Only 200 tickets remain for Mashable’s Social Media Week event, NextUp NYC – The Future Journalist on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 92YTribeca.

Join us for networking and a conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan (Professor and Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor of DNAinfo.com) and Vadim Lavrusik (new media journalist and digital media graduate student at Columbia University Journalism School).

Details

Location: 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013

Socialize (new): Facebook Event Page

Pricing: $20 in advance, $25 at door. Tickets on Sale Now.

Food and drink: Full cash bar and food menu available

Schedule

• 6:00 – 7:15 = Open Networking
• 7:15 – 8:45 = Conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan and Vadim Lavrusik
• 8:45 – Bar Close = Open Networking

A Conversation and Q&A with:

Sree Sreenivasan – Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor, DNAinfo.com.

Sree Sreenivasan is a tech evangelist and skeptic specializing in explaining technology to non-techies. He is a professor and dean of students affairs at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches in the digital media program. Sreenivasan is contributing editor at DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan-news startup he helped launch in 2009 with Joe Ricketts, the founder of Ameritrade and whose family just bought the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field. He also has been a fixture on NYC-area television. For more than eight years, he served as technology reporter for WABC-TV and WNBC-TV and now occasionally appears on various TV shows (on CNN, NBC’s Today Show, CNBC and elsewhere) to talk tech. He has written articles for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, National Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes and Popular Science. You can find him on Twitter at twitter.com/sreenet and on the Web at sree.net.

Vadim Lavrusik – Online journalist and M.S. candidate in Digital Media at Columbia Journalism School

Vadim Lavrusik is a new media journalist and social media consultant studying digital media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he is launching NYC 3.0, a tech start-up news site as part of his Master’s project. He is also currently working as a social media consultant at the New York Times. He’s reported for publications like the Star Tribune, The Minnesota Daily, the Mpls./St. Paul Business Journal and most recently was a guest feature writer for Mashable.com, where he covered trends in news media, and contributed to Poynter Online’s E-Media Tidbits. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/lavrusik and the Web lavrusik.com.

Thanks to our Sponsor

Call for Sponsors

Thanks to our Partner

Tags: Events, future journalist, nextupnyc, NYC, social media week

Go to Source

Last night in Brooklyn’s consummate hipster ‘hood of Williamsburg, CNN.com announced partnerships with two rather odd (yet entirely awesome) bedfellows: Vice’s VBS.TV and Sub Pop Records. This media marriage will result in two new web-exclusive video series, “VBS.TV on CNN.com” and “Indie Asia: On Tour with Handsome Furs.”

Although these new partnerships may seem like an unusual move on the part of the news organization — even Vice founder Shane Smith recognizes that: “The ‘Hipsters’ Bible’ hooking up with the World’s News Leader is a bit odd,” he says — it stems from an urge to add more diversity to the site in terms of style and perspective.

If you’re not familiar with VBS.TV, it’s basically a free online content channel that’s part of the Vice empire (which includes the original magazine, a record label and VBS.TV, of which Spike Jonze is the creative director). The brand is known for covering content that fits well within the indie bloodstream, and that’s rather, well, shocking — come on, the mag features a column dedicated entirely to trippin’ and one of its original founders did this (NSFW, dear lord) after mistakenly thinking he’d won Gawker’s Hipster of the Decade.

By the looks of the first episode, “The Vice Guide to Liberia,” the brand has not been slacking on its shock appeal. The spot features Smith trekking through the embattled country, interviewing warlords who admit to horrific deeds such as drinking the blood of innocent children. Shock value aside, these kinds of journalistic endeavors promise to be an interesting and vital addition to CNN.com’s arsenal of news. “The Vice Guide to Liberia” premieres today on CNN.com. Check out a teaser below:

CNN’s partnership with Sub Pop Records — an indie label from Seattle — also marks a unique foray into more offbeat territory. “Indie Asia: On Tour with Handsome Furs” follows the band across the foreign continent as they document their experiences with Flip cams. Personally, we’re intrigued by this unique form of publicity. The Furs and their label are making use of social media to draw attention to their music, and CNN, in turn, is bringing an indie outfit to a mainstream audience. The first episode premieres tomorrow in CNN’s Travel section. Check out a preview below:

Disclosure: Mashable has a syndication partnership with CNN.

Tags: cnn.com, media, music, sub pop, vice, video, web series

Go to Source

Flick Studio is making these trucks with the hopes that companies will be interested in purchasing them for their own advertising purposes. The idea comes from trucks that are already out there, which feature rolling ads. This takes the concept to a whole new (and likely expensive) level.

Information about FlickTruck is scarce. The FlickTruck site only shows a couple videos (which offer no real details) and a GPS tracker tracking the journey of one of the trucks, "Flick-2". However, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas recently, WebProNews spoke with David McDonald of Flick Studio (FlickStudio.com or FlickTruck.com).

As you can see, it’s a truck with 3 big TVs built in. The displays are higher than 1080p. The are WUXGA and can be viewed easily in broad daylight.

Flick Studio began producing the trucks six months ago, and currently there are only two of them. Those are just to drive around executives who are interested in the technology. Who knows where they will go from there?

Related Articles:

> Checking Out Boxee’s Version of the Future of TV

> A Close Up with Sony’s New Personal Internet Viewer

> The World’s Smallest USB Drive and Portable Hard Drive

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Ibizlog.com is a site that allows users to easily establish a simple online presence for their business. The site features a site creation wizard for setting up the site, and the resulting site is hosted as a subdomain of the Ibizlog.com site. The service provides creation of websites in 5 languages – English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. The wizard takes the users through a 4 step process. The first step asks the user to enter all of their business information. The second step asks the user for the type of goods or services they sell, and selects a default template for that kind of goods or services. The third steps allows users to select the overall look and feel of the site, with a number of different predefined image and color schemes. The final step asks the user to confirm the details entered, and then the site is created.
Once the web site has been created, users have a control panel for adding items and customizing the site. Tabs on the Control Panel include My Purchases (where the user can enter purchase orders), My Sales, My Site (where the user can customize the site), My Items (where items or services for sale are listed), Promote (allows the user to enter email addresses to send invitations to visit the site) and Premium, which allows the user to purchase premium features.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Las Vegas, Nevada-based Ibizlog.com was founded in September 2008 by Sol Apps and Services, LLC. Jose Bretti is CEO of the company.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Ibizlog.com comes from many sites, including Homestead and SnapPages. Both of these site offer a similar service to Ibizlog, and offer more overall features. However, Ibizlog.com is easier to set up if the user’s business does not contain a large number of goods or services. In short, Homestead and SnapPages are more powerful, Ibizlog is simpler. Ibizlog is more expensive than either of the other two sites.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The site is easy to use and navigation is intuitive. The tools provided by the site make it very easy to create and maintain a simple website. The websites created by the site are not professional in their look and feel. A lot of advertising is displayed on the user’s website if they have a free account.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to Ibizlog.com is free and is required to use the site. The registration process asks for full name, email address, password, sex, country and language. Validation of the email address is required. A free account is limited to 18 articles and 1 image per article. In addition, advertising is displayed on free account websites.

What does it cost to use the application?


There are 3 paid membership plans offered to the Ibizlog.com site, including Bronze, Silver and Gold. A Bronze account allows for up to 60 items with 3 images per item, and offers a shopping cart which uses a messaging system. A Silver account features up to 75 articles with 3 images per article, and includes a shopping cart with a payment system. The Gold account offers up to 125 articles with 4 images per article and includes the ability for the user to upload their own website design. Costs for the Bronze, Silver and Gold plans are $42.04, $52.73 and $85.50 respectively for three months. Discounts are available if the user pays for more than 3 months in one payment.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Ibizlog.com site is recommended to anyone who wishes to establish a simple online business presence. The site creation wizard is very easy to use, and the results are quite professional. The plans are somewhat limited, given the price, but the emphasis is on simplicity – a complete website can be set up in very little time using the tools provided by the Ibizlog.com site.

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Conferous.com is an online conference calling solution for small, medium and large businesses. Users can create conference rooms and manage conference calls from an easy to use online interface. Participants do not need to remember conference ids, pin or access codes – just a toll-free number and extension. Users can hold up to 5 conferences simultaneously with up to 15 participants. In order to create a new conference call, the user can use a new or existing room. When a new room is created, it is assigned a toll-free number and extension. To initiate a conference call, all participants dial the toll-free number and enter the extension. This connects all of the parties in a conference call. The site automatically records all conference calls and saves the recording for future reference.

The site is very easy to use. Once logged in, users can view their existing rooms or create a new room from their home page. The home page also contains a listing of all recordings of past calls, which are listed beneath the room name. Clicking on the link to a recording downloads a .wav file which can be played in the user’s preferred audio player application. Users pay a monthly fee plus a per minute cost for each conference call.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Conferous.com was launched by David K. Pham in December 2009. The site use the Twilio.com telephone to website API interface.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Conferous.com comes from sites such as Freeconference.com and Nocostconference.com. Freeconference.com offers both free and paid plans for conferencing. They offer more features than Conferous, but the free service does not include permanently assigned numbers. Nocostconference.com provides both free and paid plans as well, but free plans do not include a toll-free number. Conferous.com is by far the simplest and easiest to use service.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. Navigation of the site is intuitive, and the site is very easy to use. Creating and managing conference rooms is a straightforward process, as is initiating conference calls. The service functioned flawlessly during testing. There is no advertising displayed on the Conferous.com site.

How does the registration process work?


Signup for a paid plan to the Conferous.com site is required to use the service. No free trial is offered. The signup process asks for first and last name, email address, username, password and business name. The site accepts credit cards as payment for plans, and asks for first and last name of the cardholder, card number, expiration date and billing zip code.

What does it cost to use the application?


There are two paid plans available – Basic and Premium. The Basic plan allows for 1 toll-free number, up to 3 conference rooms and 3 participants per conference. The Basic plan costs $9.95 per month plus 7 cents per minute. The Premium plan allows for 1 toll-free number, up to 5 conference rooms and up to 15 participants per conference. The Premium plan costs $14.95 per month and 6 cents per minute.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Conferous.com site is recommended to anyone who needs a simple conference calling solution. The pricing is very reasonable, and the service is scalable from small to large businesses. The service is very easy to use, and the automatic recording of calls provides a valuable transcript of business discussions.

