Social Networking and Web 2.0

Filed under: Fun, Internet, News, Blogging, Social Software, web 2.0

Retaggr takes the concept of paper business cards and transforms them into Harry Potter like interactive cards. Beyond the benefits of not killing trees to leave your contact information, an interactive card is sooo multi dimensional. With your Retaggr card you can:

• Show your recent Twitter messages
• Link to your blogs, web profiles such as Facebook
• Display your online activity on other sites like FriendFeed, Flickr, etc.
• Add any web widget
• Allow others to get in touch with you via Skype, MSN, Gtalk, etc.

Whereas paper cards are static, your profile card instantly updates as you update information on your various social networks. Also, when you leave comments on other Retaggr enabled sites, your profile card is left there too. If someone mentions you in a post, they can link to you so your card automagically appears.

A profile card provides more context to what you’re about and what you’re up to. And that is the other edge of the sword. (Cue scary music). How much information do you want people to have at their fingertips anyway?
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Filed under: Blogging, Web services, Social Software

If you think Twitter’s 140-character limit doesn’t go far enough to restrict users when it comes to nanoblogging, you’ll be glad to know there’s Adocu. Adocu is a nanoblogging platform with a one-word limit for each post, which “keeps it short and simple,” but also makes it tricky to say anything meaningful without typingyourmessageoutlikethis, forming one long word.

With Twitter experiencing stability issues, we guess the proliferation of new nanoblogging platforms are waiting hungrily for everyone who’s threatened to quit Twitter to put their money where their mouths are and do it. We’re not ruling out the possibility of a Twitter killer, but Adocu is probably not it. They’re working on buying up an SMS shortcode, but for now they lack the all-important text-message updating feature that helped Twitter become so prevalent. It’s not that Adocu doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, it’s just that even if it had all of Twitter’s features, plus stability, it would be hard to sell users on a one-word blogging system.
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Although there is no such thing as a general duplicate content penalty it is difficult to get high rankings for a web page which contents can also be found on other web pages. What do search engines do with duplicate content and how can you avoid problems with duplicate content? All you need to know can be found in this article.

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Social Software, Beta, web 2.0

Does coolhunting have to be done by a handful of trendsetters and influencers, or can it be crowdsourced? p0pulist is one site that’s betting on the wisdom of crowds to turn up the next big thing. Sign up for an account, tell p0pulist what you like, and check out what others are saying to build your own personal coolhunting directory.

What interests us about p0pulist is the different directions it could take. The site has been covered by the bleeding-edge trend-watching site JoshSpear.com, focusing on its potential to call attention to exciting new products; it’s also been covered by web 2.0 news site Profy.com, who pointed to the potential for a FriendFeed-like conversation to take place on p0pulist.

We also like it for the pretty interface, the Facebook integration, and the mobile posting feature. p0pulist is on the right track by eliminating as many barriers to entry as possible, and designing a site that would be really easy to start using habitually. Whether you’re a trend junkie or a devourer of all things social on the web, p0pulist looks like a good place to jump in early.
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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Adobe AIR apps are the new hotness. We’re seeing more and more pop up every single day. It’s looks like the AIR platform is turning into the Facebook Platform on steroids.

Why? Because it’s cross platform, and what a brilliant move by Adobe on that. You can install an AIR app on Mac or PC in a blink. Not only that, but it runs lightweight as all heck.

The latest app that has everyone talking is a desktop compliment to the increasingly popular FriendFeed. Introducing Feedalizr.

With FriendFeed’s pretty neat Remote Key system, you can allow apps to access your FriendFeed stream. So getting Feedalizr going once you have Adobe AIR installed is a snap.

