For starters, the platform is focused on giving game developers the ability to quickly add local tournaments into gameplay, so that a user can, for example, play a virtual game of Battleship with other players that live on the same block. Though tournaments are the primary feature of the platform at this point, PlacePlay also supports location-based virtual goods, objects, achievements, and more.

PlacePlay is targeting Apple iOS as its main platform, but it just so happens that Apple prevents mobile developers from displaying location-based advertising in apps if they don’t include location based features. Happily for developers, because PlacePlay gives them easy access to location-based features for gameplay, developers also have the ability to take advantage of integrated local advertising networks to not only drive more engagement via in-game activities like tournaments, but also gives them access to higher ad revenue from targeted local advertising.

PressOK CEO and Co-founder Ryan Morel says that the simple truth is that it’s much easier to drive consumer action as part of gameplay than to drive action outside of gameplay, i.e. implicit user behavior versus explicit. In other words, if game developers were to add no reward for a user to join, say, a game’s leaderboard (other than it being free), but added incentive for users to play in certain locations (like free level packs for completing location-based challenges) — engagement is still going to be much higher in leaderboards, which are implicitly part of gameplay, rather than actions that are not.

There’s less friction for a consumer to participate in a local tournament than there is to get them to take some specific action at a specific place or time. When it comes to appeal for advertisers, it’s hard to find location-based games that overcome these challenges and still have a large enough user base to be relevant, he says.

In allowing third party developers access to PlacePlay’s SDK, the startup hopes that it will be able to collect data from a large number of users, across a wide set of games, by integrating features gamers love (like leaderboards, tournaments, virtual goods, etc.) around location. In the short term, Morel says, PlacePlay will monetize through integrated local ad networks, and longterm the startup plans to monetize through direct deals with brands and sponsors. Widespread distribution of its SDK among game developers will obviously be key if this is to happen.

Thus, the value proposition for PlacePlay is that it allows developers to drive both engagement and revenue; based on early testing, PlacePlay increases end-user engagement by 1.6-times and offers eCPMs of up to $20 — which should be music to the ears of game developers.

The startup is bootstrapped at this point, but it has already begun working with developers like Joybits and Brisk Mobile, and is in the process of converting more.

For another gaming startup making some cool strides in location-based features, especially in regard to gaming check-ins, check out our recent coverage of Heyzap.

For more on PlacePlay, check out the video below:

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For starters, the platform is focused on giving game developers the ability to quickly add local tournaments into gameplay, so that a user can, for example, play a virtual game of Battleship with other players that live on the same block. Though tournaments are the primary feature of the platform at this point, PlacePlay also supports location-based virtual goods, objects, achievements, and more.

PlacePlay is targeting Apple iOS as its main platform, but it just so happens that Apple prevents mobile developers from displaying location-based advertising in apps if they don’t include location based features. Happily for developers, because PlacePlay gives them easy access to location-based features for gameplay, developers also have the ability to take advantage of integrated local advertising networks to not only drive more engagement via in-game activities like tournaments, but also gives them access to higher ad revenue from targeted local advertising.

PressOK CEO and Co-founder Ryan Morel says that the simple truth is that it’s much easier to drive consumer action as part of gameplay than to drive action outside of gameplay, i.e. implicit user behavior versus explicit. In other words, if game developers were to add no reward for a user to join, say, a game’s leaderboard (other than it being free), but added incentive for users to play in certain locations (like free level packs for completing location-based challenges) — engagement is still going to be much higher in leaderboards, which are implicitly part of gameplay, rather than actions that are not.

There’s less friction for a consumer to participate in a local tournament than there is to get them to take some specific action at a specific place or time. When it comes to appeal for advertisers, it’s hard to find location-based games that overcome these challenges and still have a large enough user base to be relevant, he says.

In allowing third party developers access to PlacePlay’s SDK, the startup hopes that it will be able to collect data from a large number of users, across a wide set of games, by integrating features gamers love (like leaderboards, tournaments, virtual goods, etc.) around location. In the short term, Morel says, PlacePlay will monetize through integrated local ad networks, and longterm the startup plans to monetize through direct deals with brands and sponsors. Widespread distribution of its SDK among game developers will obviously be key if this is to happen.

Thus, the value proposition for PlacePlay is that it allows developers to drive both engagement and revenue; based on early testing, PlacePlay increases end-user engagement by 1.6-times and offers eCPMs of up to $20 — which should be music to the ears of game developers.

The startup is bootstrapped at this point, but it has already begun working with developers like Joybits and Brisk Mobile, and is in the process of converting more.

For another gaming startup making some cool strides in location-based features, especially in regard to gaming check-ins, check out our recent coverage of Heyzap.

For more on PlacePlay, check out the video below:

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The problem is, for those who work far from company headquarters, or in a startup or small business, finding cool, local office space can be tricky. It is for this reason that Campbell McKellar and team created Loosecubes, a community marketplace for workspace that connects people who have great workspace with those who need it.

Loosecubes aims to bring the many online connections we cultivate on a daily basis into the real world, during business hours, by enabling wayfaring professionals to find awesome shared workspace. Founded in 2010, Loosecubes offers, at least superficially, a similar service to Liquidspaces. But Loosecubes takes a more social, or person-to-person approach to finding shared office space. As McKellar says, “it’s about so much more than finding a desk”, it’s about finding available office space offered by people with interests (and professions) that are similar to your own.

The startup is broadly launching a public redesign today, though it will remain in public beta, to build off the traction it received at SxSW this year with its Instant Jelly app, which allowed conference-goers to create spontaneous co-working events with people of similar professions.

So, in order to create a more personalized marketplace for shared office space, Loosecubes is launching some cool new functionality today that includes “Recommended Spaces”, in which the startup will tap into your social graph (via Facebook Connect) to recommend office space based on your friends, location, and line of work.

Loosecubes also enables “Hosts”, or those with office space to rent and share, to post office space for free and to invite coworkers or friends to come share the office space. Hosts can specify which type of professionals they’d like to host, like entrepreneurs, developers, investors, etc., as well as including pictures of the office space, location, and so on. (Beware of hosting bloggers, though, they will drink all your coffee and slow your WiFi to a crawl.)

And for those looking for space rather than looking to host, Loosecubes provides search functionality, in which users can look for coworking space by city, address, or zip. Once users find space they’re interested in, they can message the host and work out the terms of their new professional coworking relationship. Users can specify on their profiles, or in messages to their hosts, whether they’re looking for office space for the day or for a month, Loosecubes doesn’t limit these requests by duration — it’s up to the respective parties to decide.

In terms of pricing, Loosecubes members who are invited to cowork receive special deals on a space when they’re invited, in order to incentivize you office-space-hunters to join the Loosecubes network. What’s more, the Airbnb for office space lets users pay online for office space. The startup charges a 10 percent transaction fee, because even though they’re backed by Accel and Battery Ventures for $1.23 million, they need to make money somehow. For the first 60 days, however, Loosecubes will be waiving that 10 percent transaction, so if you want to avoid the surcharges, sign up now.

Host offices decide how much to charge, but Loosecubes encourages those hosting office space to include printing, scanning, faxing, phone, etc. in the price so that you’re not met with additional charges. But, in the end, Loosecubes just provides the marketplace, the sellers decide the terms. Once Loosecubes comes out of public beta, it will likely begin charging for listings, but until then it’s free to list and use.

