Mashable: Latest 11 News Updates - including “7 New Apps Worth Downloading This Week” |
- 7 New Apps Worth Downloading This Week
- Tips For Gallery-Worthy Instagram Pics
- LinkedIn Boot Camp [INFOGRAPHIC]
- 3 New Digital Takes On Gift Buying
- 45 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed
- Top 10 Tech This Week
- Carrier IQ Is Misunderstood, Not Evil
- Facebook iPhone App Updated to Fix Comments Bug
- Going Viral Visualized [INFOGRAPHIC]
- Car of the Future: Toyota Fun Vii Is a Pleasure Palace on Wheels [VIDEO]
- Top 6 Mashable Comments This Week
- 9 Ways to Improve Customer Communication on Your Website
| 7 New Apps Worth Downloading This Week Posted: 03 Dec 2011 02:31 PM PST Infinity Blade II     Infinity Blade II for iOS launched on Thursday and immediately soared to the top of the App Store's best sellers list. It's the first iOS game that takes advantage of the superior graphics capabilities of the iPhone 4S, and we're impressed. See our full hands-on review for the details. $6.99. Click here to view this gallery. With about 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store and an estimated 300,000 apps in the Android Market, finding the gems among the virtual haystack can be full time job. The good news is that it’s our full time job. We’ve trekked through the overly frivolous, the ugly and the downright impractical in our search for these seven recently launched apps in the slideshow above. We hope you enjoy this week’s top picks. Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, Jorge Quinteros More About: AirCassette, App.bg, apps, DailyModi, disney, Google, Infinity Blade 2, PlayModi, Santa, TED, weekly app roundup
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| Tips For Gallery-Worthy Instagram Pics Posted: 03 Dec 2011 02:05 PM PST   From Oct. 22-23, London’s East Gallery will be hosting the My World Shared photography exhibit, which may not seem unusual, until you learn that this will be the first exhibit ever curated to feature only Instagram pics. A community of passionate “Instagrammers” have launched the exhibit and a website that’s stocked with info for other Instagram addicts, like city-based groups, photo walks, and tips on how to become Most Popular, how to boost your profile, even “10 ways to make Instagram profitable.” If you’re looking to up the ante in Instagram yourself, we’ve rounded up a few tips on how to take better cellphone pics below. Snap away!
More About: How-To, instagram, photography
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| LinkedIn Boot Camp [INFOGRAPHIC] Posted: 03 Dec 2011 01:26 PM PST Even after 9 years in the social media stratosphere, LinkedIn is still an elusive platform to master. While there’s still only a fraction of LinkedIn users compared to Facebook, the platform boasts a highly targeted and engaged audience that is there for one purpose: business networking. Still, there’s a lot of moving parts to tend to before your LinkedIn-powered personal branding machine is ready for operation. Check out the infographic below to get the skinny on how to whip your LinkedIn into shape, and take a look at other career information in our weekly Job Search Series.   Infographic courtesy MindFlash Social Media Job ListingsEvery week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!
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| 3 New Digital Takes On Gift Buying Posted: 03 Dec 2011 01:03 PM PST   The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
With the holiday season launching in full force this week, we’ve focused on three startups that have created innovative digital solutions for buying gifts. GiftSimple helps groups collaborate on gifts that recipients actually want. Presentify.me turns daily deal vouchers into presentable gift certificates, and Barkbox sends your dog a new treat every month. GiftSimple: A Social Gift Registry for Any Occasion Quick Pitch: GiftSimple is a gift registry on Facebook. Genius Idea: Making it easy for Facebook friends to split the cost of shared gifts. Mashable’s Take: Your friends might roll their eyes if you create a department-store registry for your birthday party, but GiftSimple is hoping that the idea is more feasible if it lives on your Facebook profile and encourages group gifts. “Many people find it difficult to save up for a large-ticket item, and receiving contributions toward that purchase would really help; but organizing a group gift offline can be hassle,” says GiftSimple founder Jessica Lachs. “At the same time, we all get presents we don’t want.” GiftSimple, which launched earlier this week, allows users to create a gift list and post it to their Facebook walls. Their friends can easily chip in whatever amount they’d like toward the gift. Even if the recipient doesn’t raise the full amount of the gift, he or she can “cash out” at any time to collect the money raised. The startup collects a 3% fee on the total amount raised. Knocking out two big problems in gift giving — finding the right gift and coordinating group buying — at once is a good move. Startups such as LetsGiftIt, Shareagift, and SocialGift have all been working on one or the other of these problems, but none of them has pursued the solution of simply asking people what they want and then facilitating a collaborative gift. Presentify.me: A Tool For Turning Daily Deal Coupons Into Gifts Quick Pitch: Presentify.me customizes daily deal vouchers to make them attractive gift certificates. Genius Idea: Making daily deals presentable gifts. Mashable’s Take: You’ll buy a gift on sale without qualms, but when it comes to gift-wrapping a Groupon, you think twice. Presentify.me wants to cure you of this hesitation by making daily deal site coupons just as attractive as full-price gift certificates. The new site lets you choose an occasion-appropriate design for your vouchers, and it moves mention of the daily deal sites where you bought them