Go to Source

Printing on canvas is becoming quite popular among photographers and designers. If you haven’t tried it out, now is the perfect time to give it a shot. UPrinting.com is offering a free 16×20″ rolled canvas print with any order over $50. All they ask in return is that you have your design shared in their print idea gallery (which is great for getting yourself more exposure as a designer).

How to Claim a 16×20″ Rolled Free Canvas Print

1) Click Here (opens in new window)
2) Place an Order Over $50
3) Review your shopping experience
4) Share your design in our idea gallery
5) Receive an email with a link to claim your canvas print

Canvas Print Review from Designer Adam Woodhouse

If you wondering about the quality of these canvas prints, check out the video review submitted by artist Adam Woodhouse. Printing.com offers a full range of large format printing services including poster printing, canvas printing, wall graphics, vinyl banners and window clings.

Go to Source

You can become a thought leader just by writing articles – just like I have. Because I’m found on top websites like About.com Home Business, SiteProNews.com, IMNewswatch and in ezines like John Kremer’s BookMarket.com ezine, I…

• Have gained recognition from around the world. For example, I have customers and clients from Australia, Israel, France, Thailand, Taiwan, UK and Greece – and I’m based in the United States.
• Get booked for speaking engagements.
• Have people coming to me asking if I can do article writing and article marketing training programs.
• Have my articles published in hard cover books like “Calling All Authors.”

I’m getting all this attention because I’m publishing free content that makes me the authority on article marketing. And, I’m getting these articles published on top, credible websites and not just article directories where anyone can get published as long as you follow the guidelines.

With that being said, are you ready to start writing articles that make you the “authority” in your industry?

Here Are 5 Article Templates to Help You Become a Thought Leader Fast

1. Case Study Article Template – With this template, you prove to your prospects that you are a true expert who has already gotten results using the formula you share within your article. By writing an article that a) explains a problem that your prospects are experiencing b) gives a step-by-step solution and c) reveals an outcome that your prospects desperately want — you will become the expert in their eyes. You will give prospects no choice but to want to go to your website and get on your list so they can get even more information. For an example of my of a case study article, check out my article: ” How to Promote Your Book to the Top of the New York Times Best Sellers List” .

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/yc7caq6

2. Top Mistakes Article Template – With this article template, you take a stand against what others in your industry are doing. For example, one of my new article marketing clients, James Sinclair who runs a restaurant consulting firm recently wrote an article titled: ” Restaurant Marketing: How $5 Promotions Are Killing Casual Dining Restaurants’ Profits.” Using TGI Friday’s and some other big name restaurants as examples, he proves to restaurant owners that you should not compete with Quick Serve restaurants by offering the same kinds of promotions that they use! Find out what mistakes are being made in your industry and let your prospects know what is going on, why it’s a mistake and what they should be doing instead.

3. Controversy Article Template – One of the best ways to achieve market “thought leadership” status is to stir up the market by taking some gray issues and make them black and white. This is a good opportunity to take current events and provide your expert analysis and supporting reasons why certain issues are good or bad for the market, economy and world.

4. Differentiation Article Template – If you want to be a thought leader then you must show you are different. When we first started ArticleMarketingExperts.com we set our prices at premium levels unseen in the article marketing industry. If we wanted people to invest in our services, we had to show prospects that we are thought leaders in the industry and that we have a different approach when it comes to article submission. That’s why we wrote the article: ” Choosing an Article Submission Service: 10 Questions You Must Ask Before You Spend Your Hard Earned Dollars.”

View the article here: http://tinyurl.com/ydgynb9

5. Your Questions Answered Article Template – If you want to be a thought leader than you have to be willing to provide top, unique information. And, you have to be willing to answer questions that everyone else is afraid to answer. If you can provide the information that your targeted prospects want that is found nowhere else, guess who will be the expert in their eyes. Guess whose sites they will want to visit so they can get even more information. And, guess whose products and services they will buy. So seek out the questions that your audience is asking that no one is answering. Then answer the questions in a Q & A article template.

If you write thought leadership articles using these article templates, you will become the “expert” in the eyes of your prospects, clients and the media (both online and offline.)

To see how you should organize your articles using these templates, check out my Instant Article Writing Templates Kit at http://www.StartWritingArticlesFaster.com

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Article Marketing Expert Reveals 5 Article Templates for Thought Leaders

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Konkuri.com is an online browser-based tournament management software application. The application allows tournament managers to manage their tournaments and publish them on the web. The site supports all types of sports and games, and allows the creation of single round-robin, double round-robin, single elimination and groups/playoff type tournaments. Tournament managers can either manually pair up competitors or have the site make a random schedule that can be edited as desired. Managing results and standings is easy – the manager simply enters the scores and the site updates the standings. The Konkuri.com site supports various types of scores, including best of N sets, two-legged ties and best of N matches.
The majority of sports and games is supported, with presets already defined for each sport. The application also supports game site and date scheduling. Each tournament has its own web address, which is a subdirectory of the main Konkuri.com site. Tournament managers have a Dashboard, where they can control tournament settings, add posts to the tournament blog, and see recent activity. Tournament managers and players have a Results page where the current standings can be seen, a Teams page which gives a description of each of the teams, and an Info page which gives the tournament name, its web address, venues, periods, contacts, description and rules.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Bologna, Italy-based Konkuri.com was launched in September 2009. Matteo La Rosa is CEO of the site, Andrea Lelli is CCO and Federico Panciroli is CTO.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Konkuri.com comes from sites such as Manageyourtournament.com and SportsPilot.com. SportsPilot.com is a hosted solution that specializes in the management of sporting events. SportsPilot does not support the large variety of games supported by Konkuri. Manageyourtournament.com only supports 7 types of sports and does not have the wealth of features provided by Konkuri.com.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. The tools provided for creating and managing tournaments work quite well, and the presentation of the results and info pages is professional. Navigation of the site is very intuitive. Advertising is displayed on the site, but it is relatively unobtrusive.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to the Konkuri.com site is free and is required to permanently save a tournament. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address, password, gender and date of birth. Validation of the email address is required to activate the account.

What does it cost to use the application?


There is no premium membership offered to the Konkuri.com site.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Konkuri.com site is recommended to anyone who needs to manage a tournament and post it online. The site takes most of the detail work out of managing a tournament. The site supports a large variety of sports and games, as well as scoring systems, and the tools provided for tournament creation and management work well. An added advantage is the dedicated web address assigned to each tournament.

Go to Source

From Silicon Valley to Zhongguancun, Google’s surprise announcement that it may pull out of China has fueled an enormous amount of discussion in recent days, not all of it 100% accurate. Below are some misstatements and misunderstandings we’ve seen:

1. Google failed in China

Google’s China operations contribute a small fraction of the company’s overall revenue – the company doesn’t disclose the amount, but analysts estimate it was a few percent of its total $21.8 billion in 2008 revenue, or several hundred million dollars. But Google has made significant progress in China in recent years, raising its share of the Internet search market to roughly 36% in the fourth quarter of 2009 from 13% when it started its Chinese-language google.cn site in early 2006, according to data from research firm Analysys International.

Many other foreign companies doing business in China would gladly forgo big profits in the short term for comparable market-share growth in China—especially in an industry where China has more users than any other country (384 million according to the latest statistics). Google has also been particularly popular among the highly sought-after demographic of young, educated, white-collar urban professionals. The company’s powerful brand of business and ethics (“don’t be evil) has also earned it a fair amount of good will among Chinese Internet users, many of whom are now mourning its (still uncertain) fate. While rival Baidu still has a much larger 58% share of the search market, its brand has suffered as a result of scandals involving paid results and allegations of censorship of sensitive news stories.

Google doesn’t say if it’s profitable in China, but there’s certainly no reason to assume it’s not. Baidu, its chief rival, reported net profit of about $153 million on revenue of $468 million for 2008, when it said it had 6,387 employees. Google’s revenue would have perhaps half or two thirds that amount, but it likely has a much lower cost base in China than Baidu, since Google is believed to employ well under 1,000 employees in the country, and can use technology developed by its U.S. headquarters.

2. Google.com is not accessible in China

Before Google introduced its China-specific search engine, Google.cn, in 2006, its global site Google.com was subject to periodic blocking in China. But for the last four years, Google.com has been almost always accessible to users in China.

However, the fact that Google.com can be accessed from China doesn’t mean that Internet users can get to forbidden content listed in the site’s search results. Links to sites that are blocked in China will still return error messages or time out when they are clicked. (In contrast, Google’s Chinese search engine, Google.cn, will filter out links to sites that don’t comply with Chinese laws and regulations.)

And of course, given the unpredictability of China’s Web restrictions, there’s no guarantee that Google.com will continue to be available to users inside China, at least not without “scaling the wall.”

3. Google has Gmail servers in China

Some reports have said that the reason Chinese hackers were able to access Gmail accounts is that Google has email servers physically located in China. This is not the case. Google says it has no email servers in the country.

Indeed, Google has said keeping its servers out of China was a deliberate move to help protect user information. When the company announced its plans to launch google.cn in January 2006, executives said one of the safeguards it planned to use to protect user interests was that it wouldn’t host user-generated content like email and blogs on servers in China.

Google had reason to be careful. In 2005, there was widespread outcry among rights activists and the U.S. government after Yahoo turned over user information to the Chinese government, which was used as evidence to sentence journalist Shi Tao to 10 years in prison. Yahoo said that, because its Chinese mail servers were inside China, the company felt compelled to comply with the authorities’ request.

4. Google.cn search results are already uncensored

After Tuesday’s announcement, Web users ran amok on Google.cn, looking up sensitive terms such as “Tiananmen 1989,” “tank man,” and even “sensitive words.” But many have been disappointed with the results, as searches for these terms still turned up the familiar disclaimer that “in accordance with local laws and regulations, a portion of the search results are not displayed.”

Google says that it hasn’t yet started to remove content filters on Google.cn, a process that could take weeks.

