The EU Parliament has on several occasions stated that access to the Internet is one of basic human rights. Now, Finland has become the first country to actually declare fast (broadband) Internet access a legal right.
In practice, this means that telecom companies in Finland will be required to provide all Finnish citizens – all 5.3 million of them – with broaband Internet connection of at least 1 Mbps, starting in July.
That’s not all. According to the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications Laura Vilkkonen, the plan is to provide all the citizens with even faster broadband speeds (100 Mbps) by 2015. “We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” she said.
This task is easier to achieve in Finland than most other countries, since its broadband penetration rate is among the highest in the world. In the US, the FCC may need as much as 350 billion dollars to expand broadband coverage throughout the country.
This decision by the Finnish Government is in contrast with the often heard proposals (especially in France and the UK, but also – surprisingly – in Finland) about the possible introduction of the three-strikes law, under which illegal file sharers would be disconnected from the Internet after repeated offenses. Making something a legal right doesn’t mean it cannot be taken away, but the government’s stance that broadband Internet access is similar to “banking services or water or electricity” should mean that net access should not be taken away from people lightly, if at all.

If Twitter added the ability to post video clips to the service, would you use it? That feature may be coming, according to a short and unsourced article today by Britain’s Telegraph. If true, such a service would compete with many existing Twitter video sites, including Twiddeo and Vidly.

The details, however, are suspiciously sparse, with the Telegraph merely citing discussions by the site’s founders:

The upgrade, which is being discussed by Twitter’s founders, will enable Twitter users to upload brief video snippets to their profiles directly from mobile phones, laptops and other devices.

Third party sites Twiddeo and Tweetube already allow Twitter users to post video tweets but only by creating links to their sites.

There’s been plenty of discussion about how Google, Microsoft, and other players in search are going to address “the Twitter problem” – the service’s ability to unearth breaking news and links far quicker than traditional search engines.
In fact, just last week, Google launched a new search option that allows users to filter search results to show only links that are new within the last hour.
However, competition might not even be necessary. According to The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital, Twitter is talking to both Google and Microsoft about licensing deals that would allow them to integrate Twitter data into their search engines.

From the report:

“According to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.”

Continuing, All Things Digital says that such deals would be worth “several million dollars” to Twitter and potentially include ongoing revenue sharing.
There are of course plenty of search engines that already utilize Twitter data, and Bing actually already launched one. Twitter could conceivably provide added value in the form of a truly full feed that includes all tweets (currently, Twitter search only goes several days back).
It’s certainly an interesting new twist on the evolving Twitter business model story, that points towards the company’s desire to remain independent and become financially viable, as opposed to get acquired by someone like Google or Microsoft. Now, we’ll have to wait and see if this actually happens, or gets filed away with the seemingly dozens of other Twitter business rumors we’ve seen pop up in recent months.

How do you say “What are you doing?” in Spanish, French, Italian, or German? That’s what Twitter wants to know, as it’s asking users to volunteer for a new project to translate the site into multiple languages (it’s currently available in only English and Japanese).
The project sounds quite similar to what Facebook has done to translate its site into more than 70 languages. Facebook, however, is a far more complex site requiring many more translations than the Twitter project will likely entail.

Here’s how Twitter describes the translation project:

“We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first. As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and we’ll have enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well.”

Clearly, translations are a huge opportunity for Twitter to expand its reach. Facebook has grown quickly around the world on the heels of its Translation project, and is even starting to make inroads in regions dominated by other social networks, like in Brazil, where Orkut remains top dog.

We’ve known this was coming for a while (some of you shared your GeoCities memories back in April), but Yahoo today sent out a final closure notice with the date of GeoCities’ demise: October 26.
Back in the proverbial day, GeoCities was the place where many a modern-day internet nerd cut his or her teeth. After a spectacular dot com purchase of $3.65 billion and an equally spectacular dot com bust, its closure marks the end of one of the earliest ages of the social web.

