The Facebook group I’m With COCO (the same one that we wrote about last week) organized rallies to support The Tonight Show’s Conan O’Brien in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Seattle today.

Artist Mike Mitchell, who designed the now almost iconic group image, is tweeting the I’m With COCO rally right now, TwitPics and all.

The L.A. crowd is assembled right outside the studio where Conan and crew tape The Tonight Show, and they’re accompanied by stuntman Steven Ho, who was one of Conan’s first guests on the show. He made a YouTube video to promote the movement. The group has more than 300,000 fans.

The protesters are using signs courtesy of Signazon featuring the I’m With COCO image. The Facebook event page for the L.A. event has 1,600 confirmed guests and just over 1,000 maybes. Chicago’s event: 549 confirmed, 481 maybes. That’s a mighty impressive turnout for a show host who’s already definitely out of a job for now. Here’s the first TwitPic of the event.

Tags: conan o’brien, facebook, i’m with coco, tv, twitpic, twitter

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Sharon Gaudin spoke to Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group, Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research, and Dan Olds of the Gabriel Consulting Group.  All three individuals saw potential upsides to Google branching out.  It might do extremely well in the new markets, or at least, manage to sell a few more ads.

Enderle even argued that moving on might be necessary for Google, stating, "Ultimately search isn’t sustainable.  Google search could become irrelevant.  You eventually could have specialized search providers or Google search could become part of something else and just fade into the background."

Anyway, the risk that Google will perform poorly in its new endeavors was viewed as tolerable by the group.  A corporate giant with a market share of around 65 percent and a market cap of about $190 billion can afford a misstep or two, after all.

On the subject of financial performance, here’s one other thing worth noting: Google’s stock is up 0.99 percent at the moment, so its recent mobile- and energy-related announcements haven’t exactly caused investors to run away.

Related Articles:

> Google Could Sell Energy

> Nexus One Sales Of 5-6 Million Units Forecast

> Google Unveils Nexus One "Super Phone"

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We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next generation Web platform. As evidenced by our ongoing involvement in W3C working groups, we are committed to participating in the standards process to help ensure a healthy future for the Web. Our involvement with the SVG working group builds on that commitment.

To date, I have had several interactions with the SVG working group, and their clear dedication to creating a great technology for end users and developers alike stands out.  I personally look forward to future and more direct involvement with this great set of folks.

The SVG Working Group says its mission is to continue the evolution of Scalable Vector Graphics as a format and a platform, and enhance the adoption and usability of SVG in combination with other technologies.

For more on SVG, read here about its applications to the mobile, print, web apps, design and interchange, GIS and Mapping, and embedded systems industries.

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However, when someone as big as Microsoft blogs about joining the W3C SVG Working Group they are trying to send a signal. Hopefully they will help the process and SVG will proceed nicely and we will see it on more user agents.

But, as a friend just said, I will hold my breath to celebrate until I see it and Canvas in a browser

In fact, the lack of talk about Canvas from Microsoft has me worried.

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TrendsSpotting Market Research is kicking off its predictions for 2010 with its report on social media — comprised of forecasts from everyone from Mashable founder Pete Cashmore to Craig Newmark, of Craigslist fame.

The report, which offers a tip of the hat to Twitter with its 140-character-per-prediction slideshow format, offers a smattering of prognostications, but we were most intrigued by two that came up again and again throughout the slideshow: Businesses finally integrating social media and seeing an actual ROI, and a shrinking/customization of the online world.

Business and Social Media

Some businesses already have a social media policy (as Brandon Jennings now knows all too well), but according to the Internet luminaries consulted for the report, we can expect a lot more engagement with online communities in the coming year. We already know that it’s feasible to make money off of services like Twitter — Dell did it — it remains to be seen how far companies will go when it comes to embracing the web to turn a profit. Some of the choicest quotes are below:

“Business will finally admit that social media ain’t some fad for kids and B-list movie stars.”
- Marta Kagan, managing director, U.S. Espresso-Brand Infiltration

“Social media in 2010 will cease being the shiny new object and instead become part of the everyday lexicon of business.”
- Charlene Li, Founder, Altimeter Group

“Look for social to become less about the ‘what is it’ and even more about the ROI.”
- Marc Meyer, principal, Digital Marketing Response Group

Shrinking the World Wide Web Into Communities

As the web becomes more expansive and all-encompassing, it’s only natural that we seek to contain it in some way, especially as mobile technology takes our real world interactions into the online world with such tools as Foursquare and other location-sharing devices (which Cashmore predicts will be spreading like proverbial wildfire this year).

The experts consulted on the report had some fascinating ideas regarding exclusivity that don’t seem all that far-fetched considering recent debates about privacy and the like. Check out some of the most intriguing conjectures below:

“I see velvet rope social networks, where some kind of gating to keep out the commons will occur.”
- Chris Brogan, president, New Marketing Labs

“Twitter will offer a premium level option that’ll allow the creation of hosted invite only discussions.”
- Marc Meyer, principal, Digital Marketing Response Group

“The technology will begin to fade into the background so that people can focus on the relationships that are created because of the technologies, not the technologies themselves.”
- Charlene Li, founder, Altimeter Group

What Do You Think?

Check out the slideshow below for more predictions and share your own in the comments.

Tags: social media

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What You Need

Please refer to the “What You Need” section in the first article here: SQL For Beginners (part 1).

If you would like to follow the examples in this article on your own development server, do the following:

1. Open MySQL Console and login.
2. If you haven’t already, create a database named “my_first_db” with a CREATE query.
3. Switch to the database with the USE statement.

Database Indexes

Indexes (or keys) are mainly used for improving the speed of data retrieval operations (eg. SELECT) on tables.

They are such an important part of a good database design, it’s hard to classify them as “optimization”. In most cases they are included in the initial design, but they can also be added later on with an ALTER TABLE query.

Most common reasons for indexing database columns are:

• Almost every table should have a PRIMARY KEY index, usually as an “id” column.
• If a column is expected to contain unique values, it should have a UNIQUE index.
• If you are going to perform searches on a column often (in the WHERE clause), it should have a regular INDEX.
• If a column is used for a relationship with another table, it should be a FOREIGN KEY if possible, or have just a regular index otherwise.

PRIMARY KEY

Almost every table should have a PRIMARY KEY, in most cases as an INT with the AUTO_INCREMET option.

If you recall from the first article, we created a ‘user_id’ field in the users table and it was a PRIMARY KEY. This way, in a web application we can refer to all users by their id numbers.

The values stored in a PRIMARY KEY column must be unique. Also, there can not be more than one PRIMARY KEY on each table.

Let’s see a sample query, creating a table for USA states list:

CREATE TABLE states (
	id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
	name VARCHAR(20)
);

It can also be written like this:

CREATE TABLE states (
	id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
	name VARCHAR(20),
	PRIMARY KEY (id)
);

UNIQUE

Since we are expecting the state name to be a unique value, we should change the previous query example a bit:

CREATE TABLE states (
	id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
	name VARCHAR(20),
	PRIMARY KEY (id),
	UNIQUE (name)
);

By default, the index will be named after the column name. If you want to, you can assign a different name to it:

CREATE TABLE states (
	id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
	name VARCHAR(20),
	PRIMARY KEY (id),
	UNIQUE state_name (name)
);

Now the index is named ’state_name’ instead of ‘name’.

INDEX

Let’s say we want to add a column to represent the year that each state joined.

CREATE TABLE states (
	id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
	name VARCHAR(20),
	join_year INT,
	PRIMARY KEY (id),
	UNIQUE (name),
	INDEX (join_year)
);

I just added the join_year column and indexed it. This type of index does not have the uniqueness restriction.

You can also name it KEY instead of INDEX.

CREATE TABLE states (
	id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
	name VARCHAR(20),
	join_year INT,
	PRIMARY KEY (id),
	UNIQUE (name),
	KEY (join_year)
);

More About Performance

Adding an index reduces the performance of INSERT and UPDATE queries. Because every time new data is added to the table, the index data is also updated automatically, which requires additional work. The performance gains on the SELECT queries usually outweigh this by far. But still, do not just add indexes on every single table column without thinking about the queries you will be running.

Sample Table

Before we go further with more queries, I would like to create a sample table with some data.

This will be a list of US states, with their join dates (the date the state ratified the United States Constitution or was admitted to the Union) and their current populations. You can copy paste the following to your MySQL console:

CREATE TABLE states (
  id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
  name VARCHAR(20),
  join_year INT,
  population INT,
  PRIMARY KEY (id),
  UNIQUE (name),
  KEY (join_year)
);

INSERT INTO states VALUES
(1, 'Alabama', 1819, 4661900),
(2, 'Alaska', 1959, 686293),
(3, 'Arizona', 1912, 6500180),
(4, 'Arkansas', 1836, 2855390),
(5, 'California', 1850, 36756666),
(6, 'Colorado', 1876, 4939456),
(7, 'Connecticut', 1788, 3501252),
(8, 'Delaware', 1787, 873092),
(9, 'Florida', 1845, 18328340),
(10, 'Georgia', 1788, 9685744),
(11, 'Hawaii', 1959, 1288198),
(12, 'Idaho', 1890, 1523816),
(13, 'Illinois', 1818, 12901563),
(14, 'Indiana', 1816, 6376792),
(15, 'Iowa', 1846, 3002555),
(16, 'Kansas', 1861, 2802134),
(17, 'Kentucky', 1792, 4269245),
(18, 'Louisiana', 1812, 4410796),
(19, 'Maine', 1820, 1316456),
(20, 'Maryland', 1788, 5633597),
(21, 'Massachusetts', 1788, 6497967),
(22, 'Michigan', 1837, 10003422),
(23, 'Minnesota', 1858, 5220393),
(24, 'Mississippi', 1817, 2938618),
(25, 'Missouri', 1821, 5911605),
(26, 'Montana', 1889, 967440),
(27, 'Nebraska', 1867, 1783432),
(28, 'Nevada', 1864, 2600167),
(29, 'New Hampshire', 1788, 1315809),
(30, 'New Jersey', 1787, 8682661),
(31, 'New Mexico', 1912, 1984356),
(32, 'New York', 1788, 19490297),
(33, 'North Carolina', 1789, 9222414),
(34, 'North Dakota', 1889, 641481),
(35, 'Ohio', 1803, 11485910),
(36, 'Oklahoma', 1907, 3642361),
(37, 'Oregon', 1859, 3790060),
(38, 'Pennsylvania', 1787, 12448279),
(39, 'Rhode Island', 1790, 1050788),
(40, 'South Carolina', 1788, 4479800),
(41, 'South Dakota', 1889, 804194),
(42, 'Tennessee', 1796, 6214888),
(43, 'Texas', 1845, 24326974),
(44, 'Utah', 1896, 2736424),
(45, 'Vermont', 1791, 621270),
(46, 'Virginia', 1788, 7769089),
(47, 'Washington', 1889, 6549224),
(48, 'West Virginia', 1863, 1814468),
(49, 'Wisconsin', 1848, 5627967),
(50, 'Wyoming', 1890, 532668);

GROUP BY: Grouping Data

The GROUP BY clause groups the resulting data rows into groups. Here is an example:

So what just happened? We have 50 rows in the table, but 34 results were returned by this query. This is because the results were grouped by the ‘join_year’ column. In other words, we only see one row for each distinct value of join_year. Since some states have the same join_year, we got less than 50 results.

