(* Source: FruktComms *)

Despite its title the ‘Nike Air Show’ is not a sponsored display by the Red Arrows, in fact its more akin to blow football – only with Nike footwear instead of footballs.

The people behind the campaign refer to it as a mix of advergaming and P.O.S.

A specially created in store installation enables users to power one of two racing Air Max shoes (which have been attached to magnets to give the illusion of them floating on air) across a race track by blowing into a computer mic.

The concept here is that the shoes are being powered by customers’ ‘air’, thereby highlighting the USP of the footwear.

Ok, it’s not quite the hover board from Back to the Future that everyone wants, but it’s a step in the right direction. All they need to do now is to make a version strong enough to actually enable people to discover the weightless sensation of being inside the Nike Air Max as it levitates.

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(* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)



The ad depicts 3,000 ping-pong balls being pushed up into the air by industrial strength air compressors as they slowly form together to create a 72 square foot image of the new shoe hovering above the ground.

The concept was no mean feet, requiring the engineering skills of a real life rocket scientist, the pressure power of 24 separate air valves and 800 carefully placed guide lines for the balls to traverse up.

The commercial reminds us of a similar gravity defying concept from Nike that rolled out in-store in Argentina last year, which enabled customers to race two Air Max shoes against each other across a bed of air.

What’s particularly nice about Asics effort is that it has avoided the lure of CGI gimmickry, instead opting to put effort into showcasing their engineering capabilities. It makes for a much more natural positioning, one that further enhances the message of a shoe that is supposed to encourage ‘natural’ foot movement.

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(* Source: Paloma Vazquez *)

 

Adidas’ ‘All-In’ campaign received significant attention when it launched last week (including the sometimes surprising selection of celebrity ‘athletes’). Supporting the campaign’s launch was a 3D projection mapping event in Paris, in which the brand showcased athletes across multiple sports; including football/soccer, skating, and even…music. 3D projections were a significant trend last year, with brands like Ralph Lauren, Target and others employing the visual technology to bring ideas to life. It clearly shows no sign of ceasing this year.

In investigating the campaign further, we also found it interesting how Adidas is engaging fans in the campaign in both the US and the UK, with the apparent strategy of empowering fans to demonstrate their talent, passion for sports, and their “game face,” by submitting their stories describing why they’re “all in.” As Piers noted last week, the objective of the campaign is to
promote the idea that when you love your game, whatever that game may be, you put your all into it.
To that end, select respondents will be showcased differently in each country — either in an MTV commercial in the US, or as a reporter at a music event in the UK (for example).
We can’t help but notice the slight resemblance between Adidas’ new campaign and Pumas’ ‘After Hours Athlete’ campaign. While Adidas’ ‘All In Campaign’ is a more direct celebration of athletes — as well as music makers and lovers, the combination of music directly alongside sports threw us off just a bit.

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(* Source: Fash and Mash *)



GQ Style magazine has launched a new iPhone app in partnership with designer e-commerce site Mr Porter, the men’s arm of Natalie Massanet’s Net-a-Porter.
The GQ Style Guide labels itself the essential men’s fashion manual, offering advice on “what to wear, how to wear it, and where to buy it”.

Daily updates cover everything from the best suits, shirts and shoes, to the latest trends from the catwalk shows.

There’s also an “Ask the Style Shrink” section, dedicated to answering fashion questions, and a “How to Dress” reference for specific events.

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(* Source: PopSop *)



For Beck’s, beer always goes hand in hand with art—this year, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s brand is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its Art Labels project by launching a plethora of themed activities (the recent Beck’s Art Crawl exhibit if one of them) revolving around creativity. In collaboration with Mother London, the brand has started an ambitious three-year initiative dubbed The Green Box Project, celebrating art, independent talents and technology at the same time. Beck’s is offering artists from various creative fields (not only visual) a unique opportunity to get their pieces showcased in the groundbreaking virtual gallery for people to ‘unlock’ them via augmented-reality in “the visually stunning and technically pioneering” Green Boxes designed by Jason Bruges—they will be located across more than 80 countries in major cities of the world including London, Miami, Milan, New York and Rome to name but a few.

As part of the project, Beck’s will select 1,000 works submitted by creative individuals, fund and put them on display via 6.5 feet glowing cubes. The most surprising thing here is that no art pieces are visible to the naked eye there—to see them, you should use a special mobile application that allows to locate the nearest Green Box, start the augmented-reality experience, learn more about the ways to participate, etc. (so far, the apps available only foriPhones and iPads, but soon Android users will also be able to marvel the art and watch the related content).

From July through September, the brand will distribute “30 Green Boxes holding exclusive virtual pieces by renowned artists in the US, UK and Italy,” the official website states. “You have, so to speak, a pair of glasses that allows you to experience what is inside of the Beck’s green box. Every box is filled with a piece of art, fashion, music or design or a combination of those, because we’re talking about those four passion points of our target consumer,” commented Peter van Overstraeten, global marketing manager for Beck’s , to AdAge. For the launch of the project, on July 4 Beck’s unveiled the first work by Belgian-born artist Arne Quinze—he created a giant 200-feet virtual intense orange-red flame coming out of the torch of the Statue of Liberty (the initial piece didn’t require the box to view it—people can see it via the green box as well as the Statue of Liberty through their smartphones).

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(* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)



Can a website really initiate an actual party? Perhaps in Argentina it can, where this particular slice of music-based marketing stems from – courtesy of ‘once you pop you can’t stop’ chip brand, Pringles.

The Home Party idea is based on the concept that Pringles offers the ability to “Organise a Party Right Now” and the website attempts to convey the party package in a one-stop shop by teaming up with a number of DJs to produce a unique party soundtrack.

Pringles teamed up with 12 international DJs (Carlos Belatti & Joy Marquez; Christian Berger; Felipe Valenzuela, etc) and invited them to compose a set of 12 exclusive tracks, with the whole process curated and produced by internationally renowned DJ, Jimmy Van M.

This exclusive music was then made accessible online, requiring people to sign in with their friends and via social networks in order to utilise the soundtrack for their own party.  The site also features accompanying visuals and VJ tools to aid with the overall atmosphere of the shared dance event experience.

Although the concept can feel a little caged in by its website constraints (it seems to beg for an actual live activation accompaniment) the premise of the ‘party where you’re at’ concept is one that works well for the brand’s regional markets, with the curation and exclusivity angle providing the draw of a big dance event in a compact package, echoing the ‘party in can’ message that underlies the brand itself.

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(* Source: Carlos Varela *)



Incubus has a new album coming out in July, and instead of doing the usual press tour, the band has decided to set up shop in its hometown of Los Angeles, hosting a livestream to get fans pumped for the new disc.

“Incubus HQ Live” kicks off Thursday and will run until July 6, with the band interacting with fans — in person and on camera — daily from roughly 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT. As of right now, Incubus isn’t exactly sure how its going to use the stream, according to guitarist Mike Einziger. “We haven’t really planned a lot of it,” he says. “We’re going to leave a lot of it up in the air. There are a few things that are going to be planned, like I’m the guitarist, so I’m going to do an guitar clinic with fans.”

The band also plans to perform live on the stream — the first performance of which will be tonight — answer fan questions sent in via social media, and conduct any interviews with the press from Incubus HQ. The band has also teamed up with video-sharing app Viddy (which is rapidly becoming a favorite among members of the music scene, like Panic at the Disco), asking fans to create 15-second videos inspired by upcoming album, If Not Now, When? [iTunes link]. The band even has their own Viddy production pack — or effects that users can apply — which includes the ability to soundtrack a video with their single “Adolescents.”

Although most bands are loathe to delve into the marketing side of an album release, Incubus conceived the livestream idea on its own, attempting to tailor the concept to its image. Einziger acknowledges that the promotional side of music “kind of sucks,” but looks upon the livestream as a chance to let fans know about the disc in the band’s own way.

“That’s the key for us — being able to let people know that we have an album coming out, but allow people to find out about it through the channels that we prefer,” says Einziger. “None of us are great at talking about our music, we’d rather just play it. [But] we want people to know that we have an album coming out…. If we don’t tell the story ourselves, maybe somebody else will tell it in the way that we don’t like.”

“I can only imagine what this would have been like with me, if I had this opportunity with some of the bands that I grew up listening to,” he adds. “I would have lost my mind.”
The band does feel a bit apprehensive going into the first day of the promotion. “We don’t know what we’re going to get. This could be the worst idea in the world,” Einziger says, his sentiment almost exactly mirroring Death Cab For Cutie bassist Nick Harmer’s apprehension before the band filmed a live music video for their song, “You Are A Tourist.”

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(* Source: brand-e.biz *)



Honda America has launched a songwriting competition, The Sounds of Civic, tasking Facebook fans with submitting and voting for original songs inspired by… the 2012 Civic.

To kickstart the contest and get the juices flowing, the brand got a number YouTube musicians to create their own songs about the self-same car, with artists such as Maria Zouroudis, Julia Dales, Greg Holden, Madi Diaz and Free Will joining in. The videos have been posted on the Honda Civic Facebook Page and on the branded YouTube channel. Throughout the contest, fans can follow updates through the #soundsofcivic hashtag on Twitter.
The first round of voting will begin 6 June, and the top eight finalists will each receive $2,500 in music gear from Sam Ash Music Stores. The top vote-getter among will be awarded a brand new 2012 Civic and have the opportunity to perform live on a 2011 Honda Civic Tour date in Los Angeles.

