because on the social web, everything was about real time," says Brian Solis, author of Engage. "Then I realized over the years that it's actually more about right time than real time. In fact, when information comes through, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the right time to engage, capture it, and share it. I'm more successful now creating a list of information, relevant information, and then repackaging, repurposing, and broadcasting that information at the right time." Getting people to pay attention to you — by following, friending, linking, or otherwise engaging — will have real economic value, says communications consultant and author Chris Brogan. "Attention is a currency, just like many others. We understand time and money as two interchangeable things. But attention is just as much something that needs to be arbitraged and disconnected from a 1:1 value. Said another way, 'Attention costs me time and time is worth money, so attention by extension is worth money.' " ConclusionData will be created with staggering speed, and systems will need to evolve to find, gather, and package data so that you can get what you need, when you need it, in coherent and useful bundles. Curation taps the vast, agile, engaged human power of the web. It finds signal in the noise. And it’s most certainly going to unleash a new army of web editors armed with emerging curation tools. Images courtesy of iStockphoto, flyparade and Flickr, epSos.de More About: content, curation, journalism, social media For more Social Media coverage:
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| Groupon: A $25 Billion Company? Posted: 17 Mar 2011 11:21 AM PDT   At the start of the year, two-year-old daily deals site Groupon was said to be preparing for a spring initial public offering at a $15 billion valuation. Two months later, Bloomberg is reporting that Groupon is in talks with bankers and could IPO with a valuation as high as $25 billion. Groupon raised eyebrows when it turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google in December 2010. The startup then went on to raise $950 million in a Series D round — including funding from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s investment firm — with an estimated post-money valuation as high as $7.8 billion. Could Groupon be worth $25 billion by the time it IPOs later this year? It’s hard to say. (Groupon declined to comment.) The report in question cites unnamed sources and sheds very little new light on Groupon’s financial well-being — it does add that Groupon now has 70 million members across 500 markets. We do know that Groupon generated $760 million in sales in 2010, according to a leaked internal memo from CEO Andrew Mason in February. Plus, rumors at the time of the Google acquisition talks had it that the company’s annual revenue run rate was $2 billion. The technology world was first stunned less than one year ago when it was revealed that Groupon was worth $1 billion. Should Groupon’s $25 billion IPO come to fruition, it will be larger than Google’s $23 billion market value at the time of its offering, making Groupon’s meteoric rise nearly unparalleled. For more Business & Marketing coverage:
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| Who Won the “Battles” of SXSW? [CHARTS] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 11:10 AM PDT   Social media analytics maker SimplyMeasured has taken a look at the Twitter chatter surrounding a number of the so-called "battles" at South by Southwest Interactive and determined the winners. The company tracked companies within the #sxsw hashtag stream in the categories of group messaging (which was closely watched going into the conference), check-in apps (last year's biggest battle) and mobile platform (which devices accounted for the most tweets). They also compared the volume of total activity around #sxsw versus other high-profile events. The results can be seen in the charts below: Group Messaging GroupMe won the battle for group messaging mindshare. The service attracted 65% of the mentions. Beluga, which was acquired by Facebook ahead of the conference, placed second. Checkin Apps Foursquare continues to dominate the check-in wars, though Gowalla put up a good fight on its home turf (the company is based in Austin). SimplyMeasured tracked this category by looking at checkins broadcast to Twitter within the #SXSW hashtag. SXSW vs Other Events SXSW was bigger than Black Friday, and even rival tech conference CES, but not as big as The Oscars (or Charlie Sheen for that matter). Mobile Platforms Android smartphones might be outselling iPhones these days, but at SXSW, it's another story. Apple-made devices were the source of 74% of tweets. All of the Above This graphic shows all of the battles in one visualization. 640_dsc_0011 640_dsc_0026 640_dsc_0051 More About: group messaging, Mobile 2.0, sxsw For more Social Media coverage:
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| SmartGiving Lets Your Credit Card Choose Your Charity Causes Posted: 17 Mar 2011 11:00 AM PDT   You’re a good person; you like giving to charity. But sometimes it’s hard to decide just what causes you want to support or to choose between comparable non-profits. If you’re concerned about animals, should you donate to the World Wildlife Fund? The National Wildlife Federation? Your local animal rescue? This target confusion can actually cause people to not donate at all. So Swipegood.com is launching a new initiative, called SmartGiving, to streamline your charitable donations based on your actual spending habits. Swipegood allows you to sign up a credit card; the site will then round up all of your purchases to the nearest dollar and allow you to donate the difference to charity. With more than 300 charitable organizations to choose from, Swipegood is a great way to passively and continuously donate to your favorite charity. But what if you don’t have a favorite charity, or can’t choose between the many options? SmartGiving has been developed to help these kinds of users.  The site will keep track of your credit card spending and donate accordingly. For example, if you buy groceries for $5.40, SmartGiving will round up the cost and donate 60 cents towards feeding the poor. Similarly, when you buy gas, those roundups will be donated to environmental causes. So far, there are five categories: home, food, healthcare, education and nature. While it’s unclear exactly how accurate SmartGiving will be, it’s a smart way of directing you to causes that either fit your interests or offset your impact on the planet. “The idea came about because many of our users simply didn’t know which charity to donate to which lead to many people dropping out of the signup process although they wanted to give,” Swipegood co-founder Steli Efti said in an e-mail. Users can turn off SmartGiving whenever they choose and direct their money to specific charities, or turn it back on to discover new causes based on their lifestyle. What do you think of donating money based on your spending habits? Do you think your credit card is a good indicator of your interests? What do you make of more passive social good campaign? Let us know in the comments below. Image courtesy of Flickr, doyoubleedlikeme More About: charity, credit-card, non-profit, smartgiving, social good, social media, swipegood For more Social Good coverage:
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| 5 iPad Apps That Rival Their Desktop Counterparts Posted: 17 Mar 2011 10:45 AM PDT
The iPad is sometimes criticized for being a consumption device and not a device for creating and managing content. But one look at the App Store can help dispel that notion. With more than 65,000 apps built to take advantage of the iPad’s features, there are tons of options, from photo editing to word processing that match — or outpace — their desktop counterparts. Here are five of our favorite desktop-rivaling iPad apps. 1. OmniGraffle ($49.99) OmniGraffle for iPad is a tablet-optimized version of the popular diagramming and layout tool for Mac OS X. Some may balk at the high price tag, but in our opinion, it’s worth it and then some. Using OmniGraffle, users can create layouts, wireframes, diagrams and charts directly from the tablet. The app is full featured with a large collection of pre-defined and editable diagram elements and shapes, plus the ability to add color, gradients and text to a design. A real standout feature is that OmniGraffle for iPad can connect to the extensive stencil libraries created for OmniGraffle for Mac OS X. These stencils include editable elements that make creating accurate mockups or diagrams of something, like an iPhone app, hassle free. The app can also save and open files from OmniGraffle for Mac OS X, making it s great addition to an existing workflow. 2. Djay ($19.99) The iPad is increasingly being used by musicians as a way to record, edit and create music. Djay for iPad turns the tablet into a full-fledged turntable system. The app plugs into the music collection on the iPad and allows for dual track mixing. It can even record live mixes. Effects can be applied on the fly and the app has support for pre-cueing and AirPlay. The touch interface completes the app. By looking and acting like a traditional digital turntable, the app is easy for novices to pick up or for experts to take their skills to the next level. 3. Bento ($4.99) Bento started its life as a Mac OS X app that aimed to bring the database features of FileMaker to the home and small business user. An iPhone app followed in 2009. In 2010, Bento for iPad was released, bringing users access to their existing Bento workflows and letting users create new projects at ease. The app enables users to create projects for a multitude of purposes. For instance, I created a system in Bento to help keep track of my clothes. I have a form that I can fill out where I attach the name of the item, along with descriptions like size, color, brand and material. I can also designate if something is dry-clean only or if it has any other special instructions, and I can mark the item as clean, on loan or dirty. Using Bento for iPad, I can go through my closet and find items to add to a packing list or I can enter in new clothing items as I acquire them. The app connects with existing Bento projects and lets you create new projects from scratch. Most of the desktop features are in the iPad app, which makes it a great way to enter information, take inventory or fill out forms. 