Airbnb, Hotel Tonight, Hurricane Party, BatchBlue, and SnapGoods are among the startups already offering office space on Loosecubes. Other office space of not includes Rickshaw Bags headquarters, Red Paper Clip, Platform4 in Denmark, and Society M in Glasgow.

All in all, Loosecubes’ new design looks fantastic, and search is much improved, though I’m still waiting for mobile apps. The New York City-based startup is getting some good buzz right now, so check ‘em out and let us know if you’ll be joining in or opting out.

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This maiden voyage for Android has quite a few of the familiar features that Path fans have come to enjoy, but according to Path Co-founder Dave Morin, there’s much more to come.

For those unfamiliar with Path, the startup was founded in 2010 by Dave Morin and Dustin Mierau as an alternative approach to the idea of broadly sharable social information, targeting sharing among a smaller group of close friends and family. With a 50 friend limit, Path chose to offer no outside sharing features, Facebook, or Twitter. The team later amended this by adding a complementary app for Twitter photo sharing called With and has added a host of features, like Stacks, and more.

Since its inception, the startup has grown in fits and starts, but has been on a kick this year, turning down a $100 million acquisition offer from Google and raising an $8.5 million round from Kleiner, Index, and more.

Though the app got its start on iOS and has grown its feature set on Apple’s platform, today proves that there’s no OS bias over at Path. After all, it seems par for the course today for app developers to start with Apple before moving to Android. As is such, Path’s Android v1.0 doesn’t quite offer the full suite of features available on iOS, but it does include quite a few of the components Path is known for.

Users capture and share photos with the same 50-friend limit, tag moments with people, places, and things, view friends’ moments, and make use Path emoticons to let friends and family know how you feel about their pictures and moments. Users can also take advantage of chat, see when friends have viewed their moments, and even publish a few moments to Facebook.

It’s a great start for an Android public beta, and there’s more to come. As Path’s blog entry indicates, the startup will “continue to iterate and release updates with more features frequently”, and uses can expect things to improve rapidly as Path continues through beta.

Path is currently available for users of Eclair version 2.1 and up.

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This maiden voyage for Android has quite a few of the familiar features that Path fans have come to enjoy, but according to Path Co-founder Dave Morin, there’s much more to come.

For those unfamiliar with Path, the startup was founded in 2010 by Dave Morin and Dustin Mierau as an alternative approach to the idea of broadly sharable social information, targeting sharing among a smaller group of close friends and family. With a 50 friend limit, Path chose to offer no outside sharing features, Facebook, or Twitter. The team later amended this by adding a complementary app for Twitter photo sharing called With and has added a host of features, like Stacks, and more.

Since its inception, the startup has grown in fits and starts, but has been on a kick this year, turning down a $100 million acquisition offer from Google and raising an $8.5 million round from Kleiner, Index, and more.

Though the app got its start on iOS and has grown its feature set on Apple’s platform, today proves that there’s no OS bias over at Path. After all, it seems par for the course today for app developers to start with Apple before moving to Android. As is such, Path’s Android v1.0 doesn’t quite offer the full suite of features available on iOS, but it does include quite a few of the components Path is known for.

Users capture and share photos with the same 50-friend limit, tag moments with people, places, and things, view friends’ moments, and make use Path emoticons to let friends and family know how you feel about their pictures and moments. Users can also take advantage of chat, see when friends have viewed their moments, and even publish a few moments to Facebook.

It’s a great start for an Android public beta, and there’s more to come. As Path’s blog entry indicates, the startup will “continue to iterate and release updates with more features frequently”, and uses can expect things to improve rapidly as Path continues through beta.

Path is currently available for users of Eclair version 2.1 and up.

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Originally posted at The Download Blog

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What can you use the application for?


Answers On Startups is a collaborative answer resource for business owners. The website caters to owners of startups who have questions or those who can provide answers. Users can submit a question with a title and appropriate tags. Other users can search these questions to see if any match what they need. Those with information and experience can check out a list of currently unanswered questions to see if they can provide the insight or information the poster was searching for. The tag system also gives users another way to browse questions. Answers On Startups includes a badge system that lets users earn notoriety within the community by completing tasks and adding a badge to their profile. Badges are earned for a variety of activities, from voting 300 or more times to leaving 10 comments or flagging an inappropriate post. The badges are broken down into three categories based on how advanced each task is. Bronze badges are earned for basic use of the site while silver badges are given for those who achieve longer term goals. Gold badges are reserved for those who are very active on the site.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Answers On Startups was created to help business owners find solutions and information. The website is currently in public beta, and notes that public beta typically lasts anywhere from 60 to 90 days. The site does not provide a specific timeframe as far as when it will officially launch.

What are the differences to other applications?


Answers On Startups gives users a detailed resource that allows them to ask any specific question and get helpful answers. There are many resources already out there, but Answers On Startups is one of the few to incorporate elements of blogs, forums, Digg, Reddit and Wikis. This gives users many ways to participate, find assistance and get assistance.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Answers On Startups welcomes users with an organized design that features dark blue, red and hints of orange. The color scheme works well against the website’s white background. The homepage features top questions, revealing the number of views, answers and votes the question has received as well as all the tags applied to it. Users can also toggle between hot questions, weekly questions and monthly questions. Six navigational links at the top, right hand corner of the page help the user find unanswered questions, tags, other users, badges, past questions and the form to submit a question.

How does the registration process work?


Visitors are not required to create an account to view or search for questions. However to get the full benefit of Answers On Startups, the user should create an account. This can be done by clicking the light blue “Log In” link in the upper, right hand corner of the page (inside the dark blue header). Users can sign in with an existing Google, Yahoo, My OpenID, AOL, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, VeriSign, LiveJournal, ClickPass or ClaimID account. Those who prefer to create a new account can click the blue “Click Here to Sign Up” link just below. The registration form (which is offered through OpenID) requires a username, password, email address and terms of service agreement.

What does it cost to use the application?


Answers On Startups is available to all users for free. There are no subscription fees or other charges for creating an account and utilizing the site. It is still in beta, so it is possible that a premium paid membership could be added later on. For the time being, there are no expenses for using Answers On Startups.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Answers On Startups is an excellent tool for business owners who need solutions to their questions. The website is easy to use and free, making it an economical choice. The question submission form allows users to get specific answers that might be difficult to find elsewhere.

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Originally posted at News – Microsoft

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Watching television shows at the time they air is so 2000s — about 40% of US households now own a DVR and another 40% regularly watch long form video online.

Viewers who want to pair real-time online conversation with television, however, are still left out when it comes to television-on-demand.

Startup service TweePlayer, which launched its public beta Tuesday, aims to provide a solution for these viewers that gives the best of both worlds. The product records real-time conversations surrounding television events and syncs them with recorded episodes.

Users can select Twitter conversations from shows, sporting events or award shows to play as they watch the recorded event on their televisions. If they want to add something, their tweet is inserted into the conversation as though it were actually happening in real-time. Other TweePlayer users who play the conversation will see that tweet at the appropriate time.

