E Mail

Although e-mail will always be Thrillist’s first love, the e-newsletter company is bringing its city-specific eating, drinking and shopping guide to the iPhone in the form of a free app. Today’s launch, which is tied to 14 of its 16 location-driven e-newsletters, represents the New York-based company’s first big foray into mobile. In an interview with paidContent, CEO and co-founder Ben Lehrer said that Thrillist’s app extension will ultimately influence deeper thinking about how it uses the websites to showcase its content. The Thrillist sites have mostly served as a repository of the listings from the e-mails and not a destination in its own right. In particular, the app’s heavy use of video, a weekly feature in the e-newsletters, has provided some thoughts about what Thrillist.com can do going forward.

Like a lot of local guides, the free Thrillist app is grounded by a city grid that pinpoints your location after logging in and finds the nearest listings by food, drinking and shopping. Icons—knife and fork, tumbler and t-shirt—appear on the map and offer snippets of text from the recommendations when highlighted. If one is clicked, the review opens full screen with images and in some instances, video. Logged-in Thrillist users can also save articles to “My Thrillist,” their personal favorites archive, which is automatically synced with the reader’s “My” archive on the corresponding Thrillist.com.

Lehrer took pains to point out the differences between what Thrillist does—i.e., compiling a narrowly subjective list of recommendations of the “best” places to eat, drink and shop specifically for young, urban male sophisticates—and doesn’t do. “Other local city guides aggregate all kinds of info in a very general way,” Lehrer said. “But you don’t have the best info of where to go to. If you’re looking for ‘sushi in Soho,’ this is not the app for you. We’ll only give you the best restaurants in in a given area period.”

He expects that the testosterone-focused Thrillist, which claims about 2 million e-mail subs across its 16 city outlets, could appeal to more women through the app as well, particularly for the food and drink recommendations, which could in turn attract more advertisers. The launch sponsor for the app Bacardi’s new Torched Cherry flavored rum, which also includes support for the website, though the e-mail newsletter remains at Thrillist’s core.

“The big picture here is that we’ve been building this brand for the last four years with e-mail as the main driver,” Lehrer said. “Having subscribers lets us control the flow of info, versus a website-focus that’s search optimized. E-mail forges a deeper connection and we remain singularly focused on the power of the e-newsletter and want to improve that product. In no way are we stepping back from that.”

But as the e-newsletter’s audience has grown, and developed a particular affinity for iPhones, Twitter and Foursquare check-ins, it made sense for Thrillist to make the leap to mobile. Aside from its flagship in New York City, the app will also be available for Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.—with additional markets launching in the fall.

Related

• Thrillist Buys Men's Shopping Recommender Jack Threads
• Thrillist Says Its Operating Profit Is Now In The 'Seven Figures'

Yesterday's New York Times has a two-page feature, Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price . It's a sign of the growing awareness and concern about how our network-centric lives are not only affecting our work but also our personal lives, and even our bodies — you might say, our souls.

The Times article looks at one wired family to make the point that all these gadgets negatively affect us. "Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave" the story reads. "They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information."

This is the same argument made by Nicholas Carr in his recent article for Wired and his new book, The Shallows, released yesterday. It's interesting to learn from Carr that neuroscientists can now illuminate some of what happens in our heads when we go online. But then again, their concerns are not fundamentally different from the worries expressed about the Internet over the past fifteen years.

The Internet is bad for our brains, the argument goes. It's bad for our relationships, our families and maybe (if it stops us thinking creatively or deeply) it's even bad for our careers.

As a pathological gadget and Internet user, I'm not going to join the chorus and argue that network and screen time impoverish our minds, our friendships and our communities. Maybe they do, but so what? Networks aren't going anywhere, nor is our time online likely to decrease. In fact, there's every indication that our time online is going to keep expanding.

What we need are practical strategies for how to reduce the negative impact of the net on our brains, and to magnify its positive effects. The Times article notes one study that showed Internet users "showed greater brain activity than nonusers, suggesting they were growing their neural circuitry," and another study of video gamers showed that games "can improve reaction and the ability to pick out details amid clutter."

I haven't got an MRI machine handy, so I can't document the impact of my net-taming practices at the neural level, but here are some strategies I can recommend for those who want to mitigate the personal and social impact of multitasking, and amplify the benefits:

1. Ration your e-mail: E-mail is one of the chief sources of distraction since so many of us feel compelled to check for new messages throughout the day. Different friends have shared their strategies for keeping e-mail at bay, like scheduling a specific two-hour period to process e-mail each day, or checking for new messages only after emptying the inbox. I rely on Gmail filters to support my own system for maintaining an empty inbox and I find that the practice of processing my inbox to zero also helps me focus my e-mail checkins on the moments when I actually have time to respond.
2. Structure your monotasking: I'm used to working with a dozen programs and fifty windows open on my computer, and as per the practice reported by the Times, I'm switching windows constantly to follow links or check e-mail. So when I'm trying to write a report or do any kind of focused work, I break my multitasking habit by working on a computer that has very limited memory (so I can only have a couple of applications open at a time), or I restart my main computer and launch only a couple of applications. You could even create another account on your computer that has access to only Word or Excel, and no Internet connectivity, so you can force yourself to monotask.
3. Take a tech sabbath: The National Day of Unplugging married the Jewish practice of observing the sabbath with the growing need to get some distance from technology. Try taking one day with no screen time. That means no TV, no Blackberry, no Internet. If you find it creates a useful pause in your wired-up life, consider making it a weekly practice.
4. Find hope outside your inbox: Last year I started experimenting with ways to break my constant email and Twitter check-ins. I realized I was looking for that jolt of excitement, the possibility that some sort of good news would come my way with each check-in. When I started exploring other ways to get a little unexpected delight in my day — by talking to a stranger, or visiting a new part of town — I was able to reduce my reliance on the net as the bearer of good news.
5. Use your right brain/use your left brain: If you spend your computer time geeking out in Excel or checking Google Analytics, it's time to give your right brain a workout with a browse through Flickr or a film editing project in Final Cut. If you spend your computer time writing poetry or creating collages in Photoshop, it's time to give your left brain a workout with a game of Scrabble or some financial management with Mint.com. The more you vary your online diet with activities that draw on both hemispheres, the more you'll be tapping into the net's potential to grow your brain's circuitry.

If you had to sit through a meeting with me, and watch me take notes in Evernote, tweet, and chew my nails at the same time) you would find that these practices have hardly turned me into a picture of mellow monotasking. But I take some comfort in the fact that I'm still able to focus on a single task for up to 5 minutes at a time. Considering the amount of time I spend online, neuroscientists might call that a miracle.

Alexandra Samuel provides insight and resources for working with social media on her blog at alexandrasamuel.com <http://alexandrasamuel.com> and on Twitter as awsamuel. She is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, and the co-founder of Social Signal, a Vancouver-based social media agency.