For example, there was only one row for the year 1787, but there are 3 states in that group:

So there are three states here, but only Delaware’s name showed up after the GROUP BY query earlier. Actually, it could have been any of the three states and we can not rely on this piece of data. Then what is the point of using the GROUP BY clause?

It would be mostly useless without using an aggregate function such as COUNT(). Let’s see what some of these functions do and how they can get us some useful data.

COUNT(*): Counting rows

This is perhaps the most commonly used function along with GROUP BY queries. It returns the number of rows in each group.

For example we can use it to see the number of states for each join_year:

Grouping Everything

If you use a GROUP BY aggregate function, and do not specify a GROUP BY clause, the entire results will be put in a single group.

Number of all rows in the table:

Number of rows satisfying a WHERE clause:

MIN(), MAX() and AVG()

These functions return the minimum, maximum and average values:

GROUP_CONCAT()

This function concatenates all values inside the group into a single string, with a given separator.

In the first GROUP BY query example, we could only see one state name per year. You can use this function to see all names in each group:

If the resized image is hard to read, this is the query:

SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(name SEPARATOR ', '), join_year
FROM states GROUP BY join_year;

SUM()

You can use this to add up the numerical values.

IF() & CASE: Control Flow

Similar to other programming languages, SQL has some support for control flow.

IF()

This is a function that takes three arguments. First argument is the condition, second argument is used if the condition is true and the third argument is used if the condition is false.

Here is a more practical example where we use it with the SUM() function:

SELECT

	SUM(
		IF(population > 5000000, 1, 0)
	) AS big_states,

	SUM(
		IF(population <= 5000000, 1, 0)
	) AS small_states

FROM states;

The first SUM() call counts the number of big states (population over 5 million) and the second one counts the number of small states. The IF() call inside these SUM() calls return either 1 or 0 based on the condition.

Here is the result:

CASE

This works similar to the switch-case statements you might be familiar with from programming.

Let’s say we want to categorize each state into one of three possible categories.

SELECT
COUNT(*),
CASE
	WHEN population > 5000000 THEN 'big'
	WHEN population > 1000000 THEN 'medium'
	ELSE 'small' END
	AS state_size
FROM states GROUP BY state_size;

As you can see, we can actually GROUP BY the value returned from the CASE statement. Here is what happens:

HAVING: Conditions on Hidden Fields

HAVING clause allows us to apply conditions to ‘hidden’ fields, such as the returned results of aggregate functions. So it is usually used along with GROUP BY.

For example, let’s look at the query we used for counting number of states by join year:

SELECT COUNT(*), join_year FROM states GROUP BY join_year;

The result was 34 rows.

However, let’s say we are only interested in rows that have a count higher than 1. We can not use the WHERE clause for this:

This is where HAVING becomes useful:

Keep in mind that this feature may not be available in all database systems.

Subqueries

It is possible get the results of one query and use it for another query.

In this example, we will get the state with the highest population:

SELECT * FROM states WHERE population = (
	SELECT MAX(population) FROM states
);

The inner query will return the highest population of all states. And the outer query will search the table again using that value.

You might be thinking this was a bad example, and I somewhat agree. The same query could be more efficiently written as this:

SELECT * FROM states ORDER BY population DESC LIMIT 1;

The results in this case are the same, however there is an important difference between these two kinds of queries. Maybe another example will demonstrate that better.

In this example, we will get the last states that joined the Union:

SELECT * FROM states WHERE join_year = (
	SELECT MAX(join_year) FROM states
);

There are two rows in the results this time. If we had used the ORDER BY … LIMIT 1 type of query here, we would not have received the same result.

IN()

Sometimes you may want to use multiple results returned by the inner query.

Following query finds the years, when multiple states joined the Union, and returns the list of those states:

SELECT * FROM states WHERE join_year IN (
	SELECT join_year FROM states
	GROUP BY join_year
	HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
) ORDER BY join_year;

More on Subqueries

Subqueries can become quite complex, therefore I will not get much further into them in this article. If you would like to read more about them, check out the MySQL manual.

Also it is worth noting that subqueries can sometimes have bad performance, so they should be used with caution.

UNION: Combining Data

With a UNION query, we can combine the results of multiple SELECT queries.

This example combines states that start with the letter ‘N’ and states with large populations:

(SELECT * FROM states WHERE name LIKE 'n%')
UNION
(SELECT * FROM states WHERE population > 10000000);

Note that New York is both large and its name starts with the letter ‘N’. But it shows up only once because duplicate rows are removed from the results automatically.

Another nice thing about UNION is that you can combine queries on different tables.

Let’s assume we have tables for employees, managers and customers. And each table has an e-mail field. If we want to fetch all e-mails with a single query, we can run this:

(SELECT email FROM employees)
UNION
(SELECT email FROM managers)
UNION
(SELECT email FROM customers WHERE subscribed = 1);

It would fetch all emails of all employees and managers, but only the emails of customers that have subscribed to receive emails.

INSERT Continued

We have already talked about the INSERT query in the last article. Now that we explored database indexes today, we can talk about more advanced features of the INSERT query.

INSERT … ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE

This is almost like a conditional statement. The query first tries to perform a given INSERT, and if it fails due to a duplicate value for a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE KEY, it performs an UPDATE instead.

Let’s create a test table first.

It’s a table to hold products. The ‘stock’ column is the number of products we have in stock.

Now attempt to insert a duplicate value and see what happens.

We got an error as expected.

Let’s say we received a new breadmaker and want to update the database, and we do not know if there is already a record for it. We could check for existing records and then do another query based on that. Or we could just do it all in one simple query:

REPLACE INTO

This works exactly like INSERT with one important exception. If a duplicate row is found, it deletes it first and then performs the INSERT, so we get no error messages.

Note that since this is actually an entirely new row, the id was incremented.

INSERT IGNORE

This is a way to suppress the duplicate errors, usually to prevent the application from breaking. Sometimes you may want to attempt to insert a new row and just let it fail without any complaints in case there is a duplicate found.

No errors returned and no rows were updated.

Data Types

Each table column needs to have a data type. So far we have used INT, VARCHAR and DATE types but we did not talk about them in detail. Also there are several other data types that we should explore.

First, let’s start with the numeric data types. I like to put them into two separate groups: Integers vs. Non-Integers.

Integer Data Types

An integer column can hold only natural numbers (no decimals). By default they can be negative or positive numbers. But if the UNSIGNED option is set, it can only hold positive numbers.

MySQL supports 5 types of integers, with various sizes and ranges:

Non-Integer Numeric Data Types

These data types can hold decimal numbers: FLOAT, DOUBLE and DECIMAL.

FLOAT is 4 bytes, DOUBLE is 8 bytes and they work similarly. However DOUBLE has better precision.

DECIMAL(M,N) has a varying size based on the precision level, which can be customized. M is the maximum number of digits, and N is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point.

For example, DECIMAL(13,4) has a maximum of 9 integer digits and 4 fractional digits.

String Data Types

As the name suggests, we can store strings in these data type columns.

CHAR(N) can hold up to N characters, and has a fixed size. For example CHAR(50) will always take 50 characters of space, per row, regardless of the size of the string in it. The absolute maximum is 255 characters

VARCHAR(N) works the same, but the storage size is not fixed. N is only used for the maximum size. If a string shorter than N characters is stored, it will take that much less space on the hard drive. The absolute maximum size is 65535 characters.

Variations of the TEXT data type is more suitable for long strings. TEXT has a limit of 65535 characters, MEDIUMTEXT 16.7 million characters and LONGTEXT 4.3 billion characters. MySQL usually stores them on separate locations on the server so that the main storage for the table remains relatively small and quick.

Date Types

DATE stores dates and displays them in this format ‘YYYY-MM-DD’ but does not contain the time info. It has a range of 1001-01-01 to 9999-12-31.

DATETIME contains both the date and the time, and is displayed in this format ‘YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS’. It has a range of ’1000-01-01 00:00:00′ to ’9999-12-31 23:59:59′. It takes 8 bytes of space.

TIMESTAMP works like DATETIME with a few exceptions. It takes only 4 bytes of space and the range is ’1970-01-01 00:00:01′ UTC to ’2038-01-19 03:14:07′ UTC. So, for example it may not be good for storing birth dates.

TIME only stores the time, and YEAR only stores the year.

Other

There are some other data types supported by MySQL. You can see a list of them here. You should also check out the storage sizes of each data type here.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the article. SQL is an important language and a tool in the web developers arsenal.

Please leave your comments and questions, and have a great day!

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When a group is set up, employees/students can share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, shared folders, sites, calendars, and videos with the group, rather than having to include individual email addresses or try to remember who joined or left a certain group.

Google cites the following Google Groups features that are now included:

- Fast set-up
- Searchable archives
- Sharing with a group
- Reply on behalf of a group
- IT capabilities

"After enabling the new service from the administrative control panel (add ‘user-managed groups’), users can start managing their own groups without burdening administrators for support," says Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps. "Administrators can still set group policies and manage other group settings."

