Mobile social networks have come a long way since Google acquired Dodgeball back in 2005 as both mobile devices and online product offerings have improved. Twitter and other mobile enabled lifestreaming and communication products have taken off as users have grown more accustom to text messaging. That said, I finally got around to give, the Colorado-based startup Brightkite a try and was impressed by it.
Continue reading "Brightkite Impressive Mobile Social Network" »
I attend lots of industry events and I don't know how many times I either run out of business cards or find myself cardless but thanks to technology it is a lot easier to connect. LinkedIn recently joined Facebook and a number of other sites that have created iPhone experiences which makes it easy to contact people you meet immediately thus online identity has replaced one of the features of offline identity - the business card.
Continue reading "Poll: Will Technology Replace Business Cards?" »
Microblogging has becoming extremely popular as sites like Twitter and Pownce have jumped onto the scene to enable users to quickly share messages, links and files. I recently got a preview of a Chicago-based startup that has created platform a new microblogging platform. Edmodo, a self-funded bootstrapping startup co-founded by Jeff O'Hara and Nic Borg offers microblogging for education and groups. Since both co-founders work in education, they wanted to do something to help others in the space. They also noticed there were not microblogging platforms available with the rostering and privacy options needed in the educational space - so they decided to build Edmodo.
Twitter is a great communication tool. I use it all the time. I initially enabled mobile notifications but found I was getting a constant stream of Twitter text messages which can be somewhat distracting. So I turned off mobile notifications except for direct messages. But I still find that I miss "@ replies" since they cannot currently be sent to my mobile device. 
I just put in a feature request directly with Twitter via their online form. I would love to be able to get "@ replies" sent directly to my mobile device just the same as direct messages are. Brian Caldwell and David Robinson agree with me. Does anyone else want to see this feature added?
UPDATE: Kevin Lawver just sent me a work around via direct Twitter message which gets your @ replies sent to your mobile device. By simply sending Twitter track @username you can get any @ replies of your usersname sent directly to you mobile device. Thank you Kevin - you are awesome!
Eyespot, the online video editing site that I previously reviewed with high regard, has released a new set of tools to make personalization and syndication of videos. The tools include the ability to share to a mobile device or to a number of other video platforms with just one click.
Continue reading "Eyespot Sharpens Its Video Editing Toolset" »
OUTSHOUTS, a Palo Alto, California based three employee startup, takes 'making music going round' seriously. OUTSHOUTS enables anyone to act as a DJ to create and send their own mixes of your recorded voice and pre-recorded music or other content over email and text message directly to your mobile phone.
Video lifestreaming has made great strides in the past year as Justin Kan strapped a camera on his head. Robert Scoble, Sarah Meyers, Justine Ezarik and a number of others including myself have participated in one way or another in the lifestreaming video movement leveraging tools like UStream.TV, Mogulus, Justin.TV and Blog.TV.
With CES taking place in Las Vegas this week and the unfortunate fact that I am unable to attend I am going to take full advantage of my friends lifestreaming videos to get a feel of the conference. Qik is an alpha product that has sprung onto the scene to enable users to stream live video directly from their mobile phone making the barriers of entry into lifestreaming a step closer to the everyday mobile phone user.
Continue reading "Qik Streams Live Video From Your Phone To Web" »
Microblogging platforms have been coming into their own as sites like Tumblr and Twitter have emerged to enable users to provide a shorter format for blog posts. Why microblogs? Microblog platforms offer users an easy way to make shorter format posts that take less time and overhead than a full fledge blog. Soup.io has just officially launched to offer users a microblogging platform that pay attention to your content details so different content types are displayed appropriately.
Continue reading "Soup.io Launches Hot New Microblog Platform" »
TechCrunch40, the 2007 TechCrunch launching pad conference, is upon us and you can keep up with the event just updated its website at techcrunch40.com. The site offers fully-featured hub for TechCrunch40, which starts this morning and
continues through Tuesday evening. It will offer details about the 40 presenting
companies (as they launch), the 100 demo pit companies and speaker details. The site will upload video clips of
each set of presentations. The site also has Flickr photos can view photos of the conference and messages about the event via Twitter.
Typepad, the popular hosted blog platform by Six Apart, has announced a new iPhone optimized interface. Typepad users can now visit http://i.typepad.com on an iPhone or the new iPod Touch in their Safari Web browser use an optimized version of Typepad. I tested it out with a brief video demo.
