Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Mashable: Latest 27 News Updates - including “Twitter 2012: Bigger and More Ads”

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Mashable: Latest 27 News Updates - including “Twitter 2012: Bigger and More Ads”

Twitter 2012: Bigger and More Ads

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 06:58 PM PST


People predicted rioting when Twitter decided to post ads within its feeds. However, those protests never materialized. Instead, Twitter was used to mobilize protests in the streets in Egypt, Yemen and Tunesia.

The two instances are related. As Twitter became a globally recognized entity, it also began efforts to monetize itself earnestly in 2011. As previously mentioned, Twitter’s successful introduction of advertising was one of the big social media marketing trends of the year. Despite warnings from some Twitter purists, users didn’t seem to mind more ads on Twitter, perhaps concluding that Twitter was, after all, a for-profit business.

Growth Via Advertising

Though many perceived Twitter’s 2011 ad rollout as an unalloyed success, eMarketer noted a few hiccups here and there. Twitter’s international expansion took longer than promised, and a self-serve ad product didn’t materialize until the end of the year — even then, for just a handful of advertisers.

Concerns aside, eMarketer is still bullish about Twitter’s prospects in the coming year. The researcher reckons that Twitter will post $259.9 million in revenues in 2012, an 86.3% jump from 2011. Debra Aho Williamson, the author of the report, wrote that although Twitter has a smaller audience than Facebook, marketers have posted “solid engagement rates” with Twitter’s ad products that outperform Facebook’s in some cases. (That’s fairly faint praise, however, since the click-through rates for Facebook are notoriously low. Facebook, however, has sought to reframe the argument by justly noting that CTRs are a poor measure of an ad’s success.)

Twitter doesn’t provide much transparency into its advertising performance, but some partners, notably EA, have touted an 11% engagement rate in the U.K. for a Promoted Trends campaign. Moreover, users don’t seem to mind ad products like Promoted Tweets, according to research from Lab42.

The onrush of advertising to Twitter isn’t just hype. It’s rare that a day goes by in which Twitter’s home page doesn’t sport a Promoted Tweet, Promoted Trend or Promoted Account by one advertiser or another. Twitter doesn’t divulge the pricing for such campaigns, but the Wall Street Journal pegged the price of a Promoted Tweet north of $100,000.

Now that the Twitter ad machine is up and running, the company is looking to expand its footprint. In September, Twitter opened a London office, its first international outpost for sales. That month, the company also began accepting political ads, broadening its variety of advertising.

With the company clearly on a growing path, the obvious question is whether an IPO is in the near future. Officially, at least, there are no such plans. “We can stay private and grow the business the way we want, as long as we want,” CEO Dick Costolo told The Mercury News in December. “We never think about or talk about when we want to go public.” (Twitter could not be reached for comment for this story.) Yet Twitter just bought a fancy new headquarters in San Francisco designed to accommodate far more than the company’s current 700 or so employees.

Possible Complications

Of course, there was once a time when MySpace was the next big thing, and Second Life appeared to be the marketing platform of the future. Twitter seems to be on a tear at the moment, but alas, things change. Though it seems unlikely, there’s a chance Twitter could jump the shark or experience a Netflix-like fall from grace.

How? For starters, Google+ could really take off and, realizing its SEO benefits, users and brands could begin focusing on the network more — at Twitter’s expense. Likewise, Facebook’s addition of subscriptions could usurp Twitter’s role as a celebrity platform. More celebs could follow Ashton Kutcher’s lead by leaving the tweeting to professionals, which would result in a duller experience all around. Brands, assessing the damage that Kenneth Cole and Chrysler suffered due to errant tweets, could decide it’s time to cut losses and shutter their sparsely followed accounts. Finally, Twitter might simple expire like any other fad, as users move on to something else.

Another possibility is that Twitter could get acquired and change in a fundamental way. Imagine, for instance, that Google decided to buy Twitter and absorb it into Google+. The post-IPO Facebook could also be a buyer.

Crazy, you say? Remember that YouTube was once a separate company as well.

While the scenario is plausible, the idea of a new competitor or a group of competitors stealing Twitter’s thunder seems far-fetched. Five years after its founding, Twitter is now a global brand name and a symbol of social media-enabled freedom. There simply will never be anything like Twitter again.

Image courtesy of Flickr, tantek

More About: features, Promoted Tweets, Social Media, Twitter, Twitter advertising

The 9 Oddest Job Interview Questions Asked at Tech Companies in 2011

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 06:49 PM PST

google interview

When sitting down for a job interview at a top U.S. tech company, you’d typically expect the interviewer to hammer you with questions testing your abilities, past history and knowledge of the company. You wouldn’t think it was the time or the place to start exploring solutions to world hunger, but that’s exactly what happened to one candidate looking to be a software developer at Amazon.

In Glassdoor‘s annual review of the top 25 oddball questions asked in job interviews in 2011, tech companies feature highly. Although there’s just one question from Google on the list, the Wall Street Journal recently profiled the search giant’s interview process, highlighting the trademark strangeness of some of the questions.

Google’s odd questions range from relatively straightforward mathematical brain teasers like, “Using only a four-minute hourglass and a seven-minute hourglass, measure exactly nine minutes–without the process taking longer than nine minutes,” to truly head-slapping queries such as, “A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?”

Google isn’t alone in this practice. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and many others have challenged the brains of prospective job candidates in some truly odd ways for a long time. Glassdoor has been publishing a compilation for only since 2009, but the idea has been around a lot longer than that.

The “oddball question,” of course, is meant to challenge the job candidate to think on his or her feet. It forces the interviewee to reach beyond prepared remarks and start engaging in problem solving on the spot. The best “weird” questions still have some relation to the kind of work the position entails. (For example, questions about finding the correct sequence could relate to jobs involving organizational systems.)

What’s the weirdest interview question you’ve ever gotten? Let us know in the comments, and browse the strangest interview questions from tech companies on Glassdoor’s list below.

“How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2:30 p.m. on a Friday?” — Asked at Google, Vendor Relations Manager candidate

“If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?” — Asked at Hewlett-Packard, Product Marketing Manager candidate

“Given 20 ‘destructible’ light bulbs (which break at a certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how do you determine the height that the light bulbs break?” — Asked at Qualcomm, Engineering candidate

“How would you cure world hunger?” — Asked at Amazon.com, Software Developer candidate

“You’re in a row boat, which is in a large tank filled with water. You have an anchor on board, which you throw overboard (the chain is long enough so the anchor rests completely on the bottom of the tank). Does the water level in the tank rise or fall?” — Asked at Tesla Motors, Mechanical Engineer candidate

“Please spell 'diverticulitis'.” — Asked at EMSI Engineering, Account Manager candidate

“You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?” — Asked at Epic Systems, Corporation Project Manager/Implementation Consultant candidate

“How do you feel about those jokers at Congress?” — Asked at Consolidated Electrical, Management Trainee candidate

“If you were a Microsoft Office program, which one would you be?” — Asked at Summit Racing Equipment, Ecommerce candidate

More About: amazon, glassdoor, Google, interview questions

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Dropbox Tests Automatic Camera Uploads

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 06:30 PM PST


Beta builds of the Dropbox software for Mac, Windows and Linux has added a nifty new feature to the cloud-storage service: Automatic photo uploads.

The new feature tries its hand at one of iCloud’s most appealing new features: Photo Stream.

With Photo Stream, Apple makes it easy to access photos from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch within iPhoto, Aperture or Windows Explorer automagically. This aids in backing photos up to your computer, as well as storing photos to the cloud.

The new Dropbox photo upload feature — which is currently available in the latest Experimental Forum Build of the desktop app — works in a similar manner.

Once enabled, plugging in a camera or memory card will give you the option of automatically importing the photographs and movies and then uploading that content directly to Dropbox.

I have my iPhone 4S setup not to connect to iPhoto/Aperture or any other camera utility, so I tested the new feature using an SD card from a Polaroid Z340 that we had around the office.

Upon inserting the card, I was greeted with this message:

As you can see, you can choose to automatically import photos from a particular device or opt to “never” import from that device.