Why Did The NYT Get The Pulse News Reader Yanked From iTunes? —

Is the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) trying to shut down news reader apps that rely on RSS or is it just trying to smack down one in particular? An infringement letter (included in full below) from the New York Times to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) got the flashy Pulse News Reader pulled from the Apple App Store Monday mere hours after it got a shout out from Steve Jobs during his WWDC keynote, as Kara reported. On the surface, the complaint doesn’t seem to match the NYT’s early-adopter attitude towards RSS that started with an agreement between Martin Nisenholtz and developer Dave Winer in 2002. But the NYT’s counsel says the commercial use—Pulse is $3.99 a download—and the the framing of NYTimes.com and Boston.com within the app violates the sites’ Terms of Service. In the complaint, Samson notes “the app is delivered with the NYTimes.com RSS feed preloaded, which is prominently featured in the screen shots used to sell the app on iTunes.” The NYT does not provide full-story feeds, usually headlines and links.

I asked Nisenholtz by e-mail this morning if this signaled a new policy towards news readers, CC’d to spokesman Robert Christie. The first response was to send me the complaint. When I asked if any commercial news reader app, software or browser-based version is at risk, even if the user is the one who picks the feeds, and what this means beyond Pulse, Christie replied:

“The Terms of Use on our RSS feeds makes it clear that the RSS feeds are available for non-commercial use only. By charging for an app ($3.99) that gives users access to our RSS feeds, they are violating that provision of the Terms of Use. Furthermore, when a user clicks on a story in the News Pulse Reader, it takes them to the nytimes.com site, which is framed within the News Pulse Reader app browser, as opposed to taking them directly to our site. (Since our RSS is not full text, once a user of any of our RSS feeds views the RSS headline/summary of any of our articles, a user can click a button in the app labeled ‘Web’ & this opens our web site up but keeps the user within the App.) This is a violation of the nytimes.com Terms of Use. Finally, they are using the Times name/content to promote their app, particularly because the Times RSS feed comes preloaded on the App and we are featured in their demonstration video: http://www.alphonsolabs.com/video.”

“We want to be clear that we are willing to work with Pulse, but only under our Terms of Use.”

I asked again if this has implications beyond Pulse—it’s hard to see how it couldn’t—and will update with any response.

Akshay Kothari, one of the two Stanford students who developed Pulse, told Kara they would be removing the NYTfrom Pulse, which got a rave review from the NYT’s own Brad Stone last week.

———————————————

Letter to the Apple AppStore from NYTCo Senior Counsel Richard Samson

Hello-

I am writing again, on behalf of The Boston Globe, Boston.com and The New York Times Company, about the infringing iPad app, “Pulse News Reader” produced by Alphonso Labs Inc. (please see pertinent details, link and screenshots below).

The infringing app is available on the iTunes store here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pulse-news-reader/id371088673?mt=8

The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use*. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.

I note that the app is delivered with the NYTimes.com RSS feed preloaded, which is prominently featured in the screen shots used to sell the app on iTunes.

I hereby declare, under penalty of perjury, that the information contained in this notification is accurate to the best of our knowledge and that I am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyrights and trademarks of The Boston Globe, Boston.com and The New York Times Company. We hereby demand that you immediately and permanently remove this app from the iTunes site.

Please let me know if you need any further information or have any questions. I can be reached directly at this Email or at the phone number below.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Richard Samson

Richard Samson
Senior Counsel
The New York Times Company
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, New York 10018

* NYTimes.com Terms of Service, paragraph 2.2:  “The Service and its Contents are protected by copyright pursuant to U.S. and international copyright laws. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce (except as provided in Section 2.3 of these Terms of Service), create new works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Content or the Service (including software) in whole or in part.”
* Boston.com Terms of Service, paragraph 2.2: “The Service and its Contents are protected by copyright pursuant to U.S.and international copyright laws. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce (except as provided in Section 2.3 of this Agreement), create new works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the Content or the Service (including software) in whole or in part.”

Read-Only Facebook Coming to Your Company? —

Shared by Jesse Stay
Security teams that implement this are failing to understand "Employee 2.0". The idea being that employees in today's word take their work home with them and it is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week job for many of them. Same thing for home. Just as employees are encouraged to take their work home with them, they should be just as encouraged to bring their home to work without consequences. If the job gets done, and the employee does excellent work, does it really matter?

IT managers using Palo Alto Networks firewalls are now able to switch Facebook into a "read-only" mode, thanks to an update released today. There is no relationship between Palo Alto Networks and Facebook - the changes are all within the customer's network. Previously, managers using Palo Alto Networks firewalls have had the option to block all Facebook apps (but not individual apps) as well as Facebook's e-mail and chat features. The update adds the ability to disable posting, making Facebook effectively read-only.

Sponsor

Palo Alto Networks firewalls enable granular control over 1,000 applications cataloged in the company's Applipedia - regardless of port, protocol, or evasive strategy (so the company says). The firewalls connect to Active Directory or other LDAP based directory to assign permissions by group or by individual user. All of the application detection and user permissions take place on dedicated firewall devices to avoid bogging down servers with analytical duties.

Turning read-write applications into read-only applications may seem antithetical to the read/write philosophy, but we think solutions like this will help enterprises adopt social media and break out of a binary world where they can either offer full access to Facebook or other web applications or no access at all.

Brave New Enterprise

Managers could, for instance, grant full Facebook access to its social media team, partial access to a customer service team, and read-only access to its competitive research team. Access can also be assigned by time of day, so permissions could be relaxed during lunch or after business hours.

Social media is being put to use in many enterprises; Ford, for example, is spending 25% of its marketing budget on social media. Social media reputation tracking is a hot topic in marketing, too. Yet, according to a Robert Half Technology report published in October, 54% of CIOs surveyed say they block social media websites completely.

Chris King, director of product marketing at Palo Alto Networks, says "IT departments are stuck in an old world. In the old world, if an application has a business use, then it's safe and you allow it. If it doesn't have a business use, then it's a threat and you block it. That black and white world is gone. Facebook has business uses, but it also poses threats."

King hopes that Palo Alto Networks can bring IT departments into a new world, where the benefits of Facebook can be embraced and the threats mitigated. The company says its product can help prevent data leaks, improve worker productivity, and reduce the threat of malware spread through social networks like Facebook.

King also suggests allowing some use of Facebook in the workplace could improve morale. One idea he mentions, though he's quick to point out the product isn't currently being used by the military, is limiting soldiers read-only access to social media sites in the weeks before a deployment. This would keep sensitive information from being leaked, but allow soldiers to view pictures and status updates from home.

Plugging the Proxy Holes

Another problem the company hopes to solve is the use of proxies to bypass firewalls and browsing restrictions. An increasing number of users are routing their Web traffic through public proxies or proxies on their home computers. King says, referring to the Robert Half report, that although 54% of enterprises are trying to ban Facebook, 94% of the companies whose network traffic Palo Alto Networks analyzed had employees actively using Facebook. We wrote about the company's research in this area last year.

