19 new stories on The Next Web today |  |
- Tencent to shut down China’s largest instant messaging service QQ for some users [TNW Asia]
- London to take on Silicon Valley with major investment, but can it transplant the culture? [TNW UK]
- Try This: Better Means. A democratic, open approach to teamwork [TNW Apps]
- Are you an influencer? [video] [TNW Shareables]
- Google’s Schmidt: Chinese Censorship of the Internet will Fail [TNW Asia]
- Verizon releasing “iconic device” on Nov 9th. Is it the iPhone 4? [TNW Mobile]
- Kik Hits a High Note, But Is It a Hit? [TNW Canada]
- Facebook Connect, OAuth and OpenID: The differences and the future [TNW Social Media]
- Try This: Wrappp.it. Collaborate to pick grand gifts. [TNW Apps]
- Facebook is very confidently just getting warmed up with Places [TNW Location]
- Try This: Whispurr. A New “Macro” Messaging Service. [TNW Apps]
- 10 questions, 8 million respondents, 1 giant election-centric infographic [TNW United States]
- Can you make a compelling web video series from Craigslist ads? Someone did. [TNW Media]
- Mark Zuckerberg believes in a future disrupted by “the social experience” [TNW Social Media]
- Video: How The Gap will give away 10,000 pairs of jeans through Facebook Places [TNW Location]
- Twitter for Android: Faster, cleaner and now with pull-to-refresh [TNW Apps]
- Windows 7 SP1 RTM will be released in Q1 of 2011 [TNW Microsoft]
- How Microsoft can use the Windows Phone 7 kill switch [TNW Microsoft]
- Microsoft finally admits that the iPad is ‘cannibalizing’ netbook sales [TNW Microsoft]
- Everything You Need To Know About Today’s Facebook Announcements [TNW Social Media]
| Tencent to shut down China’s largest instant messaging service QQ for some users [TNW Asia] Posted: 04 Nov 2010 03:59 AM PDT
QQ is China’s largest instant messaging service with over 600 million registered users. The dispute began about a month ago when Qihoo’s newly launched privacy protection software began blocking QQ and Qihoo accused QQ of spying on users by scanning their hard drives while the QQ app is running. In reality, it is probably Tencent’s own security software, built into QQ to prevent trojans, that Qihoo is complaining about. Qihoo are known to be unhappy that Tencent grabbed a large share of the security market by simply including their own security scanning software within a QQ update. So far, some users have responded by removing QQ from their machines, others have decided to disable Qihoo 360 instead. With the free availablility of anti-virus products, it’s probable that Qihoo 360 will suffer most from this spat as users switch to alternative security software such as Microsoft’s Security Essentials and continue to use QQ. Even if the users heed Qihoo’s dire warnings and delete QQ from their machines, they can still use QQ through a web interface or through many local smart phones. Over recent weeks, QQ has been the subject of more bad publicity as The Next Web Asia reported here.image credit, Reuters [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| London to take on Silicon Valley with major investment, but can it transplant the culture? [TNW UK] Posted: 04 Nov 2010 01:55 AM PDT
“East London Tech City”, as it will reportedly be called, will take in a swathe of east London, including the Old Street “Silicon Roundabout” area, already home to many of the capital’s startups, and the Olympic Park. TechCrunch has details of the planned investments, which reportedly include a new Google Innovation Hub for researchers, developers and academics; Cisco, Qualcomm and Intel opening new presences in the area; Facebook introducing a permanent home for its Developer Garage in London and superfast BT broadband in the Shoreditch and Old Street areas. A new “Entrepreneur Visa” is planned, in the hope of attracting overseas startup talent to the UK, along with new banking and advisory services for startups being made available. Intellectual Property laws are also expected to be reviewed and modernised. This is all encouraging stuff. As last week’s Connected Kingdom report showed, the UK’s Internet economy is worth £100bn per year and is now larger than the construction, utilities and transport sectors. Investing in growing that further can only be a good thing. However, there’s one part of Silicon Valley you can’t implant into London – culture. The entrepreneurial, risk-taking, no-fear-of-failure attitude is an important factor in Silicon Valley’s success. As we’ve reported in the past, the culture in the UK and Europe is far more cautious and conservative. That said, having the infrastructure in place to support entrepreneurs is part of the battle and we already have some seriously good startups in the UK. If all the other pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, maybe a little of that Silicon Valley spirit will naturally emerge in east London.BBC, TechCrunch Europe, Image source [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Try This: Better Means. A democratic, open approach to teamwork [TNW Apps] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 09:24 PM PDT
We've covered project management platforms before on TNW, but this latest offering, Better Means, is a whole new ball game. See this introductory video for a quick overview: Basing the platform on a system of equality, Better Means allows teams to collaborate on projects in a fair, honest environment. A democratic voting system ensures everyone who wants to contribute to a project is able to have their voice heard. Contributors outside of the core team can also vote and comment on projects, allowing the wider community opinion to be heard, whilst not affecting the progression of projects. See this more in-depth video for a walk-through of the main functions: The transparent, open-source nature of the platform would work perfectly for volunteer-based organizations, but core team member Adele Burnes also had this to say about the most suitable groups:
The options available for companies really make this a flexible platform. Adele mentions the optional credits system in the second video I've included, which is a democratic way for team members to vote on compensation amounts for those who contribute to a project. Companies who want to control compensation in their own way can simply ignore this feature. And while the team at Better Means promotes openness and transparency, private options are available as well. For companies who are happy to keep all projects and members completely public, signing up is free, but for those wanting private options, pricing varies from $25 to $200 per month, depending on how many private workstreams and members you need. Better Means is truly a new way of working within a team, and organizing projects. Adele sums up the best aspects of the platform here:
For groups interesting in testing the waters of openness and transparency (or those already doing so), this is a great way to promote collaborate, democratic decision making and cut out the traditional hierarchy of business. Sign up here to test it out. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Are you an influencer? [video] [TNW Shareables] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 09:06 PM PDT ‘Influencers’ is a cool documentary about, you guessed it, influencers. You can watch the trailer here or the full version after the jump. This short documentary made by R+I Creative goes on to explore what it means to be an influencer and to be influenced. How an idea or a feeling could go viral like a virus or an oil spill. Watch the full version: Also check out the official site, it looks good and is even designed specifically for the iPad.Fubiz [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Google’s Schmidt: Chinese Censorship of the Internet will Fail [TNW Asia] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 08:58 PM PDT
Schmidt, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, CEO Speaker Series, said that the expansion of China’s internet population, especially with the growth in mobile internet use was likely to leave China’s censors struggling to keep up. The Chinese government seeks to control the flow of information available to Internet users in the country and to prevent access to certain sites, considered to be inappropriate for Chinese users by forcing all traffic through the “Great Fire Wall” or GFW. This is not the first time Google has been critical of China’s censorship regime. Early in 2010, Google risked the loss of its licence to operate in mainland China by announcing that it was no longer willing to self-censor search results as required by the Chinese Government. That impasse was resolved by Google redirecting all Chinese search traffic to its Hong Kong servers. Chinese users have several methods of breaching the Great Fire Wall from simple anonymising proxy servers that pop up on the web daily as others are blocked to full blown VPN access and even through loopholes such as Amazon’s Kindle 3image credit, MarketWatch [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Verizon releasing “iconic device” on Nov 9th. Is it the iPhone 4? [TNW Mobile] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 08:32 PM PDT OK, so we’re tired of the rumors too. Wait, we’re not fooling anyone; of course we’re not tired of the rumors. A Verizon iPhone would be such a game-changing addition to the US wireless lineup that you’d see posts for the next six months about it. However, all things considered, some information that we’re seeing over at TUAW sure does seem to fuel the fire.
Verizon, from our own experiences, is really heavy with the corporate speak. That “iconic device” could signal any number of things, but there’s been nothing so iconic as the thought of a Verizon iPhone from big red. The fact that it talks about “select accessories” makes us think that this isn’t some 4G/LTE USB device or other such silliness. At this point in the game, it wouldn’t make sense to have such a secretive release form for anything other than the iPhone. We’re cautioned, however, that the iconic device in question might be the Motorola Droid pro. While the Droid has been a runaway success for Verizon, we’d hardly call it iconic enough to be kept such a secret. In fact, we already know almost everything there is to know about the device, and it hasn’t been that hotly anticipated from what we have seen. So set a Bookmark for TNW Mobile. You can rest assured that we’ll have our hands on whatever comes out next Tuesday. In fact, if you’ll excuse me, I have a PR person to email… [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Kik Hits a High Note, But Is It a Hit? [TNW Canada] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 08:03 PM PDT
Today Techvibes and StartupNorth are reporting on Kik’s latest press release about the tremendous number or downloads in recent weeks and 150,000 new users added in one day (CNW). While I think it’s great that Kik appears to be having gangbusters success, so much so that they need to update the messaging servers:
I’m still left wondering who is using the app. No, I’m not poo-pooing their success, it’s just that in the week + that I’ve had the app, I’ve only received one notification that someone I might know is using Kik. I’m connected to thousands of people, so it would stand to reason that even in startup mode at least a few of my tech adopter friends would have picked up on it.
