Coomuto Provides Bartering On FaceBook

Toronto, ON (PRWEB) August 25, 2008 -- Commuto announced today that it has released the Commuto Facebook application, allowing Facebook users to access Commuto's database of millions of products and interact with Commuto's functionality by posting, viewing and trading items from within their Facebook accounts.
"Launching Commuto's Facebook application is a very important step for us and our users. By combining Facebook's social networks with Commuto's social communities, we have given our users the most social and interactive bartering application online and have given our users even more choice over how they interact with Commuto", said Stephen Arbib, President and founder of Commuto, "Millions of Facebook users will now be able to show their friends all the items which they own and those they want, and be able to trade with Facebook and non-Facebook users all in real time."

Commuto's Facebook application is the first of a series of widget and applications that Commuto plans to release in the coming year to increase awareness of their online social bartering site,
Commuto.com.

Commuto is still in beta release and will continue through the third quarter of 2008, after which an integrated marketing campaign will begin with Vancouver-based partner, UM Marketing.

Tags: facebook, commuto

Woopra Web Analytics Plugin For WordPress.

Click to See a larger image

Today at WordCamp San Francisco 2008 was great. I had to leave early but there were few notable demonstrations and presentations. One was the Woopra web analytics for wordpress plugin. We have been using the Woopra for some time now and very happy with its results. iFusion Labs demonstrated a new WordPress Integration Plugin showing how to bring Woopra statistics right into the WordPress dashboard.

This is the first time any service provider has allowed users to embed Web Analytics within their own site, and it offers a number of benefits to Web masters:

• Immediate access to analytics, traffic statistics and user visits from within the standard WordPress interface.
• Zero footprint on the local WordPress server speeds up your Web page loads without cluttering your database.
• Users can customize the statistics interface with simple CSS modifications.
• Users can modify the WordPress Plugin and contribute back to the community with changes and new ways to display the data.
• It’s light, Ajax enabled, and sexy!

To experience this powerful new feature, download the new Woopra WordPress Plugin, but please keep in mind that this is a BETA. There will be issues with it. Please report bugs and issues in the Woopra Forums.

WordCamp
iFusion
Wordpress
Woopra

Tags: WordPress, web analytics, WordCamp San Francisco, iFusion Labs, Woopra

Socialthing Is In AOL's Fold!

You my have heard the rumors, seen or felt the leaks, but it is confirmed that Socialthing has been acquired by AOL. So now the Friendfeed got a competitor with some push behind it!

According to TC, David Liu will be the boss and the Socialthing team will follow him integrating the lifestreaming into AIM and of course BEBO Social Network.

You can read the whole story and more at the Socialthing Blog.

Tags: social network, Friendfeed, AOL, Socialthing, lifestreaming

Rest In Peace Bernie Mac!

The actor and comedian Bernie Mac passed away on Saturday, aged 50, in a hospital in Chicago, due to pneumonia. Bernie Mac came to fame with the television series The Bernie Mac Show, with which he was nominated for Emmy and Golden Globe awards. It was a very satisfying late night show for us and helped to unwind after a long day.
The Ocean's 11 series of films, as well as Bad Santa and Guess Who, a comedy remake of the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner stands for his achievements in the movie world. Bernie Mac was one of four African-American comedians featured in Spike Lee's 2000 documentary the Original Kings of Comedy, had suffered from lung ailments since the 1980s.
Rest in peace Bernie! Thank you for all the laughs.

Tags: Original Kings of Comedy, Actors People We See, Bernie Mac, Ocean's 11 series of films, Guess Who

'Big Mobile On Campus Challenge' Deadline Extended By AT&T

'Big Mobile On Campus Challenge' to Award $10,000 Scholarship to Winner

Dallas, Texas, August 7, 2008 AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced an extended deadline for submissions to its Big Mobile On Campus Challenge, a unique contest for full-time college students and staff to develop innovative and creative mobile applications that enhance academic performance, build campus community and help improve campus security operations. AT&T has extended the deadline for submissions, through midnight Pacific time, Monday, Sept. 15, 2008.

Big Mobile On Campus Challenge is open to all full-time students and full- or part-time staff at a four-year public or private accredited, nonprofit college or university in the continental United States. Entrants must be 18 or older and legal residents of the continental U.S.

"We're excited about the Big Mobile On Campus Challenge and in seeing the innovative applications and ideas from the college community," said Bill Archer, chief marketing officer for AT&T Global Business Services. "We've decided to extend the submission deadline to enable more students to take advantage of this opportunity to develop the next great mobile applications to help students be more productive, as well as enhance their lifestyle."

The contest opened April 1, 2008, and will now be accepting submissions until Sept. 15, 2008. After a judging period in mid-September, the winner will be announced in October and receive a $10,000 scholarship — given to an individual or divided among the team members who developed the application — at the EduCause annual conference Oct. 28-31, 2008, in Orlando, Fla.

If a staff member wins the award as an individual or is on the winning team, she or he will receive cash compensation. The winner(s) will also receive a device of choice for each entrant and an all-expense-paid trip to EduCause.