How to explain the images of tank man and links to sites about the Dalai Lama found via Google.cn? Many of the searches yielding fruitful results appear to have been conducted in English, a trick that often turns up fuller results on Google.cn than a search for the same term in Chinese. (To see what we mean, compare these Google.cn results for “Dalai Lama” in English and Chinese).

5. Google has identified Chinese dissidents as the targets of cyber attacks

Since Google revealed that it has been the target of cyber attacks, and that it had identified two Gmail accounts that had been compromised, a number of prominent Chinese activists have reported that their Gmail accounts have been hacked, in some cases repeatedly. Google says that these intrusions were not part of the larger, sophisticated attack on its security infrastructure, but likely the result of more pedestrian phishing scams or malware.

6. Google has already shut down its business in China

On Friday, Ministry of Commerce spokesman Yao Jian said that neither MOC nor the Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce had received any information from Google about a planned withdrawal of its investment. A person close to Google also denied rumors that Google employees in China have ceased to report for work.

Go to Source

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: CheckingFinder.com

Quick Pitch: CheckingFinder.com is a search engine that offers users the ability to find, compare and open a high-interest checking account.

Genius Idea: Although the big U.S. banks might seem like the only choice around, smaller institutions can offer lots of perks, including higher interest rates, a lack of ATM usage fees and no minimum balances. If you’re willing to do your banking online, you can get an account with the best banks, even if you live in another state. That’s where CheckingFinder comes in.

Just enter in your zip code and you’ll get back a list of banks (all insured by the FDIC, NCUA or ASI) that you can open a checking account with. Most have a very low minimum deposit, require no minimum balance or monthly fees and will credit you a certain number of ATM fees each month.

What’s the catch? Well, some banks will require that you use an account for a certain number of transactions or that you have a direct deposit or bill pay system setup. If you don’t meet the requirements, you can still have the free account with no penalty, you’ll just get a base interest rate and have to pay your own ATM fees.

You can also sign up for an account in a process that CheckingFinder.com claims takes about seven minutes. Some banks will even offer free savings accounts in addition to the checking account, so if you’re interested in that, look over your options.

If you’re looking for alternatives to the bigger banks, CheckingFinder.com is a good place to start your search.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: banking, banks, checkingfinder.com, finance

Go to Source

Six of the top 20 highest growth website categories in December were travel and weather related.  The airport travel category attracted 40 percent more unique visitors in December (2.1 million) than the previous month.  News sites related to weather and traffic also saw big growth, increasing visitors by 34.8 percent over November to reach 52.5 million unique visitors.

Weather.com still has a clear hold on the online weather market. The popular forecast site attracted 33.6 million unique visitors in December, a 46.7 percent increase month-over-month and 22.1 percent growth over 2008. Wundergroud.com also continued steady growth, reaching 6.98 million unique visitors in December, which represents 19.3 percent growth year-over-year.

Shipping services attracted consumer’s attention in December as they logged on to track shipped packages and research shipping rates. UPS.com led the online shipping sites with 25 million unique visitors, a 51.9 percent increase month-over-month and 17 percent year-over-year growth. USPS.com trailed, attracting 23.4 million unique visitors, while 15.5 million unique visitors clicked on FedEx.com.

While the top 50 websites in December once again remained largely unchanged, there were two notable moves among the group. eBay moved up the ranks to take the number five spot on the most popular site list. With 88.5 million unique visitors in December, the site was previously ranked number eight edged out Amazon (85.9 million unique visitors) by growing 19.6 percent month-over-month.
 

Related Articles:

> The Top 50 Websites in the US

> Online Shoppers Have Bigger Holiday Budgets Than Offline Shoppers

> Compete Builds "Twitter Down" Case

Go to Source

In last than 1 month Vancouver will be releasing the 2010 Winter Olympic. The event is almost ready and the venues are counting the days to begin breathe sports everywhere. And one of the biggest hotspots will be the Richmond Olympic Oval, a project by Cannon Design and definitely worth of attention by its beauty and design.

<!–break–>

The Richmond Oval was built to be a venue and is intended to function as a future venue for community events, not only for the Olympic Games. The way its concept was created is pretty impressive, and already receive the LEED Silver Certification, that certifies its concern about sustainability seeking a design solution that optimizes energy use, environmental health, and aesthetic value.

© nick lehoux photography

Every visit to the Richmond Olympic Oval is awe-inspiring. Much was said about the visual impact of Beijing’s Bird’s Nest and Water Cube. While the exterior of these buildings was stunning, the interiors were rather pedestrian. The interior of the Oval is majestic. The use of wood and the vistas across the Fraser River to the mountains are utterly worldly. The unique integration of art and sustainable technologies in water collection and recycling is inspired. The Oval will remain a jewel of a legacy from the 2010 Games.” Chris Rudge, CEO & Secretary General, Canadian Olympic Committee

You can check these amazing photos below, and if you want to see the Oval in action by yourself there’s still time, the Olympic Games will begin in February 12! For more informations visit: vancouver2010.com.

© nick lehoux photography

© derek lepper photography

© bob matheson

© cannondesign.com

© nick lehoux photography

© hubert kang

© hubert kang

© hubert kang

© cannondesign.com

Thanks designboom.com for the tip.

Go to Source

Here is a pretty cool flash game by the guys from oneclickdog.com. There was once a world of living robots, but one day a bad accident occurred in the main power generator and the world fell into a deep sleep.

Your objective is to solve the puzzle and bring life back to the world!

It took me about 20 minutes to solve the game without looking at the walkthrough. Let me know in the comments how long it took you to solve the game. Have fun!

(Seen at notcot)

Go to Source

Think Green Meeting

KINO

The Great Bearded Reef

Fajne Chlopaki: Portfolio

Mogulista

SocialSnack

BULLET PR

Zee

Legwork Studio

Art by Annis Naeem

Portfolio of Tyrale Bloomfield

We Shoot Bottles

Silverbackapp

Tim Van Damme

basil gloo

Charlie Gentle

Chiragj Solanki

Contrast

Brian Murchison

Visualbox

www.MelissaHie.com

Tyler Finck, Sursly

volll

SectionSeven Inc

Dan Tobolic

Work at Play

Black Estate Vineyard

Search Inside Video

Samir Tuladhar

f claire baxter

Nile Inside

rzmota.com

The Portfolio of Bryan Katzel

Carbon Aspect

smartcube.ie

GIANT Creative

Hello. My name is Myke Ambs

Fabiano Meneghetti

sebdesign.eu

NETWiSE Strategies

About the Author

Gisele Muller is someone that recently discovered a new career online. A person that really likes technology, design, photography and creativity. An eternal geek wannabe, tech fan and a communication lover! Current location: Porto Alegre, RS – Brazil. Twitter: @gismullr

Go to Source

Attributor’s FairShare Guardian service monitored 913 popular books in 14 categories in the fourth quarter of 2009.  FairShare tracked the number of successful downloads completed for each of the 913 titles on four file sharing sites that make download data available (4shared.com, scribd.com, wattpad.com and docstoc.com). Across those four sites, a total of 3.2 million downloads took place.

Across the top 25 one-click hosting sites a total download figure of over 9 million copies was projected with an estimated loss of $380 million. Each book’s retail price and category information was collected from Amazon.com.

Among the 14 book categories tracked, piracy was most common in the business and investing category with an average of 13,000 free downloads per title. The professional and technical category trailed followed by science, computer and Internet.

The 913 titles in this study represents works from publishers totaling 13.5 percent of the U.S. book publishing market. Projecting the $380 million value to the entire industry results in total potential piracy of $2.8 billion.
 

Related Articles:

>Illegal File Sharing In The UK Declines

>Streaming Music Turning Users Away From Music

>French Lawmakers Take Up Revised Internet Piracy Bill

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Vois.com is a social media outsourcing site. The site is designed to bring together buyers and service providers in a social networking environment. Buyers post projects on the site and sellers place bids on the projects. The buyer then chooses the bidder based on their feedback, profile, sample work and cost of the bid. Payment for services is handled between the buyer and the seller, or they can use the escrow service provided by the site to place the money in escrow until the project is satisfactorily completed. The site uses a credit system as payment to the site. Credits are required to place a bid or post a project. Each new member is alloted 625 credits, and more credits are earned by both buyer and seller for each successfully completed project.
The site relies heavily on feedback to function, as this is the incentive for buyers and sellers to deal honestly and fairly with one another. Both buyer and seller provide feedback, in the form of a rating as well as a description, at the successful completion of a project. Projects are posted by buyers into categories. Sellers can then browse projects via category or search via keyword. The site has social networking features such as friends, groups, networks, messaging and comments. Users have a My Dashboard page, where they can view a summary of all of the social networking items, plus view projects they have posted or bid on.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Boca Raton, FL-based Vois.com was founded in November 2006.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Vois.com comes from sites such as Rentacoder.com and Elance.com. Both of these sites are well-established, but do not offer the social networking features offered by Vois.com. They both have a much larger userbase of buyers and sellers than Vois.com. Both sites place the same heavy emphasis on feedback as Vois.com does.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Pages are very clean and uncluttered. The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. The social networking features of the site work well and the tools provided for posting and bidding on projects function well also. There is no advertising displayed on the site.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to the Vois.com site is free and is required to use the site. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address, country, password, date of birth and state or province and zip code. Validation of the email address is required.

What does it cost to use the application?


A free account is granted 625 credits – if these are used up more can be purchased. Users can also spend credits on bold listings or featured placement of their bids or projects. The basic cost to post a project is 100 credits. The basic cost to bid on a project is 5 credits. More credits can be purchased at the following rates: $15 for $375, $30 for 825, $60 for 1,800 and $90 for 3375.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Vois.com site is recommended to anyone who has a service to offer or needs to purchase the services of others. The site brings a social networking aspect to the outsourcing and freelancing world, and does a good job of providing both buyers and sellers with the tools they need to complete successful projects.

Go to Source

For this Sites of the Week we have selected some great sites such as the IInsight and Symphony. Also we’re featuring a nice flash site called Aksident, and much, much more! As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending your suggestions to us and we will be more than happy to feature your site.

<!–break–>

You can send me your suggestions via Twitter twitter.com/FabianoMe or twitter.com/abduzeedo, and include #abdz_sites in the message.

