Microsoft's New Platform: Politics

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microsoft_nov_08.jpgToday at the Politics Online Conference, Microsoft unveiled a new crowdsourcing system hosted on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Town Hall.

TownHall is advertised as "software that allows you to easily create a destination for folks to voice opinions, identify problems, offer solutions and come together around common interests and concerns."

Sponsor

TownHall focuses on "rich engagement" in the political sphere, aimed at candidates and politicians as well as political interest groups. It allows for the creation of a social media-rich site that runs across platforms and provides methods for gathering information as well as expressing opinions, by furnishing architecture where visitors can make queries, vote on issues, posit and respond, and create community conversation.

TownHall is currently available only for the PC. In the coming months, Microsoft intends to provide TownHall clients for the iPhone, the iPad, Google Android and Windows Phone 7.townhall.jpg

The software for TownHall can be downloaded free of charge. Users pay to host their site on Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing program.

TownHall is just a part of a new Microsoft Initiative called Campaign Ready.

The power of social media - the electronic version of listening to what the voters say - started with Howard Dean's abortive bid for the White House in 2004 and came to full fruition with Barack Obama's successful one. Subsequent to his election, Obama has shepherded through a series of open government initiatives, which require federal government agencies to seek transparent avenues toward public engagement.

Microsoft has posted more Town Hall screenshots on Flickr.

Discuss

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Ford’s SYNC AppLink Brings Android and BlackBerry Apps to Your Car

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Today Ford is announcing SYNC AppLink, a downloadable software upgrade for Ford SYNC systems that will allow hands-free voice control of popular applications for the BlackBerry and Android smartphones. The first car to get SYNC AppLink support will be the 2011 Fiesta, which will be available later this summer.

Back in January, Ford announced the next evolution of the Ford SYNC system, MyFord Touch. When MyFord Touch was announced, Ford also said it would be be supporting third-party mobile applications for a seamless connected experience. This is exactly what the SYNC AppLink does.

Pandora, Stitcher and OpenBeak are the first SYNC-enabled mobile apps that will be available. Using AppLink, BlackBerry and Android users can access and control their applications using voice and the in-dash car controls, rather than having to connect a phone to an line-in jack and fumble with a phone while keeping an eye on the road.

Furthermore, Ford is launching a new Mobile Application Developer Network so that Android and BlackBerry developers can build-in SYNC support for their applications. The possibilities for this sort of integration are really, really tremendous. Just imagine the potential of leveraging a geolocation app with an in-dash navigation system!

Check out this video that shows Ford SYNC AppLink in action with Pandora and Stitcher:


While there are adapters that you can purchase to better integrate the Pandora and smartphone experience for third-party head units, this is one of the most seamless examples of app to phone integration that we’ve seen on the factory level.

Check out an extended demonstration of Pandora using SYNC AppLink:

This technology will debut with the Ford Fiesta 2011, which will be heading to the US this summer. AppLink will be rolled out to other models in the SYNC ecosystem next year. By fusing together the connected car and the mobile phone, Ford is aiming at bringing a whole new level of synergy to the SYNC system.

What do you think of SYNC AppLink? Let us know!



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Reviews: Android, Facebook, Pandora, Twitter

Tags: autos, ford, ford sync, pandora, Stitcher, sync, sync applink


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iPad 3G Shipping By May 7th

iPad 3G Shipping By May 7th

Apple just updated its store with some more info on when, exactly, we can expect the iPad 3G version to ship. Their exact wording is “by May 7th,” which may mean some iPad 3Gs will be delivered earlier, though.

As far as international availability goes, there’s nothing new in the Apple Store about that. Apple will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on May 10, 3 days after iPad 3G starts shipping in the US. Let’s hope Apple doesn’t sell them all out – again – by then.

Twitter reveals details of new “Annotated Tweets” feature

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Twitter reveals details of new Annotated Tweets feature

Twitter reveals details of new Annotated Tweets featureOne of the most exciting announcements at Twitter’s Chirp conference this week was “Annotated Tweets“. Now the company has revealed more details in a message to developers.

The easiest way to think of annotations is as “invisible hashtags” that will allow tweets to be used in all sorts of exciting new ways and all sorts of interesting data to be attached. Although Twitter doesn’t know when annotations will launch, it estimates it will be around two months until a limited rollout begins.