The Big Mobile On Campus Challenge seeks applications in three categories: social networking, academics and safety and security. AT&T will choose three finalists in each category and then pick the top three overall. The two runners-up — either as an individual or team — will receive a $5,000 scholarship and device of choice for each entrant.

For more information on the Big Mobile On Campus Challenge, please visit this site.

Tags: Social Networking Applications, Social Networking, Mobile Social networks, AT&T, Big Mobile On Campus Challenge, campus community

Virgin Mobile sponsors Bebo’s latest online drama, The Secret World of Sam King.

London, UK . - Virgin Mobile has announced they will sponsor Bebo’s latest online drama, The Secret World of Sam King. Using the new funding model of brand integration developed by Bebo, Virgin Mobile will be cleverly referenced in the show. An additional dimension to the sponsorship will see Virgin Mobile take the show on location to the V Festival.

The Secret World of Sam King, a first between a social network and music company, launches on Wednesday 6th August and revolves around junior ’facilities’ employee, Sam King, who from his base at Universal Music secretly founds his own start-up label in the post room.

Produced by Universal Music UK’s production arm Globe Productions in partnership with Monkey Kingdom, The Secret World Of Sam King will upload 3-5 minute episodes daily on Bebo, a format made successful by stable mates on the social network KateModern and Sofia’s Diary. For a sneak preview, go to http://www.bebo.com/samking.

James Kydd, Managing Director of Marketing at Virgin Mobile commented: "This sponsorship deal is a great tie-in for us as a brand. Virgin Mobile is constantly looking for ways to engage with its customer market, and we are confident that such an innovative sponsorship opportunity will create real impact with Bebo users"

Mark Charkin, VP Sales Bebo added: "We are very excited to have Virgin Mobile on board for Sam King. Their interest in aligning with our newest entertainment property is a fantastic opportunity for us to demonstrate our ongoing success in the arena of social media, and in particular our proven funding models"

Tags: social network, bebo, The Secret World of Sam King, Online Drama

Is Twitter A Bad Marriage?

First I was just reading this post by Chris Brogan, then I got the idea he was trying to bring up but after reading all the comments and suggestions, I got this feeling it is like bad marriage! Even if you wanted, you can't leave! Long Live Twitter!!
So there is still a chance to beat it. Pull out that note book.

Tags: twitter, micro blogging, beating twitter

Where Is The Complete Privacy? We Can't Find It! Google Says To A Pennsylvania Family .

I think this should be an interesting story. Can you stop me from looking at your house or anything visible in your house from a public road? (Oh the house is on a private road but visible from a public road!).
But I think if I was living in that blocked section of the road and if I want people to see me on the Google Street View, I might be able to sue Google for discrimination! Wow I love This Country!
As you can see, the street view stops here! It may be possible that Google removed it due to the law suite. Click on the image to goto Google Maps.

JULY 30--Arguing that technology has ensured that "complete privacy does not exist," Google contends that a Pennsylvania family has no legal grounds to sue the search giant for publishing photos of their home on its popular "Street View" mapping feature. Responding to an invasion of privacy lawsuit filed by Aaron and Christine Boring, Google has countered that the couple "live in a residential community in the twenty-first-century United States, where every step upon private property is not deemed by law to be an actionable trespass."
The Smoking Gun has the complete article.

Tags: Google maps, Google Street View, complete privacy, Aaron and Christine Boring

Scrabulous Returns As Wordscraper

Scrabulous was taken off line a few days ago, at least in some countries but now the game has effectively returned, but with a redesigned board, a few original play options, a different points tabulation system, and a new name, Wordscraper.

"On Wednesday I spoke to Pete Kinsella, a partner at the Faegre & Benson law firm who specializes in intellectual property, and he gave me his take on the gritty details. "Copyrights are not supposed to protect board games," Kinsella explained. "What copyrights protect is the expression of an idea rather than the idea itself."

Returning as Wordscraper is a way for its creators to keep the game running while avoiding legal complaints. In effect, it's just different enough.

"I think there's a very fine line to walk in this one, and the question is whether Scrabulous went over the line or not in mimicking the colors or everything else," Kinsella assessed (keep in mind that we had this conversation before the advent of Wordscraper), "or whether they could've designed a generic version of the game with the same points system and scoring system, and that would've fallen out of Hasbro's copyrights.""

I learned about this here.