Once you select “Start Import,” the process starts. All of the photos and videos on the SD card are imported to a newly created “Camera Uploads” folder within Dropbox. That folder is then synced with Dropbox’s servers.

The entire process is quick and seamless.

In the Dropbox forums, some users have complained about the feature — worrying that the feature will make it too easy for free users to burst past their account sizes. Others dislike the lack of granularity in choosing what files to upload and to what folder.

While we would certainly appreciate an option to select an upload location, rather than defaulting to “Camera Uploads,” we think this is a fantastic new feature.

For people like my mom — who avoids uploading her photos from her camera on a regular basis — this sort of tool would ensure that her photos stay backed up in at least one more location (in addition to using iCloud).

As someone who frequently uploads shots from my camera to Dropbox, especially when at live events, this feature will save one more step. My hope of hopes? That Dropbox and EyeFi can find a way to work together so that photos I take with my EyeFi card can upload directly to a Dropbox folder.

The feature is still in beta, so be prepared for some potential bugginess. Mac users who want to stay on the cutting-edge with Dropbox updates should check out the excellent MacDropUpdate utility.

[via Wired]

More About: cloud computing, cloud storage, Dropbox, icloud, Photo Stream, photo uploads

Google’s Flight Search Sparks Antitrust Fears

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 06:09 PM PST

groupon flight around the world

Google began positioning its new flight-finding feature at the top of general search results for airline booking information earlier this month. And its new competitors in the $110 billion online travel industry aren’t happy about the search giant crashing the party, according to a Tuesday Wall Street Journal report.

The charge: that Google is using its ubiquity in search to gain an unfair advantage on the rest of the industry. When users type in a travel query — “San Francisco to Los Angeles flights”, say — the first search result is a listing of the cheapest flights for the given trip. Beneath the chart is a link to “more Google flight search results.”

Results for other travel aggregators, such as Expedia and Kayak, now appear lower on the page — unless those companies pay to be part of the advertisements that precedes search results.

Kayak executive Robert Birge told the WSJ that Google has already shown “an explicit policy to intercept general search queries with their products,” so “their argument that they’re not engaging in anticompetitive practices doesn’t hold up to basic logic.”

It is the latest example of awkwardness — some would say impropriety — surrounding Google as the world’s dominant search engine expands into a swathe of online businesses such as shopping, video distribution and local deals. Google chairman Eric Schmidt has defended the company against complaints of unjust practices in antitrust hearings before U.S. Senate and European Union officials in recent months.

Kayak, which provides links directly to official airline sites where customers then book their actual flights, is most directly affected, but it isn’t alone. Google’s service provides links directly to airline sites — while services like Expedia and Orbitz book flights through their own site, then charge the airline companies for the transaction.

Bookings made via online agencies such as Expedia cost airlines more than $11 each, the WSJ reports, compared to just $1 each when booked on airlines’ own sites. Travel booking sites rely on Google for up to 20% of their traffic — so it’s easy to see why they would be upset about being pushed down the list of search results.

Google, meanwhile, says it lists links to flights as advertisements. It hasn’t revealed the worth of those ads.

The arrangement is an apparent windfall for airlines, since it directs travelers to their own sites and away from third-party bookers. Last year, sites that charge airlines for transactions handled almost a third of online flight bookings — worth more than $17 billion. Airlines for America, the U.S. trade association for airlines, declined Mashable‘s request for comment.

Expedia PR struck a positive tone with Mashable, writing in an email that the company “believes that continued innovation in travel is a positive for the industry, as long as it does not limit travelers’ access to the full scope of options.” The rep also listed several Expedia services that Google does not offer — at least, not yet.

Google said in an email to Mashable that its new tool is simply the latest in a series of services making life easier for consumers.

“When people come to Google looking for travel information, our goal is to show them the most relevant results as quickly as possible,” Google spokesman Sean Carlson wrote. “The response to our new flights feature has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re continuing to focus on developing and delivering the best possible experience for our users.”

Is Google abusing its search power, or is this simply a good situation for airlines and consumers? Is there any middle ground? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Expedia, Google, Kayak, online travel

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How Much Time Do We Really Spend on Facebook? [VIDEO]

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 05:29 PM PST


One in every seven minutes online and three out of every four minutes on social networking sites are spent on Facebook, according to a comScore report released Tuesday.

Twitter is on the rise, the report also said, increasing its user base 59% over the past year.

Which social network do you spend the most time on?

More About: mashable video, Newsy

Google’s New ‘YouTube Slam’ Creates Video Duels

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 04:56 PM PST


Google has officially unveiled YouTube Slam, an interactive video-discovery tool that randomly spits out two videos at time for one-on-one battles. Public voting determines the winners.

YouTube Slam is designed to get users to stumble upon content they might not otherwise see while surfing the site.

YouTube describes Slam as a “place for discovering talented amateur singers, the most adorable clips and the craziest videos on YouTube.” Users can play with Slam in five categories: bizarre, comedy, cute (see image below), dance and music.

Showdown winners will get featured on a leaderboard, Google software engineer Tomas Izo said in a blog post.

So what’s in it for you? When voting in a battle, you earn points for the selecting the video that is already the more popular of the two contestants, so you can “see how you stack up against other players at the end of each week.”

SEE ALSO: Mashable’s Cover Song Face-Off Competition

In a quick test of YouTube Slam, we noticed some questionable videos (i.e. ones with racial slurs and copyright infringements). YouTube appears to be addressing this issue with a “Flag as Inappropriate” button next to each voting button. The video pool for the categories will be repopulated each week, so offensive or infringing videos might be weeded out during that process.

Will you let YouTube Slam consume some of your time? Or will you toss this tool aside?

Bonus: YouTube in 2011

YouTube surpassed 1 trillion views in 2011, and these 10 videos were the most-watched ones, excluding clips from major music labels. Unsurprisingly, Rebecca Black’s “Friday” jam leads the charge.


1. "Friday" by Rebecca Black


Click here to view this gallery.

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Windows Phone Marketplace Passes 50,000 Apps

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 04:34 PM PST


It seems like only yesterday that the Windows Phone Marketplace hit 40,000 apps — actually, it was Nov. 17 — and now Microsoft’s mobile app store has just passed 50,000, according to All About Windows Phone.

Microsoft currently gives an official count of “more than 35,000″ apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, a company spokesperson told Mashable. In the past, Microsoft has said that it doesn’t count extremely simple apps such as wallpapers or multiple versions (i.e. a paid game that also provides a “lite” version) as individual apps, which may explain the large discrepancy between the official number and the estimate.

In either case, it’s a fraction of the number of apps in Apple’s App Store or the Android Market (about 600,000 and 500,000 apps, respectively). However, even though the number isn’t large by app-store standards, the Windows Phone Marketplace is growing rapidly. The platform hit 50,000 apps sooner than all platforms except iOS, in just 14 months, the report notes. It took Android 19 months to reach that mark.

Microsoft’s app store passed the milestone sooner than the site predicted, and it’s seen a strong uptick in the number of apps submitted and approved in the past few weeks. The number of apps is growing at a rate of 265 items per day (see the graph below).

windows phone uptick

All About Windows Phone chalks up the platform’s growth spurt to the increased availability of Windows Phones (the number of countries recently went up from 16 to 35) and the highly anticipated release of Nokia’s Windows Phones, such as the Lumina 710 in the U.S. However, those events had been anticipated for a while, and it doesn’t fully explain the sudden interest from developers, which isn’t directly related to the spread of the platform.

It’s possible the release of the developer preview of Windows 8 may have been a factor. Since both Windows Phone and Windows 8 share the Metro user interface, more than a few Windows 8 developers who had never created apps in Metro may have been persuaded to give Windows Phone a try.

Even though the Windows Phone Marketplace is taking off, Microsoft faces many challenges before its mobile platform will seriously challenge Apple’s or Google’s. Charlie Kindel, the former general manager of Windows Phone’s developer experience, theorizes that Microsoft doesn’t curry favor among carriers and manufacturers the same way Apple and Android have, and the whole platform suffers, even though, as Kindel says, it provides a superior experience in many ways.