So far, the startup has a list of about 5,000 events for which it is recording conversations based on dynamic target keywords. While television shows make up the bulk of this list, it’s also possible to apply the tool to conference videos, podcasts or any other type of media. Users can create their own “Twitter event harvests” by following @TweePLayer on Twitter and adding an event.

Eventually the company plans to give users an option to create more specific conversation channels. Someone could, for instance, create a “spoiler free” channel for a television show. Options to limit conversations to social network connections or people nearby are also in the pipeline.

When it comes to monetizing the tweet harvester, CEO and founder Mick Darling says there are a few options. Tomorrowish, the startup behind TweePlayer, might provide white box solutions for companies like Hulu, or it might sell premium accounts that include commentary from people like actors and conference keynotes. Darling is also talking with several brands about providing sentiment and engagement analytics for specific television shows.

[data via NYT and Park Associates]

More About: DVR, Tomorrowish, TweePlayer, twitter

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What are the hottest links, videos, movies, photos, music and events amongst your circle of online friends? New site Utopic attempts to answer that question by surfacing trending content in these categories from your social connections on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

“We want to do one thing and do it well,” says Utopic CEO and co-founder Jüri Kaljundi. “That one thing is to find good and interesting content via friends and social circles.”

Utopic, released in public beta two weeks ago, sits on the same social swing set with iPad app Flipboard, already a popular kid on the playground, and the Facebook newspaper PostPost. Its offering is mostly web-based and delivers on the single purpose promise by surfacing trending and relevant music, video and photos from a user’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube connections.

New users need only connect their social accounts, and Utopic will highlight the hottest hits in a visually pleasing content montage. Users can check out popular photos, watch trending YouTube videos or listen to tracks, and sort by content type for a filtered look at what their friends are sharing and talking about. The experience also allows the user to like, favorite and share content on Facebook and Twitter.

Utopic is a self-learning system that learns from the user’s activity, considers what friends and friends of friends are sharing and posting, and even factors in global trends to create an elastic experience that evolves with time.

The self-learning and backend data capture and analysis features are what Kaljundi believes set Utopic apart from the competition. “Utopic is not just a UI play,” he says. “Even for just 1,000 users, we have collected more than 3 million links they and their friends have shared, retweeted or liked. This can open interesting possibilities in the future for trend analysis.”

Trend analysis factors into the startup’s future plans. Utopic, which Kaljundi assures me is more than just a hobby project, has raised a small amount of funding — $70,000 to be exact — from a few European angels. Notably, Skype’s founding engineer Ahti Heinla is one of them.

Utopic’s beta product will evolve to include more social site integrations, and the founders are looking at raising more funding to help finance faster growth.

More About: facebook, personalized news, social news, twitter, utopic, youtube

For more Startups coverage:

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Yahoo has launched a new search feature that anticipates queries as users write them.

The feature, Search Direct, is similar to the Instant Search Feature that Google released in September. In a press release,Yahoo distinguished its product as a query tool for answers, not links.

Results (or answers) on Search Direct are displayed in a box that drops down from the search box. As soon as a user places his cursor in the search box, the drop-down display shows trending search topics. Once the user begins to type, it shows the 10 most likely search terms. If one of those terms involves Yahoo content — movie times, weather, financial information — then a preview of that content appears.

Hitting the search button or enter displays normal Yahoo search results.

During a press conference call, Yahoo said a tablet Search Direct product will eventually be available and that space in the drop-down box will be available to advertisers.

The public beta product is currently live at search.yahoo.com. Try it out and let us know how you like it in the comments below.

More About: Google, Search, Search Direct, Yahoo

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

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Yahoo has launched a new search feature that anticipates queries as users write them.

The feature, Search Direct, is similar to the Instant Search Feature that Google released in September. In a press release,Yahoo distinguished its product as a query tool for answers, not links.

Results (or answers) on Search Direct are displayed in a box that drops down from the search box. As soon as a user places his cursor in the search box, the drop-down display shows trending search topics. Once the user begins to type, it shows the 10 most likely search terms. If one of those terms involves Yahoo content — movie times, weather, financial information — then a preview of that content appears.

Hitting the search button or enter displays normal Yahoo search results.

During a press conference call, Yahoo said a tablet Search Direct product will eventually be available and that space in the drop-down box will be available to advertisers.

The public beta product is currently live at search.yahoo.com. Try it out and let us know how you like it in the comments below.

More About: Google, Search, Search Direct, Yahoo

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Yahoo has launched a new search feature that anticipates queries as users write them.

The feature, Search Direct, is similar to the Instant Search Feature that Google released in September. In a press release,Yahoo distinguished its product as a query tool for answers, not links.

Results (or answers) on Search Direct are displayed in a box that drops down from the search box. As soon as a user places his cursor in the search box, the drop-down display shows trending search topics. Once the user begins to type, it shows the 10 most likely search terms. If one of those terms involves Yahoo content — movie times, weather, financial information — then a preview of that content appears.

Hitting the search button or enter displays normal Yahoo search results.

During a press conference call, Yahoo said a tablet Search Direct product will eventually be available and that space in the drop-down box will be available to advertisers.

The public beta product is currently live at search.yahoo.com. Try it out and let us know how you like it in the comments below.

More About: Google, Search, Search Direct, Yahoo

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Yahoo has launched a new search feature that anticipates queries as users write them.

The feature, Search Direct, is similar to the Instant Search Feature that Google released in September. In a press release,Yahoo distinguished its product as a query tool for answers, not links.

Results (or answers) on Search Direct are displayed in a box that drops down from the search box. As soon as a user places his cursor in the search box, the drop-down display shows trending search topics. Once the user begins to type, it shows the 10 most likely search terms. If one of those terms involves Yahoo content — movie times, weather, financial information — then a preview of that content appears.

Hitting the search button or enter displays normal Yahoo search results.

During a press conference call, Yahoo said a tablet Search Direct product will eventually be available and that space in the drop-down box will be available to advertisers.

The public beta product is currently live at search.yahoo.com. Try it out and let us know how you like it in the comments below.

More About: Google, Search, Search Direct, Yahoo

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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“Whoever are my friends on Qik – I can watch a feed of what they’re doing,” he explains. “So for example, at SXSW, I pull up the feed, and all my friends that have been recording videos and doing things – I can watch them and enjoy them. It provides a complete mobile video solution for you to interact with your friends and family.”

“We started back in 2006 – June – and our premise was how can we make video very interactive – especially over the cell networks, which has its own variability to it, so how can we provide a very compelling video experience to the users of mobile phones, and that’s how we started,” Roy says, recalling the early days of Qik.

They launched a Qik public beta in July 2008.

Qik was then acquired by Skype this past January. As Skype purchased the company, Qik was already available on over 200 different phones running Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, and Windows Mobile. On many of them, Qik comes preloaded.

“The entire product that we are launching actually leverages the capabilities tha we have built, and this capability is not just on the iPhone (which works today) but we have brought it to all the other phones as well,” says Roy. “It leverages the cloud as a storage capability so it uses cloud to wherever it’s recording in order to provide the best quality of experience.”

“So Qik in essence, is a way for you to share moments with your friends and family, whether it be through live video chat, live video streaming, or just record and share it with your friends on Facebook,” he adds.