The details released today to  the Twitter Developers Google Group are quite technical but here are some of the juicy details we can extract from them:

  • Tweets can have as many ‘annotations’ as developers can fit into 512 bytes of space that will be attached to each tweet. This could be one large annotation, or lots of small ones. Twitter hopes to increase the size of this “attachment” to 2kB per tweet eventually, allowing for many more annotations.
  • The data attached doesn’t have to be simple text. Twitter suggests examples such as MIDI data (for music) or emoji (for fancy emoticons).
  • Twitter wants to make the annotations as open as possible, so developers won’t be able to have “private” annotations that only work with one app, for example. That doesn’t mean, of course that every Twitter app will automatically be able to understand every type of annotation.
  • Annotations have to be added to a tweet at the time it is created – you can’t add more data to it later.
  • As for how annotations should be used, Twitter is open for developers to use their imaginations, writing:

“Annotations are a blank slate that lend themselves to myriad divergent use cases. We want to provide open-ended utility for all the developers to innovate on top of.

Some of us have initial ideas of cool potential uses cases that I’m sure we’ll start to share just to seed the conversation as we get closer to launch. Developers will experiment with annotations.

Certain ideas and approaches will catch on. Certain annotations will become standards democratically because everyone agrees. Some might have diverging opinions. It’s something that we hope will grow organically and be driven by sociological and cultural forces.”

Annotated tweets are going to be huge. As Twitter ends its note to developers, “Think big. Blow our minds.”

Original title and link for this post: Twitter reveals details of new “Annotated Tweets” feature

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Facebook’s New Guidelines for Advertisers: Details of What Not to Do

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Facebook updated its guidelines on what types of advertising cannot run in its performance ad network, last week. But we’ve since heard that a range of companies have been going back and forth with Facebook about what specific types of ads are acceptable or not. There has been some confusion in the market.

Facebook’s blog post referenced four general points about what ads shouldn’t do, but didn’t get into details or examples. Those points were: Unexpected User Experience, Unclear Recurring End Product, Unsubstantiated Claims and Unacceptable Business Models.

However, affiliate marketer Jonathan Volk, who is active on Facebook, posted the more specific version that Facebook sent out to him and others. For sake of helping people understand what not to do, we’re reposting his long excerpt from the document below.

Improving Ad Quality

Ad quality and user feedback have always been important considerations for Facebook Ads, and are significant factors in determining which ads we accept and display on the site. We’ve recently taken a close look at the ads that drive the most negative feedback, and identified four key themes behind ads that are detrimental to the user experience. As a result, we’re strengthening our Advertising Guidelines in these key areas to ensure that all Facebook Ads meet our high quality standards.

Unexpected User Experience

Advertised products may not generate any unanticipated user experience. This includes, but is not limited to:

1.  Computer performance changes, such as the unexpected installation of any secondary software or the overlay of advertisements on the user’s browser or operating system

2. Unanticipated recurring charges

3.  Undisclosed sale or distribution of requested user information. Any distribution of user information must be confirmed through user consent.

Unclear Recurring End Product

Advertisements must be clear and straightforward in describing any recurring end product to the user. The advertised offer must directly match the service being sold, and ads should provide the user with a clear understanding of what he or she is purchasing. Facebook Ads for products with recurring billing cycles should not:

1. Focus on an advertised “hook” without disclosing the core subscription-based service. Example: “Take a quiz!” (for a service that includes ringtones, wallpaper, or other undisclosed services).

2. Position a subscription-based service as a single product or billing interval. Example: ”Try now for $2.95” (for a service that includes monthly billing intervals)

Unsubstantiated Claims

Ads must not include unsubstantiated claims. Ads must clearly represent the offer, company, product, or brand that is being advertised. Unacceptable claims include, but are not limited to:

1.  Unrealistic prices or rates. Examples: “$0.50 LCD TVs,” “$10/month health insurance”

2. Use of current events or news reports to create false associations with the advertised product. Political events or images may not be
used for an irrelevant commercial agenda. Example: “Breaking News: Great car insurance rates”

3. Use of false qualifications to create a sense of relevancy. Example: “If you are right-handed, you qualify for low premiums”

4. Implication of dynamic ad content Examples: “7 minutes remaining,” “only (3) available”

5. Implied knowledge or passing of user data. Examples: “See who searched for you,” “you have been chosen”

Unacceptable Business Models

Ads will not be permitted in cases where a business model or practice is deemed unacceptable or contrary to Facebook’s overall advertising
philosophy. Unacceptable business models include, but are not limited to:

1. Lead generation offers which sell or distribute a user’s information to larger extent than indicated by the landing page

2. Offers that require a user to complete several hidden steps or make additional purchases in order to receive the promised product

3. Offers that require the input of user information for complete access to offer or product details

4.  Ads promoting deceptive recurring billing services

5.  Downloadable software that may affect the user’s computer or browser performance in unexpected or undesirable ways

To stay up to date on how Facebook’s changing policies will affect your business, check out Inside Facebook Gold – our membership analysis and data service on the Facebook business ecosystem.