Google says Google Groups will be rolling out to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition domains today, so there is a chance you won’t see it right away, but you should very soon.

Related Articles:

> Google Adds Relevance Option to Docs Search

> Gmail Lets You Send Attachments While Offline

> Google May Take Over More Design Jobs

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In this web design and development tutorial, you’ll get a walkthrough for creating a "Call to Action" button sprite in Photoshop as well as how to use jQuery to animate it. This tutorial is broken up into three sections: Photoshop, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript.

Introduction

This tutorial is divided into three sections:

• Section 1: Photoshop
• Section 2: HTML/CSS
• Section 3: JavaScript (jQuery)

If you enjoyed the tutorial, please express your appreciation by including images/screen shots of your work in the Six Revisions Flickr group – we’re trying to build up the collection there so that we can all have a nice community showcase.

Final Result

Click to see live demo.

Demos

• Demo 1: Fancy
• Demo 2: Simple, HTML/CSS (non-animated)
• Demo 3: Simple, jQuery (animated)

Section 1: Photoshop

The first section will deal with the graphic creation of the Call to Action button.

Set up the Photoshop document

1 Our button’s dimensions will be 200px x 50px, but since we’ll be creating a CSS background sprite for the two different states, we’ll make the height of the canvas 100px. To begin, create a new Photoshop document (Ctrl + N) that has a canvas width of 200px and a canvas height of 100px.

2 To make drawing the button easier, we’ll set up some guides. If it isn’t turned on yet, turn on your rulers first (Ctrl + R to toggle it on and off) by going to View > Rulers and making sure that it’s checked. To create a guide, simply click on a ruler on the edge of the Photoshop workspace and drag towards your canvas. We’ll make 5 guides: 4 at the edges of the canvas, and 1 horizontal guide at the 50px mark (which effectively divides our canvas into two equal parts).

Creating the button shape

3 Now we’ll create a rounded rectangle shape. Get the Rounded Rectangle Tool from the Tools Panel. Adjust the Radius option in the Options bar to 8px. The foreground color doesn’t matter because it will be overridden by the layer styles that we’ll soon apply.

4 With the Rounded Rectangle Tool ready to go, created the rounded rectangle shape at the top half of the canvas by dragging from the top left corner to the bottom right corner of the 50px mark.

Adding layer styles to the button

5 We’ll now add a series of layer styles to the rounded rectangle shape that we just created. To start, double-click on the shape layer in the Layers Panel to open the Layer Styles dialog box.

6 First we’ll add a gradient overlay. Click on the Gradient Overlay to apply the layer style. Then click on the Gradient option to open the Gradient Editor dialog box to choose the colors we want.

7 In the Gradient Editor, change the left color stop’s color by clicking on it (this will be the color at the bottom of the button). I’ve decided to use a dark olive green color for the left color stop (#85928a). Change the right color stop to a lighter green color (#d3e1d8) – this will be the color of the button at the top. Then slide the Color Midpoint to 40% so that the light green is slightly more dominant.

8 Add an Inner Glow layer style next, this will give the button a subtle white border. Set the Opacity option to 100% and change the color of the glow to white (#ffffff) by clicking on the small box to open the color picker and then changing it there. Then under the Elements option set, change the Size option to 3px.

9 The final layer style we’ll add to the normal state button is a 1px dark green (#74857a) stroke to add a narrow border around the shape. Set the Size option to 1px. Set the Position option to Inner so that it draws the border inside the button shape. Finally, change the color of the stroke by clicking on the Color option to open the Color Picker dialog box and entering a dark green color (#74857a).

Typing in the text

10 For the text of our button, we’ll use a simple and familiar font family: Arial. You can use any font that you wish, but typically, the text effect we’ll be applying is best suited for bold and sans serif fonts – keep that in mind when selecting the font family. Grab the Horizontal Type Tool (T) from the Tools Panel. In the Options bar, set the font family to Arial, the font style to Bold, font size to 24px, and anti-aliasing method to Sharp. Don’t worry about the font color since it will be overridden by the layer styles we’ll be applying later.

11 Click anywhere in the canvas to start typing, and type your call to action; the call to action used here is "Sign Up" but yours might be "Buy Now" or "See Demo", it’s up to you.

Centering the text

12 Depending on where you started typing, your text may not be centered in the button, so we need to center it precisely. First, create a marquee selection around the button by Ctrl + clicking on the button shape layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel; this will automatically create a marquee selection around the edge of the button.

13 Now click on the text layer in the Layers Panel to make it the active layer (don’t deselect the selection yet). Then go to Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Vertically Center to position the text layer vertically centered on our button.

14 With the marquee selection still around the button and the text layer still the active layer in the Layers Panel, go to Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Horizontally Center to locate the text in the middle of the button.

Applying Layer Styles to the text

15 Double-click on the text layer to open up the Layer Styles dialog box. We’re going to create an inset text effect similar to the How to Create Inset Typography in Photoshop tutorial I wrote a while back.

16 Apply a gradient overlay by checking the checkbox beside it. click on the Gradient option to open the Gradient Editor. For the left color stop, choose a dark olive green color (#425047). For the right color stop, choose a slightly lighter green color (#94ad9d).

17 Next, apply an inner shadow layer style. Set the Angle option to 90 degrees, Distance to 1px, and Size to 2px. Keep the inner shadow color to black (#000000) and the Opacity option to 75%. This will create a subtle inset/stamped-in effect.

18 To finish off the text layer styles for the normal state, we’ll add a subtle drop shadow at the bottom of the text. Change the Blend Mode option to Normal and the color of the shadow to a light green color (#d1dfd7). Set the Opacity to 100%. Make sure that the Angle option is also at 90 degrees to keep it the same as the inner shadow’s light source. Finally, set the Distance option to 1px and the Size option to 2px (equal to the inner shadow’s settings).

Creating the hover state button group

19 The hover state will fill up the bottom of our canvas. We’ll just duplicate the normal state button, move it down the lower part of the canvas, and tweak the layer styles to make a slightly different look. To keep things organized, we’ll group together the normal state button layers. To create a group, click on the Create a new group icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel (it looks like a folder).

20 Change the group’s name to something more intuitive than the default Group 1, such as Normal. Then drag the two normal state layers in the newly created group.

21 If you’ve turned off the guides that we created earlier, turn it back on to help us position the hover state button accurately; the shortcut is holding down Ctrl (or Cmd) and then pressing ; (alternatively, go to View > Show > Guides).

22 Duplicate the Normal group by choosing the group in the layers panel. Name the group to something that makes sense like Hover.

23 With the Hover group active in the Layers Panel, click on the Move Tool (V) in the Tools Panel and use your down arrow key to move the Hover group to the bottom of the canvas so that the top edge of the button is right on the middle guide. Use the Zoom Tool (Z) in the Tools Panel to help you position the Hover group if you’re having a hard time seeing the edges. If you use the Zoom Tool (Z), just press Ctrl/Cmd + 1 to go back to 100% view.

Changing the layer styles of the Hover group

24 Since we just need to tweak a few settings, creating the hover group button will be quicker. Inside the Hover group, double-click on the button shape layer in the Layers Panel to open the Layer Styles dialog box. We will keep everything the same except the gradient overlay layer style colors. Edit the settings so that the left color stop of the gradient is a dark green color (#515753) and the right color stop is a slightly lighter green color (but still dark – #7d837f).

25 Next, double-click on the text layer in the Hover group to open up its Layer Styles dialog box. Change the Drop shadow color to a darker color (#7a807c).

26 Finally, edit the gradient overlay layer style colors. Set the left color stop to a dark green color (#5d615e) and the right color stop to a slightly lighter green, but still dark, color (#606462).

Section 1: Photoshop done

We’re now done with the Photoshop portion of this tutorial (Section 1). If you followed along, you should now have something like this:

This will be our CSS background sprite. Don’t close the Photoshop document yet, since we still have to save it for the web in Section 2.

Section 2: HTML/CSS

Now, we’ll make our Call to Action button functional using HTML/CSS.

1 Start by creating a folder that’s designated as our working directory. I called this directory "Call to Action Button" but feel free to name it something else. We’ll save all of our assets in this folder.

2 FWe’ll save our CSS background sprite (the button we created in Section 1). Go back to Photoshop, choose File > Save for Web & Devices. Save it in JPG file format (PNG or GIF works too) inside the Call to Action Button folder as call_to_action_sprite.jpg.

3 Next, we’ll create the HTML document – the best way to do this is with your favorite source code editor (I use Dreamweaver), but a simple text editor will suffice. Create a standard HTML document, and save it inside the Call to Action Button folder as index.html.

4 For the HTML, we’ll use a hyperlink element <a> nested inside a paragraph element (<p>) with a class of cta-button. Here is the code to place inside the <body> of index.html. For web accessibility, we type out the text in our call to action button, which is "Sign Up".

Code block 1:

<body>
  <p class="cta-button"><a href="#">Sign Up</a></p>
</body>

View of p.cta-button a element in Google Chrome.

5 Now we need to style it, so create a stylesheet called styles.css and save it in the Call to Action Button folder.

6 In index.html, link to your stylesheet.

Code block 2:

<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" media="screen"  />
</head>

7 We need to display the p.cta-button element as a block element so that we can give it a set height and width equal to our call to action button (width:200px, height:50px). We also set it so that its background is the bottom part of our CSS sprite (the hover state). Later on, we’ll reveal it by moving the background of the <a> element by styling the a:hover pseudo-selector. To center the button on the browser viewport, we use the margin:0 auto technique, which works for most browsers including IE5.5 and above.

Code block 3:

.cta-button {
  display:block;
  width:200px;
  height:50px;
  background:url(call_to_action_sprite.jpg) no-repeat 0 -50px;
  margin:0 auto;
}

View of Call to Action button with background sprite set.

8 Next we’ll style the <a> element inside the p.cta-button paragraph. We also need it to be a block element so that we can use the text-indent CSS background image replacement technique to move the HTML text ("Sign Up") outside of the browser’s viewport; we do this by setting an extreme value of -9999px to its text-indent attribute. With set the width and height to 100% so that it’s equal to the width and height of p.cta-button. Finally, we position the background sprite to the top left of the image sprite, which is the normal state.

