Friday, December 23, 2011

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Louis CK Earns $1 Million in 12 Days With $5 Video”

Mashable!

Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Louis CK Earns $1 Million in 12 Days With $5 Video”

Louis CK Earns $1 Million in 12 Days With $5 Video

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 04:37 AM PST


Comedian Louis CK has proved a point: people are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for DRM-free content from a performer they love, even though it would be trivial for them to pirate the same content for free.

Twelve days ago, Louis CK decided to skip the distribution, DRM, ads and everything else that goes into marketing and sale of a video, and simply offer the video of his latest performance on his website for 5 dollars.

It took 4 days for Louis to earn $200,000, and another 8 days to earn a whopping $1 million.

“The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?” explained Louis in a statement shortly after the video earned its first $200k.

Obviously, people do respect this approach, as proven by Louis’ success and similar experiments by Radiohead and others in the past.

In his latest statement Louis promised to give part of the money to various charities and another part to his employees as a bonus, keeping only $220,000 for himself.

All of the buzz surrounding the video didn’t come out of nowhere: Louis has promoted it through various social media channels, including Twitter and Reddit. It’s hard to say how easy it would be for someone – even Louis himself – to duplicate this success. His experiment proves, however that people are willing to pay for content if you communicate with them openly, shed the DRM and keep the price low.

More About: DRM, drm-free, louis ck, Video

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Words With Friends Arrives to Nook Tablets, Twitter Coming Soon

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 01:31 AM PST


Popular scrabble game Words With Friends is now available for Nook Tablet and Nook Color, with Barnes & Noble promising several more high-profile apps in the near future.

Owners of Nook Tablet have had quite a slim choice of apps so far, with even obvious favorites such as Twitter missing from the picture.

This is about to change, as B&N promises Twitter “soon” as well as Plants vs. Zombies and “many more” apps early next year.

As for Words With Friends, we advise Nook Tablet owners to be careful when airborne. Alec Baldwin recently got booted off a plane for refusing to stop playing the game.

More About: nook, Nook Tablet, Tablet, Twitter, words with friends, Zynga

Man Uses Internet Memes for Marriage Proposal [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 08:46 PM PST

Like a boss, a man recently interrupted his girlfriend’s dinner to propose to her with Internet memes.

Timothy Tiah Ewe Tiam sneaked up on his long-time love interest Audrey Ooi Feng Ling at Neroteca, a restaurant in Malaysia, and began showing her poster-sized printed memes such as Socially Awkward Penguin, Y U NO Guy, Victory Baby and Impossibru.

Her initial reaction as the man she calls “Fatty” flipped through the first few meme posters: “Oh god please don't let this be a break up WTF,” she said in an entertaining blog post days after the proposal.

At the end of the meme-ridden surprise, he knelt and confessed, “I’m very nervous and terrified about this, but I love you and I think you’re my soul mate. And I can’t see myself living without you in my life. … Will you marry me?” Watch the video from Crazy Monkey Studio to see whether she said yes or no.

This isn’t the first time someone has turned to tech or the web to propose. In January, a Cincinnati man used Groupon to get engaged. In San Francisco in fall 2010, a man leveraged Twitter, Foursquare and live streaming mobile service Qik to propose. Other people also have used social media outlets — a tweet on Twitter, a checkin on Foursquare and Google’s Street View — to put a ring on it.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Geekiest Marriage Proposals | Best 10 Memes of 2011

More recently, a New York City woman used a Nexus One and the Google Maps mobile app to complete a scavenger hunt that ended with a marriage proposal. The gallery below gives a glimpse of how that unfolded.


"Faigy & Ari's Engagement Route"





Click here to view this gallery.

More About: memes, trending, Vimeo

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ConnectYard Connects Students and Profs Via Text, Social Media

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 08:19 PM PST


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

Name: ConnectYard

Quick Pitch: A social media platform that connects students and professors through their preferred form of communication.

Genius Idea: A professor emails a student and it's delivered in whatever form the student prefers, such as a text message or Twitter and Facebook post.

More students these days prefer interacting on mobile devices and social media sites over traditional forms of communication such as email. To help eliminate the communication barriers between students and their professors, institutions from Cornell University to Georgia State University are turning to a social platform called ConnectYard that allows them both to send and receive messages however they like.

If students prefer interacting through text messages or on Facebook and Twitter, they can send messages to their professors this way. In turn, professors can receive and send responses however they prefer – and typically, that's through email, according to ConnectYard CEO Donald Doane.

“Faculty isn't always keen on adopting new technology and many don't want to encroach on the personal space of students on social networking sites,” Doane told Mashable. “ConnectYard allows students and professors to interact on the platforms they prefer to use. If a teacher cancels a class and sends an email to students, some students might choose to receive the message as a text or Facebook post instead.”

Students can also respond to messages on whatever platform they choose. If they are on Facebook and send an email to their professor about a class, the professor can receive it through email.

“We wanted to give students and faculty an easy way to reach each other and interact without having anyone change their communication habits,” Doane said. “We've had great success with it so far and more institutions are jumping on board.”

ConnectYard also integrates with other popular learning platforms such as Blackboard and Desire2Learn, so students and professors can post and respond to queries, and the site archives all interactions as a reference, regardless of where they originate.

In addition, if a student is reading an ebook, she can pose a question from their ereader and the professor can respond via email, It will then show up directly in the the student’s ebook notes on the device.

“ConnectYard is flexible in how it allows students and faculty members communicate,” Doane said. “Everyone prefers to communicate in different ways, so we want to make sure people can interact with others however they feel most comfortable — whether it’s just through email or through a high-tech device or social platform.”

More About: bizspark, Facebook, Startups, Twitter

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It Doesn’t Matter If RIM Is Lying, It’s Still in Deep Trouble

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:56 PM PST


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

When Research In Motion (RIM) announced that BlackBerry 10 devices would be delayed until late 2012, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis blamed the delay on needing to wait for dual-core, dual-mode LTE chipsets.

Early Thursday, Boy Genius Report refuted that story. Citing an unnamed “high-level RIM employee,” BGR said that the real reason for the BlackBerry 10 delay is that RIM doesn’t have a working product.

RIM immediately denied the substance of the article, telling us and other members of the press that “the anonymous claim … is inaccurate and uninformed.” The company went on to reiterate its position that it “will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect.”

So who is lying and who is telling the truth — and more importantly — does it matter? I don’t think it does. The reason behind the BlackBerry 10 delay isn’t particularly interesting to me — though I get the sense that even if the LTE chipsets RIM wanted were available today, BlackBerry 10 devices would still be a year away — but the delay itself is indicative of just how perilous RIM’s current position is.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about RIM and its current situation, and no matter how I imagine various scenarios, I just can’t see a positive outcome. After sitting idle for years, RIM gave up its position as smartphone leader to Apple and Google. Already, developer sentiment toward Windows Phone matches or exceeds sentiment regarding the BlackBerry. This is a real problem.

Negative Momentum and Depressing Financials

2011 was not a good year for RIM. RIM’s entry to the tablet game got off to a rocky start, after the PlayBook failed to impress. This led to slow sales, cancelled partnerships and zero developer interest. RIM didn’t help matters by shipping the device without native email and then postponing the promised update several times.

On the phone front, BlackBerry 7 could have been called BlackBerry 6.1. BlackBerry handsets have routinely lagged behind their competitors in the past, and now they continue to fail to keep up with current-generation Android or iOS devices.

This has all has a profoundly negative effect on RIM’s bottom line.

As RIM defenders and BlackBerry loyalists like to point out, RIM is still a profitable company. However, its profits are on the decline. Moreover, just because the volume of devices shipped increases (or remains steady) does not mean a company is not in trouble. Volume != profit. Just ask Nokia.

Dan Frommer and Horace Dediu ably and astutely dissected, analyzed and graphed out RIM’s financial situation, so I won’t reinvent the wheel by doing my own. Suffice to say, without a killer new product, RIM’s profitability looks anything but secure.

A Dying Platform

In October 2010, product and marketing strategist Michael Mace wrote a prophetic article entitled “What’s Really Wrong with BlackBerry.” In his article, Mace outlines how computing platforms die — pointing to small declines in growth of sales and gross profit per unit sold. Mace’s post is worth reading because 14 months later, his predications perfectly match what has happened in the market and to RIM’s customer base.

As a former BlackBerry user, I’ve carefully watched the BlackBerry decline over the last few years. The iPhone didn’t become a lethal threat to the BlackBerry until July, 2008. When the App Store opened, the entire game changed. As a diehard BlackBerry user at that time, I bought an iPod Touch and was immediately blown away by the disparity between the first generation of iPhone apps and those available for BlackBerry.

Surely, I thought, RIM is going to do something to improve its app situation. It’s going to invest in better tools, beef up its underlying infrastructure and try to poach better developers. Right?

Wrong.

Instead, I watched as RIM ignored the current app situation, denied that there was a problem and continued to tout its dominance in the enterprise. The only problem, of course, was that BlackBerry’s dominance on the enterprise started to slip. Apple’s iOS 2.0 introduced Exchange support, and by 2009, getting corporate email on an iPhone was just as easy as getting it on a BlackBerry. I finally left the BlackBerry in 2009 as it became apparent that apps would never be a focus for RIM.

