19 new stories on The Next Web today |  |
- Facebook Credits come to UK retailers, launching this week [TNW UK]
- Abbas bin Fernas Vodafone Ad Crashes & Burns [TNW Middle East]
- Google Launches Boutiques. An Online Personalised Shopping Experience. [TNW Google]
- The Adapt Pico Play, projecting family favourites whatever the location [TNW Gadgets]
- Incredible Video Stats You Have To See [TNW Social Media]
- eMusic, subscription download service falls out with indie labels [TNW Gadgets]
- Are Canadian Police Getting More Access to Your Internet Data? [TNW Canada]
- Panasonic re-entering the smartphone market [TNW Asia]
- Disqus Launching New Features Thursday [TNW Social Media]
- Is there a digital life after death? [TNW Social Media]
- Mark Zuckerberg at Web 2.0 Summit: All You Need To Know [TNW Social Media]
- Google Docs adds auto-correct, images, and LaTeX [TNW Google]
- Australia, New Zealand get Google Maps driving and walking Navigation [TNW Google]
- Android Market going down for 6 hours on Thursday, smells like Gingerbread cooking [TNW Google]
- Try This: Pushpins. Coupons and rewards delivered straight to your iPhone [TNW Apps]
- Video: One thing Google Translate can’t translate – your growling stomach [TNW Google]
- Google Maps gets extensive UI updates for easier directions [TNW Google]
- Status Update: Resting In Piece. [TNW Shareables]
- Google Buzz Poll: Dead, dormant or still kicking? [TNW Google]
- Yahoo! CEO: “We have no interest in getting rid of Alibaba” [TNW Asia]
| Facebook Credits come to UK retailers, launching this week [TNW UK] Posted: 17 Nov 2010 03:21 AM PST
Facebook Credits are a form of virtual currency that allows users of the social network to purchase virtual gifts, games and buy unlockable items within Facebook applications, one of the most well-known examples being Farmville where users can purchase items to better outfit their virtual farms. This week, Facebook users will be able to buy a Facebook Credit gift card from supermarket giant Tesco and the popular video game retailer Game, using them on the main Facebook website initially with the social network looking to enable purchases on third-party websites via its Facebook Connect service, which will allow visitors to register on external websites with only their Facebook ID. In September, Facebook announced that it would be rolling out Facebook Credits to 1,750 Target stores in the US, in tiers of $15, $25, and $50. It was obvious that the company had the upcoming holiday sales season in mind, stating: "We think [the cards] will be incredibly popular as a holiday gift," and they could be right with a holiday season UK launch. Facebook’s Manager of Product Marketing Deborah Liu told The Telegraph that the new gift cards would “give parents peace of mind in what children were playing online, while also allowing children some freedom to spend their credits as they wished” and buy selling them at major retailers such as Tesco and Game, enable smaller developers to reach a large audience and a “wider reach into a new source of income”. [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.]     |
| Abbas bin Fernas Vodafone Ad Crashes & Burns [TNW Middle East] Posted: 17 Nov 2010 03:16 AM PST
The video depicts a group of 3 young Egyptian guys in a Back to the Future set up trying to help Abbas bin Fernas avoid a deadly flying experiment. The Muslim scientist and scholar happens to be widely accepted as the first human to fly successfully for 5-10 min back in 850AD in Cordoba – Spain. It all started with Vodafone launching a campaign both online and offline to promote their new USB Internet bundle on the first of Eid celebrations which stirred up a storm of negative sentiment. Early sentiment began to materialize in the Egyptian blogosphere with blog posts spilling offline with threats to close accounts, and others actually ending their service contracts with Vodafone in an expression of protest against the video. Then taking on to Facebook and twitter, the hashtag #VodaFly was assigned to the topic, which began to trend in Egypt generating tweets, Facebook page comments, and emails to Vodafone officials which was first ignored. Terribly. Instead of immediately acting on all the feedback the people from Vodafone would respond to comments on Youtube by deleting them. Their call centers getting many calls to end what some perceived as an insulting campaign were reportedly confronted with laughter and sometimes ridicule, enraging the already annoyed customers. Global Voices Online has put together a good timeline with samples from Egyptian bloggers about the topic you can find here if you’re interested. As much as I sympathize with those disturbed by the campaign, I don’t really find it enraging. Is it historically inaccurate? Absolutely. But I think this falls under the ‘adding insult to injury’ category of Arab pride. Vodafone have displayed the worst quality any marketing campaign could bear in my opinion: Cultural Insensitivity. They not only portrayed a historically well-respected scientist as crazy, but tried to educate him with lessons learned from the Wright Brothers using Wikipedia. Don’t they know who their audience is? Addressing Arabs who believe they don’t get enough credit for their early accomplishments in science and culture with rubbing the fact in their face with foreign achievers is like. Dumb. This is wrong on so many levels I actually only want to know is the name of the ad agency who created the series just to avoid recommending them to clients in the future. One thing Vodafone has finally done right is issue a statement on their Facebook Page announcing the end of the campaign pulling the video off YouTube and Facebook and promising to take off the air in Egypt.