Code block 4:

.cta-button a {
  display:block;
  width:100%;
  height:100%;
  background:url(call_to_action_sprite.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;
  text-indent:-9999px;
}

View of Call to Action button with CSS finalized. Sign Up HTML text is indented out of the viewport.

9 At this point, we want to reveal the hover state when the user mouses over the button, so we’ll use the :hover psuedo-selector to hide the background.

Code block 5:

.cta-button a:hover {
  background-position:0 50px;
}

Section 2: HTML/CSS finished

All together, here’s our HTML and CSS.

Code block 6:

<body>
  <p class="cta-button"><a href="#">Sign Up</a></p>
</body>

Code block 7:

.cta-button {
  display:block;
  width:200px;
  height:50px;
  background:url(call_to_action_sprite.jpg) no-repeat 0 -50px;
  margin:0 auto;
}
.cta-button a {
  display:block;
  width:100%;
  height:100%;
  background:url(call_to_action_sprite.jpg) no-repeat 0 0;
  text-indent:-9999px;
}
.cta-button a:hover {
  background-position:0 50px;
}

Demo of HTML/CSS

Example 1: Call to Action button with HTML/CSS.

Section 3: JavaScript/jQuery

Let’s animate our button, shall we?

1 First, download the jQuery library and save it in the Call to Action button folder. If you’re interested in studying the library, download the uncompressed version, but if you’re going into production, download the minified (smaller file size) version.

2 In the <head> of index.html, right below the link reference to styles.css, reference the jQuery JavaScript library.

Code block 8:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
  <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
</head>

3 Create a blank JavaScript file and save it as cta-javascript.js inside the Call to Action button folder.

4 Reference cta-javascript.js in index.html, right below the jquery library reference.

Code block 9:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
  <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="cta-javascript.js"></script>
</head>

5 Switch over to cta-javascript.js, then we’ll start coding. First, let’s set up the .ready() method which is a jQuery method that allows us to run our code as soon as the DOM is ready to be worked on.

Code block 10:

$(document).ready(function(){
  ...our code goes in here...
});

6 The first thing we need to do is to remove the :hover style because it will affect the animation effect. Doing it this way (via JavaScript) ensures that our button degrades nicely – even with JavaScript disabled, there will still be a hover effect. We can use the .css() method to remove the style.

Code block 11:

$('p.cta-button a')
  .css({
    'backgroundPosition':'0 0'
})

7 Next, we chain the .hover() method, which is an event helper that deals with the mouseover event to the $() element selection. The hover method can take in two functions: the first function executes code for the mouseover event, and the second function executes code for the mouseout event (when the user removes the mouse pointer out of the element).

Code block 12:

$('p.cta-button a')
  .css({
    'backgroundPosition': '0 0'
  })
  .hover(
    function(){
      ...code to execute on mouseover...
    },
    function(){
      ...code to execute on mouseout...
    }
)

8 The code we want to execute on mouseover and mouseout is the .animate() method, which smoothly transitions CSS properties from the current value to the desired value. In this case, we want to transition the opacity to 0 when on mouseover (to reveal the hover state), and 1 when the mouse leaves the  p.cta-button a element. The .animate() method also takes an integer as a parameter that dictates how fast the effect transisition should occur, in millisecond units. I found that 650ms was a good speed, but feel free to experiment here. And on a final note, we use the stop() JavaScript method on the element we’re transitioning so that if the user mouses in and out quickly before a transition is finished, it stops it before executing the new animation event.

Code block 13:

.hover(
  function(){
    $(this)
      .stop()
      .animate({
        'opacity': 0
 	  }, 650);
  },
  function(){
  $(this)
    .stop()
    .animate({
      'opacity': 1
 	}, 650);
  }
);

Section 3: JavaScript (jQuery) done!

We’re now done with the entire tutorial. Here’s the JavaScript in one go:

Code block 14:

$(document).ready(function(){
  $('p.cta-button a')
    .css({  'backgroundPosition': '0 0' })
    .hover(
      function(){
        $(this)
          .stop()
          .animate({
            'opacity': 0
          }, 650);
      },
      function(){
        $(this)
          .stop()
          .animate({
            'opacity': 1
          }, 650);
      }
    );
});

JavaScript demo

Example 2: Call to Action button with jQuery animation.

Download the source files

• animated-call-to-action (ZIP, 0.57MB)

Questions or comments?

Were you able to complete the tutorial? How was the difficultly? Did you get stuck in any way? Please pose your questions and provide us with your feedback on how we can make tutorials on Six Revisions better.

Related Content

• How to Create a Slick and Clean Button in Photoshop
• 10 JavaScript Effects to Boost Your Website’s Fanciness Factor
• Create a Web Layout with 3D Elements using Photoshop
• Related categories: Tutorials and User Interface

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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That was quick: following a Sunday Times article today claiming that Amazon is looking to open physical stores in the UK, the company has issued a denial.

Reuters reports:

A spokesman for the group said it had no plans to open physical stores after the Sunday Times reported the group was looking to cash in on the rising customer demand for so-called click and collect services, where customers buy goods online and pick them up from a shop.

And yet…and yet. We can’t help feeling that at the very least, a partnership allowing customers to pick up items from local outlets would significantly improve the experience of buying large items on Amazon.

In an era of instant gratification, surely Amazon could compete with retail stores by letting you order that TV online in the morning and pick it up at a partner store in the afternoon?

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Jessica Faye Carter is an award-winning author and columnist. Her company, Nette Media develops social media technologies for women and multicultural communities, and she blogs at Technicultr.

With over 50 million users, LinkedIn continues to be among the most popular social networking sites for business professionals, offering a variety of features for its users. One such feature, Groups, allows members the opportunity to create and manage groups focused on a wide range of business-related subjects, and some of the largest groups have hundreds of thousands of members and rival many niche social networks outside of LinkedIn in terms of size and activity.

Groups offer valuable networking opportunities for their participants, who gain access to resources and information that can be beneficial for their careers. If you are considering starting a LinkedIn group or want to increase the effectiveness or reach of your current group, the 8 tips below can help.

1. Use a Personal Touch

LinkedIn provides a wide range of tools that allow you to stay connected with your members in ways that feel personal. The Templates feature allows you to provide automatic responses to new members, and even to those requesting to join your group. It’s an easy way to envelope new members into your community. But you don’t have to limit yourself to early interactions.

Most members would be pleased to receive a note congratulating them on an accomplishment, or to read your comment on a discussion topic they started. As Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot observes, “LinkedIn groups are all about community and bringing people with common interests together.”

He should know: his group, OnStartups, is the fourth-largest on LinkedIn with a membership that exceeds 113,000.

2. Lay Some Ground Rules

Establishing posting guidelines and displaying them prominently (in a featured discussion) is an easy way to help new members get acquainted with your group. Such guidelines generally provide users with community contacts, encourage them to post information in appropriate sections, and specify conduct that can get them banned (spam or attacking other group members, for example).

Making everyone aware of the rules also gives you a reference point when you have to handle a difficult situation with a member.

3. Praise the Good, Deal with the Bad

Encourage member participation by praising and highlighting valuable contributions to the group. This incentivizes others to share their content and engage. If you encounter negative or counterproductive behavior from a member, it’s important to be professional and civil. Should it become necessary to issue a warning, handle the matter privately. Apart from unusually egregious behavior or spam, it’s also a good idea to give a member a warning or two before banning them from the group. Ultimately, it’s up to you to use your best judgment.

4. Help Your Members Promote Themselves

One of the biggest complaints about LinkedIn Groups is the number of people who join simply to promote themselves or their business — and then hijack the group discussion boards to do so. They usually aren’t interested in engaging with others and can have a negative impact on your community. One way to manage these bombarders is by designating a place, like a Subgroup, for group members to promote their service offerings.

Subgroups are automatically available to all of your group members and are easy to set up. Highlighting this promotional opportunity satisfies those who want to self-promote and keeps your discussion boards open for business. You can also feature members in other ways, such as in your occasional emails to the group membership or in a featured discussion that you update regularly.

5. Add Some News Feeds

To keep a steady stream of content available for members to discuss, use the “Manage news feeds” feature to add the RSS feeds for your blog or other blogs to the News section. The posts will then become automatically available to the members of your group for reading and discussion. Of course, you don’t want to flood the boards with self-promotion, so if you aren’t getting enough news inputs from your users, you may want to remove the feed and update the news section with a variety of content manually.

6. Facilitate Connections Outside of LinkedIn

It’s natural for members to seek to make non-LinkedIn connections after being active in your group for awhile. You can offer a range of options to help your members engage elsewhere on the Internet or offline.

Women 2.0, an organization for women entrepreneurs in technology, has a LinkedIn group founded by Angie Chang with over 18,000 members. This group provides numerous opportunities for members to connect apart from the group. Members can share their Twitter handles in a featured discussion, or participate in a Women 2.0 Startup Essentials Workshop for face-to-face interaction. Depending on the size of your group, you might consider starting a Meetup group for local interaction, hosting a webinar, or arranging a dinner or meeting at an industry conference or event.

7. Take a Poll

Use LinkedIn’s Polls application to get feedback from your members on group features and functionality. Create a free poll and then highlight it in your group, either by linking to it on the discussion boards or by submitting the poll’s URL to your News section. Be careful; if you make the poll available in the general directory, your responses won’t be limited to group members — anyone on LinkedIn can respond.

8. Promote Your Group

The sheer size of LinkedIn means that your group is likely to get some members without much effort on your part. But this shouldn’t be an incentive to neglect promotional tools. Some of the strategies you can use to promote your group include low-hanging fruit like inviting others in your network to join, encouraging members to invite their colleagues, and by highlighting your group to other, non-competing groups (LinkedIn members can belong to up to 40 groups simultaneously).

Shah took his group to the next level by promoting it on his standalone OnStartups blog as a static link, as well as in specific articles. He issued this call to action to potential members: “Are you passionate about startups? Then, connect with other like minded people in the LinkedIn OnStartups group”. He even created a custom URL (http://linkedin.onstartups.com) that was co-branded, catchy, easy to remember, and short enough to fit on Twitter.

Do you have any best practices for managing LinkedIn groups? Share your ideas in the comments.

