MySpace, Flock and Vidoop have developed OpenID for Flock. I’ll skip the talk about standards which you don’t care about, cut to the chase and tell you what it does. Now, when you browse with Flock and open a web site that has OpenID support, Flock will collect and manage OpenID credentials, and automatically alert you if you can use a stored OpenID to log into it. You can choose which OpenID you can use to log into a particular site and later view the login history for each OpenID-to-site relationship you’ve created. Or, if you’d like an even shorter...
Secret Santa - the gift-exchange game that’s either the highlight or low-light of the festive season in workplaces everywhere - is getting the online treatment again this year. 4 year-old social site Elfster is pitching itself as the best way to manage the whole process online. The game, in which you buy a gift for a randomly-selected colleague you might not be close friends with, intentionally shakes up the cliques that typically form at your workplace. Any yet, the outcome is usually a crappy gift. Elfster claims to fix that with features like wishlists for each user, “do not need”...
Lingerie connoisseurs will be happy to know that CBS has launched a multi-media, multi-platform Victoria’s Secret assault on all senses. That’s right: no longer will you have to search through the Internet’s wastelands to get your Victoria’s Secret fix; it’s all there on the official website and on your mobile. Social Features The new website will feature behind the scenes videos, interviews with models, photo galleries, model bios, and other original content. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will be broadcast on December 3, and if you’re the chatting type, check out www.cbs.com/socialviewing during the show, as you’ll be able...
The Apps for Democracy contest, which closes to submissions at midnight ET on Wednesday, is giving away $20,000 in prizes to developers who create web applications, widgets, Google Maps mashups, iPhone apps, Facebook apps, and other tools that utilize data from DC’s Data Catalog. In other words, the District of Columbia has made its data “Mashable”. Digging through the entries listed on the site, we’ve found at least four we think are worthy of attention: DC Location-Aware Realtime Alerts - iPhone users can download this free app from the App Store to see the location and type of crimes...
“Photoshop for iPhone” sounded like a pretty simple and compelling premise, so I recently downloaded PhotoArtist for $2 from the iPhone App Store. The application – which is an add-on for PhotoShare – allows you to take your iPhone’s photos and apply 1 of 6 filters to them: illustration, cartoon, watercolor, mono, pen, or halftone. From there, you can upload them to Photoshare, to be shared with either specific groups of friends or the public on the Photoshare website. And, unfortunately, that’s it. PhotoArtist works well, and I’ll certainly keep it on my phone and use as appropriate, but it’s...
The entire Microsoft-Yahoo saga is now starting to look really sad for Yahoo. After Jerry Yang’s statement yesterday that Yahoo is suddenly interested in being acquired by Microsoft, Steve Ballmer now responds with a firm no. “We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly,” he said. “We tried at one point to do a partnership around search, not advertising. That didn’t work either, so we moved on, and they moved on.” Although it’s still questionable that getting acquired by Microsoft is a good thing for Yahoo in...
Earlier this year, as Yahoo fought off an acquisition attempt by Microsoft, it began to entertain a search advertising deal with Google. They even even went so far as to conduct a live trial of such a measure. Now the two Internet giants have effectively terminated the effort. In June, as the US Department of Justice began its investigation of that arguably brazen move, the two companies forged an outline of what such an arrangement would look like if it were to see official approval. But opposition steadily grew as Google and Yahoo heads stood strong for an October launch....
Yahoo has announced that it will be shutting down Yahoo Live, the company’s attempt to cash-in on the live broadcasting trend popularized by startups like UStream and Justin.tv. According to the Yahoo Live blog, “… we constantly evaluate our early-stage products and sometimes have to make the hard decision to move on, in order to continue exploring new territory and developing new products.” The service first debuted in February this year, with a few novel features like offering up simultaneous multiple streams (though competitors quickly followed). Nonetheless, live video isn’t cheap – especially when you’re on the scale of a...
It’s that time of the year again - a slow news Friday turns into a Halloween logo design contest. All the web companies will try to show off how cool, funny, and unbusinesslike they are by adorning their logos with cute little pumpkins and ghosts. Last year I’ve also been Halloween logo hunting (time flies fast, it feels like yesterday), and I didn’t really think much of the logos I’ve seen; in fact, most were quite ugly and/or unimaginative. Let’s see if they fare better this year. We’ll start with Ask.com, which (just like last year) turned its entire home...