Millions of others in the U.S. made the same decision I made — including our Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff. RIM still has strong sales in some emerging markets — but again, volume doesn’t equal profit. Just ask Nokia.

Silver Lining

The promise of QNX, the operating system RIM bought in 2010, was that its infrastructure and nature would make it ideal to use and augment on a plethora of devices.

With QNX, RIM was hoping to do what Apple did with the acquisition of NeXT: Create a next-generation operating system to replace the dead-end system in the current product line.

That promise still exists and QNX still has potential. Unfortunately for RIM, that potential depends on how quickly the company can get QNX-powered components on the market and how well RIM can build out its basic devices software.

Delays on the BlackBerry 10 devices — for whatever reason — don’t help. How much longer are users, developers and carriers supposed to wait for RIM to get its act together? And assuming the company does get its act together, is RIM ready to face reality about its position in the market, its role with developers and its appearance to consumers?

More About: blackberry, Opinion, RIM, trending

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Study Shows Pinterest Will Compete with Top 10 Social Networks [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:11 PM PST


Pinterest, a social networking site with an “online pinboard” interface, has made great strides this year. According to Experian Hitwise, this invitation-only site now has 40 times the number of total visits it had six months ago, now finding its way into the top 10 websites in the category of social networking and forums.

The site is especially popular with women between the ages of 25 and 44, which comprise 59% of its readership, and the majority of those visiting Pinterest are female, consisting of 58% of its visitors in the past 12 weeks.

Pinterest lets visitors group items into categories and share them with others. Then, there’s plenty of room for comments about those items. Most of the site’s images are of items concerning home décor, crafts, fashion, and food.

The downside of all this new-found popularity? If you want to join up with the site, there’s a waiting list.

More About: pinterest, Social Media, Video

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5 Ways to Win at Website Localization

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 06:49 PM PST


Robert Laing is the founder of myGengo, a 500 Startups company that helps businesses all over the world go global with convenient, affordable and high quality human translation service that scales.

Let’s delve into the topic of website localization to learn exactly what every company needs before going global. But first, to define localization: the translation and adaptation of content for foreign markets. Simple enough, right?

Now, take a close look at five important points to remember when it comes to website localization. 

1. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Let’s assume that the images on your company website are already geared towards your intended audience. When going global, it's best to rely on images that are culturally appropriate and sensitive. Do this well and you'll boost your company's ability to connect with those visiting the site, not to mention, foster a healthy relationship with potential customers.

Let's take a look at an example of good website localization. In the screenshot above, notice how Zynga Japan, the company behind Farmville and Cityville, incorporates the Japanese flag into its homepage banner. Clearly, the image is appropriate for a website intended for a Japanese audience.

Don’t forget that the way one audience perceives a particular image can differ greatly from another reacts. And then there's the fact that what's acceptable for one target market can take on an entirely different meaning for another. For example, a thumbs-up gesture in one culture is a positive affirmation, whereas in another, it could mean, "Up yours, pal!"

Keep these things in mind when localizing the company site and you'll be one step closer to connecting with your target market. Here are some other things to consider.

  • Attention to Detail: Mistaking the Italian and Mexican flags, for example, is bad news.
  • Cultural Sensitivity: People have strong feelings about things like colors, symbols and metaphors. Does the color white symbolize purity or death for your intended audience?
  • Risk Assessment: Aim to avoid any unintended consequences that could be embarrassing or potentially hazardous to your company.

The bottom line: When building trust and earning customer loyalty is the objective, images can make all the difference in the world.

2. Adapt and Adjust

Make no mistake, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work with website localization. People do things differently around the world; therefore, companies going global must adapt and adjust to succeed. Let's compare the English and Japanese websites of Rakuten, the company behind the largest online shopping mall in Japan, to explain this further.

Notice that the Rakuten USA website (above) is simple and clean when compared to the Rakuten Japan website (below). Of course, know that Japanese websites can oftentimes appear overly busy to the non-native eye.

In a blog post titled The Puzzle of Japanese Design, Sean Hussey, former employee of Rakuten USA, offers his perspective about the Japanese company: "We tried to develop our products with clean designs and interfaces, which came in direct contrast with the home company's approach. It was understood as a cultural difference…Japanese sites are full of text, images, animations, clashing colors and scroll-scroll-scrolling layout choices."

The bottom line: The style and design of a well-localized site means staying consistent with local norms so it looks and feels familiar and usable to your audience.

3. One Language, Two, or a Combination of Both?

Question: If a major component of the localization process is content translation, then why do some companies purposely exclude the translation of certain keywords, tabs, menus, taglines and slogans when localizing their website?

The short answer is that no one ever said website translation had to be an all-or-nothing process. In fact, in some cases it can be beneficial for a company website to blur the language lines rather than opt to translate the whole thing from start to finish. If you want to see this in action then check out the Japanese myGengo site.

Now let's take a look at one example: Airbnb‘s website is used by people around the globe looking for local accommodations away from home. Specifically, Airbnb provides a platform for its users to rent from "real people in 19,732 cities in 192 countries." The tagline appears on the company website, where I'd now like to draw your attention. 

In these two screenshots, notice the tagline used for the Chinese version is in English (not Chinese), yet the Italian version of the website has been remained in its local language. Why one and not the other? Also, check out the photograph of the happy friends at the top of the page. In both examples, the words below the image are in English, and haven't been translated into Chinese or Italian. This is because localization isn’t always a science — it’s an art too.

Here are some points to keep in mind when tackling the language component of your website localization.

  • Language Lengths: Some languages appear longer when written or typed. Do the words "Invite Your Friends" fit as nicely in Italian as they do in English?
  • Emphasis: Foreign languages are cool. If you want to make your page pop, using a non-native language might be your secret weapon. Just be careful with translation!
  • International Appeal: Localization is all about going global. Translating some (not all) of the content on your site into another language might be an excellent way to strengthen your international appeal.

The bottom line: When done in moderation, there's absolutely nothing wrong with mixing languages on a localized website.

4. To Translate or Not to Translate, That Is the Question

A company's slogan/tagline can be one of its most important branding assets. When a memorable phrase follows a company's name, people are more inclined to remember it. That said, making a brand stick in the hearts and minds of potential customers is by no means an easy feat. This is especially true when crossing borders and languages.

What is the most effective way for a company to keep its brand identity strong as it expands into new markets around the world? It all depends. Here are a few points worth mentioning.

  • Brand Identity: Consistency plays an important role in maintaining a company's image.
  • Nuances: Culture systems, belief systems and worldviews shape the way we think about the words we use.
  • Target Audience: Know your audience. What may be considered funny in one language may be insulting in another.

Let’s take two examples.

A. Wikipedia, The Translation Path

Wikipedia, a company with a clear and precise mission (to be the free encyclopedia of the world), has a tagline to echo its vision. In the screenshot to the left, you’ll see the same tagline translated into each of Wikipedia’s languages.

In this case, when translating the phrase "the free encyclopedia," there isn't too much room for a mistranslation (don't hold me to that). If you believe the same holds true for your company's tagline/slogan, then perhaps opting for the translation might be a great idea.

B. Facebook, The Non-Translation Path: Everyone knows Facebook has completely changed the way people communicate with the world, but how does Facebook communicate with its users? Let's compare the English with the Japanese version of the Facebook homepage to see what stands out.

The English page says, “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” The Japanese page says, “Using Facebook, you can connect with friends, colleagues and classmates to deepen your connections. Also access Facebook from cell phones and smartphones.”
 
Notice that the Japanese page mentions users can access the site with phones, but the English page doesn't. That’s probably because 95% of the Japanese population are mobile subscribers. The same study explains that Japan uses the mobile Internet more than any other country in the world. It appears Facebook crafted its Japanese homepage with this point in mind. So, what can we learn here? If you want to maximize your outreach potential, you’d better know your target market inside and out.

The bottom line: Having a carefully localized slogan/tagline for your company can be an effective way to foster relationships with potential customers in new markets.

5. Down to the Last Detail

A successfully localized website is one that appears to have been developed locally, even when it wasn't. Since localization mistakes and oversights can be awkward for website users and potentially embarrassing for the company, make sure to get it right — it’s absolutely worth the time and effort. The last thing any company wants is to turn away potential customers from its website before those visitors ever have a chance to experience the product or service. Generally speaking, website localization means giving some extra attention to things like:

  • Dates: Month, day, year vs. day, month, year.
  • Time: 12-hour vs. 24-hour time.
  • Color: Avoid local color sensitivities.
  • Currency: Pay attention to conversions and formats.
  • Phone Numbers: Formats are different around the world.
  • National Holidays: Holidays are country and region specific.
  • Geographic Examples: Keep it relevant for your audience.
  • Website Language Codes: ISO codes are important to know.

Let's take a look at the two images above. The first image was taken from Apple's U.S. website, and the second from the UK website. Can you spot the differences between the two? Here's what I came up with.