If you’ve watched much video on your phone, you probably know that it tends to drain the battery. This is something Qik has considered thoughtfully, according to Roy.

“What we have done is – that’s one of the key things that we have worked very hard on…that’s where the cloud comes in, where we try to put more processing by the cloud servers, rather than try to do it on the handset,” he says. “So if you’re trying to do more on the handset – trying to do more and more here – obviously you’re gong to leverage more CPU, more battery power, so we tried to put all the processing – all the hard processing on the server – let the servers handle that, and so that way the client itself becomes a light client, and so it doesn’t consume as much battery overall.”

There are free and premium versions of Qik Video Connect. Qik Video Connect Plus costs $2.99 in the App Store, and includes additional features like: video editing, real-time effects, HD Quality video, and video sync.

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Want to discuss the latest gadgets & technology? Sign up to the all new TFTS Forums and get active. We look forward to connecting with you.

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Want to discuss the latest gadgets & technology? Sign up to the all new TFTS Forums and get active. We look forward to connecting with you.

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Gist can help you out by getting the names, pictures, social networks and work information of your contacts from multiple online destinations. After the break let us take a closer at Gist, the Social CRM.

Overview

Gist provides the full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details. All of this is achieved by pulling together all your contacts from your various inboxes, address books, social networks and other sources then adding news, status updates and blog posts to them creating a rich business profile for everyone in your network.

Overview

By spanning a large number online contact and content sources, Gist users are better informed with insights and actionable information about clients, contacts and most importantly prospects. Gist is currently in public beta and is free for everyone until further notice.

Using Gist

Apps & Plugins

You can access Gist and gain access to the social connections by taking advantage of any of their number of app and plugins. Name a platform and you can bet that they have an app for accessing Gist from there. There are browser plugins, Gmail extensions, Outlook plugins, smartphone apps, on Enterprise software like Salesforce and then there is the web app too.

The Firefox and Chrome browser plugins help you leverage your existing Gmail account and letting you switch between sending email, connecting on a social network or even make a Skype call.

Using a Microsoft Outlook clients behind a corporate firewall? There is a plugin for that too! Gist adds dynamic profiles for everyone in your inbox and calendar. A plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird would make Gist more ubiqutous.

Privacy & Security Notifications

After a tidy looking sign up page that requires only the vital details from you and email activation of the account, you will be taken to a welcome page that briefs about the process of importing contacts. We should really appreciate Gist for being upfront with us for clearly mentioning what happens next.

Welcome Page

Since they handle sensitive personal and professional contact information, Gist has a dedicated section section that literally promises the safe keep of all your data. Nicely done Gist, consider myself assured of the safety of my data!

Importing Contacts

Importing Contacts

Gist can import contacts from a lot of services and apps that are neatly arranged in their respective categories. For example, in the Email & Calenders section, we have all the available services that fall into that category. I chose importing from Gmail from the first category.

Import Options

In certain cases, Gist offers more options for in depth search and import of data. You can add Google Apps account in place of Gmail address too. Multiple imports can be done simultaneously and everything happens in the background. All authorizations happen via OAuth and you don’t have to enter your credentials at Gist.

CSV & VCARD Import

It’s great to see import options for CSV and vCard files.

Dashboard

Finishing Up

Before going to the dashboard, Gist updates you about the status of the import and the rich profiles that are being put together for them. The sneak preview will make everyone so excited.

Dashboard

Upon first launch, recent news stream will be displayed and you can change that from the drop down menu at the top.

Viewing Contacts

Contact View

Gist brings all your contacts into one place to give you a full view of your network making it easy to find anyone, anytime. Automatically get the latest news, blog posts and tweets for anyone in your professional network delivered where you want it, when you want it. This way you can always keep up to date with all of your contacts.

Contact Information

A consolidated contact information can be accessed from the Contact View section. Use the slider to change the default importance value of a contact if there is any discrepancy.

News & Updates

News & Updates

Gist pulls information from over 60,000 news sources, 20 million blogs and content feeds from popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook to bring you the latest about your contacts in one place.

Requesting Profile Update

Email addresses, phone numbers, work details and more all assembled and updated automatically. At any time if you feel that the information has to be verified again, there is an option to directly ask your contacts to provide their latest information by requesting a profile update.

Meeting & Sharing

Sharing on Facebook

It’s so easy to share news and information directly from the Dashboard. With the click of a button you can post updates to social networks like Twitter and Facebook or share with others via email.

Upcoming Events

All the information you need for your next meeting or appointment is automatically assembled and updated giving you the latest company news and updates from contacts.

Final Thoughts

Gist removes the noise from individual email alerts, eliminates the hassle of going to multiple services to get news and updates about contacts and automates the delivery and presentation of the most important information about the contacts in your professional network. At first glnce, the app might be a bit intimidating and complex looking, but is very easy to adapt. At the end of the evaluation, I was so impressed with Gist, I have now installed the browser plugins and the iOS app. Am sure you will like it too!

Share Your Thoughts!

Do you like the concept of Social CRM over the conventional one? How much would you be willing to pay for Gist once it comes out of beta?

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Memolane

Quick Pitch: Memolane automatically creates a searchable, visual timeline using your history from various social media accounts.

Genius Idea: If you want to record any aspect of your life in real-time, you have your pick of services: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picassa, Instagram, Myspace, Foursquare, TripIt, SPotify, Last.fm, and Youtube, to name just a few.

But if you want to reflect upon these moments that took so many taps to record, for the most part, you’re out of luck.

“There is a gap on the internet today that we are drowning in the success of social media services, capturing the moment, yet we are neglecting the opportunity to capture all of the great moments and make them memorable,” explains Memolane co-founder Eric Lagier.

His solution to this gap, which launched its public beta on Tuesday, compiles posts from all of your social media accounts into a searchable, scrollable timeline. When you want to remember, let’s say, a vacation, you can search for that point in the timeline to see Foursquare check-ins, photos, videos and updates you made during that time period.

Lagier built the first version of the product at a hackathon. He says it’s been useful during business trips to recall fond memories of his family, which the web app instantly provides when he types in their names.

Beyond just recalling good times (or the name of that restaurant that you ate at last month) Memolane also enables users to collaborate on shareable “stories” by selecting posts from their timelines to create a scrapbook-like timeline for an event or topic. During SXSW, Memolane will be challenging conference attendees to build the best such story in order to win an iPad 2.

As of now, the Denmark and San Francisco-based company has no defined plan for revenue intake and is running on a $2 million round of funding from August Capital and Atomico Ventures. The team’s first priority at the moment is to create an API that will allow the platform to include even more social media accounts within its users personal timelines.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke

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

More About: memolane, startup, timeline

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This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what they’re doing to grow.

Your credit score carries significant weight in your financial life. Want to rent an apartment or buy a car? Good luck doing so with a bad credit score. The same logic applies to landing a job if you have a negative online reputation.

So says MyWebCareer, an early stage startup that has developed algorithms to run your “Career Score,” a credit check for your professional web persona. The service analyzes your Facebook profile, LinkedIn network, Twitter account and Google juice — evaluating more than 200 different variables in the process — and spits out a score between 350 to 850.

