Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Google-Owned Slide Launches Disco, a Group Text App, for iPhone”

Granted, this app doesn’t come from Google per se. It was developed and launched by Slide, which Google bought in August 2010 for $182 million. Slide is perhaps best known for its Super Poke line of cutesy virtual pet games.

At the time of the acquisition, Google said it was planning to work with the Slide team “to develop open, transparent and interesting (and fun!) ways to allow our users to take full advantage of how technology can bring them closer to friends and family and provide useful information just for them.”

While “iPhone app” may not be the first thing that comes to mind when Google starts talking about “open and transparent” apps, we’re not completely sure about this application’s provenance. After all, if might have been under development before the acquisition; we just don’t have a lot of information on where it’s coming from or why.

The new app is called Disco [iTunes link]. You can also visit the app’s bare-bones website if you’re so inclined.

The app apparently allows users to create as many text messaging groups as they like and send messages free of charge. Sounds a lot like Convore. Or textPlus. Or the herd of group-messaging apps we saw at SXSW.

We encourage you to take the app for a test drive and report back to us in the comments. Here are a few screenshots to slake your curiosity:

More About: disco, Google, group text, slide

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As seen in the trailer, the film has some of the retro stylings of other comic-inspired offerings, such as X-Men: First Class, the latest installment of another popular Marvel-franchise-turned-film-series. But what’s really interesting for many fans of the Captain America series is this film’s special effects.

For one thing, star Chris Evans (who plays Captain America, a.k.a. Steve Rogers) is digitally manipulated to look quite underweight during the beginning of the film — underweight enough that he’s not allowed to enlist in the armed forces to fight Hitler and the Nazis.

But the so-called weakling signs up for a secret, experimental government program that eventually turns him into the USDA-approved muscular mass that is “super soldier” Captain America. After training under one Colonel Chester Phillips (played by Tommy Lee Jones), all the rest is Nazi-killing and romancing an Andrews Sister lookalike with very red lipstick — that would be Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell.

Captain America: The First Avenger is directed by Joe Johnston. The script was written by no less than four heavy-hitters: directing a script by David Self, who adapted the screenplay for Road to Perdition; Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who are together responsible for The Chronicles of Narnia films’ scripts; and Joss Whedon, of Buffy and Firefly fame.

The film will be in theaters July 22. For the time being, check out the 13-page digital comic book that accompanies the film, have a gander at the trailer, and let us know your opinions in the comments.

More About: captain-america, comic book, comics, Film, movie, trailer, video, youtube

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Launced in 2006, long before Foursquare and Gowalla were on the scene, Loopt’s first mobile product allowed users to automatically share their locations with a list of friends as well as geo-tag locations with text and photos. Since then, the company’s main app has developed into a checkin-style location-based service that allows users to see what friends are nearby, check where their friends have been, and access tips about places.

The company has also launched two sub-apps: Loopt Mix helps connect nearby users, and Loopt Star was an experimental rewards app that has since been rolled into the main app.

All of this evolution, explains co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, has been focused on a single vision: giving the user as much information as possible in return for as little work as possible.

That experience, Loopt has concluded, does not involve the checkin for its own sake. Throughout the last year, the company has been working on ways to make location useful without focusing on checkins, including a flash deal feature that is set to launch to all users within the next month.

Automatic Checkins

The first step in making checkins less of a hassle was to make them automatic. Loopt did so in July. Users choose which friends they want to make their location visible to whether or not they check in. They are alerted when those friends are near by.

Altman says that about 65% of Loopt’s 5 million users are now checking in automatically in this way.

Facebook Places Integration

Because Loopt is not focused on checkins alone, it has decided to fully integrate with Facebook Places instead of competing with the social media giant’s burgeoning geo-location product.

"Our view is that [Facebook Places] is a stupid thing to fight,” Altman says. “Let's take it for granted that Facebook is going to become the checkin hub. But then let’s also say that checkins by themselves are commoditized and by themselves are also not that interesting, so we have access to this huge amount of data. What can we do with that? How can we build data on top of that? And that's been our focus."

Loopt added Facebook Places integration in October, quickly doubling its usage metrics in the first month. The integration allows Loopt users to see their Facebook friends’ locations and their Loopt friends’ locations on the same map. It also lets them know where their Facebook friends have been in the same way that they can see where their Loopt friends’ have been.

Meanwhile, the integration gives Loopt a more complete view of its users’ social graphs.

Automatic Checkins + Facebook Places = A Better Deals Product

Both automatic checkins and Facebook Places play a crucial role in Loopt’s latest endeavor: real-time deals. The company launched this feature at SXSW Interactive after experimenting with about 30 different kind of deals within its Loopt Star app.

“Of all the things that we tried — we did checkin deals, loyalty deals, lots and lots of things — the deals that worked best were what we call flash deals,” Altman said. “They were these time and location limited, high value deals that are pushed to the user. Those were the three things that we learned really make mobile deals work. You have to have all three of them.”

Altman points to a deal from Virgin America that ran on Loopt Star as a perfect example. The deal offered two-for-one tickets to Mexico to users who checked in at special Virgin America taco trucks in San Francisco and Los Angeles between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on August 31. It also converted Loopt Star users into buyers at a rate 10 times greater than that of other deals achieved on the app.

Other flash deals, Altman says, could help restaurants fill tables during down times or help sell tickets close to showtime.

Loopt is not alone in pursuing deals that help sell businesses’ perishable inventories. LivingSocial and Groupon are both testing similar concepts with their own apps.

But Loopt is hoping that its automatic checkins will give it the edge in contacting users with deals that are relevant to their current locations. Combined with Facebook Places, the company also has a broader look at what kind of places Loopt users and their friends like to go, which makes it easier to target them with deals that are appealing.

“We have the data for targeting. We know where users go,” Altman says. “But most of all, we know where users go all of the time.”

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: checkins, deals, lbs, location, loopt, startup

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Those reports were wrong. It turns out, Firefox 4 was downloaded 7.1 million times in its first day. In fact, in the first 48 hours of release, Mozilla racked up more than 15.85 million downloads.

Over at the Mozilla blog, the team put together an infographic detailing the first 48 hours of activity. Downloads peaked at 10,200 per minute and averaged 91.7 downloads per second. That kind of leaves IE 9′s 27 downloads per second figure in the dust, doesn’t it?

The team at Pingdom put together their own Firefox infographic, this time showcasing the lead-up to Firefox 4. the infographic details the browser’s timeline, marketshare and assorted usage stats.

Firefox has more than 400 million users worldwide and has been downloaded more than 1.35 billion times since 2004.

Although the web browser has only increased in importance since Firefox 1.0 was released in 2004, many users and Mashable readers have expressed indifference or even disinterest in Firefox 4. The desktop browser wars are still going strong; however, most of us would agree the real battle is on mobile devices and tablets. It’s an issue I discussed at length with Dan Benjamin on a recent segment our podcast, Briefly Awesome.

The number of people who downloaded Firefox 4 in the last 24 hours, however, indicates to me that the desktop is still an area of great importance for the web and its ecosystems.

Are you one of the 15.85 million Firefox 4 downloaders? Let us know your experience in the comments.

More About: Firefox, Firefox 4, infographic, infographics, web browsers

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Name: Sendoid

Quick Pitch: Sendoid allows for instant and private large file transfer in the browser.

Genius Idea: Peer-to-peer file transfer.

With the sudden rise of Chatroulette, the world was exposed, for better or for worse, to the peer-to-peer possibilities of real time media flow protocol (RTMFP) technology — the technology that establishes a direct connection between two individuals.

Sendoid, a Y Combinator startup, is applying the same peer-to-peer technology to a far less visually arresting purpose: file transfer. The peer-to-peer system, which forgoes cloud or server storage entirely, lets users transfer gigantic files in the browser in seconds and at no cost.

Veteran file-transfer service YouSendIt charges the user $14 to move a 100 MB file, with the transfer taking about 24 minutes, as Sendoid co-founder John Egan said during the startup’s Demo Days presentation. The same file is transferred in 35 seconds free of charge via Sendoid.

With this in-browser transfer experience, the user selects a file and gets a link to share with the recipient. Upon receipt of the peer link, the recipient is securely connected to the sender’s machine, and the file is transferred directly from the sender to the receiver without passing through Sendoid’s servers. It’s this peer-to-peer exchange that makes Sendoid so fast.