  • Date: U.S.: May 19, 2012 vs UK: 19-May-2012.
  • Time: U.S.: 9:41 a.m, vs. UK: 09:41.
  • Color: Look closely at the colors behind the girl.
  • Bonus: What's going on behind the girl's shoulder in the UK version of the photo. Is that a tail?

The bottom line: When the aim is to make it look like you’ve developed the website in your target market, the details are incredibly important.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it: what every company needs to know when localizing its website. With the help of the Internet, expanding into new markets continues to become easier than ever before. Of course, going global, and doing it with style, requires a strategic game plan, a comprehensive vision. Good luck, and we'll see you out there soon!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tumpikuja

More About: contributor, design, features, international, web design, web-2.0

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As Users Rail Against GoDaddy, Unpacking the SOPA Supporter List [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 06:11 PM PST


GoDaddy is one of more than a hundred companies catching flak online for supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Many website operators have threatened to move their domains away from GoDaddy, and Y Combinator founder Paul Graham has said SOPA-supporting companies will no longer be invited to the startup incubator’s popular Demo Days showcase for investors.

A list of nearly 150 supporters released by the United States House of Representatives’ judiciary committee contains broadcasting, publishing and trade groups expected to attend, including ABC television and the Country Music Association. But it also includes several initially eyebrow-raising entrants including a number of private law firms, First Amendment Coalition Executive Director Peter Scheer told Mashable.

SOPA is a hotly contested bill that would greatly expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to deter and punish online copyright violations. The bill would enable companies and the U.S. Justice Department to effectively force American payment processors and ad partners to cease doing business with copyright-infringing websites that target American customers but operate from outside the United States.

Supporters of the bill argue that it is a necessary means of protecting intellectual property, but others say it’s draconian legislation that goes too far and will drastically reshape the Internet’s current architecture. While many agree that Internet piracy is a legitimate problem, the SOPA debate has largely turned into a standoff between Internet-freedom advocates — including sites and services such as Tumblr, Firefox and Reddit — and major consumer-content creators such as the Motion Picture Association of America.

“The game changer with SOPA is that it gives private entities an enforcement mechanism that previously only existed with a court order,” Ross Dannenberg of the intellectual property law firm Banner & Witcoff said in an interview.

Ben Huh, founder of the popular Cheezburger Network websites, told Mashable on Thursday he was “very surprised” when he learned the day before that GoDaddy, where his company has registered more than a thousand domain names, had come out in full public support of SOPA. He said Cheezburger will move all of its domains away from GoDaddy if GoDaddy doesn’t withdraw its support.

“I don’t think they understand how poorly the bill is written and the consequences it will have for their customers,” Huh said. “We’ve had a very good business relationship with GoDaddy and would love to keep working with them. But if they’re going to support a bill that’s going to recklessly kill Internet jobs, then we can’t support them.”

In a long Reddit thread that began on Thursday, more than a hundred other domain holders have said they will or already have transferred their sites away from GoDaddy.

The additional presence of several major law firms on the list of supporters is another sign of the powerful forces behind SOPA, Scheer said.

“Firms usually like to keep above the fray in terms of their own views and interests, but here they’re signing on their own, which is uncommon,” he said. “My guess would be that in this case two things are involved: the supporting companies are big and important, and also may be longtime clients of the firms that involve some personal alliances.”

The presence of companies and groups like pharmaceuticals manufacturer Pfizer, cosmetics brand Revlon and the 60 Plus Association seniors’ advocacy group may also come as a surprise to many casual SOPA observers.

But Danneberg said that Pfizer and Revlon are seeking through SOPA to make it easier to curb the sales of fraudulent pharmaceuticals to American customers through websites based offshore. Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told Mashable that groups like the 60 Plus Association likely support the bill because they receive money from companies with a more direct interest in SOPA passing — in the 60 Plus Association’s case, for example, from pharmaceutical companies.

The EFF — a donor-supported organization that says it defends digital rights in the public interest and is comprised of lawyers, analysts, activists and other technology advocates — strongly opposes SOPA. Higgins said that the rundown of official backers released by the House Judiciary Committee reveals whose interests SOPA serves.

“It’s clear form the list of supporters that companies that would be granted broad immunity from the bill, or who would be granted the power to silence speech they don’t like, have come out in its favor,” he wrote in an email.

SOPA was originally introduced as legislation by Texas Republican representative Lamar Smith in October. The House Judiciary Committee announced this week that it would postpone further debate on the bill until early next year. Scheer called the delay a positive step.

“It’s certainly good because as of now it’s been much too complicated to be considered, vetted and acted upon under a lot of time pressure,” he said. “It’s one of those issues where both sides have legitimate concerns and the question is whether legislation is drawn in a way that adequately accommodates the need for copyright protection in certain areas, and the need for freedom of innovation and freedom of speech in others.”

More About: Ben Huh, Electronic Frontier Foundation, First Amendment, godaddy, House Judiciary Committee, Internet freedom, SOPA, Stop Internet Piracy Act, trending

Chevrolet’s Super Bowl Ad Choice Will Be a Viral Video

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 05:48 PM PST



Chevrolet will pick the most-shared video among a pool of about 40 crowdsourced videos to determine which will run in next year’s Super Bowl.

The General Motors brand on Thursday presented about 35 of the films on ChevroletRoute66.msn.com. Chevy will award prizes of up to $10,000 to the contestant who shares the most and answers the question "If you could drive to any destination in your home country, where would you go?" The top sharers appear on a Leaderboard on the site.

Chevy announced the program in June. The brand teamed up with crowdsourcing firm Mofilm, and received 197 entries from all over the world for videos riffing on the theme “everyday heroes.” The list will ultimately be pared down to around 38, says Steve McGuire, GM's marketing strategy manager. (One of the ads appears above.) The video that gets shared the most wins.

Crowdsourcing is nothing new for Chevrolet. The brand worked with Mofilm for a program last spring in connection with the Tribeca Film Festival that yielded four commercials. Chevy also asked college students in 2007 to dream up ideas for a Super Bowl ad. The brand’s agency at the time, Campbell-Ewald, executed the spot.

By encouraging sharing, Chevy is ensuring that it gets maximum social media exposure for well under six figures. “We’re crowdsourcing distribution,” says McGuire.

Such programs can provide big dividends. Another crowdsourcing program, PepsiCo’s “Crash the Super Bowl” — now in its sixth year — allowed that company and its brands to dominate social media conversations prior to the game in February, according to Alterian, a technology and research firm. That program, however, was based on votes, not shares.

More About: Advertising, chevrolet, crowdsourcing, Marketing, Super Bowl

27% of Photos and Videos Now Captured on Smartphones [STUDY]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 05:14 PM PST


More than a quarter of photos and videos shot by individuals in the U.S. are now being captured by smartphones, according to an online survey of 3,300 Internet users ages 13 and up. Sales data suggest smartphones are replacing consumers’ need for low-end point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders.

The percentage of photos taken with a smartphone went from 17% to 27%, a 44% increase from the year previous, according to a survey conducted by NPD Group. Meanwhile, sales of point-and-shoot cameras dropped 17% in volume and 18% in revenue in the first 11 months of 2011. Individual sales of pocket camcorders dropped 13%, with a 10% decrease in revenue.

Higher-end items performed better: Sales of cameras with detachable lenses (average price: $863) increased by 12%, and sales of point-and-shoot cameras with optical zooms of 10x or greater (average price: $247) grew by 16%.

Liz Cutting, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD, acknowledged that smartphones are taking the place of point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders in many instances — particularly “spontaneous moments” — but for important events, single-purpose cameras and camcorders remain the device of choice.

We asked Flickr reps if they were seeing a similar in increase in mobile uploads. The company said traffic to its mobile site doubled this year, and uploads from mobile sources has increased eightfold in the last two years.

Image courtesy of Photojojo

More About: camera, Mobile, photography, smartphone

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7 Ways Businesses Can Get More Social With SlideShare

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 04:12 PM PST


Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel's Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy. She was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of WOMMA.

Online presentation website SlideShare is an important business network that ranks in the top 300 websites, with 30 million monthly viewers, and 80 million pageviews. Users upload presentations, Word and PDF files, tag them, and share them on other social media sites, or embed them in their blogs and company websites.

But SlideShare isn't just a one-way process: The social functions in the site are giving companies the potential to connect with customers and clients in new ways, generating new business and enhancing their online image.

Here’s how businesses achieve social success using SlideShare.

1. Tell Your Story

For organizations of all sizes, presentations can communicate a company's ethos far beyond the more traditional LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook routes alone. Presentations make a company more three-dimensional and add personality.

In May 2011 NASA launched its NASA Universe channel on SlideShare, which integrated presentations, documents and videos from NASA headquarters and field centers. In the announcement on the SlideShare blog, NASA social media manager Stephanie Schierholz said, "SlideShare provides us another great way to share our content in new ways and new places with the goal of inspiring and interesting people in the universe."

