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Deck Is a Slick, Feature Rich Application Launcher for iPhone [Jailbreak]

iOS (Jailbroken): Since the iPhone homescreen is essentially an app launcher on its own you wouldn't think it needed much in the way of quick access. However, Deck is a simple but well made side bar launch tool that adds easy access to a number of customizable apps and settings. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5892781/deck-is-a-slick-feature-rich-application-launch...

SxSW Interactive: Day Four

The sun is shining today in Austin (finally!) and walking between venues in the 80+ degree weather has been the highlight of the day. I got shut out of “Social Media in the Underground World of B2B” this morning (to my intense disappointment) but used the time to walk the trade show floor.

The SxSW trade show floor, not surprisingly, is loud, crowded, colorful and wonderful– all at the same time. It’s cool because the vendors aren’t all specific to the Interactive Festival, so you get a great mix of people walking around from the Film and Music Festivals as well.

I listened to A LOT of elevator pitches on various products, apps and platforms today and wanted to share the ones that most intrigued me. Full disclosure: I haven’t had a chance to try any of these out yet as the wi-fi in the Austin Convention Centre was definitely struggling.

  • OtherInbox: “Regain control of your Inbox by automatically organizing email clutter, maximizing your real life relationships, as well as making your inbox more efficient and effective.” The demo on this app was really cool – you can search your inbox by keyword, industry type, attachment, etc. and it does appear to organize the information in a variety of logical ways. The one downside from what I can see it that you can only use this with a single email address. It won’t allow you to upload multiple addresses. But the app did just launch last week, so maybe with enough success and feedback that issue will be addressed.
  • Beautecam: “Beautecam is a new app that lets you check your skin condition by equipping your iPhone or iPod Touch camera with a special magnifying lens (sold separately) to take a magnified photo of your skin.” This one wins the award for most interesting, at least for me. The theory behind this is that once you go through the trouble and expense of uploading the magnified image of your skin, the app will make product and regimen recommendations for you (i.e. “The climate you live in is dry this time of year; it’s time for a heavier moisturizer. Here are a few recommendations.”) As someone who is regularly overwhelmed by beauty counters, this could be very helpful. You can buy the magnifying skin lens from within the app, but I haven’t been able to determine the cost on that.
    Trade Show Floor
  • Pointburst: “Manage all your social media content from one place using Pointburst’s cloud-based library. Simultaneously publish relevant communications such as messages, documents, photos and videos to your selected social media networking sites and to those of your affiliates with a single click.” So the concept behind this is one-click publishing to a variety of properties and it’s ideally suited to companies who want to push a message out to multiple branded social channels, but have the message appear as though it comes directly from that affiliate (i.e. an Association with individual regional Twitter handles who wants the message from the home office to be consistent but with a local branding). This could actually be a cool application for an agency managing multiple social accounts for a client.
  • Hibe: Coming to us from Canada, Hibe is a social network that allows you to have multiple profiles (up to 5 at this point) that you can tailor to your interest. So let’s say you’re a dad who also happens to be a professor who blogs about mountain biking in your spare time. Oh, and you’re looking for a job. You could have four profiles: Family, Professional, Job Seeking and Public, all with access and content customized to your audience. It’s an interesting concept and one that no other social network allows you to do, although you could argue that one could configure Google+ in a similar way. And it’s got a nice user interface. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to suffer from social network fatigue. Most people don’t want another social network and this one isn’t unique enough to draw users away from Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.
  • Filmaster: “Filmaster allows you to discover the world of movies. It recommends what you should watch tonight at your local theater, on TV, or on Netflix, based on your unique taste in movies.” Filmaster is available for iPhone/iPad, Androind and Apple TV. You sign up, indicate any memberships you have (Netflix, etc.) and over time it learns your film preferences and makes recommendations for you. The coolest feature is that you can purchase the movie rental right from the app. It will also aggregate info from your local movie theaters, so it’s not just rentals in your recommendation pile. Of all the apps I saw today, this one is the biggest no-brainer.
  • Social Media Monthly: Our only entry in the old-school category, “Social Media Monthly” is actually (gasp!) a printed monthly magazine. As in, printed on actual paper. The cost is $6.99 an issue and while I haven’t had a chance to read through the current one, it is the only publication geared toward social media. Plus the Editor, Robert Fine, wrote “The Big Book of Social Media Case Studies, Stories, Perspectives” which I did thumb through and looked quite interesting.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/sxsw-interactive-day-four/

How to Back Up and Migrate Your Posterous Spaces to Tumblr, Blogger, or WordPress [Backups]

Yesterday afternoon, Twitter announced that they had acquired blogging platform Posterous, and by all indications, it was mostly for the talent. If you're a Posterous user, this means that your Posterous blog, called Posterous Spaces, is in limbo. Neither company has said there are any plans to shutter Posterous, and Posterous says nothing's changing right now, but there's no reason to wait for someone else when you can take control of your own data. Here's how. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5892776/how-to-back-up-and-migrate-your-posterous-space...