More small business resources from Mashable:

- Top Mobile Productivity Tools for the Small Business
- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business
- HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

Tags: business, groups, linkedin, List, Lists

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Now you could just look at this as some clever youtube video, but a little research on Joey L reveals he is so much more. He found his passion at the ripe old age of 7 when he borrowed his Grandfather’s video camera for fun, and boasts that nothing has changed since then.

At 19 years old and with no formal training in his field, he is photographing some of the biggest names around, including: The Jonas Brothers, Danny Devito, 50 Cent, Robert Pattinson and the cast of Twilight,  and the list continues.

Take a look at a few photos I grabbed from his website JoeyL.com before you watch the video, but be sure to browse through his site, because there are so many amazing photographs there.  It’s clear to see while this video was a funny parody, Joey L is definitely not a joke.

And yes, he is on Twitter, follow him @JoeyLDotCom

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So without further ado, let me announce the launch of the PSDFAN Facebook Fan Page and PSDFAN Facebook Group!

Please become a fan of the page today in order to receive the latest Photoshop updates, as well as interact with other members of our community. I’ll be posting actively on the page and group and so hope to get to know many of you better!

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Josh Silverman, the president of Skype, adopted a rather enthusiastic approach when breaking the news.  He wrote on the Share Skype Blog, "Great news – we’ve closed the deal with the new investors. . . .  Our journey continues: say hello to the future!"

And that future appears to be a bright one, by the way.  As had been agreed earlier, the transaction valued Skype at an impressive $2.75 billion (impressive if you ignore the fact that eBay bought it for $2.6 billion in 2005, anyway), and $1.9 billion in cash actually changed hands as the investor group acquired a 70 percent stake.

What’s more, the investor group (which was led by Silver Lake) includes such interesting organizations and people as Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Joltid Limited, and Skype’s original founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.

This would appear to make it much more likely that SkypeIn service will expand into Canada, and there’s no telling how else the new owners will try to grow and improve the company.

Related Articles:

> eBay And Skype Settle Litigation

> Skype Founders Reportedly Close To Settlement With eBay

> eBay Sells Skype, Which Is Worth $2.75 Billion

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So, we can say that each group of fields represent a sub task of a larger task – filling the entire web form. Thus, each sub task can become a step with a description, input fields and navigation that is common for wizard forms – back and next. The entire process can be done in several simple steps.

This detailed tutorial will show you how to turn long webform into a wizard with jQuery. A plugin is also available for download.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/examples/webform_to_wizard/
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

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Introduction

MyInkBlog’s Flickr Group has grown to 400 awesome members! At this point, every 100 new members will result in a Flickr group showcase; this is the sixth such showcase. If you missed the prior ones, be sure to check out I, II, III, IV and V.

Some Quick Stats

I love the inspiring work that comes from this group. Here is a quick look at the group statistics; with a shout out to the top five contributors.

• Group Members – 400 Artists
• Total Art – 1776 Inspiring Artworks
• Top Five Contributors – Créations du Net (126), Simon’s Flickr junkyard (113), RUGRLN (93), Astro Marus (71), Ivan Kasaj (57)

MIB Around the Interwebs

I also like to use these Flickr showcases as a shameless plug for some other places on the web where you can find me. Be sure to check out MyInkBlog on Twitter and more recently onFacebook

The Showcase Already!

Ok, enough stats and intro… onwards to the showcase! The artwork is awesomely inspiring once again. If you would like to be a part of the next one, please consider joining the group. Enjoy!

Explosive Typography by Angie Bowen

Future by estheticcore

Design Is Vintage by sthursby

Hidden – Have A Nice Day by Nuok (Dario)

Digital Abstract: Sailing by Tanaka13 – Créations du Net

Las Raices del Rock by mrhash

Legend by DTH/CLR

Lost in Space by fudgegraphics

Memories by colaja

The Fiery Dove by jadgraphics

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On Facebook, anyone can start a group. And the admin of a group controls various aspects of it: he can change its name, edit its info and picture or send messages to the members.

But when an admin leaves, anyone else can join the group and register as the new admin. From what we can gather, this behavior is WAI (working as intended), or at least it’s been that way for quite some time now. But it’s also an obvious design flaw, and now a group called Control Your Info is abusing it (or raising awareness about it, depending on how you look at it) by finding groups without admins and taking them over.

We’ve tried it out (on a group we own) and it works. Once an admin leaves, any Facebook user can join the group, take over, and do pretty much whatever he/she wants with it.

Now, you may perceive this as normal behavior. After all, when an admin leaves, someone has to run the group, right? Wrong. There needs to be a mechanism that prevents abuse – for example, if you’re the leader of a clan in most MMO games, and you stop being leader, the leadership cannot be assumed by just any random player (it’s usually automatically transferred to the next in rank).

And there’s plenty of potential for abuse here. Let’s say that an admin of a popular group, with thousands of members, leaves Facebook. A malicious person can take over the leadership of the group (it’s relatively easy to find such groups by conducting a simple Google search) and change the name and the picture of the group into something offensive.

In a way, it’s good that Control Your Info is raising awareness about the issue, because Facebook needs to change the mechanism for transferring group leadership; I doubt, however, that taking over hundreds of Facebook groups is the right way to do it. In any case, if you’re a member of a Facebook group, be careful: you may find that the group has been taken over and changed into something you probably wouldn’t like to be a part of.

Tags: facebook, groups, hack

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We’ve all seen them and we have the graphic designers curse to silently critique them. Yes, bad restaurant menu design is alive and well and I found a Flickr Group devoted to sharing some of them with the world. If you have a spare minute to browse this group, I assure you, it will make you feel better about that design you “weren’t quite happy with but had to go with it because of a deadline.”

a

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For professional and aspiring photographers alike, selling images to stock photography services like Getty Images can be tremendous way to boost your profile and get your images seen more places in print or online. In March, the Flickr Collection made its debut at Getty Images, with photographs comprised entirely from the Flickr community and hand-picked by Getty’s creative team.

Eight months later, the collection has over 60,000 images. However, with more than 4 billion photos housed on Flickr, some great stuff is bound to have been overlooked. Today, Flickr has expanded the program so that users can submit a selection of their photographs to a group pool that Getty staff members will regularly review for inclusion in their collection.

Users can submit a portfolio of 10 images to the Getty Images Call for Artists group and selected group members will receive an invitation from Getty to join the Flickr Collection.

Before you submit any photos to the Call for Artists group, be sure to read all of the guidelines. Here are some highlights:

Your submission should be of 10 images, no more no less
You must be able to provide model or property releases where appropriate
Images cannot be licensed to any other users or through any other agency or distributor
If you’re not accepted into the collection, you can try again and submit 10 more photos the next month

We think it’s great that Flickr users now have the ability to submit some of their best photos for consideration. This means that even more great photographs will be available in the Flickr Collection and that even more photographers can get some professional exposure for their work.

What do you think of the new submissions process? Do you have any shots you plan on submitting? Let us know!

Tags: flickr, flickr collection, Getty, getty images, stock photography

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There is a site on Flickr where the group members can post drawings of what I wore today (drawings only). The group admin has this to say.. “Some of us don’t like posting photos of ourselves on Flickr.   But we do like drawing, oh yes we do!  So, this is the place to upload your *drawn* “What I wore today” pics.   If I get enough good’uns I might make a zine or even a book!

This is a pretty good idea, specially for folks who are not much into taking photos of themselves or others but drawing them and sharing to a group with the same interest.  Check out the works HERE I have included a video on How to Draw a Fashion Sketch, just to guide those who want to try out drawing What you wore today and post it on the Flickr site.

Have Fun!!

MAIN IMAGE SOURCE – The Little Black Dress – Renee Reeser Zelnick

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There is one notable exception: Google Groups, which lately has started to look more and more like an abandoned service. The mailing-list and discussion-board service has remained short on features since Google launched it in 2001. Meanwhile, Groups has become overwhelmed with spam, and one the most popular Google Groups — the JQuery mailing list, with more than 20,000 members — is jumping ship.

John Resig, the lead developer of JQuery, a popular JavaScript Library for developing complex web applications, recently posted a sharply critical look at Google Groups.

“As far as I’m concerned, Google Groups is dead,” he writes.

Resig isn’t the only one with problems. Google Groups began life as a way to rescue the Deja.com Usenet archive, but as our Epicenter blog recently reported, the Usenet portion of Google Groups is fundamentally broken. Google has since addressed some problems highlighted in that piece, but even newly created groups, like the JQuery group, feel neglected and overrun with spam.

While Resig is careful to note that Google Groups remains a workable optionfor private mailing lists, but for large public mailing lists like JQuery, Google Groups’ inability to combat spam, its poor moderator tools and general neglect have made the platform unusable.

“The problem mostly lies in the use cases that we’re trying to support,” Resig says in an e-mail to Webmonkey. “We need to support people who are actively trying to help new users, and we also need to support people who just want a simple question answered.” Spam, awkward filtering tools and a lack of support have driven JQuery to look elsewhere for a platform that connects its users, he says.

From an end-user point of view, the problem might not be immediately noticeable, especially if you’re using a good e-mail client which can filter out the spam for you. However, it can be a bit shocking to visit your favorite Groups’ homepage and discover it’s been overrun by spammers.

While Gmail is good at filtering spam, Google Groups is so bad, it’s almost as if the company isn’t even trying. There is a moderation option, which helps a bit. For example, compare the Django Users Group homepage (which uses moderation) to the EveryBlock Group (which doesn’t use moderation). As you can see, there isn’t one legitimate message on the Everyblock Group homepage, while there’s hardly any spam in the Django Group.

Sadly, as Resig points out, moderation makes joining and posting to a Google Group much more complex for the first-time users who have come seeking help, and the tools provided for moderators aren’t nearly as slick as you’d expect from a Google product.

Compounding the problem, spammers have figured out that spoofing e-mail addresses works swimmingly in Google Groups. So even with moderation turned on, spam will inevitably get through. Even worse, it’ll look like it came from legitimate list members, or even the moderators. In the end, the moderators have to moderate their own e-mail addresses to truly stop Google Groups spam.