Palo Alto Networks firewalls use their own AppID technology to identify applications based on an analysis of a number of parameters including application protocol detection and decryption, application protocol decoding, application signatures, and heuristics. This enables the firewalls to block applications regardless of what port the application is using. The firewalls can also identify many individual proxies, such as Ultrasurf and TOR.

The End of Whack-a-Mole?

All of this control sounds great for companies. However, if the technology works the way its supposed to, couldn't it also be used by governments, such as China and Australia, which restrict access to the web? Could it also be used by ISPs to restrict their customers activities? If evasive technologies can't stay one step ahead of control technologies it's good news for enterprises, but bad news for freedom of speech.

Still, it's hard to believe that any company or country can win the game of whack-a-mole that's afoot. Short of creating a whitelist of sites that employees (or citizens) can visit, there will always be holes in the firewall. But Palo Alto Networks' technology offering is far more interesting than that tedious game, and its success isn't riding on it. They just need to offer a better way for enterprises to manage the dizzying array of Internet applications and bring useful tools into the work place. And they seem to be succeeding thus far.

Discuss

Microsoft has announced that the consumer versions of its new Office Web Apps–browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote–are now available to anyone who cares to check them out. They’re headquarted at office.live.com, and you need a Live ID to access them.

I wrote about the Office Web Apps when I covered Office 2010 a few weeks ago. Certain things about them are impressive–mainly the desktop-esque look and feel and much-better-than-average support for Microsoft’s own file formats. Overall, though, I found them frustratingly rudimentary: Years after Google and Zoho jumpstarted the category of Web-based suites, Microsoft is entering the market that lacks features as basic as the ability to move elements around on the page. They’re far more interesting as adjuncts to Office 2010–a pretty solid upgrade–than as a self-contained competitor to other online productivity packages. Maybe that was Microsoft’s intention all along.

If you give them a try, let us know what you think.

Share/E-Mail

When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it.

Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up.

“I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.”

Keep reading at the NYT >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• John Sculley: Maybe I Shouldn't Have Been CEO Of Apple
• Here's The Real Reason I Sold Zappos
• Basically, Everyone Hates Public Sector Workers Now

Edge Theory Conversations: Android & EVO vs. iPhone — On Friday, the HTC EVO, powered by Google's Android operating system, finally went on sale. As you know, I have been using the device, courtesy of Google I/O for the last few weeks. First I started using it exclusively, and later, I reported on my experience.

Tonight, Chris Saad (@chrissaad) and I talked about how the mobile landscape is changing with the rise of Android and the near-term arrival of iPhone OS 4 and a new iPhone device from Apple at the Worldwide Developers' Conference this week. Chris, seeing many mixed reviews of the EVO in particular, especially when it came to battery life, has not yet made the plunge, but I promised that if he did, he wouldn't regret it. In fact, I am having a hard time seeing myself return to the iPhone platform - barring something amazing. This probably violates my Apple fanboy contract, but that's what's happening.

This and all other EdgeTheory conversations can be found on the dedicated ET Conversations site.

Listen to the full recording below:

It's no secret that Google has ambitions of becoming an Enterprise productivity suite powerhouse; perhaps one day taking over the top spot from Microsoft. As Google's President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development Nikesh Arora told us at TechCrunch Disrupt a last week, Google hopes for Apps to be a billion dollar revenue stream in three to four years. But one challenge has been convincing businesses that a move to the cloud promises security. And some early Apps users have even questioned the security of the suite, which includes e-mail, calendaring, document sharing and chat applications. To mitigate these concerns, Google has released a white paper to give enterprise customers greater transparency into Google's security practices, policies, and technology involving Google Apps. And of course, the white paper is also intended to also assure current and potential clients of its "strong and extensive security infrastructure." Google has even created a special portal about privacy and security for the educational institutions that use Apps.

Several articles have come out recently criticizing Google for their recent policy, removing the Windows Operating System from their currently approved list of OSes that employees can use.  One might expect that I would be against this move, considering the recent criticism I’ve given of Google employees deleting their Facebook accounts.  I think this situation is different though, and I actually support it.  Of all companies, I think Google is most prepared to make such a move and I think we’ll see a lot of innovation come as a result.

Companies Have Tried This Before

Several years ago I worked for BackCountry.com as an engineer.  While there, our engineering department had a policy, making Linux and open source tools the default, while only allowing other operating systems (including Mac OS X) on an as-needed basis.  We found this saved us a ton of money, and, as engineers it made sense because we were able to completely alter the systems we were writing on as we needed.  It also made it so we could completely duplicate the server environments we were developing for on our local machines if we needed to.

We decided while there to take this to another level, and while I was there we started to push this policy throughout the company.  We got a lot of push back, and it took us, as engineers and developers, to help out the rest of the company as they adapted.  We started using Zimbra for e-mail, Bugzilla for bug tracking, and everything we could do we tried to do with open source tools.  We saved a ton of money.

There was one fatal flaw to this, though.  Where we were not an engineering-specific company (our bottom line was probably our buyers, who secured really good deals on outdoor gear, or even our customer support team, where we preached “We use the gear we sell”), we simply did not have enough resources to keep this going and be able to support it all whenever the company had a need that open source software could not solve.  The main benefit to open source software (which security is only a minor benefit) is that, as developers, you can get in and alter the software if it doesn’t meet your needs.  Then the code you altered could be shared with the rest of the world and others that also might have that need.  That’s a great benefit.

However, not having resources to constantly do that whenever there is a need means you’re always going to have weaknesses in your systems, and those systems are likely to fail.  I think that became a problem for BackCountry.com, because I heard that shortly after I left they were forced back into a closed-source, Microsoft-backed Exchange system, which probably means back to Windows for most employees.  The simple fact is Microsoft, when it comes to Enterprise systems, can’t be beat.  Exchange is by far the best e-mail system there is out there.  Linux pales in comparison, and has always had problems competing against Exchange and the desktop.  Not to mention general user experience and understanding of the OS by a mass audience.  Most companies don’t have the time or money to devote resources towards replacing these COTS systems.

Why Google is Axing Windows

So one would think that making a similar move by Google may be prone to similar risks.  Google’s hacker culture I’m sure has developers begging to be on Linux or Mac OS X, and higher executives wondering how they’re going to get along without Windows.  There’s one thing different about Google though that completely sets them apart from any other company out there that might try such a thing: Google’s base is developers.  Not only that, but Google has a vested interest in creating an operating system that works.

My guess is that Google is using “security” as a front to put a jab up against Microsoft, hoping others might try to make the same decision.  Google is hoping that the bad stigma Microsoft has had in the past regarding security (Windows 7 is actually pretty secure) might dwell in the minds of others considering similar decisions.  However, I bet the real reason is that this will force all employees, in this hacker culture, to truly understand what they’re missing when there are no Exchange servers, when there are no Active Directory databases, and when Executives can’t use the operating system or tools all their colleagues at other companies are using.