Yahoo, of course, has been busy slimming down and cutting costs under CEO Carol Bartz. With the company’s focus elsewhere, it makes sense to shut down what is essentially an internet relic. Still, to those who look back with nostalgia, October 26 could well be a wistful day. Check out the full farewell letter below, and let us know if you have any memories from the heady GeoCities days to share in the comments!

Most Gmail users are familiar with Google Labs, a nifty set of experimental features which aren’t quite ready to be rolled out to all users, but are good enough for a select subset of users who like to try out new things.
According to Cnet’s Natali DelConte, Twitter is planning a similar feature for the near future. At the FOWA conference in London, Twitter’s user experience and front end engineering lead Britt Selvitelle said that it’s coming “soon”. The idea behind it seems to be a bit different from Google Labs; while Google is using it to test their own ideas, Twitter will let developers create add-ons for the site.

While tech-savvy users can already browse through the hundreds of available third party Twitter apps, various add-ons, plugins and scripts to try out something new, Twitter Labs could help the rest of the user base, who don’t have time to do that much digging.

Google Wave has arrived. The real-time communication platform has been one of the hottest and most anticipated products in the tech and social media space for months. Soon around 100,000 people will be messaging each other in one of Google’s most ambitious projects to date.
So what if you’re one of the lucky ones to get an invite, or just want to understand exactly how this new tool works?
While not comprehensive, our guide on getting started with Google Wave will help you quickly learn the interface and important keyboard commands that will open up the full potential of Wave.

General Interface

The Google Wave interface is divided essentially into four boxes: Navigation, Contacts, Inbox, and your current Wave. Here’s a rundown of each of these core pieces of Wave:

Navigation: This is not your standard left-hand navigation bar. Yes, it has similarities to Gmail, but navigating Wave is definitely a new experience. Each of the items essentially filters your inbox for waves that fit what you’re looking for. “Active” refers to waves that have new activity, “History” checks for old, archived waves, and “Settings” lets you manage things like your extensions. You can also add custom searches (i.e. waves that discuss your company) and add folders. Adding a wave to a folder is as simple as drag-and-drop.

Contacts: Your contacts are more prominent in Wave. That’s because you drag and drop them to add them to waves, rather than type in an email address or a username. You can search through your contacts and manage them via your Google account. It’s still a bit buggy – Wave will tell you some people don’t have accounts when they do – but overall it’s smooth.
Inbox: The inbox in the middle of the Google Wave interface doesn’t work like an email inbox. The key to navigating the inbox are search and search commands. It’s the easiest way to filter different waves. We have a list of key search commands below.
Wave Box: This is the box on the right hand of Wave. This is where conversations happen. Add participants, discuss what you’d like, and add multimedia through Google Wave gadgets and extensions (for more on Wave Extensions, check out Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

This is the pure overview of the interface. However, if you want to learn more about the features and the terminology, we suggest checking out Google also created a quick YouTube video tutorial of Wave, courtesy of Wave’s mascot, Dr. Wave:

Starting a Conversation

Getting a conversation started in Google Wave is rather easy – it’s understanding all of the available conversation features that’s difficult. Let’s explore a few steps to get started with a new wave:

1. Click on the “New Wave” link. This will start a new conversation.
2. Drag and drop friends you’d like to have join your wave from your contacts box into the top of the wave.
3. Start typing.

Remember, Wave is different than email. You can reply to messages as threaded conversations and, more importantly, you can edit the text of anyone in the conversation. These options become available when you click on the downward facing arrow at the top of any message (a blip) within a wave.
Also note the top bar, with “Reply,” “Playback,” “Archive,” “Mute,” “Spam,” and “Read.” While most of these are self-explanatory, the feature you should be using liberally is “playback.” If you join a wave in progress, always start by playing back the wave to see how the conversation transpired.

