Yahoo to Unload E-mail Provider Zimbra on VMWare – As Yahoo continues to refine and redefine itself, it’s been offloading and shuttering some services in an effort to slim down (RIP Geocities!). One of the divisions that’s been on the auction block since September is Zimbra, an open-source e-mail company Yahoo acquired in September 2007 for $350 million.
Eric Schmidt: The Baddest Man On Twitter – Stop what you’re doing right now (reading this) and go look at Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s latest Twitter profile picture. Now look closer. Yes, it appears he’s wearing a flak jacket, also known as a bullet-proof vest.
An Inside Look At A Twitter Style Guide: 140 Characters – We’ve all seen Twitter grow into the company that it is now, but what was it like when it first started — back when it was still called Odeo, and Twitter wasn’t in existence. As we know, Twitter was spun off from Evan William’s company Odeo, into what we know now as Twitter, the social networking service where you post short messages in 140 characters or less.
Nothing to celebrate on Public Domain Day 2010 in the US – What child has not sat starry-eyed around the fire, dreaming of the goodies to come on January 1—Public Domain Day? The thought of new books and movies and music coming out from copyright is enough to send sugarplums dancing through heads, unless you live in the US in 2010. In which case, you have nothing to celebrate, since nothing is entering the public domain this year.
Pearl Jam Gives A Song Away For A Tweet – Regular readers may know my affinity for Pearl Jam. The band, which released a new album, Backspacer, last year had a series of promotions with MySpace to promote the album. Now they’re turning to Twitter for some more.
4 Ways for Augmented Reality to Get Past the Hype – GigaOM – With 197 million augmented reality-capable smartphones set to be in the global market by 2012, up from nearly 91 million in 2010, the building blocks are falling into place for people to merge digital information with their view of the physical world. But while we’re just getting to the point that normal users can see the promise of augmented reality for themselves, there’s still a long way to go.
This is the Link Report for November 25th through December 2nd:
Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below
To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Microsoft Launches its own Twitter… in China – Microsoft is making its own Twitter… in China. They are capitalizing on the popularity of their Instant Messenger client in that country.
Facebook’s Road to 350 Million Users – Mark Zuckerberg’s note about Facebook’s latest privacy changes also contained an announcement about another important milestone for Facebook: 350 million users.
Facebook CEO: Prepare for Some Big Privacy Changes – In a rare open letter, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a series of privacy changes, starting with the removal of regional networks.
What Will Comcast-NBC Mean for Hulu? – It looks like Comcast's purchase of 51% of NBC will not kill he online video site Hulu. Though we might be paying for the content in 2010.
Twitter Ads Are Evil: Here’s Why – Advertisers are frustrated. You’re all having direct conversations with friends on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the rest while totally bypassing the mass mediums they understand. Rather than consuming content all day on TV, in newspapers and on the radio, you’re engaging, one-to-one, with individuals you trust. They can’t get in the middle of that. They hate it.
Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs – As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs.
Small Businesses Look to E-Mail and Social Media – eMarketer – Three-quarters of small businesses will increase their spending on e-mail marketing in 2010, while nearly seven in 10 will put more dollars toward social media, according to VerticalResponse data.
Social media on marketers’ menu for 2010 – Trends & Ideas – BizReport – While email remained the most popular media among marketers for use next year (56.8% "realistically" plan to use it), social media isn't far behind. Over half (56.3%) "realistically" plan to include it in future marketing plans, found the Center for Media Research.
Local companies embrace social media to bond with customers | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ – We've heard a lot lately about the power of social media services like Facebook and Twitter to connect people, spread news and even influence world events. Tens of millions of people are signed up for one or more of these services that connect folks with shared interests or concerns.
The New AIM: Less Clunky and Annoying, More Social – PC World – I use AOL’s instant-messaging network all day long, but I’m not sure when I last used the AIM software itself (with the exception of the iPhone version). I’ve associated it with feature bloat, annoying ads, and a sort of old-timy, Web 1.0 feel. So I long ago switched to other clients that support the AIM network (Apple’s iChat when I’m on a Mac, GAIM when I’m on Windows, and the Web-based Meebo anywhere and everywhere).
Blueprint: A CSS Framework | Spend your time innovating, not replicating – Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.
Ultimate Cheat Sheet Colllection – Hungred.com – Cheat Sheets are handle for web development. Usually, these sheets are either printed out and pasted on the wall of your working area or they are placed on your computer as wallpaper. Referencing in this way makes working faster and more effective. Here are a complete list usually used by most designers and developers during web development. Enjoy!
Tutorial: How to change plugin table structure in Wordpress – Hungred.com – Some of us will have problem updating or changing your table structure in your Wordpress plugin after it has been released to the public. Many people will come up with different ideas to change their existing plugin structure to a new one. Idea such as checking for that particular column existence either through pure SQL or mixture of SQL and PHP. However, the approach here may be a bit overkill. There is a much simpler way.
RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 – RedBeacon is a new service that made its public debut at TechCrunch50 that further streamlines this process by bringing the OpenTable model of online transactions to much broader spectrum of services.
Google Launches New Ad Marketplace; Display Ads Will Never Be the Same – You’re probably familiar with Google AdSense and AdWords, Google’s (Google) flagship advertising products. It’s how Google makes its billion of dollars. Highly targeted text ads appear on Google search and third party websites that are part of the AdSense program. Advertisers buy ads based on keywords, with more popular keywords costing more per click than less popular terms.
Dropbox’s Web Interface Gets An Overhaul: Adds Bulk File Management, Search, And More – Dropbox, the impressive file syncing service which makes it easy to sync your files across multiple computers and the web, has released a brand new version of its online interface. Today’s upgrade brings with it a number of new features that will make it much easier to manage the large number of files users often have on their Dropboxes.
Yeah, But Did You Steal The Zynga Playbook, Playdom? – It’s a day late, but social game site (and Zynga-antagonizer) Playdom has finally responded to our request for comment on the lawsuit and temporary restraining order they got hit with earlier this week.
Skype Kills Extras (and Its Developer Ecosystem) – Skype’s new owners should be aware of one small thing: They are paying $2 billion for a company that, despite having more than 400 million subscribers, doesn’t know how to leverage that platform. Why? Because it doesn’t understand developers. It never has. We have consistently pointed out this lackadaisical attitude towards its developer ecosystem. The fact is that if you put your lot with Skype, then you are really on your own. Today the company announced that it’s killed Skype Extras, an API-based effort that was launched with much fanfare in June 2007.
Yeah Ok, So Facebook Punk’d Us – Techcruch's report of the "Fax Photo" feature in Facebook was a joke played on them by Facebook.
Twitter Changes TOS, Opens the Door for Ads – The new TOS, which is far more expansive and specific than the old one, not only addresses privacy concerns, but ownership, spam, rights, and links. The microblogging company said that, now that they better understand how users utilize Twitter, they can update the TOS to match.
Facebook Friends Can Now Be Filtered By City (Again) – Over the last few weeks, Facebook has been removing regional networks. Silicon Valley? New York City? Peoria, IL? They have been slowly stripped from Facebook, to the dismay of many. The biggest complaint from users? They want to find their friends by location when they travel.
Facebook’s heard the complaints and they understand the value of finding friends by region. So Facebook has decided to address that complaint by adding a filter to find friends by their hometown. This was announced via a Facebook wall post.
Morning Types Crash Faster Than Night Owls, Study Says – Habits – Lifehacker – The early bird may get the worm, but there's something to be said about burning the midnight oil. In fact, according to a new study, staying up later and longer may increase alertness and productivity more than being an early riser.
Your Tweets Are Yours: Now Back Them Up – Yesterday’s change in Twitter’s Terms of service, in which they explicitly state that every user owns their own tweets is cool, but what does it really mean for the user?
Today Gmail, Google’s email client, went down. As a matter of fact it’s still down (4:30pm 9/1/09). The minute Gmail went down it seemed as though the whole world jumped on Twitter and asked in some fashion…”Is GMail Down.” Then started the freaking out. I did a quick search on the term GMail in Twitter search and people all around the world were out of their minds without the Google email service.
Drew Olanoff, best known for the #blamedrewscancer Twitter meme, did a video in 2007 about GMail being down. It’s very apropos right now.
Enjoy… what are you going to do check your Gmail? <Insert evil laugh>
My Favorite Link Building Lie – While it is pointless to seek links (via email or any other method) for crappy content from other sites with equally crappy content, link building via email does in fact work perfectly – but only under one perfectly obvious and sadly overlooked circumstance: when the link seeker represents meritorious content and the link granter is looking for that type of meritorious content to link to. It’s so painfully obvious to me, that I fight the urge to laugh out loud when I read quotes like the one above.
Amazon Adds A Virtual Private Cloud – ReadWriteEnterprise – Amazon has created a hybrid cloud that can work securely for the enterprise, balancing the need for encryption with the low cost and scaling power that the cloud provides.
The Twitter Exploit That Could Have Stolen Your Info and Much, Much More – Found by David Naylor, the vulnerability exploits an issue with a recently added an HTML tag to all of their links (rel=nofollow, which tells GoogleGoogleGoogle that links on Twitter shouldn’t count in its algorithm). The result is that David was able to change the links in such a way that it generates a huge cross-site scripting vulnerability.
