Mario Nissan

If you want something done, perhaps you would ask a professional to do it. Someone who costs a lot but is worth more than they charge. Someone who shows up even when she doesn't feel like it. Someone who stands behind her work, gets better over time and is quite serious indeed about the transaction.

Or perhaps you could hire a passionate amateur. That's a forum leader doing it for love, not money. An obsessive in love with the craft. A talented person willing to trade income for the chance to do what he loves, with freedom.

Please, though, don't hire someone who just thinks it's a job. This category represents the majority of your options, and this category is what gives work a bad name.

All those devices in your bag make it easier than ever to stay in sync.

You can reap what you sow in Farmville, keep up with your email, know what's going on on every important blog, be in the right room at the right time earning badges, etc. You can synchronized at all times.

And if you get a little out of sync, just a little, it's painful. One more reason you might want to stop reading this and check your feeds.

Building your success on being more in sync than everyone else is a sharp edge to walk on. You'll always be near the edge of perfect sync, but never there.

The alternative is to be a lot out of sync.

People who are way out of sync with the digital maelstrom of the moment aren't always bad followers. They might be great leaders.

No business buys a solution for a problem they don't have.

And yet, most business to business marketers jump right into features and benefits, without taking the time to understand if the person on the other end of the conversation/call/letter believes they even have a problem.

My friend Marcia (we've advised each other on various projects) has a very cool idea for large professional firms. As an architect, she realized the firms were wasting time and money and efficiency in the way they use their space. Roomtag is her answer. 

The challenge is this: if your big law firm or accounting firm doesn't think it has a space allocation/stuff tracking/office mapping problem, you won't be looking for a solution. You won't wake up in the morning dreaming about how to solve it, or go to bed wondering how much it's costing you to ignore it.

And so the marketing challenge is to sell the problem.

(Interesting paradox: a lot of people aren't willing to embrace that they have a problem unless they also believe that there's a solution... so part of selling a problem is hinting that there's a solution that others are using, or is right around the corner.)

Imagine, for example, getting the data and publishing a list of the top 50 firms, ranked by efficiency of space use. All of a sudden, the bottom half of the list realizes that yes, in fact, they have something that they need to work on. If you knew that your firm was paying twice as much per associate as the competition, you'd realize that there's a problem.

When a prospect comes to the table and says, "we have a problem," then you're both on the same side of the table when it comes time to solve it. On the other hand, if they're at the table because you're persistent or charming, the only problem they have is, "how do I get out of here."

"I'll be out of bed in five minutes," is not a true statement because it's a promise not meant to be kept. It actually means, "go away, I'm sleeping, I'll say what I need to get rid of you."

"Your call is very important to us," is not a true statement either. The truth is self-evident.

"I promise I'll tell the manager about this," is of course not a real promise either. It might be uttered with good intent, or might be designed to get an annoying customer to go away, but still...

You can already guess the problem with little lies. They blur the line, and they lead (pretty quickly) to big lies. The worst kind of little lies are the ones you make to yourself. Once you're willing to lie to yourself, you're also willing to cheat at golf, and after that, it's all downhill.

Companies that refuse to break small promises have a much easier time keeping big promises. And they earn a reputation, one that makes their handshake worth more.

Given that expectation and trust are just about all we have left to sell, it seems to me that little lies and small promises are at the very heart of the matter. And they're a simple choice, nothing requiring an MBA or a spreadsheet.

It all depends on what you want to stand for.

When Gerald Roush died in late May, he left behind the Ferrari Market Letter. This newsletter, which he started and ran, had nearly 5,000 subscribers, paying him $130 a year for a subscription. Do the math! It's a good living--even without a fancy website.

The newsletter, it appears, was not just lucrative, it was a bargain. It chronicled the pricing, whereabouts and details of just about every Ferrari ever made. If you were a buyer or a seller, you subscribed. If you wanted to run an ad, you were required to include the car's VIN, which added to Roush's voluminous database.

The Roush effect involves extraordinary domain knowledge, a market small enough to understand and diligently earning the role of data middleman. The players in the market want there to be one clearinghouse, one authority who can connect the data, see the trends and publish the conventional wisdom.

It might be a newsletter, a conference or an online database. The tactics don't matter, but the role is indispensable. If you need examples to persuade you to try this, they won't be hard to find. One of my favorites is my friend Michael's role in the book industry. He's bigger and more important than the famous (but failing) trade journal.

Just about every tribe needs a Gerald Roush. And in many markets, they can afford to pay someone like him very handsomely.

Linchpin will be the last book I publish in a traditional way.

One of the poxes on an author's otherwise blessed life is people who ask, "what's your next book," even if some of them haven't read the last one. (Jeff did, of course). To answer your question, this book is my next book. I think the ideas in Linchpin are my life's work, and I'm going to figure out the best way to spread those ideas, in whatever form they take. I also have some new, smaller projects in the works, and no doubt some bigger ones around the corner. [PS the best analysis of this whole thing, particularly the punchline is by Mitch.]

A little background: For ten years or so, beginning in 1986, I was a book packager. Sort of like a movie producer, but for books. My team and I created 120 published books and pitched another 600 ideas, all of which were summarily rejected. Some of the published books were flops, others were huge bestsellers. It was a lot of fun. As a book packager, you wake up in the morning and say, "what sort of book can I invent/sell/organize/write/produce today?"

It took a year or so, but I finally figured out that my customer wasn't the reader or the book buyer, it was the publisher. If the editor didn't buy my book, it didn't get published. Here's the thing: I liked having editors as my customers. These are smart, motivated and really nice people who are happy to talk with you about what they want and what they believe. Good customers to have. (In all of those years, only one publisher stole any of my ideas, no check ever bounced, and no publisher ever broke a promise to me).

When I decided to become focused on being an author, the logical thing to do was to sell to that same group of people. And it worked. I've been lucky enough to work with some great editors, and my current publisher, Portfolio, has been patient, flexible and, did I mention, patient. Adrian Zackheim, who runs the imprint, is exactly what you'd hope for, even if the architecture of his industry is fundamentally broken.

Authors need publishers because they need a customer. Readers have been separated from authors by many levels--stores, distributors, media outlets, printers, publishers--there were lots of layers for many generations, and the editor with a checkbook made the process palatable to the writer. For ten years, I had a publisher as a client (with some fun self-published adventures along the way). Twelve bestsellers later, I've thought hard about what it means to have a traditional publisher.

Traditional book publishers use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system.

The thing is--now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn't help me or you. As the medium changes, publishers are on the defensive.... I honestly can't think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade. The question asked by the corporate suits always seems to be, "how is this change in the marketplace going to hurt our core business?" To be succinct: I'm not sure that I serve my audience (you) by worrying about how a new approach is going to help or hurt Barnes & Noble.

My audience does things like buy five or ten copies at a time and distribute them to friends and co-workers. They (you) forward blog posts and PDFs. They join online discussion forums. None of these things are supported by the core of the current corporate publishing model.

Since February, I've shared my thoughts about the future of publishing in both public forums and in private brainstorming sessions with various friends in top jobs in the publishing industry. Other than one or two insightful mavericks, most of them looked at me like I was nuts for being an optimist. One CEO worked as hard as she could to restrain herself, but failed and almost threw me out of her office by the end. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't heartbroken at the fear I saw.

All a long way of saying that as the methods for spreading ideas and engaging with people keep changing, I can't think of a good reason to be on the defensive. It's been years since I woke up in the morning saying, "I need to write a book, I wonder what it should be about." Instead, my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works, even if it's not a traditionally published book.

