Pravi  novinari PR stručnjaci blogeri  copywriteri pisci, baš kao veliki muzičari i sportisti,  svoj su talenat usavršavali godinama. Kao što Stradivarius  u rukama majstora daje drugačiji zvuk nego kod početnika, tako i reči, iako su svima poznate, odjekuju drugačije u zavisnosti od toga koliko je uloženo truda u usavršavanje veštine pisanja. Hemija. Baš kao što se [...]

In Douglas Adams’s humorous sci-fi novel series Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a special kind of fish is mentioned — the Babel Fish. When inserted into the ear, it translates any spoken language into whichever language the listener understands. It is a very nifty device, and now Google seeks to create something similar.

According to Times Online, Google is developing a speech-to-speech automated translator for Android phones. It’s essentially a combination of two of Google’s existing technologies; its online universal translator service, Google Translate, and its voice recognition system.

Google plans to make its Babel Fish a lot like a human translator; the software would analyze chunks of speech, and translate them in their entirety rather than translating word for word. Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, claims the technology could go live in a couple of years. “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on. If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently,” he says.

Anyone who’s used Google Translate knows that translations aren’t (and probably never will be) perfect, but they’re very helpful when you can’t understand a word of some foreign language. However, Google’s voice recognition also has issues of its own, and I fear that these two combined would produce a very high amount of errors. The Times also mentions the issue of different accents, a problem that Google plans to solve by making the software gradually learn the speaking habits of the phone’s owner.

Despite the big issues Google has to overcome to make this technology useful, if anyone can pull it off, Google can. The idea of being able to call someone who doesn’t speak your language, and have the conversation translated almost instantly, well, that’s one of those inventions that made Google the company it is today.

Tags: Google, machine translation, translation

Google is planning to unveil a broad new social product on Tuesday that will integrate with at least two existing Google products. Some details emerged earlier today on the Wall Street Journal (“a new feature that makes it easier and faster for users of Gmail to view media and status updates”), but our understanding is that the product goes well beyond a Gmail integration.

As I wrote last night, there is still a lot of room for improvement in online social services. Status updates, photo and video sharing, review and location based content are not only decentralized today, but are becoming overwhelmed with spam and other noise.

The Google event begins at 10 am. Tune in to TechCrunch for live coverage.

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from Google, Facebook, and Twitter with others to explore living wisely in our modern age. Mashable readers can use code ‘Mashable‘ for a discount when registering.

In the era of social media, our networks are much larger than they have ever been, and we have more ways to communicate with those in them. Even if you are not very active on Facebook or Twitter, my guess is that your sphere of communication has expanded significantly in recent years. Who you communicate with and how you communicate has changed radically. This new connected era brings both opportunities and challenges.

In the past we had a set of contacts, all of whom generally knew how to reach us — via phone, e-mail, or regular mail. Today, thanks in large part to social media, we have many different levels of communication, each with a specific purpose and etiquette. When we do not understand the role of these levels, they can become huge time wasters. When we do understand them however, they can help us more effectively engage and navigate these new waters.

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Level 1: The Public Reply

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Just about everyone, including Bill Gates (who if you have not heard, recently joined Twitter), has learned the importance of having both a means to communicate with people, and a channel where people can respond. Though you can do this on Facebook through comments on Fan pages and in groups, this seems most applicable to Twitter, where people use @replies to send and receive short, publicly viewable messages.

The public reply provides an open and transparent channel for people to interact with public figures, brands, and each other, without the pressure of response that comes with e-mail. Public interactions are a great starting point for engagement that never existed before social media, and if done correctly, can often lead to more fruitful direct communication.

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Level 2: The Direct Message

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Once a relationship is established through public communication, the next step is often a direct message within a social network. A direct message creates a private connection without opening the floodgates of e-mail. In fact, in may even be preferable to e-mail in the long term.

Why? Especially with Twitter, a DM has a character limit, and can only come from people you follow. If you have ten e-mails (of unlimited length and possibly unknown sources) and ten Twitter DMs, which are you likely to open first? For an increasing number of people, the answer is DM.

Once you make a connection through DM and get permission to follow-up via e-mail, the e-mail is often better received. Facebook, where most people allow private messages, can also be a means to take communication to the next level.

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Level 3: E-mail

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E-mail still has its place in this new era. It allows for more in-depth communication, can be easily forwarded, and sent to numerous people at once. When e-mail is used skillfully, it enables deeper communication. When not used effectively, it can become a huge time drain, as people write lengthy messages without much thought of the time and attention they are asking of recipients.

This fine line makes e-mail tough to master in the social media age. If you’re looking to advance to the next communication level with someone, respect this direct and private channel, and be sure to keep your e-mails succinct and meaningful.