Over 80% of Americans Use Social Media Monthly – The demographic data follows the trend we see overall—younger people are more heavily involved, but over-35s and over-55s are becoming more and more active in social networking. While 10% or less of online adults aged 18-34 are “socially inactive,” the older age ranges are showing high growth. Among adults 35-54, participation grew 60% over last year:
Top 5 Current Email Scams You Should Know About – There are numerous ways to be scammed nowadays. Pyramid schemes, ‘too good to be true’ investments and of course the good old internet. There are literally millions of websites that will gladly take your money, personal info, bank details and a host of other things from you and then skedaddle.
Make Post-Mortem Plans for Your Online Life – Email – Lifehacker – Email, Facebook messages, Twitter DMs—they will, as inbox guru Merlin Mann suggests, keep coming even after we're dead. TIME suggests you make a plan for your online accounts-especially if you don't want your inbox contents revealed.
reBlog by Eyebeam R&D – A reBlog facilitates the process of filtering and republishing relevant content from many RSS feeds. reBloggers subscribe to their favorite feeds, preview the content, and select their favorite posts. These posts are automatically published through their favorite blogging software. Thanks @nealwiser for pointing this out.
Have you heard the news? Yahoo has officially bought the photo-sharing startup Xoopit.
Yahoo! acquires Xoopit.
Xoopit is joining Yahoo! to make the world’s best email even better.
Yahoo! will be integrating both our photo sharing applications and our content indexing and discovery technology into Yahoo! Mail and other services over the coming months.
Xoopit has emerged as a leader in mail applications, indexing and content discovery. Yahoo! has recognized that Xoopit’s technology elevates photos to the forefront of people’s everyday email experiences. Mail is the original online photo sharing experience, and combining these two products results in an evolved inbox experience. Yahoo! Mail users can expect to see their mail become even more efficient, social and fun!
The Xoopit team would like to thank our users for all the support and guidance in developing a service that people love. We would also like to thank our angels and venture investors, Charles Moldow from Foundation Capital and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta from Accel Partners for wisdom and commitment along the way!
This is an interesting purchase from the search company, especially since they already own a very robust photo-sharing site, that some might remember, Flickr.
Why Yahoo hasn’t been able to really monetize Flickr, your guess is as good as mine. But with this latest purchase, Yahoo seems to have Gmail, search-giant and arch-rival Google’s email client, in its sights. It’ll be interesting how the companies merge.
What I don’t understand is why Yahoo hasn’t integrated Flickr into Yahoo Mail? Why buy another photo-sharing product? What are your thoughts? Post them in the comments.
So Twitter really does have power, it really works. This month I got a shock in the mail. My Comcast bill arrived with a surprise. Apparently my promotional period had ended, sending my TV (not HDTV yet) from $39.99 to $95.65. I was horrified and immediately began to complain on Twitter. I shot a quick note to Frank Eliason at his Twitter handle @comcastcares about the situation.Within minutes he said he’d look into it for me. I then gave customer service a call. I have to admit I was less than impressed with the billing department’s response to my quandry. The first lady said there was nothing that they could do (which I knew was a load of bull) and when I talked to the supervisor she passed me off again to the retention department. After a day of being bounced around the corporate phone system, I managed to get some kind of promotion, but I was still not impressed with the outcome. I decided to wait a few more days and see if Frank could do anything.
Like many areas, Verizon Fios is being installed. The thought of switching, I admit, began to enter my mind. Though the product loyalty that was developed by Frank’s hard work on Twitter made it really hard to bare leaving Comcast. Yes I admit it, the old saying is true: “You buy from people you like.” And well I really like how Frank and his team are always just a few minutes away from solving my problems on their network and it was this safety net that made me contact Frank and his team in the first place.
Image credit: Shel Israel
As promised he said he would look into it for me and sure enough within a day an angel from Comcast (I’ll leave his name out because I don’t think we wants to be bombarded with emails or inquiries) wrote me an email and set me up with a deal that I couldn’t refuse. Let’s just say I originally though what he was writing was a joke. It was that good of an offer and didn’t involve signing over my soul.
This situation proves that not only is Comcast rehabbing it’s customer service through mediums like Twitter and the other social networks, but they are doing their best to please those customers who might have left if they decided to not give a hoot (sorry for the bad bird pun). Though they still have lots of work to do on their phone customer service. Their presence online has definitely helped them greatly.
The moral of this story is simple. Don’t judge a social networking/media service based on its naysayers and criticism, judge it based on your experience with the service yourself. If you’re not interested in it fine. But don’t put down those who do use it until you’ve tried it for yourself.
It is all about community building and growing your “social” network. Twitter and these other networking platforms are like traditional networking, it’s how you work it that makes it valuable.
I’d like to hear your feedback and comments. Please post them below!
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Today Gmail, Google’s email client, went down. As a matter of fact it’s still down (4:30pm 9/1/09). The minute Gmail went down it seemed as though the whole world jumped on Twitter and asked in some fashion…”Is GMail Down.” Then started the freaking out. I did a quick search on the term GMail in 
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