Google wants their employees to hurt from this.  When you make a hacker culture that actually has a monetary benefit (Chrome OS) to fix problems that arise as a result, problems get solved, and people stop being lazy.  I expect that as Google makes this move we’re going to see a much higher rate of bug fixes and User Experience enhancements on Chrome OS and Linux, and possibly even Android.  I expect better user experiences on the server.  I expect finally an e-mail solution that works up to par with Microsoft Exchange, and a directory services solution that works up to par with Active Directory.

I argue Google Axing Windows as a company is a good thing!  I hope it’s only temporary, or on an “as needed” basis so employees that need to create Windows clients that interact and drivers that work together with Google devices, that the company can still understand and work with such devices.  Yet at the same time I think doing everything they can to challenge employees to truly understand the weaknesses their new operating systems and web services provide will challenge the thousands of developers working them to produce solutions.  While I think security is a lame excuse and PR ploy for Google to remove Windows from their network architecture, I still think this is one of the best things the company has done in a long time.

Google’s move here could be the best thing to happen to Linux, and the open source enterprise world, in a long, long time.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

In late April, I posted a long analysis about how Apple revenue and profits had closed in on Microsoft -- to within $1 billion. Judging from pageviews, comments and e-mail responses, few people seemed to get it. I saw the trend as being much more important than Apple market capitalization nearing Microsoft's. A month and two days later, Apple's valuation topped Microsoft's, which made headlines everywhere. But still few people seem to get the significance of the revenue and income comparisons. Until yesterday. Finally somebody gets it, yet missed to connect the final dot: iPad revenue could push Apple above Microsoft during this quarter.

Business Insider's June 2 Chart of the Day, "Apple Races to Catch Microsoft's Profits," graphically depicts what I explained six weeks ago. Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova write: "Apple's operating income is still trailing Microsoft. But, boy is it growing fast. In the most recent quarter, Apple reported operating income of $3.9 billion, while Microsoft reported $5.2 billion." The Business Insider chart shows "operating income after depreciation," which is a nice touch. The approach also accentuates Apple's dramatic operating income rise from 2000 to 2010.

I will repeat some numbers presented in my April 23rd post. During first calendar quarter, Apple revenue trailed Microsoft revenue by $1 billion behind Microsoft, while net income trailed by a little less -- about $940 million. In the same quarter in 2009, Apple revenue trailed Microsoft by $4.57 billion and net income by $1.36 billion. The bigger gap was obviously revenue. In the same quarter in 2005, the difference between Apple and Microsoft was $7.01 billion revenue and $3.6 billion net income.

Angelova's and Yarow's "Boy is it growing fast" understates just how much Apple has closed on Microsoft. They assert: "It's a very real possibility that Apple's income could surge past Microsoft's in the new few years." For revenue, I expect Apple to surpass Microsoft much sooner. In April, I asserted: "It's not a stretch of the imagination or reasonable speculation for Apple to close the distance during second calendar quarter or sometime later in 2010."

That assertion came before Apple shipped 2 million iPads within the first 60 days of availability. Assuming just $500 revenue per device, Apple opened a new product line worth $1 billion. On April 23, Wall Street analyst consensus for Microsoft revenue was $15.24 billion, with an estimate range between $14.59 billion and $15.91 billion. Apple was $13.7 billion with a much broader range of $11.6 billion to $15.08 billion. Today, the average analyst consensus for Apple is $14.02 billion, with a smaller range of $13.22 billion to $15.08 billion. For Microsoft: $15.22 billion, with range of $14.85 billion to $15.72 billion.

These numbers are close, and I don't believe they fully reflect the revenue lift iPad will give Apple during second quarter. Assuming that iPad doesn't cannibalize iPhone, iPod or Mac sales, Apple could reap an unexpected revenue windfall of $2 billion, estimating conservatively -- 4 million units at $500 each. The added revenue would easily put Apple above Microsoft, unless the software giant reaps more than expected from back-to-school PC sales or late closings on business annuity license contract renewals.

Income is another matter. Apple already has indicated that iPad would drive down gross margins. Then there are new product-launch logistics. Profits tend to be less up front. Apple secrecy means that most major new products don't ramp up manufacturing until after the official announcement. As such, Apple incurs higher early manufacturing and shipping costs, which typically are recouped in part through higher pricing. As sales increase and manufacturing scales, Apple profits per device go up and, later on, the company brings prices down. The point: iPad revenue will likely widen the income gap between Apple and Microsoft.

My prediction: Apple and Microsoft revenue will be close during second calendar quarter. Based on the situation as it is today, I'd guess Apple revenue will pass Microsoft revenue in second quarter. If not, then the third. If I'm wrong, it wouldn't be the first time. You don't ever get to be right without taking the risk of being wrong.

So what's the significance of Apple topping Microsoft? Among the many scathing comments to my April 23rd post: "Apple makes hardware, Microsoft makes software, why even compare the 2?" To which another reader replied: "That's Mr. Wilcoxs' patented linkbait technology." Actually not. There are many reasons to compare the companies' performance. Among them:

• The historical Mac and Windows PC competition that many people still obsess about -- Betanews readers among them.
• Mobile devices are the future of computing, and it's a market where Apple and Microsoft compete and increasingly will do more so.
• By market capitalization, Apple and Microsoft are the second and third most valuable public companies.

So what do you think? Could Apple revenue top Microsoft revenue during this quarter? Should anyone care? Please respond in comments.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010



Apple - Microsoft - iPhone - iPod - IPad

Pandora may be the Web’s best-known personalized radio service, but it’s not the best one. That honor belongs to Slacker, which just upped its game by adding caching to its iPhone app. The new feature lets you download thousands of songs to your iPhone, listen to Slacker’s customized stations when you don’t have an Internet connection, or a reliable one, or you just want to conserve battery life. And as the Slacker folks are pointing out, it may prove especially appealing for folks who sign up for AT&T’s new, not-unlimited-anymore data plans–they can cache music over Wi-Fi, then listen without eating up any wireless data.

(When you tell Slacker to cache, it advises you to do so over 3G only if you’ve got an unlimited data plan–that alert will take on new meaning once there are iPhone users who don’t have unlimited data.)

Missing, at least for now, is the automated night-time caching feature that’s available on Slacker’s Android and BlackBerry versions. Maybe Slacker will add it once iPhone OS 4 is out and it can make the downloading happen in the background.

Dave Zatz liked this feature when he tried it a couple of weeks ago, and I do, too. It’s a point in favor of Slacker’s $4.99 a month Plus service; you can try it out for two weeks for free. After the jump, some screenshots.

Share/E-Mail

Panama Creates a Vocal Community — Panama provides a way to leave and receive free voice messages.

Users can send the voice messages person-to-person with a voice app, post them on a public microblogging format or even post their Panama messages to other services such as Facebook and Twitter.

Sponsor

"Panama's ambition is to host world's conversations," Panama's founder, David Hayden, said in an interview with Mixergy. Most voice over the Internet is synchronous and the majority of text is asynchronous. That is, most voice is happening in real time via VOIP. Most text is either read and then commented on or text messages are exchanged. Why can't the sterility of the Internet be humanized by adding asynchrony to the mix?