Egyptian blogger Doha Shawki went over the lessons learnt from the Abbas bin Fernas campaign quite thoroughly. My suggestion to multinational corporations: To know your audience, go local. I guess if you’re as interested I am in all this, you want to see the video that put all of this in motion, so here it is, posted by a concerned Egyptian after Vodafone took it offline. [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 Launches Boutiques. An Online Personalised Shopping Experience. [TNW Google] Posted: 17 Nov 2010 03:16 AM PST
Boutiques.com is essentially a shopping search engine that uses tastes and extensive filtering options to produce the item you’re looking for. Currently only available in the US, you can start shopping for your items and accessories now but the site currently only stocks women’s fashion – men to come soon apparently. On visiting the site you can choose to browse the “boutiques” of celebs and fashionistas who were selected by Google to partner with for the launch – I’m deeply offended I wasn’t asked. Or sign up yourself and create a boutique of your own. On sign up you’re first asked a number of questions to determine your style and preferences. Don’t be fooled by the 6 steps, each has a plethora of questions each specifically chosen to provide you with as personalised a shopping experience as possible. After being questioned you’re then asked to complete the standard sign up form. No Google login available, you’re signing up to a completely new site. Finally once you’re in, you’re able to browse, save and favorite items and if you’re keen to dig deeper, you’re presented with recommendations and advanced filtering and search options too. On face value this appears to be a very random move but the visual search technology itself stems from Google’s acquisition of Like.com for a reported $100 million. Before the purchase, Like.com ran similar sites including Covet.com, and the styling tool Couturious.com. Interestingly there’s virtually no Google branding on the site. Is this the first of many? It screams “experiment”. More to follow. [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.]    |
| The Adapt Pico Play, projecting family favourites whatever the location [TNW Gadgets] Posted: 17 Nov 2010 01:25 AM PST
Truth be known, there are a number of different devices available that connect to your smartphone, allowing you to project the photos and videos you have taken of your friend and family. Just last week, we took delivery a new personal projector, the Adapt Pico Play, the smallest personal projector on the market that is actually lighter and shorter than an iPhone. Opening the box, the Pico Play is seriously small. Bundled with an array of cables, including an iPhone connector, the mini-projector supports external media via a SD card reader, a USB connection or via its own 1GB internal storage. When the Pico Play is switched on, the device, by default, displays any media stored on the device. For our tests, we connected an iPhone 4 expecting the projector to instantly display the home screen of the Apple smartphone. A quick click of the menu button on the Pico Play allows the user to select an AV-input, opening up the option to display photos and videos on your iPhone. Due to the restrictions placed on devices by Apple, the only way media can be projected is to start a slideshow on the device itself. Once selected, the Pico Play will instantly kick into life, transitioning between photos and videos and outputting them on a surface with screen sizes up to 54 inches with an impressive 8 lumens of brightness. The Pico Play outputs sound but it will be a case of finding the right distance to set the projector to get the best results. In our tests, the projector struggled to output videos past a distance of around 6 feet, but the quality was very watchable at distances inclusive of that mark. Adding media via an SD card, the Pico Play displays an aesthetic file manager that allows you to quickly and easily move between folders and display MPEG videos and photos. We ran the device for around an hour and the battery indicator indicated one bar, matching the one and a half hour playback touted on the Personal Projector website. RoundupIf you are looking for one of these devices, you obviously know that you will need a dark room to get the most of the Adapt Pico Play projector. Coming in at a very reasonable £99 at Personal Projector, the device launches on November 29 but is available to pre-order now. Showing it to friends and family, they saw many more uses for the Pico Play than the typical movie playback. Most saw the advantage of being able to display media wherever they were instead of having to hunt down a television set or a laptop to show off photos taken at events or shots of loved ones. At this price range, it’s a bit more than a stocking stuffer, but it’s still a very cool idea. With the holidays coming up, it might be a great buy for your family get-together. [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.]    |