Wave Search Commands
A big part of navigating through your Wave inbox are the search commands. They help you find public waves, your archived messages, or just waves related to work. Here are some of the most important commands to keep in mind:

is:read and is:unread: This will help you find all of the waves you have or have not read. is:active is the same as is:unread currently.
is:mute and is:unmute: The same type of deal – This helps you find conversations you may have muted or unmuted.
title:(keyword): This command helps you find waves with a specific word in their titles.
caption:(keyword): This helps you find waves with a keyword in the captions of attached images and files.
from:(address): This command will help you find waves from specific people. On the same token, from:me finds waves from you. to:(address) finds waves where it’s just you and the person you’re searching for.
past:(date), previous:(date), after:(date), and before:(date): These four commands help you search for waves in time periods, based on days, weeks, months, and years. Use “d” for day, “w” for week, “m” for month, and “y” for year. So, if you want to find something from before 3 months ago, you’d type “before:3m”. Yes, it’s complicated.
has: The has command will search for whether a wave has an attachment, a document, an image, or even a gadget (has:gadget).

There are actually a lot more commands. To read them all, we suggested checking out Google Wave’s advanced search terms list.

Wave Navigation

There are an abundance of keyboard shortcuts that make using Google Wave a more streamlined experience. Thanks to a list first created by Google’s Greg Dalesandre in the development version of Google Wave, we can bring you a full list of keyboard shortcuts, which we’ll update periodically.
First, here are the commands for Wave Navigation:

Up/Down Arrows: As you might expect, use the arrows to navigate messages.
Tab/Shift-tab: Same functionality as the Up/Down arrows (outside of edit mode).
Home/End: Moves you to the first or last message.
Space: Go to next unread message (note: it doesn’t have to be within the same wave).
Left/Right Arrows: Switch focus between digest panel and wave panel.
Page Up/Down: Currently doesn’t work properly due to a bug.
Ctrl-Space: Marks all messages as read.

Messages in Wave

Enter: Replies to messages. Your reply will appear just below the selected message. If it’s the first reply, it will not be indented (but otherwise it will be).
Ctrl-R: The same as enter.
Shift-Enter: Replies to messages at the end of a thread. Replies of this nature appear at the bottom with the same indentation in almost all cases.
Highlight Text + Enter: Creates an inline reply. Your reply will be indented inside the current message.
Ctrl-E: Edit a message.
Ctrl-Enter (while editing): Inserts an inline reply at the caret.

Text Editing


None of these commands will really come as a shock, but they’re still good to know.

Ctrl-B: Bolds text.
Ctrl-I: Italicizes text.
Ctrl-G: Adjust the color.
Ctrl-L: Currently links to another wave if you hightlight the text and put in the URL or Wave ID, but the keyboard shortcut will be changing soon according to Google.
Ctrl-C: Copies text.
Ctrl-X: Cuts text.
Ctrl-V: Pastes text.

Structural Formatting

Once again, not too many surprises here:

Ctrl-<#>: Changes the current line to a different-sized heading – 1 is biggest, 4 is smallest.
Ctrl-5: Adds bullets.
Ctrl-6: Normalizes text/removes bullets and headings. Does not remove italics, bold, or text edits.
Ctrl-7: Left alignment.
Ctrl-8: Right alignment.

Much, Much More to Come
Google Wave is far from a complete product. They will add new features, tweak the interface, and change entire chunks of it based on user feedback and the data they gather from this initial release. Because of that, we will continue to add to this guide and tweak it.

The web is buzzing with excitement and anticipation. In less than 24 hours, Google Wave will launch to 100,000 early adopters. The real-time communication platform has been making headlines ever since it was announced back in May as a result of its potentially game-changing features.
And while we’ve received our fair share of questions about Google’s newest product, one keeps popping up time and time again: how do I get an invite to Google Wave?