Though an early Twitter adopter, I found that when Facebook came out
with its open application platform which included mobile and web status
updates I stopped updating my twitter page as frequently. I just
couldn't keep up with updating two places with my status updates. When you also factor in Flickr photo uploads, myAOL 'Mix & Share' Favorites and regular blog posts (on Somewhat Frank, TECH cocktail and myAOL Blog) I had to start to looking for a way to cut corners. I recently found twitterfeed.com, thanks to my good friend Eric Olson. Twitterfeed.com turns twitter into a status feed aggregator as you can pull all your status updates together to be published on twitter.
Continue reading "Use twitterfeed.com To Aggregate Your Facebook Status Updates On Twitter" »
If you have an iPhone you may be trying to figure out a way to optimize your widget experience. Mojits offers a potential solution as it provides a place to find web widgets optimized for the iPhone.
Currently, Mojits offers a couple dozen web widget options which include AIM iPhone Chat, iPhone Digg, iPhone Twitter, TaDa List and many more.
Simply create a Mojits account, configure your Mojits to your liking and then navigate to the Mojits Launcher on your iPhone with Safari. My Mojits is shown below.
While online video upload sites have become
extremely popular in the web 2.0 movement, it appears that live
streaming video seems to be catching on fast. UStream.tv
offers users the ability to create their own live web channel with live
chat functionality. Streaming video is by no means a new concept but
the UStream.tv platform does make it easy for anyone with a web camera
to become a real-life Truman Show like Justin.tv.
When I asked UStream.tv CEO Chris Yeh about their product he had this to offer:
“Our story is simple. We're bringing live internet video to everyone. By removing the barriers to broadcasting, we allow the creativity of our users to flourish. While many experiments will fail, UStream.tv is the test tube that will help build the future of media.”
Over the past week I have experienced the trend first hand as several people I encountered were using UStream.tv to bring streaming reality broadcasts to the web. At the Web 2.0 Expo I was interviewed by Jeremiah Oywang live via UStream, I also ran into Justin.tv at a couple of different events and Sarah Meyers, Lindsay Docherty and Brian Solis even got into the Justin.tv act. Blog veterans Robert Scoble and Chris Pirrillo are also getting into the act and leveraging UStream.tv to produce live broadcasts.
In attempting to watch UStream.tv I have experienced some poor video quality issues but I figure they will subside with time. I think that we are only at the beginning of what streaming web tv has to offer and UStream.tv is a vaulable part of the evolution process. Check out the end of my chat with Jeremiah Oywang in the hallway of the Web 2.0 Expo below to see the video quality I was referring to - it is a little choppy but still could be effective.
Twitter has been the talk of the blogosphere and tech community for the last few weeks. Twitter has taken a simple idea and technology to create an easy to use and somewhat addictive product thus turning it into a growing phenomenon.
I finally gave in and reviewed Twitter two weeks ago along with a number of other bloggers. Robert Scoble even convinced Mike Arrington of TechCrunch to start using Twitter today. Upon setting up Twitter I opted to not get Twitter updates on my mobile phone. This week while in Silicon Valley, I decided to configure my profile to turn mobile updates on thinking I would stay better connected and to see just how disruptive it might be. Since turning them on, I have received hundreds of messages from all my Twitter friends.
A few things that I learned while using Twitter:
1.) Twitter can be a great connector - Twitter can be an excellent connector as I now feel I have more personal insight into all of my Twitter friend's as they offer short, usually personal, stream of conscience updates.
2.) Twitter can cause information overload - Twitter can produce lots of messages! It can be a slight distraction if you find yourself compelled to read every message that comes your way.
3.) Twitter could cost you - Twitter's SMS/text messaging update options could cost you on your mobile bill so be sure to check you mobile plan to make sure you can handle a lot more incoming text messages.
4.) Twitter is great for events - SXSW Interactive and the more recent VON conference are great examples of events that Twitter can enhance the experience as Twitter members can all Twitter the event.
5.) Twitter could be used as an alarm clock - If you have the Twitter mobile updates on you can configure some sleep hours where mobile updates are not sent. I found that doing this was a good idea. Interestingly, the time you set to resume mobile updates doubles as a wake-up call as the updates start flowing in.
6.) You can watch Twitter - Steve Rubel pointed out Twittervision which plots Twitter updates from around the globe on a map (as shown below). It could suck you in for a large chunk of time - so proceed with caution if you are short on time. Twittervision makes it easy to "people watch" and potentially meet new Twitter friends.
What has Twitter taught you?
Photo Attribution: Ed Kohler via Flickr.
Startup Mixology: Tech Cocktail's Guide To Building, Growing & Celebrating Startup Success by Frank Gruber