| Incredible Video Stats You Have To See [TNW Social Media] Posted: 17 Nov 2010 12:40 AM PST Online video is well and truly, having the best time of its life right now. It seems to be factoring in every marketing plan worth its salt, with some incredible videos being produced by brands that are lighting up social media. I wanted to explore the state of the online video industry a bit further and delve into the stats that show the huge growth curve online video is currently on. Right now it is one of the most fascinating aspects of online, as brands continue to push the boundaries of what's possible and engaging the audience in completely new ways. It is a seriously big business and one that every brand wants to be a part of. And it's easy to see why.. Over 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minuteThis stat on its own is pretty stunning and quite hard to get your head around. But when you look at in in the context of the past 3 years, or even 6 months, you realise just how impressive this is. The graph below from Youtube shows the average hours of video uploaded every minute, back to June 2007. While this started at 6 hours, in the past 6 months it stood at 23. That's a huge increase of 12 hours per minute in just 6 months : That is some seriously impressive growth and also shows that just as much as brand video is growing, ugc is growing at a staggering rate, due largely to the growth in mobile and ease of uploading. As Youtube note themselves there are other factors, such as upping the time limit in videos, which would obviously attribute for an increase in the total length of video uploads. But this is impressive nonetheless. Blinkx shares up by 400%
Online video ads reach half of U.S. usersWhile some research shows that advertisers are cautious over online video advertising, due to factors such as standardisation of ad formats, online video advertising is going from strength to strength. A recent study from ComScore (the people who measure things), found that just over 45.4% of users in America viewed at least one video ad over a month. But more impressively, were exposed to 32.2 videos each, on average. That's over 4.3 million video ads that were served to the online U.S. population in September 2010. This shows the power of online video ads to get right in front of your target audience. And while there are some definite rights and wrongs in the content of the video ad, I think we'll see this grow even more and prove itself as a valuable industry up there with TV. Comedian makes $315,000 from online videoA recent study found that comedians top the bill for online video earnings, and one in particular is doing very well. A recent study found that comedian Shane Dawson, who amassed 431.7 million online video views in the past year made $315,000 from his content, through ad revenue. He came out top for independent earners on Youtube and it's certainly an aspirational case study that shows the business of online video isn't just for big brands. Kia spend a third of budget on online videoIn a bold move, Kia Motors have invested a third of their £2 million marketing budget for the new Sportage model, into online video. We've seen the motor industry embracing social media more and more – with Ford launching a model through Facebook – and this shows the commitment that some brands are making to online video. Not so much an add-on or a nice to have, but a central facet of a multi-million pound campaign. The online campaign will focus on the central characters from the TV adverts and include home-page takeovers and video ads. Cases like this help to solidify online video as a serious marketing avenue that can bring a campaign to life and help you get that extra bang for your buck. 20% of downstream internet traffic is to Netflix
2 billion videos viewed each month FacebookIn June 2010 Facebook released some interesting stats into their online video offering, which show the huge potential it has to own this market. They revealed that as well as 2 billion video views on its site each month, there were 415,000 online video uploads each day. While it may not be a contender to Youtube just yet, the sharing capabilities within Facebook and the ease of connecting with your community show the potential for this to grow. Interestingly, Youtube now offer the option of connecting with Facebook instead of logging in with your gmail account. This shows Youtube recognises the power to use the huge community on Facebook, something it can't compete with, to combine with its own wealth of online video. Live stream video viewing up by 650%
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| eMusic, subscription download service falls out with indie labels [TNW Gadgets] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:49 PM PST