DESIGN / CSS

Symphony – symphony-cms.com

From the inside out, Symphony is rooted in the very same principles that you adhere to in your own work. Openness. Standards compliance. Flexibility. Symphony doesn’t just help you get the job done, it helps you get the job done right.

Codare – codare.com.br

Codare is a company that has the distinction of developing communication solutions online, in a creative and objective, always seeking the growth of our customers through actions that put them in a conscious way in the virtual world. (via Google Translate)

APP / WEB APP

Ketchup – useketchup.com

Ketchup is for meetings.

VigLink – viglink.com

VigLink monetizes the ordinary hyperlink by offering an “install and forget” code snippet that automatically secures revenue from the sites you already link without any visible changes to your site.

COMMUNITY / PORTAL

DesignersMusic – designersmusic.com

Great design needs great music, and DesignersMusic is all about helping you find new inspration. Find out what other designers are listening to, sort music by job types and share that awesome band no one else has heard of. Stop reading and get started!

IInsight – iinsight.net

IINSIGHT network is an open social collaborative internet magazine that delivers carefully curated content on culture, music, arts, fashion & lifestyle. It was created for individuals with sophisticated tastes who appreciate quality entertainment out of the box.

FLASH SITE

kimm – kimm.no

Kimm Saatvedt is a Norwegian photographer based in Oslo. He does commercial work as well as ‘art’.

Aksident – aksident.be

Aksident, bedrijfstheater, een creatief huis dat wordt bewoond door een multidisciplinair team van acteurs, muzikanten en decorbouwers.

BLOG / PORTFOLIO

Daily Payne – dailypayne.com

Howdy the names Aaron, and this is my attempt at taking a photo a day and posting it here for everyone to see starting january 1st 2010. I know, I know it’s not original.

Notorious Design – notoriousdesign.co.uk

My name is Victoria (Tor) Burrows, and I am an aspiring video/3D artist. I graduated from the University of Worcester in 2008 with a First-Class degree in Digital Media, and am currently looking to develop my career in the film or gaming industry.

TEMPLATES

MyStream – woothemes.com

MyStream is a flexible and extremely customizable personal blog theme with massive social media & lifestreaming influences. Change the background to your visual identity, move the many available widgets around and VOILA: you have YourStream.

Clickloud – themeforest.net

Clickloud is a web 2.0 business software template. It’s mainly directed towards the companies that either produce or administrate web 2.0 software content (cloud software companies) but it may be used for a variety of other things: company portfolio, personal blog theme etc.

Go to Source

I am pleased to announce Mashable’s Social Media Week event, NextUp NYC – The Future Journalist, will be held on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 92YTribeca (Tickets on sale here). The fourth Mashable NextUp NYC will focus on the changing skills and traits of journalists in a changing media landscape.

As the news industry looks to reconstruct its suffering business model, the journalists of today must reconstruct their skill sets for the growing world of online media. The night will consist of networking and a conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan (Professor and Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor of DNAinfo.com) and Vadim Lavrusik (new media journalist and digital media graduate student at Columbia University Journalism School).

Details

Tickets: There are only 300 public tickets available per event. Tickets on sale through 92YTribeca, a non-profit organization. No further tickets will be released.

Location: 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013

Pricing: $20 in advance, $25 at door. Tickets on Sale Now.

Food and drink: Full cash bar and food menu available

Schedule

• 6:00 – 7:15 = Open Networking
• 7:15 – 8:45 = Conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan and Vadim Lavrusik
• 8:45 – Bar Close = Open Networking

A Conversation and Q&A with:

Sree Sreenivasan – Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor, DNAinfo.com.

Sree Sreenivasan is a tech evangelist and skeptic specializing in explaining technology to non-techies. He is a professor and dean of students affairs at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches in the digital media program. Sreenivasan is contributing editor at DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan-news startup he helped launch in 2009 with Joe Ricketts, the founder of Ameritrade and whose family just bought the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field. He also has been a fixture on NYC-area television. For more than eight years, he served as technology reporter for WABC-TV and WNBC-TV and now occasionally appears on various TV shows (on CNN, NBC’s Today Show, CNBC and elsewhere) to talk tech. He has written articles for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, National Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes and Popular Science. You can find him on Twitter at twitter.com/sreenet and on the Web at sree.net.

Vadim Lavrusik – Online journalist and M.S. candidate in Digital Media at Columbia Journalism School

Vadim Lavrusik is a new media journalist and social media consultant studying digital media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he is launching NYC 3.0, a tech start-up news site as part of his Master’s project. He is also currently working as a social media consultant at the New York Times. He’s reported for publications like the Star Tribune, The Minnesota Daily, the Mpls./St. Paul Business Journal and most recently was a guest feature writer for Mashable.com, where he covered trends in news media, and contributed to Poynter Online’s E-Media Tidbits. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/lavrusik and the Web lavrusik.com.

Call for Sponsors

Thanks to our Partner

Tags: Events, future journalist, nextup-nyc, social media week

Go to Source

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Moveidiot.com

Quick Pitch: Free, web-based service that takes the hassle out of moving by allowing users to manage entire moves online.

Genius Idea: Moveidiot.com aims to make moving less painful by letting you track your packages, organize your packing lists and coordinate tasks all from its web-based service.

Moving sucks. It is often expensive, stress-inducing and takes tons of time. Managing the little details of a move, like indexing what’s in certain boxes or keeping track of different appointments, only adds to the stress of packing and physically moving to a new place. That’s what Moveidiot.com wants to help dissipate.

At Moveidiot.com, you can manage the various organizational aspects of your move in one place. If you’re shipping stuff across the country, you can track packages from USPS, UPS and FedEx. You can also create moving labels to put on boxes and lists of what’s inside each box and where it needs to go.

Probably the most enticing feature about Moveidiot.com is the Moving Checklist, which is a to-do list that will alert you of stuff you need to do. You can also manage your moving budget, which is handy if you’re trying to decide between hiring movers or renting a truck yourself.

Moveidiot.com is entirely web-based, so you can use it from any Mac or PC, or access your stuff from your mobile phone. If you’re planning a move and need some organizational help, this free service might be worth a look.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: movieidiot.com, moving, web apps

Go to Source

There are thousands of amazing freebies for Graphic Designers on the internet. We will hand select a collection of freebies from various websites that you can use in your designs every week. They will include vectors, textures, brushes and more. Abduzeedo has you covered on getting you the very best resources.

<!–break–>

Vectors

Floral Illustration by: Vectorious.net

Download Page

City Skyline Vector Images by: Vectorportal.com via (Vecteezy)

Download Page

5 Floral Ornaments Vector Pack by: Idealhut.com

Download Page

Photoshop Brushes

Brushed Borders by: MediaMilitia.com

Download Page

Real Smoke by: Photoshoptutorials.ws

Download Page

Snow Brushes by: Colorburned.com

Download Page

Abstract Brushes Vol 8 by: Rubina119

Download Page

Euphoria Brushes by: ShiftyJ

Download Page

Textures

Bokeh Effects Pack by: MediaMilitia.com

Download Page

Textured Grunge by: BittBox.com

Download Page

Paper Texture Pack – 9 Papers by: Zigabooooo

Download Page

Go to Source

Opinions were passionate in comments on the article, and as of the writing of this followup are approaching nearly 500 strong. From among all the comments several clear opinions emerged on the state of email and selecting an email provider and username.

• The username you select is vastly more important than the provider you use. Firstname.lastname@aol.com is preferred to and more respectable than sexkitten2010@aol.com—cutesy, offensive, or unprofessional nicknames are big mistakes.
• Domains are important, especially in technology-related fields. An AOL address might be just as serviceable as any other address when it comes to sending and receiving mail but to most people in tech fields it says “Hi. I’m from 1996. What is this internet you speak of?”
  

  As an IT exec, I definitely made judgments against prospective hires based on email addresses (as well as a wide array of other factors). It wasn’t uncommon for me to have 100-500 resumes for a single open position, and I didn’t care to rely on HR to sort through them, so I did it myself, and I needed some way to get down to a short-list of around 10 people. As such, it was pretty easy to toss a resume because somebody had a goofy email address. And I would certainly raise an eyebrow at a supposed IT tech who had an AOL.com address. – Mike De Lucia

  As an IT manager in the tech field, I have to say that I’m a little prejudice when it comes to using a Hotmail or AOL address for business or on a resume. AOL is a more dated personal email address. Hotmail is known as an email for kids, for people who don’t care if their mail is thrown out if they don’t log in for awhile, and for a spam throwaway address. – Gankaku

• More concerning than people using inappropriate emails handles on their resumes? Businesses that don’t have their own domain and personalized email. SomeCompany@sbcglobal.net or SomeDude2049@yahoo.com were huge turn offs to readers and many expressed that they would question the professionalism of a company with such an unpolished image and do business elsewhere.
  

  I’m a photographer and also wonder when I see other photographers without a domain name email.
  It seems as though they aren’t serious about their career if they haven’t taken the time to create a website and therefore have a domain name email. – veronykah

• The flood of comments wasn’t without dissenting opinion by any measure; many commenters weighed in pointing out that it was superficial and judgmental to make snap decisions based on an email address.
  

  I don’t understand the prejudice against hotmail. I’ve had my hotmail address for like 15+ years. Though I’ve had it so long I was able to choose @msn.com for my address. Fortunately I took it over hotmail.com so maybe people don’t look down on me quite so much. When I see a hotmail.com address, I think, ‘wow, that person’s been using email for a long time.’ Read the rest of mrknowitall’s comment here..

• One astute observation made by several readers was that it’s a huge hassle to switch email providers so most people never bother. One reader even noted that the hassle-factor could be a big reason why people get defensive:
  

  This issue comes up every now and then, and it always gets people so riled up. People get defensive because so many e-mail services entrench their users – they can’t switch to a new one without a lot of hassle. Read the rest of veblen’s comment here.

As we noted in the original post, email addresses have become ubiquitous and because we hand them out so liberally in professional and social situations it is worth taking the time to assess what your email address says about you. Your cute username might have been novel back in high school or college but entering the professional world it’s definitely time to retire SexyStud99 in favor of John.R.Smith.