Some of the things that Feedalizr lets you do from your desktop:

• Filter updates by service, such as Flickr, Pownce, and Twitter
• Filter updates by friend, so if you just want to see Robert Scoble’s mega-galacta-stream you can
• Post videos - which is rather seamless, and records right from your cam in the app
• Drag and drop photos and upload right to Flickr
• Get instant updates in that nice slick slidey fashion on the bottom right hand side of your desktop

FriendFeed has a public API and has no official apps, but this appears to be as close as you could possibly get to one. It’s very slick, and gets the job done.

What’s your favorite Adobe AIR app? Drop a link in the comments!

[via the inquisitr]
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Search Engine Journal has an informative post on Google penalties, a dressing down of sort that sites receive for not being regularly updated or for use of shady SEO practices. None of this has been accepted by Google ofcourse but these do provide a hint on whether your site has any issues that resulted in sudden fall of your site rank on Google.

An excerpt from Search Engine Journal

A member of the WebProWorld forums reported that there are 3 major kinds of penalties:

1. -30 penalty
2. -950 penalty
3. Index Exclusion

However, there has been a lot of debate on whether the drop of a website's rank by 30 or 950 spots in Google is really a penalty for adopting shady SEO methods or is it just because some of the major ranking elements that were holding the ranks of a website high just got devalued in the Google algorithm update tossing the ranks badly.

There are certain points to keep in mind to avoid these penalties. They have been discussed at SEOChat and Growler.

See full article.

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Harsh Penalties For Underage Drinking On Campus - 28 December 2005

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Why Goalkeepers Shouldn’t Take Penalties - 31 July 2006

Google’s Recent PageRank Penalties - 26 October 2007

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Filed under: News, Blogging, Social Software, web 2.0

FriendFeed has launched FriendFeed Rooms, a new feature where users can create private or public rooms to discuss various topics and share items with one another. Whatever happens in the room, stays in the room since only room members can see what comments are being shared by one another.

FriendFeed is a social network aggregator (which is growing wildly in popularity) that collects content from over 30 social networking sites and consolidates it to a customized feed.

Some of the rooms that have already been created include Obamamania (note to Hillary and McCain staffs) and a room about the new season of The Bachelorette. Rooms are a cinch to set up - all you do is click on the Rooms tab on your FriendFeed page and name the topic and whether the room will be public or private.

There are several Issues that need to be addressed. How do you find rooms that are public? And what about those name squatters who grab rooms with the names of corporate registered trademarked names? For instance, Thomas Hawk opened Ars Tecnica, Chevron and Exxon rooms just to see what he could register. Will there be a way to transfer room administration?

In any event, rooms looks like it’s going to be a hit with users. Be sure to check in and tell us what your favorite FriendFeed Rooms are.
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Filed under: Internet, Social Software

As cliché as it sounds, breaking up really is hard to do. Well, maybe it’s not theoretically difficult, but telling someone you’ve cared about in any capacity that it’s over and it’s time to move on isn’t fun. Actually, being told is probably even less fun, especially if there’s the element of surprise involved.

Technology complicates things. Aside from the potential for devastation that comes from a significant other texting you a “Let’s just be friends” message, or finding a picture of your sweetie online in a compromising position, there is the whole social networking issue.

ABC News takes a hard-hitting look at Facebook relationship statuses. A girlfriend is devastated when her ex- changes his status to “Single.” Was she more devastated over the break up, or the fact that several Facebook contacts gave her a ring? ABC doesn’t say for sure, but their use of the phrase “barraged with phone calls” and the statement that it was an “uncomfortable experience” for the former couple leads us to believe that, er, maybe some calls were made for less altruistic reasons than the offer of a shoulder to cry on.

The love doctors here at DLS Most of us here at Download Squad would say there are a few issues to consider when you decide to make your relationship public on a site like Facebook. Why are you using the social networking site? Is it work or career related? Are you keeping in touch with friends? It’s ultimately up to you, and how comfortable you feel about the fact that some friends on social networks might not actually be friends (unless you really do know Tom at MySpace personally).