Resig tells Webmonkey that JQuery is still looking for a suitable replacement for Google Groups. The top contenders are Vanilla Forums, which allows people to subscribe to all new posts and comments by e-mail, and Stack Exchange, which is essentially Stack Overflow customized for a specific topic.

Unfortunately, based on Resig’s account, it looks like Google’s Data Liberation Front hasn’t trained its data-export vision on Groups just yet — there is no way to export all the messages from a Group (there is, however, the ability to export a list of all members). In the JQuery Group’s case, that means some 120,000 messages in the group will have to exported by hand.

As for the future of Google Groups, well, the handwriting might well be on the wall. As blogger and former Yahoo engineer Andy Baio points out, “If you want to know which areas of big companies are being ignored, watch for spam taking over.”

See Also:

• Pack Up Your Data and Leave Whenever You Want, It’s the New Rule of the Cloud
• Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive
• Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles (UPDATED)

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There is one notable exception: Google Groups, which lately has started to look more and more like an abandoned service. The mailing list and discussion board service has remained short on features since Google launched it in 2001. Meanwhile, Groups has become overwhelmed with spam, and one the most popular Google Groups — the JQuery mailing list, which has over 20,000 members — is jumping ship.

John Resig, the lead developer of JQuery, a popular JavaScript Library for developing complex web applications, recently posted a sharply critical look at Google Groups.

“As far as I’m concerned, Google Groups is dead,” he writes.

Resig isn’t the only one with problems. Google Groups began life as a way to rescue the Deja.com Usenet archive, but as our Epicenter blog recently reported, the Usenet portion of Google Groups is fundamentally broken. Google has since addressed some the problems highlighted in that piece, but even newly-created groups, like the JQuery group, feel neglected and overrun with spam.

While Resig is careful to note that, for private mailing lists, Google Groups remains an workable option, for large public mailing lists like JQuery, Google Groups’ inability to combat spam, poor moderator tools and general neglect have made the platform unusable.

“The problem mostly lies in the use cases that we’re trying to support,” Resig says in an e-mail to Webmonkey. “We need to support people who are actively trying to help new users and we also need to support people who just want a simple question answered.” Google Groups spam, awkward filtering tools and a lack of support have driven JQuery to look elsewhere for a platform that connects its users, he says.

From an end user point of view, the problem might not be immediately noticeable, especially if you’re using a good e-mail client which can filter out the spam for you. However, it can be a bit shocking to visit your favorite Groups’ homepage and discover it’s been overrun by spammers.

While Gmail is good at filtering spam, Google Groups is so bad, it’s almost as if the company isn’t even trying. There is a moderation option, which helps a bit. For example, compare the Django Users Group homepage (which uses moderation) to the EveryBlock Group (which doesn’t use moderation). As you can see, there isn’t one legitimate message on the Everyblock Group homepage, while there’s hardly any spam in the Django Group.

Sadly, as Resig points out, moderation makes joining and posting to a Google Group much more complex for the first-time users who have come seeking help, and the tools provided for moderators aren’t nearly as slick as you’d expect from a Google product.

Compounding the problem, spammers have figured out that spoofing e-mail addresses works swimmingly in Google Groups. So even with moderation turned on, spam will inevitably get through. Even worse, it’ll look like it came from legitimate list members, or even the moderators. In the end, the moderators have to moderate their own e-mail addresses to truly stop Google Groups spam.

Resig tells Webmonkey that JQuery is still looking for a suitable replacement for Google Groups. The top contenders are Vanilla Forums, which allows people to subscribe to all new posts and comments via e-mail, and Stack Exchange, which is essentially Stack Overflow customized for a specific topic.

Unfortunately, based of Resig’s account it looks like Google’s Data Liberation Front hasn’t trained its data export vision on Groups just yet — there is no way to export all the messages from a Group (there is, however, the ability to export a list of all members). In the JQuery Group’s case, that means some 120,000 messages in the Group will have to exported by hand.

As for the future of Google Groups, well, the writing might well be on the wall. As blogger and former Yahoo engineer Andy Baio points out, “If you want to know which areas of big companies are being ignored, watch for spam taking over.”

See Also:

• Pack Up Your Data and Leave Whenever You Want, It’s the New Rule of the Cloud
• Google Begins Fixing Usenet Archive
• Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles (UPDATED)

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I’ve compiled a list of different resources to help you prepare for the big games, which begin Wednesday. For iPhone users, I’ve thrown in a couple of apps for when you’re on the go. So without further ado, let’s get going on the baseball chatter.</p.

World Series time

MLB World Series Major League Baseball’s World Series page is a great resource for those who want to learn just about anything related to the Fall Classic.

When you get to the site, you’ll be able to read the news, watch videos related to the game, and watch all the interviews you might have missed. When the game’s playing, the site will give you some updates on the progress both teams are making. You can also play World Series trivia games, buy MLB merchandise, and more. It’s a great place to learn more about the World Series.

MLB's World Series page is there for the taking.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Facebook

Phillies Facebook Group If you plan to support the Phillies during the World Series, you might want to consider joining the team’s unofficial Facebook group. There aren’t many users–about 2,500 as of this writing–but it’s filled with fans who share all kinds of great content.

When I was sifting through the group’s pages, I found several photos, a lot of handy links to game-related topics, and more. The Facebook group also has a discussion board where fans can discuss several team-related topics. If you plan to support the Phillies, its Facebook group is a good place to start.

The Facebook Phillies Group page features several neat pictures.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Yankees Facebook Group If you want to see the Bronx Bombers take another World Series, you might want to consider joining the unofficial Yankees Facebook Group.

The Yankees Facebook Group is much larger than the Phillies’ Facebook page. It has over 7,000 members. When you get to the group’s page, you’ll find a lot of interesting content, ranging from discussions on the Yankees, photos of Yankees fans, and more. You can also read the wall, where users are talking about their predictions for the series. Since the group is larger than the Philllies’ group, there is much more discussion. That helps make it a little more viable. Expect a flurry of activity in the group when the games start.

Yankees Facebook Group features a lot of members.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

iPhone

Box Score Baseball If you’re looking for a simple way to find out quickly what the score on the game is, check out Box Score Baseball.

Box Score Baseball is a free iPhone app that provides basic information on the status of a game. You’ll find the score, the inning, who’s batting, who’s hitting, and how many hits each team has tallied. If you just want quick updates about the game, this app is for you.

Box Score Baseball has simple, but useful information.

(Credit:
Box Score)

MLB At Bat 2009 If you’re looking for the best mobile way to track the World Series, MLB At Bat 2009 is it.

MLB At Bat 2009 features all the postseason coverage you might want. You can watch games from one of seven different camera angles right on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can also view your content in “Quad Mode” to see four different camera angles at the same time. The app lets you see every pitch, its location, and even hear the broadcast from MLB. You can also watch “condensed games” on the app, which packs the entire three-hour-plus game into a quick 10- to 12-minute snippet. I could go on, but I think you get the point: MLB At Bat 2009 is where you want to be if you can’t watch the game on the big screen. And for $9.99, it’s not too expensive.

Get all the game updates in MLB At Bat 2009.

(Credit:
MLB)

Twitter

MLB On Fox Since the World Series will be broadcast on Fox this year, you’ll probably want to consider following the MLB On Fox Twitter page.

The profile gives users updates on the status of a game on Fox while it’s going on. When World Series games are played, expect the profile to give you play-by-play on important points in the game. That should help you out if you don’t plan on watching every moment of the series.

World Series What better way to keep track of the World Series than to follow the updates on Major League Baseball’s World Series Twitter page?

The MLB’s World Series Twitter page is quite informative. It features information on the teams that were in the playoffs before the Phillies and Yankees won. It also includes World Series topics. So far, the page hasn’t been updated much, but now that the World Series will (finally) get under way, look for the profile to be updated often. It’s a must-see.

The World Series Twitter page is ready to go.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Twitter's MLB On Fox profile is a must-see for baseball fans.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

My top 3

1. MLB At Bat 2009: If you’re looking for the best iPhone app, this one is it.

2. MLB World Series: WorldSeries.com promises to be a fine online resource for baseball fans.

3. World Series: If you’re a Twitter user, you’ll definitely want to check out the World Series Twitter profile.

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It’s a fascinating examination of why human beings are wired and conditioned to react irrationally. We human beings are a selfish bunch, so it’s all the more surprising to see how easily we can be manipulated to behave in ways that run counter to our own self-interest.

This isn’t just a “gee-whiz” observation; understanding how and why we behave irrationally is important. If you don’t understand how these irrational behaviors are triggered, the marketing weasels will use them against you.

In fact, it’s already happening. Witness 10 Irrational Human Behaviors and How to Leverage Them to Improve Web Marketing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Let’s take a look at the various excerpts presented in that article, and consider how we can avoid falling into the rut of predictably irrational behavior — and defend ourselves from those vicious marketing weasels.

1. Encourage false comparisons

When Williams-Sonoma introduced bread machines, sales were slow. When they added a “deluxe” version that was 50% more expensive, they started flying off the shelves; the first bread machine now appeared to be a bargain

When contemplating the purchase of a $25 pen, the majority of subjects would drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7. When contemplating the purchase of a $455 suit, the majority of subjects would not drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7. The amount saved and time involved are the same, but people make very different choices. Watch out for relative thinking; it comes naturally to all of us.

• Realize that some premium options exist as decoys — that is, they are there only to make the less expensive options look more appealing, because they’re easy to compare. Don’t make binding decisions solely based on how easy it is to compare two side-by-side options from the same vendor. Try comparing all the alternatives, even those from other vendors.
• Don’t be swayed by relative percentages for small dollar amounts. Yes, you saved 25%, but how much effort and time did you expend on that seven bucks?

2. Reinforce Anchoring

Savador Assael, the Pearl King, single-handedly created the market for black pearls, which were unknown in the industry before 1973. His first attempt to market the pearls was an utter failure; he didn’t sell a single pearl. So he went to his friend, Harry Winston, and had Winston put them in the window of his 5th Avenue store with an outrageous price tag attached. Then he ran full page ads in glossy magazines with black pearls next to diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Soon, black pearls were considered precious.

Simonsohn and Loewenstein found that people who move to a new city remain anchored to the prices they paid in their previous city. People who move from Lubbock to Pittsburgh squeeze their families into smaller houses to pay the same amount. People who move from LA to Pittsburgh don’t save money, they just move into mansions.