At least developers seem to be finally warming up to the platform. Are you a Windows Phone developer or customer? Why do you favor it? And if you’re not a fan, why not? Let us know in the comments.

[via TechCrunch]

More About: apps, developers, Metro, windows phone

Infinity Blade 2 Teases Big Update to Make App Go Social

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 04:02 PM PST


The makers behind the popular Infinity Blade 2 app — which shot to the top of the iTunes download charts earlier this month — are working on an update to make the game more social.

Donald Mustard, the lead designer of Infinity Blade 2 ($6.99), is teasing an app update that includes "Clash Mobs," which will allow players from all over the world to play the game and fight enemies together in real time.

“Clash Mobs will appear in an update of the game and incorporate players from all over the world,” Mustard told Mashable. “Right now, you play the game by yourself, but Clash Mobs will let you partner with thousands of other players in real-time to help you reach a goal in the game.”

The update is expected to roll out within the next six months.

"If you're fighting a giant monster, there's only so much one player can do alone," Mustard said. "We want to make big challenges a group effort, so after you're done shooting the monster, another player can step in and work to finish him off. This could even take 24 hours, with lots of players stepping in to help."

Eventually, thousands of people will work together to defeat the game's enemy and everyone that helped along the way will receive a collective gift.

"Whether it's a rare sword or extra points, we'll reward gamers for their collaborative efforts," Mustard said.

Mustard said Clash Mobs will involve iCloud and other servers to keep tabs on what players are doing, and so players can keep track of other people's progress, as well.

"We want gaming apps to be a massive social event, and this will be a step in the right direction," Mustard said. “The concept is already available on certain games such as Words With Friends, so we wanted to incorporate a social component to this role-play games, as well.”

Do you think group-effort gaming is the future of apps? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

More About: apps, Clash Mobs, Infinity Blade 2, Social Media

Google+ Now Up to 62 Million Users, Adding 625,000 a Day [REPORT]

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 03:24 PM PST


Paul Allen, a Google+ watcher whose estimates about the social network’s growth have proved accurate in the past, claims that the site now has 62 million users and is adding 625,000 new users per day.

“It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouthmor a combination of all these factors,” Allen wrote on his G+ profile page Tuesday, “but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks.”

Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com, takes an unusual approach to come by his estimates: He and his staff run hundreds of queries on surnames they’ve been tracking since July and then extrapolate the size of the network.

At this rate, Allen writes, G+ will reach 100 million users by Feb. 25, 2012 and 200 million by Aug. 3. By this time next year, G+ will have close to 300 million users.

Allen, however, doesn’t address how many of those 62 million are active users. Experian Hitwise, however, found that those users are on the rise as well, though they represent a fraction of G+’s base. Hitwise found that total visits to G+ hit 9.4 million for the week ending Dec. 17, the most recent full week it tracked. That was a nice jump over the 7.2 million visits G+ experienced in the comparable week in November, but below the 15 million visits to G+ for the week ending Sept. 24, when Google opened the previously invitation-only site to the public.

Google’s last official acknowledgement of G+’s membership came during a conference call with analysts, when CEO Larry Page pegged the figure at 40 million.

More About: Experian Hitwise, Google, Paul Allen

Religious Americans Just as Tech-Savvy as Others [STUDY]

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 02:56 PM PST


There may be preconceptions that faithful Americans skew older in age and are traditionally set in their ways, but according to a new study, religious Americans embrace technology just as much as those who are less religious.

A new report from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that Americans who are members of religious groups are just as likely – if not more likely — to use the Internet, have broadband at home, use cell phones and send texts. Religious Americans are also just as active on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

“There is a view point that the more tech-savvy a person is the less religious they tend to be," Jim Jansen, a senior fellow at the Pew Internet Project and author of a report on the findings, told Mashable. "Our study shows that religiously active Americans use technology at rates in line with the general population. In fact, the ‘casually religious’ — those who go to church about once month or so — actually use some of the technologies that we surveyed in higher percentages than their non-religiously active peers.”

The study — conducted among 2,300 Americans about their membership in 28 different kinds of organizations and clubs — found that 79% of Americans who are active in religious groups are Internet users, compared with 75% of those not involved with religious groups.

Meanwhile, about 86% of Americans who belong to religious groups own cell phones and use email (75%), compared with 80% and 68%, respectively, of those not involved with religious groups.

However, religious Americans are slightly less active on social networking sites – about 46% use social networking sites, compared with 49% not involved with religious groups. Nine percent of religiously active Americans use Twitter, compared with 10% of non-religious Americans.

"Some analysts have been concerned that those who have active spiritual lives might not be as engaged with the secular world," Jim Jansen, a senior fellow at the Pew Internet Project and author of a report on the findings, said in the report. "We see the opposite. Those who are active in religious groups seem to be joiners."

Earlier this year, a report from Hartford Seminary found that more congregations across the country are incorporating modern technology into their services. In fact, some are even encouraging attendees to use iPads and phones to interact with the service, and in some cases, tech-savvy religious leaders are using iPads during services.

In fact, a company called Little Mountain Productions has introduced a lectern called the iPodium — or iPuplit — that holds tablet devices. Priests and pastors aren’t the only ones using tablets — Pope Benedict XVI used an iPad to send tweets and recently lit a Christmas tree with the help of an Android tablet.

More About: iPad 2, mashable video, Newsy, Pew Internet, religion

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How 9 Retailers Successfully Leveraged Game Mechanics

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 02:36 PM PST


Macala Wright is the publisher of FashionablyMarketing.Me, one of the leading fashion and retail industry business websites. She is a retail consultant and business strategist who specializes in marketing consulting for fashion, luxury and lifestyle brands. You can follower her on Twitter at @InsideFMM or @Macala.

Social games have begun to influence consumer behavior and purchases. According to Saatchi & Saatchi, 66% of tablet owners play social games daily, and 46% of tablet gamers are women. In fact, the largest group of social gamers is women between the ages of 35 and 44, the second largest is women between 18 and 34. Men make up the third largest group.

Marketing to these demographics in today’s economy is a top priority for retailers. And ramification offers companies a chance to engage young audiences and start to build consumer-purchasing habits that aren't entirely based on continual discounts and free stuff.

In 2008, DKNY was one of the first retailers to experiment with social games by partnering with digital paper doll game Stardoll. In 2010, PopSugar created a more grown up version of Stardoll with their release of Retail Therapy. The online game made a strong debut, featuring popular brands such as Banana Republic, Barney’s New York, Diane von Furstenberg, Gap, Juicy Couture, Topshop and Tory Burch. Retail Therapy's release showed that social games weren’t just for tweens and teens anymore.

Now, three year later, games are growing up. Brands and retailers alike have begun to experiment with different forms of online games. Here are nine examples of companies that successfully leveraged game mechanics in consumer marketing.

1. Nike's “Winter's Angry” Perseverance Campaign

Ending 2011 with a bang, Nike launched an interactive campaign to promote its winter wear. Players assist the athlete in "beating the cold” through a series of actions. For example, players can test their reflexes to win prizes for completing certain actions. The games feature world champion wideout Greg Jennings, U.S. women's soccer player Alex Morgan and Olympic gold medalist sprinter Allyson Felix. The highest scores achieved between Dec. 9-15 were eligible to win a trip for two to meet a world-class Nike athlete.

2. Norma Kamali's 3D Movie

Earlier this year, fashion designer turned futurist Norma Kamali launched Norma Kamali 3D, a site that features her first 3D movie and ecommerce shopping experience. But you may not have noticed that there was actually a game within the movie. Kamali asked viewers to find six objects within the experience.

The first week of the site's launch, over 20,000 Facebook fans requested a free pair of custom 3D viewing glasses with the designer’s signature cat-eye frames. "I am hoping that people see 3D not just as a source of entertainment, but as a shopping utility," Kamali told FMM in an interview earlier this year. "In the future, we will be able to view, shop and play with fashion in 3D.”

3. ALDO’s Instagram Mood boards

To promote the launch of its fragrance collection, ALDO worked with Dynamo and ALLDAYEVERYDAY to create a Facebook game. Players chose from a series of Instagram photos that, once selected, were compiled into a mood board that they could post to their Facebook Timelines.

