Launch

Google's Search Indexing, Now Fully Caffeinated —

Most of a year ago we asked "Will Google's Caffeine Update Really Change Search Results?" At that time, Google had announced a beta launch of a new indexing system for their search results. It took a while to roll that launch all the way out. It took until today.

"Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before."

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To refresh the old system Google re-analyzed the entirety of its cache. This created a lag in the results. With Caffeine, they say, they now analyze the web continuously in small portions, updating the search index as they go.

Whether the speed and relevancy claims that Google is making will be born out now that Caffeine is fully in effect remains, still, to be seen. Whether it is provable quantitatively or not, the Web remains for its users more of a process or relationship than a thing. So user taste with the new system will be the proof of the pudding.

Discuss

Recently I went to the Connect Now conference and had the chance to hug Darren Rowse, meet Gary Vaynerchuk and hang out with my social media friends. One year ago, I didn’t think I’d be able to accomplish something so awesome.

Skellie was one of the people that made this possible. She wrote this killer book, The Blog Business Funnel (aff), which presented a new model of making an income from your blog.

The Blog Business Funnel

Skellie argues that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to monetize a blog via traditional methods such as direct advertising, affiliate sales and adsense. She highlights a system which shows bloggers how they can make plenty of money doing what they’re best at.

She recommends “using word-of-mouth worthy content to generate targeted traffic, then using your knowledge and insight to generate trust.”

How it helped me.

I’ve struggled with the idea of launching a business from my blog for years. I’ve had lots of issues and was flailing around, trying to find a model that aligned with my business goals and my promotional ethic.

I had read a lot of business products about how to build a profitable business but they were separated into different niches: sales, blogging and freelancing. I was getting the information I needed but I had no way to fit it all together.

Skellie took us through key launch strategies and details how we could apply them to our own business. I’m heavily into product launches yet it never occurred to me that it could apply for services. We are in the prelaunch stages and already have huge demand. We have several larger companies willing to send smaller jobs our way as well.

I knew that my business would be successful because I had an established blog and had worked hard to create trust with my audience. What I didn’t expect was for it to be doing this well less than a month after the launch.

Why it’s so awesome.

It fits into the third tribe marketing model.

I’ve struggled with the concept of promoting myself. It’s hard. I wanted to get the word out there but didn’t want to seem sleazy or that I was trying to take advantage of my friends.

I was able to learn how to sell myself and my business by just doing what I was already doing. Hanging out online, being darn useful and creating high quality content. She taught me how I could leverage that interest in a way that benefited everyone.

Skellie has extensive practical experience

I was fortunate enough to catch up with Skellie in Melbourne. She is the real deal. This is the model she used to rock it online and leverage that success to get employed by Envato. I watched her grow from a compelling blogger to someone that commanded respect in the industry. Everything she writes is from personal experience – experience that most bloggers don’t have.

This isn’t for everyone.

Now, I love Skellie. She is one of the few bloggers I get totally fan girl over. I was worried that this would affect my objectivity so asked a friend for his opinion.

Frank Wall is a hiking blogger. His site is primarily monetized via advertising and ebook sales. He didn’t get as much out of the ebook as I did. He was intrigued by the idea and really enjoyed Skellies writing but it didn’t fit with his method of monetization.

I agree. Skellies book was perfect for me because I know I wanted to create a freelance business based off the success of my blog but had no idea how to accomplish this. I spend six months kicking arse with my guest pots and let my blog stagnate because I didn’t know how to handle the demand for my services.

Why I love Skellie

There is one blogger that I credit for igniting my passion in this industry. She showed me that you could write beautifully, no matter the topic. She revolutionized the industry for me and I’ve used her as inspiration. This blogger is Skellie.

I review a lot of products. This is the best value ebook I’ve seen in a year. Learn more about it here (aff).

Jade’s Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this product in exchange for my feedback, and get no affiliate commission.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How To Turn Your Blog Into A Profitable Business

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If real-time news isn’t good enough for ya, The Onion has the remedy: Future: News From The Year 2137, a new video project the satirical media outlet unveiled today at Mashable’s Media Summit.

The show, whose launch will mark the first time The Onion plans to sell digital content directly to consumers on an exclusive basis, promises to bring viewers so-new-it-hasn’t-happened-yet news via “state-of-the-art wormhole satellites… from the year 2137.”

According to The Onion, “More than 125 years into the future, the Onion News Network remains the world’s most powerful media empire, dispensing the finest news, commentary, and swooshy graphics 24 hours a day directly into the right eye of every viewer through technology called ‘EyeStreaming.’”

Naturally, this is all a spoof (for those out there who don’t get less-than-subtle humor) — but a spoof that seems firmly rooted in present-day issues. In the world of the future, a catastrophe called “the Burndown” has rendered the world virtually unlivable — IE, there’s scarce food and water, no laws or social institutions and a thug of a President reigning over it all.

Picture a planet populated by robots, humans bred to be slaves and a Doomsday Machine (that keeps malfunctioning, to everyone’s disappointment), and you’ve basically got The Onion’s vision of the future. Sunny, no?

Although the show will premiere this summer, Web Editor Baratunde Thurston gave Mashable a sneak peek at the official trailer today, as well as at a three-minute clip of a segment called “The Gaza Scrap,” which depicts the battle between the last remaining Palestinian and the last remaining Israeli on earth. Keep your eye on The Onion’s site for future updates, or follow them on Twitter: @ONNFutureNews.