Because presentations are generally about very specific topics, companies use SlideShare for inbound marketing, to generate traffic through clients' and customers' searches. By sharing SlideShare links, it’s possible to optimize searches by tagging presentations and using the SlideShare profile to link back to the company website.

2. Highlight Your Experts

IBM Expert Network is a set of channels that leverages the thought leadership of employees across the company to gain social media engagement. It showcases the latest thinking, research, inspiration videos and more.

3 and 4. Demand Generation and Social Cross-Pollination

We've all heard it: What gets measured gets funded. But tracking awareness metrics is one thing; measuring lead capture is something else entirely. Eloqua has an active and creative SlideShare channel – so creative, in fact, that SlideShare features Eloqua's channel as an example of an effective Platinum page. Through Eloqua’s SlideShare Cloud Connector, the company automatically populates its demand generation database with profile information from anyone who completes a form on its SlideShare channel. It's one of the ways companies are bringing together social media with demand generation.

Another thing that jumps out about the channel is its social network cross-pollination. The company highlights links to its Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube communities right under the channel description.

5. Share In-Depth Information

An increasing number of companies are using SlideShare to present financial, technical or other in-depth information that can be difficult to represent on their websites using more traditional tools, such as graphs and text. This enables businesses to connect with potential clients in a whole new way.

Pfizer uses SlideShare to post its financial reporting and other presentations, which allow interested parties to access information in a user-friendly format.

6. Spark Conversations

Brand management company 1000 Heads specializes in managing what others say about brands. The company uses SlideShare's social tools and community section to spark conversations with users who comment on, embed or share presentations from their clients, which helps them to reach and engage whole new audiences.

7. Upscale exposure

If a webinar or conference presentation reached only a few thousand people in its original format, posting online through SlideShare can create a multiplier effect. Distilled‘s Tom Critchlow initially presented a webinar to a few thousand people, but after posting on SlideShare, received over 30,000 views.

Have you used SlideShare? Do you find it a visually pleasing and useful tool?

More About: Business, contributor, features, slideshare, Social Media

Twitter Delivers Bug-Fixing TweetDeck Update

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 03:38 PM PST


Ever since Twitter unveiled its first Twitter-branded version of TweetDeck, there have been complaints about the Twitter dashboard's stability and overall performance. Now Twitter is finally rolling out TweetDeck 1.1 for the desktop, as well as an update to the Web-based Chrome version.

There is some irony in TweetDeck’s 1.1 status. The original TweetDeck, which was around for a few years, never hit version 1 status before Twitter acquired the third-party Twitter tool in May. Now, just a couple of weeks after finally graduating from beta to finished app, TweetDeck is already at “point-one” status.

TweetDeck 1.1 looks just like version 1.0. that’s because this update delivers exactly zero feature enhancements. All the changes are all under the hood. that may dissapoint some who were hoping for the reinstatement of some missing features. I wish that right-clicking virtually anywhere on the app still worked. Sadly, even in TweetDeck 1.1, it still does not.

In use, this update is far more stable than TweetDeck 1.0, which crashed so often — even while I was trying to craft a Tweet — that I finally gave up and reverted to the Adobe Air version, which never crashed. All versions of TweetDeck are now built around HTML 5 and I had heard similar complaints from those using TweetDeck in Chrome. This update should solve their issues as well.

Installing the desktop version is a painless process, but you do have to uninstall version 1.0 first. Once that’s done, installation takes less than a minute and all your settings from the previous install should still be in place.

If you’re a TweetDeck user, I suggest you grab this update today. Then let me know in the comments how it works for you. If you discover any new bugs, report them and we’ll report them back to Twitter.

Bonus: Hands on with Twitter’s TweetDeck

Since none of the features have changed, here’s another look at TweetDeck 1.0′s (and 1.1′s) feature highlights


TweetDeckInstall




Installation is now like a standard Windows application. No Air here.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: tweetdeck, Twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

6 Crazy Tech Predictions for 2012

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 02:53 PM PST


We live in a world of absolutes: Here's what happened. Even when we look to the future, our predictions are couched in the world's sometimes difficult realities. It can, to be honest, take all the fun out of guess work. So, once a year I allow myself to go beyond the likely, beyond the possible and deep into the world of the implausible. What follows are my most ridiculous and unlikely predictions. Most are just nuts, but one is, to be honest, all too scarily possible. See if you can guess which prediction I'm talking about.

1. Facebook Buys Digg

Facebook's 2012 will look a lot like its 2011: More growth, more change. Still, it hasn't quite broken through on the content curation and voting side of things. With all the frictionless sharing people will be doing, they may no longer think about accumulating "likes."

Digg started using Facebook's OpenGraph in 2011, which makes it easy to share what you're reading on Digg to Facebook. As I see it, this is simply the first step on the road to a much deeper relationship. When Facebook buys Digg next year, users will get the ability to "Digg" not only profile pages, but people. That's right, you could really "Digg" someone on Facebook. It's so 1976, but also so cool.

I foresee another side to the Facebook universe where people, places and things are Dugg on a more generalized basis, but those Diggs bubble up to individual profile pages and appear alongside Likes, Readings, Watching, etc. There is an 85% chance that all of Digg's existing audience will walk away from the service if this acquisition happens, but I'm not sure most of them will stay with the content curation destination anyway.

2. Scientists and Hollywood Develop New Way to End Movies

3D has pretty much flopped, and it's getting tougher and tougher to get movie-goers into theaters. Scientists will partner with Hollywood studios to unveil a new technology known as "Fresh Ends." Using CGI, Hollywood script writers, voice and context recognition and logic algorithms, Fresh Ends technology will generate new endings for some of the world's most popular films. These slightly rewritten movies will be re-released to theaters — just like the 3D rereleases — and are expected to add 15- to 20% additional box office returns to each film. For now, Fresh Ends only works with movies shot digitally.

3. SOPA Becomes the Law of the land

Myopic congressman and a distracted president take the Stop Online Piracy Act and pass it into law. Designed, at least according to the bill, "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes," SOPA has an almost unprecedented chilling effect on the web. Thousands of U.S. sites shut down, other larger ones continue, but are now full of boring pap that could never be misconstrued as content piracy.

Content creators of all stripes are so unsure of what will be labeled piracy they struggle to create anything. By the end of 2012, however, an underground Internet (The UnderWebs) arises. It's full of unfettered communication and content, and slowly but surely, millions of web surfers around the world begin using it instead of the government-policed Internet — a platform that dies a sad, quiet death in 2018.

4. Apple Intros a 5-inch Tablet Phone Hybrid

Sorry, no iPhone 5 or iPad 3. Unable to decide whether it should deliver a 7-inch iPad 3 or a 4.5-inch iPhone 5, Apple comes down squarely in the middle with a giant handheld that, naturally, makes calls and is almost large enough to be a usable tablet. The hidden bonus? It's also a fully functional HDTV. Apple, however, will remain mum for most of the year on whether or not it plans on actually delivering a larger Apple iTV.

5. Google+ Takes Center Stage

Virtually unchanged for more than a decade, Google's search page undergoes a subtle, yet important transformation. The search giant places a "+" sign right next to the "Google" Logo. But the change is more than logo-deep. If you hit your own "+" sign on your keyboard before typing in your search query, all results will feature Google+ search results on top. If you hit "+" twice, your search query can be used to launch a new Google+ post. You'll still have to select which circles you want to share your search query with. Rumors will swirl throughout 2012 that Google wants to rename the entire company “Google+.”

6. Honda Releases Asimo to Consumers

Japanese auto manufacturer Honda shocks the world by unveiling a fully operational, $1,999 Honda Asimo Home Helper Robot. Like the Asimo we've seen in product demonstrations and on YouTube, “Home Asimo” can walk, run, jump, make coffee and sandwiches and, as we soon learn, clean toilets. Honda sells a stunning half million units before August, 2012. The most startling news, though, comes when one Home Honda robot in Dearborn, Michigan turns on its family's computer and signs itself up for Twitter and Facebook. By December, more than 300,000 of the robots have been destroyed or returned.

Now it's your turn. Drop into comments and share your wildest predictions for the New Year.

More About: 3D, apple, digg, Facebook, features, Google, robots, SOPA, Tech, trending

Facebook Suggested Events Predicts Where You’ll Want to Go

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 02:15 PM PST


Feeling housebound by Facebook addiction? Facebook just released “Suggested Events,” which uses your own check-in information to point out events you might want to go to in the real world.

Suggested Events replaces the old Friends Events menu choice that was there before. We’re not seeing this new Suggested Events feature on all our accounts — it might have something to do with whether you’ve checked in anywhere yet on Facebook, or it could be another Facebook slow rollout — but if you’re one of the lucky ones so far, here’s how to access it:

Go to your Facebook Home page, and on the left side, click on Events. As usual, different events that are coming up will display on the right side of your screen.

But if you look underneath Events, there’s a new menu choice called “Suggested Events.” Click on that, and you’ll see a list of suggested events for later this week, next week, and on into the following months.