What makes this such a truly amazing campaign is that no retailer or brand had yet combined Instagram and Facebook in this manner. In an interview, marketing director Vyara Ndejuru shared that the brand wanted to create a "visual experience for their customers" that would entice them to visit the new A is for ALDO microsite. "ALDO customers are accustomed to immersive experiences; Instagram and Flickr are huge drivers for them,” she added.

In order to launch this campaign and build awareness amongst their fans and customers, ALDO promoted on its homepage with calls to action built into the microsite once the customers clicked through. They the company followed up by emailing its customer base in French and English and by engaging via Facebook.

4. Bonobos Incorporates Gamification in Ecommerce

This year the online closet solution for men, Bonobos, incorporated gamification into three of its social media campaigns. In its Easter Egg / NotCot collaboration and Twitter #secretcode campaign, the retailer hid images of models dressed in Bonobos signature pants around NOTCOT.org and NotCouture. Site visitors had to search the site to find and click the images. The first 50 people to find the pants everyday received a $25 Bonobos credit plus free shipping. As a bonus, social audience members who clicked the little guy in paisley pants received a special code for $100 off their purchase.

Bonobos is applying social engagement and gamification to engage a male customer base. "There is a new breed of male shopper online," says David Fudge, head of Bonobos social media, "While they may want to look great, they don't necessarily want to talk about fashion. They want to know how it's going to look in real life."  Fudge says that when it comes to marketing to male consumers through games, marketers must "speak to their customers and audience like their one of your personal Facebook friends."

Richard Mumby, vice president of marketing, added, "The key to making gaming work within our ecommerce experience is focusing on making it social, not making it commercial (in terms of focusing solely focusing on sales). Your fans and follows are looking to interact with you, not to passively take in your content,” he advises. “Provide engaging posts and tweets that solicit a response. Allowing them to take action and become involved in something is the key to a very loyal and evangelical customer base."

5. Gilt Groupe Built VIP Program On Social Rewards

In his book, Gamification By Design, author Gabe Zichermanm references Gilt Groupe, specifically how the flash sale retailer awards its top consumers with exclusive access to the site. Gilt launched Gilt Noir, a loyalty program for the top 1% of its online shoppers. The members received a scented candle and a member's card as well as the ability to shop 15 minutes before any sale begins.

Instead of offering discounts, Gilt offered access. And in retail, we know that access and exclusivity go a long way with our consumers. Once they get it, they want to maintain it.

6. BlueFly and Badgeville

Earlier this year, BlueFly partnered with Badgeville to enhance Bluefly customers' online shopping experiences and to encourage customer interaction via badges and leaderboards. Shoppers were rewarded based on the actions they took on the site, such as watching videos, creating wish lists, writing reviews and reading blog posts. As players earned higher badges, they earned early access to products and special deals and discounts, among other rewards.

7. Valentino's 3D Museum


In Decermber luxury fashion house Valentino launched a virtual 3D museum, a downloadable desktop application for Macs and PCs. Viewers navigated through various galleries, clicking over 300 virtual dresses and pulling up original sketches, advertising campaigns, 5,000 archival images and nearly 95 fashion show videos. The virtual museum had over 10,000 downloads its first day. While the digital event lacked a fluid experience for viewers, it accomplished Valentino's goal of continuing his legacy.

8. Best Buy and CityVille

Zynga says more than 230 million active users plays its games. And more than 71 million Facebook users play CityVille.

This year, Best Buy became the first virtual branded retail store in CityVille. In the game, players build houses and roads to create a city, seeking to collect points they can use to unlock new game features. Players can place other businesses in their games, but they have generic names, like “bakery” or “toy store.” Players who chose to add a Best Buy to their virtual worlds signified they wanted the brand present in their lives.

9. HSN Arcade Entices Fans To Stay Onsite Longer

Similar to BlueFly's goals, online and television retailer HSN launched the HSN Arcade to encourage customers to spend more time on HSN.com. When it launched, the HSN Arcade featured 25 video games that consumers could play for free while watching a live stream of HSN's television channel. The games enabled consumers to post their scores to Facebook streams as well. HSN's integration of shopping, social networking and gaming are largely driven by the retailer's focus on engaging female consumers online.

Making the Case for Gamification and Retail

As technologically savvy, social consumers, we solicit fashion advice via mobile apps like Pose and Fashism. We post images of things we want to buy to our Facebook page and let friends say yeah or nay. So when it comes to gaming, the next logical step is to add some retail fun.


Basil Farano, co-creator of Stylmee, the first 3D fashion app for iPad, believes that retailers must try to make the experience as “real” as possible for players. “In Stylmee, the gaming experience is built around challenging our member’s knowledge and taste in fashion as they try to build a fashion boutique and empire,” Farano says. “We use the same problems that real boutique owners would face to challenge our member’s ‘fashion-ability.’ It is a very realistic experience, which is what we believe the social gaming community is hungry for.”

When brands and retailers reward players based on the success of the their actions within a game, “retailers can increase their perceived value to the player, aka shopper, through rewards that don't tarnish their brand image,” adds Farano.

By 2014, a gamified service for consumer goods, marketing and retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon, says a recent Gartner report. It seems that social gaming, like social media, will become critical for nurturing customer relationships through play. Do you agree?

More About: contributor, features, game mechanics, gamification, Marketing, Social Media

Edward Burns and the Socialization of Indie Cinema

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 02:15 PM PST


“Twitter has fundamentally changed the way I make films,” film director, actor, writer and producer Edward Burns told me. At first blush, that might seem like an audacious statement, but in an era when full productions can get funded on Kickstarter and feature-length films are shot on consumer DSLRs, that boldness gives way to practicality.

Thanks to social and digital, the independent film movement is in a sort of renaissance. Not since the rise of the “indie” movement in the 1990s — when unknown filmmakers like Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez rose to prominence — has there been so much disruption in the business of filmmaking.

It’s a world that Burns knows well. In 1995 Burns’s debut film, The Brothers McMullen, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Shot for just $28,000, the film would gross over $10 million at the box office, becoming one of the biggest independent films of its era.

Sixteen years later, Burns is still making films without the aid of expensive crews, big studio contracts or pricey equipment.

Burns’s latest film, Newlyweds, is now available on VOD and Vudu. It comes to iTunes on Dec. 30, 2011. Although the film will have a small theatrical run in Chicago and San Francisco next month, VOD and iTunes are the delivery methods of choice.

We spoke to Burns earlier this month as he prepared for the Newlyweds film release. He talked about the changing nature of making film and the importance of social media to tie it all together.

The $9000 Movie Budget

One of the more remarkable aspects about Newlyweds is that it was shot in 12 days for $9,000. Burns laid out the budget process on Twitter and explained the process on his YouTube channel.

Burns used the Canon EOS 5D Mark II to shoot the film, along with a few stock Canon lenses. The quality of the output that filmmakers can get from prosumer DSLRs like the Mark II is stunning. Furthermore, he believes we’re only two or three generations away from having cinema-quality video sensors in our smartphones. The film director further reduced costs by using natural lighting and having cast members wear their own clothes and do their own makeup.

Burns talked about the very real implications these changes are having on young filmmakers.

“When I was in school making McMullen, I had to scrimp and save to buy film stock. You usually got poor-quality film stock or ends of other reels. That’s why movies from that era have that grimy, grungy look. A kid coming out of film school today won’t have that problem.”

Of course, lower barriers to entry also mean increased competition. Still, Burns doesn’t see this as a bad thing. “Why shouldn’t filmmaking experience the same disruption that every other industry has experienced?” he asked. “It’s happened in music and literature. Why should filmmaking be any different?”

The Growing Importance of Social

Edward Burns credits Ted Hope for convincing him to join Twitter. Hope, a prominent independent film producer in New York City, explained to Burns it was crucial that he find 500 followers to share and promote his message. Hope’s thesis — which he has since revised to include 5,000 fans — is that connecting with the people that really care about your work is the most effective way of getting things seen.

Twitter has fundamentally changed the way I make films.