Sendoid’s browser-based file transfer service maxes out for files around 1 GB, but the startup also offers a desktop application for transferring files of unlimited size. There’s no cost for either option, and Sendoid has no plans to introduce fees based on file size or transfer frequency. “It shouldn’t cost money to send a 1 GB file,” says Egan. “It just doesn’t make sense anymore. The technology has caught up.”

The file transfer experience heretofore has been clunky, client-based, slow and expensive for end users. Plus, Sendoid believes the demand for sending larger files, especially in the form of high resolution digital photographs, is growing. For these reasons, Egan and fellow co-founder Zac Morris believe the startup is launching at just the right time.

“The technology is here now to move large amounts of data inexpensively,” says Egan. “And this is about the moment in time when file sizes for consumers are crossing the threshold [in size] and are no longer able to be transferred through traditional means.”

Sendoid has moved roughly 250,000 files — an early sign that Egan’s predictions about changing consumer behaviors are fairly accurate.

The just-launched startup is currently operating on seed funding from the accelerator program, but it’s currently in talks with several interested investors and will likely raise a substantial round in the weeks ahead. Eventually, Sendoid will introduce for-charge premium features that provide additional security or support file grouping.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Fred-D

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: bizspark, file transfer, sendoid, spark-of-genius, y combinator

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Most of us have no qualms about making purchases via mobile, and the vast majority of us use the same phone for business and personal use — two common vulnerabilities in web security.

Yet in spite of these yellow flags, few of us use phone-locking passwords and duplicate the same passwords for mobile apps that we use on our desktops.

The survey [PDF] in question comes from security firm AVG and research and consulting firm The Ponemon Institute.

One key finding we mentioned was the crossover between business and personal use of the same device. Around 84% of consumers use the same smartphone for both professional and personal tasks. In those cases, if the user’s phone ever becomes lost or compromised, the amount of risk is automatically doubled, since both kinds of private and confidential data could be accessed.

When it comes to the kind of data that puts consumers at further risk, 66% of respondents said they kept personal and personally identifiable data (such as an email address, name, contact lists, photos, videos, anniversary and personal dates, etc.) on their phones. And 23% of respondents also said they stored passwords on their phones.

And we’re not as wary as we should be about mobile viruses, either. In fact, more consumers are bothered by mobile ads than by malware. Roughly 67% of consumers surveyed said they were concerned about receiving marketing ads and promotions, but just 44% said they were worried about the possibility of a mobile virus attack.

According to the survey, 66% of respondents have made at least one purchase on their phone, 38% make payments on their phones and 14% do mobile banking. A full 12% have been the target of attempted mobile payment fraud. Yet a mere 6% do a monthly check of their cell phone bill, and only 8% check their phone statement when it’s unusually high.

And in spite of all these security risks, less than half of consumers in this survey used keypad locks or passwords to secure their mobile devices, and only 29% said they have thought about using a mobile anti-virus application.

Take a look at the man-or-woman-on-the-street clips below, and in the comments, let us know what you’re doing about your own mobile security.

More About: Mobile 2.0, security

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The network, working with Mogreet, is asking consumers to text “happy” to 21534, which returns to them a video featuring the show’s stars. Videos are updated every Wednesday when the show airs. The clip then shows up on each user’s Facebook wall. (See image below.)

The idea, like that behind any social media campaign, is to give influencers — who have so far been targeted with a back-page ad in Maxim with more traditional media placement coming — some social currency, which they can spread among their various networks to create buzz for the show.

One difference, which makes mobile more of a component, is the tune-in factor: The final message will roll out on 9:25 EST on April 13, five minutes before the premiere airs. Although many of the tech-savvy users targeted in the mobile campaign are likely to be time-shifted viewers, Gary Shanas, vice president of media strategy at ABC, says he thinks with the proper messaging, such consumers can be persuaded to tune in. “We’re optimistic if they’re around at that time, they’ll turn on their TVs,” he says.

Of course, ABC’s not the first network to try to spur viewing via mobile activity. MTV launched its controversial Skins program with a group texting campaign back in December.

More About: abc, facebook, Mobile 2.0

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The paywall will be implemented in stages throughout the hour, a Times spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Readers who wish to continue reading more than 20 articles per month and who want to have access to full Times content on their mobile and/or tablet devices will then be able to choose between three different plans at NYTimes.com/access:

• $15 for four weeks of access to NYTimes.com and a mobile phone app.
• $20 for four weeks of access to NYTimes.com and its iPad app.
• $35 for four weeks of access to all of the above.

Print subscribers to the Times and the International Herald Tribune will continue to have access to all of the Times‘ digital offerings at no additional charge. 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‘ smartphone and tablet applications, without paying. In addition, non-subscribers will have access to articles found through search (limited to five per day from major search engines), blogs and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, even if they have exceeded their 20-article reading limit. 

The paywall has been in place in Canada since it was first announced March 17.

In addition, the Times confirmed a report that it had dropped its case against @freeNYTimes, a Twitter feed designed to help readers circumvent the forthcoming paywall.

The publisher asked Twitter earlier this week to disable the account because it was in violation of the Times trademark. The account has since removed the Times‘ logo from its profile photo, and the Times has relinquished its request.

Before:

After:

“We want our content to be shared, but if it’s being done in a way that uses our trademark that we’re not comfortable with, we’re going to talk to [the violators] about it,” a spokesperson explained. “[The people behind the account] have changed the way it’s identified, so we’re letting it ago,” she added.

More About: new york times, paywall, twitter

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And with that, I will cease and desist with all coverage of this phenomena — unless something of note happens… Like if Sleigh Bells decides to cover “Gang Fight.” Which would be rad.

Happy Friday, everyone! Never fear, Saturday is just around the corner!

"Saturday"

Tamar Weinberg: Because this parody needs as many views as the original.

Rebecca Black, "Friday" (Brock's Dub)

Matt Silverman: This one's my new fav.

Rebecca Black, "Friday" as Interpreted by a Bad Lip Reader

Zachary Sniderman: Probably the only way I can even like this song a little bit. "How am I going to show this cowboy I'm alive?"

The Cure, "Friday I'm In Love"

Amy-Mae Elliott: In my youth I sang this at a country and western karaoke night. It went down like the proverbial lead balloon.

Conan O'Brien, "Thursday"

Sarah Kessler: Thursday. So under-rated.

Fridays

Todd Wasserman: Here's a young Larry David & a young Michael Richards in a somewhat-funny sketch from the long-defunct ABC show Fridays, which was that network's response to Saturday Night Live. It takes a bit too long (about two minutes) to get to the punchline, but it's not bad and sort of gives a hint of what David would later do on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Friday, Best of Chris Tucker

Adam Ostrow: I'll go with the "Best of Chris Tucker" from the movie Friday. NSFW

Epic Mullet Guy Covers Rebecca Black's "Friday"

Brian Hernandez: Mullet!!!

NES, Friday the 13th Ending

Ada Ospina: My love for Friday and NES combined (although I've never beat the game).

Death Metal "Friday"

Jenn Van Grove: Me me me so excited about this much angrier version.

"Days of the Week (clap clap!)" [to the tune of the Addams Family]

Ben Parr: This is what Rebecca Black should have sung.

ABC's TGIF Theme (1991)

Josh Catone: It's Friday night. We all know what that means. TV really peaked in the '90s.

Rebecca Black, "Friday" (cover)

Erica Swallow: Friday! Fried egg!

Rebecca Black, "Friday" (Music Video Parody)

Erica Swallow: Hey, wow. Some good may come from this... this cover sounds beautiful.

More About: Friday, humor, music, pop culture, Rebecca Black, viral video, youtube

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Social media search — the ability to tap into thousands of real-time updates — has long been a hot topic. It opens up endless opportunities for market and competitor research, content inspiration and, obviously, network building.

In this post, we’ll aim to tackle some more advanced social search functionality so that you can make the most out of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Twitter

Background information

Twitter search can be accessed from your Twitter home page, as well as from a separate subdomain. Twitter search focuses on real-time results; however, Twitter has introduced important algorithm changes that push particularly hot and “promoted” tweets above the real-time results.

Advanced search:

The official Twitter search is a powerful tool. From there (as well as by using search operators) you can:

• Adjust your query (exclude any word/force any word/force the exact match, etc.).
• Set the language of search results.
• Filter search results by user name (to see tweets from a user or mentioning some user).
• Set the local filter (to see tweets near a location).
• Play with emotional coloring (using the smile emoticons) as well as search for tweeted questions.
• Include or exclude retweets.
• Restrict results to those containing links.

While the above options are certainly effective, the most useful one is hidden.