So Facebook will be using information it's gathered about you to suggest more places to go? This is the kind of feature that might be considered "creepy" by some users, but others will welcome the suggestions that might actually have something to do with places you've been -- or places you're interested in going.

Anything to get us out of the house and away from all the screens can't be bad in my book. Oh wait, will Suggested Events be available on the iOS and Android Facebook apps? We've contacted Facebook to find out, and will let you know. In the meantime, how do you like this new feature?

Image courtesy TechCrunch/Josh Constine

More About: Facebook, new feature, Suggested Events

4 Reasons 3D Movies Aren’t Just a Fad

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 01:43 PM PST


Roy Taylor is a GM and EVP at Hollywood-based MasterImage 3D. You can follow him on Twitter @Roy_Masterimage.

There's a lot of discussion these days about the viability of 3D and what the future holds for it.

Is it a gimmick? A trend? Or is it the next great frontier in movie making?

As someone in the business of 3D, I'd like to share some thoughts on why I think it’s here to stay, and in a big way.

1. 3D Sales Are Strong and On the Rise

First, let's look at data from Box Office Mojo, which shows U.S. sales results for 3D. By selecting the data from these box office returns, we can see that the top 50 3D films in the U.S. have grossed more than $8 billion, and that the top 10 films since Sept. 1 this year have grossed more than $480 million already.

It’s true that a recent Morgan Stanley report indicates that overall, 3D films are generating less per title YTD over 2010, down from 54% to 43%. However, these numbers do not consider that the biggest movie season of the year has yet to pass. Thus, the Morgan Stanley numbers do not include any of the top movies below:


Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com, Dec. 6

A recent article from Slate uses numbers (although without references for source) that show the returns for theater owners. Revenues are compared per theater for 2D vs. 3D. The Slate piece states that Avatar made $26,800 per theater in 3D vs. $15,800 for 2D, but that this positive ratio for 3D has fallen steadily since, citing a negative ratio for Toy Story 3 and others.

The per screen analysis is misleading because we do not know what size auditoriums were being used. $10,000 for a 250-seat cinema is not the same as $10,000 for a 400-seater. Each theater owner will adjust the number of screens showing 3D vs. 2D to achieve the best mix for his customers. As reported in Box Office Pro Magazine (Dec. 2011 issue, “The Number of the Beast”), we know that Harry Potter 7.2 sold 25% more in 3D than Transformers 3 on only 2% more screens, for example. What's more, 3D screen growth has been up 102.6% this year and there are now 12,738 screens in 3,015 locations in the U.S. alone.

A fairer snapshot is this one below, which shows the relative performance of different 3D movies over the summer. The green boxes highlight 3D outperforming 2D on a per-screen basis.


Source: Box Office Pro Magazine

Now, let's consider the ratio of success for a 3D movie. According to numbers available from False Creek Productions, while there were fewer 3D films that reached a gross of $1 million+ in 2010, a significantly higher percentage of them reached the top 20 of that year.


Source: False Creek Productions

2. 3D Theater Installations and 3D Movie Production Are on the Rise

According to a Sept. 20 report from IHS Screen Digest, there are now more than 30,000 3D-enabled theaters in the world and new installations are reported across all regions.


Source: IHS Screen Digest

The report also shows that 3D now averages 3.1 new releases internationally per month, up from two per month in 2010. BoxOffice.com lists 38 3D films confirmed for release in 2012, and many more are rumored. In addition, the list of respected movie producers and directors now making films in 3D continues to grow:

  • Martin Scorsese – Hugo
  • Steven Spielberg – The Adventures of Tin Tin
  • Baz Luhrmann – The Great Gatsby
  • Tim Burton – Frankenweenie
  • Peter Jackson – The Hobbit

    • Among many others.

    3. 3D Gets Favorable Reviews

    Recently, there have been extremely positive reviews about new movies due for the 2011 holiday season. Importantly, they are from directors who are new to shooting in 3D, including Spielberg, Scorsese and Tim Burton. The Sun newspaper in the UK notes about Spielberg's Tin Tin:

    “This is the first time Spielberg has used the 3D performance-capture technology which proved such a hit in 2009 sci-fi wonder Avatar and beautiful tricks abound — such as merging into a scene via a water bubble. But unlike in Avatar, everything is digitally animated. It is somewhere between Pixar and live action — a new level of computer reality. While too many films use 3D as a cheap afterthought, Spielberg has seen its true worth for immersing the audience in another world.”

    For Scorsese's new movie Hugo, CinemaBlend wrote:

    “Scorsese looks at the people who call 3D a gimmick, compares us to those who thought motion pictures were a fad a century ago, then goes on to show us what’s probably the most gorgeous live-action 3D film ever made. The 3D isn’t just a new cinematic trick for Scorsese to play with, but inherently tied to the narrative, a key element that shines up everything else around it.”

    4. 3D Is Getting Better

    The Slate piece refers to reviews from rottentomatoes.com and its scoring system to show that 3D films are declining. The piece points out that of the 32 movies in 3D, the ratings have dropped 41%. Presumably, the score for The Lion King in 3D was overlooked at 89% as was the recent score for Hugo at 94% — both big hits for 3D. Or how about Puss In Boots 3D, at 82% — a film that has so far done $142 million at the box office?

    Admittedly, Hollywood is still learning how to use the format creatively. Popular Mechanics notes, “The form is still new, the technology is still evolving, and the technology hasn’t caught up to the potential of the form.”

    Most recent 3D movies have wide action shots, which are not ideal for the format. Shooting from far away limits the effectiveness of 3D imagery and fast-moving objects don’t usually render well. But increasing the frame rate from 24 frames-per-second up to 48 or even 60 — James Cameron’s next big technological push — will help with that.

    Peter Jackson's video blog (see above) on the filming of The Hobbit in 3D is an excellent example of how 3D is going to continue to improve.

    What do you think? Are you satisfied with the quality of current 3D films? Which 3D movies are you looking forward to in 2012?

    Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kryczka

    More About: 3D, contributor, Entertainment, features, Film, Movies

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Facebook and iPhone Lead Way on Klout’s Top Topics of 2011 Lists [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 01:06 PM PST


Social media users had no shortage of things to discuss in 2011 as big news — good or bad — got even bigger online.

Hot topics that revolved around major tech companies or products such as Facebook, Netflix, YouTube, iPhone, Xbox 360 or Kindle Fire incited a flurry of online reactions.

In the infographic below, Klout lists the most-buzzed about companies, tech products, locations, people and music genres of the year, and many of the topics are in line with what got Mashable readers fired up.

“When people talked about these topics, they got tons of RTs, @mentions, shares, comments, likes and more,” Klout's marketing manager Megan Berry told Mashable Thursday. “These are the topics their audiences loved to discuss, share, and, in some cases, hate.”

For example, Apple secured five of the 11 spots on tech products list, with the iPhone leading the charge.

But why does looking at these hot topics matter? “As social media increasingly shapes and reflects the prevailing opinions on brands and events, it’s more important than ever to understand what people want to share and why for everyone from brands to individuals,” Berry explains.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Reveals 2011′s Most-Popular Status Trends | YouTube’s Top Videos of 2011

Klout, which measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Foursquare on a scale of 0 to 100, has made a major push this year to highlight (with new features) and pinpoint (by adding more popular social networks to its scoring model) the topics individual users are experts on. In September, Klout unveiled Topic Pages that let users gain insights on top influencers and +K recipients for specific content areas. This month, Klout unwrapped sashes, a visual update to that Topics feature. Despite those efforts, some critics say Klout is flawed partly because some users try to game its system, or because its scoring model doesn’t take into account the offline influence of experts who also have online presences but don’t create much content.

Which topics are you surprised to see make or be excluded from Klout’s infographic? Chime in.

Thumbnail courtesy of iStockphoto, flyparade

More About: Business, klout, Music, News, Tech

How Facebook Conquered the Social Web in 2011

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 12:48 PM PST


1. New Facebook Profile




Jan. 10: Facebook pushes a new profile design to users that featured a visual photo concept, friend categories and a new "about me" section.

Click here to view this gallery.

Already a social networking giant, Facebook still managed to have its biggest year in history. The company set unprecedented records in terms of valuation, user base and pageviews. Plus, it integrated with web, mobile and desktop platforms galore. Yes indeed, Facebook has managed to influence nearly every modern digital industry out there.

Take a look through our gallery of 2011 Facebook milestones. Nearly every month this year, Facebook released a major update to its platform or announced a new broken record.

Do you think Facebook will be able to sustain or even improve its track record next year?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Antonprado

More About: Facebook, facebook pages, facebook privacy, Facebook Ticker, facebook timeline, features, trending, year in review

Mashable Staff Debate Head-to-Head on SOPA

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 12:35 PM PST

The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is a hotly debated bill in the U.S. Congress. Some say it’s a necessary law to ensure protection of America’s intellectual property, others claim it will destroy the infrastructure of the Internet as we know it.

Mashable editor in chief Lance Ulanoff and Entertainment Editor Christina Warren hosted a Google+ Hangout Monday to discuss where they stand on SOPA and to debate the merits of the bill. They both agreed that piracy is a problem which needs solving, but they butted heads on whether legislation like SOPA is the right way to fix the issue.