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Level 4: Phone

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Hearing someone’s voice allows people to get a better sense of one another. While communicating via text, a person can take time to carefully craft his or her words, potentially presenting an image that may not be true or is harder to trust. A phone call allows for more immediate back-and-forth, and can be particularly helpful if a subject matter is delicate or people are considering a more in-depth relationship.

Some time back I was communicating with an editor about an issue that we had bounced back and forth several times. Finally she said, “Let’s chat about it on the phone.” This furthered the dialogue significantly and bypassed what may have taken weeks to sort out via e-mail.

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Level 5: In-Person (or Video Chat)

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I have met numerous people in person that I first communicated with via social networks. All of these meetings were enhanced by the natural progression of our first digital communication. While at one time face-to-face interactions were the entry point, today, in-person meetings often come at later stages.

Particularly if people are considering working on a project together, an in-person meeting allows for the most in-depth connection. For some people Skype or other video chat may be enough to experience this.

Too often people think communication is only through words, but our bodies communicate as well. They communicate how comfortable or uncomfortable we are discussing a matter, our level of passion for a subject, and our hopes and fears. Meeting with someone in person allows for communication to occur on multiple levels, and people often come away with a much better sense of each other.

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Conclusion

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In this era of social media when we are reaching out and engaging more and more people, the question is not just “Should I communicate with someone?” but “How should I communicate with someone? How can I build engagement one step at a time?” The more we allow for and understand the importance of all the various levels of communication, the more we can skillfully and effectively use each one.

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More social media resources from Mashable:

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- Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting
- The Tao of Tweeting
- How Social Media Has Changed Us
- 5 Tips for Building Lasting Online Friendships
- 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL, PaulPaladin, Kohlerphoto, sandoclr

Tags: communication, e-mail, email, facebook, List, Lists, meeting, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter

YouTube delivered on its promise to upload all the Super Bowl Ads as soon as they aired today, with users voting to choose which one will adorn the YouTube front page on Thursday.

The tech and web ads were a mixed bunch: both the established GoDaddy “Too Hot for TV” schtick and Motorola’s decision to put Megan Fox in a bathtub stuck to the “sex sells” mantra, while Monster.com returned with a “Fiddling Beaver”. Intel went for a quirky “lunch room” ad while Vizio chose star power in its Beyonce commercial. We don’t know what inspired Boost Mobile’s ad, meanwhile, but the humor appears to miss the mark [update: commenters say it's a remake of the "Chicago Bears Super Bowl Shuffle"].

Our favorite: Google’s sentimental made-for-web ad — it was promoted to Super Bowl status after its success on YouTube. FLO TV’s retrospective on American media is also a very memorable attempt. Which ads are your faves?

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Web and Tech Super Bowl Ads 2010

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Megan Fox Motorola Ad

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FLO TV: My Generation Ad

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Monster.com Fiddling Beaver Ad

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GoDaddy Super Bowl

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Boost Mobile Ad

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Google: Parisian Love Ad

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Intel Lunch Room Ad

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Go Daddy: News

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Vizio Beyonce Ad

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Cars.com Ad

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Other Super Bowl Ads 2010

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Snickers Super Bowl Ad

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Survivor: Heroes Vs. Villains Ad

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Hyundai Sonata Ad

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Doritos Ad

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Robin Hood Spot

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Doritos: House Rules Ad

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NCIS /CBS Ad

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Coca-Cola / Simpsons Ad

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Undercover Boss Ad (CBS)

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Doritos Casket Ad

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Wolfman Ad

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The Good Wife

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Emerald Nuts: Awesomer

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Hyundai Soata / Brett Favre Ad

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VW Punchdub

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Budweiser Bridge Ad

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Denny’s Chicken Birthday Ad

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Denny’s Chicken Warning

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Alice in Wonderland

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Skechers

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Homeaway Vacation Ad

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Dr Pepper / KISS ad

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Select 55 Ice Bottle Ad

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Michelob Ultra – Little Bumps Ad

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Budweiser Clydesdale Fence Ad

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Late Show Ad

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Bud Light Asteroid Ad

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Tags: ads, Super Bowl, Superbowl, trending

This one will definitely put a smile on the faces of all those who think Google’s Street View service is invading their privacy: Members of German Free Art & Technology group (F.A.T.) noticed Google’s Street View car in Berlin and decided to attach a GPS device to it and track its movement.

The result of their efforts can be seen on a large map, and although it doesn’t seem to show anything out of the ordinary — the Google Street View car seemed to be driving around Berlin as it should be (until they realized they were being tracked and removed the GPS device), but it was nice to be able to reverse the roles and snoop on Google, even for a short while.

Tags: Google, gps, street view

All right Tweetdeck fans, rev up your engines and prepare to update to Tweetdeck 0.33, which adds a slew of new features, better API management and more in-Tweetdeck media previews.

