Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Vote for your favorite mobile app

The mobile space has blown up exponentially in the past year. The CTIA semi-annual wireless industry survey was released a few weeks ago and it included some mind-blowing numbers. 4.1 billion SMS messages are being sent daily, and there are now over 276 million wireless users in the US. And Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker gave a recent presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit showing that the mobile web is taking over the world.

Whatever your feelings about the iPhone, it’s almost impossible to dismiss the notion that Apple introduced the idea of smartphones and always-on mobile connectivity to the masses. And while not the first makers of a mobile marketplace, they were the first to capitalize on creating a developer ecosystem to bring thousands of applications to iPhone owners. Apple’s iPhone also contributed to the astronomical rise in AT&T’s mobile data traffic, which is up 4,932% from three years ago.

Now we live in a world where there are countless mobile applications and markets which include the Ovi store and the Android Marketplace, the latter of which will become even more important as more and more carriers release phones running the Android operating system. By Reuters account, Google Android is forecasted to take over the number two spot in the smartphone market by 2012.

Regardless of your carrier or mobile device, you’re clearly turning to the mobile web and using mobile applications more than ever before.

Vote for your favorite Mobile Apps: What's Your Favorite Mobile App of 2009? #openwebawards
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Penzu: Private Blogs!

From Mashable's Spark of Genius Series
I Heart PenzuName: Penzu (Penzu)

Quick Pitch: Penzu is a free online diary and personal journal with a focus on privacy. Securely record your thoughts and ideas with the ease of writing on a pad of paper.

Genius Idea: A big part of blogging has always been about sharing your thoughts with others, but sometimes, you really just want to record your thoughts and keep them private — like you would in a traditional paper journal. Penzu brings the paper-journal experience (and aesthetic) to the web and offers private-entry by default and the ability to protect your entries with a password or high-level encryption.

Read the rest: Penzu: Private Online Diaries That Feel Like the Real Thing
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Monday, October 19, 2009

7 Google Labs Features That Help Us Avoid Email Mistakes

Great article over at Makeuseof.com:
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.”
~ Mitch Radcliffe (technology journalist)

That’s spot on. The Delete key is dangerous but we have Recycle Bin/Undo/Trash to help us bounce back. What sometimes seems even more deadly is the Send button under our quicksilver cursor. Making errors in email is not solely about grammatical errors or sending it to a non-existent address (though the former should also be unpardonable). Far more serious gaffes exist and we can all take to the stand on that.

How many times have we sent an email to the wrong guy? At least – once. How many times have we forgotten to include someone in the mail? Many times over! The end result may or may not be as bad as with handguns or as embarrassing as a tequila high, but email mistakes are unprofessional (and can be potentially a huge blow).

The good thing about Gmail is that the boffins in Google Labs have their empathy hat on. They know that foot-in-the-mouth disease is becoming quite common in the online world too, thanks to rapid tools like email and Twitter. That’s why Gmail has quite a few Google Labs email features inbuilt to prevent such errors.

We have brought up some of the features previously mentioned in a couple of Google Labs feature posts. Maybe, this one will help to put all of them on a common thread. Let’s start with two of the latest ones on the experimental block.


To access the Google Labs email features, click on the little green beaker icon at the top right.

1.Don’t Forget Bob
Dont-Forget-Bob
Who’s Bob? It could be your friend or your boss. But actually in Gmail it’s the new name for the old ‘Add More Recipients’. It’s Google’s way of suggesting adding guys you might have missed while filling your address fields. Click on Enable and it might help you avoid a bit of heartburn from ignored friends while emailing important announcements.

Read the rest: 7 Google Labs Features That Help Us Avoid Email Mistakes
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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Give Work

Social Good: iPhone App Lets You Give Work to Kenyan Refugees
http://www.mapds.com.au/newsletters/0807/iphone_home.gifFor the last few months, Mashable has been exploring the potential of social media for Social Good. We have seen the power of Twitter and Facebook utilized to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity (and to potentially raise $1 million to fight cancer).

But now we’ve learned of another use of social media for social good, and it does not involve raising money for charity. This morning, the Give Work iPhone app (iTunes Link) became available in the app store.

It’s a joint project between crowdsourcing platform CrowdFlower and the non-profit Samasource, a graduate of this year’s Facebook Fund class, whose goal is to train the less fortunate in Africa and elsewhere in quality assurance so that they can get work and make a living, while providing valuable data to real companies.

Pretend you’re Image Company Corporation, and you need to verify that A) a set of 10,000 images are of trees and that B) none of them are copyrighted. You could just look through all 10,000 with your own team, but they’re probably going to be more productive on higher level tasks.

So you send your task to CrowdFlower and Samasource. They place the task in the Give Work iPhone app. Then Kenyan refugees trained by Samasource do the image checks from a datacenter. And to assure quality and accuracy, an American iPhone user double-checks their work and verifies the refugee’s work. Now you have provided work for Kenyan refugees while providing value to the company (by lowering their costs).
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