The Onion has been working on some pretty exciting projects lately: Comedy Central recently picked up the Onion Sports Network pilot for a 10-episode run to air in 2011, and the Independent Film Channel (IFC) is collaborating with the parody outlet to create half-hour cable TV series called Onion News Network, also set to premiere in 2011.

Given today’s announcement, and the media outlet’s mounting cache, it will be interesting to see how the public reacts to this content-for-purchase plan. Will you pay to partake in the funny?

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Future: News From The Year 2137

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Tags: business, humor, internet week ny, money, the onion, web video

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'

Mobile Ad Network InMobi Enters the U.S. Market —

InMobi, one of the world's largest independent mobile ad networks, just announced that will plans to enter the U.S. advertising market. The company, which already has offices in San Francisco and currently serves about 2 billion ad impressions in the U.S. following a soft launch in January, is currently one of the strongest mobile advertising players in the Asia Pacific market and also has a strong presence in Africa and Western Europe. In the U.S., InMobi will go up against entrenched players like AdMob, which was recently acquired by Google, and relative newcomers like Apple's iAd and Quattro Wireless.

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InMobi started its business in Asia, so it doesn't come as a surprise that this is also the strongest region in the company's portfolio. Looking across the other regions where InMobi is currently active, the company announced that it managed to double its inventory of available impressions from 7.5 billion to 16.7 billion worldwide over the last six months. Looking at InMobi's current numbers in the U.S., it is worth noting that - without trying too hard - the company currently serves more ads in the U.S. than AdMob did two years ago (though arguably, the mobile advertising market itself has also grown exponentially since then).

The company's U.S. team is currently compromised of roughly 80 people. InMobi targets brand advertisers and also offers a self-serve tools for smaller advertisers. The company offers services for advertising on feature phones and on modern smartphone platforms.

When we talked to Ann Frisbie, InMobi's , VP and managing director for North America last week, she argued that so far, most players in the U.S. market treated the mobile Web as just an extension of the desktop Web. The company hopes to be able to differentiate itself from other players in the U.S., as its international experience has already taught the company where mobile advertising is heading in the near future. Abroad, Friebie said, the mobile phone was always seen more as an entertainment device, while users in the U.S. are only now starting to regard their phones as entertainment devices (in no small parts thanks to the iPhone). We should note, however, that AdMob also has a major global presence and that it will likely profit from Google's own international expertise as well.

InMobi also hopes to differentiate itself through its analytics tools and its adROIt product, which allows advertisers to track and optimize their buys in real time.

Discuss

Google Tries to Get Some Buzz for Wave With ‘Wave This’ Feature —

Remember Google Wave? Before Buzz came along, Google Wave was the hot new social networking feature from the world’s largest search company. It launched with much fanfare at Google’s I/O conference last May, but has since failed to get much traction, in part because no one could figure out what to do with it exactly. Then along came Buzz in February and grabbed the spotlight from its Google cousin, in part because of the furore that arose over the service’s approach to privacy. Now Google Wave is rolling out a feature that it clearly hopes will catch the imagination of some web users and maybe jump-start Wave’s popularity.

The new feature allows users to add a bookmarklet to their browser that will create a new Wave from any web page, embedding a link inside the Wave so that other users can discuss it. If the page contains a video or image, that will be embedded as well — in a playable format, in the case of videos — so that users can check it out before discussing it. And Google has also provided web designers with an easy way to add “Wave This” buttons to their pages, and/or to produce clickable URLs that will generate a new Wave discussion.

Whether this new feature will bring in any new users for Google Wave is difficult to say. So far, the service’s biggest problem seems to be a lack of awareness that it even exists — since the initial attention around the launch died down, there has been little or no public discussion of the service (although it does have its fans), and Buzz has drawn much of the attention given to social networks at Google. Wave has been invite only until recently, however, and if the Wave This button starts showing up all around the web, it’s possible that it might get more popular interest. But then Buzz is fighting that battle too, and the king of the hill at the moment is Facebook and its global “like” button. There may not be much room left for Wave to capture a lot of social mind-share.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Google’s Social Scheme Hinges on Fears, Not Fortunes

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The Vital Importance of Labs —

Over the weekend, I launched a new travel blog. It’s part of a new project I’m building as part of a course for the new company I’m about to launch. What I like about it, is that it gives me a new laboratory: a place where I can experiment. ( Ever wonder why my business is called New Marketing Labs ? Not by accident.)

It’s also a place to re-hone my skills in the art of putting together all the various parts of an online business. Having a lab is vital to the growth of your business. Let’s talk about that.

Labs Are Off-Main

First, let’s explain that your laboratory should be away from your primary site or online presence. In launching Man on the Go, I didn’t make it a main feature inside of [chrisbrogan.com]. Instead, I gave it its own domain, it’s own place to grow. With all experimentation, it’s good to try it away from the primary source of your business, at least at first.

Labs Have Goals in Mind

Experimentation starts with a supposition. In the case of this project, I’m building a media site that’s built for content marketing. My supposition is that I can launch a successful media property around the business travel space, even though it’s fairly busy, because I can be successful in differentiating. Judging by my first few videos, I will have a lot further to go to prove this.

But I have a goal in mind, and that’s what matters. In my case, I have about three goals:

• Write up all details of the experiment for my new course.
• Earn $500/month or more by month 3 of the launch.
• Write up all the how-to material to make into an ebook and/or a service offering.