We could list all the new features in Tweetdeck 0.33, but the company was nice enough to make this little video that shows everything off:

Some of the highlights:

Tweetdeck Can Manage Your Twitter API Usage — This means that the program can delegate how to use your available API calls so that the most important info gets to you as easily as possible. Plus, Tweetdeck now uses OAuth and can request up to 350 API calls an hour, and that is expected to increase soon.

Better Column Management — You can now view Flickr, YouTube and Posterous media within Tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck is free. Don’t forget to check out the Mashable branded version.

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Reviews: Flickr, Posterous, TweetDeck, YouTube

Tags: software, tweetdeck, twitter client, web apps

As more and more of our friends and favorite organizations start publishing updates online, being able to organize them well is becoming even more important. Niche-popular desktop social media stream-reader Tweetdeck issued a software update this morning and the most striking change is in its handling of user groups. It's beautiful. The new Tweetdeck is faster, more flexible and easier to navigate.

Groups, we have argued, are the secret weapon of the social web. Here are five ways that the new Tweetdeck gets groups right and that Facebook, the world's dominant social media stream reader by a long-shot, could learn from what Tweetdeck is doing. That would drastically improve Facebook's own user experience.

Sponsor

Internet startup investor John Borthwick of Betaworks has told us that he invested in Tweetdeck specifically because its column metaphor represented a drastic break from the page-based metaphor of the rest of the web and the Instant Messaging metaphor of most other Twitter clients. That's how Tweetdeck works: it lets you put your friends and contacts on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn into grouped columns across your screen. It's a powerful system and the clear leader in the ecosystem of interfaces built around Twitter. Competitor Seesmic has a similar offering and is also based on columns for groups.

These applications may be more overwhelming than many mainstream users are looking for, but the principles could be adapted to Facebook's own interface in some very interesting ways.

The Problem With Facebook's Group Support

Groups of users, which Facebook calls Lists, are extremely helpful in prioritizing messages by their source. They enable users to subscribe to more sources of information in total without fear they will miss high-priority content. Groups help contextualize messages in a stream and with good search support they can help you target queries and unearth the information you're looking for within a limited space of trusted, topical sources of information. Last month, Facebook suggested its users subscribe to news organizations on the social network and put those updates in a special list called News, for example.

Unfortunately, Facebook has never treated Groups with the respect that they deserve. The newest redesign pushes friends Lists a click removed from the front page of the site, even. (It took me three clicks from the home page to see the view pictured on the right, for example.) The company is instead focused on serving up content from favored sources using the new News Feed (vs Live Feed) algorithm. This algorithm says that the more you've interacted with a source of information in the past, the more likely you are to want to read that person's updates in the future. News Feed is a self-reenforcing paradigm that simplifies and narrows a user's universe by taking editorial control out of their hands and putting it in the hands of a black-box formula.

How could Facebook better handle groups? Let's take a look at how Tweetdeck does it.

Tweetdeck's Superior Handling of Groups

• Buttons to navigate directly

  The new Tweetdeck update today added a series of buttons at the bottom of the application for your group columns. Hover over them and you'll see the column name. Click on that button and you'll be brought immediately to that column, a much nicer experience than the awkward old scrolling. The hover display does show some information that's probably not useful to anyone (API calls remaining) but putting rapid group navigation in a good place in the app makes a big difference. It would also be nice if those buttons were configurable in some way - like the red one or #3 is for my @ replies column. But Tweetdeck now makes it much, much easier to navigate between groups than Facebook does. Facebook almost seems to be discouraging use of groups by burying them several clicks below top level options.

  
  
  
• Different Notification Priorities

  Tweetdeck makes it easy to set up different levels of notification for different groups. For example, my "high-priority" Twitter group sends full messages as a pop-up in the corner of my screen when it updates, but my column for people I actually know in real life on Facebook (like my family members) throws a pop-up and an audio notification in Tweetdeck when there's something new. That's awesome.

  Facebook is all about the notifications, why not let me get a special notification when someone in a particular group has posted an update?

  
  

• Shareable Groups, Suggestions etc.

  For years Twitter has been fundamentally public and Facebook private, but for better or for worse that's changing on Facebook. Isn't it time for Facebook to offer bundles of pages or people that you can follow all at once? Twitter and Tweetdeck make this easy with lists, sharable lists and the Tweetdeck directory of recommended lists to follow. Facebook users would love something like that! My college newspaper staff as one big list of Facebook users to follow? My football team? Suzy Bright's curated list of top sex writers to follow on Facebook? People would eat that kind of stuff up.
  