Twitter Advanced Search Operator: Filter Out Links

Both Twitter Advanced Search and twitter.com/search offer easy ways to only show tweets that contain links. However, because most tweets already contain links, in many cases the searchers are most likely to look for the opposite: a way to see tweets that have no links in order to filter out numerous updates around the same popular URL. This option is invaluable for real Twitter conversations.

To filter out all tweets containing links, you need to use -filter:links operator within your search query. The minus sign is crucial:

As you can see, it can be a handy way to find great quotes, sincere opinions, reviews and discussions.

Facebook

Background information:

Before we get into detail, let’s make it clear what exactly we are talking about here. Facebook has three huge search platforms. We are interested in two of them:

• People search: Contact search (facebook.com/srch.php) and advanced friend search (facebook.com/find-friends/browser/). For the full list of ways to find people, refer to this older Mashable article on finding long lost friends on Facebook.
• Auto-complete search was previously showing results from your friends, and is now pulling results from your extended network (friends of your friends).
• Facebook advanced search (facebook.com/search.php) is the extended version of Auto-complete search and is what you land on if you click the See more results link in the Auto-Complete drop-down.

Advanced search

The only way you can filter results is by type: People, Pages, Groups, Apps, Events, Web Results (powered by Bing), updates from friends or any update made public.

Limitations

It’s important to remember some things about Facebook search:

• It is unpredictable. Facebook search relies heavily on your friends and friends of your friends, so you never know what other users see for your search query. It’s like Google personalized search, but with a stronger reliance on social connections over any other ranking factors.
• It relies on exact match and lacks advanced operators (and thus flexibility). Unlike Twitter search, Facebook gives you no freedom with your query. You can’t exclude one word while including another one. You can’t filter results by location and so forth.

Facebook Advanced Search Operator

Facebook search relies too much on exact matches. For any two words, you will only see results that contain both of your terms. But what if I want to see combined results for two words used in the query? Luckily, there’s a hidden operator. For example, twitter | facebook search will trigger results containing either “twitter” or “facebook” (or both):



Twitter tips | facebook tips will list either “twitter tips” or “facebook tips” (or both):



The same operator works for the auto-complete drop-down, which means you can see much more varied results there as well:



This supported operator gives at least some freedom in controlling your search results’ proximity and variety. Let’s hope Facebook will eventually come up with more.

---

LinkedIn

---

Background Information

LinkedIn has a well-developed search platform that is broken into six independent sections: People, Updates, Jobs, Companies, Answers and Groups. All of these sections offer mixed suggestions (possible results from several sections) as you type.



Advanced search

Each of the above sections has a huge range of advanced search options, listed below:

• People: Filter results by location, relationship, (past) industry and school. More options are available for premium members.
• Updates: Filter results by your connection level, see updates from your immediate network, from friends of your friends or your third-level network, as well as set the time range, location, etc.
• Jobs: Filter results by how fresh they are, experience required, industry, etc.
• Companies: Filter results by location, industry, relation, company size, fortune, etc.
• Answers: Filter by categories. You can add multiple categories.
• Groups: Filter by category and language.

With such a variety of options, you are unlikely to ever need any more of them. However, there are some really handy Boolean operators, which can make search even more efficient.

LinkedIn Search Boolean Operators

Exclude any term while staying within your topic. For example: blogging -coach. Compare the results below:



Combine two search terms within one search if you, for example, want to find people who mention both “blogging” and “marketing” in their profiles:



Choose to see at least one of your terms within search results. This one is similar to Facebook’s operator mentioned above. For instance, search for blogger OR freelance writer:



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Final Word


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I hope these “hidden” social search operators will open up new exciting opportunities for you and will inspire you to get more creative with searching Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Please share your own secret search tricks in the comments below.

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Interested in more Social Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.



Image courtesy of Flickr, andercismo

More About: facebook, linkedin, Search, social media, social media for social good, social media search, social search, twitter

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It’s nearly the weekend, which means that it’s nearly time to make bad decisions, likely with phone in hand. While the tech world can’t stop you from shamelessly making out with that girl in that dive bar, it can wipe away all graphic mentions of how you did so from your Twitter stream.

Enter Last Night Never Happened [iTunes link], a rather well-made novelty iPhone/iPad/iPod touch app from 22seeds. The app’s purpose? It deletes posts, photos, comments, tweets and direct messages from your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Unfortunately, you can’t delete as much from Facebook as you might like — merely comments and photos.

Upon waking up — mysteriously covered in nacho cheese, a markered curse scrawled across your forehead — fire up the app and choose to cleanse either Facebook or Twitter. (You’ll have to connect the app to both accounts.)

You can then choose how far back you want to erase your nefarious activity, from one hour to 48 (for those who enjoy a bender). Choose which postings you want to delete (Facebook Photos and comments, tweets, and DMs) and then say “bye, bye” to your mistakes. You can even replace your ill-fated digital messages with a custom (tamer) post.

Use this in concert with The Social Media Sobriety Test, then go forth and mess up!

[via Laughing Squid]

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Egan Snow

More About: apple, humor, iphone, iPod Touch, pop culture

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Group deals have become a popular way to attract new customers and boost sales. While this phenomenon started with marketing service providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial, it has expanded to such diverse businesses as Facebook and The New York Times. The group buying market is now estimated at $4 billion.

As businesses consider adding group deals to their marketing mix, many are looking for ways to create and offer deals on their own. Creating your own group deals rather than using a marketing services provider gives you a greater level of control over program details, and lets you to retain all the upside on the increased customer volume. It also allows you to base programs on your own customer preferences, and track the performance of your campaigns to improve future deals. You can also extend the group dynamic beyond products to surveys, giveaways and more.

Some companies have tested the group deal waters by using Facebook’s social plugins — such as the "Like" button — to allow fans to vote on which products should be discounted or offered. Others are using third-party social marketing technologies to create their own Groupon-style social offers.

However you approach the mechanics, it pays to think about the strategy behind your group deal programs. Here are ideas for structuring your own group deals.

1. Engage Customers in Deal Selection

Making deals interactive is a great way to encourage sharing. Ask customers to vote on deals or offers they like best, then reward them for sharing the results. An added benefit is that the deal you’re offering is one your audience will value.

For example, StyleFactory, a crowdsourcing site for home decor, uses the Facebook "Like" button on individual products on its site to allow shoppers to choose which products should be produced and which products should be offered at a discount. The site encourages shoppers to share its products on Facebook and Twitter to help “tip” the deals. When a user “Likes” a product, Facebook creates a Fan Page for that product that only StyleFactory administrators can see. Through that page, StyleFactory can push out updates to people who liked the product about the status of a deal.

2. Protect Your Margins

Too much of a good thing — in this case, customers — can be a bad thing if you can't manage the influx of business that group buying will bring you. As NPR recently reported, businesses can be overwhelmed by shoppers eager to cash in on the deal and may not have the staff or the stock to fulfill the offers.

Limit offers to a specific type of product or category so that you don't suffer from a run on inventory. You can also limit the number of coupons to be issued, which has the positive effect of highlighting the exclusivity of the deal. Of course, if you use your own infrastructure and website to create deals, you protect a greater share of your margin.

Once you've tested the power of group offers for your own business, pay attention to what your customers tell you about your deals. Get ready to adjust offers, such as amount of discounts and timing, depending on how well your offers perform.

3. Expand Offers Beyond Product Discounts

Consider offering other rewards that customers might find valuable. For example, if you’re running a contest or sweepstakes, offer additional sweepstakes entries to customers who share the offer with their friends.

Movieline.com did just that in a recent promotion around this year’s Academy Awards. The site offered sweepstakes entries for a MacBook Air and an iPod to people who selected their picks for the Oscars and shared their selections with their social networks. These people then received additional entries when their friends chose and shared their own picks. It's like getting your customers to do your marketing for you.

Online travel community TripAlertz, which adopted a "Groupon for travel" approach to travel sales, is using a group raffle to promote one of its high-profile deals: A 30-minute journey to the edge of space. Each time a person spends a dollar or refers a friend to the site, it counts as an entry into the space trip sweepstakes.

4. Reward Your Best Customers with Special Offers

Just as the airlines do for frequent fliers, you should reward good customers for their loyalty. If they're frequent buyers, offer them steeper discounts or deals on exclusive products. Think like Gilt Groupe, which gives priority access to its members and even more benefits to its best customers. With this strategy, you create a spectrum of customer value, where you can give bigger benefits to and reward your best customers in return for a higher level of engagement.