The sad fact is that on the ‘net as well as in real life, there are people who will gossip and ask for way too many details over a break up that they aren’t directly involved in. The interwebs makes it easier for them to poke and prod for the juicy bits, sure, but that’s less technology related and more human nature related.

And guys/girls… Seriously, don’t ever break up with anyone via text. You’ll never have a relationship in this town again with that sort of behavior.
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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Iterasi, a bookmarking toolbar and web service we first mentioned in January, is now expanding its private beta. If you visit the site to sign up for an account today, there’s a good chance you’ll be let in almost immediately. At least that was our experience. Your results may vary.

So what is iterasi? It would be easy to dismiss the service as yet another bookmarking tool. You add a toolbar to your browser and you can tag and save pages to your account, which you can then access from any browser. But unlike similar services like del.icio.us, iterasi saves dynamic content. In other words, you can “notarize” a page like Download Squad, and the service will take a snapshot of the page as it looked the day you saved it. You can also use the service to save a copy of a custom Google Map, or take a snapshot of today’s cover of the New York Times.

And since iterasi saves a snapshot of a page and not just a link, you can actually share the page as you saw it with other users thanks to some embed code.

Iterasi currently only supports Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. Firefox 3 support is coming soon.

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Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

How many of you subscribe to an RSS feed because you liked one post you read? Raise your hands please. No, seriously, raise your hands please. Now how many of you stay subscribed to that feed because you’re either too lazy to unsubscribe, don’t know how to unsubscribe, or don’t want to hurt the bloggers’ feelings by unsubscribing? Us too.

NewsGator is coming to our rescue!

Starting today, NewsGator, NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon will start recommending stories and feeds for you to read and subscribe to.

Using some Harry Potter magic sauce from a company called SenseArray, NewsGator will start showing showing you suggestions based on things that other people think are interesting. Hooray!

What’s the catch? Well, to make this technology smarter, you’ll have to interact with your feeds a little. That’s OK. We know that the earth isn’t run by Terminators machines…yet. Right now, SenseArray’s technology uses forward and share numbers, as well as tags and comment data to calculate what might interest you. You’ll be able to thumbs up and thumbs down stories to customize the experience though, so no worries. Rage against the machine, y’all!

Soon, NewsGator hopes to accurately predict your tastes, even before you know what your tastes are.

It looks like the company is also hoping to help us deal with our severe information overload (the 3% of us junkies) by letting us unsubscribe to those dormant feeds that we don’t like anymore and keep us up to date with the Right Stuff. The stuff we’ll actually, you know…read?

Oh, and no worries, it’s not just for the geeks. Their new recommendation service will cover Top News, Entertainment, Sports, Fun Stuff, Science and Technology. While we’re not sure what “Fun Stuff” actually is, we’ll wait for T2 to suggest something.

Oh and please feel free to subscribe to the Downloadsquad feed. We’re humans.
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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Not everyone can expect companies like Comcast to reach out and touch them every time they complain about poor service over Twitter. But thanks to Get Satisfaction’s new Overheard service, there’s a better chance that you will receive a response next time you start bitching on Twitter about companies like eBay, Seesmic, or even Twitter itself.

Here’s how it works. Get Satisfaction is a community site that connects companies to customers in need of support. You could already login to Get Satisfaction and leave comments or complaints. And representatives from the companies you were talking about can respond.

Now Get Satisfaction has launched a service called Overheard that uses Twitter Search Engine Summize to find out when people are talking about companies on Twitter. Those Twitter messages are posted to Get Satisfaction, an when a company employee, another customer, or anyone else responds, Get Satisfaction will send a tweet letting you know about the response.

So there’s no guarantee that someone will turn your cable TV service back on if it gets shut off inadvertently just because you start complaining on Twitter. But now you know someone might be listening. Or you could just pick up the phone and call the customer service number. But seriously, who does that anymore?