• Keyword Filters

  Last week I was working when the season premier of Lost came on TV. I'm likely to watch it later on DVD. Tweetdeck let me add a filter to all of my groups to hide any posts that included the word Lost! Sick of hearing about the iPad? No problem! Tweetdeck does a great job of building value on top of these groups of contacts: filter for, filter out keywords, analyze a group for its most-used words. There are lots of possibilities. Facebook users would probably like these same options.
  

• A Group for New Friends

  Tweetdeck has a great feature that lets you create a column to display the bios of people who have just started following you. From there you can click once to follow them back. Facebook could easily do something like that, bring new friends and/or recommended friends up higher into a very visible place in the interface. Facebook wants users to go beyond connecting with people they already know in real life (sorry, users, that's what Facebook has decided) so why not create a "group" that's made up of people who are fans of the same pages you are or are otherwise recommended for connecting with?

There are all kinds of ways that Facebook could offer meaningful support for user groups and turn the News Feed into a more powerful tool, with more control for users and more value in the long run. Tweetdeck is doing a pretty darned good job of exactly that.

Discuss

iPhone repair shop iResQ claims that it has the front panel component of the next iteration of Apple’s iPhone, and it has posted a few photos to demonstrate a couple of ways the handset will differ from its predecessor.

If these pics are legit, then the new iPhone will actually be one-fourth of an inch taller than all of the previous three models. Presumably this is to make room for a new component — or more than one new component.

iResQ also observes that the front panel has a “reflective, mirror-like surface” near the top of the phone, and speculates that this is a relocated proximity sensor. The current iPhone’s proximity sensor is used to detect when you’re holding the phone up to your ear. If you are, it shuts off the screen to save battery life and to avoid blinding you with light.

If the reflective surface is the proximity sensor, then Apple might be planning to use the sensor for other functions as well.

If Apple is planning to launch a new iPhone this year, it will likely be announced at WWDC this June. We’ll have to wait until then to see if these photos are real. Take a look at the photos below, but remember that it’s best to pile this in with the rest of the rumors for now.

[via MacRumors]

Tags: apple, iphone

The 2010 Technology Entertainment Design conference will be kicking off tomorrow in Long Beach, California, bringing the leading minds of many fields together to talk shop about innovation, change, and what the future holds.

As social media has become a game changer for industries across the board, you can bet the experts at this year’s TED conference will have their sights set on peeling back the hype and getting at the core of what social technology has in store for this year and beyond.

Perhaps the best part of the TED conferences is that videos of the talks are archived and free to view right on the organization’s website. Given the wealth of insight we’re sure to see tomorrow, we thought we’d whet your appetite by highlighting a few recent and exceptional talks from TED’s past, with a focus on social media.

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1. Alexis Ohanian: How To Make a Splash in Social Media

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We’ll start things off with a real-life social media parable about how the biggest and most effective forces on the web usually take shape by accident. Alexis Ohanian of Reddit.com tells the quick and hilarious story of how the social web provided some unexpected help to Greenpeace in halting the Japanese whaling industry. Internet marketers take note: The meme is all powerful, and it cannot be controlled.

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2. Clay Shirky: How Social Media Can Make History

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In this talk, consultant, professor and author Clay Shirky discusses the unprecedented immediacy of real-time citizen journalism made possible by social media and the nearly ubiquitous access to mobile web technologies. From the election crisis in Iran to the massive earthquake that shook China in May of 2008, Shirky discusses how media is made on the ground, as-it-happens, via the social web.

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3. Evan Williams: Listening to Twitter Users

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With a couple of anecdotes building the ultimate social media case study, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams discusses how a little side project called Twitter became a game-changing phenomenon with the help and input of the very users who made the service a success. From innovative marketing uses to core functionality, Williams provides the evidence for what we knew all along: Users know best.

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4. Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy

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As social media changes our social lives, speculation has abounded for years on how the web may be disconnecting us from intimate interactions in favor of meaningless quests to rack up followers and “friends.” Not so, says Stefana Broadbent, who explains that social networks function the same way online as they do in real life. While we may have lots of friends, we only really communicate regularly and meaningfully with a handful of them, and social technologies like e-mail, texting, and tweeting allow us to do so more often across time and space.

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5. Seth Godin: The Tribes We Lead

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From professional sports mascots to balloon animal makers, some communities are so extremely niche that they could only properly thrive on the Internet. So argues blogger and author Seth Godin, who believes that our revolutionary new connectedness has brought human culture back to its roots, and that tribes (groups of people mobilized around a shared interest) are the present and future of all web content.

What are your favorite TED talks about social media? Which did we miss? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: future, List, Lists, social media, social networks, technology, TED, TED Talks, twitter, video

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: Bandize

Quick Pitch: Online DIY organization and management business tools for musicians, bands, band managers and record labels.

