Mashable! |
- Drew Carey Bids $25,000 for @Drew Twitter Name
- FIGHT: Palm Pre Restores iTunes Sync, Defies Apple and USB Forum
- Daily Show Spoofs New CNN iPhone App [Video]
- Leo Laporte Makes $1.5 Million Per Year from Podcasting [Video]
- Women Rule the Social Web
- YouTube Down, Facebook Wonky
- Facebook Wave: Why Facebook Should Clone Google Wave
| Drew Carey Bids $25,000 for @Drew Twitter Name Posted: 03 Oct 2009 09:38 PM PDT 
He's enjoying early success: today The Price is Right host Drew Carey placed a bid for $25K, far in excess of the $10K minimum bid. What's more, Carey says he will pay $100,000 if his current account (@drewfromTV) exceeds 100,000 followers by November 9th. As we wrote of the auction yesterday:
 Reviews: Twitter
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| FIGHT: Palm Pre Restores iTunes Sync, Defies Apple and USB Forum Posted: 03 Oct 2009 06:54 PM PDT 
The backstory, in case you missed it. Palm, upon the launch of its cute, pebble-like Pre phone, had a somewhat cheeky idea that allowed the device to sync with iTunes: masquerade as an iPod. Apple, predictably, rejected the idea of an iPhone competitor piggybacking on its popular software: iTunes upgrades repeatedly broke the sync function. Unwilling to give up without a fight, however, Palm appealed to the USB Implementers Forum, which sets guidelines for the use of USB devices. Apple, Palm claimed, was violating the USB-IF Membership Agreement by consistently breaking the sync. The USB-IF not only disagreed, but their response informed Palm that they may be the ones violating the rules:
I attach for your information the USB-IF's adopted and published policy regarding Vendor Identification Numbers (VIDs). Under the Policy, Palm may only use the single Vendor ID issued to Palm for Palm's usage. Usage of any other company's Vendor ID is specifically precluded. Palm's expressed intent to use Apple's VID appears to violate the attached policy. Please clarify Palm's intent and respond to this potential violation within seven days. Today the WSJ's Digital Daily blog reports that -yup! – Palm's WebOS 1.2.1 update once again enables iTunes syncing. The release notes explain that the update "Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (9.0.1)." As if to rub salt in the wounds, the update also adds an additional feature: syncing of photos, adds Digital Daily's John Paczkowski. While it's tempting to frame Palm as the underdog fighting for consumer choice, the company has now defied objections by both Apple and a regulating body. What do you think: should Palm abandon this fight, or carry on regardless? Disclosure: Palm has purchased advertising on this site.
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| Daily Show Spoofs New CNN iPhone App [Video] Posted: 03 Oct 2009 03:33 PM PDT 
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, however, noticed an amusing irony: the awesome new CNN iPhone app includes a feature that lets you check traffic reports on your phone while in the car. These mixed messages were, of course, comedy gold for Stewart, who hypothesized that the app's users could check in on a 5-car pileup shortly before turning it into a 6-car pileup. Thankfully CNN had a sense of humor about the spoof, choosing to air the clip on its own channel – the hilarious clip is embedded below.
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| Leo Laporte Makes $1.5 Million Per Year from Podcasting [Video] Posted: 03 Oct 2009 01:33 PM PDT 
The most interesting tidbit: Laporte's TWiT (This Week in Tech) network does $1.5 million in revenue per year, doubling yearly. His costs, however, are more impressive: it only takes $350,000 per year to run the business with 7 employees. The video of Laporte's speech is embedded below. [via Jeff Jarvis]
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| Posted: 03 Oct 2009 12:41 PM PDT 
When it comes to sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace and Bebo, however, women outnumber men. In fact, there's only one major holdout for men on the social web: social news site Digg, where 64% of users are male. That the Digg population is largely male should come as no surprise, but what about the other stats? Are women just more social in general, or is there some other explanation? Let us know in the comments.