The email, sent on November 16th told the subscribers that they only have two more days remaining to download music from the Domino, Merge and Beggars labels. This means that eMusic subscribers will be losing access to popular indie artists such as Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power and Arcade Fire. This loss comes not long after eMusic announced a deal with Universal Music Group which would see eMusic’s catalog expand by 250,000 tracks, but, which forced eMusic to change their pricing model to allow variable pricing for tracks. Their failure to renegotiate a deal with these indie labels, traditionally their best supporters, must come as a blow to eMusic whose membership of mainly indie music fans has not grown significantly since 2007, despite eMusic’s push to sign major labels, or, perhaps, because of that push. Read more about changes in the music business on The Next Web here and here.image, Paid Content [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 Canadian Police Getting More Access to Your Internet Data? [TNW Canada] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 10:42 PM PST
Michael Geist, one of Canada’s most respected Internet Law experts, discussed this potential problem on his personal blog (quoted above) and the Toronto Star (the versions are slightly different)…he points out, and I concur, that law enforcement does need the jurisdiction to be able to get to this information sometimes. That isn’t the point or question here. The line that has to be drawn is whether ISPs, for example, should all be compelled to be at the ready to live-stream and capture information on their networks. Is this something that ISPs should have to do just because law enforcement might need it at some point in the future or is it more prudent that ISPs be able to do it by court order at the time? While I support law enforcement getting the tools and education to fight cybercrime…I also think Michael could be pushing the balance too far in the other direction. I believe what law enforcement is asking for (access to subscriber information to better tie IP addresses to people doing things at certain times, deep packet inspection, and monitoring) isn’t unreasonable, but where Michael is dead on is that the balance is too far in favour of government right now. More oversight is needed. As for the cost to ISPs, maybe the will have to bear it or many the government will have to offer a tax break to help cover the cost. Regardless this is an issue that I hope the Opposition Parties in Parliament take up and push the Government on.Michael Geist, Toronto Star, photo 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.]    |
| Panasonic re-entering the smartphone market [TNW Asia] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 09:19 PM PST
The company, which pulled out of the mobile market in 2006 is reported to be launching new models, based on Google’s Android operating system, in Japan in 2011 and worldwide in 2012. They hope to be able to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Samsung‘s Galaxy S.
Panasonic have acknowledged that they are late in joining the crowded smartphone market, but, hope that their models will stand out through their connectivity with other Panasonic devices. They have announced ambitious forecasts predicting world sales of 15 million handsets by 2015.image, 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.]    |
| Disqus Launching New Features Thursday [TNW Social Media] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 08:40 PM PST
While we’ll have to wait a few more hours until all the new features are live, but I think the bigger picture here is that more sites that are providing us with valuable add-ons to our social media life are moving to a freemium model. HootSuite is offering Basic and Pro, now Disqus, Bit.ly is on that track as wel as is Instapaper, Simplenote, and Xmarks. Personally, I think it’s about time. We’ve gotten a lot of value from these apps over the past years. Running, developing, supporting, and improving these apps require resources—resources that cost real money. Am I going to pay for Pro features in all the services I use? Nope, I don’t need the Pro services for all things I use. But Instapaper? Simplenote? Xmarks? Oh yeah. Those are on my list of apps to support. What freemium apps are on your: “I want to pay for to get more” list?SAI [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.]    |
| Is there a digital life after death? [TNW Social Media] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 08:35 PM PST
Few of us, however, consider what should happen to all this data, our digital assets, when the inevitable comes and we die. Should it all go to the great archive in the clouds or should it be dragged into the depths of the great trash can? This concern is the subject of a new online sector, that of Digital Estate Planning. New sites like My Webwill and Legacy Locker aim to address the issue by enabling online users to securely store online information like logins and passwords to be passed on to relations after death.