If you're among the majority reading this that has never bought one of my books in a bookstore, not much will change. But I thought I'd share with you this fork in the road. Thanks for reading, in whatever form you choose.

One of the best ways we have to intuit the way others decide is to understand how we decide. We have a voice in our heads and we assume others do too. We don't like rancid cheese and we assume others don't either.

I've met two kinds of successful intuitive marketers. The first kind has absolutely no ability to describe why people do what they do. They just know. I talked with a famous fashion designer for two hours and came away believing that she has no idea whatsoever how or why purchasing decisions are made. She has no words for it.

The other kind is an honest witness of the decision-making that goes on every day inside. "Why did I just choose that?" "Why do I believe this? Is it because of something my dad said when I was three?" "Why did I give $100 to that charity? Why not zero? A thousand?" This self-insight is difficult and valuable. It means that you can't take things at face value, even things that you might be more comfortable leaving unexamined, as truths. Theologians wrestle with this dilemma all the time. How can you study an idea or a trend or a belief system if you also accept it as a universal, unquestionable fact?

And so the smart marketer throws away bias and stops cheering for one outcome over another and instead quietly takes notes on herself. Notes start shallow, but if you push, you can get deeper, stripping away layers of previously unexamined instinct. You can test those notes, see if they occur in other people when you vary the inputs. And it's this series of notes and tests that give you insight on how to share your next idea.

Critics and fans, passersby and the media crave a battle, a scandal and heroic stories of winning and losing.

Want to get written up on a tech blog? Just post a really angry rant about your competition.

Want to sell tickets to the hockey game? Just put a few brawlers on the team.

The media demands that a politician "get angry" in the face of a conflict or problem that anger won't have any effect on--but it will make a good story. Your customers demand that you stop doing what's always worked and race to follow a trend or launch a risky sideline...

When you stumble or fall, they won't say, "sorry, we were wrong." They'll say, "what were you thinking!" and talk about it even more. And then the cycle continues.

One approach to innovation and brainstorming is to wait for the muse to appear, to hope that it alights on your shoulder, to be ready to write down whatever comes to you.

The other is to seek it out, will it to appear, train it to arrive on time and on command.

The first method plays into our fears. After all, if you're not inspired, it's not your fault if you don't ship, it's not your fault if you don't do anything remarkable--hey, I don't have any good ideas, you can't expect me to speak up if I don't have any good ideas...

The second method challenges the fear and announces that you've abandoned the resistance and instead prepared to ship. Your first idea might not be good, or even your second or your tenth, but once you dedicate yourself to this cycle, yes, in fact, you will ship and make a difference.

Simple example: start a blog and post once a day on how your favorite company can improve its products or its service. Do it every day for a month, one new, actionable idea each and every day. Within a few weeks, you'll notice the change in the way you find, process and ship ideas.

When using an axe to split logs, it's awfully tempting to aim at the top of the log.

After all, if you miss the log entirely, it's dangerous or at the very least, ineffective. One can argue that if you don't split the top, it's pointless—nothing else will happen.

The problem with aiming at the top is that the axe loses momentum before its work is done and you end up with a stuck axe and half a split log.

No, the best approach is to focus on splitting the bottom of the log. Split the bottom and the top takes care of itself.

Amplification: some of my smartest and fastest-reading readers (and some with experience in log splitting) missed the point of the post above. I'm not Gary Larson, so I guess I should clarify.

I'm not talking about turning the log upside down or some other semantic trick. I'm pointing out that if you aim at the top (at getting started), then you don't split the wood. If you aim at the bottom (by way of the top) then you do. Hitting the top of the log isn't, the point, it's merely the beginning of the stroke. In other words, don't focus so much on starting something. It's the follow through that will get you there, so the beginning must be with the end in mind. And yes, this actually makes wood chopping far easier.

Subtle is a cousin of beautiful.

Subtle design and messaging challenge the user to make her own connections instead of spelling out every detail. Connections we make are more powerful than connections made for us. If Amazon and Zappos had been called "reallybigbookstore.com" and "tonsofshoes.com" it might have made some early investors happy, but they would have built little of value.

Subtle details demonstrate power. Instead of being in an urgent hurry to yell about every feature or benefit, you demonstrate confidence by taking your time and allowing people to explore. They don't put huge banners on the Hermes store, announcing how good the silk is and how many famous people shop there...

And subtle messaging communicates insider status. I don't have to say, "Hey I was in Skull and Bones too! You should hire me!" Instead, a subtle (secret) handshake does all the talking that's needed.

It's tempting to turn the dial all the way to 11, the make everything just a bit louder. The opposite is precisely what you might need.

I'm aware of the oxymoronic nature of spelling out details about subtlety. At least I didn't explicitly point out the Spinal Tap reference.

Over the summer, I've done full day road trip gigs in Boston and DC. Each was different, both were amazing. (Here are some comments from DC and Boston attendees).

Coming up: I'll be in Minneapolis next Thursday, the 26th. There's a free meetup planned a few days before for those who are going.

Chicago is completely sold out (full day) but there are a few half-day tickets left.

And today we're announcing Atlanta on Friday, October 8th. Full day tickets for Atlanta are discounted $300 if for readers of this blog... just enter the discount code Sethsblog. (Half day attendees save $125, your code is Ireadsethsblog). If you're in Atlanta, I hope you can come or perhaps spread the word.

Hope to see you there.

Some days, even the best dentist doesn't feel like being a dentist.

And a lifeguard might not feel like being a lifeguard.

Fortunately, they have appointments, commitments and jobs. They have to show up. They have to start doing the work. And most of the time, this jump start is sufficient to get them over the hump, and then they go back to being in the zone and doing their best work.

Momentum is incredibly useful to someone who has to overcome fear, dig in deep and ship. Momentum gives you a reason to overcome your fear and do your art, because there are outside forces and obligations that keep you moving. Without them, you'd probably stumble and fall.

And yet...

And yet many of us fear too much momentum. We look at a project launch or a job or another new commitment as something that might get out of control. It's one thing to be a folk singer playing to a hundred people a night in a coffeehouse, but what if the momentum builds and you become a star? A rock star? With an entourage and appearances and higher than high expectations for your next work. That's a lot of momentum, no?

Deep down, this potential for an overwhelming response alerts the lizard brain and we hold back. We're afraid of being part of something that feels like it might be too big for us.

Hint: it probably isn't.

ABC and CafePress have introduced a new ABC Online Store where of fans of the TV networks shows will be able to buy official merchandise along with merchandise designed by other fans.

CafePress technology will allow visitors to the site to design their own t-shirts, posters, water bottles and other custom products. These fan-designed products will live alongside official merchandise in the ABC Online Store.

“In keeping with ABC’s ongoing commitment to technological innovation, we sought a merchandising solution that would fully leverage the power of the internet to significantly enhance and deepen our relationship with the ABC viewer,” said Mia Rondinella, VP of Business Planning & Development at ABCEG.

“Embracing the voices and enthusiasm of our fans is very important to us. Of equal importance to us was the ability to incorporate the latest in supply chain optimization technologies to enable us to more nimbly execute our retail strategy,” “We selected CafePress based on its proven experience engaging and monetizing mass consumer audiences online.”

This new arrangement expands upon a licensing agreement announced earlier this year which allowed fans of selected ABC television shows to design and sell authorized show merchandise on CafePress.com.
 