And this is the rub. Could I get my wife to sign up for Kik? Probably not. Another service? What’s wrong with SMS? Or even email? While the app certainly has potential, exclaiming that the app is having “viral growth” is stretching it I think. I think StartupNorth has a smart, cautious optimism in the review. No doubt there is a use case. No doubt it could be handy. However I just don’t see that Kik solves the messaging glut problem that we already have (email, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and on) in any new or real way. I’m glad that Kik has had a lot of downloads, maybe Google will notice them, scoop them up, and we’ll get some interesting features in GTalk or Google Voice.Press Release [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Facebook Connect, OAuth and OpenID: The differences and the future [TNW Social Media] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 07:50 PM PDT
So we thought we’d take this opportunity to clear the air on a few things, to get you up to speed about what’s going on in the login market. With so many choices, it can certainly get confusing. Even here on TNW, we offer you the ability to use your Facebook account with Facebook Connect or Twitter via OAuth to sign in to the site. What They DoTo start, you need to understand OpenID and Facebook Connect essentially serve the same purpose in respect to identification, with different feature access separating the two. As far as identification goes, instead of having to sign up on a site and remember passwords, you simply sign up once and then you can use that login across a myriad of sites. The problem that we’ve seen with ID is that different sites have had different desires and as such different standards have evolved. Also, it pays to understand that the decision to use one platform over another, in many instances until now, has essentially devolved simply into a question of how much information you need. OpenID
The purpose behind OpenID can best be described as an introduction to a stranger. OpenID serves as the third party that can verify who you are. So, when you go to sign in to a new site, the site asks the OpenID server “is this John” and the OpenID server replies that yes, it is John. The problem with OpenID, according to Dave Recordon, is that v2 of the standard was incredibly difficult to implement:
So, combine that complexity with the fact that OpenID hasn’t been updated in 3 years and you have a bit of a recipe for disaster. There’s also the problem that it requires more than one handshake (introduction) in order to get data stored on a server. In fact, OpenID cannot, at this point, acquire that information on its own. It has to send a second request for OAuth to handle the information transfer. There is hope on the horizon, however. Rumors are swirling that OpenID is working on a new standard called OpenID Connect that will be built on top of OAuth. This would allow a single handshake for both identification and data transfer. We’ll do another post about that, later, as more developments happen. OAuth
OAuth differs from OpenID in that it cannot request identification (at least in its present form). What it can do is allow a 3rd party to have access to your data without the need for you to show your password to that 3rd party site. There is a revision to OAuth that has been proposed, allowing OAuth to acquire identity as well, but it is far from finalized. That 1.0 version of OAuth had issues of its own. In fact, it spawned the discussion about WRAP, yet another manner of doing the same thing. While the WRAP discussions have gone to the wayside, you can rest assured that the involved parties are watching the current circumstances quite closely. Facebook Connect
With Facebook Connect, what we see are elements of both OpenID and OAuth. Facebook Connect can verify that you are who you say you are, and it can then provide access to your data once you’ve given it permission to do so. Today, with Facebook pushing its Single Sign-on project, that Connect option moves into the world of mobile, where OAuth and OpenID have had issues gaining ground. So What’s Next?That’s a question that nobody has been able to answer, just yet. OpenID and OAuth think that they have a collective right answer, but Facebook clearly thinks that it has its own. As Louis Gray told me in a discussion about the subject, it will likely come down to adoption. The dominantly-adopted platform will be the one that pushes the rest aside. At this point, that is likely Facebook Connect, but there are literally millions of other sites that use the others. We’ll be monitoring this situation, moving forward, and keeping you up to date with what happens. For now, I have to send out a huge measure of thanks to Louis Gray for his deciphering of information as well as his insight into the subject. Another massive amount of respect goes out to the crew from Baydin Software (hooray for Boomerang!) for putting things into laymen’s terms. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Try This: Wrappp.it. Collaborate to pick grand gifts. [TNW Apps] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 07:30 PM PDT