There Are Four Ways to Get an Invite

Google clarified things earlier today with an update to their blog. They specifically highlighted the four key ways you can secure an invite. Here are the methods and what you need to know:
1. You signed up early on for a Google Wave account. Google put up a request form for Wave invites not long after Wave was announced. Most of the invites arriving tomorrow will go to people on that list. Your chances improve if you signed up early on and wrote a message to the Wave team.
2. You have an account on the Developer Preview of Wave. The Sandbox version of Google Wave has been active for a select group of developers for several months now, allowing them to test Wave, report bugs, and build Wave extensions. They will all get accounts.
3. Some paying users of Google Apps will get accounts. It’s likely several companies asked Google for invites when the real-time tool launched. They will get accounts. Some schools that use Google Apps will also get early access.
4. You are invited by someone currently using Wave. This is the most intriguing revelation made today by the search giant. Here’s how Google explained it:

“We’ll ask some of these early users to nominate people they know also to receive early invitations — Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too. This, of course, will just be the beginning. If all goes well we will soon be inviting many more to try out Google Wave.”

Do you know what this reminds us of? Gmail. Do you remember when it first came out and there were a select number of invites users could send out? I remember that people were willing to pay cold, hard cash for one of those invites. You might see the same type of frenzy over Wave.
Regardless, these are currently the only four ways to get an account on Wave. So if you don’t get an invite tomorrow, you still have hope. You’ll probably have to beg someone for an invite, though.

One month ago, Twitter announced Project Retweet, Twitter’s plan to officially support the popular act of retweeting as a feature. Currently, users reshare interesting tweets using the RT syntax (e.g. “RT @ev“). What Twitter intends to do is formalize the process by making retweets a core feature and displaying retweeters underneath the original Tweet.
The upcoming change has sparked a heated debate. Twitter’s leadership and others believe it will improve the user experience.
So who’s right? While we cannot foretell the future, we will say this: the current system is broken. The retweeting syntax is all over the place, and it is almost certainly scaring off potential new users to Twitter. A streamlined, cleaner, universal system fixes that problem. That’s why Twitter needed to initiate project retweet, and that is why it will change Twitter for the better.

Pros: Cleaner and More Efficient

Let me start with this: the current retweet syntax is all over the place. While most people use the “RT @username” syntax, many others add the RT at the end of their tweets while others utilize “via @username” instead.
This is a practice that is confusing new users and turning them off to Twitter. Just imagine if you stepped into a restaurant and they all talked in strange lingo that you half understood. Would you stay? Now what if that lingo kept changing? I mean, if you got this mess the first time you visited, you’d be turned off too:
The new retweet feature is constant throughout all of Twitter. It looks the same and works the same no matter who is retweeting or even what app you use. It clearly labels who retweeted the post without any acronyms that new users don’t understand.
While there are many pros to the new retweet feature (easier to count retweets, easier to see who retweeted you, easier to see what you’ve retweeted, provides more credit to the original twitterer), the biggest one is that it just looks better and works the same no matter who you are. Less confusion is essential to Twitter’s business.

Cons: A Lack of Commenting

This efficiency and design though does come at a cost. That cost is the customization of retweets.
In the current iteration of the retweet feature, you will be unable to comment. This is a big problem for many heavy sharers. We like to provide context and commentary on what we are sharing, especially if it is a friend or a worthy cause that we are retweeting:

I don’t disagree with the assertion that we are killing part of the conversation. But that doesn’t mean that Twitter won’t implement commenting in future iterations. It also means that retweets will be cleaner, as there was no standard for commentary either.

The Reality: The Current System Is Broken
While most readers probably retweet on a regular basis, the truth is that very few people retweet currently. This is a subject discussed in-depth with Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone.

The plan is to get the [retweeting feature] launched, learn from user engagement, and iterate as necessary. This is something most smart social media companies do with feature launches.
Twitter hopes that Project Retweet will vastly increase retweeting and resharing, because it’s actually a small percentage of users that retweet currently.

While Dan Zarrella and other heavy retweeters have legitimate issues with the new retweeting system, this feature isn’t being built for them. It’s being built for the new user who gets turned off by all the confusion and by the casual user that benefits from a simpler and more streamlined retweeting option.

Twitter is better off if more people retweet, and Twitter is better off with more users being engaged. The new retweeting system fixes both of these problems. It will take several iterations until Twitter gets Project Retweet exactly right, but it was right to do something about the current retweeting system. It will make Twitter a richer and more engaging experience for its millions of users.