Some might say it is because voice isn't scannable. You can't take a quick look and decide whether you'll listen or not. It's zero sum with asynchronous voice. You either listen or you don't. As overwhelmed as we are said to have gotten, and with podcasts arguably having declined as a result, is anyone going to really take more time and more opacity as a positive?

Panama's answer to that is the barrier to a call is the threat of getting drawn in, which would in fact take up more time. By users sending voice messages when they can and recipients listening when they can, they might actually save time and add a bit of humanity to the process.

The founder of Panama, Hayden, was also the founder of the search engine company Magellan, which missed its IPO window and sold out to Excite. He then founded e-mail outsourcing company Critical Path "and when Critical Path stock tanked, his bankers sued him for tens of millions in loans," according to Mixergy. After that his deposit was seized on the headquarters of his next company, a social search engine called Jeteye.

Discuss

The judge presiding over the ongoing lawsuit between street artist Shepard Fairey and the Associated Press concerning the use of a photo of then-candidate Barack Obama told the parties they should settle and that “sooner or later” the wire service would prevail, the AP reported. But it didn’t convince the opposing sides, who appear as ready as ever to see the case through to at least the next level.

In an e-mail message to paidContent, Fairey’s attorney Geoffrey Stewart said, “We don’t believe Judge Hellerstein’s statement in court today indicates a pre-judgement of the case. We continue to believe there is a strong basis for fair use in this case, and Judge Hellerstein made clear that he hasn’t even begun to focus on the fair use issues.”

The judge made his remarks during a hearing in New York where, according to the AP report,  he ordered Fairey’s lawyers to hand in records of discussions Fairey had with his attorneys before he filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against the AP in February 2009. The artist filed his suit after the wire service claimed that his use of a 2006 photo of Obama taken by then-AP photographer Mannie Garciain in creating his famous Hope and Progress posters.

The AP countersued Fairey the next month. The news co-op claims that Fairey used the Obama photo “without permission from the AP, or any form of credit or compensation to the AP or attribution to the photographer.” Garciain is not involved in the suit.

In today’s hearing, the judge also said that the AP’s lawyers could depose Fairey once more. The dispute primarily rests on whether Fairey was allowed to use the photo for his art under the Fair Use Doctrine, which the U.S. Copyright Office says allows for the reproduction of a particular work if it’s used as for the purposes of “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.”

Money is also central to the case. The AP claims that Fairey made at least $4 million from products and reproductions of his Obama poster. Fairey’s attorney denied the artist had earned “millions,” though the AP story said Stewart’s argument rested on the fact that the proceeds had been given to charities and that financial penalties would likely bankrupt the artist.

Related

• Shepard Fairey: AP Suit Driven By 'Crumbling Business Model'; AP To Fairey: You're The Hypocrite
• Artist Shepard Fairey Admits Destroying Evidence—But Presses On With Fair Use Claim Against AP
• Updated: AP Countersues Over Use Of Obama Image By Artist Shepard Fairey

In Today's World of Mobile Choices, Look to the Core —   

Since gaining the HTC EVO at Google I/O last week, I have been using it exclusively, as promised, leaving my iPhone 3G aside in an effort to remove the Apple fanboy shackles and find what it is I may be missing or gaining by making a choice of one platform versus another. While others are already comparing the EVO device to the iPhone, I am going to save that post for early next week. But while I am thinking about phones and mobile devices in general, I think it makes sense to first consider how each major mobile platform provider is approaching their device. Find the core to each platform, and you will have a better guide as to what is the right choice for you.

The world of smartphones is one of the most dynamic markets today, one full of change, and innovation. Application developers and most of the top technology companies are looking to mobile for considerable growth, both in software and hardware revenue. As the phones become more capable in terms of processing power, network capability and memory, many activities traditionally aimed at the personal computer, or television, are finding their way to your handset. It's not enough to have a dumbed-down Internet for dumbed-down devices. Consumers are expecting the same Web experience on the go as they do when in front of their home or work PC, and they are expecting applications to behave in the same way as they do on the desktop. Armed with this knowledge, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Google, Apple, Palm (HP) and others are each taking their own direction, and you can see what they have tried to accomplish resulting in why market segments are gravitating one way or another, and whether they can gain share.

BlackBerry and iPhone have to contend with Android now

For example, let's take a look at three major platforms: BlackBerry, Apple and Google.

BlackBerry, at its core, is an amazing e-mail device. It is targeting those people who send and receive hundreds of e-mails a day. The common target customer for the platform is a business executive on the go, be they a Wall Street trader or a field sales rep. BlackBerry handsets are well known for their extremely capable QWERTY keyboards, while they are less known for their applications or Web experience. Customers who need a phone that does e-mail extremely well love their BlackBerries, and BlackBerry, even with its newest array of devices has been able to shake its legacy of being a messaging device. You aren't likely to see people talk about BlackBerry as an amazing gaming platform, or one built to browse the Web in a more capable way.

For Apple, the core of their approach to the smartphone market is in iTunes, the App Store and their ties to digital media. The iPhone is practically an extension to their incredibly successful iPod line. The product is managed through iTunes, synchronizes music, videos and photos through iTunes, and the iTunes App Store (an extension to the existing iTunes Music Store) is where all new functionality arrives. The iPhone changed the game for smartphones in terms of eliminating the QWERTY keyboard and becoming touch centric, but it isn't known for being the best in the world at e-mail, like BlackBerry is, and the company's App Store approach makes iTunes both a conduit and a bottleneck for applications - as they need to go through tacit approval from Cupertino before gaining the green light. If you are a customer looking for an application-centric phone, or you want a superior phone built for music you own, or to show movies you rent from iTunes, iPhone is the best.

For Google's Android line, their core is the Internet and Search, just like the company's fleet of Web applications tend to focus on data in the cloud and superior integrated search. While the Android Marketplace is a parallel of Apple's iTunes Store, its core applications assume always-on Internet access, and proudly feature not just simple hooks to Google Search, but also voice-activated search. Its Navigation application taps into the cloud, and the company's newest features, proudly highlighted at Google I/O, are about enhancing the way the Internet can be leveraged to transfer data through the air to downstream Android devices. There is no equivalent desktop application to iTunes for Android, and the focus of the device is on delivering a high-quality Web experience and accessing apps that tap into the cloud.

Of note, the much-discussed tiff between Apple and Google presents a more direct conundrum for Apple iPhone users than it does for Android users. iPhone users still leverage Google Apps, such as Google Maps, Earth and search Google on Safari. But on Android, Apple is practically invisible. Strike that - it is invisible. So if the two had a messy divorce, only iPhone users would be negatively impacted.

So for those three players, what makes the best mobile choice for you depends on how you actually use the phone. Keep in mind that for none of these players is their core focus to actually give you a better phone experience. Even a "feature phone" can get that right without too much work.

But what about Palm? What about Microsoft? What is their core?