“We’ve seen a high crossover of Civic fans and music lovers,” says Steve Center, vp of national marketing operations for American Honda Motor Co. “And with the launch of the 2012 Honda Civic we saw a perfect opportunity to give our amazing fans a little bit of both.”

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(* Source: Maria Stadtmeuller *)



Yahoo and Collective Digital Studio have launched an original online series, In The Dressing Room, with Cat Deeley, the host of Fox show So You Think You Can Dance.

In the Dressing Room is a 20-webisode, twice-weekly series, which provides backstage access to Deeley’s room before she goes live on So You Think You Can Dance. In each programme, she will provide viewers with fashion and beauty tips, wardrobe selections and the scoop on her fashion inspiration behind each look.
In the Dressing Room will run for 10 weeks and will be promoted across the Yahoo network.

“Video is a top priority for Yahoo, and this new web series… is an important part of enhancing the video experience across the Yahoo network, and will add to our premium portfolio of original programming,” says Erin McPherson, head of originals and video programming. “Yahoo has eight out of the top 10 shows online and In The Dressing Room will continue to grow our ability to offer a rich canvas for brands to tell their stories and integrate their brand into the next generation of digital programming.” Yahoo’s original programming US audience for May was 24.2 million unique visitors.

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(* Source: Loulla-Mae Eleftherioau Smith *)



Glaceau VitaminWater, the enhanced water brand owned by Coca-Cola, has launched a national digital marketing campaign for the summer, targeting fashion and music savvy consumers through a series of festival tie-ups.

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(* Source: Laura Feinstein *)



While it would be nice if you could bring your best-friend along every time you needed a second fashion opinion, the truth is that sometimes those whose opinions you value most aren’t always at your disposal. While photo-capable phones like the Droid or iPhone have made sharing digital dressing room pictures a breeze, what if your trusty style guru is indisposed?

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(* Source: PopSop.com *)



MTV 

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(* Source: Mark Terry *)



DJ Alex M.O.R.P.H. has signed up to music social network Flowd’s Frequent Fans programme. The trance deejay will be using the platform to engage with fans for his performances this summer. He will be debuting the new and unreleased track Connected on Flowd, and the music destination’s users will be sent a mobile coupon which they can use to download song for free. The DJ is the first artist to provide content as exclusive as an unreleased track on the platform.

“Artists are beginning to embrace mobile social marketing to build their fan base and promote their latest activity,” says Tommi Laitinen, SVP, Flowd. “As artists take advantage of Flowd, the industry is recognising how useful our application is at building robust loyalty programme tools.”

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(* Source: Brenna Ehlrich *)



“Cryosphere” is a relatively simple game that lets you navigate through a colorful, geometric plane as the statue of David encased in a spinning rectangle. The song — a soaring, spinny jam reminiscent of a slightly more shrill, tinny (in a good way) Phantogram — carries you through the landscape.

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(* Source: PopSop.com *)



Bacardi 

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(* Source: Dazed Digital *)



This summer sees a new immersive theatre experience as a collaboration with Felix Barratt via a dramatic mix of film and online ventures

The Black Diamond will run from 3rd – 21st July, offering just a few thousand lucky invitees the chance to be part of this unique immersive theatre experience; whilst the story will develop simultaneously online, giving a new depth to the production and offering an additional interactive perspective for the audience, whether they’ve attended the experience or not.

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(* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)



Not content with hitting up Mr Cab Driver himself, Lenny Kravitz, for their recent ad campaign, the Jeep brand is rolling out an innovative digital promotion, which lets users map their favourite tracks online.

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(* Source: Brande-biz.com *)



London’s Camden Theatres has begun offering live and on-demand streaming from its theatrical venues via an online TV channel on its website. The platform currently hosts content from the recent Accidental Festival at the Camden Roundhouse, as well as an interview with arts duo Gilbert & George. Coverage of a number of summer festivals is in the pipeline.

“We are all about making entertaining content more readily available to consumers wherever they are,” says Marina Sirotkin, UK country manager for ipercast. “And there’s a real opportunity in the arts education space for these kinds of services too.”

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(* Source: Jenny Fillipetti *)

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(* Source: Tim Stevens *)



They're a growing threat, these simple games with their simple designs, simple controls, and simple graphics. They don't offer the full, premium experience that the real gamers want. They aren't hardcore enough. They aren't serious enough. They're just too... casual.

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(* Source: PopSop.com *) 

(* Source: Mark Terry *)

(* Source: FieldMarketing.com *) 

Featuring original band members Alice Cooper, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith and Michael Bruce, plus Steve Hunter who stood in for the late Glen Buxton, The ‘Jägermeister Ice Cold Event’ was the first time the group had ‘appeared’ together in the UK since 1972 and celebrated the release in advance of the new Alice Cooper Box Set OLD SCHOOL: 1964-1974 on 6th June 2011. Alice Cooper commented, “We were so excited to be part of this historic event. Hope you enjoyed experiencing it as much as we did being part of it. I am looking forward to coming to London in person in June to see my fans.”

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(* Source: Francisco Hui *) 

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(* Source: PopSop.com *) 

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(* Source:  Brand-M *)

(* Source: Dazed Digital *)

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(* Source: Vice.com *)

(* Source: BrandE.biz *)

(* Source: Mark Tery *)

(* Source: Paloma Vazquez *) 

Levi’s has made significant strides to elevate the brand directly into the contemporary ‘cultural fabric’. From photography to art, and from Pennsylvania to the broader US and internationally, Levi’s is doing some smart, compelling work to cultivate its perception as an interesting brand that quite simply ‘gets it’. We don’t know if this will necessarily sell more of Levi’s denim (at least not in the short term) – but it will create curiosity and relevance for the brand as it supports creativity and art, among both the professionals it partners with and the average folks that can practice their own art (with Levi’s as both patron and curator).

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(* Source: Dave Pinter *) 

Anyone remotely interested in photography either in New York City or passing through over the next three months will want to check out the space. The gallery will feature a rotating exhibition of photographs, some shot right from the on-site studio. If you can’t make it, many of the special workshops and discussions will be broadcast online.

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(* Source: Agenda Magazine *)

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Project Imagin8ion, a photography contest promoted by Canon, invites people to submit their imaginative photos for the chance to inspire a Hollywood short film by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard.

A one-minute TV commercial to promote the contest has been created. “Parade” features a city street full of visual effects as an astronaut, a little girl riding a huge diamond dog, a mermaid, firefighters, and a winged knight fighting a giant snake, all pass by Ron Howard’s apartment. He is seemingly unaware, as he gazes at a selection of photographs in search of inspiration.

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(* Source:  PopSop.com *)

(* Source: PopSop *) 

(* Source: Lauren Indvik *) 

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(* Source: Erica Swallow *)

 

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(* Source: Lauren Indvik *) 

(* Source: PopSop.com *)  

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 (* Source: Jackie Rangel *)

(* Source: Emma Hutchings *) 

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(* Source:  Jolie O'Dell *)

The Coffee Bean lineup kicks off May 16 with indie-pop singer Lelia Broussard and alt-rock artist Terra Naomi, who will perform from a Coffee Bean store in Beverly Hills. Both artists are particularly known for their popular YouTube clips.

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(* Source: Paloma Vazquez *)

Land Rover, The Brooklyn Brothers London, Somesuch & Co with director Nick Gordon and Less Rain have collaborated to produce Being Henry, a fully interactive ‘Action –Love – Fantasy – Comedy – Adventure’ film about choices. The online film affords viewers the opportunity to make Henry’s choices, via a choose-your-own-adventure style interaction. Leo Fitzpatrick of The Wire plays Henry throughout the film’s nine different story lines and 32 potential endings. Starting out as a an apparently normal, mundane day, that story may escalate from deciding on breakfast cereal to shooting rats to being kidnapping and tortured by instrument of choice, among others. The outcome depends on the viewer’s choices on Henry’s behalf.

(* Source: Laura Feinstein *)

(* Source: Emma Hutchings *)

(* Source: Stephanie Pottinger *)

 (* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)

(* Source: Giles Fitzgerald *)

It’s a clever little app that offers users the ability to create an ongoing diary of their social experiences, whilst delivering the brand a bespoke piece of engagement entirely authored and controlled by the user.

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 (* Source: Aden Hepburn *)

Adidas have created an in-store digital experience to showcase their 8,000+ shoe range. It can be deployed to allow almost any retailer to sell the entire Adidas product range without having to be a flagship store in a major city, which is a huge win for all sorts of retailers big and small.

The experience is defined by a large footwear wall, made of multiple LCD touch screens that use facial recognition to detect a customers gender on approach to the wall. The adiVerse virtual footwear wall then customises the product experience for that gender, and helps guide them to the perfect shoe, or alternatively, let’s them browse the entire range of products, with each rendered in real-time 3D (hence the Intel partnership).

The most popular products get the full content play, with videos, game stats, product specs and even twitter feeds fed through to the customer. Customers can even add product into their virtual cart, and check out via an iPad that sales staff would hold, paying with credit card or cash.