Web-based phone service JAJAH has just released their Twitter calling feature JAJAH@Call in beta, giving participating members the ability to call each other, free of charge, by way of Twitter.

The calling service works when a member tweets “@call @twittername.” The tweet will cause both phones to ring, and the Twitterers will be connected without the service sharing either telephone number.

JAJAH@Call also works independent of the platform you use, so whether you use the web, a destkop client, or a mobile application when tweeting, the tweet-to-call service should work without hiccup.

Though pretty unique, JAJAH@Call has some interesting conditions associated with the service, none more interesting than the 2 minute talk time limitation, which the company considers the verbal equivalent of a tweet. Also, in order to work, both parties — caller and recipient — need to be members of the JAJAH@Call service.

We’re quite intrigued by the voice-over-Twitter idea, though we do think it could create funky situations where you receive phone calls from Twitterers you don’t really want to talk to. In some instances, this could be a great way to immediately contact someone you need to reach on a pressing matter, but in others, it could turn into a big if not awkward distraction.

We can just envision the uncomfortable greetings now. Hello, I’m so and so, and I follow you on Twitter, my Twitter name is XXXX. Do you want to go out on a date sometime? Or, say for instance, you’re in the middle of a sentence and reach the 2 minute limit and you’re both cut off from each other. One saving grace is that calls can only be made to people who follow you, which means should a particular caller annoy you, you can unfollow them on Twitter to prevent future voice communication.

We have to give it to JAJAH for pushing the Twitter envelope and are looking forward to giving the service a try. Let us know your take on voice-over-Twitter in the comments.

You’re probably familiar with Google AdSense and AdWords, Google’s flagship advertising products. It’s how Google makes its billion of dollars. Highly targeted text ads appear on Google search and third party websites that are part of the AdSense program. Advertisers buy ads based on keywords, with more popular keywords costing more per click than less popular terms.

This has only applied to text ads though, not banner or display ads. But speculation was rampant that Google would apply its unique and lucrative ad model to display ads after its $3.1 Billion DoubleClick acquisition.

Now that speculation has become reality. Google has just launched the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and it is just like AdWords and AdSense, except that it is a marketplace for display ads.

First, here is what Google said in its announcement:

“We’ve been working hard to put these principles into practice, and today we’re excited to announce the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a step towards creating a more open display advertising ecosystem for everyone. The Ad Exchange is a real-time marketplace that helps large online publishers on one side; and ad networks and agency networks on the other, buy and sell display advertising space.

These publishers and ad networks manage and represent large volumes of ads and ad space from lots of advertisers and websites. By bringing them together in an open marketplace in which prices are set in a real-time auction, the Ad Exchange enables display ads and ad space to be allocated much more efficiently. This improves returns for advertisers and enables publishers to get the most value out of their online content.”

Essentially, the small-time advertiser or business can now buy targeted display ads on thousands of DoubleClick ad-serving websites. This could have some major repercussions on the entire web. Some possibilities:

- It could significantly increase revenue for Google, as a highly targeted ad marketplace means people are paying more for the ads they want to serve.

- It increases Google’s competition with Yahoo, the current leader in display advertising.

- Highly targeted ad campaigns could effectively reach everywhere. This could be a major boon to marketers.

If you want to learn more, Google has a PDF explaining the Ad Exchange, as well as a video overview:

Twitter has been making a series of big announcements outlining changes to the microblogging service such as geolocation tweets and Project Retweet. But quietly Twitter has been making some subtle interface changes too.

A few days ago, some of our readers noticed some font changes to Twitter pages. But two changes that seem to have rolled out today also piqued our interest. First, there is now a new “Follow Bar” which provides a cleaner interface for following, replying, or blocking specific Twitter users. Secondly, the horrendous and ugly default avatar of old has been replaced by a variety of multicolored Twitter birds.