Genius Idea: Bandize, which will be unveiled at South By Southwest, is an idea so sharp that you’re likely to wonder why it hasn’t already been done. And to some extent, it has; many of its features have appeared in web or desktop apps before, but not in such a complete and cohesive package.

Managing an independent music act (like, say, a punk rock band) is like owning a small business. Bandize helps managers and band members collaborate on all the critical data related to their work, from merchandise sales to event schedules to important contact information.

If you already know the world of online workplace collaboration tools, think of it as a Basecamp or Backpack for bands. Tasks can be assigned to band members and you can track their productivity to make sure every one is pulling his or her weight. And if someone pitches in a little extra — like if he or she lends the band some money for gas — you can keep track of that and make sure that person is compensated.

The obvious features are all here, of course. You can schedule tour dates and track how much money you’ve made with merchandise sales. But one feature that sets Bandize apart is the ability to track how well each piece of merchandise is selling at each venue. You can see if one T-shirt tends to be more popular than another when your band plays in Austin so you can plan to bring more of that same merch the next time you have a date there.

You can also use Bandize to manage your contacts. If someone is associated with a particular venue, you can tag him or her with that venue, and when you print out day sheets at each venue, his or her contact info will be included. If you already have a lot of contacts, you can import them from various sources like Outlook, Google Contacts or a vcard. There are a bunch of other smaller features like poster printing, file storage, and more accounting and contact management tools.

Bandize is currently in beta testing, and you can get a 30-day trial for your band right now. After the trial, it will cost $15 each month.

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: bandize, bizspark, music, startups

How the Super Bowl ad featuring David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno came together.

Although all is said and done when it comes to football this season, such is not the case for the Super Bowl advertisers.

We’re now entering the entertaining aftermath of the Super Bowl ad showdown, and thanks to social media tracking services like Alterian and Radian6, we can take an early look at advertisers winning big on the web.

The following results come from two sources. Starting in early December, Alterian SM2 looked at social media conversations across a variety of sites and tracked all discussions relevant to Super Bowl advertising. Its latest report is embedded below. By contrast, Mullen and Radian6 crafted BrandBowl2010 to measure volume and sentiment of Twitter chatter mentioning the advertisers, with analysis beginning the Friday prior to the game. The discrepancies in their results represent different methods of data collection.

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Biggest Buzz-Makers

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When it comes to sheer volume alone, Alterian SM2 ranks Focus on the Family as the advertiser with the most mentions overall from December 1, 2009, to February 8, 2010, at 3:00 a.m. CST.

You might recall that initially the unaired ad stirred up controversy prior to the big game due to its pro-life subject matter. While this viewer thought the buzz was much ado about nothing, the fact of the matter is that the build-up led to a highly anticipated spot with a big payoff on the social web in terms of overall mentions.

By comparison, however, Alterian SM2 found that conversations on game day alone were Google-heavy. According to the company, Google’s late entry into the Super Bowl advertiser foray was a pretty big win for the search giant. On Super Bowl Sunday, Google was the advertiser with the most mentions, highest Social Engagement Index (i.e. farthest reach), and the second-highest sentiment score (second only to Doritos) among all advertisers.

According to Mullen and Radian6’s BrandBowl2010, which looked at just Twitter chatter over a shorter time span, Doritos saw the most volume of tweets, and was its winner for “most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast.”

BrandBowl ranked Google and Focus on the Family as second and third in the most-buzzed about competition. Its top 10 most effective brands are as follows:

1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus On Family
4. Snickers:
5. Budweiser
6. Bud Light
7. Hyundai
8. Kia
9. GoDaddy
10. Coca-Cola

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Who We Really Love

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Quantity is one thing, but quality is something else entirely. When looking at initial tallies, social media analysis points to the advertisers and ads we loved the most.

Alterian SM2 crowns Anheuser-Busch as its initial post-game victor in the battle for the most-loved brand overall (for the entire duration of the measurement period).

On game day only, however, Doritos took the top spot with the highest sentiment score, followed by Google in a distant second. Due to the flurry of social positive sentiment Doritos garnered on Super Bowl Sunday, the brand was able to skyrocket to become the second most-loved (i.e. highest sentiment score) brand overall as well.

Per BrandBowl, we — the members of the Twittersphere — loved McDonald’s and Dr Pepper. Though neither of these advertisers ever cracked the top 10 list in terms of volume, tweets about them were extremely positive.

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The Biggest Losers

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Per Alterian SM2’s data, the advertiser with the most negative conversations from December 1, 2009, to December 8, 2010, at 3:00 a.m. CST was Focus on the Family.