to a discreet corner. Right now the voucher makeover wizard only works with deals from Tippr, Groupon, Deal-find, and GiltCity, and it only offers six gift certificate designs. More options in both categories are on the way. Presentify.me is an appealing service. We’ll definitely be using it this month. But whether or not it can turn its simple app into a business and fend off deal sites’ own efforts to turn deals into gifts is less certain. BarkBox: Birchbox for Dogs Quick Pitch: BarkBox is a monthly subscription service that caters to dogs. Genius Idea: Carving out a fresh niche in subscription services. Mashable’s Take: Man has been treating his best friend more and more like a fellow man for a long time. Dog bakeries? Check. Dog clothes? Yep. Winter coats? Of course. Doggie Daycare? There’s an app for that. So it’s only natural that Fido gets a holiday gift. And BarkBox wants to be the one that keeps on giving. The startup offers monthly shipments of dog goodies such as bones, treats, shampoos and leashes for a $25-per-month fee. It’s similar to the subscription services that Birchbox offers for women who dig makeup samples, Hoseanna offers for toiletries and Manpacks offers for men who don’t like to buy their own underpants. It also reminds us of Groupon’s massive wake, which has given the world daily deal sites for every niche (dogs included). We’re not sure how many subscription services the world needs, but BarkBox’s success is hanging on it being a high number. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, narvikk Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark  The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. More About: Barkbox, bizspark, Gifts, GiftSimple, Presentify.me, Startup Weekend Roundup For more Business coverage:
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| 45 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed Posted: 03 Dec 2011 12:49 PM PST   Now that Thanksgiving is over, the family is gone and that shopping frenzy might have worn you out a bit, it’s time to gear up for the next round of holidays. So kick back, relax and catch up on this week’s features roundup. We know you’re tired, so here is everything gathered nicely for you. This week at Mashable, we learned that gamer girls like to get it on and gamer guys are potentially emotionally unstable — a match made in heaven. Spotify revealed its new app platform, Facebook is going public and Android users are raising their eyebrows at a questionable app. Want more? Read on for further social media resources. Editor’s Picks
Social Media
For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Tech & Mobile
For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Business & Marketing
For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. More About: Business, Features Week In Review, List, Mobile, Social Media For more Media coverage:
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| Posted: 03 Dec 2011 11:58 AM PST 1. Traxxas XO-1 RC Model Car Who knew radio-controlled cars had gotten so sophisticated? The spectacular Traxxas XO-1's electric motor can zip this 27-inch-long pocket rocket from 0 to 100mph in 4.92 seconds. Its maker calls it "the world's fastest ready-to-race radio-controlled supercar." The $1,099.99 price might seem like a lot to the rest of us, but to RC car enthusiasts, it's a pittance. Click here to view this gallery. The world of technology and gadgets continued its explosive pace of innovation this week, with astonishing inventions making their mark on offices, home theaters, battlefields and even on your feet. Buckle up, because we’ve narrowed the field down to the best, brightest, fastest and most futuristic collection of the Top 10 Tech This Week you’ve ever seen. More About: Gadgets, Google, Top 10 Tech
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| Carrier IQ Is Misunderstood, Not Evil Posted: 03 Dec 2011 10:54 AM PST    Look out! Your phone knows what you're doing. It has your contacts, email messages, SMS text, pictures and video. It gets worse. Your carrier — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon — has to handle some of this information. You hit "send" and then their networks pass along personal email messages to your contacts. Some of these messages also contain your photos and even, if bandwidth permits, video. Horrifying, I know. Now for the worst possible news: Carrier IQ is also, possibly, running on your phone. It was put there by the manufacturers and carriers to help improve network and handset performance, and it can see everything you're doing. That's right — every action. It's watching. It doesn't stop there. Your computer also has software on it that knows every keystroke, every email and photo. It's called the operating system, and it basically runs everything. But who knows what it's doing with all it knows. Sometimes, you can tell, especially when it tries to help you. Say you're using universal search. How does that work, exactly? Well, it has to index everything on your hard drive and then maintain and update a database so you can find everything matching a keyword search. Some people install powerful system search software like Google Desktop, which can even index chats and instant messages. Smart systems, in other words, know pretty much everything about us. And when our computer or phone can't find what we need and acts, on occasion, like it doesn't know everything — like it can't connect the dots between our data and, say, our social and business connections — we get annoyed. Now, what Carrier IQ is doing is, to be fair, deeper than just pure data. It's watching, at least according to this research, all activity on the phone: Every keystroke and action. This must be a whole new level, right? What kind of software would look at system activity, user actions, which applications are running? Debugging software. From the moment I read about Carrier IQ’s