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| Facebook is very confidently just getting warmed up with Places [TNW Location] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 07:00 PM PDT
If you haven’t already read our extensive coverage of today’s mobile event at Facebook HQ, start with our “Everything You Need To Know” post and then work your way through our other posts before coming back here. Welcome back – obviously, today’s event cemented location/Places as a key feature of Facebook. Expanding the ability to check-in on Android is an especially good move for Facebook at this point, as is the opening up of its Places APIs to all developers. Before today, the Places platform was simply too limiting to show what it is capable of, and now we should start to get a taste of that potential (or not). Beyond today’s announcements, the member of the Places team that I spoke to at length said that there are many things that the team still wants to do with Places. To this point, however, they’ve been focused on just rolling out these current features, but from what I gathered we may see a number of changes/additions in the not-so-far-off-future. So what are some of the things that they want to do? Well, for one, the person I talked with agreed that getting Facebook’s Places data in order is a challenging priority, especially where venue duplication is concerned. Also, as many users (especially new ones) want to check into their homes, Facebook has had to deal with how it shows that kind of (private) information and to whom. Part of the difficulty of course, is that Facebook does not control the hardware – CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a very solid “No.” to whether his company is working on a handset – that whatever location data the phone collects is what Facebook has to use for Places. In other words, Facebook, for the foreseeable future, is dependent on Apple’s and Google’s location determination. Of course, once Facebook has that, it then translates that to its own Places database (and/or compares it to the third-party check-in app that is feeding Places) or users can create the venue. This last part was a huge issue at smaller location startups, and Facebook said that it realizes that this will be a hurdle to get over with Places moving forward. Another issue that I brought up today in my conversations at Facebook was how I feel that the “check-in with your friends to unlock a Deal” thing is a little half-baked. Basically, from my point of view, without some kind of way for multiple people to triangulate their respective positions to themselves and relative to the venue that is offering the Deal, it makes it very hard for users to make plans. So unless three friends are walking down the street or in the same car together, these kinds of Deals will be too much effort for most people. Facebook’s response? More or less, “we’ve got a lot of things we want to do.” That was the central impression that I’ll take away from today’s event: while the updates today are a large step forward – especially the addition of Places into Android, Deals and opening up the APIs – Facebook is looking very long term at Places as a product that it will continue to iterate on for a long time. “Beyond the check-in” might be a catch phrase this year, but Facebook seems to have taken it to heart as a strategic concept. I was told today that Facebook used and test Places for six months internally before launching – this is a very serious effort, and not just ‘another feature’. What Facebook will end up doing beyond today, we’ll have to wait and see, but it certainly sounded from my discussions that the wish lists is already quite long, and that Facebook expects that those future enhancements will allow it to dominate this space. One last thing: Facebook is confident that it has built Places correctly to avoid privacy issues, and the fact that so far it has avoided any major issues was noted as prove of that in my conversation. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Try This: Whispurr. A New “Macro” Messaging Service. [TNW Apps] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 06:34 PM PDT
Hits:
Misses:
Overall: 4/5 Once you’ve logged in, a nifty link shows up under the text box to help you get started. Clicking on this shows a quick overview of how to post a message, import Gmail and Yahoo contacts, invite friends, and update your profile. All of these tasks are easy to do, and only take two or three clicks. Once you're set up and ready to start exploring, you'll find more of those handy tips on each page to explain how to use the service in different ways.
The basic functions of Whispurr work similar to Twitter – you can read through the public thread, reply or forward messages or add them to favourites. One cool difference in the basic posting features is the option to record a video and attach it to your message. You'll need Flash installed to do this, but it was quick and easy when I tried it out, and could prove to be a popular feature. Another great feature that Twitter users will rejoice over is threaded replies. Each reply you make is connected to the original message, making it easy for you (and others) to follow your conversations.