Where do you stand on SOPA? Let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, akinbostanci

More About: internet, SOPA

Vending Machine Dispenses Jell-O, But Only if You’re Old Enough [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 12:18 PM PST


Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

Kraft is employing a unique vehicle to publicize the first Jell-O dessert made just for adults: A vending machine that doles out the treats, but only to those of a certain age.

The company sampled the dessert, called Temptations, in Chicago and New York. As the video above shows, the machine uses facial recognition technology to make its determination. Kraft worked with Intel on the effort, which was conceived by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which had previously created the Jiggle-It app for the iPhone and iOS.

The video, which details a trial run in Chicago, benefits from the current viral video trend of exasperating children, though there’s no cussing this time around.

Age recognition is just the beginning for the Kraft/Intel partnership. As detailed earlier this year, the two are working on another machine that reads faces to suggest meals for grocery shoppers. (An elderly man might get a different recommendation than a young woman, for instance.)


1. "Friday" by Rebecca Black


Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Advertising, intel, jell-o, Kraft, Marketing, vending machines, youtube video of the day

Why Real-World Socializing Is the Next Big Thing for Social Media

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 12:05 PM PST


René Pinnell is the CEO of Foreca.st, a free mobile app that lets friends share where they are going and what they are doing. Foreca.st is the latest app from Hurricane Party.

Often, there is an ironic disconnect between your online and offline social networks. In other words, we're "friends" with strangers on Facebook, and we "hangout" when we’re actually apart on Google+.

Facebook app Shaker attempts to transform the social network into a virtual bar. While buying someone a virtual beer is a poor substitute for the actual experience, Shaker is attempting something pretty interesting when it comes to meeting new people. By mashing up your social graph with your interest graph, Shaker connects you with new people you might actually become friends with in real-life.

But Shaker still feels like an awkward middle ground for social networking — a stopgap bridge between our online and offline selves. In other words, I'm not entirely convinced that I'll ever really say, "I had a great night last night on Shaker."

There's no doubt that social networking has transformed the way we interact with friends and family, and has made the world a more open and connected place. There's just one problem — social networking is not actually social.

Friends > Screens

From the Latin root socials, meaning "united, living with others," the word social is firmly grounded in the physical world and implies face-to-face interaction. If you're a social person, it means you like to spend time with other people. But this definition conflicts with today’s concept of social networking, in which we interact primarily with screens rather than with people.

Facebook doesn't understand old school, face-to-face social interaction, and it never will because the concept goes against the company’s bottom line. The more time users spend with the computer screen, the more ads they encounter, and consequently the more money Facebook makes. While Facebook enables some real-world interactions, this practice is the exception, not the rule.

When Google+ launched Circles as a real-life interaction tool, it seemed to understand the problem, stating that the "subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our [current] online tools." But what was Google’s solution? More nuanced online tools. This is a losing battle because there are no substitutes for real-world interaction.

So, how do we break away from our screens without losing the benefits of a digitally connected life? How do we bridge the gap between online and offline by becoming more connected with our real friends out in the real world? How do we make social networking actually social?

Putting the Social Back in “Social” Networking

Two converging trends have the potential to socialize social networking: the explosion of mobile and the shift toward "future tense" sharing.

Mobile has done more than any other trend to drag social networking into the real world. No matter where we go, our smartphones help us to stay connected with friends and family. But "staying connected" is different than actually connecting face-to-face. Even industry leaders like Foursquare fall short when it comes to facilitating real-world interactions. The checkin was partly built on the myth of the serendipitous connection — the idea that when I check in somewhere, a nearby friend will decide to join me. In practice, this rarely happens. There are just too many hurdles, missed connections and passed opportunities.

While mobile represents the bridge between the online and offline worlds, mobile alone isn't enough. It's not simply a matter of web versus mobile; it’s a matter of past versus future. In the last decade, Facebook and other social networks have focused on mapping and documenting our existing relationships. The company’s preoccupation with the past is highlighted by its new Timeline feature. At the same time, however, Twitter and Foursquare emphasize what is happening right now.

“Future Tense” Social Networking & Marketing

The past and present of our lives are already established online — therefore, the next frontier in social networking is the future. "Future tense" social networking asks: Where do you want to go? Who do you want to meet? What do you want to buy? By sharing your plans, desires and aspirations, you enable real-world interactions. For example, when you push a checkin to the future, you shift the paradigm from "I'm here now" to "I'll be there later." You increase the likelihood of connection.

Likewise, "future tense" social networking has the potential to transform location-based marketing because users are directly expressing their intent. For example, imagine that a user broadcasts her plans to grab pizza at Home Slice. A competing pizza place could then offer a deal in an attempt to swipe Home Slice’s checkin. Then, Home Slice could upsell by offering the customer half-off a second pie. So it goes.

Marketing has always been about understanding a potential customer's intent. When you understand intent, you can serve a more relevant ad at a time when that person is most likely to take action.

Understanding intent is just as beneficial for consumers as it is for businesses. Consider the travel industry: When a customer buys a plane ticket from Expedia, his intent is clearly to travel to a specific city on a specific day. Consequently, Expedia can present great hotel and rental car deals for that destination — and the payoff is big. According to Expedia's 2011 third quarter report, only 9% of its worldwide revenue comes from booking airline tickets — the remaining comes from booking hotels, car rentals and other travel-related services.

The shift from present tense to future tense might seem trivial, but it will generate a huge shift. "Future tense" social networking catches people at a unique moment in the buying cycle. The consumer hasn’t entirely made up her mind about where to go or what she plans to buy, which means businesses can take an active role in the decision-making process. After all, you can't change the past or the present, but you can change the future.

Ultimately, real-world socializing will win the day. Humans are social creatures hard-wired for interpersonal contact and companionship. It's time to bridge the gap between our online and offline lives and make social networking actually social. Real life: Accept no substitutes.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter, johnwilliamsphd

More About: contributor, facebook timeline, features, foursquare, Google Hangouts, Marketing, Social Media

FCC Approves First White Space Devices, Paving Way for Better Wi-Fi

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 11:46 AM PST


New developments from the FCC could bring us one step closer to faster, more advanced wireless networks.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Thursday that its Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) has approved the first database for television white spaces and the first device that will be allowed to operated on these bands.

White spaces are unused spectrum between broadcast television channels. Although broadcasters argued that they needed this bandwidth for their own needs, the FCC disagreed and ruled to allow unlicensed usage of this spectrum in November 2008. Tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, have long lobbied that the FCC allow these white spaces to be used for more powerful Wi-Fi and wireless broadband. This could lead to what some have dubbed “Super Wi-Fi.”

The FCC ruling [PDF] lays the foundation for a new breed of high speed wireless devices, including new forms of Wi-Fi, to come to market.

The first part of the approval says that Spectrum Bridge Inc.’s database of television white spaces can start providing service to devices as of January 26, 2012. Additionally, the FCC has approved a device from Koos Technical Services “as the first product allowed to operate on an unlicensed basis on unused frequencies in the TV bands.”

FCC rules require that unlicensed TV bands contact an authorized database first — so the approval of Spectrum Bridge’s database is a big first step to getting more products approved.

For now, the approval is limited to Wilmington, NC and its surrounding area. Operations will expand nationwide as soon as the FCC completes and activates processing requests at other facilities.

Eventually, the goal will be to have licensed spectrum across the country that can be used with a new wave of devices. Much as the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands allowed for better cordless telephone and router service, the use of these white spaces will allow more devices to operate more quickly and with lower interference.

Image courtesy of Karl-Martin Skontorp on Flickr

More About: fcc, White Space, white spaces, wi-fi

Gift-Giving Got You Stumped? This Site Can Help [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 11:13 AM PST


If you’re scrambling to find a Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa gift, but have no idea what to get, you might want to give Anonysize.me a shot.

The site, created by Erik Dungan, co-founder of web design and hosting firm BIG Folio and a few other companies, will send an anonymous text to your intended recipient and then ask his or her size and preferences. If the recipient answers the text, Anonysize.me spits out the size information plus a link to where you can buy it.

SEE ALSO: The Giftinator: The Ultimate Way to Find Your Man a Last-Minute Gift

Dungan created the site during a hackathon for Zappos and Twillio last week. The site uses APIs from both.

In a trial run at Mashable headquarters, the technology appeared to have a few issues. When I sent the text to colleague Samantha Murphy, she received the following text:

Hi Samantha! Someone you know is shopping for you & wants to know your shoe size. Reply with your size(ex: ’9′ or ’10.5′)

After she answered, she got a follow-up question:

Thanks! So, just wondering … do you prefer flats, heels, sandals or boots? (reply with one of those)

Setting aside the fact that the average person might consider such a message spam, even a successful correspondence in this case didn’t much help the prospective gift giver since the site’s link to Zappos didn’t work. Dungan says that the primary feedback he’s gotten about the site so far is that people thought the texts were spam and some women thought they were creepy as well. However, the texts have gotten a 60% reponse rate, he says. “We’re tweaking the messaging,” Dungan says. “That [stat] can definitely be improved.”