AllFacebook has discovered that Facebook is now testing showing all liked news articles in its search results. This would obviously be a significant move as the company competes with Google. Nick O'Neill writes:

Besides hinting at new features and talking about user stats, Twitter also made a couple announcements this week. One is that all Twitter apps use OAuth. The other is that it will start tracking every t.co link users click. This is Twitter's own default URL-shortener. 

Twitter sent an email to users saying, "In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link... When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL."

"When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time."

This may be a good thing for users from a security standpoint. Symantec says that short URL spam and phishing attacks are rising sharply. "With the announcement that Twitter will be rolling-out its own short URL service, many malicious attacks through this route will be thwarted," says Amanda Grady, Senior Analyst at Symantec. "Through Twitter's added analysis, they will be able to check if the short URL is directing users towards a site with malware and alert them in advance. This should reduce phishing attacks on Twitter accounts and prevent criminals from directing users to infected websites.

 What about other URL-shortening services? Well, Bit.ly Twitter's old favorite, has posted an update on the matter. "Following this week's OAuth and apps announcements, some of our users have inquired about how bit.ly will work with Twitter's new link-wrapping service," says Bit.ly's Matt LeMay. "Link-wrapping will enable Twitter to collect traffic data and block spam, but it will not interfere with bit.ly analytics, bit.ly Pro custom domains, or bit.ly Enterprise usage — you will be able to shorten, share and track links with bit.ly exactly as you do now."
 

"Many of our partners are already using their bit.ly Pro short links with t.co, since all links shared via the Twitter Tweet Button have been wrapped in t.co since the button launched last month," he adds. "Link-wrapping will happen automatically and invisibly in the background."

Bit.ly says its been working closely with Twitter and other social media platforms to continue improvements across the web.

Consumer Watchdog has created a new anti-Google video portraying Google CEO Eric Schmidt has some kind of evil ice cream man. The video is a commentary on what the group perceives to be Google's lack of regard for consumer privacy. 

Google and Facebook are two of the biggest companies on the web, whatever you think about the privacy practices of either company, both have received a great deal of criticism in this area (though some think the concern about Facebook has been sensationalized by the media). Which do you trust more - Google or Facebook? Comment here.

The Associated Press has revealed some new guidelines for its reporters with regards to credit and attribution. The guidelines come in the form of a letter from AP Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes.

Is the AP asking its reporters to do what it has frowned upon in the past? Share your thoughts.

The guidelines apply to AP reports in print, broadcast, and online news, and stress the importance of giving proper attribution to other publications that break stories.

"We should provide attribution whether the other organization is a newspaper, website, broadcaster or blog; whether or not it's U.S. based; and whether or not it's an AP member or subscriber," writes Oreskes. "This policy applies to all reports in all media, from short pieces, such as NewsNows and initial broadcast reports, to longer pieces aimed at print publication."

Oreskes says attribution doesn't have to be at the beginning of a story, and that sometimes it can be two or three paragraphs down.

"If some information comes from another organization and some is ours, we should credit ourselves for what's ours and the other organization for what's theirs," he writes, adding that if material from another source turns out to be wrong, that will be cited in corrections later. (emphasis added)

The AP is one organization that has famously expressed disdain with blogs in the past (ones that quoted AP stories and gave credit), and was cited among various other publications earlier this year by Danny Sullivan as one that failed to credit where it got its information (most likely his article, at least somewhere in the chain) about a particular story.

It is interesting however that these guidelines appear to suggest that its reporters can freely do what the AP has in the past complained about others doing - using snippets of content. Now, the guidelines don't exactly say anything about using "snippets", but it's either that, rewriting, or regurgitating something that's already been discussed elsewhere (even with some additional original content added). Am I wrong? It's a matter of fair use, and the AP's stance on fair use in the past has basically been that there isn't any when it comes to the AP's content. Is it a double standard? Clearly, this is admission that the AP has participated in this same type of reporting.

It's good to know that they're recognizing that this is just part of how it works in this age of online news, but you still have to wonder what side of the fence they come down on with regards to their own content. I guess we'll see if AP reporters abide by these guidelines and whether or not the AP attacks anybody for using the same methods with AP content.

The whole thing is very related to the AP's stance on search engines and aggregators as well. These sites do, after all, provide snippets, links, and credit to the sources. The AP just reignited a deal with Google, by the way. 

While stressing the importance of attribution, Oreskes does also make a note of telling reporters not to use other sources so much that it appears they're "free riding" on another organization's work, and stresses matching or further development of the story. 

What is not mentioned once in the guidelines is the word "link". There is no mention of linking whatsoever. It is unclear whether linking is included it in the proper attribution described or whether they deem simple credit to be sufficient. While obviously you can't link in print or broadcast (one reason why online content is more valuable to readers), linking has become commonly looked upon as necessary to attribution in online news, so those who deserve credit for breaking a story can in turn get traffic to that story.

The letter does say that it will continue to use "information from" lines with URLs, but that attribution should be in the body of the story as well. However, it is unclear whether or not this attribution will actually include links.

It will be interesting to see how the AP proceeds in this regard. Without links, the organization is setting itself up for a great deal of criticism.

Thoughts on the AP's guidelines? Let's hear them. 

Google announced that it is updating its privacy policies to make them simpler. They don't appear to have any changes involving CEO Eric Schmidt driving around neighborhoods in an ice cream truck, luckily.

Google isn't actually changing any of its privacy practices. It's just trying to make the language more understandable. Google Associate General Counsel Mike Yang outlines the updates:

1. Most of our products and services are covered by our main Google Privacy Policy. Some, however, also have their own supplementary individual policies. Since there is a lot of repetition, we are deleting 12 of these product-specific policies. These changes are also in line with the way information is used between certain products—for example, since contacts are shared between services like Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs, it makes sense for those services to be governed by one privacy policy as well.
2. We’re also simplifying our main Google Privacy Policy to make it more user-friendly by cutting down the parts that are redundant and rewriting the more legalistic bits so people can understand them more easily. For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, “The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,” since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies.
   
   In addition, we’re adding:
   

• More content to some of our product Help Centers so people will be able to find information about protecting their privacy more easily; and
• A new privacy tools page to the Google Privacy Center. This will mean that our most popular privacy tools are now all in one place.

Google says the updates will take effect on October 3. The company's main privacy policy can be found here. There is also an FAQ here. We'll see what Consumer Watchdog, who is running the above satircal video in Times Square, has to say about it.

Location-based advertising is still in its early stages, but according to ABI Research, businesses will spend $1.8 billion on it in 2015 as part of their overall mobile marketing budgets.

“It’s still early days and there’s no single ‘right’ approach to location-based advertising,” says practice director Neil Strother. “This remains a very fragmented market that is full of experimentation.”

Location-based ads are enabled by three sets of technologies: GPS, Wi-Fi, and Cell-ID (location determined relative to mobile phone transmitters.) The most successful campaigns, according to ABI, use a mix of some or all of these, depending on the product or service, the region, the consumers, and the location accuracy required.

New location-based services are springing up, catering to mobile shoppers. Some are “check-in” services such as Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, and Facebook with its Places, for consumers who are willing to “self-identify.” Others, such as Shopkick, use an iPhone app to reward shoppers just for visiting certain stores.

“Some might be put off by the ‘Big Brother’ aspects of this,” says Strother, “but it’s really about the value-exchange: if you care about getting discounts or being rewarded for shopping, is the value-exchange high enough so that you’ll accept having your whereabouts known to these companies in return for the benefits?”
 

Google has given an update on its immediate plans for Google Wave. As you probably know, the company recently announced that it would be shutting down Google Wave as a standalone product, thought Google said it would preserve the technology behind Wave for future use and integration with other Google products.

