Get Satisfaction, the popular online customer service company, just announced that it is bringing its service to Facebook fan pages. This new service, the Facebook Social Engagement Hub, will allow companies that have a presence on Facebook to easily answer questions from their customers on Facebook. The Social Engagement Hub recreates the Get Satisfaction experience on Facebook and allows users to ask questions about products or make suggestion for new features. One key feature here is that ..   show all text

There’s a ton of chatter on Techmeme today regarding iPad and Flash and HTML 5. Again. In particular don’t miss posts from ReadWriteWeb regarding Flash vs. HTML 5 speed and PC World’s comparison of HP’s new Slate vs. the iPad and how the focus will be on Flash. Yesterday I sat down with top execs from Adobe’s Flash team. I filmed two videos: 1. A video demo of a variety of things Adobe announced at the Mobile World Congress, including a new Flash player for Android and Palm Pre (I played ..   show all text

The App Store censorship horse may have been beaten to death, but mainstream German media—whose iPhone applications have been censored by Apple because of its content—are not surrendering. I'm glad. In fact, I hope they win this war. More »

Since the announcement went live yesterday about the Google Marketplace, we've had a number of companies come to us about how its applications will fit with the service. We'll do a fuller look at these companies this week but for some immediate perspective we decided to take a look at Zoho, a service that competes with Google Apps. So it is it interesting that the company joined Google Apps Marketplace in its launch. Sponsor Buy why would Zoho offer its applications to integrate with Google..   show all text

Google just launched a new Google Labs product for Google Reader: Google Reader Play. Reader Play is a new, highly visual way to browse your Google Reader subscriptions that is somewhat reminiscent of Google's Fast Flip. It replaces the busy Google Reader interface with an interface that focuses on a single story. Whenever a post includes videos or images, Play with highlight these and give you the option to read more of the text as well. This new interface allows you to browse through the fe..   show all text

I’m going to start this most with a small homage to Tony Hirst. Tony has the honour of posting the first ever comment on this blog and ever since I’ve been an avid follower of his work on OUseful.info. When I saw Tony had started playing around experimenting with using Google Apps Scripts to post data from Spreadsheet to Calendar and vice versa it looked like he was having way to much fun, so like with so many of Tony’s other ideas I thought I would have a go too. The challenge I set myself wa..   show all text

[Important updates below - Facebook says the Daily Mail knew its story was untrue, but printed it anyway. Legal action is promised.] In the early hours of this morning, the Daily Mail published an astonishing attack on Facebook under the title “I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.” Here’s the opener: Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90..   show all text

I’m a little scared and more excited to kick off a serious and ambitious exercise in collaboration across a spectacular range of websites, including Center for Investigative Reporting, Grist, Mother Jones, Reuters, Slate, The Atlantic, Wired, and WNET. It’s called The Climate Desk, and although its website isn’t up and running yet, it does have a mission statement: The Climate Desk is a journalistic collaboration dedicated to exploring the impact — human, environmental, economic, political — o..   show all text

Der Gary und ich sind ja dicke Kumpel und deshalb war er auch so nett, heute ein Video zu diesem Blogpost von mir zu machen, in dem er die Bedeutung der dort erwähnten beiden Begriffe nochmal unterstreicht … ;) Video (1:20 min.): Weiterempfehlen

Sony just announced that it is expanding its selection of newspapers and magazines in its e-book store. Starting today, users of Sony's e-readers will be able to subscribe to 20 new newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, PC Magazine and Foreign Affairs. With the newspaper business in turmoil, it only makes sense for these papers to try to get a better foothold on more devices. Sponsor eInk vs. LCDs For users who don't own an e-reader yet..   show all text

As many in the Twitterverse have dubbed this week, the battle of location based apps continues, as both Gowalla and Foursquare release yet another update to their iPhone apps today. And these are some big guns coming out to accompany the various real-life incentives, contests and whatever else these the two companies can do to take the focus at this year's SXSW. Both apps are will showcase new design features the companies are calling "fresh" and other such things, and while they surely are, ..   show all text

Microsoft Outlook has historically been at the heart of document-based environments that for many years have ruled the enterprise. But the walls that have guarded this document-based world are crumbling fast. Outlook is now more than a message center. It is becoming a collaborative space where the lines between Google Docs and other social applications start to blur. Sponsor Three extensions exemplify this trend. These services are quite similar. Xobni has the longest track record. it start..   show all text

Facebook plant es, Twitter hat es schon, Google Buzz sowieso - die Social Networks von heute wollen wissen, wo wir gerade sind. Eine beunruhigende Vorstellung. Trotzdem werden sich Ortungsdienste durchsetzen. Sie sind einfach zu nützlich.

With the impending launch of the Apple iPad, the Cupertino-based company's shunning of Adobe Flash technology has been brought to the forefront of technological discussions. While it was one thing to forgo Flash on a small, mobile device such as the iPhone or iPod Touch, some are questioning whether lack of Flash support is going to be a make-it-or-break it feature for the new slate devices arriving next month - devices which, if you believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs - are "better than netbooks." ..   show all text

There's nothing worse for a bicyclist than finding yourself a mile in to a two-mile stretch of shoulder-less, busy, highway-speed traffic with no alternative route. Before today, this was a common occurrence if you went to trusty Google Maps to get bicycling directions, but starting today, that has all changed. Google has added bicycling directions, lanes and routes to Google Maps, meaning you no longer have to drive, walk or bus to get directions. And we can tell you, bicyclists are excited. ..   show all text

Whenever I meet someone who finds out that I work on the directions team for Google Maps, the first question I'm asked is often "So when's Google Maps going to add biking directions?" We're big biking fans too, so we've been itching to give you a concrete answer. I don't want to keep the good news a secret any longer, so the answer is: right now! Today we've added biking directions and extensive bike trail data to Google Maps for the U.S. My team has been keeping close tabs on all the public ..   show all text

Ortsbasierte Statusnachrichten sind der neue Trend. Google stellt Buzz vor, Twitter experimentiert mit Ortsverknüpften Tweets. Mit Foursquare und Gowalla gibt es sogar eigene Netzwerke, bei denen es lediglich um das „Sagen wo man ist“ geht. Klar, dass dort in Zukunft auch das weltweit größte Social Network Facebook mitmischen will. Wie und ob überhaupt wusste man bis vor kurzem noch nicht. Die New York Times hat nun jedoch etwas Licht ins dunkle gebracht. Laut der Zeitung soll auf der hausei..   show all text

Last Sunday, writer and author Zoe Margolis was shocked to discover that the headline on her own opinion piece about the portrayal of women in the media for the Independent on Sunday, wrongly described her as a prostitute. The headline was changed for later editions of the paper. An online version of the headline has now been changed to ‘I’m a good-time girl who became an agony aunt’, with the same article. The original version remained live on the mobile site for some time, before being r..   show all text

Charging might work with specialist content, says Google's chief economist – but engaging readers with online content during their leisure hours is a more promising strategy The key to most newspapers' survival online is engaging more with readers, rather than seeking to charge them directly, Google argues. The case was put by its chief economist, Hal Varian, yesterday at a workshop of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington on "The Future of Journalism". Google denies any responsibility ..   show all text

Zwischen Hype, Spielwiese für kreatives Potenzial und Rettungsanker für Anzeigen bewegen sich die Erwartungen rund um Augmented Reality. Als wäre es Werbung aus einem Philip K. Dick-Roman werden Anzeige oder Packungselemente dreidimensional aufgeblasen, interaktiv, beweglich. Fehlt nur noch, dass einen die Produkte im Regal direkt ansprechen. Was aber kann Augmented Reality bieten? Wie kann der [...]