While there are a few things left to be desired with the adiVerse Virtual Footwear Wall, its a great step in the right direction that helps blur the line between instore and online experiences. I’m looking forward to finding out a little more about this as the concept store rolls out…

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(* Source: Olivia Solon *)

This has to be one of the most bizarre things I have seen today. Vodafone is challenging F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, to race against the speed of its improved mobile data network in The Netherlands.

Vodafone is calling for 28,800 Facebook users to join the race in a virtual car on Facebook. The time it takes for Vodafone’s network to download all of their profile pics (around 288MB) is the time Hamilton has to beat.

The actual race is taking place on a secret 2.7km track on 13th September and the race will be aired live on Facebook. Hamilton will be in a Mercedes Benz MP4-23 F1 car.

Users can sign themselves up to form part of the Facebook car on a special Facebook page. You can literally add your profile pic to a virtual outline of a car and can then navigate around the car seeing who else is involved.

While I completely appreciate the idea of pitting the speed of the broadband against something really fast like Lewis Hamilton in a supercar, I find it very hard to comprehend how to draw any sort of meaningful comparison from the race. So I decided to do a bit of calculation:

Vodafone claims to be able to have speeds of up to 28.8Mbps, which by my calculations (actually by Media Road’s converter’s calculations) would mean 3.6MB per second, would mean that it would take 80 seconds to download 288MB of photos.  80 seconds is almost enough for Lewis Hamilton to complete a lap of Silverstone, which is 5.9km long.

I don’t see how Hamilton could possibly lose?

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(* Source: Steve Donovan *)

Steve says...

Anybody out there remember the Rockman? It was this little personal guitar amplifier, about the size of a Sony Walkman (adding “man” to anything portable was all the rage in the 80s, you know).The Rockman let you play distorted guitar through headphones and it curiously made everything you played sound like BOSTON.

The AmpliTube iRig combo for the iPhone is kind of like the Rockman except WAY cooler. WAY, WAY, WAY cooler. We first told you about it a couple of weeks ago. I finally got my hands on one and while it’s been reviewed once or twice since that time, I thought I’d give you my view on it anyway since it ships this week – July 6 to be exact.

First lets talk about the iRig dongle. What is it? The iRig is a special connector that has an input for a 1/4 mono guitar cord as well as a headphone output jack. It showed up in the mail a few days ago and I was immediately impressed by the solidness of it. It’s still plastic, but the cable cover and coupling are pretty solid. It feels like you could pull on it pretty hard, or it could get ripped out of the iPhone many times and would not be damaged. That’s pretty much all it does; it connects the instrument to the iPhone.

AmpliTube is the amplifier modeling software that runs on the iPhone. It looks and sounds as good as you could expect for something this small and portable. The interface design is pretty great. Seeing all the stomp-boxes on your iPhone screen, complete with working LEDs and tactile knobs and controls, is a fun and natural way to conceptualize the effects. The tones they produce are pretty realistic too. Heck, just having a guitar tuner on board is a nice feature to note.

The software also lets you transfer songs to the app over wifi from any host computer on that wifi network. Once you transfer a song over, you can play along or set sections to loop. The loop triggering is pretty intuitive and works well.

Come to think of it, if I had to sum up the AmpliTube iRig combo in one word, that would be the word I would choose – intuitive. You don’t have to read one instruction manual or download a single PDF to figure out how to use AmpliTube for iPhone. Just plug  your guitar or bass in and start fiddling with it. In no time you will have some serious guitar fuzz flowing past your little eardrums.

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(* Source: Steve Cheney *)

Editor’s note: Guest author Steve Cheney is an entrepreneur and formerly an engineer & programmer specializing in web and mobile technologies. His last guest post was on Why Mobile Innovation Is Blowing Away PCs

Steve says...

The success of iPhone 4 has been astonishing to witness, despite the antenna issues, proving once again that Apple has a unparalleled ability to differentiate around design and integration, not simply “features.”

Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this.

Apple eliminated this friction by innovating at the confluence of hardware and software—hit one button mid-call and the feature just works. It really is amazing (yes, I am channeling Steve Jobs).

But FaceTime is just a teaser of Apple’s deep integration capabilities. Below the surface of hardware / software, Apple is on the cusp of differentiating on a much deeper level, a result of its strategy to vertically integrate at the component level. The advantages of integrating so deeply are subtle but incredibly powerful.

Feature Bloat in Components Benefits Apple:

I recently discussed why innovation in mobile is happening at an unprecedented pace. One primary driver is incredible component innovation.

But this rapid innovation—which is good overall—causes a negative byproduct: “feature bloat.”  The HTC EVO, which crams in 4G wireless, epitomizes this best (sorry, but mobile 4G is not ready for primetime, and I firmly believe Apple won’t even include it on next year’s iPhone 5).

The temptation for companies to differentiate via features is a virtuous cycle: component vendors (Broadcom, TI, Qualcomm) compete aggressively based on integration levels. Handset OEMs like HTC push vendors to release features prematurely, and they make component decisions based on availability of bleeding edge (but often buggy) technology.

This leads to a “kitchen sink” mentality, which conflicts with customer development frameworks, ironically driving a maximum feature set. Pressure from handset OEMs is a driver, but component vendors also tend to use competitive analysis to shape their marketing requirements. Steve Blank made some excellent insights into why this leads to feature bloat. The poor reviews of the HTC EVO are proof that—though alluring—additional features don’t always speak to consumers. Especially when they kill your battery overnight.

Apple thinks much differently about adding features. While the HTCs of the world “differentiate” blindly based on available technology, Apple innovates only when it can create a superior, well-integrated user experience.

Right now this virtuous cycle of feature bloat is accelerating in system-on-chip (SoC) development for the reasons I outlined above. And Apple is poised to sidestep it by vertically integrating and producing chips which mirror its minimalist product strategy.

Supply-Chain Transparency is an Enormous Unspoken Benefit for Apple:

Perhaps even more powerful is an unspoken advantage afforded to Apple’s SoC designers: vertical integration gives them explicit knowledge of what’s happening across the entire component ecosystem and value-chain.

How? Every component vendor in the world visits Cupertino to share its “secret” roadmap—despite the fact that Apple now competes in SoC development. The dangling carrot of an Apple design win simply outweighs any aversion to sharing. This transparency from other chip makers is extremely powerful, since handset OEMs plan several generations out (e.g. Apple is undoubtedly in concept stages with iPhone 6 and the A6).

Apple can learn Broadcom’s chip plans and mull over whether to bring portions of the digital logic related to GPS and WiFi on to the A6. New technologies like NFC for payments—bring in-house or purchase discrete? There are dozens of permutations, each with design challenges, benefits, and risks.

By extracting data from suppliers, Apple’s chip team has a feedback loop into product planning. All of this collective wisdom adds up, helping Apple decide what to roll-up, buy, license, or outsource. Imagine seeing your competition’s entire feature roadmap, and then planning your own SoC strategy. It’s like seeing your neighbor’s wife naked, and deciding afterward whether you’re interested, even though you’re already married.

Cisco has used a similar vertical integration strategy to its benefit in the enterprise for many years (Broadcom and Marvell pitch Ethernet fabrics despite the fact that Cisco builds its own switch chips). But in mobile, Apple is the only company who owns all three elements of the value-chain—hardware, software and chip components (outside of Samsung). Nokia divested its component division to STMicro, and Ericsson and Motorola spun off theirs as well.

As multicore ARM-based chips accelerate, and as software / hardware integration becomes more of a differentiator, Apple engineering teams will out-innovate competitors at the intersection of these three levels (again, antenna issues aside). It’s much more difficult for Google, Motorola, and others to cross-pollinate information from their own independent silos.

In tomorrow’s smartphone wars, this transparency into the entire mobile value-chain will give Apple an incredibly powerful advantage. This strategic implication wasn’t lost on Steve Jobs when he made the decision to vertically integrate and compete with the giants in the semiconductor world.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

What do you get when you combine music with frantic, all night hour coding sessions?  An event called Music Hack Day, where developers have 24 hours to hack together a new music-related app, which they then show off to their peers at event’s conclusion. Music Hack Day has previously been held in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, and Stockhold; this is the first time it’s coming to the Bay Area. The event runs May 15-16, and is being held at the Automattic offices at Pier 38 in San Francisco.

The main goal Music Hack Day, according to its homepage, is “to explore and build the next generation of music applications”. Aside from that, anything goes — it just has to do with music. Space is limited, so you’ll want to register here (it’s based on a first-come first-served basis, and the organizers will also be looking to ensure the people attending are planning to actually help make something).

Music Hack Day is run by an interesting group of guys with experience in both music and tech: Dave Haynes (of SoundCloud), Paul Lamere (of Echonest) and Daniel Raffel (Senior Product Manager at Yahoo!, used to run some record labels). Also attending the event will be representatives from music companies like SongKick, Pandora, SonicLiving, Songbird, and Last.fm.

The timing is also good for developers: Muisc Hack Day is taking place the weekend before Google I/O and the SF MusicTech summit, so developers from out of the town can hit up multiple events on the same trip. So rock on. And try not to think too hard about the pain some earlier music startups have suffered through — things are finally looking up for a few of them.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

It’s becoming increasingly common for the web’s many publishers to offer their own native smartphone applications in addition to mobile-optimized web versions. But few web publishers have the resources to actually develop an app for themselves. iSites is a new service launching today that allows publishers to quickly build applications for the iPhone, allowing them to create a customized and branded app in as little as 10 minutes. And soon, you’ll be able to use the platform to simultaneously publish Android apps from the same platform.