Labs Are For Experiments

I have ideas I want to try out that are more suited for Man on the Go than this site. I will experiment over there and see what comes of it. If some of it works, I might incorporate it back over there. My main goal: not to do the same stuff I’m already doing over here. Why replicate?

One experiment: multiple authors. I’ll open this project up to others, just as soon as I work through how much work will go into vetting submissions, as well as how to properly compensate them, etc. So, I’ll try that on Man on the Go and see if there are lessons I can share forward.

Labs Can Be Home to Failures

They say Thomas Edison failed over 1000 times before he invented a lightbulb that worked, and that he retorted that he hadn’t failed, but instead had simply worked out 1000 ways not to invent one. Failure is part of learning. Do you think I’ve never failed? I fail plenty. I fail often. I just learn fast.

Labs are For Innovation

In the end, the goal of a laboratory is to create breakthroughs. I’m hoping to help others replicate what I learn from the Man on the Go experience and help them achieve escape velocity with their own efforts. That will be one of many innovations I can bring forward to people hoping to grow their businesses.

If You Don’t Keep Your Hands Dirty

If you step away from the processes that make things happen, you fall into the realm of theorists. There are plenty of authors writing books about other people’s work, adding their thoughts and insights, but essentially, reporting on the works of others. I can’t do that. I have to be part of the story.

What I do with [chrisbrogan.com] is often partly an experiment that I can take and apply to partners and clients at New Marketing Labs. What I’ll do at Man on the Go will hopefully help my new business grow. But no one will ever be able to say that I’m not active in the space that I’m talking about. I’m breathing it every day.

Make sense?

Where is Your Lab?

Where do you experiment? Where do you dare to mess up? Where do you take your first steps? And what have you found out through the processes built into making a lab?

Photo credit casers jean

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings got up on stage right after Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the WWDC 2010 conference, which we’re liveblogging here. Guess why he was there: there’s a Netflix app for iPhone on the way, and it’s coming this Summer.

It isn’t much of a surprise. I mean, Netflix already has an (amazing) iPad app, and it started surveying interest for an iPhone app early March 2010, while rumors of its impending launch have been swirling for much longer.

Judging from MobileCrunch writer Greg Kumparak’s comments on the liveblog, the features they’ve mentioned on stage mirror that of the iPad app: full catalog, Instant Queue access, and movies will start playing where you stopped watching even if it was on any other platform than the iPhone OS.

Steve Jobs' Opportunity: Apple Products are for Humans —

Shared by Bud
I think Louis hits the nail on the head here. Apple's industrial design is just superior. Google, at heart, is an infrastructure play. They're making progress in the last user interface mile, but it's not their forte by a long shot.

At 10 a.m., Apple CEO Steve Jobs will take the stage once again at WWDC, no doubt introducing the next generation iPhone, along with its already previewed iPhone OS 4 software, as part of what will hopefully be many announcements in the day, which point to the future of the company and its application ecosystem. His remarks will come at a time when Apple as a company is tremendously strong, firing on all cylinders, with the launch of the iPad looking like a tremendous success. Yet, in the background, the company's iPhone juggernaut seemingly looks like it is vulnerable, thanks to continued momentum from Google, Android, and Sprint's record-setting sales of the newest device, the HTC EVO (which I've discussed at length the last few weeks).

Steve Jobs is a master visionary for foretelling the future of tech, and also a master salesman, convincing you to think he was the leader, in the occasions when Apple is actually late the game. He and Apple have been among the best in convincing customers that features or products are not needed, or markets are not interesting, right up until the minute they introduce their own version. At this WWDC, Jobs will need to convince those watching and listening not only that the company's present is strong, but that their future is as well, that they can remain atop the charts in the smartphone race, in the face of the onslaught from Mountain View. One way he can turn this tide is to turn Android's marketing around against them - taking on the harsh, metallic, robotic, messaging directly, and say that in contrast, Apple's products are designed with soul, by humans, for humans - connecting with one's emotional side in a way that Google hasn't traditionally been able to do.

As far as robots go, the Android robot is cute - friendly and appealing even. So too are the code names for the Android releases themselves, each sounding like a calorie-rich dessert one would lust for. But, at the end of the day, it's still a robot, and Google, so far, hasn't been known for a soft, creative, approach. The stories about the company being data-driven and letting the numbers tell the story have reigned supreme, often being pointed to as one contributing reason behind the company's false starts in social, and, amusingly, the lack of a Google Sports to go alongside Google News. In contrast, Apple is all about emotion, and creativity, and how one feels about an experience - be it on the desktop, on a tablet or from a mobile phone.

Apple once said its operating system was so divine that "you would want to lick it". Licking and loving? Human emotions, not something robots desire to do. I don't see Google wanting you to lick your Nexus One or your Droid Incredible any time soon. They just "do". And even though I am enjoying my Android experience still, I am working around some of the lameness when it comes to non-humane error messages, non-intuitive software design and things that take more steps than they should, which Apple already tackled in the simplicity department long ago.

Do you know the primary use for the pair of iPads we got the first day they hit stores? Playing YouTube. Now, before you say that's a Google product (which it is)... what I left out is that the primary users are my nearly two-year-old kids. The two of them are constantly on the iPad, browsing videos or playing simple arcade games. That we have two iPads for the two kids is a must, for when one is in the room, they are fighting over it. The simplicity and human approach Apple took to the iPad is so well executed that the twins don't hesitate in learning how to approach new apps and to swipe between screens. But when they look at my EVO, they're pretty much lost.

