Google Reclaims a Slice of its “Don’t Be Evil” Mystique

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/0NW0lEeu0pU/

Google’s well-known corporate motto of “don’t be evil” has become a bit of a punchline in recent times. No longer the innocent David against the ruthless Goliath (Microsoft), many have taken a more watchful eye towards the search giant, its vast ambitions, and the seemingly infinite amount of data it seeks to collect about us.

This afternoon though, by standing up to censorship in China, Google reclaimed some of the mystique that once made it so special. In the growth market that everyone is after (and Google still trails significantly in), the company is putting principles ahead of profit.

Writing on the Google blog today, the company’s Senior Vice President David Drummond said, “we launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results,” a position that was met with plenty of criticism at the time.

However, now that it’s seen the breadth of Chinese censorship by way of implied state sponsored attacks and surveillance of Google products, the company has been prompted to action, declaring in as straight forward a way as possible that “we have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn.”

Mind you, if Google’s ultimately successful, they do stand to gain plenty –- a search engine operating in a free and open market is more profitable than one in a closed and censored one. But we think it’s unlikely that China will essentially reverse course on some of its fundamental values in a matter of weeks, and as such, Google will likely feel pain to its bottom line in the short-term, especially if competitors like Baidu, Microsoft, and Yahoo don’t take a similar position.

It’s too soon to give Google a standing ovation – we’ll wait and see what kind of agreement, if any, they’re able to strike with the Chinese government before full adulation. But at least for a day or two, we can once again think of Google as a company that stands for more than a never ending quest for market share and profit.


Reviews: Google

Tags: china, Google, Political

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Haiti Earthquake: Twitter Pictures Sweep Across the Web [PHOTOS]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/O7BU2W_ethI/

An outpouring of well wishes and support for the Haitian people has swept the web in the wake of a devastating 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. And just like the Eureka earthquake, tweets have quickly spread moving and gut-wrenching TwitPics of the disaster.

Photos taken by journalist @CarelPedre on his mobile phone are providing a glimpse into the devastation that has slammed the Caribbean nation. Another Twitter user, @MarvinAdy, shared those pictures through TwitPic, resulting in tens of thousands of view and countless retweets.

There are also thousands of Facebook and Twitter updates on the disaster appearing every minute. The web has been moved by the plight of the Haitian people. Social media has quickly become the first place where millions react to large-scale catastrophes.

Our best wishes go out to the victims of this devastating natural disaster, as well as their families. Below is a collection of the most retweeted pictures coming out of Haiti, courtesy of TwitPic.


Haiti Earthquake in Pictures








Tags: haiti, twitpic, twitter

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Pepsi’s Refresh Project Uses Facebook to Award Millions to Charity

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InsideFacebook/~3/Hyx1KFosv4A/

Pepsi’s Refresh Project is a Facebook-based charity contest set to donate millions of dollars to organizations throughout the United States in 2010. Located on an application in a tab within the company’s “Pepsi – Refresh Everything” Page, the contest lets users submit and vote on the charities they think are most worthy of funding — the plan is also to raise Pepsi’s visibility with Facebook users, and increase its number of fans.

Pepsi partnered with four non-profit groups in the venture, who will award up to $1.3 million a month in several increments. Each monthly amount will be split up between two grants of $250,000 and up to 10 grants of $50,000, $25,000 and $5,000 each. Any legal U.S. resident over 13 may submit a proposal, either on their own or in conjunction with a non-profit or business, but the projects must be U.S.-specific.

With the motto, “Submit. Promote. Vote,” the contest opens this month as grant submissions will begin to be accepted from January 13 until January 24; thereafter submissions will run from the first through the 15 of the month, or until the first 1,000 applications are received, whichever comes first.

Categories of the grants include health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighbors and education and winners will be selected each month of 2010 by Facebook voters, in Pepsi’s words, “in a democratic way online wherein members of the public will vote for projects that they find the most compelling.”

Winners of the contest are to be determined entirely by Facebook voting, and in order to promote Pepsi and its Refresh Project, the company’s Facebook page is set to include tools to advertise the competition within their social network.

While corporate giving is not a new concept, using Facebook to do so is, and the process is not without a few kinks.

JPMorgan Chase & Company had a generally successful crowd-sourced charity funding campaign on Facebook; but, a few charities said they were cut out as voting came to a close because their missions included legalizing marijuana and opposing abortion. In this app, some people will inevitably want Pepsi to fund charities that address issues Pepsi wants to avoid.