explanation about what its software does and watched this video, I recognized it as pretty much run-of-the-mill debugging and diagnostic software. If you watch the video you’ll notice that while it is in fact recording virtually all activity, it would be nearly impossible for anyone without a programming degree to decipher it. The hieroglyphics spit out by Carrier IQ actually reminded me of code I had seen before. Not on an Android device or even another mobile phone, but on a PC and from a pretty long time ago. Back in the early days of Windows there was a diagnostic utility called Dr. Watson. On Windows 95 and 98, you could run it to collect system activity into a log file that, if you were savvy enough and had some of the right decoding tools, you could use to figure out what was triggering your system crashes. Yes, Windows users — well most in my industry, at least — were aware of Dr. Watson. However, on Windows NT, whether you were aware of it or not, Dr. Watson was running, watching and collecting errors — and potentially more. There were posts online about how to disable Dr. Watson on the OS, but it wasn't easy. You had to dive into Windows Registry. No one was ever harmed by what Watson collected, and the reason most people wanted to disable it was that some thought the doctor was slowing down their PCs. There is, of course, a big difference between good old Dr. Watson and Carrier IQ. Dr. Watson ran, primarily, on desk-bound computers (and early laptops). Carrier IQ runs in your pocket. You could lose your phone and whatever Carrier IQ has collected could be on there. A would-be thief then simply has to, well, unlock your phone, hope you don't remotely brick it, find the Carrier IQ log file, and then figure out a way to read Carrier IQ-speak. On the other hand, if Carrier IQ were removed from all phones — including yours — and a thief found one of them, he could still access all recent emails, contacts, and texts, view videos and photos and do a whole lot more, as long someone left the phone unlocked. (Admit it, you don’t always lock your phone). My point? This situation is way overblown and spiraling out of control. However, when I asked the relatively tech savvy Google+ audience why people didn't understand that complex systems are always running diagnostic software, they surprised me. Most sided with those who find the very existence of Carrier IQ on phone troubling. Many believe that Carrier IQ is collecting emails and SMS messages and passing them along to carriers (Carrier IQ says it’s not). They were also concerned that there’s no way to shut down the software or opt out. The last point is somewhat laughable. Do a Ctrl Alt Delete on your Windows computer sometime and look at the process tab. There are dozens of processes running on your computer at any given time, most of them likely unidentifiable to you. Microsoft runs some, other software and utilities you're running are responsible for the others. You didn't explicitly ask for those processes to run, but they come as part of the system or software you're using. You can shut any of them down, but at the risk of harming your computer. For carriers and handset manufacturers, Carrier IQ is very much like one of those processes. I bet it never even occurred to them that they should inform consumers, let alone offer a way to disable the diagnostic tool. Carrier IQ, though, is not blameless — and I think this whole mess would have disappeared in a hurry if Carrier IQ had not dropped a Cease and Desist order on researcher Trevor Eckhart, who discovered the diagnostic software, wrote a post about it and then and documented Carrier IQ’s abilities (virtually unstoppable, voracious tracking on an HTC Android phone) in video. That is, at least in some people's eyes, the act of a company that has something to hide. The reality is it's an act of a company that's not used to dealing with the public. Carrier IQ operates in the background and only deals directly with carriers and manufacturers. Now consumers are looking for ways to disable Carrier IQ on their phone, as if that will in some way improve their mobile experience or protect them from identity theft. This is misguided and in the end, could end up hurting more than it helps as Carrier IQ's carrier and manufacturer customers suddenly find themselves with far less diagnostic information and fewer avenues for measuring service and network quality. If service quality degrades, consumers will finally be harmed — but not by Carrier IQ. More About: Carrier IQ, smartphone, Wireless
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| Facebook iPhone App Updated to Fix Comments Bug Posted: 03 Dec 2011 10:34 AM PST   If you’re a heavy Facebook user on your iPhone, you’ve probably noticed every now and then that comments are displayed wrong. For instance, when you’ve just uploaded a new picture, sometimes Facebook displays comments on it that were received for other ones, mixing content up. An update is now available in the Apple iTunes App Store that addresses the comment bug. The Facebook iPhone app has now reached version 4.0.3 and just about the only thing we noticed (and that’s listed in the changelog) is the fact that it “fixes an issue that caused incorrect comments to be displayed for certain photos.” Follow the source link below or consult your iTunes/App Store apps to update your client. [via iTunes App Store] More About: apps, Facebook, iphone