Where you fall could be an indicator of how employable you are and indicate your overall professional attractiveness.

Credit Check

Once you grant MyWebCareer access to Facebook and/or LinkedIn, the service works to retrieve employment history and searches Google for references to you in any of the positions you’ve claimed to have held. The startup is also running semantic analysis on your Facebook updates, checking out your Stack Overflow profile, if you have one, and factoring in your Klout score, among other things.

The resulting score — which remains private until you opt to share it publicly — is evaluated against your peers in three areas: your connectedness, professional online brand and internet search footprint. The service will highlight potentially offending status updates and make specific recommendations for how you can improve your score.

If a search query doesn’t bring up results, for instance, relating to past jobs, MyWebCareer will call your attention to these eyebrow-raising issues.

The public beta service, only having launched in February, is far from complete. Co-founders Greg Coyle and Nip Zalavadia say they want to make the Career Score as reflective of your online reputation as possible. This means they’ll continue to add data sources — like Quora once there’s a publicly accessible API — in the future.

The Credit Bureau of the Web?

If MyWebCareer’s calculation is meant to be a credit score for your digital life, then the startup aims to be like an Experian or Equifax.

This presents it with the challenge of convincing consumers, and eventually business users, that its score means something significant, beyond the novelty of the site itself. Because other startups also traffic in reputation management (Brand-Yourself) and online influence scoring (Klout), this will not be an easy sell.

In a month’s time, the startup has acquired more than 4,000 users, according to Coyle and Zavaladia. Not overly impressive numbers, and more interesting, perhaps, is that a significant subset of users are openly sharing their scores via Facebook or Twitter and helping to bring in new members — 20% of new users sign-up through this network effect.

In the product pipeline are new features that could better drive home the utility of the service. A premium version is slated for early April release and should offer the full breadth of everything that MyWebCareer evaluates for a small monthly or yearly fee.

Also in the works is an enterprise version that will allow employers to evaluate content without giving them direct access to a candidate’s Facebook or LinkedIn profile, says Coyle and Zalavadia. This will eventually be positioned as a recruitment tool that employers can use to discover potential talent with high Career Scores in certain industries.

So long as MyWebCareer can figure out what their score really means, it could have bright future. Employers are socially screening candidates and employees are more likely than ever to have blemished online records, so there is an audience for the product.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sdominick

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

More About: career score, facebook, influence, mywebcareer, online reputation, reputation, spark-of-genius, twitter

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As of a few weeks ago, Authentic Jobs and portions of this site have been running on Happy Cog Hosting. So far it’s been very reliable, and the customer service has been top-notch.

The doors are now open for a limited public beta. But take note, this isn’t a replacement to your $10/month host. Instead,

It’s for people who are tired of managing their own infrastructure and would rather have someone else do it. It’s for sites with impressive traffic and bandwidth requirements. It’s also not for people who want to manage every aspect of their infrastructure through a feature-saturated control panel. It’s about professionals working with professionals and delivering respectful, attentive service. It’s rock-solid, white glove hosting for people who cringe at the idea of hosting.

There’s only one plan and only one price: $799/month. If you’re running a LAMP stack implementation and fit the profile above, please get in touch with me here or on Twitter. I have some invitations I’d love to hand out.

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Continue reading: Google Android App Inventor Now Open To Everyone With A Google Account [Google App Inventor Out Of Beta, Set To Democratize App Creation]

Comment | View latest news in Audio,Visual | Mobile/Cell Phones | TFTS Home.

TFTS Holiday Gift Guide 2010 | HOT POST: Motorola Droid X Android 2.3.340 (Gingerbread?) Update Hitting Soon?

Related Reading on TFTS – In Order of Freshness:

1. Google Responds To Oracle Lawsuit [Google Says Oracle Lawsuit On Android Is An Attack On Open-Source Community, Don't Look - It's Going To Be Ugly] by Kevin Schram
2. Google Sued By Oracle Over Android [Open-Source Mobile OS From Google Is Being Sued By Database Giant, Infringes On Java Patents] by Kevin Schram
3. App Inventor Gets Released By Google For Android [Google Releases App Inventor For Android, Allows Consumers With No Coding Knowledge To Create Their Own Apps] by Jeff Baker
4. Audible Audiobook App For Android Now Available In Beta [Audible App For Android Now Available As Public Beta, Download The App From The Audible for Android (beta) Google Group] by Robert Nelson

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Newly available in Public Beta (currently), Git Tower is a Mac app, built in Cocoa, that provides a GUI for working with the Git version control system. One of the most frequently asked questions on Nettuts+ is, “What’s the best GUI for working with Git?” It’s no wonder: Git can be incredibly confusing at first. In today’s video quick tip, we’ll take a first look at this new app.

Conclusion

So what do you think? I’m curious to hear how Git newbs view this app, as opposed to seasoned veterans? To the latter, do you see any advantages to using a GUI? Thanks for watching!

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The rumor mill has been buzzing for months about the imminent arrival of a new “Facebook browser” called RockMelt.

Well, it really does exist, and it’s here. RockMelt is being released as a limited public beta Sunday. Anyone can sign up to test it out, but the release will be throttled so as not to overload the cloud-based components of the app. RockMelt will be doling out download links as quickly as it can manage on a first-come, first-served basis.

The two founders, CEO Eric Vishria and CTO Tim Howes, demonstrated RockMelt to Wired a few days before Sunday’s launch.

It’s based on Chromium, so it inherits Google Chrome’s speed, looks, and basic functionality on both Mac and Windows.

And while its Facebook integration runs deep, RockMelt is not exactly a Facebook browser. It’s a social web browser, allowing you to post links, videos and status updates to both Facebook and Twitter (that’s it for now, but more services will be added later). There are also built-in clients for consuming your Facebook feed and managing multiple Twitter feeds, a chat client, and lightweight RSS reader. It does use your Facebook account to personalize the experience, but its reach is broader than just Facebook.

We’ve seen browsers custom-built for the social web before, most notably Flock, which launched as a MySpaced-up version of Firefox. Mozilla experimented with Ubiquity, an in-browser tool for posting to different social sites and interacting with web services. There are a number of add-ons that can embed social networking dashboards into the browser for you. These tools have grown in popularity as we’ve struggled to manage the ever-increasing flow of links, media and bits shared by our online friends.

So, the idea isn’t original. And RockMelt doesn’t sport a complete re-invention of the browser interface, either. But it is very streamlined, and there are some key elements that people who live and breathe the social web will find intriguing.

First of all, you log in to RockMelt before you use it. You authorize the browser to connect to your Facebook account, and the browser is instantly customized for your social circle, showing your friends and your favorite sites in slim sidebars — or “edges,” to use the RockMelt parlance.

The edge on the left has your picture at the top, and the friends you interact with the most appear in a list below you. To send a new tweet or to update your Facebook status, you click on your picture. To send your friend a message or start a new chat with them, click on their photo. You can also share things by grabbing an image or video on the web page and dragging it on top of your friend’s icon.

The edge on the right has small icons for each of the services RockMelt tracks for you (only Facebook and Twitter for now) as well as spaces to add RSS feeds from your favorite sites.

The “edges” aren’t intrusive — they are less than 50 pixels wide each — but they do add extra visual heft.