[via VentureBeat]

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Social Software, web 2.0

A few months ago, Google launched Google Sites, a hosted wiki product built on JotSpot technology. But until this week, Google Sites was only available to Google Apps users, which basically meant you needed to have your own domain name to set up a wiki. Now Google is opening Google Sites up to everyone.

If you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years, a wiki is basically a page that’s open to collaborative editing. While Google doesn’t call its new product a wiki, the service lets you create and customize pages, and share access to those pages by inviting a group of people to view and edit the content. In this way, you can plan trips, meetings, or other activities.

You can sign up by logging into Google Sites using your Google ID, or by registering for a new free account. Your page will be created at sites.google.com/sitename. If you want a custom domain, you can still sign up for the service through Google Apps.

Check out Google’s Demo video after the jump.

[via Official Google Blog]

Continue reading Google Sites expands: Anybody can create wiki-like pages

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What is the most important factor in determining whether your site really counts when it comes to geo targeting a particular segment? With local search growing in prominence, there are several factors that help determine the relevance of local sites. But the most important may perhaps be whether or not your country specific top level domain matches the targeted geography.

An excerpt from SearchEngineJournal

A country specific top level domain is what really helps. Citing another Googler:

If a site is being hosted with a country-code top level domain, we generally take that as a really strong signal that this is the country the site is targeting.

So if you have a .co.uk top level domain and set geo targeting to the US, it won't help. It might help (though no one can be sure), if you own generic TLDs (.com or .net) which are not tied to any country.

It does make logical sense for a ccTLD to target users from that area, but should that be the all important factor? Perhaps with only a few engines dominating the search space there is little to argue about but just heed the rules.

See full article.

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5 Surefire Techniques To Optimize For Local Search - 22 July 2007

Behavioral targeting Vs Intent targeting - 10 January 2008

SEO tactics to avoid : Cloaking - 11 February 2008

YouTube推出新型广告定位技术buzz targeting - 15 五月 2008

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Video, Features, Social Software, web 2.0

How do you do decide which photosharing site to go with? If free is your criteria, there are certainly many options to choose from. Most free photo sharing sites are ad supported and come with a certain GB capacity limit. If you upgrade to a pro account, which can run anywhere from $20-$25 per year, there are typically no limits and no advertisements.

We took a look at the most popular photosharing sites’ features and did a comparison to help you decide which photo site is best suited for your needs. We compared Flickr, Photobucket and Zooomr and then test drove each of the sites to see how well they did. Check out our unscientific findings after the jump.

Continue reading Photosharing - comparing Flickr, Photobucket and Zooomr

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People not involved in website Optimization often have difficulty to understand Search Engine optimization and the different methods that are involved. If you have to explain the basic SEO concepts to your boss, the following list will help you.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Browser Tips, Social Software, Mobile Minute, web 2.0

Opera has released a report on the state of the mobile web. And considering the company claims more than 44 million users for its Opera Mini cellphone web browser, Opera’s in as good a position as any company to report on mobile web usage.

There are two trends that are particularly noteworthy. First, 77% of all traffic was to full web pages, not stripped down mobile pages. This probably shouldn’t be that surprising, since Opera Mini renders full pages pretty quickly and lets users zoom in and out to read the fine print. And while WAP might have been pretty exciting a few years ago when there wasn’t as much rich media content on the web, and when mobile internet connections were significantly slower, those days are long gone.

The second trend is a bit more surprising. 40% of worldwide traffic was directed to social networks. In some countries including the US, South Africa, and Indonesia, that number was as high as 60%. Now, it’s not like we didn’t know that social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, and Bebo were popular. We just didn’t figure people would be spending half of their mobile web browsing time visiting them.

What sites do you visit regularly with your mobile web browser?

[via VentureBeat]

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software, AOL, web 2.0

AOL completed its acquisition of social networking site Bebo today. You may remember that AOL announced it would buy Bebo for $850 million back in March. According to InformationWeek Bebo will be the center of AOL’s new People Network business unit. Heading up this business unit is Joanna Shields who will serve as president. This “People Network” will consist of three AOL services: AIM, ICQ, and now Bebo.