Jobs may not try and present iPhone as the alternative to Android at WWDC, in the same way Google presented itself as the alternative to iPhone at Google I/O. Maybe he doesn't want to give them that much credit. It's just as likely that he will tell us how much better iAds are to AdMob, or tell us how many more cool apps there are for iPhone and iPad than there are for Android. Maybe talking about one's human nature and personality is too much of a throwback to Jobs' hippy days, but it's certainly an opportunity, one that would resonate with many people considering their computing choices going forward. We're not robots, and Apple is a touchy-feely company who understands touch and feel better than anybody else in tech. Therein lies the opportunity to remind customers.

With minimal additional investment and no extra hires, fan-based SB Nation is launching 20 new regional sports sites during the next few weeks. The first six went live after midnight: New York, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Arizona and DC, where the startup is based. The look is similar; all are based on the template at flagship site sbnation.com and use the main site’s story stream.

SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff explained in an interview: “The reason we are able to do this is that we have already made the investment in paying 300+ writers and developing technology to support 255 sites so we are able to launch 20 sites in about 20 days at a really minimal incremental cost. Eighteen of our 20 regional editors are already SB Nation team writers as are many of the contributing writers to the regional sites so we didn’t have to hire any new people. But we were able to expand the roles and the compensation for many of our existing folks.”

The next wave starts June 10 with Houston and Dallas, followed by Kansas City, June 14; St. Louis, June 15; Minneapolis, June 16; Cleveland, June 17;  Pittsburgh, June 21; Philadelphia, June 22; Tampa, June 23; Atlanta, June 24; Denver, June 28; Los Angeles, June 29; Seattle, June 30 and Bay Area, July 1. Some of the timing is a little odd—Philadelphia and LA have teams playing for league championships that will be over by the time the sites launch—but they’ll all be up before the MLB All-Star Break and well underway before football season kicks off. More to come.

Every day I spend using my cloud-centric MacBook Air and my HTC EVO brings me further and further away from an iTunes-centric digital media life. A once-diehard iTunes user who has no doubt purchased thousands of tracks from the music store since its debut, I find myself interacting with the application less and less over time - as my music is now coming from far-flung Web-based places like Last.fm and Pandora, satellite from Sirius/XM Radio, and, as often as I can, from Spotify. A near-immediate Spotify convert back in August when I first got my hands on the application, I have also enjoyed its iPhone app, and can now leverage the preferences and playlists from friends who I am connected to on Facebook, to see what songs they recommend.

Spotify already seemingly has the lion's share of music available with instant streaming, but now, it makes enjoying tunes a social experience. Despite the fact the service still hasn't publicly announced a launch date here in the US, it looks like a lot of my peers have gained access, one by one, so my social sidebar in the app is populated by several dozen audiophiles, each listening to their favorite music, and favoriting tunes for me to discover.


As with Last.fm and MusicMobs before it, the social elements of Spotify are great for finding shared musical preferences between friends you may not have known existed. For example, I was surprised to find Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb is high on Blonde Redhead, and that I could relive high school with Pearl Jam's Spin the Black Circle off Chris Messina's "Rock Out" playlist.


The future of software is to be connected, instant and social. Spotify starts up tunes faster than any product I've seen (no buffering noted) and, of course, lets you share tracks to Facebook and Twitter. It's all about enabling improved song discovery and expanding social connections.

At LeWeb 2009 last December, Spotify said their plans were to open in the US in Early 2010. We're practically reaching the midpoint, so it seems things are going slower than anticipated. With WWDC upon us, it will remain to be seen what plans Steve Jobs and crew have for LaLa's integration into iTunes, and whether their offering will be strong enough to make Spotify's eventual launch too little too late. Hopefully not, for what they're making is extremely good... I just worry about the ticking clock.

Two months after its launch, there are no shortage of RSS readers for the iPad. But I’ve tried most of them, and still find them all lacking in some way. In fact, the one I’m still using the most is not optimized for the iPad at all — Reeder. As we noted back in March, with the 2.0 launch, Reeder finally brought an excellent RSS app to the iPhone. And shortly, it will be bringing an iPad-native experience as well.

The app was submitted to the App Store for approval three days ago, the developers noted on Twitter. That means we should expect it any day now. It will be a separate app from the iPhone version and will carry a new, slightly higher price, $4.99. But judging from the pictures below, and one stellar preview from MacStories, it will be worth it.

Below, find some screenshots of what it will look like. One nice touch is that sets of feeds can be drilled into using the pinch gesture, similar to the way you unbundle pictures in the iPad’s photo app. It’s also worth noting that if you have a blog and want one of the big favicons to appear, you should put a 120×120 apple-touch-icon.png file on your server.

Textbook rental site BookRenter just announced that it has raised $10 million in a second round of funding.

Book rental sites promise to help students cut back on their textbook spending. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a book if you’re only going to need it for a few months? With services like San Mateo, Calif.-based BookRenter, students simply pay a rental fee and then return those books at the end of the class. The most prominent company in this market has been Chegg, which is backed by top venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, but chief executive Mehdi Maghsoodnia said he has a different strategy.