• Scale your purchases to your needs, not your circumstances or wallet size. What do you actually use? How much do you use it, and how frequently?
• Try to objectively measure the value of what you’re buying; don’t be tricked into measuring relative to similar products or competitors. How much does buying this save you or your company? How much benefit will you get out of it? Attempt to measure that benefit by putting a concrete dollar amount on it.

3. It’s “Free”!

Ariely, Shampanier, and Mazar conducted an experiment using Lindt truffles and Hershey’s Kisses. When a truffle was $0.15 and a kiss was $0.01, 73% of subjects chose the truffle and 27% the Kiss. But when a truffle was $0.14 and a kiss was free, 69% chose the kiss and 31% the truffle.

According to standard economic theory, the price reduction shouldn’t have lead to any behavior change, but it did.

Ariely’s theory is that for normal transactions, we consider both upside and downside. But when something is free, we forget about the downside. “Free” makes us perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. Humans are loss-averse; when considering a normal purchase, loss-aversion comes into play. But when an item is free, there is no visible possibility of loss

• You will tend to overestimate the value of items you get for free. Resist this by viewing free stuff skeptically rather than welcoming it with open arms. If it was really that great, why would it be free?
• Free stuff often comes with well hidden and subtle strings attached. How will using a free service or obtaining a free item influence your future choices? What paid alternatives are you avoiding by choosing the free route, and why?
• How much effort will the free option cost you? Are there non-free options which would cost less in time or effort? How much is your time worth?
• When you use a free service or product, you are implicitly endorsing and encouraging the provider, effectively beating a path to their door. Is this something you are comfortable with?

4. Exploit social norms

The AARP asked lawyers to participate in a program where they would offer their services to needy employees for a discounted price of $30/hour. No dice. When the program manager instead asked if they’d offer their services for free, the lawyers overwhelmingly said they would participate

• Companies may appeal to your innate sense of community or public good to convince you to do their work at zero pay. Consider carefully before choosing to participate; what do you get out of contributing your time and effort? Is this truly a worthy cause? Would this be worth doing if it was a paid gig?
• When it comes to the web, make sure you aren’t being turned into a digital sharecropper.

5. Design for Procrastination

Ariely conducted an experiment on his class. Students were required to write three papers. Ariely asked the first group to commit to dates by which they would turn in each paper. Late papers would be penalized 1% per day. There was no penalty for turning papers in early. The logical response is to commit to turning all three papers in on the last day of class. The second group was given no deadlines; all three papers were due in the last day of class. The third group was directed to turn their papers in on the 4th, 8th, and 12th weeks.

The results? Group 3 (imposed deadlines) got the best grades. Group 2 (no deadlines) got the worst grades, and Group 1 (self-selected deadlines) finished in the middle. Allowing students to pre-commit to deadlines improved performance. Students who spaced out their commitments did well; students who did the logical thing and gave no commitments did badly.

• Steer clear of offers of low-rate trial periods which auto-convert into automatic recurring monthly billing. They know that most people will procrastinate and forget to cancel before the recurring billing kicks in.
• Either favor fixed-rate, fixed-term plans — or become meticulous about cancelling recurring services when you’re not using them.

6. Utilize the Endowment Effect

Ariely and Carmon conducted an experiment on Duke students, who sleep out for weeks to get basketball tickets; even those who sleep out are still subjected to a lottery at the end. Some students get tickets, some don’t. The students who didn’t get tickets told Ariely that they’d be willing to pay up to $170 for tickets. The students who did get the tickets told Ariely that they wouldn’t accept less than $2,400 for their tickets.

There are three fundamental quirks of human nature. We fall in love with what we already have. We focus on what we might lose, rather than what we might gain. We assume that other people will see the transaction from the same perspective as we do.

• The value of what you’ve spent so far on a service, product, or relationship — in effort or money — is probably far less than you think. Be willing to walk away.
• Once you’ve bought something, never rely on your internal judgment to assess its value, because you’re too close to it now. Ask other people what they’d pay for this service, product, or relationship. Objectively research what others pay online.

7. Capitalize on our Aversion to Loss

Ariely and Shin conducted an experiment on MIT students. They devised a computer game which offered players three doors: Red, Blue, and Green. You started with 100 clicks. You clicked to enter a room. Once in a room, each click netted you between 1-10 cents. You could also switch rooms (at the cost of a click). The rooms were programmed to provide different levels of rewards (there was variation within each room’s payoffs, but it was pretty easy to tell which one provided the best payout).

Players tended to try all three rooms, figure out which one had the highest payout, and then spend all their time there. (These are MIT students we’re talking about). Then, however, Ariely introduced a new wrinkle: Any door left unvisited for 12 clicks would disappear forever. With each click, the unclicked doors shrank by 1/12th.

Now, players jumped from door to door, trying to keep their options open.They made 15% less money; in fact, by choosing any of the doors and sticking with it, they could have made more money.

Ariely increased the cost of opening a door to 3 cents; no change–players still seemed compelled to keeping their options open. Ariely told participants the exact monetary payoff of each door; no change. Ariely allowed participants as many practice runs as they wanted before the actual experiment; no change. Ariely changed the rules so that any door could be “reincarnated” with a single click; no change.

Players just couldn’t tolerate the idea of the loss, and so they did whatever was necessary to prevent their doors from closing, even though disappearance had no real consequences and could be easily reversed. We feel compelled to preserve options, even at great expense, even when it doesn’t make sense.

• If your choices are artificially narrowed, don’t passively get funneled towards the goal they’re herding you toward. Demand choice, even if it means switching vendors or allegiances.
• Don’t pay extra for options, unless you can point to hard evidence that you need those options. Some options exist just to make you doubt yourself, so you’ll worry about not having them.

8. Engender Unreasonable Expectations

Ariely, Lee, and Frederick conducted yet another experiment on MIT students. They let students taste two different beers, and then choose to get a free pint of one of the brews. Brew A was Budweiser. Brew B was Budweiser, plus 2 drops of balsamic vinegar per ounce.

When students were not told about the nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the balsamic beer. When students were told about the true nature of the beers, they overwhelmingly chose the Budweiser. If you tell people up front that something might be distasteful, the odds are good they’ll end up agreeing with you–because of their expectations.

• Whatever you’ve heard about a brand, company, or product — there’s no substitute for your own hands-on experience. Let your own opinions guide you, not the opinions of others.
• Just because something is labelled “premium” or “pro” or “award-winning” doesn’t mean it is. Research these claims; don’t let marketing set your expectations. Rely on evidence and facts.

9. Leverage Pricing Bias

Ariely, Waber, Shiv, and Carmon made up a fake painkiller, Veladone-Rx. An attractive woman in a business suit (with a faint Russian accent) told subjects that 92% of patients receiving VR reported significant pain relief in 10 minutes, with relief lasting up to 8 hours.

When told that the drug cost $2.50 per dose, nearly all of the subjects reported pain relief. When told that the drug cost $0.10 per dose, only half of the subjects reported pain relief. The more pain a person experienced, the more pronounced the effect. A similar study at U Iowa showed that students who paid list price for cold medications reported better medical outcomes than those who bought discount (but clinically identical) drugs.

• Price often has nothing to do with value. Expensive is not synonymous with quality. Investigate whether the price is justified; never accept it at face value.
• Don’t fall prey to the “moneymoon”; just because you paid for something doesn’t mean it’s automatically worthwhile. Not everything we pay money for works well, or was even worth what we spent for it. We all make mistakes when buying things, but we don’t want to admit it.

What I learned from Predictably Irrational is that everyone is irrational sometimes, and that’s OK. We’re not perfectly logical Vulcans, after all. The trick is training yourself to know when you’re most likely to make irrational choices, and to resist those impulses.

If you aren’t at least aware of our sad, irrational human condition, well … that’s exactly where the marketing weasels want you.

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Check out the showcase below, and be sure to let us know of your favorite favicons that we may have overlooked!

A List Apart

Trap Solutions

Szpo

Nilesh Chaudhair – Shutterbug

Deviant Art

BuzzShout

Lego

Trade Hero

Kirkpatric Bank

Smoothieland

Connection Cube

Silverorange Stuff

Pedoodles

UnLtdWorld

Textbroker

Jonnotie

Hawaiian Airlines

GrowVeg

Hire Web Designer

Blog Mad

WinterPRIDE 2009

Thinking Woman’s Diary

Sweet Solutions

Snook

ShaunInman

The Seattle Times

ROIsure

Reach Group Consulting

myGoya

Juice

India Macromedia User Group

HUGS

Flashaholics

Evozon

Enlightened Lamp Recycling

The Dragonflies Pond

Dictionary.com

dev.upian Hotlinks

Design-Kulture

Daily Web Tools

Coalla Revolving

Camerata Musica

C82

Baltimore Sun

Apples to Oranges

Alazanto

Adam Polselli

Jeffery Zeldman Presents

ITC Fonts

Ornamentals Photoshop Brushes

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Facebook’s Groups feature seemed to have long since taken a backseat to the “fan pages” that the social network has encouraged companies and brands to create. But they’re far from obsolete.

In a Monday blog post called “Giving Groups a Stronger Voice,” Facebook has announced a number of ways it has improved Groups, to better match the rest of the site and more closely tie to members’ activity feeds.

“Group activities, which previously only appeared in the group, will now be delivered to your news feed,” the post by Facebook engineer Knot Pipatsrisawat read. These updates will be restricted to those that come from people already on your friends list, which is key, since many groups have thousands–or even millions–of members.

“For example, you now will see a story when your friend uploads photos from a recent party at your high school alumni group, or when one of your friends posts a message on the wall of your pick-up soccer group, saying that there is a special game this week,” according to Pipatsrisawat’s post.

A look at the new 'Groups' design on Facebook.

(Credit:
Facebook)

Additionally, the home page of a group has been modified to look more like a regular member profile or fan page, complete with a news feed and “publisher” field. Basically, this gives yet another Facebook feature a dose of the “real-time stream.” The blog post adds that this is currently available to a small number of users and will be available more widely “in the coming days.”