The introduction of the site is another issue: It just went live on Dec. 16, pretty far along into the holiday season. Given the response, though Dungan says we might see another version of Anonysize for the 2012 holiday season, perhaps for other retailers beyond Zappos.

[Via Creativity Online ]

More About: anonysize.me, apps, holiday 2011, Mobile, texting, Zappos

Why Good Entrepreneurs Borrow, Great Ones Steal [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 11:07 AM PST


Fabrice Grinda is the CEO of OLX, one of the largest classified websites in the world, and he’s very excited about the emerging digital markets Russia and Brazil. His company, which he describes as Craiglist 2.0 for the rest of the world, is rapidly expanding there, and as a tech investor he’s putting money into startups from those countries, as well.

“These are two of the hottest Internet markets in the world right now,” said Grinda, who notes that GDP growth is fueling similar growth in the digital sector in these emerging markets.

In additional to his views on Brazil and Russia, watch our interview with Grinda to hear his thoughts on why he considers himself an entrepreneurial thief, what he considers when deciding to fund a company, what the “secret sauce” is for running a successful consumer Internet company and tell the story of how he went from being broke in 2001, to being a successful startup founder and prolific investor just a decade later.

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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More About: classifieds, entrepreneurship, mashable video, Startups, venture studio, Video

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9 Awesome High-Tech Holiday Easter Eggs

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 10:59 AM PST


YouTube Snowflakes





A new snowflake button can be clicked at the bottom right-hand side of certain YouTube videos to drop flurries onto the screen. The snowflakes accumulate at the bottom of the video, even when you hit the pause button.

Click here to view this gallery.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas — at least on tech sites such as Google and YouTube. Some of the Internet's biggest companies are treating its visitors to a series of seasonal surprises, from falling snowflakes to pictures that celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

Google is the king of “barrel roll” search result surprises, so it's only expected that the site would be filled with fun holiday tricks to celebrate the season. Type “Christmas” or “Santa” into Google search to reveal a row of Christmas lights. A row of Star of David images also pop up when “Hanukkah" is searched, and “Kwanzaa” turns up a collection of kinaras, a candle holder with seven candles that represents the tradition's roots.

Last week, Mashable reported that typing “Let It Snow” into Google delightfully fills the browser up with flurries and fog. It also acts like a frozen lake and shows the path your cursor has taken.

SEE ALSO: “Do a Barrel Roll” on Google, and You Won't Be Disappointed

YouTube is getting into the holiday spirit too by adding a snow button on some of its videos. Only available on certain clips, a new snowflake button can be clicked at the bottom right-hand side of the video that drops flurries onto the screen. The snowflakes accumulate at the bottom of the video, even when you hit the pause button.

And instead of the typical circle-shaped, time-counter that shows the progress of a playing video, some clips feature snowflake-shaped buttons instead. Certain results pages on YouTube feature flurries too, such as when you search for clips with “Snow.”

It's also snowing on Bitly, a site which shortens and tracks links, and Klout, which measures a user's influence across social networking sites.

Have you seen any other seasonal Easter Egg holiday tricks pop up on sites? Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

More About: easter eggs, Google, klout, trending, YouTube

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GDrive: 5 Ways Google Could Dominate the Cloud Storage Market in 2012

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 10:35 AM PST


Charlie Wood is the CEO and founder of Spanning, makers of Spanning Backup for Google Apps. For years Wood has worked closely with the Google Apps team and possesses unique insights into the Google ecosystem for businesses. You can read more by Wood here.

For more than five years now, people have speculated about a not-so-secret Google product called Google Drive, or GDrive for short.

If you look closely, plenty of evidence reinforces that Google Drive is real and its release could, in fact, be imminent. With every leaked GDrive screenshot, test page or UI element, we creep closer to the product’s official launch, expected any time now. Heck, even Microsoft announced its Dropbox competitor.

Cloud storage is no longer in the early adopter phase. Businesses have adopted Google Apps so wholeheartedly that it only makes sense for Google to capitalize on this chunk of the market.

All the hype and excitement aside, Google will need to overcome some serious challenges if it’s going to succeed. Here are five things Google needs to do to make GDrive a success and to tap multiple markets in the coming year.

1. Google Apps Users are Already Using a "GDrive" – Keep it Intact

The earliest rumors define Google Drive: "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)."

But my company’s data suggests that businesses are already leveraging Google Docs to store critical files and data safely in the cloud, some of which is native to Google, but most of it actually is not.

In fact, 53.2% of the files backed-up by users in our sample were non-native files – mainly PDFs, songs, movies, photos and Microsoft Office Files. The rest (46.8%) were "native" Google files created in Google Apps — spreadsheets, presentations and word processing docs.


Google is no stranger to this behavior, and I'd argue that the company already has a very clear understanding of what's at stake by owning the prevailing file system in the cloud. Other players like Dropbox, Microsoft's Docs and iCloud are all contending for the same title. Believe or not, Google has essentially been in this business even longer — the company just never called the service by the same name.

The reason a prevailing system has yet to be fully realized is due to the difficult task of engineering a highly extensible storage infrastructure with a dead-simple user interface.

Google needs to take a close look at Google Apps user behavior when storing files, and make sure GDrive leverages the same strengths as the existing Google Apps setup. The company also need to integrate GDrive with Google Apps in a way that doesn't cannibalize or interfere with existing workflows.

2. A Simple Desktop-Cloud-Mobile Sync that "Just Works"

If Google nails the desktop-to-cloud and mobile-to-cloud sync, it will be crowned king of cloud files. Think iCloud for the rest of us.

In order to pull this off, Google needs to build in support for Android devices, Chrome browsers and the ChromeOS. Outside of Google properties, we’ll require virtual drive extensions for Windows, Mac and Linux. If Google Drive is ubiquitous and seamless between the cloud and our devices, it will undoubtedly snatch up the majority market share for businesses.


With Dropbox valued at $4 billion and reportedly generating tens of millions in revenue per year, I'm confident its business looks like an appetizing snack for Google. Dropbox's simplicity makes up the majority of the secret sauce, but Google can crush it if it keeps Google Drive dead-simple and pairs it with excellent sync capabilities.

But syncing anything is notoriously difficult and buggy, and it absolutely must "just work." If not, the whole idea is a non-starter. Google Drive needs to be so effortless that anyone can use it without thinking too hard, and Google has long been one of the best at keeping things clean and intuitive. If it's so straightforward that everyone can use it, they will. 



3. Google+ Integration for Consumers, Google Apps Integration for Business Users

Google+ is still finding its place among the social networks. Consequently, brands and businesses continue to experiment with the platform. Recently, Google integrated Google+ data into Google Apps, a nice gesture towards consumer data ownership, but highly influential for businesses.

Think about it: At work, we would be able to share with sub-organizations, groups and circles from Google Apps domains. Yes, please build that. GDrive, if integrated well with Google+, could be the mesh that binds Google Apps and Google+ together to make an incredibly powerful, full-featured business collaboration platform. At this point, Google merely needs to stitch the various pieces together.

4. Picasa, Google+ Photos and Google Music Integration

Our photos and music already live on Google services — why shouldn't they also exist in top-level folders on my Google Drive? By allowing me to upload photos and music to Google Docs, Google is forcing me to fragment my files and determine their intent. It would make more sense to consolidate and store all my files into one place, regardless of where it's uploaded.

Amazon does this nicely with Amazon Cloud Drive and MP3 purchases. I shouldn't have to think about which Google application in which to store specific stuff. They should all be in easy-to-access folders within my Google Drive.

If GDrive is one storage location to rule them all, it will become the hub of my digital life, not to mention, amplify the value of all the other Google services I use. Google needs to address this opportunity in the first release; otherwise, the company risks losing the market’s attention.



5. More Free Storage, Then Current Pricing for Extra Storage

Google Docs currently includes a satisfactory 1GB free storage. Google should bump that to at least 5GB in order to compete with Amazon Cloud Drive and iCloud (Dropbox starts at 2GB free storage). Microsoft's brand new SkyDrive provides 25GB. That's the kind of offer that makes people pay attention. 

Of course, Google could retain its current pricing for extra storage — $5 per year for 20GB, and $100 per year for 400GB.

Regardless, pricing will be a key factor for businesses and consumers alike. By maintaining current pricing, Google has the opportunity to substantially undercut Dropbox (where $100 per year only gets you 50GB).

In truth, businesses will gladly pay the existing storage prices, particularly if the above integrations are in place. But a little price reduction will go a long way in making up for Google’s late market entry.

Conclusion: It Could Be Awesome In A Google Drive World

All wish lists aside, Google Drive has the potential to introduce a ubiquitous drive exists for both consumer and commercial use, which would accelerate the way by which we find, discover, consume and share valuable data. Not to mention, it would enable much more (and better) sharing from all the other Google services we already use.

Our files, data and content are the lifeblood of every application and service we use for work and personal entertainment. If Google Drive can pull off the above five features, it won't just own the applications and services that millions of people rely on every day, it will own the mesh that holds it all together.