So what makes this truly different to other public messaging services? Firstly messages can be sent to a single user, like the one pictured above, or to a whole network you've created using the lists feature. Secondly you can also opt to broadcast your message to the entire Whispurr network through the public channel. This makes Whispurr a perfect way to communicate with colleagues, friends, and family in different ways from one central hub. Once you’ve got the basics down, there are some more exciting ways to use Whispurr. Using your email address, you can send private and public messages straight to your Whispurr account. Even better, you can send Whispurr messages to your friends’ mobile phones – whether they have a Whispurr account or not. This can be done from the Web interface or through your email account, and is free, but unfortunately only available to a few European countries so far (Italy, Turkey, the UK and Ireland). In many respects Whispurr seems to tread on Friendfeed territory, but if the mobile features expand overseas anytime soon, it could be a big deal. Obviously, Whispurr isn’t but a whisper compared to twitter’s noise but there are definitely some advantages to trying it out. Go sign up here, and tell us what you think. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| 10 questions, 8 million respondents, 1 giant election-centric infographic [TNW United States] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 04:44 PM PDT In case you happened to miss it, there was an election held in the US yesterday. While being one of the most carefully watched in recent memory, history has been made on a number of fronts. Twitter is still sparkling today with election talk and some major issues are about to be addressed in the coming months. The Yahoo! Ask America project, in conjunction with JESS3, has put together another fantastic infographic for us. Visualizing the information from 7.9 million respondents to 10 different questions, we get a pretty interesting insight as to what’s important to voters, as well as somewhat of an explanation about why certain members got elected yesterday. Click through for full size:
A huge thanks goes out to Yahoo! and of course our friends at JESS3. It’s been a unique perspective that we’ve been offered this election year into the hearts, minds and concerns of Americans here on TNW US. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Can you make a compelling web video series from Craigslist ads? Someone did. [TNW Media] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 04:42 PM PDT
Brown was a producer for Project Runway when he first approached Craigslist founder Craig Newmark about the idea. Earlier this year, the first “season” of episodes hit the web, with the second season debuting a few weeks ago (Brown is now working on the third season). “I have a company called Brownstone Entertainment, which is a little production company,” he told me in a phone interview. “And Craigslist TV is a constant project for us. I mean we call them ‘seasons’ but they’re not really seasons, rather it's more like how we look at how we start and finish things; it's more or less a continuous process.” But can such a premise work? Does Craigslist sport a vibrant enough community among its ads for used couches and no-strings-attached-sex to offer up characters for which viewers will actually care? Well, take its “Ninja for Hire!” episode, which debuted in the first season. It follows around a Craigslister who refers to himself as Ninja Nick as he goes from house to house, offering up his services for free. He cleans a person’s pool — using a pool net as a pole vault and a bow staff — and asks the bewildered owner whether “there’s anything I should watch out for, like pirates attacking, or anything like that?” The next scene cuts to him washing a person’s car, balancing on his head and “attacking” the tire’s rims as the car’s smirking owner snaps pictures. A cute gimmick, yes, but a minute later the humor dissipates. We see Nick pull his car up to a curb that night. “Right now I have $600 saved up from the medical experiment I have been doing,” he says mysteriously. He covers up his car windows with a sheet and we suddenly realize that the ninja-by-day actually lives in his car. “Ninja Nick was literally the first interview we ever did when we opened up the casting mechanism,” Brown said. “He was advertising as a ninja for hire and we brought him in and he seemed like this great fit. From my own experience in television, anyone would want to work with Nick. It's just vibrant. He had energy and we loved him. We were like, ‘Ninja for hire, let's do this, this is hilarious.’ This is the quintessential starting point for us. We went out, and what was unique is that the next step was a home visit; if possible we go meet the person at their house. As documentarians, our process is that we don't know what we're walking into. When we walk up to someone's door, we might not have met them, so we normally have no idea what we're doing, and we have no idea what this person's like or what we're going to see when we get there. Nick was our first example of this. He gave us an address and we show up with the van and are ready to go knock on the door and then we realized that Nick doesn't live in that house, Nick lives in the car at that address. This thing that we thought was so lighthearted and funny became serious all of a sudden.”