Interestingly enough, BrandBowl declared Budweiser Select55 to be its last place-finisher. The kind hearts at Mullen are now offering free creative services for next year’s commercial as a consolation prize. Its 10 least effective brands list is as follows:

30. NBC’s Universal – Universal Orlando
31. Paramount Pictures
32. FloTV
33. Cars.com
34. Motorola
35. Diamond Foods’ – Pop Secret
36. Honda
37. Teleflora
38. Michelob Ultra
39. Budweiser Select55

Super Bowl Social Media Results Feb82010

[img credit: Willard, iStockphoto]

Tags: Anheuser-Busch, doritos, MARKETING, Super Bowl, Super Bowl ads

In previous posts, we discussed the common challenges that entrepreneurs face — from those in the garage to innovators inside large companies. In order to tell if we're making progress, we turned our attention from the outputs of models — from things like gross revenues and profits — to the inputs, insisting that the path to successful innovation is to prove the viability of the concept in micro-scale.

The idea is simple. Establish baseline metrics by building the minimum viable product — the minimum required to measure the response of early adopters. Then, in each development cycle, use the insights gained by studying customers to make improvements. This is the source of validated learning — proof that the customer insights translate into tangible metrics improvements.

But this leaves a very difficult problem still to be solved: How do we know that these changes are what actually effect change in the metrics that we're observing?

This is the curse of vanity metrics, numbers which look good on paper but aren't action oriented: website hits, message volume, or "billions and billions served." They look great in a press release, but what do they accomplish?

Consider a scenario where a team makes a product change, and the very next month page views go up. As humans, we're hard-wired to infer causality from correlation: when the numbers go up, we tend to take credit. But when the numbers go down, we tend to blame someone or something else. Worse yet, different team members tend to attribute positive changes to whatever project they were working on at the time (but not negative changes, of course). As a result, different parts of the team are constantly "learning" in their own private reality. When those teams face difficult choices, it's incredibly hard for them to come together and make an informed, fact-based decision.

To avoid falling into this trap, I recommend you follow the three A's of metrics. All metrics should be actionable, accessible, and auditable.

Actionable: When an employee sees a report about a specific metric, it's essential that they have some idea how to replicate the result in the report. Techniques like split-testing, where discrete groups of customers see different versions of the product, are the gold-standard here. Following the scientific method gives confidence that the observed behavior was, in fact, caused by the change being tested.

Accessible: Most data warehousing systems provide reports that are too complicated to read and take too long to generate. As a result, many teams don't get any benefit out of them. In order for reports to be worthwhile, it's essential that:

• Everyone in the company understand how to read them
• Everyone in the company has easy access to the latest data

Additionally, to keep accessibility high, the feedback loop between taking an action and seeing the results should be as short as possible. In my experience, waiting for even a weekly round-up or having to ask a data warehousing expert to run a report creates too much friction. Key data should be available to any employee, anytime, in a matter of minutes. In order to achieve that goal, the reports themselves have to be extremely simple.

Auditable: The biggest benefit of actionable metrics is that they can be used to reap the biggest savings in all of product development, when they tell you that you don't need to do something. Metrics have to be credible to the people who drive the product vision, including company founders. Even if they understand a report, and know what caused it, that doesn't mean they will actually learn. Is the report accurate? Believe me, when it's your idea on the line, it's much easier to believe the report is the problem rather than the idea.

Thus, it's important that skeptics can audit a report. When possible, this should mean that report generation is simple. Hopefully it can be created with direct access to primary data. For example, a report about revenue that's generated directly from the master orders database is more credible than one that requires several intermediate steps. Most importantly, it should be possible to translate the summary numbers in the report back to the actual customers who generated them.

Remember, metrics are really reports on people. This is where most off-the-shelf metrics packages fail. For example, consider a report that claims in a split-test between two proposed features, feature A generated more revenue than feature B. Which people used feature A? Which people used feature B? Can a skeptic call them up and ask them questions about their use of each feature? If not, how can we generate actionable insights about what to test next? Or consider a report that reports abstract quantities, like website hits or attrition rates. These are hard to visualize. But if instead our metrics say a sports stadium full of people declined to buy our product. Ouch. We can all viscerally relate to that.

I have found that most entrepreneurs — in any sized company — will readily agree that better analytics leads to better results. But how do they know when it makes sense to make infrastructure investments?

In order to make sense of these trade-offs, we need a heuristic for evaluating the value of new processes, tools, or infrastructure in an entrepreneurial context. That will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Eric Ries is the author of StartupLessonsLearned.com and is an adviser to many startups, companies, and venture capital firms.

With the Super Bowl yesterday came the time-honored Super Bowl commercials, each costing $2.5 million for a 30-second spot.  Even Google got in on the game with its first ever spot receiving rave reviews (although the commercial wasn’t new). But which commercials went beyond TV to score on the Web?  Reprise Media released a report that ranks Super Bowl advertisers based on the level of integration between their television commercials and presence on the web in terms of search and social media. According to Reprise’s scorecard, Boost Mobile, HomeAway, E*Trade and Google were the marketing standouts out of last night’s commercials.