4. Photogene ($2.99) Photo editors for the iPad are plentiful, but Photogene is a standout for us because it’s fast, inexpensive and feature-rich. The app lets you edit photos in your iPad library, and you add effects, control tone, retouch blemishes and eliminate red eyes. Photogene also has options for adding text and vignettes, as well as cropping and rotating images. But these features aren’t exclusive to Photogene — what really sets the app apart from others is its non-destructive photo editing. The original photos aren’t change — instead the edits take place in the app and can be altered or reset at any time. Only when a file is exported back to the camera roll do the edits actually take place. This is the same feature found in desktop apps like Lightroom and Aperture. Editing photos using a touchscreen is really fluid and very easy for users who aren’t well versed in the world of photo editing software. 5. iMovie ($4.99)First released for Mac OS in 1999, iMovie revolutionized non-linear editing software by making it easy for users to create and edit fantastic looking video compositions without pulling out their hair. More than a decade later, iMovie continues to be the standard by which all other mainstream consumer video editing products are based. In conjunction with the release of the iPhone 4, Apple released iMovie for iPhone and with it it brought some of the best features of the desktop app to the small screen. In March 2011, iMovie also landed on the iPad 2. Taking advantage on the new devices ability to record HD video and dual-core processors, the app sings. Some of the best features from iMovie ’11 are present in iMovie for iOS and finished productions can be uploaded directly to video hosting sites like YouTube. Although not technically available for original iPad owners (check out this page for instructions on how to get the app running), the app is still worthy of this list. Amazingly, benchmarks of iMovie for iOS and iMovie ’11 indicate that for most users, the iPad version of the app is actually going to be faster than on a MacBook Pro. Your PicksWhat are your favorite iPad apps that rival their desktop counterparts? Let us know in the comments! Series Supported by LogMeIn Ignition  The iPad for Business Series is supported by LogMeIn Ignition. Contrary to popular opinion, iPads aren't just for games any more. Unleash it's full potential and make your iPad work for work, download LogMeIn Ignition and get one-touch access to all your applications and files on your remote computers from your iPad/iPhone. You'll be more productive anywhere, anytime thanks to the App Store's #1 third-party Productivity App of 2010. More Business Resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of Flickr, traftery. More About: bento, business, djay, imovie, ipad, ipad apps, iPad for Business Series, OmniDrive, omnigraffle, photogene For more Business & Marketing coverage:
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| EvoMouse Pet Offers Multitouch Control, Looks Like a Cute Dog [PICS] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 10:32 AM PDT   Meet evoMouse Pet, a dog-shaped device that turns any surface into a touchpad. Tracking your fingers, it lets you do anything a regular mouse can do, and then some. Beyond conventional mouse functions such as cursor control, right- and left-clicking, dragging and double-clicking, the Celluon evoMouse offers multitouch capabilities, letting you rotate and zoom on images and scroll text using gestures. The device can even recognize your handwriting if you use either your finger or pen. Celluon says the evoMouse Pet will be available first in the UK in late March or early April at a price of around $99. But is it worth it? Couldn’t you just get a Magic Trackpad from Apple that can do the same gestural controls? Sure, but that only works on a Mac — this device works with Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Windows, Android and BlackBerry. It’s small enough to take with you, and connects either wirelessly via Bluetooth or plugged in with a USB cable. Take a look at Celluon’s teaser video and you’ll get an idea of the scale of this tiny device, whose two laser eyes follow your hand’s every movement. One possible use: Celluon says it’s ideal for those with carpal tunnel syndrome who suffer from the slightest effort of pushing around a physical mouse — perhaps this little evoMouse Pet will now let those sufferers run with the big dogs. More About: Celluon, evoMouse Pet, Pointing Devices For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
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| The Rise of the Preemptive Checkin Posted: 17 Mar 2011 09:58 AM PDT   When the latest version of Foursquare launched earlier this month, the brunt of the overhaul was a new recommendation engine called “explore.” The feature provides recommendations to people based on where they’ve been, the places their friends go, places they’ve been to with friends, and what time it is. Instead of providing information for users about the places where they and their friends already are — as the rest of the app is designed to do — it gives them information about where they might go. Foursquare, an early pioneer of location-based check-in games, isn’t the first to realize that the potential of checking in “now” is limited without a “later” to accompany it. Startups