Like your clothing, your hair style, and your manner of speaking, your email address is part of your personal image. Certainly it’s a type of prejudice that a hiring manager might look over you because you have an “antiquated” email address or a “stupid” username, but that’s not entirely different than a hiring manager being unimpressed that you showed up to a job interview sans a neck tie. Sure it might be unimportant or silly to you and you might say “I wouldn’t want to work at a company that uptight anyhow,” but it’s worth taking into consideration because whether or not a prejudice—big or small!—is fair or reasonable, it is still out there.

Have an email-related story? An awkward moment revolving around an email address? Some insight as someone who handles applications or other hiring processes? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Go to Source

ReachBy.com is a new online platform that lets users blog per the standard or act as a chief editor — accept contributions from readers, then edit or post them as-is. It’s an easy way to share news, stories, thoughts, links, pics, videos, or whatever on the Stream of messages. A ReachBy Stream provides all it takes to jump-start a new blog, build online audience, involve people to contribute, and if you choose to — make an extra buck or two by serving the ads from your own Google AdSense account.

http://reachby.com

Go to Source

When Blippy [blippy.com] goes live on Thursay, we’ll find out. The site has been in private beta with 5,000 users so far and has tracked over $4.5 million dollars in transactions, according to co-founder Philip Kaplan. So far, the average transaction amount has been $43 a purchase.

Blippy users hook their credit or debit card accounts, which then sent to followers, much like tweets. It’s opt in, so users can either link individual cards, or just purchases from specific merchants like iTunes or Amazon. Blippers can also choose whether they want the total dollar amount or details of the purchase shown.

So, for example, one could Blip just “$18.40 at Joe’s Shanghai” or a more detailed “$4.65, pork steamed buns and $13.75, sesame chicken.” Fellow users could then comment on items ordered and price paid.

People who purchase songs on iTunes could immediately see their “Rubber Soul” album purchase put on Blippy. Then friends could comment engage via comment thread in a debate over which Beatle is best. Twelve different merchants are available, with more to come, Mr. Kaplan says.

Mr. Kaplan says that Blippy will let consumers get side-by-side comparisons of specific products, such as gym memberships or airline tickets, then be able to negotiate or call out a merchant for overcharging.

“Consumers have never had this kind of transparency before,” he says. Not included in the launch, but a possibility down the line would be a trending products feature, much like Twitter’s “trending topics” tool, which would measure popular purchases among Blippy users.

Blippy was founded by Mr. Kaplan, Ashvin Kumar and Chris Estreich. Charles River Ventures is the lead venture capital investor, with Sequoia Capital as a VC investor as well. Angel investors include Ron Conway, Twitter CEO Evan Williams, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, HotOrNot.com founder James Hong, Ariel Poler and Mr. Kaplan. Also on the board is Saar Gur. In the “seed” round of funding, Blippy raised $1.6 million.

Consumers can pause or delete their transactions on Blippy, so those holiday gifts or, ahem, personal purchases can be kept private. Security info, such as credit card numbers, is also kept confidential.

Mr. Kaplan admits that like many start ups, the user base will initially skew young, male and tech-y (”like a crowd at a ‘Star Trek’ convention”), but he said the goal is to sign up as many users as possible before nailing down a model for generating revenue.

So what about overcoming the creepiness of feeling like your bank statement is on display?

“People have seen the benefit of this,” Mr. Kaplan says. “With Twitter, you’re sharing what you’re doing. With Flickr, you’re sharing photos that were once private. Things people used to think were private aren’t any more.”

Go to Source

Update: We got an email from Mesiab Labs. The statement is included below.

-

Do you remember Retweet.com? Several months ago, in very public fashion, the Tweetmeme competitor launched, targeting “early adopters of tweetmeme.com” with a $10,000 contest and strong words for its rival.

Today, we’ve found out that the website, along with the website of parent company Mesiab Labs, have simply vanished. Mesiah Labs is now host to a WordPress installation screen, while Retweet.com just says “Database Error” in the title.

Three potential scenarios immediately come to mind. First, Mesiah Labs could have called it quits in the face of a growing rival. Yet to our surprise, Retweet.com is growing rapidly as well.

The second scenario is that Retweet.com and Mesiah Labs were hacked. Finally, both sites could have been taken down due to a malfunction or database error. To be clear, though, we don’t know what exactly happened. We’ve e-mailed Mesiah Labs to find out.

Update: Here’s Retweet’s response:

“As you mentioned, Retweet.com has been enjoying a healthy growth rate. As a result the site has attracted the interest of many potential buyers. Unfortunately the same popularity has attracted several DDOS attacks in the past as well.

Our current downtime, however, may be due to internal upgrades to our underlying server infrastructure.

We will have a conclusion very soon and are working to restore services as soon as possible! ”

Above: The homepage of Mesiab Labs.

Tags: retweet, twitter

Go to Source

Users can search for every property listed on Realtor.com by price, location, property type, MLS ID number, square foot, lot size, open house events, distance from a user’s current location and age.

The real estate iPhone app allows users to send a link of a specific property via email, Twitter or Facebook to family, friends or a realtor.

"The Realtor.com iPhone app places the power of Realtor.com in the hands of millions of highly mobile consumers that depend on us to deliver the largest collection of properties with the freshest and most accurate information available on the market," said Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com.

"By combining our unmatched search power with the ability to instantly share listings and feedback by email, Twitter or Facebook from an iPhone, millions now have mobile access to a phenomenal property search experience superior to other apps already on the market. We expect Realtors and their clients will appreciate the ease and convenience that our app brings to their experience as they work together to find the ideal property."
 

Related Articles:

> New Google Phone Has Tech Community Licking Chops

> New Google Maps For Android Gets Experimental

> Apple Fans Respond To The "Droid Does" Advertising Campaign

Go to Source

Go to Source

Google’s announcement that it may leave China has prompted strong global reactions.

An interesting trend can be observed on The Wall Street Journal’s own news sites, where readers have been asked to vote on the question: Should Google leave China?

At last look on WSJ.com, the main English-language site, 80%, or 361 votes, said a resounding Yes.

However, on Chinese.WSJ.com, the Chinese-language version, asked the same question in Chinese, 72% of a total 934 voters said No. The number of votes, just a couple hours of the announcement, was well above what similar questions have drawn in the past, and was growing.

While of course the samples are small and far from representative, the results so far indicate that while some Chinese Internet users tend to veer towards nationalism when it comes to Western companies and products, they value freedom of speech all the same. Some Chinese readers commented that Google leaving China would be a “tragedy.”

Stay tuned.

Go to Source

What’s Required

1. A solid grasp of the English language.
2. Consistency. You must submit one article each week – the day to be determined between the two of us.

I’m Interested. What Next?

You have a few options:

1. Email nettuts@tutsplus.com with your first tutorial idea. I’ll either okay it or request a different topic.
2. Take the initiative and prepare a high-quality design article, and submit it to nettuts@tutsplus.com.
3. Leave a comment with any questions that you might have.

When you’re ready to begin writing, be sure to take a look at our formatting instructions.

How Much Does the Job Pay?

You’ll be offered $150 per article for your first few submissions. However, once you’ve consistently submitted a weekly article for a month, your pay will be upped to $200 per article.

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the Nettuts+ RSS Feed for the best web development tutorials on the web.

Go to Source

Create your free store and sell digital and physical items!

IndieMart.com is a free service to register on. We have designed or fee structures to try and be some of the most competitive in the industry especially when you consider all the features you receive. We charge fees only when sellers sell their products or list over a certain amount of items at one time. We also have premium memberships which carry a monthly fee in return for reduced selling fees and no fees for listing products as well as other benefits.

http://www.indiemart.com/

Go to Source

The website SpeedCine.com makes it easy for users all over the world to find out what movies are available online and where.

SpeedCine is basically an aggregator of legal movie sites: It helps you find free movies or movies you can rent or buy. SpeedCine tracks Netflix, iTunes, The Auteurs, Crackle.com and dozens of other services, and offers users a choice of options quickly and easily.

This video gives you an overview of what SpeedCine does:

When the site launched this fall, its focus was on the U.S. — because many of the largest services are U.S.-based. However, as founder Reid Rosefelt explained to me via e-mail, that level of specification is far from ideal. The Internet is increasingly melting barriers between countries, and the idea of keeping content segregated for certain geographical locales is becoming increasingly silly.

SpeedCine will soon work all over the world, but the first big focus in the international rollout is the UK, because they have so many different websites. iTunes-UK, Blinkbox and LOVEFiLM are just some of the UK-specific sites that are supported.

In addition, SpeedCine has deals with all six iTunes stores to handle movies and arrangements with companies like TheAuteurs — which have relationships with distributors all over the world — so that people can access content regardless of location.

We think that this site is really brilliant, not just because it is useful — because it is — but because it can really make the process of finding content, regardless of location, easier for users. In turn, maybe the industry will take notice and start taking the initiative to work out rights issues, rather than just ignoring the international community.

How do you find movies online?

Tags: Film, hulu, netflix, speedcine, theauteurs

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Stickk.com is a site designed to help people keep commitments to lose weight, quit smoking, exercise regularly or maintain their weight. These are the standard commitments listed by the site – users can create a custom commitment for almost any task or goal. The user makes a contract with the site to keep the commitment, and can optionally bet money on the fact that they will keep the commitment. The brainchild of 3 Yale University economists, the site is designed to provide an incentive for helping people to keep commitments. There is an active user community, which the user can interact with in helping them to keep their commitment.

The site offers profiles, friends, messaging and communities (groups). There are communities built around Career, Diet and Healthy Eating, Education and Knowledge, Exercise and Fitness, Family and Relationships, Green Initiatives, Health and Lifestyle, Money and Finance, Quite Smoking, Sport, Hobby and Recreation and Weight Loss. The site also offers a service to corporations for helping employees achieve their corporate goals. Users create a commitment by stating a goal, setting a timeframe, determining the stakes, choosing a Referee, who will monitor their progress towards their goal, and choosing a support system (which can be either a community, other users on the site or any other individuals).

What is the history and popularity of the application?