The updates come as Facebook previews some home page improvements to advertisers. But the Groups redesign is geared toward ordinary users, not brands, Facebook says.

“Groups are for fostering member-to-member collaboration, while Pages remain the best way to broadcast messages to your fans, if you are a business, organization, public figure, or other entity,” Pipatsrisawat’s post explained.

Meanwhile, the other big player in real-time content, Twitter, started the beta test rollout of its own grouping, or “lists,” feature last week. Those are fairly different, though, as Twitter users are encouraged to create their own lists of recommended members that other users can follow with one click.

Originally posted at The Social

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Sponsor

CloudFab: CloudFab is an online fabrication platform where owners of 3D printers, machining tools and laser cutters can offer their services to designers. Similar to Ponoko or Shapeways, designers and hobbyists visit the site with ideas for custom jewelry, furniture, vinyl figurines or even bike parts. From here users connect with those who can help make their ideas reality. CloudFab CEO Nick Pinkston is so dedicated to the maker-lifestyle that he started Hack Pittsburgh – a non-profit organization dedicated to DIY tinkerers and hobbyists.

Fooala: Fooala is restaurant platform that offers instant ordering options for hungry website visitors. This service ensures that for every web access point and mention of a restaurant, there is a corresponding online order button. After scanning a user’s menu and basic information, the company indexes your restaurant in its “Anywhere Ordering Network”. Customers then order menu items over their desktop computers and mobile devices via the Fooala widget. The company already has 60 restaurant partners and is actively seeking investment to expand into new regional markets.

LeftRight Studios: LeftRight Studios is an independent game development house specializing in iPhone applications. The studio’s goal is to create a branded gaming network where companies can expand their customer reach via entertaining mobile games. To show off its development abilities, the group has already released Smackbots, an iPhone version of the classic Rock’em Sock’em robots game.

Vivo: Vivo is a lifestreaming service that allows users to share live event broadcasts. Rather than pursuing the Justin.tv lifestyle audience, Vivo pitched AlphaLab investors as a platform for live video customer engagement. The site has already penned partnerships with HarperCollins and the American Booksellers Association. It will be interesting to see if the publishing industry uses the service to broadcast readings and launches, or if they will find new methods to engage readers and fans.

NavPrescience: NavPrescience is a GPS system that incorporates predictive technologies. By observing driver behavior, the service continually tweaks route recommendations according to driving patterns and route preferences. The company is seeking funding to launch a mobile and web-based freemium service for the Pittsburgh area.

Zipano: Zipano is a personal privacy platform that allows users to better express their privacy preferences and contacts. The group claims to solve the privacy issues associated with location-based services by offering users another layer of information sharing options. Zipano demonstrates its capabilities with its Locaccino Facebook application. Users specify their level of comfort with location requests and have instant access to those who have already looked for their location. There is also an option to create rules so that your public whereabouts only display in specific locations, during specific times, and for specific friends.

Photo Credit: Alex Thomson

Discuss

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Sounds great, except users can listen to streaming on demand music for free today at MySpace Music and Spotify, which is preparing to launch in the U.S. Will MOG’s user experience be so compelling that users will pay $60/year for something they can get free elsewhere?

In January we first heard MOG’s plans for the service. At the time it sounded compelling – it combined a great user experience with a free streaming model. But the crucial part of that service has vaporized – it’s no longer free. And non-free music subscription services don’t work, despite years of attempts by major companies and startups alike.

We’ve championed MOG in the past, but this looks like yet another music failure to us. Too bad the labels didn’t agree to a pure revenue split, which is what CEO David Hyman was hoping for back in January.

MOG has raised around $12 million to date from Menlo Ventures, Simon Equity, Universal Music Group and Sony Music, among others.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Justin Maller is a freelance illustrator and art director based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been creating digital art for over eight years and has produced professionally in both private and studio based capacity for the last two. He is represented by the Jacky Winter Group.

Justin has had the pleasure of producing illustrations and concept art for a diverse array of companies and publications worldwide. He currently enjoys a cordial collaborative relationship with several prestigious international design studios. Justin is an inner core member of the Keystone Design Union, an avid sneaker collector, a savvy blogger, occassional tweeter and a mild force of nature on the basketball court.

• Homepage
• Behance

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Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, was the main force behind the development, and Lili Cheng, who’s worked for Microsoft since 1995, will be the general manager of FUSE Labs.  The involvement of these two individuals suggests that Microsoft’s hoping for some significant results.

As for the purpose of the new group, "FUSE Labs’ team will explore new social, real-time and media-rich applications and services that add value to existing products, or could be released on their own," according to a corporate statement.

Also, if you’re curious, Microsoft’s Creative Systems Group, Rich Media Labs, and Startup Labs are the three entities that were merged to create FUSE Labs.  FUSE Labs should include about 80 people, and they’ll be based in both Redmond and Cambridge.

Otherwise, details are scarce.  Microsoft, Ozzie, and Cheng didn’t announce anything with regards to specific products or general release dates.  But whether this ties to a potential deal with Twitter, Microsoft’s investment in Facebook, or something(s) else entirely, it’ll surely be interesting to see what comes out of FUSE Labs.

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

Facebook Pages may be taking the social network by storm, but they can take time and technical skill to set up. When you need to promote something quickly, or are looking to foster a stronger sense of community, the more traditional Facebook Group is often the way to go.

While not as fancy as Pages, Groups offer many of the same features, with a slightly more streamlined look. This makes it easy for virtually anyone to create a Group, for any number of purposes, and get them live quickly—an important benefit in the time-sensitive social media sphere.

However, the ease and speed with which a Group can be set up has created a lot of spammy or messy Groups that are slapped together in minutes and abandoned soon after. In order to break through the clutter and gain members, you need to take the time to set up a Group correctly. Here are a few tips:

Global, Open, and Public

In order to get the maximum reach and value out of your Group, you need to ensure that anyone who wants to can join, without you having to approve them. You also want them to be able to invite their friends, as this cuts down on the work for you and allows you to focus on building a Group people want to join and share with other people. So, when setting up your Group, make sure you create it as a “Global” Group so it is visible to all of Facebook, and that the access is set to “Open,” allowing members to invite friends. Members should also be able to post and share links and media on the Group page.

Fill Out All Fields

First and foremost, you absolutely must include as much information as possible—not JUST the required fields. This is what truly separates a successful, professional Group from a spammy, “I-lost-my-phone, give-me-your-numbers” Group. Don’t go overboard with lengthy text—stick to basic web-reading principles—but don’t leave anything blank. This includes the image field: think of it like a profile picture; would you really friend someone with a question mark for a head? Didn’t think so.

Use Correct Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling

Another huge tip-off that a Group was slapped together in a few minutes and won’t provide much value to members? Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Print out your Group and proofread it to make sure it says what you want and reads the way you want it to sound.

Include Keywords for Easier Search

Groups are indexed by the ever-evolving Facebook search, as well as traditional search engines. So having a completely and accurately filled-out Group description not only looks good and provides valuable information to those clicking on an invite, it also increases the chance that a potential member will find your Group while searching for similar topics, organizations or events. Put on your SEO hat when coming up with a Group name and crafting a description; think of keywords people would associate with your content or purpose of the Group and popular searches around your topic of interest.

Use With Profile or Page

When Facebook first introduced Pages, they offered Group admins the option of automatically transitioning members into fans. As a result, many brands now have a single presence on Facebook, in the form of a Page. But in order to launch a Group, you need a “parent” Page or Profile. This will give you a base from which to invite people and provide you with a more human connection.

Make New Friends

Since a Group cannot exist on its own (see above), your Profile, as admin, will more than likely be tied to the initial members, as they will have to be your friends in order to invite them. Send a friend request that explains how or why you found people and want to be friends. Selling socks? Search for “funky socks” and friend people in relevant groups, with a personal message attached to the friend request that says something along the lines of “I share your love for unique footwear.”

Segment Friend Lists

While building your friend list (and by extension, potential member base for your Group), segment your friends into lists relevant to the Group for future marketing purposes. If you start friending random people based on a search for similar Groups, name lists after the keywords you searched for to find these people. The “funky socks” friends could go in a list called “funky” or “crazy patterns,” so you know that these people will appreciate updates on your more outlandish designs.

Incorporate Events

Events and groups have a greater reach than other elements on Facebook, as they have built in “pass it on” functionality. Always include a brief intro when sending event invites and keep them as open as possible: allow guests to invite other people and post their own videos, links and photos. Try out “virtual events” as well, asking people to invite their friends to join the Group.

Participate and Post New Content

Keeping the Group wall, photo and video restrictions open encourages content sharing and discussion, but that only goes so far; you need to post and update yourself as well. In order to create a Group that people remain members of, particularly engaged members, you need to keep the Group’s page fresh. Pages can be automatically updated, and to compete, you need to provide interesting, valuable perspectives or information to members.

Post Links, Photos, Videos

Besides providing fresh content, frequent posting keeps members engaged and allows for greater interaction. Post a link to any site, or off Facebook, to ask members to join, sign up or take action in some way. You can also post photos or videos from events and tag members in them to increase their connection to the Group.

Send Messages

Groups have mass messaging capabilities, allowing you to quickly keep all members up to date on Group news, events and information. Select “message all members” and draft your message like any other private correspondence on Facebook; it will be delivered to members’ Facebook inboxes just like a message from anyone else. This is one advantage Groups have over Pages; Page updates are dumped into a hidden folder, whereas Group messages carry more weight. That said, they lack the formatting functionality of Page updates and can clog up inboxes quickly, so use sparingly. You may also want to utilize your segmented friend lists to deliver more targeted messaging.

As you can see, a lot of elements go into even the simplest of Facebook Groups. But the tools are all there for you; you just need to use them correctly. And as Facebook pushes users from Groups to Pages, it will be easier and easier to stand out from the crowd of “lost cell-phones” and differentiate your Group as one of the ones to stick with.

More Facebook resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Integrate Facebook With Your Blog
- HOW TO: Set Up a Winning Facebook Fan Page
- 3 New Facebook Strategies for Building Your Personal Brand
- The Journalist’s Guide to Facebook
- HOW TO: Do Good on Facebook

Image courtesy Chris Spooner

Tags: facebook, Facebook groups, groups, how to

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