TC Interns’ 10 Favorite Facebook Applications As a few titans of tech blogging recently began to go back and forth over whether platform-enhanced Facebook is really worth the hassle, we lowly interns over here at TechCrunch decided to list our favorite Facebook applications to see whether third-party additions have really improved our social networking lives. As early twenty-somethings who experienced Facebook when it was exclusively for college students and it differentiated itself from MySpace, with its simplicity and compelling lack of extraneous features, we figure we are better (at least in some respects) than these latecomers at judging the current viability of Facebook as a place where we will increasingly want to spend our time. The following list of applications is meant, of course, to share with you some of the Facebook platform’s standouts. However, at the same time it reflects how much value the open platform has so far given to Facebook.
Improving IT planning in 2010 - A hint for CIO's and IT Leaders Just finished reading Chris Curran’s article on CIO.com titled How to Improve Your IT Planning in 2010 – CIO.com – Business Technology Leadership. Good article with some survey results that are very surprising. A snippet from the article:
The future of gaming: up the beanstalk and into the cloud Many non-gamers and casual gamers who've heard the cloud computing hype might be surprised to learn that the cloud is actually changing the way we play games. From the ever-evolving Steam and Impulse to upcoming services like OnLive, the cloud has already had a serious impact on the games industry, and with a slew of new services on tap for later this year and next, that impact is slated to grow enormously. This shift to the cloud has implications far beyond the gaming experience—every aspect of the multibillion dollar business of gaming will be affected, from distribution and sales to quality assurance to anti-piracy controls. Steam releases the Cloud The gaming world got its first major taste of cloud-based gaming on November 18, 2008.
BBC smartphone future Smartphones are not only revolutionising the mobile phone industry. They are also about to change the way we use computers. The mobile phone industry is in trouble. Un-Facebook Yourself From Wired How-To Wiki Sometimes, social networking is just a bit too social. If you're feeling vulnerable on Facebook, the web's biggest social hangout, you can easily take control over who can see your information.
20 + mind-blowing social media statistics Social media remains the hot topic of the digital world and I often get asked about the various statistics involved. This in itself is fairly difficult, as this particular online sphere is constantly shifting, evolving and growing at an astronomical rate. But I’ve pulled together some interesting (and hopefully useful) data for a couple of the bigger players in the market... Bear in mind that these are relatively recent figures – in a few months time (or even less) a lot of it is likely to be obsolete - but for now, I think they’re a great way of demonstrating the impact that social media is having in the digital landscape. YouTube
30 Predictions Of The Future For Twitter « Jeffbullas’s Blog 3.6 The direction Twitter will go will be determined not just by ”Twitter” the company but by the market forces and its users and especially the trends in Social Media, Search and Social Search. The emergence of Twitter Lists in the last few days is producing some interesting dynamics regarding influence real or perceived on Twitter. Some obvious trends Its growing importance as a real time search engine and feed from its API to startups such as Sency, Topsy and OneRiot and of course Google and Bing.The growing use of Twitter to drive traffic to blogs and websites .. Guy Kawasaki makes no apology when he says “I approach it as a broadcast marketing tool to help me make Alltop successful”Twitter is heading in the direction of more filtered and intelligent conversations not just inane chatter .. Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur has some interesting and revealing and radical predictions … and though I don’t agree with all of them the future will be the real judge and jury.
Twettle: The Story of a Tweeting Kettle Two London designers decided to come up with a get-rich-quick scheme whilst waiting for a bartender to mix their drinks. The result? A kitchen appliance which could communicate through Twitter. And what kitchen appliance would any self-respecting Englishman choose? An electric kettle, or the Twettle. When we first saw Tweeting appliances, they were a laughable novelty: a Twittering toilet designed to show up the banality of most Tweets, for example. The IATV Bookstore - Designing Social Web Applications (Voices T Produktinformation Amazon-Verkaufsrang: #148014 in Bücher Veröffentlicht am: 2008-04-24 Abmessungen: 9.13" h x .35" b x 7.36" l, .82 Pfund
30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook Josh Peters is a freelance social media consultant from Salt Lake City, Utah. He authors a blog at Shuaism.com. Think LinkedIn is the only place for business? Facebook is growing rapidly and it's becoming a destination for businesses and business professionals alike to establish a presence. Here are over 30 Facebook applications to help promote, network, communicate, collaborate and accomplish more with your business. Which apps do you use?
NASA's "Alien Eyes" - Unlocking Secrets of the Universe 3.6 Beta "Our personal window on the Universe is terribly small within a stunnng range of wavelengths. With our eyes we see wavelengths between 0.00004 and 0.00008 of a centimeter (where, not so oddly, the Sun and stars emit most of their energy). The human visual spectrum from violet to red is but one octave on an imaginary electromagnetic piano with a keyboard hundreds of kilometers long." Google Buzz Privacy Reset Coming Tomorrow In an effort to address mounting criticism of the privacy issues surrounding Google Buzz, the search giant is going to ask all Buzz users to confirm or change their privacy settings tomorrow. In an announcement that will be coming soon, Google will admit that they "didn't get everything right," which has resulted in serious privacy tweaks since its launch. However, many users weren't affected by these changes because they had activated Google Buzz before the privacy updates.
Virgin Media revenues beat forecasts Virgin Media beat analysts' forecasts for the third quarter, adding 8,100 net new cable TV households and boosting revenues by 1.3% to £953m. Overall, the company added 17,800 new customers in the third quarter. The cable operator reported a year-on-year increase in operating cash flow (OCF) – broadly equivalent to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) – of 6.8% to £348m for the quarter ended 30 September.
The Myth of Usability Testing In 1998, usability expert Rolf Molich (co-inventor with Jakob Nielsen of the heuristic evaluation method) gave nine teams three weeks to evaluate the webmail application www.hotmail.com. The experiment was part of his series of Comparative Usability Evaluations (CUEs), through which he began to identify a set of standards and best practices for usability tests. In each segment of the series, Molich asked several usability teams to evaluate a single design using the method of their choice. From the documented results of the second test, called CUE-2, a surprising trend appeared.