New York, NY-based Stickk.com was founded in January 2007 by Ian Ayres and Dean Karlan. Jordan Goldberg is President and CEO of the site.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Stickk.com comes from sites such as Mindtools.com. Mindtools.com offers help primarily in achieving career goals, and does not offer the contract aspect of commitment offered by Stickk.com. Stickk.com appears to be unique in the contract approach to achieving commitments.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The Stickk.com site has a very clean and uncluttered look and feel. The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. The social networking features work well, and the site is easy to use. Navigation is intuitive, with a convenient top menu bar with dropdowns shown on all pages of the site. Tabs on the menu bar include My Profile, Messages, Communities, About Us, FAQ and Contact Us. There is no advertising displayed on the Stickk.com site.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to Stickk.com is free and is required to use the site. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address, phone (optional), screen name, password, country, zip code and date of birth. Confirmation of the email address is not required.

What does it cost to use the application?


Premium services are available to corporate users. The site accepts Mastercard, Visa and American Express as payment for bets made on contracts. In the event of a failed commitment, the amount bet goes to charity or to a person designated by the user.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Stickk.com site is recommended to anyone who needs accountability in trying to achieve a difficult goal in their life. The site offers a good support community, and the contract commitment is an added incentive to achieving the goal. The fact that bets can be made is a good incentive as well. Many people have used the site to successfully achieve a goal.

Go to Source

Browse pictures, videos and interactive maps of the top attractions around the world on Funtouristattractions.com, the most comprehensive visual travel guide on the web. Our interactive map shows a categorized “heat map” of the best attractions in a city.

http://www.funtouristattractions.com

Go to Source

The wallpaper of this week is an image from the young self taught freelance Illustrator and Art Director Saad Moosajee. We have already featured him in the past but he has some new works that are definitely worth checking them out.

Since Saadart.com was established in September 2008, Saad has had the privilege to work with a multitude of charities, brands, and agencies. Saad’s work has been exhibited in multiple galleries and published in a multitude of magazines and books. He has also served as the Creative Director of slashTHREE.com for over 2 years, and is also a member of The Keystone Design Union.

For more information visit http://saadart.com/

Desktop Version

iPhone Version

Resolutions:

• 1920x1200px
• 1680x1050px
• 1440x900px
• 1280x1024px
• 1280x800px
• 1024x768px
• iPhone

Go to Source

For this Sites of the Week we have selected some great sites such as the Frish and Sutton. Also we’re featuring a nice flash site called I Make My Case, and much, much more! As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending your suggestions to us and we will be more than happy to feature your site.

<!–break–>

You can send me your suggestions via Twitter twitter.com/FabianoMe or twitter.com/abduzeedo, and include #abdz_sites in the message.

DESIGN / CSS

Comfort Brothers – comfortbrothers.com

Jim Starnes and Bill Hamby met years ago at Daddy’s Day at a nursery school. While sitting Indian-style on the floor, in their business executive attire, they exchanged curious glances while the other Dads belted out “Twinkle Twinkle” with unusual enthusiasm.

Frish – frish.nl

Frish Design Studio is a one-man webdesign and web-development studio run by me, Rogier Strobbe.
I specialize in clean design, usability, accessibility, custom WordPress templates and semantic code, but sometimes I also create webapplications.

APP / WEB APP

Peashoot – peashootapp.com

Start Marketing on Twitter in Minutes. The quick & easy way to manage social media campaigns that sell.

Upload Pie – uploadpie.com

Upload Pie is a simple no fuss tool for temporarily sharing images and text files, allowing you to view the files within a browser window for a chosen amount of time.

COMMUNITY / PORTAL

Read This Link – readthislink.com

ReadThisLink is a source for what’s new and popular on the web (for “I should known” articles). This application is made with Symfony 1.4 (Doctrine ORM) and uses the Digg API.

Sutton West Coast – suttonwestcoast.com

At Sutton WestCoast Realty you’ll find agents with the experience you need to navigate today’s current real estate market. You’ll also find an organization behind them that is committed to innovation and service excellence.

FLASH SITE

I Make My Case – imakemycase.case-mate.com

Create your custom phone case with artwork from world-renowned artists and designers.

Wonderwall – wonder-wall.com

Official website of WonderWall/Masamichi Katayama.

BLOG / PORTFOLIO

Lairdesign – lairdesign.com

Not exactly the first line you expect to see on a design company’s website but never have truer words been spoken. The reality for today’s businesses is that design has to work, looking pretty and winning awards are secondary, the work has to pay.

Colagene – colagene.com

The idea behind this innovative agency was inspired by a desire to change the status quo in the media and image field — a well-worn cliché, but one that would quickly take off. Born of a common enthusiasm for painting, fashion, graphic design and advertising, Colagene was founded in Montreal in 2001.

TEMPLATES

Thick – woothemes.com

THiCK is a super-personal theme that focuses on you: the blog owner. With both clean & grunge, dark & light styles, as well as 5 colour schemes for each, you’re sure to find one you like. The theme also includes a bunch of custom widgets to make it a truly unique experience!

MXT – themeforest.net

MXT — Business Portfolio Template (PSD).

Go to Source

SellBizToday.com is a National Business for Sale Listing Website that was built by a team of Business Experts, Investors, Web Designers, and Sales experts, to create an environment that is beneficial for business buyers, sellers, brokers, and franchises. We are also an active member of the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA). Our goal is to be the leading web presence for all online communication in this expanding market. With the economy being at an all time low, we understand how important your business needs are and will go above and beyond to help you achieve your business buying and business selling goals. We are able to connect thousands of people each month that are searching for Businesses, Franchises, or a Commercial Property just like yours.

http://www.sellbiztoday.com/

Go to Source

Go to Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser and you’ll see a small new addition to the homepage: a tiny Near Me Now option below the search box. The new functionality turns your location into an automated search query and makes finding or learning about places in your immediate vicinity a no brainer.

The US-only functionality uses GPS on your device to pinpoint your whereabouts and sort nearby results — right on the Google.com mobile homepage — into the following functional categories: Explore right here, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and ATMs and banks.

In fact the “Explore right here option” serves up an instant drop down menu, providing you with results that are literally right in front of you. You’ll immediately get a quick glance at a venue’s Place Page rating and its distance from you. As a result, the simple and smart addition to the mobile Google experience is bound to be both a big time saver and a boon for Place Pages.

It’s no mystery that Google is trying to attack mobile location-based services and customer review sites like Foursquare and Yelp head on, and actively promote their Place Pages. This update is a natural progression to help them do just that. We do have to wonder, however, as to why the functionality isn’t a part of the Google Mobile app yet.

If you’re not clear about how Near Me Now works, you can watch this rather hokey video demonstration:

Near Me Now Screenshots

Tags: -local, Google, Google mobile, gps, lbs, Mobile 2.0

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Mailchimp.com is a complete, web-based email marketing list and campaign manager solution. It allows the user to manage lists, create sign-up forms, create custom emails for campaigns, send emails and manage campaigns. The site offers integration with a number of desktop and web-based services, including Google Calendar, Salesforce and Outlook. Users can add addresses to their list one at a time, via web signup, or by importing them from popular email and list management software. The user can also generate the HTML code for custom email list signup forms for their website using the list form tool. Users can create custom campaigns that include custom HTML and/or text only emails generated using the Campaign Builder. The emails can incorporate links, banners, custom templates and forms, and can be integrated with Google Analytics for monitoring campaign performance.

The Campaign Builder also allows the user to specify a list or a portion of a list to send the email to. The site includes over 50 pre-defined templates, and these can be customized as much as the user wants using the site’s browser-based WYSIWYG editor. Templates and text can also be edited in HTML and CSS if the user desires. Once the email is completed, Mailchimp takes care of all phases of campaign management including sending, monitoring clicks, sending emails when someone subscribes to a list, and integration with Google Analytics if chosen. The user can see at a glance the success and ROI of their campaign using the analytics tools provided by the site.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Atlanta, GA-based Mailchimp.com was founded in 2001. The site has undergone steady growth since launch and currently has over 190,000 registered users. The site is used by corporate heavyweights such as Mozilla, Intel, Fujitsu and Canon.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Mailchimp.com comes from sites such as ConstantContact.com and DadaMail. ConstantContact.com provides a very similar service to Mailchimp.com, does not provide a free account, but is priced lower than Mailchimp.com. DadaMail is a hosted solution which provides similar features to Mailchimp.com. Dadamail can be purchased installed for less than $100, and administration is entirely web-based as well.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The Mailchimp.com site has a very clean and uncluttered look and feel. The site is quite responsive, and the browser-based tools respond much like a dedicated desktop app. Page loads happen quickly, as do email or signup form editing. Navigation is intuitive, with a convenient top menu bar shown on all pages of the site. There is no advertising displayed on the Mailchimp.com site.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to Mailchimp.com is free and is required to use the site. The registration process simply asks for email address and password. Validation of the email address is required. A free account is limited to a list size of 500 addresses and 3,000 monthly emails. Registration for a paid account asks for email address, username, password and credit card information.

What does it cost to use the application?


Two types of paid pricing are available from Mailchimp.com – monthly and pay as you go. There are 5 monthly pricing plans available, all with unlimited monthly mailings and with list size limits ranging from 2,500 to 50,000. Pricing ranges from $30 to $240 per month. Contact Mailchimp.com for pay as you go pricing.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Mailchimp.com is recommended to any individual, small or large business or organization who needs a complete mailing list and mailing campaign management solution. The site provides a full-featured, turnkey service that is easy to use, yet flexible and powerful.

Go to Source

Some days ago I’ve posted about the 10 Tallest Skyscrapers in the World, and I couldn’t include this one because the building was not done at that time. Well, now this list has a new top 1… it was presented in Dubai the Burj Khalifa or Burj Dubai, the tallest building in world today with 828m. Wow!

<!–break–>

Officially opened yesterday, January 04 of 2010, the Burj Dubai is the tallest building made by the humans hand. When I looked at the first pictures in the beggining of the construction in 2005, I almost couldn’t believe in the enormous building they wanted to put in that place. The Burj is far taller than the previous record, the Taipei 101 Tower, in Taiwan with 509m. The building can be viewed from 95km away, is covered with 26,000 glass panels and the estimate cost for the Burj Khalifa was about US$1.5 bilion.