Of course, these companies are treating a serious issue, seriously. On a slightly lighter note, The Next Web have already covered the E-Tomb, a Bluetooth enabled, solar powered gravestone concept that can store your social media life internally and deliver it to your grieving relatives’ mobiles, tweet by tweet, when they visit your grave. Creepy? or not? Let us know what you think, knock once on the table for a Yes, twice for a No.image, image [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 at Web 2.0 Summit: All You Need To Know [TNW Social Media] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 07:38 PM PST
On Facebook Messages If you missed yesterday’s announcement, but caught today’s, you’ll be happy to know that Zuckerberg recycled his speech and anecdotes from yesterday when questioned about what Facebook Messages was and what he hopes it will do. If you missed both, Zuckerberg talked to the audience about how his girlfriend’s sister, who is in high school, complained that she and her friends didn’t really use email even though they had accounts. When pressed for why, she exclaimed that it was too slow. Too slow? Well, what she meant was that it was too formal and that is where Zuckerberg hopes Facebook Messages fits in. It’s less formal than email because it doesn’t have subject lines, no threads and it has more of an IM feel to it. Add in some SMS and this is what the messaging of the future will resemble. According to Mark, of course. On Privacy Host John Battelle led into this by saying that Facebook doesn't ask for permission, it asks for forgiveness when it comes to user privacy. It keeps pushing until voices start complaining and then it changes and says sorry. After a little discussion and prodding, Zuckerberg made one of his first interesting quotes of the night when, in regards to the ban on the email address download policy he said:
On Advertising/Competition Battelle then shifted into the Facebook advertising model and its competition, noting that Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said “competition” when asked to give a one word response about Facebook earlier in the day. Citing Google and AdSense as an example, Battelle questioned Zuckerberg on whether or not it was time for Facebook’s business side to expand given the fact that the Open Graph and the Like button were all over the Internet. Zuckerberg noted that Facebook is probably at an earlier stage than Google, and that even though they have a successful ad model to this point, there is a lot of work left to be done. As far as competition is concerned, Battelle noted that Tim O’Reily opened up the conference with a call for more cooperation and he questioned Zuckerberg on whether or not Facebook and Google could work together after the recent flare-ups. Zuckerberg mad it clear that he and Facebook want to understand how another big company is going to use the data and contribute something back in return. On Facebook Groups Zuck made a quick remark about how Facebook Groups has been one of their fastest growing products ever. On Social His overall take can be described with this little gem:
He went on to exclaim that he thinks this is going to be a very exciting period where some people make things social and some aren’t but that in these next five years, everyone will have to think about it, just like they have to think about mobile. He believes that people will ultimately get there but they need to take steps to get comfortable and that a slow approach isn’t a bad thing. On Company Culture Zuckerberg talked about two behaviors in particular that he thinks applies to the culture at Facebook – move fast and be bold. He then went on to say that every day he thinks about how to get his company to move as quickly as possible. On Being Young and Successful Once the Q&A session began, Zuckerberg was asked what it was like to be so young and successful and about some of the lessons he’s had to learn. In response, he said that he’s made many mistakes, probably any mistake one can think of. But, he said, that’s the story of Facebook. If you are building a product you love, then you can make mistakes. Moral of story: focus on building something you like. On Education Another audience member told Zuckerberg that when his daughter was studying, she was also on Facebook, and asked whether or not education was a place to expand with applications and services in order to make education social. In response, Zuckerberg said that he has spent time researching education, but that education software just hasn’t been as good a communication tool as instant messaging. Don’t doubt him. Zuckerberg knows a thing or two about improving education. He is the guy who donated $100 million to improve education after all. On a Bug That Killed Legitimate Accounts Zuckerberg said that he has no new info, apologized to users for the issue and said that it was not related to messaging in any way. Overall, Zuckerberg seemed very candid and honest on all of the subjects even the touchy ones like the privacy debate and the situation with Google. He was very cool and very collected, a far cry from the Mark Zuckerberg we saw back in June at the the D Conference. [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 Docs adds auto-correct, images, and LaTeX [TNW Google] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 06:53 PM PST While we might be debating whether or not Google Buzz is dead, Google Docs is alive and well. In fact today Google dropped a bunch of pretty helpful features on us:
Not a lot of people use LaTex for equations, but auto-correct? Are there words that you always mis-spell? We all have them. For me one is “lessons” which more than half the time I type as “lessions”, no idea why. Well now in Docs you can tell Google to always replace lessions with lessons. From the preferences dialog you can see that you should be able to add your own substitutions beyond the ones like (c) for © … Unfortunately either this feature isn’t fully baked or Google Docs doesn’t like Chrome or Safari on my Mac. The standard substitutions worked fine, but custom…not so much. As for spreadsheets (also far from dead) you can now put images, but… Here’s the detail issue…you can only pull images from Google images or a URL. You can’t upload an image from your computer. Hmm. Fine, still useful, but not nearly as useful as being able t0 upload your own stuff. Oh, and one more thing…the Google Blog post did mention another feature is coming tomorrow…any guesses?