Hope was right. Since joining Twitter, Burns has found numerous opportunities to answer questions from fans, share insights about his filmmaking process and, of course, promote his projects.

For his last project, Nice Guy Johnny, Burns was able to crack the top six in iTunes the week it was released. “This was a film with no budget, absolutely no money for marketing — outside of traditional morning show press stuff — that appeared next to major box office hits.”

Studios spend tremendous amounts of money raising awareness as to the digital and home video availability of their films. Edward Burns was able to accomplish that with Twitter.

Burns turned to the social web while working on Newlyweds as well. When it came time to get a poster for the film’s debut at the Tribeca Film Festival, Burns turned to the online community. Fans voted for their favorite submissions. The winner of the poster contest not only got to keep the rights to his artwork (he’s now selling prints and t-shirts on his own website), he also got flown in for the premiere.

When it came time find a song for the closing credits, Burns once again turned to the online community and then chose the winner from the submissions.

Although Burns hasn’t cast anyone directly using YouTube, he agrees with our assertion that online video is the new casting tape.

The Film

Watching Newlyweds, I would never have expected that its production budget was only $9,000. The film is endearing, funny and real, a story about a newlywed couple whose “honeymoon” stage comes to an abrupt end thanks to some unexpected drama from both sides of the family.

It’s very Woody Allen-esque, reminiscent of Husbands and Wives and Hannah and Her Sisters in its understanding of relationships.

After watching Newlyweds, I was struck by how difficult it is to find a good relationship film — be it comedy or drama — in the theater. Even harder to find are those smaller ensemble films. Once a staple in cinema, these types of stories are often pushed to the sidelines in lieu of franchise films, family comedies and big-budget action films.

Thankfully, in the era of iPads, connected HDTVs and more widespread indie distribution, filmmakers are still able to tell these types of stories.

More About: edward burns, filmmaking, independent film, YouTube

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5 Tech Trends to Watch in 2012

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 01:37 PM PST

5 Tech Trends to Watch

2012 promises to be a very busy year in all things digital, but, as with any annum, there will be just a handful of big, memorable trends. Here, I've collected five such movements that are likely to make a big impact in our technologically-enhanced lives.

Augmented Reality

It's now in games, location apps, business cards and coffee shops and could start showing up in cars and even eyeglasses. Augmented Reality, which puts a virtual view on top of your real world, is really just a cool way of saying, "Reality with Style." Instead of simply viewing your apartment through your phone, you're playing Star Wars Arcade Falcon Gunner on top of it. Instead looking up a restaurant in your neighborhood, you're using Yelp to see its location and reviews for it and other restaurants right on top of your on-screen view of the street. 2012 will mark the beginning of exponential growth for Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR).

According to a report from Visiongain, 25% of all app downloads will feature some sort of augmented reality. Though adoption hinges on more powerful, high-speed and camera-ready mobile devices, it's clear to me that the majority of smartphones and tablets in end-users' hands next year will be 3G-to-4G-ready, high-def, large-screen devices with not one, but two multi-megapixel cameras. Trust me, by 2013, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn't at least tried augmented reality.

The Micro-Payment Economy

App manufacturers are not the only ones who can make money selling tiny wares and incremental upgrades. The barrier to entry for starting your own small business has been effectively knocked down by a variety of online merchants who are willing to hawk your wares for next to nothing. In truth, the merchandise isn't entirely yours. In fact, these companies are often just selling your idea on top of their wares and you get a tiny slice for each sale, or for when the numbers of sales reaches a certain threshold.

Sites like RedBubble do everything for the artist; all they need to do is upload the content. RedBubble will, for example, make the T-Shirt with your art, sell it for you, manage the distribution and, of course, collect payment. The site lets you set the price above their fixed price. Yes, you could add as much as you want onto a $16 T-shirt, but most smart sellers know this means they won't sell a single garment. Instead, you add 1%-to-5% (maybe 10% if you're feeling strong) and then promote the dickens out of your product on the site and through various social networks.

RedBubble is just one of many destinations popping up to help the aspiring entrepreneur. They join established platforms like Lulu (self-publish books), and YouTube. YouTube has been inviting videographers into the commerce tent for years, letting them add AdSense accounts to popular videos and then sitting back and watching the pennies roll in.

As the economy sputters along, look for more and more of the sites helping you sell almost anything you can imagine and making you a “fortune”–one micro payment at a time.

The Rise of the UltraBook

Tablets dominate the tech conversation, but that doesn't mean the PC is dead. No, it's alive and well, but in a form that will closely mimic some of the best features of tablets. I don't have numbers yet, but I'm betting Desktop PCs were not big sellers this holiday season. Laptops may have done a little better, but who among you was willing to give junior an end-of-life netbook instead of a sexy, touch-screen tablet? (I'm imagining no one raising their hands).

A term coined by Intel, Ultrabooks describe exquisitely thin and light, yet pleasingly powerful laptops. Think MacBook Air and you get the idea. No, they don't have touch screens or apps (though that's changing, too) and Ultrabooks usually have just one HD camera. Still, with just a little more heft and girth than your garden-variety iPad, an Ultrabook adds a full-sized keyboard and far more powerful components. In other words, they're perfectly designed for getting real work done, but no one will be embarrassed to carry one around. 2012 will witness an explosion of these devices as manufacturers pin on them their last best hopes for regaining consumer computing interest.

Social/Digital Exhaustion

Facebook will break the 1 billion user mark in 2012, but its numbers have flattened out in the U.S. Twitter is growing; it may have as many 450 million users, but no one knows how many people are really active users. Google+ is growing steadily, but is still well behind the two most established networks and much of the public is unaware of its existence. There is the now persistent, with good reason, backlash against mobile phone usage in cars and on streets.

In general, more and more people seem to be reevaluating their social and digital existence. Even the SOPA battle is revealing some unforeseen schisms. The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bad idea, not because piracy is good, but because of the plan for enforcement is wrong and dangerous. That said, no one who creates content can deny that the digital revolution hasn't forced them to rethink how they create, sell and distribute content. There are no easy answers here and 2012 will be a year of introspection; one where we possibly rewrite the rules of content, copyrights and social interactions.

Mobile Chip Wars

The tech industry is gearing up for a rather intense battle—on a micro scale. With ARM-based CPUs in virtually all of today's tablets and handsets, Intel, the dominant system CPU manufacturer, has no presence in the mobile space. It's a situation the company promises to change in 2012 with Medfield—its rethinking of the Atom CPU (popular in netbooks). Meanwhile a consortium of Pacific Rim manufacturers have just banded together to produce new mobile CPUs for phones and tablets.

These efforts may not mean much, though, as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Motorola, Marvell, Nvidia and others all license the ARM architecture and show (along with the hardware partners) little interest in switching to a new or once-established platform. Even Microsoft is developing Windows 8 to run on ARM-based CPUs in addition to traditional Wintel machines.

What do you think? Are these the right trends? Will there be other defining movements in 2012? Chose the biggest trend in our poll and then let's talk about it in the comments.


More About: 2012, Augmented Reality, CPU, ecommerce, Mobile, social, trending, trends

Dan Marino Sends Congratulatory Tweet to Passing Record Breaker Drew Brees [VIDEO]

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 01:13 PM PST


New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees broke the NFL‘s 27-year-old single-season passing record Monday night, and the feat immediately attracted a flurry of congratulatory tweets, including one from previous record holder Dan Marino and another from rap star Lil Wayne.

Twitter reaction wasn’t all positive after Brees ended the game with 5,087 passing yards on the season — ahead of Marino’s 5,084 yards in 1984 when he played for the Miami Dolphins. Sports writers continue to argue the significance of the new record, with some saying defenses now aren’t as good as in the 80s. The video above highlights those arguments.

Brees threw for 307 yards Monday in a 45-16 win against the Atlanta Falcons. The Saints, which won the Super Bowl in 2009, are 12-3 this season with one game left to play.

SEE ALSO: How the NFL Plans to Go High Tech | How Social Media is Changing the NFL

Here’s what Brees tweeted after breaking the single-season passing record.