Reprise decreed that Boost Mobile and HomeAway, which were both first-time Super Bowl advertisers, had the best cross-channel promotion from the tube to the web. E*Trade and Google followed with compelling ad spots that encouraged users to look to the web for more information. Who fumbled?  The Pop Secret/Emerald Nuts, Prudential, Dodge Charger and all movie commercials had the least amount of cross-channel integration.

Interestingly, Turbo Tax, Mazda and Pepsi didn’t have ads in the Super Bowl but they attracted traffic online by running paid search ads on keywords related to other Super Bowl advertisers. Unsurprisingly, millions of consumers turned to social networks including Twitter to discuss their favorite ads. According to social media monitoring service Trendrr, the four top gaining Super Bowl ad brands on Twitter within the last 24 hours were Dockers (+307%), Boost Mobile (+161%), Emerald Nuts (+150) and Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (+120%). Out of all of the car commercials, Audi’s A3 Green Police advertisement received the most buzz on Trendrr.  But was that because it was humorous (showing people getting arrested for using foam cups and incandescent bulbs) or too smug?

Social media measurement company Radian 6 and ad agency Mullen have released stats on which brand was most effective according to sentiment and volume of Tweets on Twitter. The report says that Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast on CBS this year. Budweiser Select55 was the least effective brand. And Google and Focus on the Family followed Doritos is becoming the most discussed commercials on Twitter. Of course, it should be noted that Doritos had several commercials in the Super Bowl, which could have contributed to the volume of tweets. On the other hand, Google had a higher percentage of positive tweets.

Computer experts say individuals with upcoming bachelor parties or afterwork get-togethers are especially vulnerable to cyber attacks resulting in fraudulent late-night purchases.

Piše: Hana Kazazović
Video: Rizah Halilkadić

Sinoć je nakon nakon košarkaškog meča prve ženske lige BiH Čelik – Željezničar policija imala svoj šou. Ne znam kako bi drugačije čovjek mogao nazvati njihovu akciju u kojoj su priveli novinara zeničkog dopisništva kakanjske televizije IC.

Detaljne informacije možete pročitati na Zenicablogu, tu imate i video. A isti video možete pogledati na linku dole, ili u gornejm desnom uglu na našoj stranici.

VIDEO “Milicija trenira strogoću”

Na sve ovo nemam komentar, samo mogu reći da me nakon ovakvih stvari uvijek malo više strah. Samo bih pitala ponovo – kako da čovjek povjeruje u to da će oni nekog zaštititi?

A prije mjesec dana su izdali svoj časopis “STOP” u kojem kažu da imaju za cilj Vratiti dostojanstvo policajcu. Moraću ga pročitati, volim humoristične časopise.

Sorry if we're the sort of folks to look a gift SD card reader in the mouth, but while we're oh-so-happy that Apple finally opened up application-enabled hardware development in iPhone OS 3.0, we really wish an accessory like this had been available for the iPhone right from the start. The new zoomIt SD card reader from zoomMediaPlus adds a bit of external, swappable memory to the iPhone and iPod touch at long last, giving you the ability to store your iPhone's pictures on the card, or pull stuff off it onto your handset using the free zoomIt app. Interestingly, this is coming to light just a couple weeks after we saw Apple's own similar solution for getting cameras into the iPad mix -- the SD and USB-adapting iPad Camera Connection Kit, which will be a mere $30. There's no word if Apple's adapter will work with the iPhone (we doubt it) or if the zoomIt will work with the iPad (perhaps), but the $60 pricetag on the zoomIt is a bit of a turn off. Also, it won't be shipping until April (though you can pre-order now for a $10 discount), so Apple may very well make up our minds for us by the time March rolls around.

zoomMediaPlus' zoomIt is the iPhone's long overdue SD card reader originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In this week’s Free Music Monday we offer you 10 free downloadable MP3s (or the occasional full album) for your eclectic listening pleasure. If you haven’t checked out Free Music Monday before, we’re giving away free and legal tracks in honor of the #musicmonday tradition on Twitter.

We also gladly accept your submissions for Free Music Monday — please find information about how to submit your tracks or music from artists you represent at the end of this post. Now without further ado, let’s roll some tracks!

1. [DOWNTEMPO] Cosmo D’s Sauce: “Metroid (Brynstar)” — Jazzy horns and downtempo beats from one of several acts from the Brooklyn-based Smoothe Moose label and artist collective. Right-click to download this track, and grab lots more from Smoothe Moose’s mixtapes at Soundcloud. The We Love Video Game Music sampler featuring this track is also embedded below for streaming and download.