5. Don't Do Social Offers in a Vacuum

Don't limit group deal offers to social networks. Get the word out via your website and blog as well as advertising and in-store signage. Antivirus software provider McAfee is taking this approach for its online store group offers, using SEO-generated web traffic, large media buys, email blasts, and Facebook Pages together to drive significant traffic to their offers.

A Final Word

Group-based offers should become an important new part of your overall marketing strategy. Learn what works and what does not, and make sure offers can integrate properly with your marketing strategy. If you run a successful offer that actually hurts your business, that's not a great outcome.

What tips can you recommend? Have you taken the plunge into group buying? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kutaytanir

More About: business, group buying, MARKETING, social media

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To help raise money for disaster relief efforts in Japan, Universal Music Group has assembled a who’s who of the music world for a benefit album called Songs for Japan, which hit iTunes Friday. It includes an exclusive remix of Lady Gaga’s latest chart-topping single, “Born This Way.”

The 38-track album [iTunes link] costs $9.99 and features popular tunes in original, remastered, live or acoustic formats from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Bieber, Eminem, Katy Perry and other superstars (see full list below).

Worldwide proceeds from album downloads will go to the Japanese Red Cross Society to provide immediate assistance to people affected by the March 11 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The participating artists, their labels and music publishers waived their royalties, meaning every cent from each album download helps survivors.

This global initiative — one of the many new ways people can help Japan — is akin to the star-studded fundraising efforts following the destructive 2010 earthquake in Haiti when celebrities joined forces for a telethon and a new “We Are The World” charity single.

What do you think of the Songs for Japan lineup? Let us know in the comments.

Track listing

• John Lennon — “Imagine” (Remastered)
• U2 — “Walk On”
• Bob Dylan — “Shelter From The Storm”
• Red Hot Chili Peppers — “Around The World” (Live)
• Lady Gaga — “Born This Way” (Starsmith remix)
• Beyonce — “Irreplaceable”
• Bruno Mars — “Talking To The Moon” (Acoustic piano version)
• Katy Perry — “Firework”
• Rihanna — “Only Girl (In The World)”
• Justin Timberlake — “Like I Love You”
• Madonna — “Miles Away” (Live)
• David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland — “When Love Takes Over”
• Eminem featuring Rihanna — “Love The Way You Lie” (Clean version)
• Bruce Springsteen — “Human Touch”
• Josh Groban — “Awake” (Live)
• Keith Urban — “Better Life”
• Black Eyed Peas — “One Tribe”
• Pink — “Sober”
• Cee Lo Green — “It’s Ok”
• Lady Antebellum — “I Run To You”
• Bon Jovi — “What Do You Got?”
• Foo Fighters — “My Hero”
• R.E.M. — “Man On The Moon” (Live)
• Nicki Minaj — “Save Me” (Clean version)
• Sade — “By Your Side”
• Michael Buble — “Hold On”
• Justin Bieber — “Pray” (Acoustic)
• Adele — “Make You Feel My Love”
• Enya — “If I Could Be Where You Are”
• Elton John — “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”
• John Mayer — “Waiting On The World To Change”
• Queen — “Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)” (Remastered)
• Kings Of Leon — “Use Somebody”
• Sting — “Fragile” (Live)
• Leona Lewis — “Better In Time”
• Ne-Yo — “One In A Million”
• Shakira — “Whenever, Wherever”
• Norah Jones — “Sunrise”

More About: itunes, japan, japan earthquake, justin bieber, Lady Gaga, music, social good

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Ecommerce is a booming business in the U.S. and across the globe — and it’s not slowing down anytime soon.

This infographic, from online coupon aggregator My Coupon Codes, shows the online buying market, illustrating what, where and just how much people are buying online.

The data is based on a 2010 Nielsen survey of more than 27,000 Internet users from North America, South America, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.

The study revealed that online reviews are playing an increasingly important role in purchasing decisions; 57% of online respondents consider reviews prior to purchase, particularly for cars, software and consumer electronics; and 40% of participants said they would not even buy electronics without consulting online reviews beforehand.

[via My Coupon Codes]

More About: e-commerce, infographic, Nielsen

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These are questions that keep social media strategists awake at night (or maybe just me). So at Mashable, we decided to take a look at our own data and see how user behavior compares between Facebook and Twitter, the two social media sites that generate the most referral traffic to Mashable.com.

After pulling three months worth of our social data and calculating the click-per-share (CPS), it appears that users on Twitter are more likely to share an article rather than read it, whereas users on Facebook click on more articles than they share. According to our social data, Twitter received roughly 0.38 clicks per tweet, whereas Facebook received 3.31 clicks per engagement (the number of times people posted a Mashable link to Facebook through an action on a social plugin or through a Wall post). This would mean that a Facebook action gets roughly 8.7x more clicks than a tweet.

Calculating the Click-Per-Share

Before we get into the why, I want to quickly explain the numbers and some potential discrepancies. First, I want to emphasize that these results are not conclusive but may instead by representative of Mashable’s unique audience.

For some context, Mashable receives roughly 20% of its visits from social media sites, with Twitter and Facebook accounting for 14% of those referred visits. I calculated the click-per-share for Twitter after looking at the number of total retweets Mashable has received in the last three months. To give you an idea, we average roughly 124,000 retweets per day for our main @Mashable account, which has 2.2 million followers. These numbers include both RTs and the native Twitter.com retweets across Twitter.com and third-party applications.

Here is where the tricky part comes in: We can only accurately separate the clicks that take place on Twitter.com, as third-party apps are bundled with other platforms these links are shared on. To compensate for this discrepancy, we adjusted the clicks number based on Sysomos research, which recently concluded that 58% of tweets come from official Twitter applications, 35.4% of which are Twitter.com. Based on these numbers, we calculated that each tweet receives 0.38 clicks per tweet.

For Facebook, we looked at the total number of actions on Facebook that result in Mashable links for the past three months. This includes likes, shares, comments and links being posted to one’s Wall. Looking at Facebook.com clicks on those links, we determined that each action received roughly 3.31 clicks. Both of these calculations were compared and compiled based off internal tracking numbers used from both platforms’ APIs and clicks on our bit.ly links, which includes those shared by Mashable and our readers, with numbers from our referral analytics.

As an aside, Facebook and Twitter visitors also spent 29% more time on Mashable.com and viewed 20% more pages than visitors arriving via search engines.

Are Shares More Valuable than Tweets?

Though Eventbrite’s experience is that Facebook “Likes” are more profitable than tweets, with news content it’s not that simple. But the data may suggest that comparing user activity on Facebook and Twitter — two very different social environments and userbases — may be a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. You have to consider the differences between the way content is displayed on each platform. On Twitter, it is a real-time stream with text and a link, occupying fewer pixels on a screen. The majority of tweets are uniform, and for a user, one tweet can get lost in a fast-moving stream.

Facebook’s News Feed, however, is driven based on algorithms that take into account previous engagement and your social graph. Further, story links typically include a user’s comment, with a headline of the story, thumbnail and blurb. This takes up more real estate in the feed. But engagement activity has a short life on Facebook as well, with less than 20% of likes occurring after 24 hours.

In general, within Mashable’s audience, the number of tweets vs. actions on Facebook was far higher, which makes sense considering there are nearly 100 million tweets posted per day, 25% of them containing links. However, it also might be a result of our distribution on the two different platforms (Twitter: 2.2 million vs. Facebook: 460,000+). It’s also worth considering that Facebook has far more users (nearing 600 million) and sees roughly 1 billion pieces of content (news stories, photos, links, etc.) shared each day, with an average user having 130 friends.

The recent “Like Log Study” by Yahoo Labs examined the Facebook distribution of top media companies, and estimated that there are roughly 10 Facebook “likes” per 1,000 pageviews. It also found that on Facebook, frequency of publishing to Facebook didn’t matter in terms of attracting actions, and that the majority of actions came from a few stories that performed really well. On Twitter, most active users have fewer connections.

The point is these two platforms are very different in their user interactions, which results in a disparity of clicks on stories between the two, at least for Mashable.com. Because we have such a unique audience, we’d love to know if others are finding a similar disparity in their click-per-share on Facebook and Twitter. Please share your findings in the comments below.

More About: facebook, journalism, News, social media, twitter

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The addition, announced today, means Cherokee speakers can now make it their default language for searches, and help keep the language alive. Google also introduced an on-screen keyboard option. In practice, this means anyone who can read and write Cherokee can look up anything on Google. Users can change their language setting to Cherokee here.