In any case, Pepsi’s Refresh Project is set to run throughout 2010, so despite any bumps along the way, they’ll have a lot of chances to get it right.

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4G iPhones, Here by the Summer and “Heavily Upgraded”.

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4G iPhones, Here by the Summer and Heavily Upgraded.

High level execs from South Korea’s KT (recently told local Korea Times that they not only planned to distribute early-release 4G iPhones to select corporate customers in April, but that they planned for full release by June. That’s not all they said, either.

KT, formerly Korea Telecom, is the exclusive Apple partner in their respective market. According to the execs, they reached an agreement with Apple to begin selectively releasing the phones in April, as a “litmus test.” If all goes well, they plan to release to the public in June. The sources who spoke to the paper asked that their names not be released with the information, but spoke freely otherwise.

Heavily Upgraded

KT says that the phones they’re planning to distribute aren’t just 4G models of the popular iPhone 3GS, they’re heavily upgraded. Improvements include an OLED screen of indeterminate size, live video chat capability (which begs the question of a front-facing camera), a dual-core processor as well as upgraded graphics hardware — neither of which were given any specific names or numbers. A removable battery was rather cryptically mentioned as “highly likely,” which could mean there are two models being tested — one with and one without. Apple’s been plagued with battery issues since the very first iPod line, so it’s no surprise that it’s still an issue today.

The camera itself isn’t mentioned in the report but logically speaking, if Apple is revving up the onboard graphics handling, then it’s probably upgrading the somewhat meager camera, as well. This also ties in to an earlier report at Apple Insider that Apple has moved in recent months to purchase large quantities of both 5 Megapixel image sensors as well as LED flash modules.

Normally, this sort of info would get stamped with RUMOR, but the KT execs weren’t hinting at anything — they’re excited to start selling the new phones. Aside from all the technical information they divulged, they also stated that they have been in talks with telecom carriers outside South Korea about launch dates for the new phone.

If KT is already this sure about their own release dates, even if selective for corporate customers, and they’re working in concert with Apple, then it’s safe to say that carriers the world over are also likely set to release the phone sometime this summer. Unfortunately, 4G networks in some of those countries, America included, may not be so ready for public use just yet.

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Is Twitter Flattening? A Short Answer

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Is Twitter Flattening? A Short AnswerCompete and Quantcast have now released their latest data about the traffic on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter for December.

According to Compete’s report, twitter.com’s US traffic reached 22.81 million unique visitors in December, up 1.45% from November. This is still below its peak in June. MySpace continued to drop, slowing to 49.33 million unique visitors, while Facebook reached 132.13 million unique visitors in December, up from 128 million in November.

This led to a number of blogs repeating the refrain: Facebook grows, MySpace shrinks, and Twitter stalls. Is that the case?

Is Twitter Flattening? A Short Answer

As we all know quite well, Twitter.com is only a fraction of total Twitter activity. To say emphatically that if Twitter.com stalls, the service stalls is the height of ignorance. It is difficult to find reliable statistics measuring Twitter client traffic. TweetStats claims that the web site is used for a sizable third of the traffic, but that leaves two thirds unaccounted for in the Compete and Quantcast reports. Unfortunately TweeStats’ data collecting method is not described.

Data produced from Twitstat shows that twitter.com captures 19.32% of the users, and generates 19.72% of the tweets, down by about 1% from November. In short, Twitter.com’s share decreased, and the overall Twitter usage increased via 3rd party applications.

Twitter client user share jan 2010

The same data shows TweetDeck and Tweetie posting solid numbers, but more interestingly, it shows two fast-growing clients: HootSuite and FourSquare. Hootsuite aims at professionals –marketing, search, communication, PR; FourSquare is the mobile app that lures you and people around you into a game on their platform. This is good news for Twitter; it shows that businesses are getting serious about Twitter, right when the startup is ready to offer paying services for higher volume users and in-depth analytics. It also shows that users respond very positively to Twitter apps on mobile. Mobile is the future of Twitter, with its money-making opportunities via tailored push services, referring and analysis, search, and ads.

For those that want to read the demise of Twitter by comparing it to Facebook, a few points to consider:

  • Facebook did not reach 350 millions active users and 132 million unique monthly visitors right away. Facebook started in February 2004. In June 2006, MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the US. In April 2008, Facebook overtook MySpace. In the past 18 months Facebook grew tremendously because it somehow reached a critical mass, after which everybody wanted to be part of it. Twitter experienced the same phenomenon, and it continues to grow, albeit at a much slower rate.
  • Facebook does not subsume Twitter. The concept of “update” spreads from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn, but this will not make Twitter obsolete. Twitter’s modus operandi is different from Facebook and LinkedIn, because it is an asymmetric network that allows people to listen, express, and share without reciprocity. Also Twitter’s concise format is great for to-the-point info and recommendation-based grading. I am a user of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and I use these services in a completely different way.