I believe part of the reason Palm failed with its WebOS approach is because they didn't have an easy answer for what they did better than anybody else. Their messaging around the Palm Pre was that it was "fully featured", offering both the beauty of an iPhone and the QWERTY keyboard of a Blackberry. But it didn't do either thing better than anybody else, and there was no compelling reason to choose Palm.

Microsoft's new Windows 7 Phone Series similarly makes me question their core. To date, Microsoft's core has been in Enterprise and Office. They have dominated the business OS market, the office suite market and have had significant roles in a wide array of downstream services, from e-mail to peripherals, and yes, entertainment devices with the XBox. If Microsoft can make a compelling case that their Windows 7 Phone Series is the best business phone that integrates Outlook better than BlackBerry, hooks into companies' Active Directory and synchronizes Office documents better than any other device, then I think that's their core. (See: PC World: Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Should Rule Business Smartphones) But even PC World says Microsoft sees smartphones "through the eyes of the desktop". The desktop business OS has been their core, and it's come too late. Even their usual fans at PC World say "Windows Phone 7 will face a formidable challenge just to establish relevance."

The world of mobile smartphones is not the same old war we saw with the desktop. It is one about Web connectivity access to rich media, and being social. I believe there is room for perhaps one more player who can make "social" the center of their phone. Maybe Google gets there. Maybe Apple gets there first. Or maybe one of the players like Twitter or Facebook can find a way to launch a line of phones or a phone OS that is all about social, at the core.

Until that happens, I think you really have four choices - BlackBerry, Apple, Google or a mistake. Know who you are and what's important to you, and the platform choice will become clear.

Foursquare and Farmville are among the world’s worst inventions, at least according to TIME.com’s list of “The 50 Worst Inventions.”

The list of “the world’s bright ideas that just didn’t work out” included both the location-based social game Foursquare and Zynga’s Farmville, among other items that ranged from tanning beds to spam e-mail. Foursquare, which Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove just reported is nearing 1 million checkins per day, made the list for promoting narcissism. Time.com’s Kristi Oloffson acknowledges its potential for being useful with coupons, such as Starbucks’s recent promotion for its mayors, but dismisses it as “another layer onto a generation living virtually.”

Farmville made the list for being a time-suck and an addicting game that Dan Fletcher says is “hardly even a game,” but instead a “series of mindless chores.” He’s quick to point out that the game has captivated the interest of millions. Farmville has 30 million farms created with 2 million in the U.S., according to Zynga.

Because Farmville is quite popular and Foursquare is gaining steam, we’re curious if you agree. Let us know what you think in the poll below.

Are Foursquare and Farmville really among worst inventions?customer surveys

---

For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

---

Tags: farmville, foursquare, poll, social gaming, social networking, starbucks, Time.com

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Tinypay.me

Quick Pitch: Tinypay.me is the easiest way to sell virtually anything and is the world’s first socially integrated e-commerce website.

Genius Idea: If you are thinking of putting an old watch up for auction on eBay or listing your latest T-shirt design on Etsy, you may want to check out Tinypay.me first.

Tinypay.me is an e-commerce service that enables users to create quick listings for their products or services. Simply fill out the name, price and a quick description of the good or service you’d like to sell, type in a few personal details and upload a picture. You can also opt to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity, and identify your product or service’s location on a map.You can then share your listing directly with your social networks or set up your own online store on your blog or website. The whole process can take less than a minute.

The service only asks for your name and your PayPal e-mail address; you don’t even need to set up an account or share any of your bank information. You can also sync your listing with Facebook, Twitter and Google Product Search to share your listings instantaneously.

While the service is great for selling your products and services quickly and easily, it lacks many of the benefits of e-commerce sites like eBay, Etsy and Amazon Marketplace. They are destination sites for buyers and drive most of the traffic to the listings of individual sellers via marketing and excellent search and recommendation engines. And although Tinypay.me allows visitors to leave comments on a product, it has yet to implement seller and product ratings.

In other words, if you want to succeed with Tinypay.me, you’re going to have to depend entirely on your website and social networks to advertise and sell your goods.

What do you think of Tinypay.me? Have you ever sold anything online? If so, what e-commerce service did you use?

Find out more about the service in the video below.

---

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

---

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

---

Reviews: Facebook, PHP, Twitter, eBay

Tags: bizspark, e-commerce, tinypay.me

By Brian X. Chen, Writer, Gadget Lab, Wired.com

Most Fortune 500 CEOs are about as accessible as Kim Jong Il, but Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs has been breaking the mold. He’s sent terse e-mail replies to more than a dozen customer inquiries — and one journalist — in the past few months.

It’s not that he’s become unusually friendly.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Earlier this week, after reading Chris Brogan’s excellent article on the Open Forum website about how he uses mind mapping as a planning tool for his small business, I got to thinking about what makes mind mapping truly unique and essential as a business tool – one that meets the needs of today’s leaders and managers.

Next, I got to thinking about the forest and the trees – how mind mapping software is uniquely able to give you a high-level view of your project, knowledge or information, with all of its major topics collapsed. But yet you can also drill down to an amazing level of detail in just a few mouse clicks. In other words, you can take a broad overview of the forest and the surrounding area, or you can zero in on a single tree, a single aspect of your project. It’s up to you.

That, in turn, got me reflecting on the tools we use to get work done, and how they shape (and sometimes limit) the ways in which we think. I realized that most of the productivity tools that we take for granted – for creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations and tracking a variety of projects and data – inevitably push us into a “details” mindset. We get very focused on crafting the next paragraph, the next screen, the next e-mail. But most of us rarely step back to look at our work from a more strategic level – to look at the entire forest versus an individual tree.

Think about it for a minute: What software tools do you use in your job? Do they help you to focus on the bigger picture – or on what a former client once called “the glorious minutiae?” Here’s a summary of the tools I use at work and their primary focal point:

• Microsoft Word – trees.
• Microsoft Excel – trees.
• Microsoft PowerPoint – trees.
• Microsoft Outlook – trees.
• SugarCRM – trees.
• Mind mapping software – trees and forest.

See what I mean?

(BTW, I’m not picking on Microsoft – I just happen to work for an organization that uses most of their products. These focal points apply to almost every program in these software genres)

Don’t be a tree hugger

That’s not to say that we’re trapped into the role of being “tree huggers.” We control our mindset. But it’s all to easy too be lulled into complacency and to focus on the project/detail level. Inertia takes over; we feel busy, and so we conclude that we must be effective. Um, maybe not.

Unless we consciously force ourselves to do so, we rarely step back to look at how our projects and priorities fit into the bigger scheme of things, to think strategically and creatively about our business.

How can you maximize your value?

Ironically, our greatest potential value to our employers and our customers can be found by thinking strategically about our organization, the industries it competes within, the customers and constituents it serves, and the trends that are even now starting to reshape its future.

Let’s be honest: If you’re a manager or leader and you’re not thinking strategically, you’ll probably be toast in 5 years or less. Focusing on projects and their details is fine when the status quo is the norm. But change is happening far too quickly today for us to stay in head-down, churning-out-the-projects mode.