Google announced that it will expand upon the 200,000 lines of code that it has open sourced already, to "flesh out the existing example Wave server and web client into a more complete applicatino or 'Wave in a Box'".

The project will include:

• an application bundle including a server and web client supporting real-time collaboration using the same structured conversations as the Google Wave system
• a fast and fully-featured wave panel in the web client with complete support for threaded conversations
• a persistent wave store and search implementation for the server (building on contributed patches to implement a MongoDB store)
• refinements to the client-server protocols
• gadget, robot and data API support
• support for importing wave data from wave.google.com
• the ability to federate across other Wave in a Box instances, with some additional configuration

Google stresses that the project won't have full Google Wave functionality, but it will give developers and users a way to run Wave servers and host waves on their own hardware. This should please some IT departments.

It still remains to be seen what other Google products Wave technology will appear in.

It seems that bedbugs can be found everywhere these days, and the New York office of a certain search giant is no exception.  Late yesterday, a Googler reportedly tweeted that her workplace had been invaded.

According to Nicholas Carlson, the pammy5 Twitter account belonging to "a Googler in marketing" just sent the message, "jeepers i am not immune from the bedbug epidemic.  bedbugs have been found at work."

Now the account - which a small amount of detective work connected to Pamela Eng, a product marketing manager previously employed by DoubleClick - seems to have been deleted, and Google's not volunteering many details.

This doesn't exactly count as a PR win for the company.  There's a definite stigma associated with bedbugs, and it may be that no amount of free food and fun artwork will convince would-be recruits to risk getting bitten.

To be fair, though, it's not known whether 20 or 2,000 of the creatures were found.  And as we acknowledged in the first sentence, lots of other places in New York, including the Empire State Building, a Times Square movie theater, and the Time Warner Center, have been affected.

Good luck to all Google employees who work at the New York office.

Google is planning to launch a mobile music download service that would allow users to access songs wherever they have access to an Internet connection.

According to Reuters, Google has been in discussions with the major labels about reaching licensing agreements.  Google has not yet signed any licensing deals but the major labels are reportedly interested in seeing a competitor to Apple’s iTunes launch.

"Finally here's an entity with the reach, resources and wherewithal to take on iTunes as a formidable competitor by tying it into search and Android mobile platform," said a label executive who asked not to be identified.

"What you'll have is a very powerful player in the market that's good for the music business."

Andy Rubin, Google vice president of engineering hopes to have the music service launched by Christmas, according to “people familiar with the matter.”

“We're cautiously optimistic because Google has great scale and reach but doesn't have a track record in selling stuff," said another label executive who declined to be named as the talks are still ongoing.
 

After wisely letting the air clear following the big Apple TV announcement (and all the comparisons to Google TV), Yahoo's stepped forward to remind everyone that it also intends to compete in the connected TV space.  Yahoo announced a partnership with a major TV manufacturer this morning.

Vestel, the TV manufacturer in question, is Europe's largest.  It claims to produce 16 percent of LCD TVs made on the continent, and 25 percent of digital set-top boxes, too.

That gives the organization quite a reach, and Yahoo will benefit from it in an obvious way: Vestel plans to ship Yahoo Connected TV to consumers in over 40 countries.

Rich Riley, the senior vice president and managing director of Yahoo EMEA, stated as a result, "Yahoo! is transforming the television experience for millions of consumers around the world.  Vestel's innovative consumer electronics products combined with Yahoo!'s industry-leading Connected TV platform allow consumers to experience the Internet and television together in ways they never have before.  This is the future of television."

Turan Erdogan, a board member and the president of sales, marketing, and R&D at the Vestel Group, also said, "Through this partnership, we provide customers with a high-quality, easy to use, well-known platform for delivering Internet apps directly to our connected products."

Shipments of the joint Yahoo/Vestel products are scheduled to begin early next year.

Facebook is testing a feature that lets users "subscribe" to other users. Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook shares an official statement from Facebook: "This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they've subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes)."

This could make Facebook more attractive as a news reader, a way Facebook has encouraged users to use the service in the past, and a functionality that is probably more often associated with Twitter, though the capabilities are clearly both there with either service. Notifications of updates would only enhance Facebook for this purpose. 

Facebook also announced that users will soon have a new way to control their accounts, with a remote log-out feature (pictured above). Users will be about to log out of any Facebook session from another computer or device. More on that here.

PeopleBrowsr shared a rather interesting report with us this week, looking at privacy related tweets during the center of this year's Facebook "privacy storm." The firm studied the public's reaction to Facebook's open graph-related announcements that set off the majority of the Facebook privacy controversy back in April.

Are you concerned for your privacy as a Facebook user? Let us know.

The report specifically compares the general public's (or at least the portion that uses Twitter) thoughts about Facebook privacy with the media sensationalism around the story. The firm studied tweets with references to privacy, along with other keywords like Facebook, Open Graph, Zuckerberg, and Google.

"We are the last generation to know privacy as it was," says Brian Solis, Chief Data Analyst for PeopleBrowsr. "As Facebook moves human connections and society into a more public spotlight, people and the press will push back. But this will move things forward collaboratively. Over time I believe the debate will evolve into a series of productive forums and memes that explore the risks of living in public and the rewards for participation."





Some of PeopleBrowsr's findings from the study:

- Prior to the F8 conference on April 24, privacy tweets hovered between 1,000-3,000 references per day, then spiked to 9,000 on the day of F8

- On April 25 (day after the conference), privacy-related tweets fell to 3,500 – then surged to 7,500 when politicians joined the fray. Around May 25, privacy discussions hit the ceiling in this study with 20,000 unique discussions.

- In terms of context, Facebook dominated the landscape for mentions of #privacy

- Conversations followed media reports

"We see that even on the day when privacy took center stage, the media sensationalized the topic. But the public, at least those on Twitter, did not flood the streets with 140 character picket signs. 9,000 tweets does not seem to account for the millions of Twitter users or the 500 million people who have Facebook accounts," says Solis.

That last statement is true on a couple of different levels. For Solis' purpose it does not appear to indicate that the majority of Facebook users were that concerned. However, it is also worth noting that the majority of Facebook users are not necessarily active Twitter users. Facebook has over 500 million people. It's not a flawless argument, and the findings should be taken with a grain of salt like any such study. That said, Twitter is generally viewed as a good indication of public opinion, as trending topics often reflect pop culture and news at large. If there is something significant happening, you can generally find people talking about it on Twitter.

Besides, Facebook's numbers continued to grow. Diaspora (the "Facebook alternative") will be here soon. I'm willing to bet that will have little impact on Facebook's growth as well.

Do you think the privacy discussion around Facebook was overblown? Share your thoughts.

Update 2: Swisher reports that Facebook blocked API access to Ping after failing to strike an agreement with Apple, so Apple removed the feature after launch. She credits "sources familiar with Facebook's platform" with this information. 

Update: With regards to Facebook and Ping, Dan Frommer points out that the screenshots Apple used in its prsentation actually did show Facebook integration. MG Siegler also notes that he actually was able to connect to Ping with Facebook, but then it disappeared. It appears that Apple may have pulled Facebook from it at the last minute. Siegler writes:

I can tell you for sure that yesterday Facebook Connect was a part of Ping — because I used it.

When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn’t work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them.

He also claims that he's still connected to the Ping app from within Facebook and that while Facebook isn't on iTunes, it's still live. 

Original Article: At Apple's music event yesterday, where the company launched a new version of iOS, a new version of iTunes with a new social network (Ping), a new line of iPods, and a new version of Apple TV, Steve Jobs took a shot at Google involving numbers of smartphone activations.

Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that Android gets over 200,000 devices a day.

"People throw out a lot of numbers about how many devices they're activating per day," Jobs is quoted as saying. "We are doing 230,000 activations a day.  We think our friends may be counting upgrades - if we were counting upgrades, that would be way higher."

Fortune has a quote from a Google spokesperson responding to those comments: "The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services."

Ping, the iTunes social network, is like Facebook or Twitter meets iTunes. That's the way Jobs described it in the announcement, anyway. While that may be the case, and it may even resemble Facebook, there is no integration with either Facebook or Twitter (or other social networks).



Kara Swisher was able to speak to Jobs about this, who said Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to." When asked about integrating Facebook Connect to help people find their friends, Swisher quotes him saying (or shrugging rather), "We could, I guess."

She also got this statement from Facebook on the matter: "Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we've partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future."

Om Malik at GigaOm calls Ping "the future of social commerce". "From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we see, music we listen to and books we are reading," he says. "These are accepted social norms. In fact, many relationships are made on the basis of collective love of a movie and many friendships have started with mixed tapes."

Boxee, whose Boxee Box is due out in November, had some comments on Apple's Apple TV announcement. These two are now direct competitors. On the Boxee blog, Avner Ronen writes:

We think people want to be able to watch anything that they can watch on their computer, only on their bigscreen TV.  There is an overwhelming consumer expectation that the content we can consume in our cubicles, our dorm rooms, and in our laps should be available in our living rooms, in full 1080p with a gorgeous interface.  It’s a simple premise, but the challenge is to do it in a way that makes sense in that space, so you can put your feet up, grab a remote and start watching. No keyboards, mice, windows or labyrinthine menus. It should be calm and it should be beautiful. And it *must* be open.

We all watched the Apple announcement. We walked away feeling strongly confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms.  We are taking different paths to get there. The Boxee Box is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, but will give you the freedom to watch what you want.

We think it’s worth it.

NewTeeVee has a comparison of Apple TV, the Boxee Box, and Roku, which some have also said is superior to the new Apple TV.

When it comes to Street View and the collection of sensitive WiFi data, Google is, at least to some degree, safe from serious penalties in New Zealand.  A police investigation has determined that the company didn't violate any laws.

Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff referred the matter to police in June, which seemed to put Google in a precarious position.  Logic dictated that Shroff wouldn't call in law enforcement for no reason, after all.

But fortunately for the search giant, New Zealand police said in a statement today, "An investigation by Police has determined that there is no evidence to suggest a criminal offence has been committed."

Detective Senior Sergeant John van den Heuvel of the Police National Cyber Crime Centre just suggested, "Anyone using Wi-Fi needs to ensure they have appropriate security measures in place.  People should not underestimate the risk that information they broadcast might be accessed by others, either inadvertently or for more sinister purposes."

Now the ball is back in the privacy commissioner's (figurative) court, and she hasn't made clear whether her office will take further action or not.

We'll be sure to report any other noteworthy developments that occur.

NASA has introduced a new free mobile application for the iPad called NASA App HD.

NASA App HD features live streaming video from NASA Television, an interactive map with links to all of its centers, quick links to feature stories and launch schedules, a scrolling “alerts banner,” and a NASA Featured” link.

The app’s landing page features the solar system, where users can learn more about it, the universe and NASA missions. The app also allows users to view and search updated, higher resolution NASA Image of the Day and Astronomy Picture of the Day collections and agency videos on demand.

“Our goal with the first NASA App was to deliver current mission information, images, videos and news updates in the best possible way for the iPhone and iPod touch," said Jerry Colen, NASA App project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

"Now we've enhanced and expanded the application to include even more content and really take advantage of the iPad's larger screen."
 

Google announced today that it is making public its help documentation for Local Shopping inventory for Google Merchant Center. This is a feature that allows retailers to let consumers know about what they have in stock right from the web. 

"One weekday evening a few weeks before our son was born, my wife commissioned me to find a box of raspberry red leaf tea for the delivery," says Google Product Search business product manager Paul Lee, explaining the usefulness of such a feature.  "I promptly drove to the nearest grocery store, which has an awe-inspiring wall of tea. After diligently scanning the wall and not finding the tea, I began to wonder if it even existed. Was the similarly-labeled raspberry tea the same thing? What about red leaf tea?" 

"Stumped, I pulled out my phone and looked up 'raspberry red leaf tea' on Google," he continues. "Beneath the 'Shopping results,' I saw a red map marker for a nearby Vitamin Shoppe and a link, 'In stock nearby,' next to a picture of Alvita Raspberry Red Leaf Tea. I hopped back in the car, and 15 minutes later had accomplished my mission. Two weeks later, my wife accomplished her much more important mission and we welcomed Benjamin, a healthy and happy baby boy, to our family."

Keep in mind that Google doesn't accept all retailers who apply for listing this information, but there is a form you can fill out to do so. If you aren't accepted, Google will keep you on file for potential future inclusion. 

You'll be asked to submit a complete and accurate data feed, including unique product identifiers. You'll also need to be listed and verified in Google Places.

Under the right circumstances, search engines can turn the names of a person's city and state into ugly words; users looking for local info may have to type them over and over until they wish the founders had stuck to just two or three letters.  New Yahoo search suggestions aim to eliminate that problem, though.

Product Manager Vivian Lin Dufour wrote on the Yahoo Search Blog this morning, "We're making Search more intuitive by taking user context and applying it to the search experience.  Today we are introducing an enhanced Yahoo! Search Assist, providing suggestions geographically closer to you as you type your query."

You can see an example of how this works below.  The first image shows what search suggestions a Yahoo user in Sunnyvale, California (which is in Santa Clara County) would get after typing "santa."  The second image shows how they'd differ for an individual located in Santa Barbara.

This should save people some typing, and in the process, also tends to make Yahoo's results look much more useful.

The upgrade shouldn't cross any sort of "creepy" line, either, since Yahoo doesn't seem to be interested in pinning down users' exact addresses or anything like that.

Anyway, Dufour invited everyone, "Give this new feature a try and let us know what you think about geo-sensitive search suggestions in the comments section . . ."

Google announced today that it is releasing a new stable version of Chrome, which the company says is even faster and more streamlined. In fact, Google claims it is three times faster on JavaScript performance than it was two year ago, when Chrome was first launched (it's the two-year anniversary, by the way).

"We've also been working on simplifying the 'chrome' of Chrome," says product manager Brian Rakowski. "As you can see, we took the already minimalist user interface and stripped it down a bit more to make it easier to use. We combined Chrome’s two menus into one, revisited the location of the buttons, cleaned up the treatment of the URL and the Omnibox, and adjusted the color scheme of the browser to be easier on the eyes."

"As always, we’re hard at work on making Chrome even faster, and working on ways to improve graphics performance in the browser through hardware acceleration," adds Rakowski. "With the Chrome Web Store, we hope to make it much easier to find and use great applications on the web. We also ratcheted up the pace of our releases so that we can get new features and improvements to everyone more quickly."



The new stable version can be downloaded here. Google has a list of all stable and beta channel updates here.

If you're more interested in the fact that it is Chrome's 2nd birthday, you can get more reflection on how far the browser has come in those two short years by reading this celebratory post from Google.

Texting by American adults has increased significantly over the past year, but still does not approach the level of text messages exchanged by young people, according to a new report from Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of adult cell phone users send and receive text messages now, up from 65 percent in September 2009. The majority (87%) of teen cell users text. Teens text 50 messages a day on average, five times more than the typical 10 text messages sent and received by adults per day.