“You can’t forget you’re a browser, and you can’t get in people’s way,” says RockMelt CEO Eric Vishra. “We designed these edges to be very thin, to be there when you want, and to blend in when you don’t.” You can also dismiss them with hot keys.

Clicking on one of the icons in the right edge — either Twitter, Facebook or a website icon — brings up a little pane that shows recent posts and activities from that source. Following the “keep things out of the way” philosophy, these panels can pop out from the browser to float freely if you want.

All of your user data is stored in the cloud by RockMelt (on Amazon servers) and synced when you log in, so no matter whose copy of RockMelt you’re using, you see your own custom version of the browser. Others are moving in this direction, too — Chrome connects to your Google account and Firefox has an agnostic Account Manager. But RockMelt’s Facebook integration is central to the experience.

RockMelt is polling Facebook, Twitter and your favorite sites periodically to check for updates (There’s no Firehose or PubSubHubbub magic yet, the founders tell us). But the feeds are real-timey enough. Updates show up in under a minute, often less. The updates are collected by the cloud service and pushed down to the browser.

There’s also a big “Share” button at the top of the browser. Clicking this button opens up an all-purpose sharing window, so you can tweet a link, post something to your Facebook wall or send the link as a message to a friend. Not a huge innovation, as we’ve seen something similar in Flock, but it’s nice.

Lastly, when you use the web search box in the browser, you get another floating window pane that shows the top ten search results. You can click (or navigate with keys) through this list, and the results flip by in the main browser window. RockMelt starts pre-fetching and rendering each one of those ten search results as soon as they show up (with Flash blocked). When you click through the list, you’re seeing real web pages, not snapshots, and you don’t have to wait for the individual pages to load. It’s wicked fast, like flipping through a stack of cards. It sounds bandwidth hoggish, but the browser calculates how much pre-fetching your connection can handle and adjusts accordingly.

Those are the big features. But let’s consider for a moment the elephant in the room: RockMelt is very, very Facebooky. It uses Facebook to sign you in, the in-browser chat experience is built on Facebook Chat, and when you share something via a message, you’re sending them a Facebook mail.

The founders say there are investigating other login experiences, like Twitter sign-in or OpenID logins using Google, Yahoo or AOL accounts.

“We’re going to remain agnostic and pick the services that the most people want to use,” Vishra says, but the team decided to “go deep” on Facebook simply because of the site’s size and volume.

Although it’s disappointing to see that the browser doesn’t play as well on the open web as it does on Facebook’s web, the tight focus makes sense for a young browser trying to gain a foothold in the mass market: Go drop your line where the fish are biting.

The downside being, of course, that if you’re not a Facebook person, RockMelt isn’t as interesting. I could see it being useful for Twitter power users who have a Facebook account, even if they don’t use Facebook heavily. But if that’s your angle, RockMelt’s chat and messaging features, which are based entirely on Facebook, are nothing more than food coloring.

See also:

• New Flock Is Simpler, Now Based on Chrome
• Mozilla Gets It Right, Moves Identity Management Into Firefox
• New ‘OpenID Connect’ Proposal Could Solve Many of the Social Web’s Woes

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Blekko’s alternative search engine — a $24 million venture-backed project that’s been three years in the making — is today launching its public beta. With the official rollout, Blekko is also releasing several new features designed for both mainstream and the site’s super users.

As you may recall, Blekko is designed to eliminate spam search results, allowing users to search just a subset of the web through its proprietary slashtag technology.

The most significant upgrade to Blekko’s search engine is the addition of slashtags that auto-fire for queries that fall into one seven categories: health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels. Every time a Blekko user’s query is determined to be in one of these categories, Blekko will automatically append the associated slashtag to the query and limit results to just the subset of URLs that fall under that slashtag.

The auto-fire functionality is designed with passive searchers in mind, and aims to eliminate friction for first time users. The technology that powers these auto-slashtags was developed through an extensive research and development phase that involved analyzing the relationship between queries and the type of spam results they typically generate.

Blekko plans to introduce auto-slashing for additional categories moving forward, but selected to launch with ones that represent a high volume of search traffic and are typically laden with spammy results. Health, lyric and financial queries on Google or Bing, for instance, will return results dominated by poor quality content farms or malware-hosting sites. Those same searches on Blekko yield results only from high quality sites.

Blekko’s slashtag formula works because of passionate users who take the time to add and edit URLs for category slashtags. As such, the company has released new features to enable users to apply to be editors for slashtags as well as share their comments and feedback on individual slashtags. Think of this as the Wikipedia formula but applied to search, so a small percentage of users will work together to build out slashtags for the majority of Blekko searchers.

Blekko has been testing its solution to search with roughly 8,000 beta testers who have created more than 3,000 different slashtags. Blekko tells us that 11% of its existing user base come back to the site on a weekly basis. CEO Rich Skrenta and Founder Mike Markson have modest projections for the immediate future, but believe that once the site hits one to two million queries per day, it can be profitable.

Blekko is currently available on the web or as a mobile-optimized site, but mobile applications are also said to be in the works.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Robert Scoble

More About: blekko, Search, search engine, startup

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Continue reading: Windows Phone 7 Connector Beta Available to Mac Users [Apple Users Can Now Connect Their Windows Phone 7 To Their Macs With Download]

Comment | View latest news in Mobile/Cell Phones | PCs, Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets | TFTS Home.

Related Reading on TFTS – In Order of Freshness:

1. Windows Phone 7 Sync Software Coming For Mac [Despite Questionable Zune Support On Macs, Microsoft Turns New Leaf, Promises "Beta" Sync Software For WP7] by Kevin Schram
2. Windows 7 SP1 Now Available For Download [Microsoft Pushes Out Windows 7 SP1 Public Beta To All, Final Release Still A Ways Off] by Jeff Baker
3. Windows Live Essentials Beta Now Available For Download [The Program Called "Better than Mac For Photos" is Now Ready For Download] by Steve Andersen
4. StarCraft II Coming to Macs in Beta Form; You Should Buy Additional Pylons! [Blizzard to Launch StarCraft II Mac Beta in April Before or After Apple Announces the Intel Core i5/i7 MacBook Pro Update] by Chris Smith

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Android – Google – AppInventor – Android Market – Handhelds

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A post on Nokia Conversations, which is the official Nokia blog, summed them up as follows: “Availability of the Nokia Qt Software Development Kit (SDK) 1.0,” “Individuals can now register as Ovi Publishers,” “Public beta of Nokia signing Symbian apps for free,” “Availability of Nokia Smart Installer for Symbian,” and “Ovi Store intake for Qt apps.”

That should spare developers a first-time-signup-fee of $215.  Plus, it means lone developers and small groups can go neck-and-neck with more official organizations.

Of course, some may decide that, in a long-term sense, Nokia’s doing too little, too late.  Apple and Google appear to be on their way to dominating the mobile market in most respects.

Still, Nokia enjoys quite a large following for the time being, so developers who aren’t fixated on what might happen five or ten years down the line could benefit from these changes in a big way.

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That said, coming courtesy of the Windows Team Blog, we have a friendly reminder that Windows XP is only going to be around for a few more months. Well, a little more than four months at this point. The official end run date for Windows XP is October 22, 2010.