The first part of his plan was to establish BookRenter as the clear number two among websites for where students can rent books directly. The company says it now rents books to “thousands of students on over 5,000 U.S. campuses.” While it may not overtake Chegg in popularity, Maghsoodnia says BookRenter keeps its costs down by not buying or warehousing any books itself — instead, it connects students with partner companies who fulfill the rental orders.

In recent months BookRenter has been building the second part of its strategy — working with campus bookstores. After all, those bookstores still control a majority of the textbook market. BookRenter works with stores to add textbook rental options to their own sites. Students can either pick up their rentals from the store or have them delivered directly. Either way, the store gets a cut of the revenue. The company says more than 75 campus bookstores have signed up to use the platform.

With the launch of Apple’s iPad, there’s growing interest in electronic textbooks, too. When I asked Maghsoodnia if that’s an area BookRenter is looking at, he said it is, but it’s “not the highest priority on my list.” For now, the iPad is still priced too high for the majority of students.

The new round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with money from previous investors Storm Ventures and Adams Capital Management. BookRenter raised a $6 million round last year.

Companies: Adams Capital Management, BookRenter, Norwest Venture Partners, Storm Ventures

People: Mehdi Maghsoodnia

Twitter Exposes Intersections in the Social Graph —

Twitter is testing a new feature tonight that will provide users with a widget in the profile sidebar which displays mutual follows. According to a status posted by Twitter developer Nick Kallen, 10% of users now see a "You both follow" section on user profiles that will showcase a handful of users that are followed by both that profile and the user visiting it. So if user A follows B, and user C follows B, then B will show up in this section when user A visits user C's profile.

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Previously users relied on third-party tools to determine relationships such as these, but now Twitter seems to be testing their own version of this functionality. It's not surprising that Twitter is attempting to better leverage their millions of users, as their network lends itself to these types of inter-user features. The connections that can be made through mutual follows on Twitter far outnumber those that can be found on Facebook, where users keep friends lists at a much smaller amount than they do follow counts.

In a hyperlinked world, where our activities, interests and social connections are naked to the world by interlinked web document, the factorial of that number of connections represents the universe of possibilities for analysis, feature development and added value.

Is this just the tip of the iceberg for Twitter? Should third party app developers be concerned that Twitter is slowly going to replace popular add-on features with tools of their own? It wasn't long ago that Twitter snatched up atebits, developers of the Tweetie iPhone app, which has since been rebranded as Twitter's official app. As Twitter expands it's base functionality to include more tools, some third-party developers may be nudged aside.

It is unlikely, however that Twitter would go to the trouble of over-developing on its own platform. Twitter has prided itself on its simplicity since its launch, and by creating too many tools it could ruin that delicate balance of simplicity and functionality. This is precisely why the mutual follow feature, like many before it, is being tested on a small sample size before being rolled-out to the entire population of users.

The same public link connections that make this new feature possible is what makes more advanced social graph analysis possible using tools like Mailana or Twiangulate. Those 3rd party services, while incredibly useful, will likely remain outside the realm of what Twitter would ever develop itself.

Photo from dacort on Twitpic.

Discuss

"Likejacking" Takes Off on Facebook —

Shared by Jesse Stay
I think Jeff Barr got compromised by this yesterday ;-) (You'll know if you read his stream)

Security researchers are warning of the newest Facebook threat, something they're calling "likejacking," a Facebook-enabled clickjacking attack that tricks users into clicking links that mark the clicked site as one of your Facebook "likes." These likes then show up on your profile and, of course, in your Facebook News Feed where your friends can see the link and click it, allowing the vicious, viral cycle to continue.

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According to security firm Sophos, hundreds of thousands of users have already fallen for this new "likejacking" trick thanks to the clever and tantalizing linkbait the spammers use to entice people to click their links. For example:

"LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE."

"This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!"

"The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School."

After clicking through on a link, victims don't get to see the promised content, but rather a blank page reading "click here to continue." This page contains the clickjacking worm (Troj/Iframe-ET) embedded via an invisible link. Click anywhere on the page and the message is posted to your profile and News Feed, allowing the worm to further its spread.

This particular exploit is made possible by way of Facebook's new "like button" and its associated developer code. According to the Like Button documentation, the buttons can be customized with meta data that includes things like the title of the webpage, the name of the Web site and the URL of a picture for the page. By customizing these fields, spammers and hackers can easily create links that are, in fact, malicious "likes."

Told You So

The popularity of this particular attack vector is not surprising. Soon after the launch of the Facebook like button, we reported on its potential as a threat, noting how incredibly easy it is to create like buttons that link to anything on the web - even pages you have never visited.

It was only a matter of time before spammers and hackers started exploiting this weakness for their own purposes. (Frankly, we're surprised it took this long.)

The problem has to do with the overly simple way Facebook has implemented the "like button" feature. Non-developers can plug a URL into a wizard that generates code which can be copied and pasted anywhere on the Web. Like buttons created this way or manually, via handwritten code, will function properly even if they point to a webpage that's on a different domain from the page where the button is being hosted.

Kyle Bragger, a Web entrepreneur who just launched Forrst, an online community for developers and designers, warned Facebook users of "like fraud" back in April by way of personal blog post. To circumvent potential likejacking attempts such as these, he created a Facebook "like" bookmarklet which safely "likes" the page you're on, allowing you to feel secure that you're actually liking the real thing and not some shady linkbait. (Or likebait, if you will).

If you've been hit with this likejacking attack, the best you can do is remove the like from your profile and delete the post from your News Feed. You might want to apologize to your friends with a Facebook status update, too.