The majority of African Americans and English-speaking Hispanics own cell phones compared to 80 percent of whites. Twelve percent of African American and 14 percent of English-speaking Hispanics make and receive more than 30 calls a day on their mobile phones. Four percent of whites report placing and receiving that many calls. African American and Hispanic texters typical send and receive 10 texts a day; whites who text typically send and receive 5 texts a day.

“Texting among adults has reached the mainstream and the charge is being lead by African-Americans, Hispanics and young adults,” said Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and author the report.

“Of course, none of these adult groups hold a candle to teens when it comes to texting, who swamp adults in messages sent per day by a factor of 5.”

For all of their enthusiasm for texting and talking on their cells, Americans have mixed feelings about the role of the mobile phone in their lives. Most cell users report that their cell phone makes them feel safer (91%), and that they appreciate the way it allows them to arrange plans with family and friends (88% agree.)  But mobile phone users also report that they get irritated when a call or text interrupts them (42%) and that they find it rude when others check their phones repeatedly during meetings or conversations (86%).

Other highlights of the report include:

*65% of American adults with cell phones sleep with their phone on or right next to their bed.

*57% of adults with cells report receiving unwanted or spam text messages on their phone.

*90% of parents have a cell phone compared with 72% of adults without children under 18 at home.

 

Update 2: It looks like Dell has lost the bidding war for 3PAR after all. The company issued a release saying it has ended discussions and will recieve a $72 million break-up fee from 3PAR. This comes after 3PAR accepted an increased bid from HP of $2.4 billion.

Update: Following the below news, HP and Dell got into a bidding war for 3PAR, but according to TechCrunch, 3PAR has accepted the latest offfer from Dell  for $27 per share in cash, or approximately $1.8 billion.

Original Article: Dell announced that it is acquiring virtualized storage solutions provider 3PAR for $1.15 billion. Dell says the acquisition will enable its customers to take advantage of the "virtual era" and cut data management costs by as much as 50%.

"We have aligned our storage offerings over the last several years to provide our customers choice and value," said Brad Anderson, Dell SVP, Enterprise Product Group. "3PAR brings the same values of performance, agility and ease-of-use to higher end, virtualized storage deployments as EqualLogic does for the entry-level and mid-range, rounding out our industry-leading solutions portfolio."

"3PAR has consistently provided customers with the ability to do more with less," said 3PAR President and CEO David Scott. "With Dell we combine a powerful, virtualized storage platform with an outstanding distribution network to deliver this value to an even broader set of customers."

The transaction has been approved by both boards of directors. Some analysts are saying Dell overpaid for 3Par, and the Street calls the acquisition a "shrewd move".

After closing, Dell plans to maintain and invest in additional engineering and sales resources for 3PAR. The company has no plans to move the current operations.

Samsung has unveiled its Galaxy Tab tablet device, and Kobo announced that it is supplying the e-reader technology for it.

"After much speculation, the new Samsung GALAXY Tab has just been announced by Samsung’s CEO in Berlin, and Kobo is THE eReading application powering the 'Readers Hub' on the new Android tablet," says Kobo. "This partnership is an industry first for Kobo and Samsung, offering the first eReading experience on an Android Tablet to readers worldwide."

"This is a HUGE WIN for Kobo!" the company proclaims. "Samsung is a global leader - a world class organization that touches billions of consumers worldwide.  The GALAXY Tab is an amazing device and will be a real contender in the marketplace as consumers everywhere adopt tablets. To have been selected as THE eReading application that powers the 'Readers Hub' on this device is simply incredible."

The announcement comes at a time when not only is the competition heating up in the tablet space, but it's also heating up in the e-reading space, led by Amazon's Kindle, which offers apps on other platforms as well as its own. This is going to be another space (in addition to the connected-TV space) to keep a close eye on over the next year or so.

Kobo's store has over 2.2 million popular titles, including new releases and 1.8 million free books. The company also says its adding thousands more each week. Apple announced yesterday that it has 35 million books in iTunes.

Facebook may be going through some of the growing pains that Google went through earlier in its life. Google has always had to deal with link farms and link buying, polluting its search results, and has gotten better and better at keeping this under control over the years.

Now that Facebook "liking" is taking the place of linking in many cases, Facebook may have a similar issue on its hands. Like farms and like buying aren't entirely new concepts, but since Facebook's developer conference, where it unleashed the open graph and social plugins like "like" buttons all over the web, they have become more of an issue, and will probably continue to do so unless Facebook does something about it.

Would you buy "likes" if you could significantly increase your exposure? Comment here.

Why would you buy likes?

When a user "likes" a piece of content, it shows up in their friends' news feeds. The more friends they have, the more people that "like" will be exposed to. The more friends a person has, however, and the quality of those friends, may place more value on those "likes" from the perspective of those doing the buying. The problem with this, is that those same factors that increase that value may also affect how Facebook provides its search results, and Facebook is going to want to improve that search experience, particularly as competition with Google (in general) heats up.

Farming Likes

A couple months ago, AllFacebook had a pair of articles taking a deep look into the gaming of Facebook search results and the rise of the like farm. The topic has been brought up again this week by Nick Saint at Silicon Alley Insider.

"Basically, these sites are enabling the equivalent of Twitter hash tag jokes on Facebook; people see funny sentences pop up in their streams, and indicate their approval by liking them," writes Saint. "This is the Facebook equivalent of retweeting, since all of your friends are notified that you liked the blurb. Many of these entries have been liked by tens of thousands of users, all of whose friends see the updates, which links to the sites, so this is no doubt generating non-negligible ad revenue despite requiring zero effort on the part of the sites' creators. The biggest we've seen, Likey.net, is already seeing over a million uniques per month."

"Once an update has enough likes, it can spread entirely on Facebook," adds Saint. "But to get the process started, someone has to have gone to the site and submitted it in the first place. It's hard to say why -- unlike on Twitter, the original poster of these updates isn't referenced or credited in any way. And the sites look and feel extremely spammy. At least one of them has already been flagged as an attack site by Google, though it's not clear whether the site is itself malicious, or merely the target of third-party attacks."

Like farms stand to have implications on Facebook's search functionality, and Facebook's share of the search market stands to grow along with the proliferation of Facebook itself - not necessarily to Google-like proportions, but for certain kinds of searches - and with Pages becoming more heavily marketed (not to mention the potential of Places), people will search for businesses on Facebook. 

"While users are mostly searching Facebook for their friends currently, users will begin to search for more generic topics as Facebook slowly changes user behavior," wrote AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill back in June. "Right now, showing up for the phrase 'discount travel' won't necessarily benefit you, however as Facebook improves their search product and users begin to understand that they can search for things other than their friends, ranking high on various keywords will become increasingly important."

"In the meantime, the numerous 'like farms' that are spamming Facebook with random quotes and phrases (like Likey.net, LikeItPage, and others) will continue to proliferate until Facebook develops a system that determine which add value and which are just spam generators," added O'Neill.

Back to Like Buying

As far as "like buying" is concerned, it's a similar situation. This has the potential to hurt the Facebook user experience, and if Facebook were to penalize Pages similar to how Google does, it could make a big impact.

Inc. just ran a story about how Google cost Ryan Abood's GourmetHandBaskets.com $4 million by penalizing the site for link buying right before the holidays. As Facebook becomes one of the main marketing vehicles of the web, much like Google has been for years (despite the differences in how the two sites operate), it is a situation that his going to have to be looked at and assessed.

