Socialize Your Business

T.A. McCann serves as founder and CEO of Gist. His past experience includes Vulcan Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, where he was an entrepreneur-in-residence. Prior to Polaris, he held senior positions at Microsoft.To quote Eric Clapton: “It’s in… Read more

Twitter has begun testing User Streams, a new Streaming API that will finally give Twitter desktop apps real-time capabilities and streams.According to Twitter Developer Advocate Taylor Singletary, Users Streams is now in “a limited testing period for desktop… Read more

More women than men across the world visit social networking sites and spend 30% more time per month using them.As such, in the “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet” report, comScore concludes that women… Read more

Facebook has begun the rollout of a new feature, Facebook Questions, which will allow users to get answers to their queries from the entire Facebook community.Similar in concept to Yahoo! Answers, Quora and… Read more

Social recommendation service GetGlue has just announced a new partnership with HBO that will let fans of shows like True Blood, Entourage and Hung earn stickers and rewards when they check in to the programs using GetGlue’s new iPhone… Read more

Privacy issues aside, it’s hard to complain too much about products like Bing Streetside and Google Street View, considering such tools were until recently nonexistent.  But Microsoft has previewed its next-generation mapping tool, dubbed Street Slide, and it promises to up the ante in several ways.

First, consider the jumpy nature of current offerings, which offers users viewpoints only every so often.  Street Slide’s approach is to piece images into a continuous strip, providing an unbroken look.  Also, because the picture’s somewhat zoomed-out, Street Slide provides a better perspective of streets as a whole.

That leads us to a second problem with Streetside and Street View: they make it easy to get lost in a blur of buildings.  Street Slide corrects this by showing addresses above the images.  Clickable logos and/or ads may also be presented, and users would probably welcome them.

Then here’s one more interesting fact: Michael Cohen, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, told Tom Simonite that people who choose to link Street Slide to a social network might even be able to see the locations of their opted-in friends.

The sole problem with Street Slide looks to be one of coverage.  It’s already hard enough to find places where Bing Streetside functions; it seems unrealistic to expect that Street Slide would work in more than a few areas anytime soon.

Still, the tech should find a lot of fans whenever it arrives.  Let’s hope Microsoft doesn’t need too long.

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The Social Network is an upcoming 2010 drama film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook, I saw the trailer for it yesterday at the Cinemas and it reminded me a little of The Pirates of Silicon Valley Movie (1999), a film about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Anyhow The Social Network film features an ensemble cast which consists of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Malese Jow, and Joseph Mazzello.
The film was written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film is distributed by Columbia Pictures and is set for an October 1, 2010 release. None of the Facebook staff, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, will be involved with the project. One of the co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, was a consultant for Mezrich’s book.
Here’s a trailer for The Social Network Movie:

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Netflix announced today that it has added search capabilities to its service on the Sony Playstation 3. This is part of a software upgrade from the company.

"This architecture allows us to improve your Netflix experience by adding more and more features over time," says Greg Peters, VP of product development. "Sony is the first of the game consoles to adopt this new software from Netflix, so if you’re a PS3 user, you can now search for a movie or TV episode on your TV via your PS3. No need to go back to your computer to add it to your Queue."

Speaking as a Netlix on Wii user, I can say this feature would be incredibly useful. Although, if Netflix gets the mobile apps out soon, it won’t be so much of an issue, as grabbing the phone to do the searches would be almost as easy as the console search function, if not more so. Those will come eventually, no doubt.

In the meantime, Netflix says it will have "more cool features" in store with its continuous improvement architecture.

Netflix is also seeing increased competition from all sides with the launches of things like Hulu’s paid service and Redbox talking about its online strategy.

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ThinQ.co.uk reports that a directory containing personal details of over 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on a file-sharing site. That’s about a fifth of Facebook’s total user base.

Gawker’s Valleywag has posted numerous paparazzi-style photos of Mark Zuckerberg, after photographer Nick Stern followed him around. The piece is framed as a way of "turning the tables" on him after he "turned strangers’ intimate moments into riches."

Redmond Pie points to an update to the recent activity section of Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile which indicates he is now an Android user. He had previously mentioned possibly switching to Android after making complaints about the iPhone. This may not mean anything, but it is interesting to know what kind of device the leader of one of the most important sites on the web is using. It could shape some of his thinking.

Mashable looks at a new browser plug-in called Google Alarm that alerts you when your personal information is sent to Google’s servers. It works for Firefox and Chrome. With Apple releasing its extensions gallery for Safari today, it would not be surprising to see it end up there as well.

Google Alarm from Jamie Dubs on Vimeo.

Last week, Apple announced a delay to the release of the white version of the iphone 4. The Street has an interesting article suggesting that a "light leak" may be the cause of the delay. Gizmodo notes that this is unconfirmed.

CrunchGear has a review of the new Dell Slate, an Android "tablet". Reviewer John Biggs calls it "too big to be a phone and a bit too small to be a tablet." Speed is noted as the biggest draw. He says it’s one of the fastest tablets he’s seen. The size is questionable, however.

News came out yesterday that Yahoo Japan would be going with Google instead of Bing as its provider of search results. eWeek looks at Microsoft’s beef with the deal, and Google’s response. Basically, Microsoft has called it anti-competitive, and Google has said it isn’t. Google maintains that it will only license Yahoo Japan ad technology, rather than supplying ads.

Peter Kafka at MediaMemo says Time’s iPad problem is trouble for every magazine publisher. The problem he refers to is the publisher’s inability to get Apple to let it sell and manage subscriptions for its apps.

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 Despite being a pioneer in user recommendations and its overall leadership in the online shopping sector, Amazon has been slow to embrace social shopping. But a new feature launched yesterday allows Amazon shoppers who connect their Facebook account to Amazon to get recommendations from their Facebook friends on what to buy.

 Numerous studies have shown that a friend’s recommendations have the most weight with shoppers, and the Amazon Facebook connection places the users friends right inside the buying cycle. Shoppers who connect their accounts can:

Discover Amazon recommendations for music, movies and more based on Facebook Favorites and Likes.
See upcoming birthdays and find your Facebook friends’ Amazon Wish Lists more easily.
Get gift suggestions for your friends based on their Facebook Favorites and Likes.
Explore your friends’ Favorites and see who has similar interests.

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