Tags: Scrabulous, Wordscraper, social games, intellectual property, Copyrights

socialmedian Goes Public Beta.

socialmedian Opens To The Public


NEW YORK, New York — July 31, 2008 — socialmedian, http://www.socialmedian.com, a new social news network that is working on solving the information overload problem, opened its website to the public today. The public launch follows a fourmonth invite-only alpha period with more than 4300 participants from around the world. The socialmedian site is a public beta and continues to be a work in progress. The company’s model is to ship new features and enhancements every other day in direct response to user feedback. Interested parties are encouraged to check out the company’s about pages at http://www.socialmedian.com/aboutsocialmedian/ about-socialmedian for more detailed background information or to log onto the site at http://www.socialmedian.com and give it a whirl. socialmedian updates can also be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/socialmedian. socialmedian is founded and led by Jason Goldberg who previously founded and was CEO of Jobster Inc. from 2004 to 2007. Goldberg founded socialmedian in January 2008. The company is backed by Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and personal investments from Goldberg and leading angel investors such as Allen Morgan (Mayfield fund), Reed Hundt (fmr. FCC Chairman), Gordon Crovitz (fmr. WSJ Publisher), Julius Genachowski (LaunchBox Digital), and Johnny Taylor (CEO of IAC’s Rushmore Drive). Morgan, Genachowski, Crovitz, and Don Baer (Burson-Marsteller, fmr. Discover Communications Executive) also serve as active advisors to the company.

Socialmedian has offices in New York, NY and Pune, India. socialmedian is a user-driven website both in the manner in which it has been developed as well as in the functioning of the site.

The company released its first code to an early set of alpha users in March 2008. Users can submit feature requests directly on the website. More than 350 user-submitted features have

been built and launched on the site during the alpha period. socialmedian aims to help anyone anywhere easily discover, share, and discuss news and information that meets their specific topical interest through collaborative filtering by people with common interests. The site was created in response to peoples’ need for better ways to access the rapidly increasing amounts of news content created daily while at the same time enabling them to easily filter it down to just the most personally relevant content. socialmedian helps solve the information overload problem by enabling people with common interests to highlight to each other what to read and discuss on a particular topic from an infinite number of sources, whether it be from a traditional news outlet or a new media website or a blogger with a great analysis.

Socialmedian’s founder, Jason Goldberg, said of the site: “The name socialmedian itself represents what we believe to be the next evolution of media; as information becomes more universally accessible and people socially can create, share, and discuss it online, what we’re witnessing is a massive democratization of information around the globe as people who share common interests can instantly become newsmakers for each other without any regard to political borders or boundaries. Increasingly, when it comes to news and information, it’s no longer about the have’s and have not’s, we are all the social median.”

socialmedian’s thesis is that people who share topical interests can act as effective filters for each other. Here’s how socialmedian works.;

• Users of socialmedian can create “News Networks” on any topic. A News Network enables a group of people to track, share, and discuss aggregated news on a particular topic. Within a News Network, users can share RSS feeds or submit content to socialmedian via a browser bookmarklet, by email, or directly on the site.

• Users “clip” stories of interest to highlight them to people in their Networks.

• Every user gets a personalized news feed on their socialmedian homepage which presents relevant news clippings from people in their networks.

• Users can also specifically follow other users as their “Newsmakers” This enables one user to effectively get their news through another user, following what the other person is clipping, discussing, and sharing. Users can elect to follow all updates from another user or only those updates relevant to that person’s topical interests. For bloggers, journalists and others opinion leaders, becoming a “Newsmaker” provides a new way to engage with their audience.

Here are some facts on the alpha period:

• Socialmedian’s 4300 users have created more than 1125 News Networks

• The most popular News Networks (http://www.socialmedian.com/network?s=popular) on socialmedian include:

o Web 2.0, 1250 users http://www.socialmedian.com/network/web-2-0

o Social Media Watch, 685 users http://www.socialmedian.com/network/socialmedia-watch

o Twitter, 442 users http://www.socialmedian.com/network/twitter

o Campaign 2008, 305 users http://www.socialmedian.com/network/campaign-2008

o iPhone, 116 users http://www.socialmedian.com/network/iphone

• The most popular Newsmakers on socialmedian already have more than 100 followers. http://www.socialmedian.com/users?s=popular

• The U.S. represents just less than 50% of the alpha users.

Top countries represented on socialmedian thus far:

 U.S. 48%

 India 10%

 UK 10%

 Italy 4%

 Canada 3%

 Germany 2%

 Netherlands 2%

 Australia 3%

 China 2%

 Japan 2%

Also notable:

• socialmedian beta also includes several progressive innovations in areas such as use of the Google Social Graph API and Twitter integrations. • With the beta release socialmedian users can now share

news from socialmedian on Twitter from the socialmedian site • The socialmedian site is built upon the Ruby on Rails web framework along with nginx as a web server proxying to Mongrel instances. socialmedian uses multiple MySQL database servers, and memcached;, a distributed memory caching system, to help withstand high traffic. The company has built an engine for crawling and parsing tens of thousands of RSS feeds using solr, an open-source search server based on Lucene search library.

• Socialmedian recently held a global contest for user experience designers to design the socialmedian iphone application, one of the top user requests. The contest concludes on July 28, 2008 and submissions will be displayed on the company’s blog at http://blog.socialmedian.com in the coming days.

For additional assistance, journalists, bloggers, and analysts may contact Scott Wheaton, Scott@socialmedian.com 1-315-751-4372 or Jason Goldberg Jason@socialmedian.com 1-917-455-1020.

Tags: Social networking, Social news, socialmedian, social news network