If we want to be successful, we need to pay attention to the bigger picture – to the forest instead of the trees – because that’s where most of the opportunities are. In fact, it’s actually up to us to make these opportunities via our creative thinking and problem solving abilities!

Fortunately, mind mapping software makes it easy to view both the forest and the trees. It supports our need to think creatively and strategically about what we do for a living in ways that other types of productivity software can’t.

For those of us who want to make a difference in the world, in our lives, in our jobs and for the people we serve, that makes it a very important and valuable tool indeed!

Only a little over two years ago, I covered well-respected Web user interface designer Kevin Fox's leaving Google for the then-startup FriendFeed. That's practically ancient in the world of the real-time Web, as since then, the company essentially rose and fell, before being absorbed into Facebook last summer. For the most part, the site was left on but ignored, as the team, now at Facebook, spread out and took on new challenges. Now comes word that Fox has determined nine months at Facebook was enough, so he is bidding "farewell".

Kevin's leaving Facebook marks three known defections from the social networking giant since the talent buy was announced, including Gary Burd's October 2009 exit and Ben Darnell, who joined Brizzly a month following.

Kevin did not indicate any specific incident as a contribution to his leaving, calling his work with Facebook's "world-class designers, PMs and engineers" a privilege. He says instead that it's "time for the next adventure", hinting he will take vacation and go into private practice.

He said as much to me earlier this week, saying, "I'm really excited to do my own thing after a summer vacation. No jumping from one ship to another."

Previous to Facebook and FriendFeed, Kevin led the design of GMail 1.0, Google Calendar 1.0 and Google Reader 2.0, after he had also spent time at Yahoo! at the end of the Web 1.0 era.

When you find interesting content in your social streams, it's very common for you to want to share that content to your own social graph - letting more people be exposed to what you found interesting. This need to reshare has led to Twitter's integrated Retweet functionality, and the ability to reshare items on FriendFeed and Facebook. Today, Google Buzz joins the resharing party, letting users of the nascent social network share content from any Buzz user to their own followers, while still providing attribution to the original source. The feature enhancement is said to be among the most popular user requests, and meets the team's objective of adding a new feature a week to Buzz.

Now, Buzz users, myself included, will have four options to spread the love for any individual item. You can still comment on the item and like it, or send it via e-mail, but a new "Reshare" button is included.


Unlike Twitter's new Retweet functionality, which does not allow for any modification on forwarding updates, Buzz opted for a "two-click" process, where you can click reshare, add a comment to say why you found the content interesting ,and then hit post to add it to your stream. And yes, the Google team thought ahead, so if a bunch of your friends reshare the same content, similar posts will be collapsed, so you only see each item once. Similarly, downstream reshares of reshares give attribution to the first poster.


The official blog post introducing the feature talks about how resharing the post "forks" the conversation, essentially setting up two places in two different social graphs, to discuss the same content. This distributed comments debate has been fodder for much of its own discussion for a few years, but looks to finally be closing down, especially with the rollout of public comments on Google Reader announced just this Monday.

The downstream benefit of the Reshare feature will depend on the diversity of one's network, and if you cross multiple sharing circles. If your network is closed, it will simply add noise, but if you have a network of connections that extends beyond a small group, the feature could increase eyeballs to interesting content from all sources.

You can reshare anything I post to http://www.google.com/profiles/louisgray.

Fake BP Public Relations Twitter Account a Viral Hit [INTERVIEW] —

After oil started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil rig explosion almost a month ago, a Twitter account launched purporting to be BP’s public relations group, @BPGlobalPR. The account, which offers dark, satirical commentary about the spill and cleanup efforts, is run by an anonymous person (I know for a fact that he’s a “he”), who responds to all media inquiries as “Terry.” Mashable contacted “Terry” in an attempt to find out more about the man behind the Twitter stream.

We were ardently hoping that “Terry” would drop the act (if it is, in fact, an act) and tell us who he really is. Unfortunately, homeboy kept in character throughout the entire e-mail interview, which we’re pasting below.

We’re fairly certain that the real BP is not behind the account — the company said as much to CNN. In fact, it’s far more popular than the official feed; after launching last week, @BPGlobalPR has more than 55,000 followers, while @BP_America has just under 7,000. (Although someone apparently hacked into the official account today and posted a tweet from “Terry” that says, “Terry is now in charge of operation Top Kill, work will recommence after we find a XXL wetsuit. #bpcares #oilspill.” The tweet has since been removed).

Check out our interview below and let us know what you think in the comments.

“Hi Brenna! I really like being interviewed by women first of all. You know what I call men who are journalists? Pickledicks. LOL. The guys said I should be the one who does the interviews ’cause I’m the smartest, which is also why I do all the hard work. It does kinda suck, though, because the other guys have so much fun all day playing grab-ass and XBox and beer pong. Ah, well.”

Why did you start this Twitter account?: “I work for BP Global PR. The reason we do PR is very simple, it’s the best job you can have. You see, corporations screw up all the time. They are very worried that the screwups are going to cost them a lot of money. They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money. I get paid to talk and waste time and I get paid a lot. So why do we do this, because its our job and we love money!”

How did you amass so many followers in such a short amount of time? What was the tipping point for you?: “We got a lot of followers because we’re really good at our job. Also Roger Ebert tweeted our tweet about how our oil wasn’t good for dolphins and a lot of people like him for some reason. To be honest, the review he gave Transformers 2 (my fave movie of 2009) was a little out of line, but whatever.”

Who runs the account? Is it just you or a few other people?: “We’ve got a real brain trust running the account. The other guys do most of the tweeting, but I do most of the work and I also do a lot of dares every day. I guess I’m kinda the star, so that’s pretty cool. I have my own Twitter I’m starting up @BPTerry, but I got so frustrated trying to get to the page today I gave up. Turns out I accidentally typed www.twitter.corn. The guys gave me hell for that one.”

You appear to be selling “BP Cares” shirts via your Twitter account to benefit healthygulf.org. What’s the deal with that?: “I really messed up with the ‘BP Cares’ shirts. I wish we could drop it. Long story short, everyone was really mad at BP about the oil spill, so naturally we decided to make a ton of T-shirts to give to everyone to make them like us again. I got the design, put it in the T-shirt machine and I guess I spilled ink on it or something ’cause all the shirts are messed up. To make matters worse, I broke the controls and the thing wont stop making the damn shirts. No one can turn it off. Also, I signed some stupid paperwork that made it so I have to give all the money we make to www.healthygulf.org. I’ll tell ya, everyone was so pissed about this. We are literally losing thousands of dollars to them. The only reason I still have my job is cause I ate some oil on a dare.”

How much time a day do you spend tweeting/interacting with followers? What has been the most interesting interaction so far?: “I work about five hours a day at BP headquarters and am always the last one in the office. Interesting interactions? Felicia Day liked our tweets; Alyssa Milano liked our tweets, too.

I was hoping i could maybe meet Felicia or take her on a boatride through the gulf, but she hasn’t gotten back to us. Also, @Wired said some weird stuff about us, so we all decided they were pickledicks and we hate them.”

