Change in 2010: Social Media Innovation Will No Longer Be Limited By Technology

With Web technology maturing and the near-elimination of previous barriers such as closed platforms and discrete logins, companies will now look to innovate the way they use existing technology, rather than focus on technology enhancements themselves. We will see a move to leverage existing assets -- content and capabilities -- in new ways, turning information to wisdom and insight to action. Whereas once user research required focus groups and usability tests, companies will utilize the Web's capabilities to achieve the same. Naturally occurring conversations will be utilized in product innovation and design, and companies will create incentives for people's attention and engagement while repurposing and analyzing content and engagement in new ways that will deliver valuable input.

Change in 2010:Social Media Will Become a Single, Cohesive Experience Embedded In Our Activities and Technologies

Today, it is impossible to separate social media from the online world. Facebook reached 350 million users last month -- 70% of whom are outside the US -- and it accounts for 25% of the Web's traffic, according to Pew nearly one in five people on the web use Twitter or some other service to check status messages, and 94% of enterprises plan to maintain or increase their investment in enterprise social media tools. The social media conversation is no longer considered a Web 2.0 fad -- it is taking place in homes, small businesses and corporate boardrooms, and extending its reach into the nonprofit, education and health sectors. From feeling excitement, novelty, bewilderment, and overwhelmed, a growing number of people now speak of social media as simply another channel or tactic.

So what will social Web bring next? What will "being connected" mean? What will the next experience be for the 2 two billion people who are connected to the Internet? Here are 10 ways what we've called social media will evolve in 2010.

By this time next year, social media will no longer be "social media" -- it will be an integrated, unquestionable component of your online and offline experience. Last year we spoke of cross-platform integration across media sites. Open APIs and OpenID made that possible, and even LinkedIn announced last month that it too will finally open its APIs. 2010 will be about integration and a single, cohesive experience across platforms as well as across products and devices -- Web, mobile, TV, and video -- will become near-inseparable experiences.

Users will access content from any device or platform, co-create and mashup their photos, videos and text with traditional content while interacting with each other. Publishers will create new kinds of content for the connected world, and the last years' lull in good entertainment will finally be lifted. This trend will cut across all of our activities -- from playing games to shopping to emailing and texting -- nothing will be lost; everything we do will be gathered and streamed together, allowing people to view their world of activities as if it were projected in front of them, open to change, review and input at any point in time from any device or online tool.

StuffBuff

Fast Fun Auctions
http://stuffbuff.com/

StuffBuff helps you Catalog everything you own online and the have fun buying and seling in adrenalin fueled auctions.
1.Import Everything: All the things you love and own in the real world.
2.Discover: Cool things your friends and favorite celebrities have.
3.Cash Out: Buy and sell in fast paced, adrenalin fueled auctions.

Site Assistant

http://www.site-assistant.com/

This site provides webmasters with relevant information about their websites!

If you are a webmaster, webstudio or website owner that wants to have a good overview over many of his, his customer’s and competition’s websites then Site Assistant can help you.

Site Assistant provides you with always up to date relevant information about your websites themselves, your domains and your SEO stats.

iPhone on Rails

A framework for the iPhone that makes interacting with RoR applications dead simple
http://iphoneonrails.com/

ObjectiveResource is a framework for the iPhone that makes interacting with Ruby on Rails applications dead simple.

ObjectiveResource is an Objective-C port of Ruby on Rails’ ActiveResource. It provides a way to serialize objects to and from Rails’ standard RESTful web-services (via XML or JSON) and handles much of the complexity involved with invoking web-services of any language from the iPhone.

Google launches new service for display ad trading

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Google Inc. on Friday unveiled a new service for buying and selling online display advertising, representing a big step for the Internet search giant to expand into a market now dominated by Yahoo Inc. and other companies.

Called Double Click Ad Exchange, the new service is a "real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side, and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell display advertising space," Neal Mohan, Google's vice president of product management, said in a posting on the company's blog.

"By bringing them together in an open marketplace in which prices are set in a real-time auction, the Ad Exchange enables display ads and ad space to be allocated much more efficiently," he added.

The Ad Exchange is the first big product resulted from Google's purchase of Internet advertising solutions company Double Click in 2008 for over 3 billion U.S. dollars.

Google has been successful in making money from search advertising -- short, highly relevant text ads alongside search results on its search engine. But the company lags behind competitors like Yahoo in the market of display ad, a type of advertising which usually includes images and videos.

Microsoft to launch new products amid innovative drive

Microsoft is expected to introduce an array of new products in coming months as it would allocate 9.5 billion U.S. dollars in research and development this fiscal year, said Ya-Qin Zhang, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President at the sideline of 2009 Summer Davos forum.