That does not mean that Twitter can lay back and relax. Their growth is much slower than before, and they need to attract a new wave of users if they want to fulfill their promises. How about addressing the following:

  • Uptime and stability. Enough said.
  • Lists are great, but where are the tools to easily build them? Nobody wants to build a list by adding users one by one. This is not rocket science. I want to copy, add/remove multiple items, merge, and intersect easily.
  • Provide user search capabilities. I hate to have to visit 5 different sites to find experts that can answer my questions, or to find a community I can follow to be informed and/or educated on some subject.
  • Ranking system. Anybody can buy 100,000 followers for a few bucks, isn’t that about time to provide some way of assessing the relevance of tweets and users by other means that the sheer number of followers?

Twitter has been great for developing a rich eco-system with hundreds of clients to read and send tweets, as well as analyze, search, and manage tweets and users. But some consolidation would help factorizing the effort and would result in a much better user experience, which can only appeal to the non-geeky, non-professional, mainstream user. It is time for Twitter to shake up and go to the next step.

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Google komt met online storage, eerste GB gratis

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingFacts/~3/ngNg-cI8Y_8/

De aankomende weken zal Google de mogelijkheid om elk bestandstype online op te slaan binnen Google Docs. Bestanden mogen tot 250 MB groot zijn en je kunt maximaal 1 GB gratis online opslaan. Dit valt te lezen op het Google Docs blog. De service wordt gepresenteerd als een uitbreiding op Google Docs, maar is effectief een online backup/ storage oplossing. Heb je niet genoeg aan 1 GB? Geen probleem voor $0,25 per GB per jaar kun je dit uitbreiden. Lees meer over: Google komt met online storage, eerste GB gratis.

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Now Users Can Comment in Facebook Via Email

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InsideFacebook/~3/VuxUdAZtt6s/

While you still can’t use email to do things like send private messages back and forth on Facebook, the company is making another email-based feature available to everyone today. When you receive email notifications about your friends activity — photos you’re tagged in, status updates, Wall posts, videos, etc. — you can send a comment back via email.

All you have to do is reply to the email notification, typing in your comment at the top of the message body. You don’t need to be logged in for it to work. Many organizations block Facebook in the workplace — something to do with “productivity,” we hear — so this is another way for people to stay in touch with friends, engage in flame wars, etc. in spite of their IT departments.

Facebook has been testing the feature since last month. You can adjust what email notifications you receive in your Facebook Account Settings.

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Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things: Barcode Scanning