In case you need a refresher, here is the old avatar, which you would have had on your profile until you uploaded a picture. Remember the weird brown smiley face?

Stare into its creepy blue eyes, and you might suddenly find your soul missing. Yes, that’s how ugly it is.

Now, here is the new, updated default avatar for Twitter profiles:

So you may notice that they not only updated the avatar, but they also changed the follow bar. It extends across the page, has hover text, and is just all kinds of win. You’ll also notice that the avatar above is different than the one at the very top of this article. Different people have different avatar colors – orange, blue, green, and others have all been sighted.

It looks like that their slew of new hires are paying dividends, especially Twitter’s Creative Director Doug Bowman, formerly Google’s visual design leader.

We’re glad that the old avatar is going the way of the dinosaur. Almost anything was better than that thing.

Is reading online news broken? Google seems to think so as they just launched Google Fast Flip, a Google Labs experiment that’s designed to help you flip through news online as fast as you would if you were holding a print magazine or paper.

Fast Flip is essentially just a funky way to flip through articles from three dozen Google partners including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fast Company. Partners share in advertising revenue generated through the labs experiment.

With Fast Flip you can flip through snapshots of the day’s popular news, drill into specific sections and topics, or narrow stories by publisher source. Once you select a story, you can view the article in its totality and use the arrows to flip to the previous or next story.

Fast Flip comes with additional features like the ability to share stories via email, story liking, dynamic content based on your viewing experience, and mobile-friendly versions.

According to Google’s post on the launch, the point is to replicate the magazine or print reading experience and make browsing stories faster. The company writes:

“Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting.”

On first look, Fast Flip feels like a bit flop. While certainly unique, it’s likely to appeal to a very small segment of online news consumers. Sure, the online news reading experience could be improved, but Fast Flip is more of a tangential approach than it is a step in a revolutionary direction.

What’s your take on Fast Flip? Share your thoughts in the comments.

At this point it’s already the stuff of legend. In geek circles, the Apple Tablet is more coveted, more sought after, and more mysterious than Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the jackalope combined.

One thing that seems increasingly clear is the market has been dancing around the question, “what is the perfect computing form factor between smartphone and full notebook?” for some time. The unexpectedly popular netbook craze is one answer to that. I think Apple’s tablet will be another.

Moreover, I think the Apple Tablet will be disruptive to the still formative eReader and digital publishing industry. Amazon is the current forerunner there, with the popular Kindle taking the lead over earlier player Sony and smaller companies like iRex, FoxIt and Bookeen. They’re already sitting right on top of a pile of published works to distribute, and right now their vertical strategy is almost the only game in town.

But it won’t be for long. And there are some major corners of the publishing industry who haven’t quite chosen sides yet: newspapers and magazines. Some in those camps are flirting with the forthcoming Plastic Logic Reader, and others are poking at the idea of developing their own hardware devices and trying to build their own vertical markets for content.

In other words, the time is right — for Apple to swoop in and steal the show the way they did when the music industry was struggling to find the answers to how to go digital gracefully. Let’s take a look at why an Apple Tablet would not only be a timely device, but could be poised to be a powerful player in the shift to digital publishing.

It Won’t Be a One-Trick Pony

There’s both an upside and a downside to single-function devices. The upside is they do exactly what some sizable niche market wants and they do it better than almost anything else out there. The downside is they appeal to sizable niche markets, and risk being subsumed by multi-function devices sooner or later.

Case in point: your phone. You can’t buy a mobile phone that’s just a phone anymore. Well — you can, but you have to reach for it. Not so long ago MP3 players and portable video players were separate devices — now you’re hard-pressed to find a media player that doesn’t do both… and for that matter, isn’t also a phone.

Portable gaming devices have cameras (so you can send photos to Facebook, of course), still cameras shoot video (as do media players, which could unseat single-function devices like the Flip Mino…), heck — even printers have app stores these days. Steve Jobs even alluded to this himself in a recent interview with David Pogue: “I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing. But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.”