Cherokee, an Iroquoian language, did not have a written form until the early 19th century, when it got a syllabary (a set of written symbols to represent syllables) writing system. The Cherokee Nation has about 300,000 members, though only about 20,000 people speak the Cherokee language.

"I believe that efforts like those of Google are essential to keeping our language alive," Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith said in a statement. "We have been working hard to get our young people interested in learning our Native tongue, but we cannot be successful unless they can read and write in the medium of their era -– all the digital devices that are currently so popular."

With this latest addition, Google now supports 146 interface languages and encourages users to sign up for Google in Your Language to make a case for interfaces in other endangered languages.

Google made similar additions of other North American native languages Maya and Nahuatl last year.

More About: Cherokee, Google

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As civil unrest continues to sweep across the Middle East and North Africa, citizens are turning to social media and the Internet to communicate, assemble and rally support. But this is riskier than it may seem, and has landed users in jail.

Access, which bills itself as a “new global movement for digital freedom,” wants to help educate citizens in the Middle East and North Africa about the realities and risks involved with online communication. We spoke with Brett Solomon, executive director at Access, about the new document and the organization’s goals.

The Mission: Educate

Because of this growing recognition, Solomon says that “governments are increasing resources dedicated to online censorship and security.” For citizens turned activists, understanding this reality becomes vital.

“In the heightened moments of political crisis, the focus is on the goal instead of the process,” says Solomon. That means activists become more focused on getting the message and living in the moment rather than taking risks into account. Access aims to keep the process intact even at these heightened moments.

A Guide for Us All

This recognition has led to more education about best practices in keeping communications more secure and more private online. Sites including Twitter, Facebook and Google have introduced options to let users login via HTTPS. This encrypts the data stream and can protect what interlopers are able to access.

The guide that Access helped put together is available in both English and Arabic, and the organization has received offers to translate it into eight other languages. The target audience may be in the Middle East and North Africa, but the document is also a good primer for general web users who want the most secure experience.

I asked Solomon about the risks involved in helping to spread the document. While Access and its contributors took great pains to make sure the document is educational and apolitical — it is not written with the stated goal of furthering a revolutionary ideology — dictators are hardly going to be pleased that this sort of education is getting out.

Solomon says that he doesn’t know of any place where mere possession of such a document is a punishable offense. Of course, that doesn’t mean possessing it is necessarily a good idea. So Access is using social media, mirrors and other back channels to disseminate the document to as many people as possible.

The Documents

More About: accessnow.org, bahrain, Egypt, facebook revolution, libya, mena, middle east, north africa, online security, Yemen

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“We want to do one thing and do it well,” says Utopic CEO and co-founder Jüri Kaljundi. “That one thing is to find good and interesting content via friends and social circles.”

Utopic, released in public beta two weeks ago, sits on the same social swing set with iPad app Flipboard, already a popular kid on the playground, and the Facebook newspaper PostPost. Its offering is mostly web-based and delivers on the single purpose promise by surfacing trending and relevant music, video and photos from a user’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube connections.

New users need only connect their social accounts, and Utopic will highlight the hottest hits in a visually pleasing content montage. Users can check out popular photos, watch trending YouTube videos or listen to tracks, and sort by content type for a filtered look at what their friends are sharing and talking about. The experience also allows the user to like, favorite and share content on Facebook and Twitter.

Utopic is a self-learning system that learns from the user’s activity, considers what friends and friends of friends are sharing and posting, and even factors in global trends to create an elastic experience that evolves with time.

The self-learning and backend data capture and analysis features are what Kaljundi believes set Utopic apart from the competition. “Utopic is not just a UI play,” he says. “Even for just 1,000 users, we have collected more than 3 million links they and their friends have shared, retweeted or liked. This can open interesting possibilities in the future for trend analysis.”

Trend analysis factors into the startup’s future plans. Utopic, which Kaljundi assures me is more than just a hobby project, has raised a small amount of funding — $70,000 to be exact — from a few European angels. Notably, Skype’s founding engineer Ahti Heinla is one of them.

Utopic’s beta product will evolve to include more social site integrations, and the founders are looking at raising more funding to help finance faster growth.

More About: facebook, personalized news, social news, twitter, utopic, youtube

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Not to worry. There are plenty of solutions that can help keep your kit safe on the go, and we’ve found 10 top anti-theft products for you. Whether you have a tendency to leave your laptop in a coffee shop or your camera bag in a cloakroom, or you just want to keep your data secure wherever you may be, we’ve got some options that will help you out.

Could you use a few more items in your personal security arsenal? Take a look through the gallery. Let us know any tried and tested devices you’ve used in the comments below.

1. Clippa Bag Hanger

A sturdy alloy hoop that flicks open to become a portable non-slip hanger. You can hook it onto bars, table edges, chairs, shopping carts, etc, to make sure your bag -- and more importantly, its precious contents -- is always in view.

Cost: $32

2. Ogon RFID Wallets

This wallet's special aluminium casing shields up to 10 cards from RFID scanners and data-stripping demagnetization. Better to be safe than sorry.

Cost: $49

3. Kensington Notebook Locks

Take the worry out of walking away from your laptop in public places with a laptop lock. This will keep your portable PC secure long enough for you to nip to the restroom or top up your coffee.

Cost: From $24.99

4. Mandylion Password Manager

Make password management less of a hassle -- and much more secure -- with the Mandylion Password Manager. This device auto-generates super-strong passwords and can manage up to 50 log-in records at once.

Cost: $49.99

5. PacSafe bag Protectors

Available in a range of sizes,this adjustable, high-tensile, stainless steel "eXomesh" cage system attaches itself to a fixed object offering protection for all kinds of bags against tampering and theft.

Cost: From $64.99

6. 3M Laptop Privacy Screens

Are you worried about people looking at your screen when you're working on the go? Make sure they don't see anything important with a privacy screen that seriously limits your laptop's viewing angle.

Cost: From around $25

7. iPad Lock and Security Case

The iPad lock is designed for retail environments, but we'd imagine some consumers will find a use for it -- even if it's just to stop colleagues friends or family members pilfering their tablet.

Cost: $69.95

8. IronKey USB Drives

Boasting military-standard encryption and a tamper-resistant, waterproof metal case, IronKey's USB drives are for anyone who is cost-me-my-job serious about data loss.

Cost: From $79

9. Helix Personal Safe

If you don't trust hotel safes, or want a secure storage solution in the office or staff-room, a personal safe with a tether provides a small-scale solution and more importantly, peace of mind.

Cost: $18.59

10. Hand Paper Shredder

Don't let good security habits lapse just because you're away from home. This handheld shredder can destroy sensitive documents with a twist of your wrists.

Cost: $23.99

More Tech Resources from Mashable

- Travel Tech: 10 Must-Pack Gadgets for Geeks on the Go
- Desktop Farming: 10 Gadgets for Growing a Cubicle Garden
- 10 Great Desktop Gadgets to Quench Your Thirst
- 10 Boredom-Busting USB Desk Toys
- 5 Beautiful Keyboards to Spice Up Your Boring Desk

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, oonal

More About: anti-theft gadgets, gadgets, gallery, List, Lists, security gadgets, tech

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YouTube recently announced it is launching a beta version of what it calls youtube.com/create, a section of the site where YouTubers can use Xtranormal, Stupeflix and GoAnimate to make videos for upload.

The above is good news for everyone who has had the ardent dream of creating their own YouTube show, but lacked a camera (or editing skills — although that hasn’t stopped some people).

If you’re not familiar, GoAnimate and Xtranormal Movie Maker allow users to make animated videos with prepackaged characters (my favorite of this ilk being “Hipster Dating”), while Stupeflix lets you make slideshows from your photos, clips, pictures, etc.

Now get animated! The world has a dearth of robots discussing kittens.

More About: goanimate, Stupeflix, Xtranormal, youtube

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In fact, according to Billboard, although the song is currently at number 57 on its Hot Digital Songs, it has only been played 12 times on the radio (on the 1,200 stations Billboard uses to compile Hot 100 Airplay) from March 16 to 22.

For comparison’s sake, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” — the video for which has fewer views than “Friday” on YouTube — is currently at number one on the Hot 100 Airplay chart.

Before you start scoffing, “No one listens to the radio anymore,” remember that study from earlier in the week about music recommendation services: 57% of people surveyed rely on word-of-mouth/the radio to find new music.

So chances are, there’s still a goodly number of people out there whose brains are still unencumbered by the phrase: “Party, party, party.”