Of course, you’re not going to be able to build out a particularly complex app in ten minutes, but if your primary goal is to syndicate your stories to users, with basic features like browsing by categories and the ability to ‘favorite’ stories, this will suit you just fine. Building an app is straightforward: first, you tell iSites which RSS feed it should include in your app. You can also include feeds from a dozen popular web services like Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, and Wordpress.  Once you’ve figured out what content you’re going to include, you can tweak the color scheme of the app, add your own logos, and attach an icon and a description to include in the App Store.

Once all that’s done, you submit the app and wait for it to appear on the App Store (iSites handles the submission process). Once the app is live, you can log in to your iSites account to view analytics on the app’s performance, including which content in your app is the most popular.

One of the nice things about iSites is that even after you’ve deployed your app, you can modify the various feeds the app is pulling content from. And soon, you’ll be able to deploy apps to both the App Store and Android Market (the Android version is currently in Beta testing, with release planned in the next few weeks). Changes made using iSites (like your app’s layout or feeds) will be reflected on both your iPhone and Android apps.

iSites costs users a flat fee of $25 for the standard version, or $99 a year if you want to be able to include your own AdMob ads. The service is currently being used by a number of clients, including university papers like The Daily Californian, The Stanford Daily, and The State Press.

iSites certainly isn’t the first player to offer a solution for helping publishers build mobile apps — we’ve been seeing similar tools for nearly as long as the App Store has been around, with competitors including AppMakr, Mobile Roadie, and plenty more.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: PSFK *)

Posted by brian tiong at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 (* Source: Erik Schonefeld *)

Erik says...

Now that the aughts are behind us, we can start the new decade with a bang. So many new technologies are ready to make a big impact this year. Some of them will be brand new, but many have been gestating and are now ready to hatch. If there is any theme here it is the mobile Web. As I think through the top ten technologies that will rock 2010, more than half of them are mobile. But those technologies are tied to advances in the overall Web as well.

Below is my list of the ten technologies that will leave the biggest marks on 2010:

1. The Tablet: It’s the most anticipated product of the year.  The mythical tablet computer (which everyone seems to be working on).  There are beautiful Android tablets, concept tablets, and, of course, the one tablet which could define the category, the Apple Tablet.  Or iSlate or whatever it’s called.  If Steve Jobs is not working on a tablet, he’d better come up with one because  anything else will be a huge disappointment.Why do we need yet another computer in between a laptop and an iPhone?  We won’t really know until we have it.  But the answer lies in the fact that increasingly the Web is all you need.  As all of our apps and data and social lives move to the Web, the Tablet is the incarnation of the Web in device form, stripped down to its essentials.  It will also be a superior e-reader for digital books, newspapers, and magazines, and a portable Web TV.
2. Geo: The combination of GPS chips in mobile phones, social networks, and increasingly innovative mobile apps means that geolocation is increasingly becoming a necessary feature for any killer app.  I’m not just talking about social broadcasting apps like Foursquare and Gowalla.  The advent of Geo APIs from Twitter , SimpleGeo, and hopefully Facebook will change the game by adding rich layers of geo-related data to all sorts of apps.  Twitter just recently launched its own Geo API for Twitter apps and acquired Mixer Labs, which created the GeoAPI.
3. Realtime Search: After licensing realtime data streams from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and others, Google and Bing are quickly ramping up their realtime search.  But realtime search is still treated as a silo, and is not regularly surfaced in the main search results page.  In 2010, I expect that to change as the search engines learn for what types of searches it makes sense to show Tweets and other realtime updates.  In the meantime, a gaggle of realtime search startups such as Collecta, OneRiot, and Topsy will continue to push the ball forward on the realtime search experience.  Realtime search will also become a form of navigation, especially on Twitter and Facebook.  The key will be to combine realtime search with realtime filters so that people are delivered not only the most recent information but the most relevant and authoritative as well.
4. Chrome OS: In November, Google gave the world a sneak peek at its Chrome operating system, which is expected to be released later this year.  The Chrome OS is Google’s most direct attack on Windows with an OS built from the ground up to run Web apps fast and furious.  Already a Google is rumored to be working on a Chrome Netbook which will show the world what is possible with it a “Web OS.” It sounds like it would be perfect for Tablet computers also (see above).  Chrome is a risky bet for Google, but it is also potentially disruptive.
5. HTML5: The Web is built on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the next version which has been taking form for a while is HTML5.  Already browsers such as Firefox and Google’s Chrome (the browser, not the OS) are HTML5-friendly.  Once HTML5 becomes more widespread across the Web, it will reduce the need for Flash or Silverlight plug-ins to view videos, animations, or other rich applications.  They will all just be Web-native.  HTML5 also supports offline data storage, drag-and-drop, and other features which can make Web apps act more like desktop apps.  A lot of Websites will be putting HTML5 under the hood in 2010.
6. Mobile Video: With video cameras integrated into the latest iPhone 3GS and other Web phones, live video streaming apps are becoming more commonplace—both streaming from phones and to them.  As mobile data networks beef up their 3G bandwidth and even start to tiptoe into true broadband with 4G (which Verizon is heading towards with its next-gen LTE network), mobile video usage will take off.
7. Augmented Reality: One of the coolest ways to use the camera lens on a mobile phone is with the increasing array of augmented reality apps.  They add a layer of data to reality by placing everything from photos to Tweets to business listings directly on top of the live live image captured by the camera.  Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera, Layar, GraffitiGeo and even Yelp are examples of augmented reality apps.
8. Mobile Transactions: As mobile phones become full-fledged computers, they can be used for mobile commerce also.  One area poised to take off in 2010 are mobile payments and transactions.  Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s latest startup Square turns the iPhone into a credit card reader.  Verifone has its competing product, as does Mophie.  The idea is that any mobile phone can become a point of sale, and those mobile transactions can tie into back-end accounting, CRM, and other enterprise systems.
9. Android: Last year saw the launch of nearly two dozen Android-powered phones, including the Verizon Droid.  In a few days, Google’s Nexus One will launch as the first Android phone which can be unlocked from any given carrier (it is launching with T-Mobile). Android is Google’s answer to the iPhone, and as it reaches critical mass across multiple carriers and handsets it is becoming increasingly attractive to developers.  There are already more than 10,000 apps on Android, next year there will be even more.  And other devices running on the mobile OS are launching as well.
10. Social CRM: We’ve seen the rise of Twitter and Facebook as social communication tools.  This year, those modes of realtime communication will find their way deeper into the enterprise.  Salesforce.com is set to launch Chatter, it’s realtime stream of enterprise data which interfaces with Twitter and Facebook and turn them into business tools. Startups like Yammer and Bantam Live are also making business more social.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Leena Rao *)

 

Leena says...

GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration has steadily gained an impressive amount of users and added compelling features to its application. The social network platform has just hit 2 million users, adding another million members in just 6 months.

And GROU.PS has amped up its offering for publishers by launching Elastic Modules, which gives publishers the ability to change the way the data is displayed to their visitors. To date, the highest reach of look and feel customization was at the template level; the publisher could only change the skin of their site. Now publishers can actually modify the backend of the social network they’ve created.

GROU.PS counts Don Dodge, developer evangelist at Google, is among the community builders that have chosen GROU.PS as their online platform. “Don Dodge’s Startup List” is sort of a Crunchbase for Boston area.

The startup’s networks are attractive to users because it lets you run all of your group’s collaboration tools from one GROU.PS domain using a single login. The system supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups – each of which is available as a plug-and-play module for your community. These modules also allow users to pull in their data from other third party services (flickr, Digg, blogs, etc).

The startup, which has over 40,000 networks on its platform, also recently added ActivityRank Pipelines, a point and reward system that lets moderators of a social network measure and rank members’ content contributions and then extend moderation privileges to members based on these rankings. And the social network is launching a subscription model that will allow moderators to charge subscription fees to members (GROU.PS gets a 50% cut on any fees charges).

GROU.PS just raised $1 million in funding, bringing the startup’s total funding up to over $2 million. But while the social network is growing, it is still faces major competition form the leader in the space, Ning, which recently hit 37 million users with 1.6 million social networks created on the platform.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: b-side *)

Google Wave is proving to be a great way for people to express themselves creatively in the form of videos.  Here is one done by Whirled Interactive.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by brian tiong at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Orli Yakuel *)

 Orli says...

In this post, I compare 16 file-sharing services.  I took three main issues under consideration when creating the comprehensive app list below: Free, Fast, and Useful . . .

Most of the services suggested require no registration. None of them will ask you to download anything to your computer, and all of them are easy to use, and worth using. It is actually great to see services, such as Yousendit, MailBigFile, and Rapidshare, that are still relevant and are good choices, but if I had to pick one it would be Mediafire.

Don’t get confused now.  This is not a list of services that let you store all your files in the cloud, organizes them, or allows you to collaborate with friends. It’s more focused on file-sharing only, in the richest capacity—well, okay, you be the judge of that.