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So You Got an iPhone 4S? Here’s How to Accessorize

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 12:46 PM PST


1. The iPhone Carabiner Clip




This kind of useful tool is worth its weight in gold. With a leather strap, the carabineer clip gives you quick access to your iPhone. You can hang it from a strap or bag making it ideal for iPhotographers or for quick-draw call answering.

Cost: $30

Click here to view this gallery.

So, the Christmas elves made you an iPhone 4S? Lucky you. What’s particularly useful about owning an Apple phone is that manufacturers around the world are churning out tailor-made iPhone accessories. The variety can make choosing the right ones a little difficult. To help those with obsessions for all things iPhone, we’ve created a list of awesome accessories.

SEE ALSO: Got an iPhone 4S for Christmas? Have Some Fun With Siri [PICS]

Take a look through the image gallery. Let us know in the comments which ones you’d consider — and what else is top of your “must-have” list now that you have an iPhone 4S.

Image courtesy of Flickr, nino63004

More About: accessories, apple, features, iphone, iPhone 4S, iphone accessories

App-y Christmas: 242 Million Downloads Sets New Record [STUDY]

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 12:19 PM PST


Apparently, a lot of people spent Christmas Day turning on their new smartphones and downloading apps. Assessing the data from the busiest day of the year for activations and app downloads, Flurry Analytics found consumers shattered records for both this year.

Activations topped 6.8 million, a 140% jump over Christmas Day 2010′s 2.8 million, according to Flurry. Consumers downloaded 242 million apps that day, an increase of 125% over last year. The day caps off a strong year for both iOS and Android. Apple’s App Store, which exceeded 10 billion downloads overall in January, is on track to post 10 billion downloads for 2011 alone. The Android Market, meanwhile, surpassed 10 billion downloads overall this month.

Unfortunately, Flurry doesn’t break down Android downloads vs. iOS. “Frankly, they’re neck and neck,” says Peter Farago, vp of marketing for Flurry, who adds that the company chooses not to share that data with the public. Android’s share of the smartphone market was 43.7% vs. 27.3% for iOS in August, according to comScore.

Flurry also tracked app downloads for all of Christmas Day and found a big increase around 9 a.m. and then another jump around 11 a.m. The amount stayed at that level until about midnight. (Time zones were “normallized” in the research, so 9 a.m. in London, New York and San Francisco were all considered 9 a.m.)

The “appy Christmas” is expected to continue. Flurry is predicting that between Christmas and New Year’s Day, consumers will download 1 billion apps.

What do you think? Did you spend your Christmas Day at the App Store or at Android Market? Tell us your story.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto,sjlocke

More About: android, android marketplace, app store, apps, flurry, iOS, Mobile, smartphone

Unlock Free Pizza in NYC This NYE With Payment App LevelUp

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 11:38 AM PST


Mobile payment app LevelUp will launch with its first national brand partner, Villa Pizza, on New Years Eve. Members of the annual Time Square New Years Eve mob who use the app to pay at the restaurant can enjoy $10 worth of free pizza while they’re waiting for the ball to drop — regardless of which phone, bank or credit card they’re using.

To cash in on their free slices, users need to link any credit or debit card to their LevelUp accounts. When they get to the restaurant, the app generates a unique QR code at the register that can be scanned with a merchant app to pay. Up to $10 of pizza is on the house, and anything more than that will be charged to their connected accounts.

LevelUp, which was created by check-in game SCVNGR, makes mobile payments more practical by taking NFC hardware out of the equation. It can be used with an iPhone app, Android app or through a mobile website. Google Wallet, by contrast, can only be used by those who have a Citi Mastercard or Google prepaid card and an NFC-enabled phone.

A trickier problem than practicality, however, is getting people interested in using their phones to pay in the first place.

“I don’t think the payment experience is particularly broken,” SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch told Mashable. “You need to add something more.”

That’s where the $10 of free pizza comes in. Merchants can add rewards to LevelUp that are already waiting for customers the first time that they use the app. Customers earn free credit at that merchant every time they spend money there using the app. It functions like a loyalty card.

But is that enough to get people scanning their phones instead of their credit cards? T-Mobile is betting on it. They’ve partnered with the startup to provide merchants with scanning hardware that replaces the merchant app and makes it easier to accept LevelUp payments. Since launching in October, the startup has accumulated 100,000 users and teamed up with more than 1,000 merchants in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

With more than 350 locations, Villa Pizza is their biggest partner merchant yet. If you had plans to be in Time Square on New Years Eve, would LevelUp’s $10 deal persuade you to check it out with your phone?

More About: levelup, mobile payments, scvngr

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The 10 Best Android Games of 2011

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 11:18 AM PST


1. Where's My Water?




Disney entered the fray of physics puzzlers with this game, in which players try to get water to Swampy. The puzzle and varied level designs are ingenious. Swampy is also incredibly well-animated, and his reactions add a layer of production value that few other games boast.

Price: $0.99

Click here to view this gallery.

Apple’s iOS isn’t the only platform that lets you have fun on the go! For those with Android phones and tablets, choose from many fun games that span the gaming spectrum.

SEE ALSO: 10 Best Cross-Platform Multiplayer Mobile Games

The above 10 games were 2011′s cream of the crop Android releases. Which one is your favorite?

More About: android, android games, features, Gaming, Mobile, mobile games, trending

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Pandora Tests Live Show and Video Waters

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 10:43 AM PST


Pandora is bringing aspects of its new live concert series to the web.

The personalized web radio service launched its new live concert series earlier this month with the Southern California band, Dawes. Pandora and launch sponsor Budweiser let 230 fans in Portland, Oregon see the emerging rock band free of charge. Now, aspects of that live experience are on the web in a new portal.

Called Pandora Presents, the portal showcases aspects of the live concert — including behind-the-scenes videos — along with a 100-song curated mixtape. The mixtape or “station” was selected by the band in combination with Pandora’s analysts and the service’s algorithm.

The web portal is attractively designed and offers up a glimpse at what might happen if Pandora embraced more video content rather than focusing just on audio.

The only really disappointing aspect of Pandora Presents is that, at least now, actual footage from the concerts isn’t available online. Vevo has been sponsoring live concert series for quite some time and it makes the footage viewable online too. Likewise, MTV’s Hive project frequently offers online access to live shows of emerging artists.

With Pandora facing increased competition from Spotify, looking at alternative methods to connect with listeners makes a lot of sense.

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Dictate to Your Mac What to Do With Vocal

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 09:03 AM PST


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

Name: Vocal

Quick Pitch: Control and dictate to your Mac computer using your voice.

Genius Idea: Vocal responds to commands on Mac computers just like Siri does on the iPhone 4S.

Most people expect their Mac computers to do exactly what they want with just the click of a mouse, but a new iPhone app is taking a different approach.

Vocal, an app powered by a platform-agnostic commands engine, lets users control and dictate their Mac computers using their voice. You can use the app to dictate commands straight from your iPhone 4S.

The $1.99 app comes in two parts — commands and dictation. Similar to the iPhone 4S’s personal assistant Siri, commands lets you control your Mac by voicing commands such as play songs, open apps, search the web and compose new emails. Using Vocal to say commands such as “search Google” or “compose a new email” does exactly that, ensuring that Mac computers do exactly what you ask it to.

The second part, dictation, allows users to write text in an email or document using their voice. The text is automatically inserted into the user’s document as they speak the words. Users can even use Vocal to format text by saying “bold,” “italics” or “underline”.

To begin vocally controlling your Mac, download the Vocal app onto your iPhone 4S and download the companion app onto your Mac computer. Once the downloads are complete, you can begin dictating and commanding your Mac to do exactly what you want.

Vocal users can even add their own commands — just open the “custom bookmarks” menu in the Mac app, set the preferences for your favorite websites and add actions that you want Vocal to perform.

Advanced users can even write their own custom commands using URL schemes or dictate text with HTML tags by enabling HTML formatting in the “Advanced Menu.”

“Vocal uses the iPhone 4S to make using your Mac faster than ever before,” says Matthew Roberts, CEO of Vocal. “The Mac computer is just the start because Vocal’s platform makes it easy for the app to be available on other platforms that users may want.”