“I think that the interesting thing for us is simply bringing users to life by filming them,” Brown said. “Craigslist is like an anonymous community and anonymity has a lot of different effects. But essentially we're on Craigslist and we don't know who we are. We don't know what the average Craigslister looks like. You would never think of some of these people as Craigslisters, maybe. We simply bring them to life one at a time and we're defining this community in that process.” A spokesman for the project told me that the show received 1 million unique visitors in its first season. But to what end? By the time the show is edited and uploaded to YouTube, the Craigslist ad that it’s featuring has already come and gone. But Brown told me that whether the Craigslister gets what he or she is looking for is irrelevant. Most of the people featured in the show, he said, have negative outcomes (one Craigslister who tried to use the site to meet Sandra Bullock, for instance, never meets her). “We don't have any beauty to provide in terms of positive outcomes, we just follow them until our budget runs out basically,” Brown explained. “So in that sense we're unique branded entertainment. It's free to be itself, it's free to be entertaining, and I think that's a reflection of Craigslist at large.” [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Mark Zuckerberg believes in a future disrupted by “the social experience” [TNW Social Media] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 02:55 PM PDT
Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble sets the tone for a candid interview with Mark Zuckerberg today by opening with, “So, Mark…What’s up?’ The answer is: what Facebook is doing is cool. Zuckerberg sees the future of Facebook as a wide, open platform that will re-tool “every vertical in our history” to be behave in a social way.
The social experience is disruptive. To Facebook, having great social integration is more important than having big groups or high-res photos on any platform. Take Zygna for example, a gaming system built on top of a social platform, whose second market valuation is now bigger than industry giant EA’s. Zuckerberg thinks entertainment will naturally follow gaming, pointing out iTunes’ development of Ping. Over time, he believes that every vertical, noting ads and e-commerce, will be tied into a social platform. Zuckerberg differentiates between sites that simply integrate Facebook functionality from the sites built from the ground up to focus on social networking. “A lot of the apps integrate social stuff just to check a box,” he says, “But they will all be beat by companies that are going all in, in complete social mode.” The power of social recommendations is a huge driver of all networks. “You can integrate a person’s friends into anything and make the app instantly more engaging and viral. It’s not intellectual, it’s hard wired into humans to focus on what people around you are doing. It’s a visceral need,” he explains. And adding the importance of a digital layer, what would be Facebook on top of real life, he stresses, ”There should be programatic interfaces to access anything that a human can.” As Facebook continues to grow and feed on information, organizing that information will be that much more essential. Understanding the semantics of how data is structured will also be essential. Check-in at restaurant for example and you see your friend’s tips thus upping your chances of having a better meal. Go to the Places page at a sports venue and see people’s comments at a game in real-time. This is the value of this data aggregation and mass-market location awareness. On the value of tagging photos, places, people and things, Mark said, ”I thought it was going to be cool. But it’s even better than I thought it was going to be.” The sky may be the limit in terms of tools Facebook could implement with their places and deals network. Facebook could aggregate deals, promote deals on a massive scale and provide recommendations. Zuckerberg sees this API growing naturally, much like their open graph API has evolved (although Zuckerberg believes even the open graph is still in its infancy). People like the Like button. People like Places. People will undoubtedly like Deals. And it’s clear, people love Facebook. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Video: How The Gap will give away 10,000 pairs of jeans through Facebook Places [TNW Location] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 02:39 PM PDT The Gap was one of the partners announced today at the Facebook mobile event that will be doing a Deals promotion in the near future through Facebook Places. We got a chance to chat with Gap spokesperson Olivia Doyne after the event about the details of Gap giving away 10,000 pairs of jeans, and how Places and location fits into The Gap’s overall marketing plans: [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Twitter for Android: Faster, cleaner and now with pull-to-refresh [TNW Apps] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 02:21 PM PDT
From what we see so far, the interface looks really slick. The quoting and pull-to-refresh options have been a long time in the coming and we’re really glad to see those as well. The pull-to-refresh function, you might remember, was originally a feature of Tweetie for iPhone. Considering that Twitter bought the brand, we can only assume that no litigation issues will come up in the release for Twitter.
[Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Windows 7 SP1 RTM will be released in Q1 of 2011 [TNW Microsoft] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 02:11 PM PDT
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| How Microsoft can use the Windows Phone 7 kill switch [TNW Microsoft] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 01:25 PM PDT
Microsoft is constantly scanning the apps available for Windows Phone 7, and can, whenever they determine an app to be malicious, pull it from the app store. But there is more, if Microsoft decides that the app is too risky to be left on any phones it can remotely remove an application from your handset. Microsoft explained to PCPro why they are slightly mum on the matter: “We don't really talk about it publicly because the focus is on testing of apps to make sure they're okay, but in the rare event that we need to, we have the tools to take action.” In regards to the removal of an app on a users’ phone, Microsoft said the following: “we don't want things to go that far, but we could [remove the app for the user.]” If any of this scares you, don’t be alarmed, similar features can be found in iOS and Android, and they help keep users safe. The Windows Phone 7 app store is still new enough that it is not likely to attract much attention from black-hatted developers, but it may in the future, and the kill switch will then become an important safety feature for the platform.PCPro, WinRumors, Image Credit [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Microsoft finally admits that the iPad is ‘cannibalizing’ netbook sales [TNW Microsoft] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 12:20 PM PDT
Microsoft’s Gavriella Schuster sat down with Nick Eaton and said the following in regards to tablets consuming netbook sales: “These [netbooks] are definitely getting cannibalized. These are really a second device. But they are getting cannibalized.” Well, yeah, thanks for that. Now, I must admit that Schuster was responding to a generic question about the effect of tablets (and not specifically the iPad) on netbook sales, but as we all know that the iPad controls some 95% of the tablet market, it seems fair that her comments can be construed as a response to the iPad-effect. Netbook computers are cheap ultra-portables that nearly always run Windows. When they burst onto the scene a few years back it was a revolution in portable computing. That ship may have sailed, can Microsoft create a tablet to compete?Image Credit, SeattlePi [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
| Everything You Need To Know About Today’s Facebook Announcements [TNW Social Media] Posted: 03 Nov 2010 12:18 PM PDT
At 10:30 PST today, Facebook held its “mobile event” for over 7,000 viewers. In his opening remarks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “Our goal is to make it so that no matter what platform you are building, your apps can be social…And that over the next few years, entire industries will be rethought as social applications.” He also mentioned that 200 million people now use Facebook via mobile devices. Facebook for iPhone updatedThe app update, announced at Facebook's event this afternoon, brings a new Facebook Groups interface, deals, improved check-ins and a flurry of bug fixes for the iPhone. Facebook Places Comes to AndroidSee our post on Facebook’s announcement that it is now bringing Places and Groups to its latest build of the Android app, unlocking the services to millions of users. Single Sign-On
No one enjoys logging in, so Facebook has announced its “Single Sign-On,” essentially, one button to rule them all. If you have the Facebook app and you’re logged in, you will be automatically logged into every other social app which requires a Facebook log-in. The same goes for the Facebook mobile site and other 3rd party mobile sites that use the Facebook log-in. Simply put, the Single Sign-On feature makes it less of a hassle to use any other social app on your phone. “Now you don’t have to enter a password, how big of an innovation is that?” asked Zuckerberg. According to Zuckerberg, this reduces friction in the same way YouTube affected video, compressing it down to an easy to upload flash file. The Single Sign-On encourages developers to build richer experiences on phones to create a better overall user experience. Single Sign-On partners include Groupon, Zygna (which will be debuting on Android next week), SCVNGR, Yelp, Loopt, Flixster and Booyah. Partners will benefit from a user increase with an easier sign-on process. Facebook Places API UpdateFacebook’s Read, Write and Search API are now open. This is competitive with the Google Places API. They also announced an update to their Android SDK with an update to the iPhone SDK coming next week. DealsFacebook is building a platform for local stores and places to offer deals to nearby Facebook users. What does this mean? You will be able to read where your friends are, write and publish check-ins back into the graph and search for relevant places. Watch their video demonstration here: According to Facebook, the thing that has been missing with check-ins is that those local businesses can’t communicate with customers. Facebook hopes their platform will enable merchants to push deals out to their existing customers and will attract new customers. The Deals concept turns store’s online visitors and eyeballs into real people, dollars and experiences. Here’s how Facebook Places and Deals will look on the iPhone:
Types of Deals
Facebook’s Announced Deals
All in all, 20,000 small to medium sized business are expected to sign up with Facebook deals through their easy self-service platform. The velocity of this has not been lost on Zuckerberg who added that they only launched Places two months ago. Is an iPad app in the works?According to Mark Zuckerburg, “iPad is not mobile. It’s a computer. Next Question.” See our original post here. [Notice: this is the RSS feed for ALL stories from across The Next Web - that means a lot of stories every day - for just our top stories, subscribe to our Top Stories RSS feed here.] |
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TNW Quick Hit
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While the sea is awash with Twitter clients for the Android OS, it’s always cool to see what the Twitter team itself comes up with. The latest version, according to the 
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