Furthermore — and this is all conjecture, so feel free to call me out if Black wins “Best New Album” at next year’s Grammy Awards — I would assert that this lack of airplay affirms the fact that Black’s jam doesn’t fit within the realm known as “popular music.” It doesn’t even fit within the parody music realm, members of which include the Gregory Brothers, whose “Bed Intruder” song also made it onto the Billboard charts.

While the Brothers remixed a viral video to make a new song, showcasing both their skills as well as Antoine Dodson’s original words, Black merely created an accidental viral video that became popular due to its lack of polish. In short: The Gregorys were trying to be funny.

So what is “Friday” if it’s not a straight-up parody video? I would call it an addition to a genre that could be called “memecore,” a collection of songs that become popular because of their shareability and ridiculousness. Songs like this are not listened to on one’s iPod while one peacefully reflects on the week gone by, but, rather at parties, on Facebook walls and in Twitter streams. And once their novelty wears off… well, the weekend’s over.

Granted, there are exceptions to the rule in this musical realm — William Hung managed to attain some sort of commercial fame from his American Idol audition — but looking at the way people are listening to this song (on YouTube, largely, and packaged within parodies), it does not appear as if Black’s jam has any real, foreseeable staying power.

More About: Billboard, humor, pop culture, Rebecca Black, viral video

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Just last month, IBM's Watson, a "question-answer computer," defeated two humans on the game show Jeopardy. The computer played against the top two Jeopardy mega champions: Ken Jennings (who consecutively won games for almost six months) and Brad Rutter (who won the largest sum of money in the game's history). Watson's ability to decipher complex clues and respond both quickly and accurately, as a human would, is a testament to the viability of natural language processing for commercial applications. Technologists have long regarded this sort of artificial intelligence as a holy grail because it allows machines to converse more naturally with people, letting us ask questions instead of typing keywords.

At the same time that natural language processing has been coming of age, a consumer led revolution has been occurring. A generation of users, including but not limited to digital natives, are living in an online world where blogs, texts, tweets, ecommerce and social networks are the way of life. This web-savvy consumer prefers both their personal and business engagements to be conducted online, with minimal human contact.

The confluence of these two events has given rise to the commercial use of intelligent virtual agents in the customer service arena with impressive benefits for both the consumer and the business. Progressive companies such as eBay, L'Oreal, H&R Block and SFR are already successfully using virtual agent solutions not only to keep operational costs in control but also to improve service accessibility and to provide the best possible customer experience to today's web-savvy customer.

These aren't the virtual agents of old. Today's contemporary, intelligent virtual agents are represented by sophisticated, animated avatars that are available 24/7 and emulate the knowledge and performance of a company's best support agent. Whether accessed via a public or password protected online help page, a mobile device or Facebook, intelligent virtual agents serve as the first point of contact for the online consumer. Leveraging advanced natural language processing and predictive intent analysis, they are able to immediately engage the user, respond quickly and consistently to users' online requests and interactively guide them to the right outcome through a personalized, conversational channel.

Beyond serving as a simple information resource, virtual agents can now address sophisticated online service needs such as troubleshooting a technical support issue, canceling orders or upgrading services. The success rate for intelligent virtual agents is high, in that they often provide the answers and services customers are looking for, and when they don’t, they can intelligently direct the user to the right human representative. Virtual agents can eliminate the frustration of multiple service hand-offs that require a consumer to re-state their problem over and over to each department.

Recent data within my company's customer base show that 50% of its customers prefer virtual agents as the first line of service. For "digital natives" or "Generation C" customers, this can be as high as 70%. Intelligent virtual agents offer an equally compelling ROI for businesses that deploy them. Not only do they earn higher customer satisfaction ratings, but the cost of a virtual agent channel can be one-tenth the cost of traditional human service channels. They often result in a more efficient service center by deflecting a number of call center issues that no longer require human intervention, and improve live customer service by freeing up representatives for more complex or urgent issues. And customers that have used a virtual agent prior to being routed to live chat generally have higher satisfaction with the overall service experience.

The virtual agent value proposition is so compelling for both the online consumer and the business provider that leading analyst firm Gartner Research predicts that virtual agents will be the standard technology for customer interactions in three to five years. Intelligent virtual agents that are easily and cost-effectively deployed — unlike the experimental Watson — are clearly ushering in the age of digital customer relationships.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kemie

More About: artificial intelligence, customer service, virtual agents

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Whether you crave a cupcake, fancy a fruity flan or are desirous of a delicious dessert, we’ve found six apps that offer some scrumptious recipes for you to have a crack at.

So, don your apron and take a look through the app selection in this tasty gallery. Let us know which apps you’ve cooked up a storm with in the comments below.

1. Chocolate - Irresistible Recipes

With 55 choc-tastic recipes, this is a good buy for any chocoholics out there. Categories include sweets and drinks as well as the more standard hot and cold desserts, cakes and cookies.

Ingredients for recipes are listed clearly, and the method section includes some step-by-step photos which you can choose to play in a slideshow for a quick overview.

With easy no-baking recipes right through to advanced treats for special occassions, you'll be sure to find something to tempt you.

Extra features are thin on the ground (a little disappointing for the price tag) but there are the useful options to favorite and email recipes.

Cost: $2.99

2. BBC Good Food Cake Recipes

This is a fantastic example of how a foodie app can go beyond the ebook experience. In addition to a solid library of yummy cakes to make, Good Food Cake Recipes boasts some well-thought out features.

These include the ability to add a recipe to the app's shopping list (the ingredients are then, rather handily, listed in order of supermarket sections), a built-in timer, and the ability to show recipes in both metric and standard measurments.

The photography is nice, the instructions are clear, and other extras - which include nutritional info, tutorial videos, trouble shooting, tips, and the option to share recipes on Facebook and Twitter, make this a great app, and well worth the two dollar download.

Cost: $1.99

3. iCooking Desserts

What we like about this app, aside from its reasonable price tag ($0.99 for 58 recipes) is the international flavor of the recipe selection.

As well as more traditional Western desserts, the app offers a few choice options from Asia and Africa, giving you the chance to try something new.

Recipes are divided into three sections -- a photo of the finished product, a list of ingredients and a preparation guide.

Extras include the ability to email recipes, add to favorites, and the handy option to add your own recipes to the app.

Cost: $0.99

4. Cookie Nook

Cookie monsters will love this app, which offers around 25 cookie recipes in a simple, no fuss format with fun graphics.

You can select the type of cookie you'd like to make from the baking tray display, then tap through to see a list of ingredients, easy-to-understand directions, and nutritional info.

Cost: $1.99

5. The Photo Cookbook – Baking

The most expensive app we've picked is also the best looking, with over 500 photographs illustrating 60 recipes.

With a designer layout to match, the Photo Cookbook is a pleasure to browse. It offers a photo view of ingredients as well as great step-by-step pics.

In addition to some delicious sweet options, this app also covers a range of breads and great savoury baking recipes, so is a good all-rounder for more adventurous cooks.

Cost: $4.99

6. Cupcake Recipes

Ideal for baking beginners or kids, this app offers a wide range of cupcake variations, many of them offering easy baking options using cake mixes rather than ingredients from scratch.

Sadly, with no photos, the illustrations are none-the-less fun and the ingredients lists and instructions are simple and clear.

More experienced cupcake makers may still find interest in this app's more unusual recipes -- "Maharani," chai, and even chocolate zucchini!

Cost: $1.99

More About: app store, apps, baking, cooking, Food And Drink, iphone, iphone apps, List, Lists

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Think you’ve got what it takes to get a laugh on the InterTubes? Prove it.

This week, we’re putting our precious Mashable Comic in your hands. Write a hilarious caption or some lulzy dialogue for the illustration below, and next Friday you may just see your name in lights … er, pixels.

We’ll select the funniest entry (and perhaps some runners-up) and publish it for all the world to quietly snicker at in between Facebook stalking sessions.

Mashable Comics are illustrated every week by Kiersten Essenpreis, a New York-based artist who draws and blogs at YouFail.com.

How To Enter the Contest:

• Tweet your comic dialogue with the hashtag #mashcomic and a link to this post, OR
• Submit your dialogue in the comments below and share this post on Facebook

Submit your comic dialogue by Wednesday, March 30 at 12 p.m. ET. Please use your real identity in the submission so that we may contact you via email, Twitter or Facebook to let you know you’ve won. The winning dialogue will appear in this comic on Friday, April 1.