Two of the biggest trends we tracked last year were Mobile Web and Internet of Things . In a new series on ReadWriteWeb, which we're calling Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things , we'll explore how these two important trends are converging and look at some cutting edge example products. We start with barcode scanning...Internet of Things is when everyday objects become connected to the Internet, via technologies such as RFID tags, sensors and barcodes. One trend we saw expanding in 2008-09 was mobile phones being deployed as readers for barcodes . Sponsor Increasingly, smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices offer applications that allow you to scan a barcode on a product or object and get more information about it.The Technology Barcodes are similar to RFID tags, in that they both hold data. RFID tags are generally more functional and flexible than barcodes . Also RFID tags can be read/write, whereas barcodes cannot. However the big advantage for barcodes is that they're cheaper, therefore we're more likely to see scanning as a consumer activity ramp up in the U.S. via barcodes.The most popular form of 2D barcode is the QR Code (the QR stands for "Quick Response"), which became popular in Japan and is now gaining traction in the U.S. and other markets.The Products In a series of posts written over September 2008, Sarah Perez analyzed the then burgeoning " scannable world ." As Sarah explained, barcode scanning is not a new technology on the Web. One of the first examples was :CueCat , a cat-shaped barcode reader from the late 1990s. It linked a user to a website by scanning a barcode in an article or other printed matter. CueCat never took off because it required a separate piece of hardware, but now in 2010 smartphones are the hardware . There's also no shortage of software circa 2010, such as ScanLife and the NeoReader app described in Part 2 of Sarah's Scannable World series . A variety of other barcode reading apps are listed in Part 3 of that series.There are a variety of use cases for barcodes on the Web. They include Semapedia.org (a non-profit project that aims to augment the physical world with Wikipedia data), QRContact (contact management via barcodes), and barcode wearables such as p8tch ("Think of it as a TinyURL you can wear"). But none of these is likely to become widely used in the mainstream, at least in the near future.What Will be The Tipping Point?In Japan, barcode scanning is already a popular activity thanks to the culture of using mobile phones for just about everything. In the U.S., where the Mobile Web took longer to ramp up, barcodes are yet to catch on. However there's one market where barcode scanning could become a mainstream activity in the U.S. and other countries. No, not magazine publishing - although there are valid advertising use cases there. We're talking about scanning retail products using your mobile phone . By the end of 2009, a lot of barcode scanning apps had gained popularity in the iPhone and Android, in particular. In November we listed our picks for scanning and other mobile shopping apps to test over Black Friday. There is no clear winner yet in the shopping scanning market, but here are some applications you may want to try:
RedLaser (iPhone app getting rave reviews ) ShopSavvy (popular on Android) The Amazon Mobile app ; see also SnapTell , owned by Amazon StoreXperience CardStar pic2shop Point Inside ( good review on CNET ) CompareEverywhere (Android) ZXing Barcode Reader (Android)
Thanks to followers of @rww on Twitter , who suggested some of those. Will Consumers Adopt Barcode Scanning?As well as adoption by retailers, another big question is: will consumers want to interact with real world products using their mobile phones? I suspect they will, once they begin to see compelling reasons for doing so - which will probably involve getting the best deals and being able to do advanced shopping comparison very easily. Finally, it's worth noting that Google is active in barcodes . Google's Favorite Places program allows local businesses to put a sticker on their products which features Google's logo, a scannable barcode and a message reading "We're a favorite place on Google." Barcode scanning and its applications will grow during 2010, meaning more and more real world data will be connected to the Internet and accessed on your mobile phone. There are many apps trying to entice consumers to wave their mobile phone in front of products, so let us know your favorites in the comments. Image credits: clevercupcakes ; Stan ; ScanLife Discuss http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/HFX8RhlfbQY/barcode_scanning_m...

Finding Experts on Twitter Just Got Easy with Twendly

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Finding Experts on Twitter Just Got Easy with TwendlyTwendly, a new expertise search engine, has launched making it easier than ever to find subject matter experts to follow on Twitter.

Twendly is different to both Google Search and Twitter Search in a couple of ways.

Let me explain (with the help of some images):

A Google search on “SQL” returns the best documents and/or sites to visit to find out more on SQL.

Finding Experts on Twitter Just Got Easy with Twendly

A Twitter search on “SQL” returns tweets showing who’s talking about SQL right now.

 

Finding Experts on Twitter Just Got Easy with Twendly

A Twendly search on “SQL” returns results showing you who has been speaking about SQL the most, on Twitter, over the past 12 months and how often they’ve been speaking about it.

Finding Experts on Twitter Just Got Easy with Twendly

The theory here is that people who speak about something more often probably have some degree of skill/expertise in that area.

Before anyone gets started, I’m sure this isn’t a hard and fast rule and that there are exceptions, but as a general rule it makes sense.

Also, I’m sure there are other use-cases for the site – e.g. finding out who your biggest fans are – but in the couple of days I’ve been playing with it I’ve found it super useful as a tool for finding people on twitter who have some expertise about a topic I’m interested in. Build those people into a Twitter list and Bam! instant expertise streams.

Twendly was created by the team at BinaryPlex, the same people who created HiveMind, an expertise search engine I wrote about not long ago.

Co-Founder Tim Bull explains why they created Twendly:

We’ve launched this as an open demonstration of our underlying HiveMind engine indexing Twitter users and allowing people to perform searches for the things that people tweet about.

There are only 120K Twitter users indexed at the moment (something we plan to rectify soon when we’ll start to crawl and index more aggressively), but the results are already proving interesting.

He also detailed how the site is going and where they plan to get it:

We are getting very consistent search traffic on Twendly at the moment and it seems people are finding it a useful tool to identify Twitter users they should follow.  From an Enterprise perspective, we now have a credible live story around indexing 120K Users and over 118M records already.  We are targeting growing this to 1M users and 1Bn records to see how Twendly evolves with more data and to actively demonstrate our capability to scale.

It’s a simple, yet incredibly powerful idea and one that has proven to be unbelievably useful in helping me find people with expertise I want to tap into.

This is definitely one to check out

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