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Survey: More Than 80% of Businesses Support the iPad —

In a new survey (which is still accepting responses for the rest of today) Citrix is asking its IT customers to characterize their support for iPad in their businesses. Currently, over 80% of respondents expect to purchase the iPad for their company. Even more respondents are saying they will support personal iPads for their employees.

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Survey Results

The Citrix team has shared an overview of the preliminary results.

• While 84% of organizations will support personal iPads, 50% expect their organization to purchase the device for them.


• 80% will purchase and use the iPad for business.


• The high level of adoption of the mobile device illustrates the confidence IT has that they can provide secure, safe access to company data and virtual desktops.


• Support, according to respondents, for the use of personal iPads for work will open the door for more Bring Your Own Computer programs


• The largest perceived benefits include the mobility to work remotely without interruption, greatly improving productivity for even the most remote workers.

Considerations

Realizing that the audience being surveyed is more likely to be interested in iPad due to self selection, it is still interesting the high level of support within business for the new device.

Here are a few additional thoughts about iPad's momentum in the enteprise.

• Cost is a factor of volume. One of the big surprises of the iPad launch was the price offered by Apple for the device. For the functionality offered (especially as it gets closer to parity), it's a revolution in IT budgeting to consider this low-cost option for a hardware solution. The big win for Apple in the enterprise is going to be made on volume. If the company is successful, as it seems it will be, in continuing to have a "low SKU" approach to the market, it will continue to gain advantage through volume alone.
• "Bring your own computer." In a way, this phenomenon is a big change. If Apple makes it acceptable, "Bring your own phone" may be close behind. This may break the logjam we see now where enterprises hand out corporate phones, yet consumers buy their own and carry them with them in the office (and then negotiate with IT for access to apps, for example).
• Mobility as the killer enterprise app. The iPad with 3G has an unlimited data plan option that may be too good to pass up for IT managers who want to deploy mobile solutions or support the mobile workforce.
• iTunes for corporate assets. The opportunity to deliver corporate content as subscriptions, podcasts, and video libraries could be a new wrapper on corporate assets. The ability to easily catalog resources is one thing that big intranets and internal corporate networks have been challenged with in the past. Perhaps the structure of a library approach will also target enterprise employees and reduce the friction in content distribution.

It's amazing to see the growth of momentum for iPad in business computing. This survey suggests the dynamics of iPad seem to be trending in Apple's favor. It's still a long way off before we see it create a large dent in enterprise laptop or desktop sales, but this movement is creating a new set of opportunities - and problems - in the enterprise.

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New GPS Satellites Will Help Apps Better Pinpoint Your Location —

Location-based applications are all the rage right now, but anyone who uses them knows that current GPS technology only allows for a certain amount of accuracy. If you pull up Foursquare, Gowalla or any other social check-in app while in a dense business area, chances are the place you're looking for is not at the top of the list. This is because current GPS chips and satellites are only accurate to roughly 20 feet at best, but this number could shrink significantly with the recent launch of the first of several new GPS satellites.

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Late last Thursday, the U.S. Air Force launched the GPS IIF SV-1 satellite from Cape Canaveral (see video below), the first in a series of new satellites designed to overhaul the existing network that has been providing GPS data for nearly two decades. Boeing has been contracted to build 12 GPS Block IIF satellites, part of an $8 billion government project to replace the 24 existing GPS satellites over the next ten years.

According to Boeing, the Block IIF series of satellites include a host of enhanced features and functionality that will improve GPS signal strength, quality and accuracy. Boeing says the new satellites will have "two times greater predicted signal accuracy" than the previous ones, as well as improved signals for aviation and military use. Additionally, this new fleet of satellites should improve the overall accuracy of GPS signals from the rough estimates of 20 feet to a tighter radius of between 2 and 3 feet.

For mobile location-based applications, these improvements could be monumental. Not only would location apps as we know them today be greatly improved, but increased power and accuracy could create entirely new breeds of applications. By boosting the signal, the possibility of having GPS function in large indoor facilities, like malls or convention centers, is significantly increased. Mobile apps could be developed to help stranded cave divers, rock climbers or even victims of landslides and earthquakes be located by rescue personnel. In fact, NASA already has plans to continually improve on the GPS satellites for the purpose of creating a better search and rescue system.

Mobile augmented reality (AR), a field that relies heavily on GPS data, would also see large improvements with increased accuracy. With the current limited accuracy of GPS, mobile AR apps can only give users a rough estimate of where locations are relative to their position; these new satellites could make is much easier for an app like Layar or Wikitude to point users directly to the nearest ATM or subway entrance. Combine this with enhanced visual recognition technology and AR could quickly evolve to recognize our surroundings and help us navigate the world.

But what about privacy? With increased accuracy, user's homes could be identified by their location data, not just what area of town they are in. Location-based applications may need to implement privacy controls that limit the amount of data shared with other users. I wouldn't mind if an app used as much data as it needed to find me and provide relevant information, but once that is complete, I should have the option of what level of location to share with other users.

The Block IIF satellites are the first step in creating a highly accurate GPS network for consumers. The second step is creating smaller, more capable GPS chips for mobile devices, and the third is updating databases of location data to reflect more accurate results. It's not good enough anymore to just know the address of an establishment, especially if it is in a mall or shopping center. In the near future, our GPS devices won't simply drop us off at the block of road a business is on, they will walk us right through the front door.