More Mashable Comics:

- HOW TO: Survive Those Awkward Online Moments
- Pitching 101
- Viral Video Stars: Where Are They Now?
- HOW TO: Pick the Right Super Power for a Modern World
- Watson vs. Jeopardy: The Early Years

More About: comics, contest, dogs, humor, ipad, mashable comics

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There has been a huge outpouring of support for Japan as it weathers the aftershocks and aftereffects of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Social media has been no slouch with nearly countless campaigns aimed at donating money, supplies or lending support in any way possible.

Mashable brought you seven other ways to help, and we’re back with even more ways that you can assist the on-going relief efforts. Some are as lighthearted as a T-shirt from Snoop Dogg while others support on-the-ground rescue workers. Let us know how you’re helping.

How You Can Help

#Hands4Japan on Crowdrise

Two Japanese-born venture capitalist brothers started a campaign on Crowdrise in support of the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter. They’ve offered to match donations until the campaign reaches its total goal of $1 million. In just four days, the brothers and their family raised more than $225,000 (with matching donations), at time of writing that number is nearly $325,000. The family said most of those donations were for amounts of less than $50.

Twestival

Twesitval is an international charity event that uses social media to help organize local meet-ups around the world. This year’s Twestival had several meet-ups planned for Japan but those had to be canceled because of the need for help following the earthquake and tsunami.

Instead, Twestival opened a special channel of its site where people can donate to Save the Children’s Japan Initiative.

PayPal

The popular online payment site has offered to credit transactional fees incurred from March 11 to April 10 to any registered charity in the U.S. or Canada raising funds to aid Japan relief. (For the U.S., any 501(c)(3), and for Canada, any under the Canada Revenue Agency). PayPal members can also donate directly here (U.S.) or here (Canada).

Clothing & Shopping

Threadless, the online clothing vendor jumped into the effort by running a short, crowdsourced contest to come up with a T-shirt design that could be sold to help Japan. The winner, based on the theme “sunrise,” is available for $20. All of the net proceeds from the sale will be donated to the American Red Cross‘ Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund. The shirt is part of Threadless Causes, an initiative to help non-profits and causes through its sales.

Snoop Dogg and Neff Headwear have teamed up to help Japan by creating a T-shirt in which all profits will be donated to Operation U.S.A.. The pair are hoping to raise $50,000 in funds in one week.

Shop for Japan is a one-day global shopping event happening Saturday, March 26. Businesses can sign up at the site to pledge a percent of their revenue from that day to go toward charity. The site also has a list and map of participating stores.

#TweetDrive

This social good community has organized #TweetDrive4Japan.

The campaign is an international series of tweets-ups from March 29 to 31 where 100% of ticket sales from each event will go to the Save the Children‘s emergency Japan relief fund.

Text-to-Donate

Ever since Haiti was hit by an earthquake, text-to-donate has been a huge trend — and a huge help — in times of need. The Japan crisis has spawned several options:

• MobileCause has shortcodes for the Salvation Army (text “JAPAN” to “80888 for a $10 donation), the International Medical Corps (text “MED” to “80888″ for a $10 donation), and ADRA Relief (text “SUPPORT” to “85944″ for a $10 donation).
• Mobile Giving Foundation promises a 100% pass-through of all funds for shortcodes to Save the Children Federation (text "JAPAN" or "TSUNAMI" to 20222 to donate $10), World Vision (text "4JAPAN" or "4TSUNAMI" to 20222 to donate $10), the Mercy Corps (text "MERCY" to 25383 to donate $10), the Canadian Red Cross (text "ASIA" or "ASIE" to 30333 to donate $5), and Canadian Salvation Army (text "QUAKE" to 45678 to donate $10).
• Obopay lets consumers make larger donations (in the hundreds) that, according to Obopay, reach organizations faster than carrier-based text-to-donate plans. Donors can text “Japan” to “48510″ where they’re taken to a mobile payment site complete with electronic tax receipt.

JiWire

JiWire has offered it’s location-based ad network of Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile apps by running a campaign in support for the Red Cross. The ads will let users know about nearby Red Cross locations as well as options to donate through text.

It’s a nice example of an ad platform maximizing its reach and geo-location possibilities to serve a good cause.

Tumblr

Tumblr recently announced the addition of Japanese as the newest language option for the blogging network. Users will be able to change their language setting on the preferences page, opening new opportunities for outreach for native-speakers and supporters abroad. Users can also keep up with news from Japan on Tumblr’s #Japan tag page or donate to the Red Cross from the dashboard. Donating will unlock a Limited Edition Japanese Tumblr Logo and the company will match donations up to $15,000.

The last time Tumblr opened special features was its all-black background to promote awareness and raise funds following the Gulf oil leak.

Next Steps

Before donating to any sites or organizations, make sure you do a little bit of homework. It’s important to know about any transaction fees and to double check that the site will actually donate to the (registered) charity as promised. Disasters are unfortunately prime targets for scammers who try and play off the public’s genuine sympathy and desire to help. Organizations like the Red Cross are generally above-board and provide upfront information on how your money is being spent. It’s important to help in times of crisis, but it’s also important to make sure your support isn’t being misused.

There are definitely other ways to help the relief efforts outside of the options above. Please share in the comments your hashtags, newsfeeds, non-profits, campaigns or any other ways to help Japan.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Yashar.Mans

More About: charity, Earthquake, japan, japan earthquake, non-profit, social good, trending, tsunami

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This means that Android app developers will be able to charge users for goods and services from within the app, which opens up new, lucrative sources of income. One iOS-based study showed that in-app purchases yield more revenue than mobile ads, with average monthly revenue per user being close to $8, compared to roughly $1 of revenue per user from advertising.

Developers will be able to upload apps during the test development phase, but they won’t be able to publish them until the full launch of the feature, which is slated to happen next week.

More About: android, Google, in-app purchases, Mobile 2.0, platform, smartphone

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Musing about missing socks in the laundry hasn’t been a fresh idea since Jerry Seinfeld tackled the subject in his stand-up days, but General Electric is giving the concept another spin for the social media age.

The company recently launched a fake advocacy campaign called L.O.S.S., the Laundered and Orphaned Sock Society, replete with a dedicated website, some dryly humorous videos (see the latest, above) and, of course, Facebook and Twitter components. The digital effort is a roundabout plug for the company’s new line of washers and dryers.

Though GE has recently let itself be the subject of barbed references on NBC’s 30 Rock (GE owns 49% of NBC; Comcast owns the rest), the company isn’t known for its sense of humor. But, like many other brands, GE has seen the explosion of social media as an opportunity to let its hair down a bit.

Molly Mandell, client partner at LBi US, the ad agency behind the effort, says LBi’s creative team threw out a lot of ideas, but the GE people really liked the sock concept, which gently lampoons the earnestness of advocacy campaigns, outlining, for instance the “harrowing conditions” that create sock loss. “They were happy with a clever campaign that was different,” Mandell says.

The idea was also perfect fodder for mommy bloggers, many of whom were seeded with the initial YouTube videos and then given fake press releases from L.O.S.S. Apparently pleased with the amount of engagement that the campaign has received, GE is planning to introduce a digital billboard for L.O.S.S. in New York’s Times Square.

More About: advertising, General Electric, LBi, MARKETING

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Podcasts are among the oldest types of syndicated content on the web. Yet the format remains a popular choice among content producers looking to connect with a wide audience. Audio podcasts were the norm for many years, but video has taken the podcasting world to new heights.

In this article, I’ll to walk you through the steps necessary to ensure your video podcast gets off to a great start. We’ll cover everything from conception to technical set up, promotion, and monetization. Every podcast is different, but this guide should help you navigate your way through the process and hopefully spark some broadcasting inspiration.

1. Choose a Topic You’re Passionate About

Before you hit record, it’s a good idea to give serious thought to why you’re starting this podcast in the first place. And don’t take this step lightly! Starting a podcast takes a lot of hard work (maybe more than you think). Not everybody is cut out for it. But we’ll assume that you are.

A good starting point is to figure out which topic you can talk about naturally and endlessly. Your true passion. We all have one. What’s yours? A good measure is to do a test show with no notes or preparation whatsoever. Can you fill 30 to 60 minutes just talking about your topic off the top of your head and make it interesting? Good! You found your topic.

Now, search iTunes for other podcasts in your niche. Did you choose a crowded niche with many existing podcasts? Try to think of ways to differentiate your show from theirs. For example, you can choose a sub-niche with a more targeted audience.

2. Brand Your Podcast

Now that you’ve chosen your topic, it’s time to start crafting your podcast. Just like creating products or services, your podcast is its own brand. Branding your podcast starts with choosing a good name.