Right now, it's unclear what Facebook's policies are on things like "like farms" and "like buying". We've reached out to the company for comment, and will update when we receive it. The point is that Facebook isn't just a way for college kids to look at pictures of each other anymore. People are counting on it for business, and how delicate situations like these are handled will be crucial to operations. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't have the greatest track record for handling delicate situations. 

Facebook likes and Twitter retweets have replaced links in many instances. That's not to say that links are dead by any means, but a lot of people will simply retweet a piece of content or "like" it, rather than blog about it and link to it. This "cannibalizes" the link graph from the search perspective, as Rand Fishkin and our own Mike McDonald discussed a while back, and that makes Facebook and Twitter even more important to pay attention to from the marketing perspective - when some of that juice is going away from search engines and into social networks.

Do you agree that these issues are something Facebook is going to have to take into account? Share your thoughts.

Twitter's link service, t.co, is designed to make shortened links easier to read and safer to follow.  Initial tests have gone well, too.  But an announcement that Twitter will start tracking every t.co link users click has caused a bit of a stir.

Twitter sent an email to users last night that in part stated, "In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. . . .  When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL."

Then here's the more controversial point: "When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click.  We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time."

So it looks like a (small) loss of privacy will prove unavoidable, with no opt-outs or anything of that sort having been mentioned.

Declan McCullagh noted that, as a result, "[A] security breach at a Twitter data center could reveal who's clicking on what links . . . .  Police armed with search warrants in criminal investigations may have link-clicking questions they want answered.  Divorce attorneys armed with subpoenas won't be far behind.  And, in general, users may not expect this data about their behavior to be stored forever."

It should be interesting to see if this becomes a significant problem, or if, between some users not grasping the issue and others more or less understanding that most of their online movements are tracked, anyway, Twitter avoids any turmoil.

AOL said today it has signed a five-year search advertising deal with Google renewing its partnership with the search company that dates back to 2002.

Under the terms of the deal Google will provide search services to AOL’s content network and properties, in exchange for a revenue-sharing arrangement between the two companies which will be expanded to include mobile search and YouTube.

“Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL,” said Tim Armstrong, AOL’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

“AOL users will be getting a better search and search ads experience from the best search company in the world – Google. After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”

Key highlights of the partnership include:

*As AOL renews its focus on mobile apps and content, the companies will work together to expand the alliance to cover mobile search.

*AOL and YouTube have agreed to a content partnership that will bring AOL’s video content to YouTube.

*The alliance is international in scope and will provide improved experiences to AOL’s worldwide audience.
 

Twitter has launched its official iPad app. There's a bit more to this than the standard mobile Twitter app.

"Twitter for iPad takes advantage of the iPad's fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly – without needing to open and close windows or click buttons," says Twitter's Leland Rechis.

When you tap a tweet in this app, it opens a pane, and depending on the content of that tweet, you can open videos, photos, articles, etc.



"When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline," explains Rechis. "And, let's be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen."

There is also a gestures feature, which lets you pinch on a tweet to see details fo the author, reply, or retweet. You can put to fingers together and pull down on a tweet to see replies, showing the whole conversation. Now that's useful.



iPad users can use the app without even signing into Twitter and still see good content. Twitter has hand-picked certain Twitter accounts that you can see in various categories without logging in. You can also search and find breaking news without logging in.

Gowalla has launched a new feature called "highlights" which it describes as "little rewards you can give to places that are important to your life". MG Siegler talks about the potential significance of such a feature.

"Where this gets really interesting is when you bring the social graph into it," he writes. "So, for example, if I check-in near a spot where a friend of mine asked his wife to marry him, I'll get a message alerting me of that. Or if I’m looking for the best taco place in Austin, Texas, I can visit the Highlight page and see what the masses are voting for. There are a lot of potentially interesting uses for this when it starts to get populated with a lot of data."

As reported, Target is going to start selling Facebook Credits gift cards. SFGate.com has an interesting article about the implications of this, in terms of Facebook securing.

Wired looks at today's story about a man who took hostages at the Discovery Channel's headquarters in Maryland, and posted his demands to the web, on his site savetheplanetprotest.com - the text is still available in cached form here.

Apple announced a bunch of new things today. You may have heard. Here's a summary.



Michael Arrington has an interesting piece about how Google has lost 118 employees to Facebook, and how the company makes counteroffers to those employees receive offers from Facebook.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb talks about why Alcatel-Lucent acquiring OpenPlug is big news.

Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider reports that South Korea's Naver has taken search in-house. Unfortunately for Yahoo (and Microsoft), it has been Yahoo's biggest search affiliate, according to Blodget.

Justin.tv has a new Android app for broadcasting live video. This competes with services like UStream and Qik. Unfortunately, it doesn't let you simply watch Justin.tv content like the iPhone app does. Perhaps that will come later. This is the first Android app Justin.tv has offered.

"We've been focused on mobile applications since the beginning of this year, starting with the launch of Justin.tv for iPhone," says Caleb at Justin.tv. "We think the mobile space is the biggest opportunity in live video, and that being tethered to a computer has held a lot of people back. Today we’re solving that problem for Android phone owners."

"We use efficient hardware encoding to create high quality video while maximizing battery life," says Caleb. "We optimize the video for 3G or WiFi and constantly adjust quality as you move around to keep the video smooth. The results are crystal clear when compared with any other apps available, Justin.tv’s video is best because that’s what you’ve told us you care about."

The app comes with the ability to share broadcasts via Facebook or Twitter. There is even an autoshare option.

In between the announcements about iPods, Apple TV, and a music-oriented social network, Apple and Google's mobile rivalry heated up a little more today.  Steve Jobs, while discussing the success of iOS, also tossed out what was likely a veiled insult at Eric Schmidt and Android.

Remember how Schmidt said in early August that 200,000 Android devices were being activated every day?  It's that figure - and Google's method of counting - that Apple's CEO seemed to bring into question.

"People throw out a lot of numbers about how many devices they're activating per day," said Jobs according to Ryan Block.  Then Apple's CEO continued, "We are doing 230,000 activations a day.  We think our friends may be counting upgrades - if we were counting upgrades, that would be way higher."

That's an interesting statement.  It's of course hard to imagine that Jobs has the iOS numbers wrong; no one's in a better position to collect more accurate data, and the SEC encourages CEOs to avoid misleading anyone.  But the same observations apply to Schmidt and Android stats.

Google may well weigh in to clarify the matter (or "coincidentally" share some Android growth numbers) later this week.  Or Eric Schmidt might at least save up a witty comment or two for the next time he's on camera.

Anyway, neither company's suffering due to today's events at the moment.  Google's stock rose 2.29 percent today, and Apple's gained an even more impressive 2.97 percent.

Google has launched a new major version of its 3D modeling tool SketchUp: version 8. This comes ten years after the launch of version 1.

Google says there are over a million people using SketchUp. "That's a pretty humbling number of 3D model makers," says SketchUp Product Manager John Bacus.

The new version comes with new geo-modeling capabilities that leverage Google's collection of geo-spatial data, for what the company says is quicker, easier, and more fun model building.

"We've made it easier to build site context models for your projects using our ever-growing collection of geo-data," says Bacus. "We've added a new collection of “Solid” tools for doing common additive/subtractive modeling operations and we’ve packed out LayOut with some new features that make it easier to document your models professionally."

SketchUp 8 is available for download today in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German versions. The list of all the new features is here. SketchUp Pro comes with a price tag of $495. Upgrades from previous versions are $95.