Google has launched an API that allows other websites to provide users with the option to login using their Google Account, in turn eliminating the need for a separate sign-up. The move comes as part of Google’s announcement earlier this year that they would become an identity provider for OpenID, along with Yahoo, Microsoft, and a number of other huge technology companies. The first big site to allow users to sign in with Google accounts is Zoho. Users of the online office suite can now sign-in to create, collaborate, and share documents all without ever creating an account specifically for...
MySpace dropped us a line this evening to alert us that their mobile application for the Android platform is already live ahead of it’s official release on Wednesday, when the Google G1 is made available to the public. The app joins other platforms MySpace has made themselves compatible with, including the Sidekick and the iPhone, as well as the upcoming release of the app for the Blackberry platform. The new app seems to support most of the core functions on MySpace present in the Web version, including photo updating, commenting, friend search, messaging, profile viewing and bulletin usage. Aside from...
We’ll be honest: here at Mashable we know that reading terms of service for new products can yield interesting and/or controversial info; but those things are just too long to read. Luckily, the folks over at ComputerWorld have done so for Android and they’ve discovered this interesting tidbit: “Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement … in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion.” Hey — you, the angry customer, cry — but what if I’ve paid for this application? Don’t worry (too much)....
Slowly but surely, the entertainment industry is grasping the fact that the Internet is the most important promotional tool they’ll ever have. Shows like South Park and Jackass already have websites on which fans can see full episodes for free; now, something similar is planned for Saturday Night Live. According to Broadcasting & Cable, SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels and NBC are planning to develop an on-demand Web site that will feature clips from the popular show. Nothing is certain at this early stage, but it seems that they’re planning to offer clips taken from the show instead of full...
We sincerely hope you don’t, but should you find yourself on the receiving end of some bad news this Monday morning, may we direct you to our resource list 70+ Tools For Job Hunting 2.0? You might also want to consult 9 Sites for Successful Job Interviews, and perhaps 18 Sites for Finding Startup Jobs. Or check the job search section of the site for our complete archive. Oh, and don’t forget we have our very listing section for startup jobs. That said, maybe there’s a smarter option? Nushio may appear to just aggregate listings from Indeed.com and Jobster,...
GoodReads, a social network for book lovers, is adding the increasingly ubiquitous status update feature to its site. Taking a page out of Twitter’s book, GoodReads asks not “What are you doing,” but rather, “What page are you on?” Once you’ve answered that question, you can also input your current thoughts on a given book in 140 characters or less. Status updates will be displayed throughout GoodReads, which in turn serves as both a way to read microreviews and also discover other people who are reading the same things as you. For instance, each book’s page will feature recent...
Google Knol, a fairly recent launch in a space populated by the likes of Wikipedia and Mahalo, received considerably bad press in the last several weeks. Farhad Manjoo of Slate and Harry McCracken of Technologizer are just two individuals who’ve torn into the service as of late. So you might not think it’s worth your while. And substantively, it may not be. But can Wikipedia speak to you? Knol can. Sometimes. If you browse Knol’s catalogue of user-submitted articles (a number of which duplicate content from Wikipedia, but that’s another item for another day), you will find that audio tracks...
After Adobe jumped into the wonderful world of web apps with their lightweight version of Photoshop, dubbed Photoshop Express, they’re releasing Photoshop Mobile as a free beta for US-based owners of Windows Mobile-based phones. Yes, that sounds like a lot of restrictions, and I honestly cannot understand why only US-based users (which excludes me) can use the software, but it’ll give me a wonderful opportunity to go hard on them without even trying the thing out. Just kidding. In any case, the mobile version of Photoshop (take that with a grain of salt, you can’t work on your 100+ layer...
Sometimes, all it takes is a simple and seemingly stupid idea. Any geek worth their salt knows this, because they’ve watched Office Space, and thus know the difference between the “Jump to Conclusions Mat” and the Pet Rock (”It made a million dollars!”). On FriendFeed today, I was alerted to Web 2.0’s version of the Pet Rock by prolific purveyor of cool Mona, a site called “Umbrella Today?“. The site takes the simplicity and utility of sites like “Is it down for everyone or just me?” and the question we all really want to know while we sit through...