Box.net is probably the most commonly-known site featured here. But I couldn’t keep it from the list because it’s really a good one and despite all its features, it’s actually simple to use. The light version is not so attractive though. Here’s what you get: File uploads up to 25MB/file (OK, that’s pretty lame). 5 collaboration folders, 1GB storage, mobile access, public file sharing, folder widget, and a few more options. The other plans are far richer, but for personal use, the free one is enough (except for the lame file uploads limit). One thing that bothered me is that you can’t upload a file without signing up. That’s the old fashion way, don’t you think?

 Rapidshare is lacking in features & design, but if you’re looking for a one-click file host, you came to the right place. Founded in 2006, the service is the twelfth most visited homepage in the world. With Rapidshare, users can upload big files (200MB) in one step and subsequently make them available to friends and family via the download link. Premium accounts offer additional convenience, through TrafficShare that provides the option to make files available for direct downloading. The recipient of the file can access it instantaneously even if he/she is not a premium account member of RapidShare. A file can be downloaded 10 times, and will be deleted after 90 days.

I always liked drop.io and even now with much more usage than before, it is still simple to  understand. No need to sign up in order to quickly send a private link with your file(s). Maximum file upload is 100MB, but there are three different packages that will give you a whole lot more. Back to the free service; you can share, collaborate, and present music, videos, documents, audio, in a private drop, through email, web, phone, fax, and more. Additionally, you’ll be able to privately chat with the people you share a file with, in real-time.

Filedropper aims to give the most basic file hosting service that enables you to share stuff quickly. Therefore, there’s nothing complicated here, just upload the file, and share it. Simple as that. Filedropper says you can upload up to 5GB per file, which looks a bit odd to me - after all, who needs that (unless you are transferring HD videos, I guess)? Very similar to Filedropper, is FileSavr, which offers you the same package completely, with a slight change: uploads up to 10GB per file…

I actually marked this one as a favorite: Wikisend - an elegant and simple interface that helps you share files quickly. Share files with your friends using email, social networks, your blog, forums and so on. You can also protect the file with a password and choose the range of the file’s lifetime up to 90 days (max)

You can use Driveway even without registration and send up to 500MB max for each upload.  Signing up for a free account offers several advantages: A registered user can upload up to 2 GB of data to the Driveway account. Additionally, you can upload, manage and create widgets for files and folders and search for files/folders within your account.

With the free plan of Send6, you can send files up to 100MB size, which you can store in your 250MB free space. Send6 also has a free plug-in for Outlook that allows you to send large files directly from your Desktop. Please note that you don’t need to register to send files to friends. Sharing is done via email only.

Zshare is mainly used to share files that are too big to be sent via e-mail. With Zshare you can host files, images, videos, audio and flash in the same place, and as long as they remain active they can be downloaded limitlessly. Zshare lets you upload files up to 1GB, and if you register for the service (still free), you’ll be able to share them privately. Premium members get faster downloads (like most of the services here) and the ability to upload up to 2GB per each upload. Multiple files are allowed in both free and premium lines.

Overall, 2large2email has a nice and comfortable email-like interface for sharing large files. How large? 100MB in the free plan. However, if you’re looking for something good and free, 2larg2email is not your answer. The service won’t give you any additional features but password protection, and your files can be downloaded up to 7 times, will be saved for only 7 days, and will expire after that. For more features, you’ll have to pay, or move and chose another service. BTW, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t pay for premium services, but if there are other services for personal use, that offer you more for less, you may want to check them out first.

For busy people, Senduit is the best choice there is! It’s a one-page platform that generates a private link from the file you upload (100MB Max) for easy sharing. You can send the link via email through Senduit’s page directly, or copy-paste the link to any other communication channel (IM, Social networks, etc.). You get to choose when the link will expire—from 30 min. to 1 week.

I couldn’t find the exact amount that you can upload per file to Flyupload, but the service looks great. Flyupload allows you to store, access, share and backup your digital documents, photographs, and music easily with complete privacy online. Registered users get extra features like 2GB space of files, Multi-uploads with an upload progress bar. You can also upload large files via FTP or create folders and keep track of files and Images. Additionally, Flyupload lets you share files from your database, to your Twitter account with a side tool called: Flyontwit.

If I had to choose one service only from this list, Mediafire would be it. The service has a good looking UI, with some great usability. It lets you share files even when you’re not logged in and gives you a set of tools to complete this experience. For individual use, you can freely share files up to 100MB with unlimited uploads, unlimited downloads, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage. This is why you might choose Mediafire over 2large2email, for example. When signing up, Mediafire enables you to organize your files in folders, search and view your files, and email/share/embed with others. It’s the best service that you can get for free.

I was surprised to see that underneath the new layout of DivShare is the same great service from three years ago. And, even more surprised to discover some files I had stored 3 years ago in the service are still there! DivShare is a file management service that not only lets you share files, but also saves them for later (for an unlimited period of time). The maximum size per file is 200MB and you have 5GB space for free to start. After the upload, you’ll be able to embed your videos, audio and slide shows on any web site or profile. Diveshare has an iPhone and Facebook applications, a Wordpress plug-in and an open API, if you want to build something yourself.

Back when I tried MailBigFile in 2005, I thought this was a great service that offered a convenient solution to sending larger files. I still think it’s a good service. You don’t need to sign up, but if you choose to this is the best pro account for your dollar. Even though, you can use the service for free and as long as you want to send up to 200MB per file via email (but with no additional features). MailBigFile has the best price for a pro account - $15/year with an impressive list of features.

Last but not least is good old Yousendit, which has never plummeted in its presence online. A reliable and secure service since 2004 that offers the ability to send free 100MB files with a maximum number of 100 downloads allowed per file. You use it just like an email, choose a recipient, send it directly to a person’s inbox, and you get a notification when your file is downloaded.

Sharing files, large or small, should be a simple act, in my opinion—not something that should require a major effort or thought process on your behalf or make you create a complicated profile/account to use it. The options I listed here will help you explore the diverse file-sharing opportunities currently available. Whether you need to send a file privately or publicly, small or big, temporary or permanent, the options are all in this list, you just need to find the best match for your needs.

Posted by brian tiong at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Mark Hefflinger *)

The founders of gadget news blogs Gizmodo and Engadget have teamed to launch GDGT, a gadget-focused online social network.

The site was launched on Wednesday by Pete Rojas, the founder of Gizmodo and co-founder of Engadget, and Ryan Block, the editor of Engadget.

The site will not produce original news content or reviews, as do Gizmodo and Engadget, but instead aggregate news and reviews, and allow users to post their own gadget reviews.

Users can also create profiles and list their stable of gadgets, as well as wish lists.

Block told The New York Times that the gadget blogs focus on only 5% of a device's lifecycyle, the "lust phase," while GDGT will address "the 95 percent of the time you own the product there is nowhere to go. We are building the place where you can live with your gadgets online in perpetuity." 

See site here

Posted by brian tiong at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 (* Source: Alison Driscoll *)

Alison Driscoll is an interactive copywriter and social media consultant who specializes in Facebook. She authors a blog at alisondriscoll.com.

Not even a year ago, Facebook was still being dismissed as a silly site intended to help college kids slack off. Indeed, that is what helped the social network take hold with a large number of users, but it has proven its worth in business and by now, nearly everyone is on board. Companies of all sizes are scrambling to get on the site and reach both new and current customers with a Facebook Page, the Facebook preferred method for user interaction with a brand, company or public figure.

An effective Facebook Page not only attracts fans, but is sticky so that fans keep coming back and may even share the content on the Page. To do that, you need a well thought out Page that has some great applications supported by good, relevant content. Here are eight essential apps for your brand’s Facebook page:

Applications

1. Facebook Notes

This app was originally a Facebook feature that they then converted into an application; as such, it is sponsored and maintained by Facebook and less likely to break or be abandoned. Set this application up to pull in the RSS feed from your blog or other content source and it will automatically bring everything into Facebook and show all of your friends that you’ve posted a new Note.

This notification system is important for staying on their radar and is more visible than an RSS Reader, or mini-blog as I like to call it, but lacks many formatting capabilities; it’s best to think of Notes and an RSS Reader as working hand in hand. Start here to get content coming into your Page, then move on to the RSS Reader.

2. Blog RSS Feed Reader

I may have jumped ahead a bit with the Notes recommendation, but I am assuming that most companies have, or could have, a blog. If you don’t, work on that before Facebook, for many more reasons than I could get into here. But if you already have a blog, good news: there are tons of blog and RSS apps out there, but I’ve done the leg work and I found this one offered more functionality, better customization (you can pick an image to make your Facebook mini-blog look more like your actual blog) and a greater sense of control. It can be a bit buggy, but it’s worth persisting for the level of customization, and therefore attention grabbing potential.

3. Twitter App

Again, this assumes that you have a Twitter account, but if you’re reading this and working on a Facebook Page, my guess is you do. Or you at least know you should have one. If not, set one up before adding this application to your new Facebook Page. This will automatically pull your tweets into your Facebook status, and it puts a cute little Twitter-themed box on your profile, so everyone knows you’re cool enough to be on Twitter. It also saves you time in updating AND ensures profile activity to keep you relevant.

4. Static FBML

Neither Facebook Pages nor Profiles allow any type of HTML in the main content section, but you can add FBML and HTML applications to add more stylized elements to a Page, like clickable images, anchor text and interactive content. The Static FBML app allows you to add advanced functionality to a page by placing a customizable box in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language), giving you free reign over the space to add images, video, stylized text and almost whatever else you want. This app was developed by Facebook, so it’s fully supported and not prone to the problems of some third party applications.