The sum is worth much, much more than its parts here. This could be the keystone of business computing in the cloud era.

Dropbox, Box.net and Apple still can't compete on all those fronts, which means Google has an enormous opportunity to capitalize on multiple business and consumer computing markets.

Here's hoping they can pull it off.

Image courtesy of Flickr, lennysan

More About: cloud computing, cloud storage, contributor, Dropbox, features, gdrive, Google, icloud

Facebook Prioritizes Being ‘Blue Chip’ Before IPO [VIDEO]

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 10:05 AM PST


Facebook is heading towards its much anticipated IPO, but before the company goes public, Zuckerberg is concerned with putting forth the best product possible.

The Facebook CEO told The Wall Street Journal he’s focused on building his company into a solid performer, rather than the mammoth IPO that could be worth $10 billion.

If you were Mark Zuckerberg, what would you prioritize right now?

More About: Facebook, facebook ipo, mark zuckerberg

White House Releases Infographic to Spur #40dollars Campaign Recognition

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 09:39 AM PST


As part of its ongoing digital campaign to raise support for a two-month payroll tax cut extension, the White House released a new infographic Thursday showing that tweets with the hashtag #40dollars have been coming in from across the U.S.

The infographic also highlights a selection of individual tweets centered around the theme of “what $40 means to you.” Responses have ranged from “a home-cooked meal for my family” to “the difference to me in buying gas or paying my electric bill,” and “getting to help my brother.”

The White House began asking supporters Tuesday to use Twitter or an online form to share what the end of the tax cut would mean to them. According to their calculations, $40 is what the average American would lose every two weeks should the tax cut be left to expire. Democrats have been using that figure as a rallying point to garner support for the extension. The #40dollars hashtag was trending on Twitter Wednesday.

The extension plan has stalled in the House of Representatives, where some Republicans want a longer-term solution to the payroll tax issue.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Pleasureofart

More About: Twitter, White House

Obama’s Tumblr Posts Viral Photo of Same-Sex Kiss

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 09:18 AM PST


A Navy tradition of raffling off the first homecoming kiss turned into a poignant reminder of the sign of the times after the ship docked Wednesday and the winning female sailor kissed her awaiting girlfriend.

And now, the Tumblr blog for Barack Obama‘s 2012 presidential campaign has seemingly put its stamp of approval on the moment. On Thursday morning, the Tumblr reblogged The Associated Press photo of the kiss.

As the original blog post from The Guardian mentions, one year ago today (Dec. 22, 2010), Obama put his signature on the repeal of the 17-year-old Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. The law was overturned in September 2011, which allowed Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta to win the raffle and publicly kiss her girlfriend, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell.

The blog has attracted more than 800 Tumblr “likes” and reposts in just two hours. The sentiment for the photo has been largely positive with Tumblr users reposting it with messages such as “It’s about time. Beautiful,” “Makes me want to cry” and “Thank you Mr. President.”

“It was meant to be,” says Snell in The Virginian Pilot video below. “I think that it’s significant because it’s the first time where we can actually show who we are. … It’s something that is going to open a lot of doors … for all of the other gay and lesbian relationships in the military right now.”

SEE ALSO: The Year in Flickr Photos | YouTube's 10 Most-Viewed Videos of 2011

The Obama Tumblr launched in October and added to the president’s already extensive social media presence.

Photograph by Brian J. Clark/AP

More About: barack obama, Politics, tumblr

How to Master YouTube Promoted Videos

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 08:53 AM PST


Matt Lawson is the vice president of marketing at Marin Software, the largest paid search management provider.

Many people think of YouTube as a place to watch cat videos and post clips of their kids singing silly songs. However, marketers should take YouTube as seriously as they do Google.

By many counts, YouTube is the second-largest search engine (behind Google and ahead of Yahoo). In June 2011, ComScore reported that Americans had more than 5.6 billion YouTube viewing sessions per month, with the average visitor frequenting the site 23 times a month at an average of 26 minutes per visit. Reports show that YouTube passed 20 billion video views during October 2011 alone.

YouTube’s millions of visitors do a lot of searches, either by way of Google or the YouTube site itself. Predictably, sophisticated video search is the cornerstone of YouTube's success.

For marketers, this means you need to think about your video strategy as carefully as you do your paid search strategy. Creating compelling videos and posting them on YouTube is a given — but you also have to get people to watch them. Make sure your videos turn up in search by using YouTube Promoted Video Ads to ensure your videos get found. The ads operate much like Google paid search ads, enabling advertisers to draw attention to videos, gain viewers and channel subscribers, and eventually influence downstream conversions. According to visitors' search results, Promoted Videos appear either at the top or at the right of the page.

Additionally, with a Promoted Videos account, marketers can add overlays to their videos that link directly to their site, offer a promotion, etc., which will drive traffic to their sites and directly boost sales. Given the prominence of YouTube today, every marketer should consider a Promoted Videos program. Here are a few practical steps to get you started.

1. Create a Channel

Before you even think about buying Promoted Video ads, make sure you have a complete presence on YouTube. Start by creating engaging videos (not just one, but several) that promote your products and services in a fun, dynamic way. Don't make these videos "salesy," but instead focus on entertaining people. Experiment with different kinds of video, including how-tos, product reviews, customer testimonials and professionally-produced marketing videos. To create these videos, you can work with an agency, hire a video production company or shoot some yourself.

Once you've generated a menu of videos, create a YouTube channel to showcase them. Just as important, add accurate titles, descriptions and tags to every video; YouTube will use these keywords to match your video with visitors' search queries. Over time, make sure to monitor video feedback. If a video achieves a positive response, it's time to invest in promoting it.

2. Keywords are Key

Like other Google ads, Promoted Videos are managed through AdWords and follow a similar format to paid search, so search marketers may find the process of creating Promoted Video ads quite simple. When creating an ad, make sure the thumbnail description and ad copy reflect the nature of your video. Like paid search, you can select between broad, phrase, exact or negative match types for your Promoted Video keywords.

One thing to remember: YouTube visitors are looking just for video content, so their search habits differ from traditional search. That means porting over keywords from search or display campaigns won't work. Instead, choose keywords that relate to the video you're promoting. YouTube offers advertisers a keyword suggestion tool that provides recommendations based on your video description, video id/URL or target demographic. The tool, currently in beta, also provides monthly search volume statistics for each keyword, so you can see which keywords visitors tend to use more often.

3. Make Every Bid Count

When it comes to bidding for Promoted Video keywords on YouTube, approach the task as you would a paid search or display campaign. That means setting a conversion goal and determining an expected volume and budget for each month. Naturally, you'll want to determine the value of each click before making bids. A third-party bidding tool, particularly one integrated with your SEM campaigns, proves useful in managing your YouTube bidding decisions and assessing the results of your Promoted Video campaigns.

4. Don't Forget the Overlay

One of the primary perks of running Promoted Videos is the ability to include an overlay ad, clickable text that appears at the bottom of your video while it plays. The overlay allows you to add a link from your YouTube video to an external site, and is thus an invaluable technique to drive viewers to your site.

You can also use this space to offer a promotion, such as 20% off a customer’s first purchase, which directly impacts conversion. Video is often more of a branding tool, but with the overlay, you can turn your videos into actionable, direct response campaigns.

5. Don't be Boring

First and foremost, YouTube is a massive content destination and social network. Consumers go to YouTube to be entertained, get information, find specific video clips and then share. Therefore, create videos that engage your target audience, then embed links in the overlay or at the end of your video that encourage people to pass along. A successful video doesn't just get views, but also elicits a response and encourages sharing.

Track the social sharing path of your videos and respond to viewer comments. If viewers ask for a follow-up video, be sure to provide one. And if your video is shared onto other social networks, be sure to respond on those channels. Participating in the conversation with viewers allows you to strengthen your brand and provides insights on how to create better videos.

Online video is no longer just “nice to have.” Every marketer should have a video strategy — and YouTube is the place to start.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, ozgurdonmaz, Flickr, jonsson

More About: Advertising, contributor, features, How-To, Marketing, promoted videos, trending, Video, YouTube

Researchers Create ‘Sun-Believable’ Solar Cell Paint

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 07:58 AM PST


Notre Dame researchers have created a semiconductive paste, which can turn surfaces its applied to into solar cells.

A team of researchers, lead by Professor Prashant Kamat, created the new material by coating nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide, and then suspending them in a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste.

The paste can then be applied to a transparent conducting material, which creates electricity when exposed to light.

The solar cell paint is cheap to produce, but it currently has a serious drawback: low efficiency. Silicon solar cells typically have 10-15% efficiency, while the material created by Kamat and his team has a 1% efficiency at best.

"This paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities. If we can improve the efficiency somewhat, we may be able to make a real difference in meeting energy needs in the future," says Kamat.

Due to its amazing properties, Kamat and his team dubbed the new material “Sun-Believable.” The researcher believes that, if perfected, the new material could be a start of a new era in solar power.

More About: green energy, solar cells, solar energy, solar power

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