Smoothe Moose Mixtape #3 – We Love Video Game Music by smoothemoose

2. [OPERA] The Knife: “Colouring of Pigeons” — It’s The Knife like they’ve been heard before. Right-click to snag a track from the electro-opera the brother and sister duo were commissioned to compose, Tomorrow, In a Year, based on the infamous Charles Darwin text The Origin of Species. The digital release on the 92-minute opera is out now, with the two-CD physical album to arrive March 1.

3. [STONER ROCK] Ancestors: “The Ambrose Law” — If you like Sabbath-influenced progressive rock, right-click to check out this track from L.A.’s Ancestors. [via Stoner Rock]

4. [ELECTRONICA] Four Tet: “Essential Mix” — Almost two hours’ worth of mixes and remixes are included in this set from UK’s Kieran Hebden, better known as Four Tet. Download the entire set from Soundcloud or from the streaming player below.

Essential mix (January 2010) by Four Tet

5. [ROCK] Martha and the Muffins: “Don’t Say Anything” — To get your free download from the recently released new album Delicate (their first studio release in 18 years), head on over to MatM’s site to sign up for the mailing list and get a copy of “Don’t Say Anything” from these Toronto-based rockers.

6. [INDIE] Thunderhawk: “King Basement” — Get your right-click on to snag a track from the forthcoming VI release from Indianapolis’ Thunderhawk, slated to drop in March. Check out more about the band on their MySpace page and at Standard Recording.

7. [EXPERIMENTAL] Primary Colors of Sound: “bAg” — Chill, downtempo beats characterize this experimental electronic outfit, who offer a free download of the track “bAg” along with several others on their iLike artist page.

8. [GUITAR ROCK] Gary Reynolds and the Brides of Obscurity: “Three Angels” — Songwriter, guitarist and Electrokitty Studios owner Gary Reynolds has embarked on an ambitious plan to release a new track per week and a full-length album every month in 2010. New tracks go up every Monday, and you can always download the latest on Gary and the band’s website. This week’s track is “Three Angels,” described as “religion and spacemen done to a Zeppelin style groove and a nice backwards guitar solo.”

9. [DUBSTEP] Derivate: “L2 (Beto Narme’s Dense Subspace Remix)” — Netlabel Sublime Porte from Istanbul offers this remix (right-click to download) of Derivate’s recent EP, Lagrange Points I. You can also download the release in its entirety at Sublime Porte, plus follow the label for future releases on Twitter.

10. [SINGER/SONGWRITER] GarageSpin: “Spinning Daydream” — This track about “embracing all experiences in life, good and bad” from singer/songwriter and music blogger Mike B, recording and blogging as GarageSpin, is available for the low cost of your right-click. Snag another free track and free stream from the GarageSpin Music page.

As always, thank you for tuning in to Free Music Monday! If you like this feature, please help us out by sharing it with your music-loving friends. You can always find the latest edition of this feature by hitting up the Free Music Monday tag page, so please check back. We’ve appended the list of past Free Music Mondays at the end of this post in case you missed any of the back catalog.

Big thanks to everyone for the great submissions we’re getting. If you sent us tracks and we haven’t featured them yet, stay tuned for a future Free Music Monday. If you’d like to submit tracks for yourself or an artist you represent, give us a shout at barb AT mashable DOT com. Be sure to send us an MP3 or two we can use (no more than 25MB file size total please) or send us a link to listen to tracks you’re willing to provide as a free download. Thanks everyone!

P.S. Bonus tip: They’re not “free” but they are low cost — be sure to check out Amazon’s 100 albums for $5 through February.

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Free Music Monday Back Catalog

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- Alternative Rock Edition
- Covers, Remixes, and Mashups Edition
- Electronica Edition
- Free Downloads for Your Ears (Feb. 1, 2010)
- Fresh and Free Downloads (Jan. 25, 2010)
- Hip-hop Edition
- Labor Day Edition
- Live Edition
- Rock and Pop Edition
- Singer-Songwriter Edition
- Video Edition
- Your Submissions Edition
- Your Submissions, All Downloads Edition

Tags: downloads, free music monday, mp3s, music

Are you a budding Web entrepreneur who would like some pointers or advice from seasoned company founders? MayField Fund and First Round Capital are sponsoring a raffle to give away mentoring sessions with the founders of Digg (Jay Adelson), Flickr (Caterina Fake), Mint (Aaron Patzer), Ning (Gina Bianchini), Slide (Max Levchin), and Zynga (Mark Pincus).

The raffle will take place at a private event in Silicon Valley with space for 100 attendees on March 1. But you can win a ticket for the event by applying here. The event and raffle are free, but the 100 attendees in the running will be selected beforehand by partners at Mayfield and First Round.

Winners of the raffle do not get to become Best Friends Forever with the founders. But they will get one intense mentoring session each.