What Men and Women Really Want, According to Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

As a fully-licensed and accredited man, I am wholly unqualified to discuss what women want or care about. That’s what social data is for.

Social media monitoring company NetBase analyzed a year’s worth of online conversations — 27 billion, to be exact. Using natural language processing, they parsed English grammar and gender voice in search of phrases like “I want X.” The data was then analyzed for sentiment, and condensed into a top 10 list for each sex. The fascinating results have been compiled in the punchy inforgraphic below.

SEE ALSO: 10 Reasons Twitter Is Sexier Than Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]

We won’t spoil the fun up front — you’ll have to scroll down to see the winners. But it’s worth noting that food absolutely dominates social media conversation among both genders.

Here we are, the most interconnected civilization the world has ever known, and humanity’s greatest collective aspiration can be boiled down to, “Me likey pizza.”

Same as it ever was.


Infographic courtesy of NetBase.

More About: data, Food, gender, infographic, Social Media, trending


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/12/men-women-want-social-media/?utm_source=feedbu...

GTVHacker teases Boxee for rooted Sony Google TVs

Since the Boxee Box and original Google TV v1 hardware share Intel Atom processors at their heart users have wondered about the opportunity for a port, and as seen above, that may have been achieved. GTVHacker tweeted out the picture tonight, promising "big things" in store for owners of rooted Sony Google TV devices while showing Boxee running on a Sony NSZ-GT1 Blu-ray player. There's no other details mentioned so far, but if you managed to open up the capabilities of your hardware before an update put the kibosh on rooting, you should have some extra capabilities coming your way shortly.

GTVHacker teases Boxee for rooted Sony Google TVs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  source@GTVHacker (Twitter)  | Email this | Comments

from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/12/rooted-sony-google-tv-boxee/

Stop innovating, please: Kaleidescape loses DVD ripping case

A California judge ruled last week that Kaleidescape, the company behind a line of high-end home media servers, violated the terms of its DVD licensing agreement by allowing consumers to rip DVDs.  

The DVD Copy Control Association sets rules that all manufacturers of DVD players must follow. The organization objected to the DVD-ripping functionality of Kaleidescape's products and went to court to force them off the market. On Thursday, Judge William Monahan issued a broad injuncton barring Kaleidescape from selling its DVD-streaming products.

The case is a useful reminder that, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, major content companies continue to enjoy veto power over the design of digital media devices. Include a digital lock in your spec and the DMCA keeps anyone from bypassing it, even if the intended use might well be legal. Hollywood is using this power to prevent "DVD jukebox" products from reaching consumers.

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from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/stop-innovating-please-kaleid...

YouTube Opens Up Live Streaming to Non-Profits First

youtube


YouTube has given all members of its non-profit program the ability to live-stream from their channels.

YouTube wrote in a blog post Monday that this will give its non-profit program members the chance to spread their causes, by sharing charity events and conferences in real-time.

“In the past we have rolled out self-service live-streaming for a small group of select partners,” Ramya Raghavan, YouTube news and politics manager, told Mashable. “Today it is open up to all 16,000 nonprofit organizations in the YouTube Nonprofit Program.”

Two non-profits have already made use of live-streaming on the platform. Last Saturday, March 3, the American Foundation on Equal Rights live-streamed YouTube’s first play, 8, about the trial for Proposition 8 in California. The ONE campaign and RED live-streamed a day-long symposium on World AIDS Day in December.

YouTube has been making a big push extending its non-profit program. In April, it will host a day-long summit in San Francisco to better help non-profits tell their stories on the social video platform.

What types of events do you think non-profits should live-stream? What other organizations do you think YouTube should open up live-streaming to next?