have started to innovate past the present-tense checkin, instead allowing their users to check in to what they are about to do. “When you're a Foursquare user, you're already seated at that cafe, you've already ordered your latte, and that's when you check in and find that there's a special across the street,” explains Ditto founder Jyri Engestrom. “What are your chances of actually getting up and walking across the street to that special? Pretty low.” Ditto, which launched in early March, is somewhat of a response to Foursquare. It allows users to broadcast what they are going to do (eat out, listen to music, work, see a movie) to friends, who can then recommend places to do such things or offer to join. It combines these recommendations from people who users already trust with an option to accept recommendations from strangers nearby.  The focus on the future is a matter of both usefulness and revenue, explains Engestrom, who previously founded Google-acquired microblogging platform Jaiku. “If you think about things like our Google search, that's what makes search advertising so lucrative, right? Because it's about contacting people at that moment when they're making a decision about something that they're going to purchase or an activity that they're going to do,” he says. With the rise of premptive check-in services, whether offering deals or simple Google search ads, businesses have a way to hit this decision point with a social emphasis. Startup Crowdbeacon, for instance, at some point plans to charge small businesses to answer inquiries made on its Q&A location-based platform. Users of the app throw out questions about where they are, such as, “does anybody know where to get a good burger?” These questions are then pushed out to other users in the area as well as small businesses. Right now about 100 businesses in the New York area are signed up to respond to those types of inquiries with something like “Great burger is here, and we’re running a deal.” Eventually, if all goes as founder Robert Boyle plans, they’ll pay to respond.  “If I know where you are and you tell me what you are looking for, and I can help you, that's valuable to you as a service,” Boyle explains. “But if you tell me where you are and I can tell the people that have what you are looking for nearby, then that's really valuable to them.” New York-based social startup ImUp4 plans to apply a somewhat similar revenue model to an app that allows users to preemptively check in to activities. Users post messages like, “I’m up for drinks tonight” within their group of friends with hopes of gaining company. A promising option for monetization, says co-founder Suraj Patel, are Groupon-like deals targeted at groups of friends that have already said they intend to do something relevant. For instance, a bar might offer a drink special if that person who was up for drinks can find three friends who are also up for it. “With Groupon, deals come at you,” Patel says. “Most of the time they’re irrelevant and you delete them. But if you say you’re up for drinks, you’re asking for a drink deal, and it’s relevant.”  Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Roydee More About: check.in, Crowdbeacon, Ditto, foursquare, imup4, preemptive check-in For more Startups coverage:
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| Internet Fans Project Syracuse, Duke, Kansas & Wisconsin in Final Four Posted: 17 Mar 2011 09:28 AM PDT   Syracuse, Duke, Kansas and Wisconsin are already front runners for the Final Four — in Internet buzz at least. March Madness is just beginning, but these four teams topped the positive online buzz rankings, according to Zeta Interactive. The agency analyzed about 200 million blogs, message boards and social media websites looking for keywords related to each of the 68 first-round teams. (For instance, "I have Duke winning my bracket" would count as a positive mention, while "I don't think Duke will make it past the Sweet 16," is a negative.) Zeta's rankings (see charts below), sometimes upend conventional wisdom. For instance, Ohio State, which is the No. 1 seed in the East Region, is rated fourth in Internet buzz, after Syracuse, Kentucky and North Carolina, thanks to an association of such "cluster words" as "difficult," "long" and "overrated." Zeta also picks Gonzaga, Utah State and Richmond as favored "upset" teams this year. This report is hardly the final word, though. Advertising Age, working with NetBase, came out with its own buzz rankings, which picks a different Final Four (and, unlike Zeta, projects a winner — Duke). To its credit, Zeta last year projected the actual winner, Duke, accurately, but had Duke facing off with Michigan State, rather than Butler in the finals. Using similar methodology, Zeta also projected The Social Network as the Academy Award winner for best picture (The King’s Speech actually won) but correctly picked the best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress and best director winners.  Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adamkaz More About: basketball, NCAA, Zeta Interactive For more Social Media coverage:
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| Will You Pay for the New York Times Online? [POLL] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 09:22 AM PDT   On Thursday, The New York Times officially released the details of its long-awaited paywall digital subscription offerings. The new access policies — which go into effect March 17 in Canada and March 28 in the United States — will require frequent readers to pay at least $15 per month for unlimited access to the New York Times website or mobile app. Print subscribers will continue to have access to the website and all other digital apps at no additional charge. The newest Times digital subscription offerings come nearly four years after the Grey Lady threw caution to the wind and opened up full access to the website and its archives. The Times will still be offering readers free access to front page stories, as well as the ability to view 20 articles per month. Additionally, links from Twitter, Facebook or other blogs will continue to work, even if the article limit has been reached. Users will also be able to access up to five articles per day via Google. In other words, not having a digital subscription won’t mean that users can’t still access Times content online. Back in 2007, the Times reported that it had 227,000 paying subscribers for its TimesSelect offering. It will be interesting to see how many subscribers the newspaper will be able to retain under the new plan. Our question for readers is simple: Are you willing to pay for full access to the Times? Let us know by taking this poll and feel free to expand on your thoughts in the comments below. More About: media, new york times, newspapers, NYTimes, paywall, polls, publishing For more Media coverage:
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| How JavaScript & HTML5 Are Remaking the Web Posted: 17 Mar 2011 09:16 AM PDT
With browsers implementing more HTML5 features across platforms and devices, developers are starting to integrate many of the new features and frameworks into their web apps, websites and web designs. Although HTML5 is its own standard, the power of HTML5 is really only best realized with the use of CSS 3 and JavaScript. JavaScript, in particular, has quickly emerged as one of the best ways to help render great looking effects, animations and content in a self-contained, platform-agnostic way. Graphics libraries like WebGL can extend JavaScript, allowing for the creation of interactive 3D graphics within the browser all while utilizing the plugin-free nature of the HTML canvas element. WebGL Brain Surface and Tractography ViewerUsing JavaScript, jQuery and WebGL, developers at Children’s Hospital Boston created the Brain Surface and Tractography Viewer. This is a web front-end tool that lets researchers explore data from an MRI scan within the web browser and in real time. The implications of this type of technology for aiding in medical research are stunning. The fact that this all takes place in the web browser means that a researcher or doctor could explore MRI results from another part of the hospital — or another part of the globe. Google Body Browser Google released its Body Browser as a showcase for the WebGL support now included in Chrome. It’s a great proof of concept and is also useful as a learning tool. In December, I described the project as “three-dimensional, multi-layered browser version of those Visible Man/Woman model kits. Or a virtualized version of Slim Goodbody, if you will.” The Google Body Browser is a great example of just how fast technology is moving in web browsers. In December, only beta builds of Google Chrome and WebKit nightlies supported WebGL. Today, every shipping version of Chrome supports the technology and Firefox 4 — which is nearing release — also works with WebGL out of the box. Safari users still need to use a WebKit nightly, but we expect to see final support rolled out soon. MathBoard MathBoard is a featured case study on Google’s HTML5 Rocks page and for good reason — it adroitly highlights how robust web apps can be built using HTML5, even if they start life on other platforms. MathBoard is a popular education app for the iPad that helps students learn and practice their integers. We’ve discussed how mobile developers are using HTML5 in their app development process, but this is actually the inverse. N2N-Apps aimed to do a high-fidelity port of the app for the web browser in HTML5. Using HTML5, SnowUI and jQuery, the goal was met. Arcade Fire, “The Wilderness Downtown” Before they won a Grammy, Arcade Fire won our hearts with their innovative and awe-inspiring music video created using HTML5. This Google Chrome Experiment, directed by Chris Milk, takes listeners into the video. As I noted last summer,
More than six months later, this still rocks our world. Lost World’s Fairs When Microsoft released the first IE 9 beta, the company contracted Friends of Mighty to create this stunning web page that showcases the power of WOFF and web fonts. Using JavaScript goodies like Lettering.js and built using HTML5 Boilerplate, this is not just a beautiful web design, it’s a look at what is possible with HTML5. HTML5 isn’t just about 3D effects or creating web apps — it is also offers great advancements to how content — including text — is displayed and how users can interact with that text. Series Supported by Elsevier  The Future Web Series is supported by Elsevier‘s SciVerse Application Marketplace and Developer Network. In 2010, prominent science publisher Elsevier launched SciVerse to provide developers with access to ample research data so they can build apps on top of trusted scientific content. SciVerse also sponsors "Apps for Science," a $35,000 developer challenge to accelerate science. Learn more. More Dev and Design Resources from Mashable:
More About: Future Web Series, HTML5, javascript, web design, Web Development For more Dev & Design coverage:
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| Neiman Marcus Launches Nationwide SCVNGR Challenge Posted: 17 Mar 2011 09:07 AM PDT   Neiman Marcus has paired up with mobile gaming startup SCVNGR to encourage shoppers to engage more thoroughly with products in its stores. The high-end retailer will award a series of prizes to shoppers for completing various challenges with SCVNGR’s iPhone or Android apps between now and April 10. Users will be asked, for instance, to head to the beauty counter and snap a photo of themselves wearing a new shade of lipstick, or to identify a trend (such as florals, or statement necklaces) and take a photo of a piece that matches it. After completing enough promotions, participants will be awarded a makeover from le Metier de Beaute (tier one) and, should they complete even more challenges, a “special” (i.e., unspecified) gift from Neiman Marcus’s customer service counter (tier two) and a chance to win a $2,500 shopping spree (tier three). Although we find the challenge cleverly designed and applaud Neiman Marcus’s willingness, as a long-established luxury retailer, to embrace new mobile marketing techniques, we were concerned that the typical Neiman Marcus shopper might not be the most likely candidate for a SCVNGR campaign. Neiman Marcus has, however, taken pains to ensure that its least mobile-savvy customers can participate. In addition to a dedicated online outreach, Neiman Marcus will also be promoting the campaign via in-store signage and glossy, instructional handouts, Chris Mahl, SCVNGR SVP and chief brand alchemist, explained. The promotion is available at all Neiman Marcus locations nationwide. Screenshots  Image courtesy of Flickr, ttarasiuk More About: fashion, neiman marcus, retail, scvngr For more Business & Marketing coverage:
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| New E-Commerce Platform Lets You Offer Rewards for Social Sharing Posted: 17 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PDT Curebit, a Y Combinator-funded startup officially launching Thursday, aims to increase the profits of e-commerce companies through social media sharing. Online retailers integrate Curebit’s technology into their websites to add social referrals to the purchasing process. Say a user buys a tasting box at Foodzie (one of the Curebit’s customers). Once he or she completes the check-out process and hits the receipt page, that customer is struck with a Curebit referral offer: if the customer shares the purchase with friends and those friends buy something through that link, then that customer will get something like cash back or a discount. Curebit can integrate with any e-commerce website, but it has also created extensions and plugins for Magneto, Shopify, Ubercart, Zencart, Opencart and osCommerce. The company has also created a special demo of the product at Curebit.com/share to celebrate its launch. Users who refer friends through Curebit will earn $5 Starbucks gift cards.   Behind the scenes, businesses utilizing Curebit can manage their campaigns through an analytics dashboard. It comes with an overview of sharing activity, new sales and rebates. The dashboard also boasts an activity feed that displays newly referred sales and active deals. Curebit’s analytics are impressive and include the history of purchases, rebates and sharing. Businesses can even dive into individual purchases to see what a customer bought and what offer he or she used. When I asked Curebit CEO Allan Grant about the product’s effectiveness, he told me that one of the company’s core objectives is to test social conversion strategies in order to boost the percentage of customers who share, the number of clicks per share and the conversion rate of those clicks. While Grant couldn’t share specific numbers from individual customers, one of them, netshopperhk.com, publicly stated on Quora that Curebit has “added almost 30%-40% daily revenue pretty consistently.” The Y Combinator startup hasn’t raised any money beyond its YC seed funding and Start Fund, a joint fund by Yuri Milner and SV Angel that offers $150,000 in uncapped convertible debt to every YC company. The founders, Allan Grant, Jeff Yee and Nori Yoshida, are all Ruby on Rails developers that have started successful companies that have been sold to Microsoft, Salesforce and others. The social e-commerce space is red hot at the moment. Retailers are finding success in everything from group-buying (Groupon) to social brand advocacy (500friends). Curebit’s referral model fits in nicely with this rising trend, but the startup also faces stiff competition from companies like SocialFeet. In other words, expect activity in the social e-commerce space to heat up very soon.  More About: Curebit, ecommerce, Socialfeet, y combinator For more Startups coverage:
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| Porn Industry Could Get a “.xxx” Domain This Week [REPORT] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 08:24 AM PDT   The porn industry is rumored to win a major battle this week with the possible approval of the .xxx domain. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which doles out the .com, .net and .biz suffixes for website URLs, could approve the domain name on Friday, according to Politico. The report goes on to say that such domains would be available for purchase this summer. Reps from ICANN could not be reached for comment. However, reports of the .xxx top-level domain (TLD) for adult websites have circulated before. Last June, ICANN was poised to approve the domain, according to multiple reports, but it didn’t happen. The domain name, originally proposed by a company called ICM Registry in 2005, had been held up by the Bush Administration, which had bowed to pressure by religious groups that opposed .xxx. (Somewhat surprisingly, some pornographers have also taken issue with .xxx, declaring it a form of digital segregation.) Some proponents also point out that .xxx would result in fewer accidental landings on .com porn sites, though there’s no indication that the domain would be mandatory for all or any adult websites. The Obama Administration hasn't taken a stand on the domain name. If approved, .xxx would be the latest domain name approved by ICANN. It would follow .co, which ICANN approved for commercial use last July. Image Courtesy of Flickr, Ryan Christopher VanWilliams More About: .xxx, ICANN, ICM Registry For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
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| What Makes the Modern Media Agency [INFOGRAPHIC] Posted: 17 Mar 2011 08:13 AM PDT
In the not-so-distant past, media agencies spent a client’s marketing dollars on a standard set of carefully planned options — print newspapers and magazines, radio and television. How quaint. In 2011, TV still reigns at the top of advertising budgets, but online media is on the rise, and it’s transforming the way media agencies plan and measure campaigns. Jump-started by the economic downturn and propelled by changing consumer habits, Internet advertising and social media have captured a growing share of the market and a disproportionate share of the industry buzz and innovation. Gone, too, are the days when simply having a corporate Twitter account or Facebook page was an accomplishment in itself. Agencies are finding innovative ways to integrate traditional media with social media and mobile to create networks of brand “touchpoints” for consumers. Mobile is in. Metrics are in. Recession cutbacks are out. The perennial difficulty of measuring the effectiveness of marketing is not gone, but it has evolved. With constant instantaneous feedback pouring in from across the web, the biggest problem is knowing how to analyze the deluge of data — and turn it into action.  Series Supported by IDG  The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. With the explosion of mobile devices, advertising dollars will begin to shift to mobile for tech marketers this year. Ad networks, ad exchanges and real-time bidding significantly expand marketing options and underscore the importance of data. IDG Global Solutions President Matt Yorke explains why these trends should not be ignored. Read more. More Media Resources from Mashable:
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| New York Times Reveals Paywall Plan Posted: 17 Mar 2011 07:58 AM PDT   Details of the long-awaited New York Times paywall have officially been disclosed. Beginning March 17 in Canada, and March 28 in the U.S. and worldwide, the most frequent readers of the Times — that is, those who want to read more than 20 articles per month — will need to sign up for one of the publication’s new digital subscription packages. Digital subscription bundles come in three forms:
Print subscribers of the Times and the International Herald Tribune will continue to have access to all of the Times‘s digital offerings at no additional charge, the publication said in an e-mailed statement. Those who decline to subscribe will still be able to read all nytimes.com front page content and up to 20 additional nytimes.com articles per month, as well as the “Top News” sections of the Times‘s smartphone and tablet applications, without paying. In addition, non-subscribers will have access to articles found through search (limited to five per day from Google), blogs and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, even if they have exceeded their 20-article reading limit. Subscriptions to the Times via Amazon’s Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble’s Nook device will continue to be sold separately. "The challenge now is to put a price on our work without walling ourselves off from the global network, to make sure we continue to engage with the widest possible audience," Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, said in his annual State of The Times remarks Thursday. Further information about digital subscription packages is available at nytimes.com/access and in a new FAQ section. More About: new york times, paywall, trending For more Media coverage:
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