“I’ll admit I’m not that smart, but they write a magazine about computers. They use PRINT to talk about new technology. I mean, that’s some real pickledickery. I’ll bet those idiots write letters about e-mails. Also, right when we reached 50,000 followers we noticed a fake account w/ a bunch of typos and we had to call them out.”

What kind of feedback have you been getting from the public?: Everyone thinks we’re funny. To be honest, we’re all mostly confused by that. We’re just trying to think of solutions for this stuff and report the news. But I’m told that we’re doing great. Hoping for a bonus so I can invent the hoverboard.”

And, finally, who are you really? What’s your day job, where do you live and what are your goals with this Twitter account?: “This question doesn’t make sense. I’m Terry; I can’t tell you my last name because a lot of people hate us. I work for BP Global PR and my goal is to get paid and shut down this damn T-shirt machine. Thanks, Brenna. Btw, are u pretty? Hope so.”

---

For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

---

---

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: humor, twitter

Talking With @WayneSutton On Foursquare, Check-ins & Facebook Privacy — Following up on yesterday's discussion with new Foursquare product manager Siobhan Quinn, North Carolina blogger Wayne Sutton (@waynesutton) and I took time this afternoon to talk about how we see businesses benefiting from location-based services, and Google's role in the market. Additionally, we took a few minutes to talk about Facebook's announced changes to their approach to privacy, updated today in an event chaired by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In short, I said that I while I have always considered my content on Facebook public and open, the company's changes have negatively impacted users and were made worse through their poor rollout and a lack of clear communication. You can hear our comments in full in the below embedded podcast, and catch Wayne's blog here.

SocialWayne.com Podcast #11 - All about Location with @LouisGray by waynesutton

In Part I of our insider look at the earliest days of Foursquare, we saw everything go downhill in a flurry of technical catastrophes. But we also caught a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. In this second and concluding installment we join the founders at South By SouthWest — the debutante ball of the internet startup world — utter the “G” word and consider the iPhone conundrum.

The rapidly growing number of workstations at Foursquare’s office look like scene from the Matrix: split keyboards, obscure wires and a disconcerting old cup of something that might be soup. No trench coats, though.

Code is compiling on co-founder Naveen Selvadurai’s screen. Green text scrolls on a black background on programmer Harry Heymann’s. A blue-eyed new hire, Tim Vetter, currently homeless and sporting purple corduroy pants, leans back in his chair.

The mood is at once casual and intense. Jokes and laughter intermittently penetrate the haze of concentration, bouts of frustration occasionally interrupting 90-wpm typing. Co-founder Dennis Crowley is obviously stressed. Upon entering the office, he’s instantly bogged down in communication: Twitter, e-mail, AOL Instant Messenger, and texts on his iPhone.

“Oh man, oh man,” he repeats about every 30 seconds. Turns out he’s running on two days without sleep. Thirty-six hours ago he was in Amsterdam presenting Foursquare at a conference. Fresh off the plane, he spoke at NYU last night and then at Web 2.0 Expo this morning, a talk he claims was “not stellar.” He’s got his fingers crossed that his 1 p.m. meeting bails on him. “I just want lunch,” he mutters.

Heymann rants to no one in particular. Because of the crowdsourced nature of the data on Foursquare (users can add new venues or change name-and-address information), listings are in a constant state of disarray.

They’re also battling with ways to curb cheating, an inevitable byproduct of the game. People checking in remotely in order to steal mayorships, racking up points without earning them are at the top of the list.

On the marketing side, they’re working hard to alleviate consumer-privacy fears. It’s common to hear someone say, “I don’t want everyone to be able to see my exact location. That’s freaky!”

Although Foursquare only reveals your location when you specifically tell it to -– and then only to a select group you choose -– earlier GPS apps were literally always on, like tracking devices from a spy movie. People have a hard time shaking that idea when they’re introduced to Foursquare.

At least they can sign up now, though.

However, a bigger concern has cropped up in the last month: a competitor based in Austin, Texas, named Gowalla.

“You just said the ‘G’ word!” Crowley spits when I bring it up.

Selvadurai delivers the punishment, “Time-out corner!”

Gowalla also launched at SXSW 2009. It sought to become a virtual passport for your life, but began as mainly a GPS-based game. While initially buggy, it saw opportunity in the same city guide–social network–game space Foursquare had nestled into. The Gowalla team managed to raise $8.4 million to seize that opportunity, and some of its investors included angels that had talked with Foursquare and were now kicking themselves for not sealing a deal.

With seven times the cash and the backing of web media barons like Digg’s Rose and Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuck, in a few short months Gowalla had become a serious contender for Foursquare’s throne. Although Gowalla’s user base was smaller in comparison, it was already available in cities Foursquare wasn’t, and some bloggers were predicting it would topple Crowley’s creation.

The tension is thick. “I’m waiting for the first original thing they come out with,” Crowley says. “Everything they’ve come out with so far is a derivative of ours. It’s bullshit.” He demonstrates screenshots he’s taken of Gowalla allegedly ripping off Foursquare features. Gowalla had just created its own version of mayorship: the top 10 users in each venue.

It also came out with Explorer and Discoverer badges –- exact replicas of Foursquare’s. Even the app’s liner notes, “Lovingly created by Dennis, Naveen, and Harry,” are similar on Gowalla’s site: “Lovingly made by the guys and girls going places in Austin, Texas.”

Gowalla CEO Josh Williams, a friendly, long-haired serial entrepreneur and web 2.0 veteran himself, says in an e-mail that he’s not threatened by Foursquare. On the contrary, he says, “I felt like the presence of other innovative location services was simply confirmation that we might be onto something interesting.” He and co-founder Scott Raymond built their private version of what would become Gowalla five months before Foursquare launched.

He continues, “I believe Gowalla will be the leader in this space because of our commitment to design,” among other things. His app sparkles with illustrations, cartoon characters, and a friendly interface. Many bloggers have since agreed with Williams that Gowalla’s “cooler” design will help it outshine Foursquare. Vaynerchuck, who is a personal friend of Crowley’s, recently said at New York University’s 0260 Conference that Gowalla is a better product, though he believes Foursquare will win due to its head start and good PR.

Further complicating matters, semi-competitors like the popular GPS friend finder, Loopt, could easily modify their software infrastructure to compete on the same city-guide and social-game level. “I think both Foursquare and Gowalla are great apps –- using the real world as the backdrop for a game is a lot of fun,” Loopt CEO Sam Altman says. “It’s probably a safe assumption that we’ll add some gaming elements.”

Or worse, Facebook’s recent announcement of adding location check-ins could be a hydrogen bomb that ends the war overnight.

Fred Wilson, of Foursquare investor Union Square Ventures, calls Gowalla “a knockoff.” But, he says, “if Foursquare keeps doing what they’re doing and making the product better and better, they’ll be able to beat the competition.”

The Foursquare team has a head start, but the Scala rewrite has drawn their attention away from building new features, allowing Gowalla and others to close much of the gap in the meantime.