Real estate website Zillow.com said today it has partnered with Apartments.com to bring the rental website’s database of 90,000 apartment listings to Zillow.

Apartments.com rental listings include home details, photos, floor plans, and property manager contact information.

Listings from Apartments.com will be viewable to Zillow’s 12 million monthly visitors, including two million who are currently renters.  The partnership brings the total number of rental listings for single-family homes and apartments on Zillow to 150,000.

"Zillow offers an unmatched user experience for home shoppers who are renting, deciding whether to rent or buy, or shopping for a home to buy,” said Chloe Harford, Zillow's vice president of mortgages and new ventures.

“This partnership deepens Zillow's footprint in the rental search industry, and gives Zillow users access to a new category of managed apartment rental listings.”

In addition to being displayed on Zillow, Apartments.com rental listings will also appear on the Zillow Mobile application, which has been downloaded more than two million times and is the most popular real estate application on the iPhone, Android, iPad, and Windows Mobile platforms.

 

Google announced a new feature for businesses in Google Maps in the U.S. today. The feature lets businesses include sponsored map icons that appear on the maps themselves. The feature actually began in a pilot program earlier this year in Australia.

"Now, when you zoom in to areas of interest on Google Maps, you'll more easily be able to spot the locations of companies and brands that are already familiar to you," says product manager Matthew Leske. "That's because we're working with business owners to enable them to replace the standard icons that appear on the map at their business locations with their well-known company logos. These logos appear directly on the map when you zoom in to see a close-up view of an area. Just like the existing default business icons that appear in grey, these colored logos are clickable and open the Place page for that business. Both large and small businesses can claim their Place pages and enhance them with information including hours of operation, product inventory, photos and videos."

"By helping users identify popular businesses, we're making it easier to browse the map and navigate the real world," adds Leske. "That might mean fortunately stumbling upon a nearby ATM when you're looking up the address of the new restaurant where you're dining tonight, or exploring the neighborhood you just moved into by figuring out where the grocery store is relative to your new apartment."

Google says the icons will become visible on mobile phones in the coming weeks.

Advertisers pay to have their logos appear on the map. The feature is only being offered in limited beta to companies in the U.S. that have multiple locations and "a well-known brand." That's unfortunate for small businesses, but the feature could expand in the future.

Apple held its big event today, and showed off several things.  At the event, Steve Jobs said that Apple now has 300 retail stores, and will soon open one in Spain making it 11 countries. He said that Apple has shipped 120 million iOS devices, and that there are 230,000 new iOS activations per day. He also said they've had 6.5 billion app downloads and get 200 app downloads every second.

The New iOS

Jobs introduced iOS 4.1, which features bug fixes, High Dynamic Range photos, HD video upload over WiFi, TV show rentals, and Game Center.

With HDR photos, it takes 3 photos in rapid succession, and combines them to make a better picture.

Game Center includes features for  multi-player games, challenging friends, auto matching, comparing scores and discovering new games. There is an API, which is its own app on the phone.

iOS 4.1 will be available next week in iTunes for the iPhone and iPod Touch. 4.2 will come in November for the iPad. This will include multitasking, Game Center, HDR photos, and wireless printing, and something called AirPlay.

AirPlay is the new name of AirTunes, and extends the service from music-only to all kinds of media. You can stream audio, video, and photos over Wi-Fi.

The New iPods

Jobs said the company has sold 275 million iPods. He then announced what he says is the biggest change to the iPod lineup "ever". The new version of the Shuffle comes with buttons, VoiceOver, playlists, and "Genius mixes." It holds 15 hours of music, comes in five colors, and costs $49.

The new version of the Nano eliminates the click wheel and adds multi-touch. It also now has a clip. It's 46% smaller and 42% lighter than the last version. It has hard volume buttons, VoiceOver, FM Radio, Nike+, pedometer, and comes in 29 languages. The screen can be rotated. It costs $149 for the 8GB version  and $179 for the 16GB version.

Jobs says they've had 1.5 billion game and entertainment downloads. He says the iPod Touch is the most popular portable game player in the world with over 50% market share worldwide.

The new version is thinner, and comes with retina display, the A4 chip, 3-axis Gyro, iOS 4.1 with Game Center, FaceTime with a front camera, and a rear camera with HD video recording. It costs $229 for the 8GB version, $299 for the 32GB  version, and $399 for the 64GB version.

The iPods are all available starting next week, and are available for pre-order.



The New iTunes and Social Network

Jobs says iTunes has 11.7 billion songs, 450 million TV episodes, 100 million movies, 35 million books, and 160 million accounts with credit cards and 1-click shopping in 23 countries.

He then announced the launch of iTunes 10, with a new logo (without a CD, noting that iTunes is about to bypass CDs in sales). The new version has a hybrid view with five or more songs from the same list view and album artwork. There is also a new "ping" feature, which is a social network based on music. Jobs says its like Twitter and Facebook meets iTunes. This is for users and artists.

Ping comes with privacy settings, social music discovery, follow features, a circle of friends feature, the ability to post thoughts/opinions, custom song/album charts, concert listings, and 160 million iTunes users.  Ping will be an app store app.



The New Apple TV

Jobs says in four years they've sold a lot of Apple TVs but the product hasn't been "a huge hit". He introduced the second generation, and it comes in the form of a device that fits in the palm of your hand. It has a built-n power supply, one HDMI connector, built-in ethernet, and built-in WiFi.

It features HD content, with no purchases. There is no storage because everything is by rental. You can also stream from your computer. You can view movies, TV shows, and music. TV shows are 99 cents (in HD). You can rent first-run HD movies for $4.99 the day the come out on DVD. They have deals with ABC and FOX, abut think the other studios ill get onboard. It comes with Netflix access (for subscribers) as expected, and supports YouTube, Flickr, and MobileMe. You can stream content from an iOS device to an Apple TV. It costs $99 as expected. It will be available in four weeks with pre-orders today.



Update: We received the following statement from Disney/ABC: “When we put our shows on iTunes five years ago, it was revolutionary,” said Anne Sweeney, co-chair Disney Media Networks and president, Disney-ABC Television Group.  “Since then, we’ve continued to provide viewers with innovative new ways to access our programming, and today we’re proud to team with Apple on a rental option for fans of our shows.”

(Hat tip to GdGt for its live coverage)

Electronic Arts has launched Madden NFL Superstars on Facebook that allows users to create their own fantasy team by collecting NFL players and competing in matchups with their friends.

“Each day on consoles, fans are playing as many games online as the equivalent of 750 full NFL seasons,” said Peter Moore, president of EA SPORTS.

“Now on Facebook, Madden NFL Superstars will bring a whole new dimension and audience to the Madden NFL experience.”

Madden NFL Superstars allows users to choose from more than 1,500 current players from all 32 NFL 2010 teams.  The game features an “In Season” mode where players compete in increasingly difficult matchups against other player’s teams through a progressive ladder to earn championship trophies.

“NFL Pro League” mode allows players to compete in a series of games against each of this season’s actual NFL teams. “Scrimmage” mode allows users to play against their Facebook friends.

“The highly celebrated Madden NFL video game franchise from EA SPORTS is loved by millions. Madden NFL Superstars is a unique new experience that gives those fans, and tens of millions more, an opportunity to enjoy the excitement of NFL football on Facebook,” said Kristian Segerstrale, vice president and general manager of Playfish.

“With the start of the NFL season right around the corner, we’re looking forward to feedback from the Madden NFL Superstars community to help us create the most authentic and entertaining NFL football experience possible on Facebook.”