Air Dictate, a speech recognition app also available for the iPhone 4S, is similar to Vocal because it also enables users to enter text on their Mac’s by speaking into their iPhone 4S. Unlike Air Dictate however, Vocal does not require an iPhone 4S. The app provides a text box on the Mac computer which users can type their commands into using their keyboard.

Roberts is currently rewriting the application to use true natural language processing to ensure the app translates exactly what the user says. The new version is expected to be available in a few weeks.

Image courtesy of Vocal, Vocal

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

Microsoft BizSpark

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

More About: bizspark, iphone, iPhone 4S, iphone app

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How a Handful of Small Investors Built Silicon Valley [VIDEO]

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 08:53 AM PST


Venture capitalist Paul Holland isn’t just a general partner at Foundation Capital, he’s also a documentarian. He directed Something Ventured, a documentary that explores the origins of the tech startup economy in Silicon Valley. The movie was inspired by a conversation he had with Bill Edwards, a man who helped found the modern-day California venture capital business model. Something Ventured debuted at SXSW 2011 and should be available next year on Netflix, a company in which Holland is an investor.

Check out the interview to learn Holland’s view on investing in clean tech and what he’s focusing his investments on right now. He also has the greenest custom home in the U.S., which is net energy positive, meaning it creates more energy than it uses. A huge advocate for student entrepreneurship, Holland describes how student entrepreneurs should be thinking and talks about two students who he met and later funded, that went on to run a billion-dollar energy company.

Follow Venture Studio, in association with Mashable, which is brought to you by Square1 Bank. The show is hosted by Dave Lerner, a 3x entrepreneur and angel investor. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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China Launches Its Answer to America’s GPS Dominance

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 08:49 AM PST


Officials at China’s independent satellite navigation system announced Tuesday their GPS alternative is available to the public, reports the BBC.

Named Beidou, Chinese for “compass,” the system has been in development for more than a decade. China began work on Beidou in 2000 in order to become less dependent on the U.S.-owned Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) infrastructure.

Before launching Beidou, the Chinese relied on American GPS for military and domestic use. Should China have gotten involved in a military conflict with a U.S. ally, the United States could have blocked access to GPS, causing a disadvantage for the Chinese military. With Beidou, China now has its own system for warship navigation and missile targeting.

China state media have stressed the commercial potential of the new system. Domestic GPS technology is a thriving market in the United States and Europe, and China expects to replicate that success.

Civilian users of the network will have geolocation accuracy of 10 meters and speed measurements accurate to .2 meters per second. The Chinese military will have access to more accurate data.

SEE ALSO: First-Generation GPS [COMIC]

The development of Baidou parallels the creation of GPS, which was available exclusively to the American military for the first 20 years of its existence. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton declared GPS to be a “dual-use system” in 1996. This paved the way for car and naval navigation, geolocation, geocaching and a plethora of other GPS applications. However, in the U.S. and elsewhere, the military still enjoys more accurate GPS data than civilians.

Currently, Beidou uses 10 satellites. Coverage is limited to mainland China and nearby areas of Asia. The Chinese government plans to expand the system gradually, providing global coverage by 2020.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, enot-poloskun

More About: Beidou, china, gps

Ruling Increases Odds for Online Gambling Legalization

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 08:35 AM PST


Online lotteries and poker may be poised to become legal thanks to a new decision by the Justice Department reinterpreting the Wire Act of 1961.

The decision, written in September but made public last Friday, found the Act’s prohibition of wagers via telecommunications crossing state lines or international borders refers only to bets on a “sporting event or contest” and not to lottery tickets sold online. The decision doesn’t mention online poker, but some reason that the ruling will pave the way for online poker.

“The United States Department of Justice has given the online gaming community a big, big present,” Prof. I. Nelson Rose wrote on his blog, Gambling and the Law.

“If the Wire Act is limited to bets on sports events and races, what other federal anti-gambling statutes are left?” wrote Rose. “There are prohibitions on interstate lotteries, but Powerball and the other multi-state lotteries show how easily these can be gotten around, even before Congress passed an express exemption for state lotteries. And poker is not a lottery under federal law.” Rose continued that since the Wire Act refers to bets on an event, poker would be except because poker is itself the event.

The DOJ has aggressively enforced the ban on online poker. In April, the agency shut down three foreign-based online poker firms — Absolute Poker, Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker — charging that each of the companies had violated the law by serving U.S. residents.

What do you think? In April, we polled our readers and found most (54%) thought online gambling was a “victimless crime” and should be legal? Do you agree? Sound off in the comments.

More About: Department of Justice, online gambling, poker

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5 Tools for a Big League Website on a Budget

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 08:18 AM PST


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

There's an unpleasant moment that occurs for entrepreneurs more often than it should. Someone asks for your business card, and you hand it over. They say, "Great, I'll check out your site!" You say, "Excellent, but ignore the ‘Shop’ section — it's out of date. And, oh yeah, the email newsletter link isn't working, but I can add you manually to the list if you want. And … well the design is a little embarrassing …"

By this point, the person who was excited about your product just moments ago has finished the drink they were sipping and is looking for a polite way to exit the conversation — immediately.

It used to be the case that developing a robust web presence for your company was expensive and therefore often inaccessible to newer companies or those without large ecommerce or digital marketing budgets. Today, thanks to the ingenuity of fellow entrepreneurs, this is no longer the case. "You can operate at the same scalability and efficiency of a large company," says Harley Finkelstein, chief platform officer of Shopify. "You may not know any angel investors — today it doesn't really matter."

Here are some of the tools that you can use to make your business seem as if you have a giant team — and bank account — behind your company's online presence.

1. ReTargeter

Traditionally, running ad campaigns on large news sites in order to reach millions of potentially qualified leads is cost-prohibitive for anyone without a multimillion-dollar (or at least a many thousand-dollar) advertising budget. But what if you could narrow down the audience so that you were just reaching people who had actually expressed some kind of interest in your product?

ReTargeter allows you to do just that. By adding a simple snippet of code to whatever pages of your site you'd like to track (a similar process to implementing Google Analytics), ReTargeter's system allows you to purchase advertising that shows up repeatedly for those people who have visited the aforementioned site pages. Voila — you look like a company that has the budget to wallpaper nytimes.com.

Furthermore, ReTargeter’s reach extends beyond the outlets that some small business owners might be accustomed to. "If they're spending that sort of money on display, the real goal is to have access to more inventory than just the Google network," says founder Arjun Dev Arora. "We've gone out and partnered with Glam, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and more."

2. Shopify

Once upon a time, a few big players had a lock on the ecommerce market. If you wanted to sell your wares online, you had to play by whatever rules eBay or Etsy set. It's obvious that today, any potential online store owner can buy a domain name. But, then what’s next?

Shopify was designed to answer that question. Their technology makes it easy to create a totally customized, extremely professional-looking storefront with little technical effort, thanks in large part to its database of pre-designed templates. Shopify also takes care of the back-end, providing analytics, the ability to create special promotions, and tools to accept payments and track your orders.

Finkelstein names iPad cover designer DODOcase as a business that's leveraged Shopify's resources well to make the company appear as if it’s created a much larger footprint than it actually has — and that illusion has helped the company grow its bottom line. "Today it’s a multimillion dollar business — and they still don't have an office," he says.

3. SinglePlatform

Restaurant owners are usually busy with their main objective — you know, making sure food gets to the table in a timely and delicious manner. But ignoring website upkeep and presence across social media channels is missing an opportunity to connect with and market to customers.

SinglePlatform allows business owners to upload offers, menus and photos to one, well, single platform, and they do the rest, populating the content across social media channels and the company's own website. Though the company began by serving the restaurant community, it’s now expanded the offerings to all types of businesses — spas, daycare centers and even sky diving companies. With a few minutes of work a week, you end up looking like you have a dedicated web and social media staff.

4. Unbounce

Want to create a special offer for the holidays to run on your site? What about five different special offers, depending on where your users are coming from? This could be a nightmare for whatever graphic design resources you have on staff, but Unbounce allows you to create various pages without tapping into your tech team — it's a system they say is just as easy to use as PowerPoint.