5. Extended Info

In the Extended Info box you can use HTML to customize any kind of content and create numerous fields beyond the standard Information categories; you can also name the box anything you want so it matches your page perfectly. This app works much like the Static FBML application but is slightly easier to use. Although not developed by Facebook, it is highly ranked and provides a nice alternative or second customizable box option on a page.

6. Flash Player

This Flash application, also developed by Facebook, will add a box to your Page in which you can upload your own Flash files to achieve advanced customization and play any kind of Flash video, widget or game. It can be renamed to maintain the integrity of the page and keep the look and feel consistent with your brand.

7. Posted Items Pro

With Posted Items Pro you can embed multiple YouTube, Yahoo, and Google Videos, music mp3s, sites, files, and more onto your profile and Facebook pages. You can add any variety of these elements, making it great for a media center or press section.

8. Something Unique

If you have the resources, add some personality to your profile with a fun, irreverent application that you create just for your Page. This could be tied into your brand in multiple ways; try to think of something that people outside of Facebook would appreciate or enjoy that will remind them of who created it and keep them coming back, like a game or contest.

Brands that get it right

In order to stay relevant on Facebook, you need to continually update your Page and use the site. The more actions you take, the more you appear in a fan’s News Feed. This keeps you in their mind, and in their friend’s Feeds when they interact with you. But updating content will do more than keep you on the News Feed; it will also help make your Facebook Page sticky by offering fans an incentive to remain a supporter and come back more than once; one of the best way to do that is to provide some unique benefit to fans: exclusive content, secret contests or insider access to information before non-fans.

If you have a good brand, product or service with a strong website behind it, building a Facebook Page should be fairly easy. But if you need a few examples or inspiration, check out these Pages that definitely get it right:

VS Pink Victoria’s Secret

PINK collection is aimed at college girls, so Facebook is a natural fit, and this Page nails it. They are my most frequent example when explaining effective use of Facebook. This Page makes good use of HTML and FBML apps and provides lots of contests and exclusive stuff for Facebook fans.

Britney Spears

A childhood favorite of many avid Facebook users, Britney is taking Twitter by storm and her Facebook Page is not far behind. Britney sends out tons of Updates to fans and posts plenty of sneak peeks on Facebook.

Zappos

Lots of videos means plenty of opportunity for laughing and sharing. Zappos is almost always mentioned as a social media success story, and they’re working on making their Facebook Page meet the brand image.

Target

Target has managed to break free of the Wal-Mart stigma and position itself as a hip and budget conscious alternative to mall stores. They’ve chose to direct visitors to their “Vote” tab, where not only is Target donating to a good cause, it’s encouraging fans to participate and spread the word to their friends with interactive voting.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source:  Ben Parr *)

Name: AudioBoo

Quick Pitch: AudioBoo is social audio. An iPhone app & platform that effortlessly records audio to the cloud.

Genius Idea: AudioBoo is a platform that I’ve been waiting to review ever since I discovered it several months ago. It’s essentially a way to create and share podcasts and audio clips, but with a simplicity that has attracted some big names like UK actor Stephen Fry and The Guardian newspaper as users.

First, the iPhone app: it’s very simple to use. The most important feature of the app is that you can record audio and upload it to the AudioBoo server and your account. This makes it very simple to create, publish, and broadcast your most recent podcast (also known as a boo). The second feature is the ability to listen to the most recent boos from other users.

Yes, the iPhone app is very simple, but that’s the goal: to make podcasting really easy. Audioboo definitely succeeds in that regard. With very little fuss you can be up and running with your own podcast that can be distributed via social media - you can have AudioBoo automatically update your Facebook and Twitter with new Boos - and even iTunes.

The website itself is also pretty basic. You can only listen and subscribe to boos (although you can sort boos by popularity and time). But once again, this is the point: it’s the Twitter of podcasts - simple to use, easy to distribute. Its focus on simple audio is superb and perfect for anyone who wants to try podcasting without all of the fuss.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jason reports...

You may have noticed over the last few weeks that TechCrunch links on Twitter have had a nifty custom URL, with links looking like tcrn.ch/1A’ instead of more generic codes from TinyURL or Bit.ly. This was due in no small part to the handiwork of our crack team of developers, but it was made possible by a new service launching today called Awe.sm.

There are countless URL shortening services available on the web, and they’re probably only going to become even more popular as Twitter continues to catch on with mainstream audiences. But these services come with downsides, like obscuring where a link is pointing to (which makes them a godsend for spammers). Awe.sm is looking to offer publishers an alternative to these generic services, while also offering a powerful analytics engine that offers much more insight as to how their content gets distributed across the web.

Every time we publish a post on TechCrunch, Awe.sm generates a handful of links specific to the service it originates on. For example, the shortcode link at the bottom of this post is different from the link that we send out on Twitter through the TechCrunch account. Awe.sm then tracks these links, analyzing how they’re spread and storing meta data on each. Even better, the links awe.sm creates are compatible with Google Analytics, so you don’t have to learn how to navigate yet another dashboard.

This means that we can get a feel for how our links are spreading throughout each service, quantifying just how effective each one is and adjusting accordingly. And for some services, including Twitterfeed, AddtoAny, and TweetFace, Awe.sm can work in tandem with the service to gather even more data. Readers benefit too - spammers don’t have access to tcrn.ch, so all URLs pointing to that domain can be considered trustworthy.

Awe.sm is available beginning today for $99/year, which includes 10,000 URL creations per month (more than most people will ever need) and the option to export your data at any time if you want to stop using Awe.sm. The company’s flagship product is this custom URL shortening service, but it is also going to provide publishers with more tools that will help distribute content across a variety of services to maximize their audiences. The service is also slowly opening up an API to developers, who can build their own applications off the platform.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Ben Parr *)

Ben says...

Google has been on a tear with Gmail lately - it has been releasing new features at a rapid pace. You can now watch YouTube videos within Gmail, undo sent messages, and as of this week, you are able to insert images into Gmail. These are all useful and wonderful features…if you’ve turned them on in Gmail Labs.

Gmail Labs, the Gmail version of Google Labs, has several dozen features you can enable, from location-based signatures to multiple inboxes - these features can take your Gmail experience to the next level. However, many people don’t know about Gmail Labs or haven’t taken the time to review all of the features. With that in mind, here is how to get the most utility out of Gmail Labs:

Step 1: Understand how you use Gmail

Before turning on every feature available in Gmail, assess how you use it currently - is your Gmail mostly used for personal contacts? Is it a business account? Do others ever use your Gmail account? Do you attach a lot of images?

Answering these questions and more before adding features will save you a lot of trouble and a lot of headaches.

Step 2: Review the available features

After assessing how you use your Gmail, it’s time to take a look at all of the available features. Read all of the descriptions to get an idea of what each features does and how it can help you.

If you’re confused, read Google’s introduction to Gmail Labs and read our gmail coverage to get more in-depth information on specific features.

Step 3: Activate and try out features

Reading won’t be enough to understand these features, though - you’re just going to have to activate them and try them out yourself. Some, like “Vacation Time!” and “Right-side chat” are straightforward, while others like “Multiple Inboxes” and “Mouse Gestures” take a little more practice and training to get used to.

When trying them out, note your reaction and whether you want to keep it initially or not. Don’t activate anything you don’t need - this will just hinder your Gmail experience.

If Gmail Labs features become too complicated or if something goes wrong, use the Gmail escape hatch to deactivate features. This link returns you to the no-frills version os you can permanently deactivate features.

In the same line of thought, don’t keep features activated that you don’t use. These are still experimental features - things can go wrong like layouts or load times. Minimize your risk (and your clutter) and turn off any feature you aren’t using.

Step 4: Keep up-to-date with new features

Google seems to put out a new feature every week. This week’s feature, embeddable images, was a big one. Here are some simple ways to keep up:

Subscribe to the Gmail blog: Gmail tends to make all of their Labs announcements on their blog.

Create a Gmail Labs Google Alert: Google Alerts or an RSS feed of Gmail Labs can give you immediate knowledge of new features, although it may be filled with other noise on Gmail products.

Follow Mashable’s Gmail coverage: We try out best to cover the most useful Gmail information - read our Gmail articles for details on specific features.

GMail Labs: Top 10 Features We Recommend

Now that you’re getting started with Gmail Labs and its cool features, which ones should you start with? These features, in our opinion, are worth a spin:

1. Offline: This allows you to view your messages anywhere, even if you don’t have wifi.

2. Tasks: Tasks takes your to-do list and makes it part of Gmail. Tasks makes it easy to add items to your to-do list, even allowing you to take emails and turn them into tasks.

3. Superstars: This feature helps you organize your folders with different star icons. Be sure to determine what each icon means to you.

4. Mouse Gestures: Mouse Gestures allows you to scroll through your emails without clicking on multiple links or touching your keyboard. Swipe your mouse right with the right click held down to read your next email or go back to the inbox by swiping down.

5. Email Addict: On Gmail too much? Activate this and a link will appear at the top of the page, allowing you to take a 15 minute break. Great for when you have a lapse of self-control.

6. Navbar drag and drop: Navbar drag and drop makes it easy to organize your Gmail screen by dragging and dropping the items in the menus in the order that you want.

