This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: Scordit Quick Pitch: A social site where you share the stuff you’ve bought or want to get, and win prizes by doing it! Genius Idea: It’s nice to share your new purchases or “scores” with friends or to let people know what stuff you really ..   show all text

Twitter engineer Alex Payne upset a flock of third-party developers recently when he boasted about new features the company plans to roll out to its website. "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client," he wrote on his Twitter page. Software makers feared that Twitter was trying to squeeze them out. Payne did damage control -- all of these tweaks are built on top of options we've already given to developers, he plead..   show all text

Over the last six months, doubleTwist, the iTunes alternative that lets you manage your music, videos, and photos, has really been stepping up its game. In October the company integrated an Amazon-powered MP3 store, allowing users to download and sync their music directly with any of hundreds of compatible devices, much as they would with the iTunes/iPod combo. And today it’s adding a new feature that makes it an even more viable iTunes competitor: support for podcasts. Co-founder Monique F..   show all text

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

Last week, an App Store error got the latest version of Foursquare for the iPhone into a few users hands a little bit early. That hiccup resulted in the app briefly disappearing from the App Store before finally returning early yesterday. Now the newly designed version of the app is in the App Store and available for everyone to check out. Foursquare 1.7 features a new design, faster checkins and shouts, plus an easy way to view your checkin history. The app also features pull-to-refresh,..   show all text

  Talking Third Frame There is a crisis in the use of photography by NGOs, but that crisis is producing a flowering of creative practice and thoughts.  That’s my impression after a packed day talking imagery and compassion at UAL’s Paul Lowe’s Third Frame Conference,  put on with Polis at the London College of Communication. Here’s the problem. NGOs like Save The Children or Water Aid want to raise money and consciousness about development, Human Rights  and economic oppression. They al..   show all text

Sure, you’d think the chief executive officer of a company struggling to emerge from bankruptcy and desperate to salvage an $8 billion buyout-gone-bad would have better things to do than pester his underlings with crazy proclamations. But in the case of Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels, you’d be wrong. The man at the top of the [...]

Sonos, the Santa Barbara, California based startup that develops of wireless multi-room music systems, is taking a new round of financing from London-based Index Ventures, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Partner Mike Volpi, a forcer Cisco exec who found himself in the middle of a huge drama last year around eBay’s Skype spinoff, will join the board of directors of Sonos. Volpi will bring real expertise to the Sonos board. As recently as 2007 he ran an $11 billion routing and access produ..   show all text

Longtime readers of this site probably know that I’ll be speaking on a panel at SXSW on Monday with NYU’s Jay Rosen, Apture’s Tristan Harris and paidContent’s Staci Kramer about the future of context. I trust that if you’ve been reading and you’ll be in Austin for SXSW, you’ll be in Hilton H on Monday morning at 9:30. This is a preview of my opening argument for the panel. If this seems like familiar territory for me, don’t worry, the panel is going to cover plenty of untrodden territory. And ..   show all text

Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the “social rut.” What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they’re being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone. While that ..   show all text

A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active. The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: an active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and had tweeted at least 10 times. By tha..   show all text

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

Sony has named its forthcoming PlayStation 3 motion controller “PlayStation Move.” The controller is Sony’s answer to Nintendo’s Wii Remote and Microsoft’s Project Natal for Xbox 360 — a way to use motion to play video games instead of (or at least in addition to) buttons. The controller was originally announced at the E3 interactive entertainment conference last year, but it was not named. Since then people have simply called it “the PlayStation motion controller.” It’s good to have a nam..   show all text

Regular readers will know my love for all things location. In particular, these check-in location-based services fascinate me, mainly because I see them as a bridge between social networks as we’ve known it, and actual social interaction in the real world. Foursquare has been my app of choice over the past year (it launched almost exactly a year ago at SXSW). But the latest version of Gowalla has me thinking about switching sides. At the very least, I’ll be using both at all times now. Gowa..   show all text

Are you going to be in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest? So will I. So will Justin Levy and Colin Bower from New Marketing Labs. While we’re there, I’m definitely up for business meetings with people interested in talking about upcoming projects. I don’t like making set time meetings at the event, because things are a whirlwind. That said, when we get it narrowed down to a day, we can usually do okay on getting a meeting set up. I’m also going to be out and about for some socialization, n..   show all text

Google has just released an alternative player for Google Reader that gives those with a penchant for browsing news the ability to do so in an image-heavy, TV-like fashion. Dubbed Google Reader Play, the new tool is an experimental Google Labs project that presents stories one by one — based on their Recommend Items technology — using enlarged photos and auto-playing videos (in lieu of text) on a black backdrop. Viewers can redefine categories and star, like or share stories, with those be..   show all text