BONUS: YouTube Chooses 20 Non-Profits for Next Cause Program



The Bracelet Story


Ron and Carol Zenaro tell their touching story about how they channeled love into making bracelets in honor and support of their son Scott, who diagnosed with cancer and passed away on February 24, 2010. He was a Lazarex patient in clinical trials for 28 months. By July 2010 the Zenaros had raised over $24,000 in donations for Lazarex Cancer Foundation by selling their bracelets.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: non-profits, Social Good, trending, YouTube

For more Social Good coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/13/youtube-non-profits-live-streaming/?utm_source...

Why is Massachusetts Playing the VC Game?

This is the second post in a five-part series on the Massachusetts government’s role as a venture capitalist. The first post introduced the topic and covered the broader record of government performance in VC. Posts in the series will appear here as they are published.

Before we can begin to judge the success of Massachusetts’ venture programs, we need to determine their aim and gauge whether it’s worthwhile in the first place. The Commonwealth is in a somewhat unusual position, in that the state is already home to one of the largest concentrations of venture dollars and entrepreneurial activity in the world. So unlike many forays by governments into venture capital where the goal is jump-starting some modicum of startup activity, Massachusetts needs to justify its activity with reference to specific gaps in the state’s innovation ecosystem.

In the case of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), that gap is fairly straightforward. There is a recognized lack of seed and series A funding in cleantech, and promising technologies often face a “technological valley of death” in which they lack the capital required to hit certain “proof points” that would lower risk to the point where venture investors would be interested. This is far from the only market gap in the energy space, and perhaps not the only way in which MassCEC’s investments are adding value, but it offers a basic justification for the fund’s existence.

The justification for the Mass. Technology Development Corporation’s (MTDC) existence begins much the same. Its website points to a survey it conducted that claims to identify a capital gap for smaller investments under $3 million. As has been widely noted in the tech press, seed funding for web and internet companies has been plentiful lately, but broader VC trends offer some support for MTDC’s diagnosis. Venture investments are becoming larger and coming later. (Angels have partially filled this gap, but with an emphasis on internet and healthcare deals. And the Massachusetts angel community is much smaller than California’s.)

To that, MTDC adds a few other areas in which it tries to add value: by backing less experienced management teams and by investing in industries “out of vogue” with venture capitalists (it avoids energy and biotech which are covered via equity or grants by other agencies). As I’ll discuss, these roles are somewhat more suspect.

What Does Success Look Like?

The fundamental difficulty in assessing a government venture program is that to succeed, it must toe the line between investing in viable companies and filling a market gap. It shouldn’t be duplicating private sector efforts by simply joining in the most promising or lucrative deals; on the other hand, it shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer dollars by dumping money into nonviable companies.

To do this, it must aim to address a market failure large enough to justify its own existence, but small enough that, by bringing to bear some government capital, it can ultimately attract private investors to the companies it funds.

“There certainly is a balancing act there,” Josh Lerner, the HBS professor, told me. “When you look across public sector interventions in the public space, often you find investments which fail on both counts.”

One of the best ways to achieve this balance, according to Lerner, is to require the funds to co-invest with private investors, thereby ensuring that the government fund cannot become too divorced from the realities of the market.

But that’s hardly the only challenge government venture funds face. They must also work to attract highly talented staff, they must be set up with enough independence to avoid any political pressures in the investment process (like pressure to invest equally across geography to please legislators), they need to properly align incentives for fund managers, and they need to fundamentally understand the nature of venture capital, so that deals are structured in a way that invites rather than deters subsequent private investments.

Returns are an important metric, but unlike private venture funds they are far from the only one.

With these criteria laid out, we can now begin to evaluate the state’s venture activities in subsequent posts. The remainder of the series will run as follows:

Wednesday: We examine the MassCEC’s structure and record.
Thursday: We look at MTDC’s structure and record.
Friday: Concluding thoughts and summary.

To view all the posts published in this series, click here.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/all-series/why-is-massachusetts-playing-the-vc-game/

BetaBait: The Newest Web Platform That Helps Startups Get Users Before They Even Launch

Ever since Zuck Dawg made it look super easy to become one of the world’s richest entrepreneurs, everyone and their mom wants in on the action. The result? A lot of startups.

Between developing a platform, raising capital and building a team, it’d be the understatement of the year to say that startuppers don’t have the bandwidth to do PR to get their name out there. And while the TechCrunches of the world are great, they can’t possibly cover every Pandora for Cats that pops up. For that, there’s BetaBait.