Google Operating System, Google Docs Blog, photo 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.]    |
| Australia, New Zealand get Google Maps driving and walking Navigation [TNW Google] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 06:45 PM PST Australia and New Zealand just joined the list of countries that have Google Maps Navigation on Android. Google is rolling out turn-by-turn navigation for both driving and walking on Android headsets running Android 1.6 or later. If you’re in Australia or New Zealand and haven’t used Google Maps Navigation before, here are some of the things that you can do according to the Google Australia Blog:
Navigation part of Google Maps, so all you have to do is download or update Google Maps through the Android Market to get the update.Google Australia Blog, 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.]    |
| Android Market going down for 6 hours on Thursday, smells like Gingerbread cooking [TNW Google] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 06:02 PM PST
So, the Market is going to be down and dev’s won’t be able to update their applications? Smells like Gingerbread to us. Remember, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said that Android 2.3 would be out in a few weeks but it wouldn’t be shocking to see it roll out a little sooner. At the very least, it’s a sign that we’re close to a new Android update. Very close. [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: Pushpins. Coupons and rewards delivered straight to your iPhone [TNW Apps] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 05:55 PM PST
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| Video: One thing Google Translate can’t translate – your growling stomach [TNW Google] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 05:43 PM PST Google Translate is a very useful tool for many people around the world (50 languages in all), but even Google admits that it can’t translate everything. This week on the Google Translate Blog, Google is giving us a cheeky list of five things that Google Translate can’t do, starting with translating the growling of your stomach. Google says that if you can think of any other things that you wish that Google Translate can translate, you can tweet out your idea with the hashtag #GoogleTranslate. So, what would you like Google to be able to translate? (personally, we’d like a Chinese > Dr. Seuss translation engine…) Here’s the first of five videos, of a guy’s stomach: [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 Maps gets extensive UI updates for easier directions [TNW Google] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 05:33 PM PST
Now, instead of having to select modes of transportation early and then re-search for each one, you can switch on the fly and get an extensive view of your entire trip in one pane. There are changes, as well, to the descriptions for routes that will make it easier to decipher exactly what you’ll need to do in getting from point A to point B. But even at that, Google didn’t stop. Now, instead of simply having a step, you can go as deep as turn-by-turn directions for each part of your journey and you’ll see more context by Google Maps showing train stops previous to your final destination. All said, the changes look really slick. I’m also a huge fan of the detailed steps. It’s really nice to click on something and see the in-depth information about it: That single bit of information, telling me things like transfer times, turns at specific streets or other things of which I’ll want to be careful has really increased the usability of Google Maps all around. For now, it looks like the changes are all big winners for you and for Google. [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.]    |
| Status Update: Resting In Piece. [TNW Shareables] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 05:04 PM PST It used to be that when you died you left your body and identity behind. These days however you also have an ever expanding online identity and there really isn’t any reason to let that rot as well, the creators of the E-Tomb should have thought. The E-Tomb is powered by solar panels and has a bluetooth connection so that relatives can still visit your online profiles and memories after you passed away. I actually like the idea but then again I think I’d rather be cremated and there are ways that are much easier and cost efficient to view already existing online profiles. You probably have your own opinion though so please, feel free to share it with us.Yanko [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 Buzz Poll: Dead, dormant or still kicking? [TNW Google] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 04:22 PM PST