7. Multiple Inboxes: If you’re a Gmail power user, like most of us at Mashable, you have a lot of different mail sources and lots of labels. See more information at once by activating Multiple Inboxes. Note: this creates new inboxes for labels, not inboxes for secondary Gmail accounts.

8. Inserting Images: The newest Gmail Labs feature is a useful one that makes sending images a lot easier.

9. Create a Document: Turn any email into a Google doc with this useful little Gmail Labs feature.

10. Google Calendar gadget: If you’re a regular user of Google Calendar, activate it to link your Gmail to your Google Calendar.

Good luck with your Gmail experience!

Posted by brian tiong at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 

Leena says...

Startup Nomee aggregates social networks and websites into a free Adobe Air powered desktop application that helps you manage these networks and sites into a single interface. The nomee personal all-in-one dashboard aggregates all your favorite social networking sites (you can manage profiles from up to 100 networks including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Digg ) and RSS feeds, giving you one place to organize your online relationships, share your information, follow newsmakers, and even publish your own news.

Nomee is designed to simplify social networking by organizing all of your online relationships in a single location, making it easy to focus on who you want to connect with, when you want to connect. With the help of Adobe Air, Nomee also brings news updates to users in a pretty simple interface. In addition, Nomee lets you customize the information you want to share, pointing your contacts to the web sites you want them to see. It also alerts your contacts when you post updates or new content, including providing custom updates to different friends and business associates.

Nomee also allows you to follow your favorite celebrities, sports teams and other interest areas through downloading its exclusive nomee newsmaker cards. You can become your own nomee newsmaker by collecting links on your nomee card and posting it for download from your blog or website, so your fans can track you.

Managing all of your social networks, celebrity obsessions and RSS feeds in one place is not a new idea. FriendFeed aggregates all of this information into a website. But the adoption of Adobe Air into the application gives it a different twist. Nomee, which can be run on a PC or a Mac, isn’t your conventional website, its actually a rich internet application separate from your browser.

Here’s a screenshot:

Posted by brian tiong at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

Yahoo has launched an Adobe AIR-powered desktop application called Sideline yesterday, once again validating the power of Twitter for real-time search. After taking it for a spin, I have to say it looks and feels really nice, but other than that there’s no real incentive for me to keep using it on a regular basis.

So what does it do?

Sideline is a straight-forward Twitter monitoring tool, giving you the opportunity to stay on top of the latest trends on the microsharing service and/or keywords you feed into the application. It has an auto-refresh feature (which you can tweak to have the search results reload between 1 minute and 1 hour), a notification system that alerts you of new keyword mentions in an overlay that appears whatever you’re doing and the ability to only look for favorited tweets containing the keywords you’re tracking.

So far, nothing special, but what’s nice about Sideline is that it enables you to create so-called Search Groups which pull together multiple keywords for tracking purposes. This basically allows anyone to create e.g. a TechCrunch group and track different keywords and phrases like ‘techcrunch’, ‘crunchgear’, ‘michael arrington’, etc. Also really nice is the advanced search function, which lets you filter results down extensively, for instance by person, hashtag, ‘asking a question’, by negative or positive connotation (determined with smilies), and so on. Update: this is actually a layer over Twitter’s advanced search functionality, as a commentor points out.

It’s slick and useful, but nothing major any way you look at it, especially since it’s not a functional client that lets you actually send direct or public Twitter messages. I wonder how many people will effectively keep using it after trying it out, but I doubt it will be many.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Reena Jana and Peter Burrows *)

Research in Motion will soon launch an online store to rival Apple's, with Nokia and Microsoft to follow

Businessweek reports...

On Apr. 1, Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIMM), is expected to take the stage at the wireless industry's annual trade show in Las Vegas and open the virtual doors to a much anticipated new online store. BlackBerry App World will be chock-full of software programs created by outside developers that visitors will be able to download to their RIM phones.

It's the first of several major assaults by rivals on Apple (AAPL)'s fast-­growing iPhone business. Apple has stoked demand for the device by offering thousands of software applications from independent developers through its App Store. Now, Nokia (NOK), Microsoft (MSFT), and Palm (PALM) plan to follow RIM with virtual software stores of their own this year. "There's going to be a significant counter-­challenge to Apple," says Mike McGuire, analyst with researcher Gartner (IT).

Nokia, RIM, and others sell more phones than Apple. But Apple has leapt out to an early lead in transforming the mobile phone into a sophisticated computing device onto which people load their favorite software. The number of mobile phones that can browse the Web and handle other advanced tasks is expected to surge from 139 million last year to 295 million in 2010, according to Gartner. These so-called smartphones are on track to eclipse the 300 million-unit ­personal computer market. "This could make the PC wars of the 1980s look like small potatoes," says Trip Hawkins, chief executive of mobile game maker Digital Chocolate.

More here

Posted by brian tiong at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

Erik says...

There are plenty of ways to monitor the buzz of any given topic in the blogosphere, on Twitter, or across social networks. There is Artiklz, Trendpedia, Trackur, Brandseye, Radian6, Attentio, Buzzcapture and Chatterguard, to name a few.. Now Omgili, a search engine that focuses on forums, discussion boards, newsgroups, and Q&A sites, has just added a new buzztracker called Omgili Stream. It searches the same set of discussion sites on the Web and returns results based on how recently they appeared.

Results are not ranked by anything other than chronology, which produces an undifferentiated set of results. What I really want to know is what are the most important or influential discussions going on about any given topic. Fortunately, Omgili Stream allows you to filter results by minimum number of replies, language, and where the search term appears (in the title, topic, or replies). Another filter opens up a column with Twitter search results on the left. A unified view might be preferable, but that might then be dominated by the Twitter results. Omgili’s strength is in searching through discussion boards, forms, and the like. It sifts through 7 million such posts a day.

Omgili’s greatest strength (its focus on deep discussion sites), is also its greatest weakness. It completely ignores blog comments, for instance, where a huge chunk of discussion on the Web takes place. That is a huge oversight, in my opinion. Although, there are other sites where you can search across only blog comments, such as Backtype or Artiklz. And then what about public discussions on Facebook and other social networks?

Omgili is geared towards marketers who want to keep track of what people are saying about their products, companies and brands. Yet it returns results from only one portion of the Web. So if you are a marketer, you might want to bookmark it (consumers might be more likely to talk about product defects or other problems on a discussion board or Q&A site where they are looking for assistance from other users). But it only addresses a portion of the discuss-o-sphere.

As far as it goes, it does a decent job. One of the more helpful features of Omgili is the ability to create a buzz chart for any set of topics. Below is one comparing “IE8″ to “Gmail” and “Flip Video.”

Posted by brian tiong at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

This is what you get when you use a slick tool like Wordle (try it!) to run all the words used to make up the Terms of Service agreements of seven notable internet companies: cool visualizations that somewhat capture the essence of their content.

Pointless? Very. Cool? Definitely.

Here’s how Facebook’s Terms of Use agreement comes out (at least for now):

Yahoo (Terms of Service)

Digg (Terms of Use)

Google (Terms of Service)

Twitter (Terms of Service)

MySpace (Terms of Use)

YouTube (Terms of Service)

Posted by brian tiong at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *)

Erik reports...

What if you could peer into the thoughts of millions of people as they were thinking those thoughts or shortly thereafter? And what if all of these thoughts were immediately available in a database that could be mined easily to tell you what people both individually and in aggregate are thinking right nowabout any imaginable subject or event? Well, then you’d have a different kind of search engine altogether. A real-time search engine. A what’s-happening-right-now search engine.

In fact, the crude beginnings of this “now” search engine already exists. It is called Twitter, and it is a big reason why new investors poured another $35 million into the two-year-old startup on Friday. Twitter is not the only company trying to solve this problem. Facebook, FriendFeed, and even Google are trying to crack it, but Twitter has a decided advantage in that it is capturing the vast majority of the real-time thought stream on the Web (because more people enter their thoughts directly into Twitter’s database than any other, and are doing so at an increasing rate).

What makes Google and other search engines so valuable is that they capture people’s intent—what they are looking for, what they desire, what they want to learn about. But they don’t do a great job at capturing what people are doing or what they are thinking about. For thoughts and events that are happening right now, searching Twitter increasingly brings up better results than searching Google.

Whether you want to know how people are mentally gearing up for this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or what they are thinking about today’s Ireland vs. Italy rugby match, searching Twitter will give you a pretty good smattering of sentiment and opinion. It is also a lot faster at getting out the essential details about breaking news, such as the Mumbai attacks or the plane that landed on the Hudson.

Twitter’s search engine is powered by Summize, a startup it acquired last July. But it also developed a feature called Track, currently disabled but coming back soon, that allowed people to follow the mention of specified keywords. John Borthwick, an investor in Summize (and thus now an investor in Twitter), explained in a blog post earlier this month ago why he thinks that “Twitter search changes everything.” Excerpt:

Imagine you are in line waiting for coffee and you hear people chattering about a plane landing on the Hudson. You go back to your desk and search Google for plane on the Hudson — today — weeks after the event, Google is replete with results — but the DAY of the incident there was nothing on the topic to be found on Google. Yet at http://search.twitter.com the conversations are right there in front of you. The same holds for any topical issues — lipstick on pig? — for real time questions, real time branding analysis, tracking a new product launch — on pretty much any subject if you want to know whats happening now, search.twitter.com will come up with a superior result set.