The new products would include the Window 7, the latest version of Microsoft Windows operating system, new Office Software, new servers and new mobile technology, Zhang told Xinhua here Thursday.

"Against the backdrop of global economic downturn, Microsoft planned to allocate 9.5 billion U.S. dollars in research and development, an increase of 15 percent from the previous fiscal year," he said at the sideline of the meeting, also known as the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2009, in China's port city Dalian, northeast Liaoning Province.

"We are preparing for a fast development after the financial crisis," said Zhang, noting that Microsoft's research team in China, with about 3,000 employees, had contributed to a large number of the core technology in the new products.

"To my understanding, China and India have become the major innovation center for the world," he said.

Twitter nearing completion a new round of financing of $50 mln

Twitter is nearing completion a new found of financing of 50 million U.S. dollars, which makes the value of this micro-blog site rise to 1 billion U.S. dollars, according to Reuters report. Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, said this to his employees on Wednesday. He also revealed that the company had completed its first financing on this February and its value was estimated to reach 250 million U.S. dollars at that time.

Like other social networking sites, Twitter has being withstood the pressure to prove that it has commercial value and hopes to go public or be purchased. The new round of financing will effectively boost the confidence of investors.

Facebook has said earlier the company had achieved a positive cash flow.

HP upgrades notebook lines with thin, stylish models

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), the world's largest personal-computer maker, on Tuesday unveiled a number of new models across its notebook lines with the aim to feed consumers' strong appetite for portable computers during the economic downturn and to maintain its leadership on the global market.

HIGH-END BRAND

The upgrades of HP notebook lines include the introduction of anew ENVY sub-brand, representing the company's expansion into the high-end notebook category.

HP said it plans to launch two models, ENVY 13 and ENVY 15, in the United States on Oct. 18 with the starting price of 1,699 U.S. dollars.

Each of the models is about 1-inch (2.54-centimeter) thin with the ENVY 13 weighing 3.74 pounds (1.7 kilograms), and looks very similar to Apple Inc.'s unibody MacBook Pro notebook.

The ENVY 15, to use the future Intel Core i7 processor, is billed as HP's fastest consumer notebook.

"HP ENVY includes the latest in materials and technology inside and out and pushes the technological and performance boundaries of what can be done in sleek, powerful and lightweight notebook PCs," Ted Clark, a senior vice president of HP, said in a statement.

THIN AND AFFORDABLE

In addition to the two luxury models, HP rolled out two new notebooks which the company said strike an "optimal balance of mobility, performance and affordability."

Among them is the 0.9-inch-thin ProBook 5310m, described by HP as "the world's thinnest full-performance notebook."

ProBook 5310m, as well as the newly-introduced 1-inch-thin Pavilion dm3, both fall into the thin-and-light notebook category, a personal computer market segment seen to have significant growth potentials in the next several years.

Over the next five years, the thin-and-light category is predicted to grow three times faster than the overall notebook market in the United States, a trend that is expected to spread worldwide, HP said, citing forecast of market research firm IDC.

The two new notebooks "raise the bar for the entire thin-and-light category," said Clark, HP's senior vice president.

Both models will be available worldwide from Oct. 22 when Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to launch its next-generation Windows 7 operating system.
The ProBook 5310m will start at 699 dollars while Pavilion dm3 starts at 549 dollars if equipped with an AMD processor.

REUNITE WITH FASHION

While introducing the new notebook models, HP tried to put emphasis on design as a selling point.

"Design is not just about what the computer looks like or even what it does for us. It's also about the experience of using the PC and ultimately what the computer says about us," Stacy Wolff, director of notebook design at HP's personal computer group, said in a statement.

The company noted that one of its two newly-introduced netbooks, or low-cost mini notebooks, is a special edition of HP Mini 110 model created by Dutch designer Tord Boontje, featuring the industry's first three-dimensional PC surface technology.

HP also announced last week that it will reunite with renowned fashion designer Vivienne Tam to introduce new "digital clutch" netbook.

New version of "digital clutch" debuted on Sept. 12 on the catwalk of Tam's fashion show during New York's Fashion Week, reflecting Tam's spring 2010 collection which is inspired by the classic Chinese love story "Butterfly Lovers."

Editor: Xiong Tong

Facebook's communication problems

Social networking websites Facebook and Twitter are changing the way people communicate. People can find out the most intimate details about friends and family whether they want us to, or not.

Welcome to a world of instant media where breaking personal news can be shared on the internet. The cyber age has meant keeping up-to-date with friends and family is only a mouse click away. But not everyone is thrilled with its immediacy.