It looks like my post from the weekend has tweaked the noses of a few of Google Buzz’s remaining fans. In that post, I opined on the status of Google’s thus-far unsuccessful dalliances with social networking (with the possible exception of Orkut). Some of my criticism was directed at Google Wave, whose redeeming qualities I described as “accurately invok(ing) the feelings that a senior citizen has while trying to use the Internet for the first time.” However, most of my criticism was directed at Google Buzz. When I claimed that “Buzz failed horribly,” and that “The service was flooded with privacy complaints, quickly became unused and is now little more than an icon on the side of users' Gmail accounts which remains perpetually unchecked,” I didn’t think these statements were really that contentious. Of course, some people thought otherwise. I soon received my first Buzz message in five months from an active Buzz user named Robert Wallis (@qwallis), one of the social media coordinators for Ford Europe. In a conversation with him, and a few other Buzz users, I was told that the service was not dead, and that I’d misspoken when I’d insinuated in my post that it was. However, the conclusion that I came to after this discussion wasn’t that I’d misspoken, but that we were operating under fundamentally different assumptions as to what constitutes a successful social network. Wallis and the other Buzz users I talked to (nice bunch of people, incidentally) were focused on the quality of the people who still used the service, which did seem high compared to others. What I was referring to, though, was the vitality of the service itself. When you are following 34 users and you see almost no comments on these 34 users’ posts for five months, it’s hard to make the case that the service is flourishing and has a huge and vibrant community. I wrote a post in April that talked about the power of Buzz when used as a feed aggregator, a sort of Google Reader for your social media streams. This reimagining of Buzz proved to revitalize its usefulness for me. Or at least it did until almost all of the people I follow unlinked their Flickrs and personal blogs from their Buzz accounts. In fact, it looks like I had a lot more patience with Buzz than the lion’s share of users. While it’s nigh on impossible to find traffic stats for Buzz, search stats offer a decent proxy to gauge relative interest. Looking at the chart above we can see that in the weeks following Buzz’s release, search volume on Google for Buzz drops off precipitously. Even more damning is this Google Insight chart, which gauges interest in Buzz relative to interest in Twitter, based on number of searches.
In short, that means that Facebook is 25x as popular in terms of search volume as Twitter. Twitter is more than 25x as popular as Buzz in terms of search volume. This means that the public interest in Buzz is so small as to be nonexistent compared to Facebook and Twitter. When I was talking with Buzz’s remaining users, they recommended that I go to Buzzzy, a Buzz search engine, to find people to follow, with the idea that I’d be more inclined to change my tune if I found someone good to follow. Amusingly, when I tried Buzzzy’s sample searches, they returned no results. In fact, they all returned no results. If that’s not damning, I don’t know what is. And yet, this is not the worst knock I’ve found against Buzz. In fact, the service is so under-used that the two Googlers I am closest to have essentially stopped using it. One hasn’t used it since February, while the other drunkenly Buzzed a month and a half ago, and hadn’t used it for months before that. When Googlers aren’t even using the service, who will? Not most users. So yes, in exact terms, Buzz is not dead. The service still has users who love it and use it obsessively. But the fact of the matter is that outside of this small user group, Buzz is dead. So in my opinion, Buzz is comatose at the very least. What do you think? Tell us in the poll below: H/T to Chitika for the graphics and Google Insight for the search analytics. [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.]    |
| Yahoo! CEO: “We have no interest in getting rid of Alibaba” [TNW Asia] Posted: 16 Nov 2010 03:00 PM PST
Yahoo! has a 40% stake in Alibaba, the Chinese company that is a leader in a number of web verticals, having invested $1 billion in the company in 2005. That $1 billion now, as Bartz put it today, “has turned into many, many billions of dollars.” In response to a question about Alibaba CEO Jack Ma wanting to divorce his company from Yahoo by buying back Yahoo!’s stake in his company, possibly in a three way deal with AOL that would have AOL and Yahoo! merge and facilitated by private equity firms, Bartz replied, “Did Jack say that?… Don’t believe everything you read.” Bartz also said that in 2005 (before she joined the company), Yahoo! had, “got into some trouble in China,” and that it made the smart move of investing in Alibaba (it also turned over Yahoo!’s site in China to Alibaba), while basically getting out of the complicated country in one fell swoop. Bartz said that other companies are now looking at Yahoo! as a model for doing business in China, saying, “we’re getting credit for making the right choice,” for, “investing in a Chinese company without the risk.” For many industry watchers, Yahoo!’s stake in Alibaba is one of its most valuable assets – if not the most valuable asset the company has. Is Bartz bluffing for a higher price when/if Yahoo! eventually sells back its share to Ma? That’s certainly a possibility, but right now, it would seem that 40% of Alibaba will continue to be held by Bartz and Yahoo! for at least the near future. [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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