Pick something that is both memorable and speaks to your topic/audience. It’s my opinion that direct, descriptive names work better than abstract or overly creative names. Before you can hook your audience with your killer smile and groundbreaking content, you’ll need them to tune in. That’s why your podcast name needs to jump out and grab them. Remember that much of your audience will be discovering your podcast via iTunes or Google search. So it’s a good idea to include a keyword or two within your show’s name.

Next, you’ll need a logo. For a podcast, it’s important to come up with an attention grabbing logo and a show image for your iTunes listing. Again, it’s about crafting your brand to stand out in iTunes podcast search results.

3. Format and Structure

Will this be an audio or video podcast? It’s my belief that video podcasts have an easier time gaining traction with an audience simply because they are more personal. Aside from offering valuable content, you’re selling your personality, and video is the most effective and authentic way to do that. It’s a good idea to offer an audio-only version of the podcast for those who prefer to listen and don’t want to download bulky video files.

Now we need to structure the show. Let’s start with your schedule. Once a week? Once a month? Whatever schedule you choose, be sure to keep it consistent. A quick way to lose audience members is to release a show four weeks in a row, then go on hiatus for several months. People appreciate a regular schedule, and even a regular day of the week.

Finally, you need to choose your show length. Break it down into segments and allot a certain amount of time to each segment. I believe 30 to 50 minutes is a good length for an episode as it’s long enough to pack in quality, in-depth conversation, and short enough to fit within the typical work commute. Some prefer quick episodes of under 20 minutes each. Again, consistency is key. You don’t want to set your audience’s expectation for 45 minute episodes, then do a 15 minute episode.

4. Plan Your Content

Now it’s time to map out the most important aspect of your podcast, the content. Podcasts are no exception to the adage “content is king.” Your topics, conversation flow, personality, and overall engagement are what will ultimately determine the success of your podcast.

It’s a good idea to keep a running list of show topics. As soon as an idea strikes, note it down and plan it for an upcoming show. One way my co-host Dave and I come up with topics is to simply recognize when we stumble upon a great topic for a show. We’ll be having a spontaneous chat, talking shop about freelancing and web design, when suddenly it’s apparent we’ve hit on something interesting and relevant for the show. Write it down.

Some podcasts break each episode into segments. If your niche is somehow tied to current events, it may be a good idea to cover news topics as part of your show. Perhaps a guest interview is a main component in your format. Plan for each of these segments and keep in mind the timing and flow of each.

Finally, it’s beneficial to think about some kind of script for your show. This will be different for everyone. My preference is to have a few sentences written out beforehand to use as the introduction to the show; something to get it off to a strong start and introduce the topic and guest properly. The rest of the show’s topics are planned using short bullet lists indicating which points I want to hit on.

The idea is to make sure I’m covering what I want to cover, while keeping the delivery natural and somewhat improvised. Again, it’s up to you to find the right balance.

5. Record, Broadcast, and Edit Your Podcast

Now on to some of the technical aspects for creating a video podcast. Surprisingly, there are quite a few tools needed to piece together a working podcast. Here are the ones we use:

Blue Yeti USB Condensor Microphone — I strongly recommend investing in a quality microphone. It will drastically improve the audio quality of your show. The Yeti USB mic is reasonably priced and it delivers great sound.

Skype — All of our shows start with a Skype video chat. Now that Skype 5 includes the ability to have video conference calls, it’s a perfect choice for having a three-way conversation. Plus, the sheer popularity of Skype makes it easy on our guests who are already comfortable using the platform for online conversation.

ScreenFlow — This is a great app for recording and editing screencasts. It’s easy to use and packs in powerful editing features.

Blip.tv — With the finished recording edited and exported, it’s time to put it up on the web and submit it to the iTunes podcast directory. Luckily, Blip.tv makes all of this very easy. Plus it’s got great reporting tools to check the popularity and reach of your podcast.

BoinxTV — BoinxTV serves as our virtual control room, allowing us to produce a live web broadcast for our show. It has features to allow for quick switching between cameras and screens and other visual effects like captions and transitions.

Justin.tv or UStream — Both are viable options for when you want to broadcast live on the web. We feed our output from BoinxTV into one of these services to fire up the live show. We then embed the video and chat room right on our website for the audience to participate live.

CamTwist — This little utility allows us to route the video feed between BoinxTV and Justin.tv or UStream.

Audio Hijack Pro — This fun little app is used to route the audio from Skype into BoinxTV. Be sure to check out the psychedelic sound effects you can apply in the process!

Skype Call Recorder — This plugin for Skype adds functionality to let you record a Skype call. This can be useful if you’re only interested in making a recorded podcast (not broadcasting live). Plus, it comes packaged with handy utilities for splitting a conversation into individual movie files, and stripping an MP3 audio file from your movie file.

6. Grow Your Audience

With your podcast created and released to the world, now comes the hard part: promoting your podcast and growing your audience.

I’m a believer that if you focus your efforts on creating the most interesting and engaging content possible, you will naturally attract an audience and grow a community around your work. But there are a few things you can do to help move things forward:

• Have a solid website. Something professional, clean and simple. The focus is your podcast, so let the design of your site support that. I recommend going with a quality, premium WordPress theme to get up and running quickly.
• Build community around your podcast. Encourage your audience to participate in your live chat (if you have one). Ask for feedback, conduct surveys and polls, keep a close eye on your podcast’s analytics (via blip.tv). Know which topics garner the most interest from your audience and let your audience help shape the direction of your podcast.
• Sharing is great. Ratings are better. As with any web content, social media integration is a must for your podcast to help your audience spread the word faster. If your podcast is largely distributed via iTunes, you’ll want to encourage subscribers to rate and review your podcast to help boost its standing within the iTunes directory. This is one of the best ways for your audience to help you get discovered.

7. Monetize Your Podcast

Just like starting a blog, starting a podcast should be about quality, authentic content first and monetization second. You can’t have the latter without the former. That said, there are several methods to monetize your podcast which are worth considering:

• Try to sell advertising placements on your show. Just like advertising on a blog, this requires a significant audience in order to bring in real revenue. It also runs the risk of turning off your audience who may not want to hear plugs in between quality content.
• A more viable approach, and one that may be more lucrative, is to simply build your personal brand using your podcast as the medium. Hosting a podcast — particularly a video podcast — is a great way share your personality and let your ideas shine. Today’s wisdom dictates that promoting your personal brand can translate into building a prosperous business. Just watch any video by Gary Vaynerchuk and I think you’ll agree.

Have Fun!

I hope you find this guide helpful as you plan your video podcast. No matter what niche you’re in — live or recorded, video or audio — the key is to have fun with it and let your passion for the topic shine through. Now press record and start podcasting!

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, Graffizone, and Flickr, borman818.

More About: audio, List, Lists, podcast, social media, tips, trending, video, video podcast

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Google Delays Open Source Access to Honeycomb

Google is holding off on the distribution of its source code for its tablet-based operating system, Android 3.0 Honeycomb, for the "foreseeable future.” Historically, Google has provided device makers like HTC, Motorola and Samsung with advance access to the Android OS before extending access to the broader development community to modify the code.

BlackBerry PlayBook Will Run Android Apps

When the long-awaited BlackBerry tablet hits the U.S. and Canada on April 19, it will also support apps written for Android 2.3 and BlackBerry Java.

Color To Release New Version Shortly

Color, the dynamic photo-sharing app that made a splash with its launch Wednesday, is already hard at work on the next version of its app. The update will directly address user criticism about the app's apparent lack of utility when a user's friends aren't nearby.

Further News

• Members of the UK Parliament have been granted official approval to tweet updates from the House of Commons.
• Facebook is wrestling for the rights of 21 domain names that include the term 'facebook', including KillFacebook.com and FacebookStuff.com.
• "OMG," "LOL" and the symbol for "heart" have all been added to the Oxford English Dictionary Online.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

More About: android, blackberry playbook, color, first to know series, Google, honeycomb

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Now, the Holland-based company Miniot has revealed a wooden cover that works on the same principle: Magnets help it align with the iPad’s screen, and it rolls up into a a cylinder that can be used to prop up the device for easier typing or for watching a movie.

Despite being made of wood, which gives it a high-end look that will appeal to a lot of users (Apple’s Smart Cover is available in polyurethane and leather, with a price of $39 and $69, respectively), the Miniot Cover has quite a reasonable price: €50 or $71.

Check out the video of the Miniot Cover in action, and let us know in the comments how you like the idea!

[via TUAW]

More About: cover, ipad, iPad 2, Miniot Cover, Smart Cover, wood

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