5. Grasshopper Group & Twilio

No matter how big your staff is, it's simply impossible to always be manning the phones. The last thing you want to do, though, is miss a call that could have turned into a sale. Grasshopper Group enables you to create a professional phone system without the cost or hassle of an enterprise level solution. Add extensions, pre-recorded greetings and (an often necessary evil) hold music. When you do need to miss a call, you can receive your voicemails transcribed as emails for easier processing and forwarding around to stakeholders.

If you'd like to incorporate text messages — say, notifying a customer of a purchase they just made over the phone — Twilio is an incredibly robust tool for this very function. The API also allows for innovative integrations and customizations should your business need them.

Do you have any can’t-miss tools for making your website more thoughtful and robust? Let us know in the comments below.

More About: ecommerce, features, mashable, newsletters, open forum, shopify, website

The 15 Best Mobile Apps of 2011

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:57 AM PST


1. Android: Pulse News




Pulse News offers Android owners a visually pleasing way to catch up on current affairs and other web content, on and offline. Feeds are collated into a colorful and interactive mosaic homescreen. Sharing is simple, and the apps hosts read later options via Instapaper, Read it Later, Evernote and Google Reader.

Cost: Free

Click here to view this gallery.

The apps market continued to grow in 2011, with millions of apps now available across the major mobile platforms.

With so many apps out there, it’s easy to miss out on a must-have mobile tool. We have rounded up our favorite apps of 2011 for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 so you can check to see what you may have missed.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Apps Downloaded in 2011

Take a look through our app gallery. Obviously this list can be debated endlessly, so let us know in the comments which apps you consider the best of the past year.

More About: android, Android apps, apple, features, iphone, iphone apps, trending, windows phone 7

Can Apple Become the Next Big Content Creator?

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:49 AM PST


Nathan Safran heads the research department at Conductor, a leading SEO technology firm. Formerly, Nathan was an analyst for Forrester Research‘s consumer product strategy group, where he researched trend studies, consumer attitudes and behaviors toward technology adoption. Nathan blogs at exceljockey.com.

The status quo for visual content has always been that its creation, delivery and consumption have clearly delineated borders. Content creators make it, cable providers deliver it, and viewers consume it on the big screen in their living room.

In the last few years, however, we've seen a fundamental shift in the visual content landscape. For the first time since the advent of cable television in 1948, the lines are blurring as the quality of content created by non-prime networks — and even individuals — continues to improve. Plus, content increasingly reaches us over the Internet, consumed on whatever screen we happen to be in front of.

As rumors about an Apple television continue to gather steam, many believe that a content package of some kind will be part of any new iTV offering.

Yet for potential content creators like Apple, formidable challenges lay ahead, for instance, when it comes to attractive subscription packaging. And license holders are loathe to upset the traditional TV network model with its predictable payment model. What else lays ahead?

Who will Control User Experience?

According to recent reports, Apple could be developing a new TV (or line of TVs) that will likely carry a premium price tag and new content consumption options. This type of situation could leave a significant portion of consumer experience outside of Apple’s control. (Although, it’s not the first time Apple’s user experience has fallen outside of its control: iPhone service is controlled by cell phone companies.) So Apple may find itself at the mercy of the content creators who are licensing their content in new ways.

Apple as “Content Facilitator”

Perhaps it’s time for Apple to get into the content creation business and license its own content. Imagine if the company approached a number of successful producers and convinced them to create an Apple series, for instance, "TV Series X by Steven Spielberg, exclusively on iTunes," or Quentin Tarantino, or Tom Hanks.

However, “content creator” doesn’t imply that Apple become the new Disney. “Content facilitator” is the more accurate descriptor, suggesting that Apple target other established, successful creators to generate compelling content that Apple would then exclusively distribute.

Exclusive Content will Drive Hardware Sales

To be sure, Apple will still need ongoing participation from traditional content holders. After all, any new content consumption package will have to include access to Glee, Grey's Anatomy and other popular programming. But if Apple succeeds with compelling content, its exclusivity will help drive hardware sales, particularly if Apple actually releases a TV. And driving hardware sales is one of Apple’s primary goals, according to Steve Rubel, EVP at Edelman: “Seems like Amazon and Apple are really opposites. Amazon uses devices to sell more content. Apple uses content to sell more devices.”

Yes, it will be costly for Apple to develop its own content, but the company has plenty of cash in hand. Plus, non-traditional content holders have already begun acquiring content; see Netflix's recent resuscitation of the popular Arrested Development series, and its acquisition of Fincher’s House of Cards, for which the company outbid HBO.

What I am suggesting, however, is that Apple take it further than Netflix by applying Apple development principles/excellence to content creation. That is, Apple pursues exclusive content development, then applies its high standards of excellence to the process of content creation.

For Apple, succeeding in any way with content facilitation will be a step toward loosening the grip content licensing has on the holistic user experience. The company will need to:

  • Drive hardware sales. Apple will need to generate exclusive content, accessible across the full spectrum of Mac/iOS devices. Plus, a new Apple TV will drive new hardware sales and increase stickiness for existing customers.
  • Create control with user experience. If the content is compelling enough, Apple will succeed in challenging the control license holders currently hold over the Apple user experience, at least as far as content consumption goes.

Those who insist Apple is outside of its wheelhouse and should leave the job of content creation to traditional creators need to realize the potential of future content practices. As Steve Jobs pointed out, things are the way they are only because people no smarter than you said they are.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, CostinT

More About: apple, Apple TV, content production, contributor, features, TV

Facebook Status Update Saves Woman, Child in Hostage Situation

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 06:57 AM PST


A Utah woman held captive for five days used a Facebook status update to save her and her 17-month-old son from a grisly hostage situation.

The woman hid in a closet with a laptop and posted a message saying that she and her son would be “dead by morning” if no one came to their aid, Police Sgt. Jon Arnold told The Associated Press. A friend read the post and notified police, who came to her rescue on Saturday.

Police arrested Troy Reed Critchfield, 33, who was jailed Saturday while they investigate charges of aggravated kidnapping, child abuse, aggravated assault, forcible sodomy, domestic violence, animal cruelty and other charges.

According to the report, the woman told officers that Critchfield took her cellphone and another phone in the home that belonged to a disabled child. He also forcibly blocked her from opening the door.

The woman, who is unnamed in the report, had bruises, but refused medical treatment. She told police that Critchfield also treated her son roughly and refused to let her feed the family dog.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has been central to a hostage situation. In June, a man named Jason Valdez, also in Utah, updated his status on the social network during a 16-hour standoff with SWAT teams. Valdez eventually shot himself in the chest as officers swarmed the room. Valdez survived the incident and was sent to jail in July.

More About: crime, Facebook, trending

Today’s Top Stories: GoDaddy Woes, Twitter Lawsuit, No-Glasses 3D

Posted: 27 Dec 2011 05:31 AM PST

Social Media News

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories.

Company Sues Former Employee for Value of Lost Followers

Noah Kravitz left his former employer PhoneDog in October 2010 on good terms, but his Twitter account – more precisely, his Twitter followers – have come back to haunt him. The company is suing him for $340,000 for the 17,000 followers he kept after he left the the position, and it’ll be very interesting to see how the judge decides in this one.

Reddit Community Launches Another Anti-Go Daddy Campaign

The community on social networking site Reddit has started a campaign to dump GoDaddy on December 29 due to the company’s support for the highly controversial SOPA act.

After the first wave of backlash, GoDaddy publicly announced that it no longer supports SOPA, but many doubt the company’s apology was genuine. The domain registrar reportedly lost 20,000 accounts in a single day following the SOPA outcry.

Stream TV Networks Plans to Show Off No-Glasses 3D With Real-Time Conversion from 2D

3D video content which doesn’t require glasses is not a new thing, but Stream TV Networks has developed a technology called Ultra-D, which enables real-time conversion of 2D video material to no-glasses 3D.

The company thinks its technology might create “a significant shift in the way people view media, comparable to the transition from black and white to color TV.” We’ll be watching it closely at this year’s CES.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

More About: 3D, first to know, first to know series, GoDarry, Today's top stories, Twitter
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