Based out of Bridgeport, Conn., BetaBait is a web platform that helps startups find beta testers by connecting them with early adopters. “For startups, we wanted to give them a fighting chance,” explains Cody Barbierri, cofounder of BetaBait.

Launched two months ago, BetaBait now has more than 1,000 startups listed in their directory who are connected with 5,000 early adopters. The site allows users to sign up with an email address and then receive a daily email listing all the newest startup apps that have been submitted to BetaBait in the past 24 hours. Once featured in the daily email, all the apps are slated into BetaBait’s online discovery network, each boasting a profile page, social sharing links and a feedback section in which users can provide recommendations to make the apps better.

Last week, BetaBait launched a complete site redesign for easier navigation. The new layout features a new voting system, which allows users to rate apps and push them to the top of the homepage, similar to Reddit or Hacker News. Apps can be sorted by topical categories such as business, entertainment and music, allowing early adopters to more easily vet which apps they would like to explore. Barbierri and the team also revamped the email options and added an RSS feed, “for those who don’t like email,” he says.

In addition to the new platform, I’d love to see the site vet the apps by city, so that users can check out which apps are being developed right in town, facilitating easier connections between early adopters and developers.

In the spirit of beta testing, BetaBait is also promoting Early Adopters Day, a day, as its name suggests, honoring early adopters. The site reads:

Dear President @BarackObama,

As an early adopter, we are the millions of individuals behind the growth of many of the newest startups today, which helps to drive this great nation’s innovation and economy.

To show appreciation for our willingness to always try something new and tell a few friends, I support making September 20th, 2012, the first annual:

National Early Adopters’ Day

Sign the petition here, and get exploring with BetaBait’s new platform. Who knows, you just might help vet out the next Instagram for Hamburgers.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/03/13/betabait-the-newest-web-platform-that-helps-st...

SxSW Interactive: Day Five

It’s the final day of the 2012 SxSW Interactive Festival. It’s been a whirlwind and though very exciting, I am looking forward to getting back to Boston.

As we wrap things up here in Austin, I wanted to share some insights from a great session I attended called “Drugs, Milk and Money: Social In Regulated Industries.” The conversation was led by Glenn Engler, CEO of Digital Influence Group. I say conversation rather than presentation because the session was truly interactive. Some of the best insights came from audience members dealing with social  media issues in real time.

The three main takeaways from this session were:

  • Make legal your friend
  • Think content
  • Go where the conversations are

Likely the biggest obstacles companies in regulated industries face when looking to engage via social media is their internal legal team. There was a resounding chorus of laughs in the room when Engler relayed an anecdote about a client’s tweet taking a week to get posted because it had to be vetted through their legal department. As digital practitioners we’ve all been there. We’ve all seen the client who has a complex approval process for every instance of engagement and we know that doesn’t work. Engler’s advice is to integrate legal into your social team as much as possible,  whether social comes from Marketing, PR or is a department all on its own. The more you involve them the more quickly the process will move. That’s not to say there still won’t be delays in certain circumstances, but from Engler’s point of view, this is how companies have successfully overcome this barrier to engagement.

The second point, a focus on content, seems obvious enough but a common theme emerged in the session: many regulated companies (hospitals, financial institutions) seem to believe that they don’t have valuable content to offer. Our job as digital practitioners is to get them to evaluate the assets they do have (a white paper; a clinical study that may be in progress, but may have portions that are complete; a chatty CEO ripe for a “fireside chat” style video) and open their eyes to existing content.

Which brings us to Engler’s third point: go where the conversations are. It’s great to start a company blog, but the fastest way to become part of the conversation is to look at what’s being said and then analyze how your content matches up to that. For example, one of Engler’s clients, Glidden Paints, was frustrated that “no one is talking to us.” People just weren’t interested in conversing about a paint brand. But people do talk about choosing paint colors and interior design inspiration. Once Engler/Glidden were able to identify where those conversations were taking place, Glidden was suddenly popular. They had something valuable to contribute and they’d found the right home for it.

Sometimes it’s not a matter of just putting your product out there. Not a lot of people want to read a blog post on the ins and outs of purchasing life insurance. But people who’ve just had a baby are interested (and voraciously searching the Internet) for information on  estate planning, which purchasing insurance is certainly part of. So take your conversation to the new parent blogs and message boards.

A few additional tips:

All in all, a great way to wrap up a great conference. Check back Thursday for a summary post on my experience and some tips for those looking to attend next year’s event.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/sxsw-interactive-day-five/