Megan Gelaburt-McGee, a Facebook user, said, "What happened was we were on our way to the doctors office and he put as a status update Facebook 'Brian is on his way to find out what the sex of the baby is' and I was like 'do not write anything because we are not going to post it' and he was like 'why not?' And I was like 'I wanna tell our family, tell our friends and not put it up for public announcement before we tell the close people in our life first' and he was like fine."

The couple later telephoned their closest friends about the birth of their first child. Another couple found Facebook to lack the personal touch. Brad Friedman proposed to partner Stephanie Kahn in true, romantic style.

Brad Friedman said, "I cut open a tennis ball and put the words Steph will you marry me inside of it and as we were picking up I had here take a look at one of the balls."

"He opened it up like a ring box and the ring was inside."

But a marriage proposal wasn't the only surprise for Stephanie.

Stephanie said, "Before I knew it my sister, his sister, my mom they were all posting things on Facebook before I even had a chance to register that, oh my God I don't want my family to find out that way. When it's a big important event, I want to be the one to make that known personally whether it be over the phone or in person, not over an internet website."

Announcements of personal milestones like marriage, pregnancy and relationship break-ups are being broken through more ways than ever before. But you might not like the way technology can take it all out of your hands - or mouth

(Source: english.cctv.com)

Lee quits as president of Google China

BEIJING, Sept. 5 -- Google Inc, owner of the most used Internet search engine in the world, said on Friday its China president Kai-Fu Lee will leave the company to start his own business in Beijing.

Boon-Lock Yeo, director of Google's Shanghai engineering office, and John Liu, who heads the sales team in China, will take on Lee's responsibilities, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Lee disclosed that he would form his own venture soon.

Lee's departure will not affect Google's China business too much, said industry insiders. His successors will still face the challenge of competing in a market dominated by Chinese rival Baidu Inc, as well as online censorship.

"Google is more popular than four years ago. It is rising but still lags behind Baidu," said Jiang Qiping, secretary general, center for informatization studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

According to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International, Baidu held 62 percent of China's search market in the second quarter while Google held 29 percent.

In June, Google was criticized by the Chinese government for providing links to pornographic and violent material. Some of the company's services became inaccessible to domestic web users for hours.

Lee joined Google in 2005 after seven years at Microsoft, where he was a computer scientist and corporate vice-president. His move to Google triggered a lawsuit from Microsoft, in which the company sued Lee and Google.

Microsoft claimed that Lee was violating his non-compete agreement by working for Microsoft's direct competitor in an area that overlapped with his role at Microsoft. The dispute lasted for five months and ended up in a private agreement between the two companies.

Lee, 47, led Google during a period of big expansion in China in the past four years, said industry insiders.

"He has made great achievements in the past four years in Google and now it is time for him to realize his own dreams," Zhang Yaqin, corporate vice-president of Microsoft and a friend and former colleague of Kai-Fu Lee told sina.com on Friday.

"Kai-Fu has made an enormous contribution to Google over the last four years, helping dramatically to improve the quality and range of services that we offer in China," said Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice-president for engineering, in a statement.

Lee is an icon among many Chinese young students. "He is open and nice to young people. I respect him," said Jin Shifei, a postgraduate of computer sciences in Tsinghua University, who held an internship in Google China last summer.

Jin attended a seminar at Google held by Lee during the internship. He was impressed by the way "Lee taught us basic skills in business presentation".

From 1996 to 1998, Lee was president of Cosmo Software, a subsidiary of Silicon Graphics Inc, responsible for several product lines and the company's web strategy. Before that, Lee spent six years at Apple Inc, leading an interactive media group.

Before his business career, Lee used to be an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon.

Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo fight Google Books

BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Three of Google's biggest online rivals have joined the fight against a court settlement that would give Google the rights to sell millions of books on the Internet, meida reports said Monday.

Microsoft confirmed Friday that it had agreed to join a coalition opposing the Google deal. Amazon and Yahoo have also joined.

The coalition, called the Open Book Alliance, opposes a settlement reached last October between Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. The settlement would allow Google to display portions of books online and sell digital copies of them.

A court will review the agreement for approval on Oct. 7. The coalition said it is considering whether it will file a challenge to the settlement with the court.

"We've been having a range of conversations with rather diverse organizations that have interest in speaking together to articulate concerns about the settlement," said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive and spokesman for the Open Book Alliance. "We'll raise the possibility of ways that the settlement may be changed or altered to create a more open market for books."

Google's online book initiative, called Google Books, has cataloged 1 million public domain books with expired copyrights. The tech giant's settlement was reached after the publishers and authors associations sued Google for copyright infringement in late 2005 over the company's plans to scan and copy millions of books from library collections -- many of which are still under copyright.

The settlement would give authors and publishers 45 million U.S. dollars whose copyrighted books are scanned without permission.

The Justice Department's antitrust unit announced in April that it was looking into the settlement.
(Agencies)