While Bebo is most popular in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand, AOL is hoping grow this upcoming social network in the US. Silicon Alley Insider seems to think AOL will layoff employees working in the AIM/ICQ division due to the restructuring process.

What do you think? Did AOL make a good decision? Do you think this acquisition puts AIM at risk? Be sure to voice your opinion in the comments!

Disclaimer: AOL is the parent company of Weblogs, Inc. which owns DownloadSquad.

[via InformationWeek]

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The web is growing rapidly in a graphic sense and so the importance of relevance being attached to the presence of appropriate content on the sites other than just the text. There is a pointed to note that for blogs it is always good to include an image or two with the blog entries. A recent post at SEO By The Sea throws light on how metrics on community based tags are helping search spiders make more sense of images and relevance of web pages on the whole.

An excerpt from SEO By the Sea

There were a few rules followed in the process of clustering together photos from landmarks identified by tags from community members who took the pictures and uploaded them to Flickr. The authors tell us that the following assumptions were at the core of those rules:

(1) A cluster would contain photos taken from many different users, indicating that there is a broad interest in the subject shown in the photos,

(2) There would be some amount of visual cohesiveness in the images - in other words, people were finding the same things about the scenes at the locations interesting, with the same objects being photographed or the same type of photos being taken, and;

(3) The group of photos would be distributed relatively uniformly in time - showing that there was an interest in the landmark itself, and not a specific event that happened at the landmark's location.

Observing time-lines in the creation of tags and using that information along with the data obtained from keywords used by users and the actual images that they click on is a process that will get more refined as activity on the web increases.

See full article.

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Help! My SEO rankings dropped! - 05 November 2006

Pros and Cons of Page Tagging and Logfile Analysis - 19 November 2006

Effective Tagging: How To Do It - 15 November 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Filed under: Fun, Web services, Social Software

Believe us when we say that we know you’re sick of hearing about Twitter, but there’s a good reason it’s one of Download Squad’s favorite toys. We often find out about new software on Twitter before it gets blogged anywhere else, and the readers reap all the benefits. And did we mention that some people’s Twitter streams are flat-out hilarious? Favrd, a new service from Dean Allen, will help you find some of the best. It keeps track of which posts people are marking as favorites, so you only have to read the good stuff.

Dean also uses a mysterious algorithm to filter out “webcock,” a term he coined to describe “online-marketing, web-strategy, killer-startup cheerleaders/water-carriers.” This is sure to offend some people, but it keeps the focus of Favrd on people who use Twitter to entertain. To put it another way, a way that probably wouldn’t make it past Dean’s algorithm, Favrd is crowdsourcing comedy, and everybody wins.
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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Desktop social networking client Sociagami has added two features that were noticeably absent from earlier builds: Twitter integration and support for updating your status from the application. When we first looked at Sociagami a few months ago, the software provided an attractive (but RAM-heavy) tool for interacting with your Facebook and MySpace contacts. You could see all of the latest status updaes in one place, navigate through your friend list in a slick browser, or view the latest photos uploaded by your contacts.

But without the ability to update your own status, Sociagami wasn’t nearly as useful as other desktop social networking tools like Digsby. The latest version includes a handy status update tool that lets you post to Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter simultaneously. If you only want to update one service, just uncheck two of the boxes.

The new Twitter client works pretty much exactly as you’d expect. You get a list of recent messages from your contacts in one window, and you can sift through your contact list in the browser. One thing that sets Sociagami apart from Digsby is the fact that you can see all of your latest Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook messages in a single window.

But while Digsby already has a reputation as a RAM-heavy application, at least that utility also gives you email notification alerts and an instant messenger application, two features that Sociagami lacks. Still, we’re happy to report that Sociagami continues to get a bit better with each release, so we’re not ready to give up on this application just yet.

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