“The tower is a global icon. It represents the determination and optimism of Dubai as a truly world city. It is a powerful symbol for the entire Arab world.” Mohamed Alabbar

The numbers are somewhere around ‘awesomeness’ and that is exactly what they like. In another post we talked about the The Unusual Architecture of Dubai, where you can see that the buildings are created to make history, no matter how architects will be see them. We have to think if we really want this as a reference to new projects, what is the reason to build stuff even taller and more expensive? Maybe the investiment on the urbanism and the planning of Dubai would be more important than those sinlge projects.

The History

Some Videos

Take a look the latest news and the main sites about Burj Dubai:

• dailymail.co.uk
• dailyfinance.com
• archdaily.com
• news.bbc.co.uk
• guardian.co.uk
• burjdubai.com
• .burjdubaiskyscraper.com/
• wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai

Go to Source

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Encoding.com

Quick Pitch: Encoding.com is the leading SaaS provider of studio-class video encoding services. It scales instantly and supports all popular media formats.

Genius Idea: One of the most tedious aspects of online video creation is the encoding process. Sure, YouTube is great for some purposes, but it’s not really the ideal platform for getting high-quality video onto the web in a number of different formats.

You can encode video into multiple formats on your desktop computer, but the process just to go from MPEG-2 to .h264 can be extremely time-consuming, especially if you want to actually get any work done on your computer while the encoding process is taking place. Plus, the best encoding software (which can do multiple formats and batch processing) can cost a lot of money. Plus, once you do have the video encoded, you still have to upload it to a web server anyway.

That’s why Encoding.com is so brilliant. Encoding.com utilizes cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services and the Rackspace Cloud to make video encoding efficient and hassle-free for small businesses and larger production houses alike.

This Software as a Service lets you upload video using the program’s web-UI or Adobe Air desktop app and select what formats you want the video to be encoded to use. Then Encoding.com will process the video and upload it directly to either your web server or back down to your hard drive. It can also integrate with video services like Brightcove and even Hulu. You can even get plugins for Drupal and WordPress sites to directly link up with your Encoding.com account.

This video shows off Encoding.com’s Adobe Air desktop app.

Encoding.com has a number of different payment plans — monthly, prepaid or usage-based. Using parallels servers, the encoding process can take place much more quickly and efficiently. If you’ve been looking for a way to encode your video content into multiple formats in an efficient and inexpensive way, check out Encoding.com.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: encoding.com, video encoding, web video

Go to Source

Put on a few extra pounds this holiday season? Don’t expect a welcome mat from BeautifulPeople.com, a dating site who recently made like a high school bully: belittling and booting members for weight gain.

According to the Guardian, the site has just expelled 5,000 members for packing on the pounds. To add insult to injury, the site’s founder, Robert Hintze, stated, “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

Apparently decisions were made based on photos posted to the dating site. Those holding the reins blame members’ holiday overindulgences for their harsh actions and have been notifying former members via e-mail of their expulsion. Of course, all is not lost; should those same members get fit again, they can reapply for membership.

The report details:

“The site’s managing director, Greg Hodge, pointed out that the fate of the exiled ‘chubby members’ had been democratically decided. ‘Their re-applications were reviewed by existing members and only a few hundred were voted back in,’ he said. ‘Over 5,000 were rejected.’

According to the site, however, managers have been kind in breaking the news to former members. Each is said to have received an email encouraging them to re-apply when they are back to looking their best. They have also been sent details of recommended boot camps.”

If you’re keeping count, the United States was the most overindulgent group of the bunch, with 1,520 members getting the boot. The United Kingdom was a distant second with 832 members ousted, and Canada took home the bronze medal.

The disturbing news is no doubt a big publicity stunt, but one of the worst variety. I’d hate to be one of those members waking up to an e-mail informing me that I’m too fat for a social network. That’s rejection of the worst kind.

[img credit: Cimmerian, iStockphoto]

Tags: Food, social media, weight

Go to Source

Back in October, we wrote about a new policy approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that will allow non-Latin domain names to be registered in early to mid 2010. This is really exciting for Internet users in areas that use non-Latin alphabets (like Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Cyrillic), who have spent the last fifteen years without full domain opportunities.

However, as the Times Online pointed out this week, this international progress also has some potentially disastrous opportunities for scammers and phishing sites. This is because of the characters that render the same way (despite different meanings) in different scripts. For instance, Cyrillic scripts, which is the basis for the Russian language, shares some of the same letterforms as the Latin alphabet. What this means is that potential evil-doers could register a domain using non-Latin characters that appears to spell out a Latin word.

Example: Real PayPal.com Versus Fake PayPal.com

The Times Online article uses PayPal — already a frequent phishing target — as an example.

If the domain, created using Cyrillic scripts “raural.com” was registered, the way that Unicode-browsers will actually render that domain in latin is as “paypal.com.” In theory, phishers could pass around that link and set up a fake version of the PayPal site to harvest logins and credit card data.

I’ve made this graphic for even better illustration:

Pretty scary, no? As of right now, ICANN hasn’t instituted any policies of trying to protect these kinds of situations, meaning it might be that much more difficult for even normally cautious users to avoid being scammed. Of course, a certain amount of the success of these scams is determined by how well different mail and browsing programs handle Unicode. However, most modern browsers and operating systems have strong Unicode support, which makes deciphering the differences that much more difficult.

Not all Latin letters are represented in Cyrillic, for instance, but for companies that can have their brand compromised, we hope they look at locking those domains up quickly.

Tags: ICANN, IDN, international domain names, phishing scams, security

Go to Source

This year we’ve featured a lot of great sites, I mean, a bunch of sites every single week! And I know you love this serie of posts. Thinking on it, and to bring to the memory the best sites we shown you in 2009, I’ve selected 60 of them to remember. It’s time do inspire your eyes again, or if you had not seen some of them yet, now it’s your chance! Enjoy, and Happy New Year guys!

<!–break–>

Carsonispace – space.carsonified.com

Carsonified, a creative web company, is renting out five desks in our office in beautiful Bath, England.

Pallian Creative – pallian.com

Adarsh Pallian is the founder of Tweetizen and the creative force behind Pallian Creative. With over 10 years of experience, he has the passion, creative flair and technical expertise to deliver innovative websites and web applications with a unique user experience.

Is It Normal? – isitnormal.com

Are You Normal? Curious how others might perceive your situation? Submit your story today and find out what others think…

Ui Tuneup – uituneup.com

Smart, low-cost re-design in less than a week. We’ll simplify your most complex webpage, and make your site elegant and easier to use. Your users will thank you.

Ciriljazbec – ciriljazbec.com

CirilJazbec Photography.

Matthamm – matthamm.com

My name is Matt Hamm. I am co-founder and Creative Director of Supereight Studio. Pete Orme and I started the company in March 2009 after working together as web designers at Kyan.

Deluge Studios- delugestudios.com

In short, the web is opportunity. Opportunity to solve our client’s problems. Opportunity to reach people in unexpected ways. Opportunity to design, to create, to collaborate & engage. We love helping our clients succeed, and the web is our opportunity to do just that.

The 99% Conference – the99percent.com

Behance is partnering with Cool Hunting to host “99%.” A conference that focuses less on inspiration, and more on how idea generation and organization come together to make ideas happen.

KISSmetrics – kissmetrics.com

KISSmetrics not only measures results, it helps you improve them. The initial product, a metrics solution designed for developers, product managers and marketers is almost ready. Enter your email address below to get on the beta launch list.

LE CAID – lecaid.com

Le Caid was founded 2001 in hamburg. Specialized in corporate design & web. We are driven by the ambition to always learn new things and to gain experience.

IconDock – icondock.com

IconDock is brought to you by N.Design Studio. We know your time is valuable, that is why we offer stock icons in vector and pixel format that you can quickly snap in your projects to speed up the development.

Mailchimp – mailchimp.com

MailChimp manages over half a billion subscribers for over 60,000 users, and we deliver millions of emails a day. We strive to make MailChimp easy and affordable enough for a small business to get started, but powerful enough for a large company that’s looking for an enterprise level solution.

Kraft Foods – Food & Family – kraftfoods.com/foodandfamily

The new digital edition of you favorite food magazine is now online!

Creative State – creativestate.com

Creative State is built by people who know what it means to bring an idea to life. We live it and breathe it, and we have the experience to back it up. We know the web. We know brand. We know user experience and information architecture and user interface design and graphic design and database design and content management. And we use that knowledge in a collaborative environment to provide you with a nearly endless set of possibilities for your ideas.

Starbucks – starbucks.com

What we are all about Starbucks purchases and roasts high-quality whole bean coffees and sells them along with fresh, rich-brewed, Italian style espresso beverages, a variety of pastries and confections, and coffee-related accessories and equipment — primarily through its company-operated retail stores.

Tuts Plus – tutsplus.com

From graphics to web development, audio to video and more, get the skills you want from our family of tutorial and resource sites. Need more? We also offer a Plus program where you can access source files and bonus tutorials.

Tank – withtank.com

Tank is a clean, simple and fun way to build a website.

Postbox – postbox-inc.com

A new way to work with email messages and content. Postbox helps you make the most of your email, offering powerful new ways to find, use, and view email messages and content, organize your work life, and get stuff done.

Krop Creative Database – krop.com/creativedatabase

Quickly organize your work in our beautiful template. Designed for creatives with impossibly high standards, and built to the specification of creative recruiters at companies that already use Krop to find talent. (including Apple, Gucci, Nike, Mtv, etc.)

Sarah Longnecker – sarahlongnecker.com

I am a graduate of Pellissippi State Community College with an Associates Degree in Video Production and a Certificate in Video Editing. My love for video production came during my high school years with numerous projects in History, Spanish, and various other classes.

Clearleft – clearleft.com

We create sites that are elegant, engaging and easy to use. We have Big Agency skills but small agency flexibility and you’ll be able to remember all our names. We can work with you. We are Clearleft.

Basecamp – basecamphq.com

The Better Way To Get Projects Done. Trusted by millions, Basecamp is the leading web-based project collaboration tool.

Transparent House – transparenthouse.com

TRansparent House, we create the reality.

Carrot Creative – carrotcreative.com

Carrot Creative is a new media agency located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY. We specialize in social media, application development, and user experience, all in the name of brand development.