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Facebook Ads Will Use Your Web History

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Facebook will soon use your activity on other web pages to target ads based on your interests, Financial Times reports. That’s potentially a big boon for advertisers, but it won’t sit well with privacy advocates.

Note that Facebook already targets ads using information from your profile, and this new system will not track all of your browsing.

Rather, Facebook will offer sharing buttons to interested websites. Readers will be able to click on them to share the links with their Facebook friends via Facebook Connect — just like the buttons you already see on this Mashable article.

Once the user shares a link with his friends, Facebook will assume that person shared it because he or she liked it, so the company will include content from that web page in the data it uses to target ads based on user interest. The ads will appear whenever the user visits the Facebook website.

Facebook will probably announce this new system at the F8 conference on Wednesday. The company is also expected to officially announce its already-revealed to change the words “Become a Fan” to “Like” for brands’ pages because it has found that users are more likely to click the latter than the former.



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Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter

Tags: ads, advertising, facebook, facebook connect

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Facebook Twice as Popular as Google in the Workplace [STATS]

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Business employees are visiting Facebook from the workplace more than any other internet site, including Google, Managed Security Services company Network Box discovered in a recent study.

The company looked at 13 billion URLs used by businesses in the first quarter of 2010 and found that 6.8% of all business Internet traffic goes to Facebook, which is double the amount of business traffic that goes to Google and nearly triple the amount that Yahoo gets.

Network Box also found that Facebook consumes a significant portion of business bandwidth: 4.5% of all bandwidth. However, YouTube reigns supreme in that department, accounting for 10% of all business bandwidth used. An accompanying survey showed that 43% respondents are concerned about this seemingly excessive use of social media in the workplace.

Facebook certainly appears to dominate business users’ attention while at work. If previous findings that Facebook is the fourth largest destination site for news are accurate, then perhaps we can safely assume that in-office use of Facebook is for more than just social networking. We can only hope that the YouTube video viewing is as educational in nature.


Business Traffic and Bandwidth


Top five websites visited by businesses:

  • 1. Facebook – 6.8 per cent of all traffic
  • 2. Google – 3.4 per cent of all traffic
  • 3. Yimg (Yahoo!’s image server) – 2.8 per cent of all traffic
  • 4. Yahoo – 2.4 per cent of all traffic
  • 5. Doubleclick – 1.7 per cent of all traffic

Top five business bandwidth sites:

  • 1. YouTube – 10 per cent of all bandwidth used
  • 2. Facebook – 4.5 per cent of all bandwidth used
  • 3. Windows Update – 3.3 per cent of all bandwidth used
  • 4. Yimg (Yahoo!’s image server) – 2.7 per cent of all bandwidth used
  • 5. Google – 2.5 per cent of all bandwidth used

[via All Facebook]

[Img credit: Balakov]



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Tags: facebook, Google

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Social Media Use on the Rise in TV Newsrooms [STATS]

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A new study of television, radio and online media by RTDNA and Hofstra University reveals that use of social media in TV newsrooms is on the rise. 77% of TV newsrooms now use Twitter, with 36% of newsrooms claiming they use the microblogging service “constantly.” Another 35% say they use it daily, 16% use it periodically and 13% claim not to use it at all. However, only 20% have a Facebook Page.

Earlier today, we discussed how it is becoming common practice for news outlets to crowdsource pictures uploaded to Twitter after the occurrence of natural disasters and phenomena. After last night’s possible meteor shower in Wisconsin, reporters gathered pictures on Twitter and shared them with their audience.

Although Facebook and Twitter are popular with TV stations, only 27% of radio newsrooms use Twitter and 1% have a Facebook page. The survey’s conductor, Robert Papper of Hofstra University, said the contrast in usage is due to staff size. “If you had a staff of three or more, you were involved in a number of social networking things. If you did not hit that magic number you were not involved.” He explains why radio stations do not participate more in social media in the video clip below:

Beyond social media, 90% of TV stations say they publish text, stills and video on their website, while another 60% post blogs, live cameras and audio, and 30% stream audio and recorded newscasts.

The study also revealed that TV stations are increasingly utilizing mobile devices to deliver content. About 2/3rds of TV stations now deliver news to computers, TVs and mobile devices.

Do these numbers surprise you? What other trends have you noticed in television media? Let us know in the comments.

[via: PoynterOnline and @lavrusik]



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Tags: facebook, radio, social media, survey, tv, twitter

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