Image from Boeing.

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Apple broke the Memorial Day peace today to declare it has sold over two million iPads in under 60-days since launch on April 3.

"Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone."

Official Press Release follows:

CUPERTINO, Calif., May 31./ Apple® today announced that iPad™ sales have topped two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3. Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year.

"Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone."

iPad allows users to connect with their apps, content and the Internet in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before. Users can browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad's revolutionary Multi-Touch™ user interface. iPad is 0.5 inches thin and weighs just 1.5 pounds—thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook—and delivers up to 10 hours of battery life.

Developers have created over 5,000 exciting new apps for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch user interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. iPad will run almost all of the more than 200,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®.

So much for it being a niche product! Apple says it has sold two million iPads in 60 days since the launch of the tablet device. It sold the first million iPads in 28 days. It is hard to find some of the 3G enabled iPads in their retail stores. The pace of iPad sales is way ahead of the early results for iPhone, which took 74 days to sell the first million. According to some estimates, iPad is outselling the Mac itself.

According to GigaOM Pro, our research service, “the web tablet app market will be a significant one in just a few short years, going from $183 million in revenue in 2010 to $8.2 billion by 2015″ and the “overall momentum for this market will be driven early on by the iPad and Apple’s app store.”

Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year. There are about 5,000 special apps for iPad.

Related GigaOM Pro Research Report (sub req’d): Forecast: Tablet App Sales to Hit $8B by 2015

Infographic by Column Five Media

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After New iPhone App Launch, Skype Ready With 2-Way Video Calls on Nokia N900 —

If you are one of the few thousand people who own a Nokia N900, then sometime later this week Skype is going to offer you a ability to make two-way video calls on that device. You would be able to call any Skype user (whether on desktop or laptop) and have a two-way video communication, Russ Shaw, Skype’s vice president of Skype Mobile told GigaOM. Eventually you will be able to call other mobile clients and also to Skype-on-TV.

Shaw said that it was part of their ongoing close relationship with Nokia. Nokia N900 has dual cameras — one in the front and one in the back. The calls would work on both 3G and WiFi networks, though I bet the performance is going to be far superior on WiFi. Some of the smaller VoIP players such as Fring have already launched video calling enabled apps.

“We are going to do video calling across all our platforms and are agnostic about the operating system and carriers,” Shaw said. In other words, if the new iPhone (version 4) features dual cameras, then Skype is going to make its software work with iPhone. In a recent poll conducted by the company, an overwhelming 43 percent of Skype users said that they wanted mobile video.

Ironically, on Friday afternoon when I spoke to Shaw, he was unclear when company would launch its Skype-over-3G app for the iPhone, arguing that the company didn’t want to release any product that disappointed customers. And 24-hours later the app was available from the Apple’s iTunes App store. (For now these calls are free but eventually Skype is going to be charging folks for calls over 3G, which tells me they are using a solution very similar to the one they cobbled together for Skype-over-Verizon. For an alternate explanation, check out Andy Abramson’s post who thinks the magic is Skype’s SILK codec and working intimately with Apple hardware.)

Shaw said that the company was focused on seamless switching between 3G and WiFi. Anyway that app seems to have met its goals, prompting even their harsh critics to give it a thumbs up. Skype data shows that the company has seen 12 million downloads from the owners of iPhone and iPod Touch.

Shaw also confirmed that the official Android Skype app will be available before the end of the year. Skype was focusing on iPhone, Symbian and Android OS devices, Shaw said. In other words, Windows Phone and WebOS don’t figure in the company’s plans for now. “We are not doing anything directly on Palm but if a carrier wanted to do that, we can work with them,” he said. It was part of company’s strategy to take a cue from carriers on operating systems with a smaller footprint compared to the big three.

What about RIM? Shaw said that a lot of people want an over-the-top application. Verizon subscribers can get Skype on their Blackberry devices, thanks to a special relationship between the two companies. In other words, for now, all Blackberry owners who want Skype are out of luck.

Apple Selling Million iPads a Month —

So much for it being a niche product! Apple says it has sold two million iPads in 60 days since the launch of the tablet device. It sold the first million iPads in 28 days. It is hard to find some of the 3G enabled iPads in their retail stores. The pace of iPad sales is way ahead of the early results for iPhone, which took 74 days to sell the first million. According to some estimates, iPad is outselling the Mac itself.

According to GigaOM Pro, our research service, “the web tablet app market will be a significant one in just a few short years, going from $183 million in revenue in 2010 to $8.2 billion by 2015″ and the “overall momentum for this market will be driven early on by the iPad and Apple’s app store.”

Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year. There are about 5,000 special apps for iPad.

Related GigaOM Pro Research Report (sub req’d): Forecast: Tablet App Sales to Hit $8B by 2015

Infographic by Column Five Media

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The iPad has finally made its international debut, meaning that thousands and thousands of new users will be enjoying Apple’s latest device over the coming weeks.

With the launch of the iPad comes the international launch of the iPad App Store, making it possible for us to play Words With Friends with our friends in Australia. There are already thousands of apps available in the App Store, and with the exception of apps focused on media services like Netflix, ABC or Pandora, most are also available internationally.

We’ve been fortunate enough to have the iPad in our screen-smudging paws for the past two months and in that time we’ve surveyed well over 100 apps and games for the new platform. While this list could easily be four or five times as long as it is, we wracked our brains and decided to pick ten of our favorite iPad apps for the new iPad owner.