Invoice Machine – invoicemachine.com

The Invoice Machine is an online invoicing service which simplifies your invoicing and makes it beautiful.

45royale Inc. – 45royale.com

45royale is an enthusiastic web design studio located near the bustling metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. We promote web standards and bring energy and commitment to our work every single day.

The work of Nick Jones – narrowdesign.com

Freelance Flash designer / actionscript / animator.

Hellomonday – hellomonday.net

Hello Monday is a Flash-revolutionizing, identity-building, talent-cultivating, image-moving, illustration-loving, campaign-developing, fun-sharing, idea-growing boutique “designery”.

Twitshirt – twitshirt.com

Ever wish you could wear a Tweet? For $20, we can turn it into a comfy Twitshirt! And each time we sell one with your Tweet on it, we give you a cut.

rw/2 studios – rw2studios.com

rw/2, (formerly rushwade2) is a studio capable of taking on productions of any size. Located in the midwest, rw/2 is a collective of photographers, producers, retouchers and a talented team of professional support staff. Our photographers have produced work for hundreds of national ad campaigns for some of the top advertising agencies and their fortune 500 clients, along with numerous national magazine editorials.

StackOverflow – stackoverflow.carsonified.com

A full day of inspiration and learning for developers, brought to you by the team behind StackOverflow.com and FogBugz. Lunch is provided so you’ll have plently of time to hang out and meet other developers. Hope you can join us!

Ecoki – ecoki.com

Ecoki.com is a fresh, new eco-lifestyle community filled with enthusiasm for all things eco-related. At ecoki.com, we’re passionate about all things green – whether it’s the latest in scientific research, the newest eco-fashion fad, or an update on organic foods. Regardless of your interest(s), ecoki.com strives to provide you with up-to-date news, great green tips, or even a recipe for dinner.

Thumbslap – thumbslap.com

Arrange & find game nights to play in Thumbslap makes it easy to arrange game nights with your clan, friends or other players whether it’s for Xbox 360, PS3, PC or Wii.

Finch – getfinch.com

Finch is online presence of Francisco Inchauste. He is an “insert buzzword here” designer of finely crafted pixels for web and interaction. During the day he is a UX Specialist for the finest purveyor of RIAs around, Universal Mind. At night he is a design-addict scouring the world for beauty in type and color.

Good – good.is

GOOD is the integrated media platform for people who want to live well and do good. We are a company and community for the people, businesses, and NGOs moving the world forward. GOOD’s mission is to provide content, experiences, and utilities to serve this community.

Krop – krop.com

Krop is a Job Board and career resource website for creative professionals. Whether you’re looking for job, or hunting top-notch talent, Krop’s simple and powerful tools are geared towards connecting the worlds brightest minds with the best companies.

Odopod – odopod.com

Walk into our studio. You’ll meet experts of all sorts – designers, developers and strategists. We’re refugees from the worlds of advertising, product design, branding, gaming and beyond. We’re happy collaborators, bringing our diverse, original perspectives to bear on every problem. What do we share in common? Endless curiosity and a deep love for all-things-digital.

Inkd – inkd.com

We are an experienced team, working hard to create the world’s first online marketplace for cutting edge print designs. This marketplace is targeted at the business sector. We know we can’t do this without great designers, and this platform is designed to help the best designers find new outlets of revenue and commissioned work.

37signals – 37signals.com

A Better Way To Work. Over 3 million people use our web-based apps to get things done the simple way. Web-based means it works right in your web browser. You don’t have to download, install, or update anything. No “IT guy” required.

EveryBlock – everyblock.com

EveryBlock filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city.

We Choose The Moon – wechoosethemoon.com

Wechoosethemoon.org is an interactive experience recreating the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in real time. Once where only three men made the trip, now millions can. Live event begins 9:32 AM EDT July 16, 2009. Exactly 40 years after Apollo 11 lifted off.

Spoon Graphics – spoongraphics.co.uk

By now I’m sure you’ve gathered that I’m a creative designer, an avid blogger and that I’m generally crazy about pretty colours and shapes. If you want to know more, grab a warm drink, light the fire and cuddle under a soft blanket while I condense my life story into a few paragraphs.

Carsonified – carsonified.com

At Carsonified we believe in treating other people like we want to be treated: with friendliness, patience and respect. We believe that the web industry is one of the most exciting places in the world, and that it’s an honor for us to connect, encourage and train that community through our events. We believe in being more creative than we need to be and having fun while we’re at it.

Nike + Dashboard – nikerunning.nike.com

Nike Running

Tapbots – tapbots.com

Tapbots are utility robots designed and engineered for your iPhone and iPod Touch. Our applications are easy to use, focused, and lots of fun. These amazing little robots are dreamed up and brought to life by Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad. We slave the night away creating—not to make a quick buck, but because we love software (particularly Mac and iPhone/touch software). We hope our robots will create the same love for software that we have.

Josh Puckett | 55Eleven – 55eleven.com

Welcome to 55Eleven.com, the portfolio of Josh Puckett. I’m a visual designer, and I create beautiful and functional websites, logos, printed media, and more. I’d also love to work with you.

wellknown.as – wellknown.as

Business opportunities through social engagement. We are a bunch of folks working hard on a new idea: a new concept of social engagement for the mobile professional.

Fever – feedafever.com

Your current feed reader is full of unread items. You’re hesitant to subscribe to any more feeds because you can’t keep up with your existing subs. Maybe you’ve even abandoned feeds altogether. Fever takes the temperature of your slice of the web and shows you what’s hot.

Huxley Prairie Fest – huxleyprairiefest.com

Prairie Fest is back and is bigger than ever. Get the latest info on all of the returning events as well as the new ones you and the entire family will enjoy.

Area 17 – area17.com

AREA?17 is located in New York City and Paris, France. We take an interdisciplinary approach — blending the practices of design, technology and branding — to create modern interactive systems.

Analog – analog.coop

Analog is a company of friends who make web sites. It’s a co-operative where imagination, design, and engineering thrive; good people doing good work.

Nocturn – nocturn.ro

We are a small group (population: 2) of design enthusiast offering mainly design & creative solutions to our clients, partners and friends. We are currently covering a large area of interest such as: identity (starting with naming and logo design, reaching out to implementation campaigns, developing detailed visual identity manuals etc.), print (from small flyers to large outdoor banners, both design and dtp) and web services (from layout and implementation until seo and online marketing campaigns).

Less – lesscss.org

LESS was inspired by its predecessors—especially Sass, a ruby project which provides an ingenious solution to a lot of the common problems CSS designers and web developers face when developping large websites.

Adhemas Batista – adhemas.com/

Adhemas Batista – I’m Selling Colors

Zee – zee.com.br

We work with the internet, develop web projects emphasizing design and technology exploring creativity, user satisfaction and an honest and open relationship with our customers.

Electrolux Infinity – electrolux.com.br/infinity/

Electrolux Infinity

Project 365 – project365.co.uk

We are a cutting edge design and marketing company who specialise in maximising your ROI. We create stunningly designed landing pages and deliver traffic on a CPM, CPC or CPA basis. Whichever way, the results are the same, with us its all about sending the right people at the time to the right section of your site…oh and did we mention we make it look good too?

Fontanel – fontanel.nl

Fontanelle is an online magazine that focuses on the latest developments in the design world with a focus on the young, talented and upcoming generation. (via Google Translate)

Authentic Jobs – authenticjobs.com

Authentic Jobs is a targeted destination for web & creative professionals, and the companies seeking to hire them.

Haystack – haystack.com

Haystack helps you find the best Web Designer for your project. If you’re like most web designers, you have a great site but you’re having a hard time getting qualified leads to visit your site. Haystack is here to help drive potential clients to your site. We promote Haystack to thousands of businesses, they find your work on Haystack, and then we direct them to your site so you can finish wowing them. Haystack helps them find you so you can do your magic.

About the author

I’m from Brazil, co-founder of Zee with Fabio. Nowadays I like to play with Fireworks, Photoshop and improve my skills in CSS. If you wanna request some posts, please feel free to contact me or follow on Twitter.

Sponsored Links:

Go to Source

What can you use the application for?


Blogged.com is an online social network and blogging directory. The site contains a database of over 200,000 blogs, and allows users to easily share stories they find with their network of friends. Users can use the site to follow the blogs they like to read and discover new ones. Bloggers can also use the site to see who is reading their blogs and interact with them. Users have a Home page, from which they can access the current Top Stories, Hot Topics, Blogs they are following and My Blogs, which gives a summary of activity from any blogs the user owns.
Other sections of the site include Chatter, where users can see what their Friends are discussing or a stream of the entire site’s discussions, Profile, where the user can change their profile settings, and Follow Blogs, where users can see a summary of the blogs they are following or a summary of the blogs their friends are following. There is also a Find People section, where users can find friends and people to follow, an Inbox, which gives the user access to the site’s messaging features and Settings, where the user can control their settings for the site. Users can also see which other users are following them and view the profiles of those users.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Southern California-based Blogged.com was launched in 2008.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Blogged.com comes from sites such as BlogCatalog and Blogging Fusion. Both of these sites offer blog directories similar to Blogged.com, but neither has the heavy emphasis on social networking and blogging. BlogCatalog is more of a traditional directory, while Blogging Fusion offers some social networking features such as easy sharing of blog posts found by users.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Some features take several seconds to load, such as looking at Blogs Followed, Followed and Followers. Navigation is intuitive, with a convenient top menu bar shown on all pages of the site. Clicking on a section in the menu bar brings up another top menu bar with additional choices for that section. Features such as commenting and messaging work quite well. The site makes it easy to comment on or share any post on the site. There is no advertising displayed on the Blogged.com site.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to Blogged.com is free and is required to use the social networking features of the site. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address and password. Validation of the email address is required.

What does it cost to use the application?


There is no premium membership offered to the site, and registered users have access to all features of the site.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Blogged.com is recommended to anyone who follows more than a few blogs. It provides a convenient tool for following all the user’s blogs in one place. In addition, the site makes sharing blogs and blog posts with the user’s friends and colleagues an easy task. The site also makes it easy to see what is currently hot news in the world of blogging and to interact with bloggers. Unfortunately the Blogged.com community is not very active and the website is very slow.

Go to Source