Basically, starting as of October 23rd, “OEMs will no longer be able to pre-install Windows XP Home on new netbook PCs.” Now initially, or at least back when XP was given the extension I had though it necessary. But now at this point in netbooks and available options for Windows it hardly seems needed anymore. After all, Windows 7 has come a long way and I am speaking as someone that has run Windows 7 on an Eee PC since the public beta was released back in January of 2009.

In addition, it seems that the numbers support my thoughts on Windows 7. Based on NPD’s Retail Tracking Service, as of April 2010;

“81% of netbook units sold at retail in the US came with Windows 7 pre-installed.”

Granted, much of those have probably been Windows 7 Starter, which does have some “quirks” but don’t get me started there. Moving right on, as of July 13th the support for Windows XP will end, that is unless you have the latest version (Service Pack 3) installed. And for those that will not give up on Windows XP, the end of life (even with SP3) will come in April 2014 at which time the support will officially and finally be over.

Of course, depending on your usage needs, there are also plenty of other nice options for a netbook operating system including Ubuntu as well as my personal favorite, Jolicloud.

Looking to get up to speed concerning the iPhone 4? See iPhone 4 – All You Need to Know about the Next Gen Apple iPhone.

Related Reading on TFTS:

1. Chrome OS Acer Netbook Coming by Mid 2010? [Acer Said to Unveil Chrome OS Netbooks Soon; Sell One Million of Them in 2010]
2. MSI Releases Two New Netbooks [Computex 2010 Witnesses MSI Releasing Two New 10 Inch Netbooks Called Fashion And Serene]
3. Apple’s 9.7-inch Touchscreen Netbook to Debut in October [Apple's Tablet to be Priced at $800, Released in October]
4. MeeGo for Chrome Now Available, Targets Netbooks & Nettops [MeeGo Netbook User Experience V1.0 Up for Download, MeeGo V1.1 Set for October]
5. MSI Unveils Trio Of Netbooks, Adds Confusion With Current Netbook Lineup [MSI Intro's The L1300, L1350 & L2300 Netbooks Which Look Similar To The Current U130, U135 & U230 Netbooks]

Not reading this in a feedreader? If so this has been taken from the original post as seen here: MSI Unveils Trio Of Netbooks, Adds Confusion With Current Netbook Lineup [MSI Intro's The L1300, L1350 & L2300 Netbooks Which Look Similar To The Current U130, U135 & U230 Netbooks].

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Not reading this in a feedreader? If so this has been taken from the original post as seen here: Adobe Shows off Flash 10.1 Beta for Android [Despite Backlash from Apple, Adobe Has Gone Ahead and Released a Flash 10.1 Beta for Android].

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Regator, the spiffy blog, news and feed reader, is opening up the doors on its latest version to a select few early adopters — including 200 Mashable readers. The latest iteration includes an amazing UI upgrade as well as some important social integrations.

We’ve been enthusiastic about Regator in the past. This simple feed-reading service works out of the box to help users find and consume the content they care about most. It launched almost two years ago and has been in public beta for almost as long. Today, we got a look at the shiny next generation of Regator and we’re impressed. The site’s best tools and features are much easier to find and use.

“We’re really excited to be opening up the private beta of the rebuilt, redesigned Regator.com today,” wrote Co-Founder Kimberly Turner. “The new Regator has a completely new interface as well as Facebook and Delicious integration, a cool new tool that lets you graph trends based on blog mentions, and dozens of other improvements.”

Here’s what the public beta of Regator looks like:

And here’s a sneak peak at the 2.0 version:

Regator’s next-gen app includes the following new features:

• New interface with large navigational tabs at the top.
• Lists of grouped trends that relate to the same story.
• Graphs comparing the coverage a keyword has received.
• Improved search with date, topic and blog filters.
• Facebook and Delicious integration.
• A setup wizard for quick onboarding with a user’s four favorite topics.
• RSS feeds for keywords.
• Improved blog profiles with graphs showing posts per day, related blogs and more.

In short, if you’re a blogaholic, the new Regator is a must-have tool. If you’re ready to sign up, we’ve got 200 invites. Just go to the new version’s preview site and in the field for invite codes type “Mashable.” If you get to the site after the invites are gone, be sure to put your email address on Regator’s wait list.

If you’ve had a chance to look over the refurbished site, let us know what you think of the new look and features in the comments.

Tags: invites, regator

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The new trend in online sharing has been experiencing an explosion lately. Just yesterday, The New York Times did a story on the new ways that people are sharing their personal information online. But then today, it came out that one of those companies exposed some of its users’ credit card numbers to Google search.

Oops! Online purchase sharing site Blippy just closed a $11.6 million round of funding. And it’s a good thing it did, because the company is going to continue getting a lot of flack for this for a long time.

Blippy lets its users share their purchasing information with their friends. According to The New York Times:

“This is all part of one big
trend: People are becoming more relaxed
about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces
of information about themselves can result in serendipitous
conversations — and little jolts of ego gratification.”

But no one on the site expected to publicize their credit card numbers. Except that is what happened this week — or at least what was discovered this week.

Blippy has never published personal credit card information. But it is included in the information it does use, before the company scrapes it out to share less dangerous purchasing information among users. Several months ago, when Blippy was in public beta, this transaction data was part of the underlying code on Blippy’s site. And it turned up in Google search results. Until today, when someone searched the terms “Blippy” and “from card” they were rewarded with credit card information from Blippy users.

Not all users were exposed. The credit card numbers shown belonged to only
four Blippy beta users. Since coming
out of
beta, Blippy has cleaned up its code so Google cannot scrape this info
from the site.

Blippy cofounder Philip Kaplan
tells VentureBeat:

“While it looks super-scary and
certainly sucks for those few people who
were affected, and is embarrassing to us, it’s a lot less bad than it
looks.”

On the ratios, it is. Not even all of Blippy’s beta users were affected. Four out of thousands is not a bad percentage. But it’s not good. And the fact that this was available on Google for MONTHS is equally bad news for Blippy.

Like the rest of us, the company only found out about the breach today. And while it’s completely possible that no one’s credit card info was actually stolen, this incident underlines a growing issue online.

Tiny start-ups trying to create “serendipitous conversations” are now dealing with very sensitive information online. And while consumers are trusting that they will be careful with their information, that’s not always possible.

Mostly because they’re creating their business models as they go. And their code. There is a very large room for error that these companies are working with. Take for example event sharing company Hot Potato, which relaunched at SXSW and accidentally rebooted its database, sending out hundreds of repeat emails and deleting the histories of many of its users.

Many people are wary of sharing intimate information online because they are not sure how it will be handled. Count many big companies among them. Including Amazon, which blocked its users from sharing their purchasing history with Blippy last year. Blippy got around that hurdle, by requesting access to users’ Gmail accounts, which they gladly handed over. They scraped users’ Amazon purchases from their emails and put them up for other users to see.

Blippy gets around 125,000 visitors a month. That’s nothing compared to Amazon’s traffic. And while there is no indication that Amazon would have been affected by this recent security lapse, it is sure to scare off larger companies signing on to work with Blippy in the future. Errors like this — even if it only truly affected four people — serve as a reminder that the new social web is not as safe as many would like.