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| Going Viral Visualized [INFOGRAPHIC] Posted: 03 Dec 2011 09:52 AM PST   The baby who laughs at ripping paper. The overdramatic chipmunk. Nyan Cat. These characters are forever immortalized in the world of viral Internet content. But what is it about these vastly different pieces of content that make them so ubiquitous and sharable? According to research by ProBlogger.com, whatever makes a video or meme go viral is mysterious, but also follows certain patterns. So if “going viral” is your goal, how can you optimize a campaign to transform into a Web meme goldmine? Smart money would select an environment where lots of group sharing is going on. Places such as Facebook and Twitter are no-brainers, but the value of Reddit as a veritable meme factory is on the rise. Combining the right design and tone with the proper platform is one of the trickiest parts of creating a successful viral campaign, but when it’s all aligned, success is more likely. What’s your favorite viral campaign? Let us know in the comments. Infographic designed by Voltier Digital More About: infographic, Meme, viral videos
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| Car of the Future: Toyota Fun Vii Is a Pleasure Palace on Wheels [VIDEO] Posted: 03 Dec 2011 08:51 AM PST Is this a car? Is it a smartphone? Is it a gaming machine? Yes to all three. The Toyota Fun Vii is a spectacular design concept unveiled at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show this week. The 13-foot-long three-seater’s interior and exterior are blank slates for whatever visuals you would like to wirelessly paint onto them in real time. And if you get too confused, there’s a holographic “navigation concierge” lady with a cute little hat to accompany you, guiding you around the vehicle’s futuristic features. She also helps you find your way from one place to another, which is probably effortless considering that the vehicle is networked with all the other cars on the road and drives itself. Check out this astonishing video, and then wonder along with us how long we’ll have to wait until we can sit in a car that drives itself, instantly converts into a video game, and acts like a super-smartphone on wheels. Come on Toyota, put some wings on it and we’ll finally have that long-anticipated flying car. [via Designboom] More About: Future Cars, Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota, YouTube For more Dev & Design coverage:
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| Top 6 Mashable Comments This Week Posted: 03 Dec 2011 07:52 AM PST   We’re back with another roundup of the top Mashable comments of the week. In our weekly roundup post, we showcase the week’s greatest comments on our site. We select thoughtful comments that engage the community and drive more conversation as well as those that make us laugh. This weeks comments were innovative, witty and fun to read. Here are this week's top comments on Mashable: Cyber Monday Humor Tom Bab adds some sarcastic humor about his Cyber Monday shopping experience. This year's U.S. online sales for Cyber Monday amounted to $1.25 billion, up 22% from 2010′s record highs. Comment originally posted on: Cyber Monday: 6 Years of Online Discounts [INFOGRAPHIC] Click here to view this gallery. If you haven’t commented on a Mashable article before, check out Mashable Follow, our content curation and social tool, as well as our comment guidelines to learn more. We’d love for you to join the conversation. We look forward to reading next week’s community comments! More About: comments, community, mashable follow, top comments For more Social Media coverage:
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| 9 Ways to Improve Customer Communication on Your Website Posted: 03 Dec 2011 07:07 AM PST   Daniel Alves is the design director for the small business web design division at the digital marketing and web design company, 352 Media Group. If you're like most business owners, getting leads online is the main reason you created a website in the first place. Sure, you may have a stellar SEO campaign, a beautiful design and an über low bounce rate, but without a well-planned contact strategy, you can't turn those pageviews into conversions. Online conversions aren't just for ecommerce websites. In fact, most businesses use their websites to initiate one-on-one conversations. By personally engaging a contact, you are more likely to turn that contact into a customer. So, what's the trick? First, you need to understand that most people don't want to give their phone numbers or email addresses to yet another website — the thought of spam is horrifying. And it's not just privacy hawks who shy away from contact forms; most websites only achieve a 2-3% conversion rate. Furthermore, people don't want to have to worry about waiting for a return phone call to address their problems or questions. They want to get the answers they need with as little effort as possible. Follow these nine tips to make your website design and customer service more approachable, and thus, gain the trust of more customers. Go with the Flow Website usability is built on convention. Follow tried and true design strategies to ensure that your users can move through your site as easily as possible. Remember, the less effort, the better.
Make It Easy A user must already overcome an internal battle in order to share her personal contact information. Your job is to remove as many obstacles as possible so that she makes the leap.
Be Reassuring Trust goes a long way with online clients. People fear that their contact information will get dumped into a huge database that marketers can access at will. By making your contact form unique, fun and reassuring, your user will know there's a human on the receiving end and, therefore, be more likely to share.
Offer Instant ChatInstant chat has been around for quite some time, but has traditionally only been used by the customer service departments of large Internet companies. Now, many low-cost services enable your users to reach you instantly wherever you are.
How has your company improved its contact forms and its customer service? Has it strengthened your business? Please share in the comments below. More About: Business, contributor, customer service, design, features, website design For more Business coverage:
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