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1. Air Video

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The iPad is a great media player. The size of the screen coupled with the quality of the display really makes it a great way to catch up on lots of content. Although you can use iTunes to transfer movie and music files to your iPad, converting and transferring can be a complicated and tedious process. This is why Air Video is so great — it makes it extremely simple to stream video from your Mac or PC to your iPad.

Just install the free Air Video server client on your PC, tell it what folders to watch or include and then fire up the app. Now select your computer and feel free to go through your lists of available content and watch it in great quality on the iPad! Air Video does a really terrific job of “live conversion,” meaning your video is converted as it plays, which saves time and makes it really easy to enjoy your video collection on the couch.

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2. Real Racing HD

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Real Racing for the iPhone was a great racing game. Real Racing HD is even better. The use of the accelerometer for turning and maneuvering might make you look a little weird to your friends, but the graphics, sound, controls and gameplay are all top-notch.

Seriously, this is a great racing game and its a great game to really show off the power of the iPad!

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3. GoodReader for iPad

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We’ve written about our affinity for GoodReader both on the iPhone and the iPad in the past, but it bears a repeated mention. Simply put, GoodReader is one of the best document readers/file managers out there. Period. You can connect to Dropbox, Box.net, Google Docs, FTP servers, and local computers, and download files directly off the web.

More than just a PDF viewer (though it is a great PDF viewer), the app can read a variety of different file types and can even let you open documents inside other apps to make editing a breeze.

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4. Mondo Solitaire

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Mondo Solitaire was one of the apps we highlighted in our early roundup of iPad video previews. In practice, the app is extremely addictive and extremely entertaining.

Mondo Solitaire comes in two varieties, a pack of the most popular games or the whole shebang. If you like card games, we recommend getting the full package and then having a blast playing through tons of variations of Solitaire and Freecell.

I have personally spent many hours playing Mondo Solitaire that otherwise could have been spent sleeping or being productive.

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5. Wired Magazine

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Released earlier this week, Wired for the iPad has already sold over 24,000 copies. For good reason too: Wired for the iPad is a great example of what publishers and content creators can do when they really fire on all cylinders.

While we aren’t sure if we would buy Wired every month without some sort of better subscription plan, the first issue, which includes a look at the making of Toy Story 3, is really worth checking out.

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6. Kindle for iPad

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Apple’s iBooks application is fantastic, but when it comes to content selection, Amazon still has the lead. Kindle for the iPad is a really good e-reader app, and makes it easy to browse through books. It seamlessly launches the web-based book store to make purchasing a snap.

We think Apple has the edge in overall presentation, but you can’t beat Kindle in price or selection. Also, while not as utterly beautiful as iBooks, Kindle for the iPad is still great to look at.

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7. Epicurious

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Even if you’re like me and cooking consists of re-heating take-out and making reservations, there is something to love about the Epicurious app. There are so many recipes and ideas, not to mention gorgeous pictures, that this is a great app to have on hand before hitting the market or just to gaze at while waiting for the pizza delivery guy.

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8. Dropbox

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If you are a Dropbox user, you owe it to yourself to get the Drobox app for the iPad. It brings all of what makes the iPhone app great and makes it even better. You can save content directly to your device, you can upload content off your device and you can view and playback media content all in the app.

Dropbox is a great way to stay connected to the documents on your computer no matter where you are.

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9. The Guardian Eyewitness

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UK publication The Guardian released a really terrific iPad app that features its stunning photography. Visually, this app is one of our favorites. The form factor of the iPad makes it perfect for really enjoying and studying the art that accompanies news stories.

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10. NewsRack

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NewsRack is our current pick as the best newsreader available for the iPad. It syncs with Google Reader seamlessly, so if you add a feed, it is added to Google Reader — if you remove it, it’s removed there too. However, you can selectively sync only certain feeds or categories, which can make news reading on the iPad more manageable.

The iPad is a terrific way to browse the web, and that includes RSS feeds. NewsRack is a top-notch app that also works on the iPhone, if you want to keep everything in sync across devices.

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Your Picks

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You’ve seen our list of ten must-have apps, now tell us your picks! What apps do you love the most on your iPad, let us know!

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For more Apple coverage, follow Mashable Apple on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

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More iPad resources from Mashable:

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- 10 Awesome Apple iPad Cases
- 10 Great Sites for Watching Video on Your iPad
- iPad Accessories: A Quick Guide to Apple’s Official Add-Ons
- 10 Insanely Great iPad Apps We Can’t Wait to Use

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Reviews: App Store, Australia, Dropbox, Facebook, Google Docs, Google Reader, Pandora, Twitter

Tags: apple, apps, ipad, ipad apps, Mobile 2.0, tech

Qik has lived up to its name in clarifying some leaks indicating that EVO 4G owners on Sprint will be charged $5 a month to make use of its video chat services. As it turns out, that subscription fee will be for a new range of "advanced premium features," which will be elucidated on June 4 alongside the EVO's retail launch. The core two-way video calling will come absolutely free, we're promised, and only those yearning for extra features will have to dole out the cash. It seems clear from the wording of that statement that multi-party conversations will figure prominently in the premium set, though we're left guessing at what other ways Qik has for seducing us to part with our cash. Either way, good news if you wanted to keep things simple... and cheap.

Qik two-way video calling on the Sprint EVO 4G is free, premium service is not originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 May 2010 11:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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