 [Image Credit: lisibo] Reviews: Bebo, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, MySpace, Twitter
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| Posted: 03 Oct 2009 10:58 AM PDT 
YouTube acknowledged the problems on its Twitter feed earlier today, Tweeting: "We're aware some users are having trouble accessing YouTube videos. We're looking into it, and we'll update everyone soon." In the meantime, you could head over to Facebook … except that too appears to be experiencing issues today: users report their timelines are not updating. Are you having issues with YouTube and Facebook today? Let us know in the comments. [thanks to Eric and Stephina for the tips]
 See also: YouTube down Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
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| Facebook Wave: Why Facebook Should Clone Google Wave Posted: 03 Oct 2009 09:51 AM PDT 
This week we saw the release of the highly anticipated Google Wave. Wave is an innovative communications platform that combines asynchronous communication (like email) with real-time communication (like chat), an application platform, and discovery tools. It's been touted as both an email killer and a Facebook killer. In short, there's a lot of hype, and while Wave may prove to be a huge success, I think one thing it potentially represents is a great opportunity for Facebook. What Facebook is Good AtFacebook does a lot of things, and with over 300 million active users, they do a lot of things for a lot of people. But the two things they might do best are enable sharing, and co-opt good ideas from companies that target early adopters. According to some data, Facebook is the most popular way to share information online, more popular than older technologies like email. Which probably shouldn't come as a surprise given that Nielsen Online reported earlier this year that social networking now has a broader global reach than email, and that among social networks Facebook is experiencing the most most growth. While Facebook certainly hasn't killed email, something that has been has been a recurring meme since 2007 (see here, here, here and here, for example), people are spending more and more time on the site. Now Google Wave is being talked about as a potential email killer. But perhaps, Wave is actually an opportunity for Facebook to put a nail in the email coffin. That's because the other thing Facebook is good at, is taking good ideas that early adopters love and adapting them for a mainstream audience. Facebook took the idea of activity feeds (updates from outside services) from FriendFeed, for example, a company they eventually acquired. And though they only recently tied people search to photo tags, that's something that Zooomr has been doing since 2006. Facebook took the idea of single sign on from earlier efforts (like Microsoft Passport and the geekier OpenID) and made it all easier for the mainstream (and third-parties) to palate with Facebook Connect. And while Facebook may have done status first, they've been borrowing some more innovative features from Twitter recently, such as @mentions and real-time search. In other words, Facebook has become very good at taking ideas that hardcore web users love and remaking them in a way that is easier for mainstream audiences to digest. If Google Wave really is the long awaited email killer, there might be an opportunity for Facebook co-opt the best bits and turn Google's idea in a win on their end. How Facebook Could Do WaveWave is open source, so eventually, someone is probably going to put it on Facebook anyway. But Facebook could certainly do it first. Google Wave drew a standing ovation from developers at the annual Google I/O conference when it was unveiled there in May, and there has been a good deal of buzz around the product since then among the tech set. But it remains to be seen if Google Wave will be as readily accepted by mainstream audiences. Google's audience at I/O is not the mainstream. That's who makes up Facebook's audience, though. There are reasons to believe Wave might not be a mainstream hit right out of the gate. First, it's very noisy, and second, Google Wave is complicated. There is a learning curve associated with Wave, both in terms of figuring out how to use its features and learning how best to integrate it into your current workflow. Google is no stranger to innovative user interfaces, of course. Gmail, when it launched, was a unique and unfamiliar way to organize email, for example. But Wave is a much larger departure from the status quo of current online communications technology than Gmail was from then current-generation web-based email clients. If the learning curve is too high, Wave may never cross the proverbial chasm and make a splash with mainstream users. Facebook, on the other hand, has a proven track record of taking stuff geeks love and simplifying them for mainstream appeal. And when it comes to Wave-like communication tools, Facebook already has the basic building blocks in place. They have existing applications for messaging, chat, media sharing, photo and video hosting, real-time search, and they have a popular application platform and developer ecosystem. It's not out of the realm of possibility to envision a Facebook inbox that cherry picks the most useful bits of Wave and brings Google's innovations to the masses. Why Would Facebook Steal Wave?The most obvious reason why Facebook would want to borrow ideas from Wave and remake their inbox is to pre-empt Google. Facebook and Google have been on a collision course, and as Mashable's Adam Ostrow wrote a few weeks ago, "not having a strong presence in social networking remains [Google's] Achilles' heel." Some think that Wave could be the missing link that eventually ties Google social software efforts together into a viable social networking competitor. For Facebook, bringing a Wave-like communications paradigm to the mainstream, could also potentially make their internal messaging system — which despite its popularity has been generally neglected — more relevant, and might finally bring truth the old "email killer" meme. Further, based on my observations of anecdotal evidence, most of the people trying Wave right now and complaining about how noisy and how much of a time-sink it is, are generally from Generation X or Generation Y (i.e., they were born in the late-60s to mid-80s). Almost 40% of Facebook's users are in the 13-25 age group. So-called net natives may ultimately be more receptive to the type of always on, fast-paced communications that something like Wave offers. Facebook, by revamping their messaging system and borrowing the best of Wave's innovations, could possibly be appealing directly to one of their core use groups and laying the ground work for creating the de facto communications platform for younger generations. What are your thoughts? There's no doubt that Facebook could co-opt ideas from Wave and remake their internal communications system, but is that something Facebook should be working on? Let us know in the comments. Reviews: Facebook, FriendFeed, Gmail, Google, Google Wave, Twitter Tags: facebook, Google, Google Wave
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Yesterday we reported that 
Palm Pre owners, rejoice: iTunes sync is working again. Until the next round, that is.
CNN rightfully warned viewers against driving while texting this week, as studies have found it to be more dangerous than drunk driving. 
Podcast pioneer Leo Laporte gave a talk at the 
…at least according to an infographic by 
YouTube is having a less-than-reliable Saturday as unscheduled downtime is preventing video pages from loading. YouTube embeds around the web are also broken. While the YouTube front page continues to load, clicking any of these video thumbnails will deliver a downtime message.
History is littered with good ideas that didn't work out because they were ahead of their time. Tablet PCs didn't work out a decade ago, but with technology advances, they're poised to 
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