. . . How is real time search different? History isn’t that relevant — relevancy is driven mostly by time. . . . This reformulation of search as navigation is, I think, a step into a very new and different future. Google.com has suddenly become the source for pages — not conversations, not the real time web. What comes next? I think context is the next hurdle. Social context and page based context. . . . Twitter search today is crude — but so was Google.com once upon a not so long time ago.

Twitter may just be a collection of inane thoughts, but in aggregate that is a valuable thing. In aggregate, what you get is a direct view into consumer sentiment, political sentiment, any kind of sentiment. For companies trying to figure out what people are thinking about their brands, searching Twitter is a good place to start. To get a sense of what I’m talking about, try searching for “iPhone,” “Zune,” or “Volvo wagon”.

Why can’t Google simply index Twitter? It does, but its search results give more weight to links than to time. It could create a new search product along the lines of Blog Search or News search that is geared more towards Micro-messaging services such as Twitter, FriendFeed, and the rest. But what it really needs to go beyond simply indexing Twitter after the fact. IVP partner, and Twitter investor, Todd Chaffee, suggests:

If they were really smart they could partner with Twitter and make Twitter their real-time feed.

Doing that would require Google to “affirm Twitter’s dominance in this category and the importance of the Twitter data stream,” contends Borthwick. But so far, Google has pretty much flubbed this opportunity to open up real-time search. It bought Twitter competitor Jaiku, only to shut it down. And now it is hoping to create a counterweight to Twitter’s growing strength in real-time data by open-sourcing Jaiku. Good luck with that one.

Listening to Twitter’s investors gives a good sense of how they think Twitter can become a game-changer in real-time search. While it is instructive, it is also important to note that much of this vision has yet to materialize. Twitter’s current search is extremely crude, as Borthwick readily admits. It simply brings up the most recent Tweets with the keyword you are looking for. There is no ranking or clustering beyond that.

An undifferentiated thought stream of the masses at some point becomes unwieldy. In order to truly mine that data, Twitter needs to figure out how to extract the common sentiments from the noise (something which Summize was originally designed to do, by the way, but it was putting the cart before the horse—you need to be able to do simple searches before you start looking for patterns). But what is the best way to rank real-time search results—by number of followers, retweets, some other variable? It is not exactly clear. But if Twitter doesn’t solve this problem, someone else will and they will make a lot of money if they do it right.

Posted by brian tiong at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

I’m not going to discuss the economic meltdown and its devastating effect on technology companies and internet startups in this post, but rather something that crossed my mind earlier this morning: “Web 2.0″ seems to become more and more a void (and an avoided) term. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely apparent.

So why do I say it’s fading? For one, because the number of startups that contact us and include the term Web 2.0 in the subject line or message is visibly dropping (and that’s a good thing), and I hardly ever see it mentioned anymore on other technology blogs and news sites either. That’s not really tangible, so I took a look at the number of mentions of the phrase across the web, and they seem to be decreasing significantly, reflecting my feeling on this.

Judging by Google Trends, which shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume across various regions of the world (and in various languages), the term started being used at the end of 2004 when Tim O’Reilly organized the first edition of the Web 2.0 Conference. Search queries for the term started picking up in the middle of 2005, when TechCrunch was started - with the tagline “Tracking Web 2.0″ by the way - and the number kept increasing until the end of 2007. After that, the trend is clearly downwards, falling back to the level it reached in early 2006 today. If the trend continues, there should only be a handful of people left who scour search engines for “Web 2.0″ by 2011.

Also noteworthy: take a look at the geographic regions that have generated the highest volumes of worldwide search traffic for the term over the years - it’s Asia, with the top 5 regions being India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia (in that order). Furthermore, Google Trends pegs the number one language in which people search for stuff related to the topic of Web 2.0 to be Russian before English.

And just in case you’re curious: “Web 3.0″ doesn’t seem to picking up much.
Let’s all rejoice.

Google’s “Insights for Search”, a beta service that analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered - relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time - gives an even better overview:

Posted by brian tiong at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Morgan Stanley *)

Mary Meeker shares the below presentation on tech trends at the State of the Technology Industry November 2008 Web 2.0 Summit.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: MarketingCharts.com *)

Nearly 61% of US consumers who recently bought a mobile or wireless phone were influenced by online product reviews and user comments, while 30% of purchasers were similarly influenced by blogs, according to the Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey by Ad-ology.

Additional findings:

• Consumers who rated online blogs and reviews highly tend to be younger (18 - 34 years old) and have average or higher-than-average incomes.

• Television, newspapers, and direct mail advertisements were among the most influential traditional media for recent mobile phone buyers.
• 26.3% of consumers surveyed indicated they prefer to purchase mobile/wireless phones online instead of in perso or at a store.
• Survey respondents also revealed product reviews, user comments, and blogs significantly influenced other consumer electronics purchases.
• The price of a cell phone was widely considered to be a less important buying factor than rate plans, coverage area, and mobile phone product quality.

“This is the modern day version of ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising,” said C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research. “Advertisers have always known the immense value of positive word-of-mouth. Now consumers have a whole world of opinions and reviews available online, and this survey shows how much they value that kind of information.”

About the survey: The Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey is conducted quarterly by Ad-ology Research to study on- and off-line media influence on buying decisions. The survey asks a national consumer panel about key factors in their buying decisions. Respondents also rate nine types of online and seven types of traditional media with regard to how each influenced what they bought and where they bought it. The research was conducted with an online consumer panel of 1,105 adults from August 25-28, 2008.

Posted by brian tiong at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Tony Hung *)

Tony says...

At the most recent BlogExpo Twitter was a huge topic, and with good reason. Although it started more than a year ago with fairly geeky roots, it continues to grow at a breakneck pace. Has it crossed over to the mainstream, yet? I think we're on the cusp. I certainly think that when anchors on CNN start using Twitter to monitor conversations on live television -- it's probably time.

Like a few others, I happen to be quite bullish on the topic of Twitter, not just as a singular web application, but as a medium, and microblogging service. As Mike Arrington of TechCrunch believes, services like Twitter are becoming more and more like a utility, much like the telephone service.

But what about its application in branding? Specifically, its role in brand management?

1. Understanding twitter (AKA microblogging) in the ecosystem of conversation

Whether you Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, or Friendfeed (or all of them), the role of such services for the purposes of brand management is primarily to listen. When Twitter launched, there was some angst about how crushingly banal some of the conversations were. However, like blogging, Twitter had some maturing to do -- and we're maturing still. People still Twitter about what they ate for breakfast, what bus stop they're at and where they plan to have dinner, but its also used for communications of other sorts.

Questions about particular services. Opinions about particular brands. Blog alerts on postings. By average folks. By opinion leaders.

The wonderful thing is that, for the most part, these conversations are public, searchable, and trackable. With this emerging ecosystem of live conversation and thought, anyone with any particular interest can follow ideas, topics, names and places as they happen.

The role of Twitter in brand management first is to listen. Find people who are talking about products, services, and experiences with your brand. Then find their friends. Then find who is driving those conversations and who those opinion leaders are.

The best way to do this is probably starting with Twitter's own search function which was acquired via Summize a few months ago. Search for names of products, services, brand names, competitors and people. Then select the feed icon for that search and follow it actively throughout the day in your favorite feed reeder. Done.

2. Engaging in microconversations

Once you've found your conversations of interest, take a deep breath. Because these are live, unfilitered and unmetered opinion, some of it may also contain a lot of raw emotion. After all, when you only have 140 characters to express yourself, it doesn't lend itself to appropriate self-censoring all the time.

Then, reach out.

I presume you already know about your brand, what it stands for, and what your brand "ideal" experience ought to be. You're probably intimately familiar with tag lines, logos, and all of the literal and visual elements of the brand. Now, with all that in mind, it's time to try and sculpt the experiences of others ... but not in a cynical or sinister way.

I firmly believe that there is a lot of banal conversation on Twitter, but there is a lot of important stuff as well. People talk and reach out when emotions are at their peak, whether it be happy, sad, or frustrated. For many folks, they Twitter during these times not only let themselves be known, but to share in the emotion, to get a response, and for some, a hope for answers as well.

The great thing about reaching out on Twitter, much like the blogosphere in some ways through comments, is that the expectation is close to nil that brand representatives of any fashion are present. Furthermore, the expectation that anyone will actually listen, or even do anything supportive or rectifying is also, for many, close to nil.

If you're able to answer questions, respond to opinion, and engage in a real human way (such as the admission that you don't know the answer), you'll shock and pleasantly surprise most Twitterers.

If they've got issues, and you've been empowered to use Twitter in this way, take ownership of the problem. Point them in the direction of someone who can solve it, or work with it until you can.

Because the bar on Twitter is so low, the mere act of appearing on Twitter can be a powerful first step that gets people noticing. Listening is better. Fixing and solving is, of course, best, and can generate word of mouth traffic and notice that is difficult to put a number sign to.

3. Dealing with "thought leaders"

Of course you should try and engage each Twitterer you meet equally. It's critical to keep in mind, that someone who has 5 followers should, in all seriousness, be treated with an equal amount of respect. Every conversation is s