Images: Blippy, Mashable

Microsoft Office 2010 has reached the release to manufacturing (RTM) stage, marking the end of development for the popular office software. Now the software will be distributed to manufacturers, followed by businesses, retailers, and customers.

In general, when a piece of software reaches the release to manufacturing stage, it is ready for mass distribution. Microsoft manufacturing partners and computer makers will get the software first, followed by businesses and then finally general customers. Product downloads for Volume License Partners begin on April 27th, while general customers can expect to see Office 2010 on shelves starting in June.

“RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone,” said Microsoft Corporate Vice-President Takeshi Numoto in a blog post earlier today. “It is also an appropriate time to re-emphasize our sincere gratitude to the more than 5,000 organizations and partners who have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products. Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we’ve had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version – that’s more than 3 times the number of 2007 beta downloads.”

Microsoft Office 2010 had one of the largest software beta tests ever; it’s the same approach the company took with building Windows 7, a tactic seems to have paid off for the technology giant.

Tags: microsoft, microsoft office, microsoft office 2010, Office 2010

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Hey there,

It’s Friday, so this roundup is devoted to all things “interesting! Some links are newsworthy and others just meet our “awesomeness” requirement, and regardless we think you’ll enjoy them:

• James Sturm, fearing he’s addicted to the internet, is going offline for four months. He’s blogging about it (via fax and phone) for Slate (via @kottke)
• iPad’s “mighty popover” (via Designing Agile)
• New York invasion by 8-bits creatures ! PIXELS is Patrick Jean’ latest short film, shot on location in New York.
• Quirky gets new funding for a crowdsourced way to produce your designs (via Fast Company)
• Visualization app Many Eyes, has rolled out a public beta of a project called Many Bills. Many Bills color-codes and organizes congressional bills (limited bills dropped in 2009 at this point) to make it easier for us to quickly comprehend what’s in a particular bill, some of which, you may have heard, can be thousands of pages long (via TechPresident)

Wildcard: Mindblowingly awesome photographer Kris Krug (@KK) talks about open design, media, & software standards (a year old, still entertains & inspires!)

Let us give you link love! Send your links to news@thinkvitamin.com

Handpicked by, Chrissie (@tenaciouscb)

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One month ago we wrote about the official Twitter app for BlackBerry, which has been in the works for quite some time now, bringing features such as automatic URL-shortening, easy photo-sharing, push and message list integration and search filtered by geolocation.

Today, the first public beta of the app is available in the BlackBerry App World. Based on the feedback from closed beta testing, the developers have added several additional features. These include notifications of new tweets and @replies/mentions, support for lists, profile editing and persionalization settings, and changing the font size and style.

You can get Twitter for BlackBerry here. How do you like it? Please, share your opinions in the comments!

Tags: blackberry, Mobile 2.0, mobile apps, twitter

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

Name: Entrustet

Quick Pitch: Free service helps you take stock of all your digital assets and assign an heir to access them when you pass away.

Genius Idea: Where do bad folks go when they die? Yeah, I can’t tell you that definitively, but I can tell you where both good and bad folks can store their online presence: Entrustet. This new service, which is currently in public beta and will launch officially on April 26, is like an online will — but instead of listing your jewels, golden bars and mattress cash, Entrustet lets you leave your Facebook profile, Gmail, etc to designated “heirs.”

According to Co-founder Jesse Davis, he and his partner Nathan Lustig founded the site because it’s difficult for family members to access your online accounts after your demise due to TOS. Davis writes in the site’s Q&As:

“I was reading Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat and one of the chapters was about the Justin Ellsworth case. Ellsworth was a U.S. Marine who was killed in action in Iraq. His parents wanted access to his Yahoo! account to have more information and details from his life. Yahoo! refused. After a few months in court, a judge ordered Yahoo! to grant email access to his parents. All of a sudden it hit me that digital assets were ‘real’ and an essential part of an estate. It also made me wonder if Justin even would have wanted his parents to see all of his emails.”

Entrustet makes it easy to pass all of your info into the right hands. To get started, just set up a free account, and then add all the accounts you want protected/passed on:

You can then store any files on the site via Mozy (for $4.99 per month), which seems like a great option even if you’re not expecting to kick it any time soon.

Next, you can add your heirs — who will inherit your YouTube account and whatnot after you pass on. I made my sister my heir, so that she can continue to Tweet in my honor. Like a Twitter ghost. Your heir gets an e-mail notification once you enter their information, and he or she is prompted to join the service as well. You’re also prompted to add a digital executor.

The site’s coolest feature, I think, is that it lets you decide what will happen to each account. You can leave it to an heir, delete it or delete it via the upcoming Account Incinerator, which will delete your account without giving access to any of your heirs.

You can even get your lawyer into the game or find one to help you out via the Lawyer Directory, which is still rather skimpy, but the site’s still in private beta.

Right now, the only service that you can use is the Account Guardian, explicated above, but soon the site will also offer the Executor’s Assistant, a premium plug-in that will allow Entrustet to delete important digital assets like cable bills and magazine subscriptions after your passing.

We here at Mashable think that is this is a pretty neat idea, but we’re a bit concerned about storing all of our password information in one place indefinitely. So, as always, if you choose to utilize Entrustet, make sure to choose unique passwords and keep them safe.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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

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

Tags: facebook, money, online will, social media, youtube

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Web designer Tim Van Damme, founder of Made by Elephant and blogger at Max Voltar, has skyrocketed from relative oblivion to comparative fame in little over a year. Before you succumb to jealousy, consider the man’s work. Consider, for example, his spanking new redesign of Gowalla, Austin-headquartered AlamoFire’s nifty, location-based social networking game for iPhone, Android, and even newer Blackberry devices (kind of).

Launched as a public beta in March 2009, Gowalla “uses a large catalog of virtual goods to encourage its users to go places and meet people.”

Seven years ago I was a cigarette smoker. Today I’m a compulsive Gowalla user. I check in at the corner deli, at the library, and at the movies. I check in when I get to my studio in the morning and first thing when I get home at night. (Well, maybe eighth thing when I get home—I have an active five-year-old and a sick dog to take care of first.)

I love Gowalla and now I love its website just as much as I love the application, thanks to the stylish skinning of young Master Van Damme.

Note that I haven’t mentioned content strategy, labels, user flow, error handling, and all the other things that go into most good redesigns. I haven’t mentioned those things because this redesign is mainly a skin job. Alamofire designed a great brand and crafted a fine piece of user experience (not to mention a host of kick-ass icons) well before involving Tim Van Damme. So the challenge here was to take a strongly branded, well-thought-out, existing site with a fanatical user base and an already super-strong visual identity, and to make it that much better.

He met the challenge, and then some. I wish I possessed before and after screen shots to show how and why the redesign trumps its predecessor without scrapping what users like me loved about the old look and feel. Aside from the one big change (a light green background that feels like a translucent overlay over the previous background), it’s all about the details here, and the details are primarily tiny enhancements to the user experience—from subtle glows that make the interface feel more responsive (more alive), to WordPress- and Mail-style numeric indicators that cue users when there’s new content behind a tab.

This is good design, the test of which, for me, is always that I wish I’d done it.

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