It Will Be in Color

Let’s face it, one of the biggest limitations of e-ink is that displays are currently only monochrome, except for the Fujitsu Flepia that is only being sold (expensively) in Japan. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has gone on record stating that a color Kindle would be “multiple years away” because of the progress (or lack thereof) being made in laboratory prototypes.

Other companies have color e-ink products in the works, but even they don’t see any mass production before the end of next year at the earliest. And even when we get there, e-ink technology faces unmatchable competition from the existing technologies of LCD and OLED in the visual quality afforded by the contrast ratio department. The best a color eReader can hope for currently is about 20 to 1 contrast ratio, with LCD typically measured in the thousands to 1 range and OLED in the tens of thousands to 1.

For all of these reasons, we see every opportunity for someone like Apple to swoop in and upend the digital print content market with an awesome tablet device married to the great content delivery engine it already has with the iTunes Store. And most importantly it won’t be just books — it will be graphic novels and newspapers (with ads!) and slick, glossy magazines (with ads!).

Once you start thinking about all the places a “magazine” can go once it gets on an interactive device with an internet connection, you can imagine publishers starting to find a digital ocean they can finally swim in. One could argue they have that ocean already, but think about how multi-touch on a device you can hold in the hand offers something distinctive from mouse, keyboard and monitor land.

And what is iTunes LP if not a stepping stone to a great multimedia content delivery engine? With iTunes 9, Apple is already selling digital books (warning: iTunes link).

It Will Be Multi-touch

We touched on this already in the last section (pun intended!): the secret’s in the interface. We’ve been trundling along with mouse, keyboard and monitor as the primary computing interface for a dang long time at this point. The tablet PC was at least successful enough to stick around, but it didn’t exactly revolutionize the computing world after the form factor’s introduction in 2001. And only recently did they start supporting Multi-touch input.

To what device do we owe the relatively newfound popularity of multi-touch? That’s right. That one. It turns out that multi-touch is an intuitive way to interact with a lot of different objects, because human beings are so attuned — perhaps even evolved — to using our fingers to perform these kinds of gestures. It feels so natural because it is natural.

Apple has already brought Multi-touch to the trackpad of its MacBook Pro laptop line. The next logical step is to bring that interface to a larger, tablet-style computing device that doesn’t have to be quite as portable as a mobile phone, but will be held in the hands nonetheless.

It Will Be Sexier

Don’t get me wrong, the Kindle isn’t an eyesore or anything. It’s just a bit, shall we say, utilitarian in some respects. There’s markedly more suave in evidence in the Kindle 2 versus the original (see the comparison below with the original Kindle on the left). And yet, it still falls on the geekier side of the spectrum.

One thing that limits the Kindle’s sex appeal? Its keyboard. With the iPhone, Apple has already proven that a digital device doesn’t need to waste lots of screen real estate with all those keys. Of course, there are still those in the hardcore QWERTY camp out there, and we don’t see the physical keyboard disappearing from all computing devices anytime soon.

However, there is one conspicuously suitable form factor for a keyboard-less computer: a tablet. Give it one big juicy screen and a virtual keyboard, take down the Apple Store for a few minutes, and listen for the sound of thousands of early adopters reaching for their wallets. And once those early adopters bring that thing home for the holidays, fuggedaboutit. Everyone will have to have one. And they won’t even entirely know why.

What do you think — Apple Tablet: inevitable fact, or wishful fiction? Will Jobs and company go after the digital publishing market, despite protesting too much? Will you be untempted by an iSlab, or have you already been practicing your credit card quickdraw for the next Apple event?

Yesterday, Twitter expanded its Terms of Service, turning it into a 15 section document that encompasses everything from spam to tweet ownership. However, the addition that’s getting the most buzz is advertising.

Twitter has yet to turn on any major revenue stream, despite being in business since 2006. However, Twitter opened the door to the possibility of advertising in both its TOS and a blog post announcing the changes. This could be a significant profit machine for the microblogging company, but it could also cause user dissatisfaction or even revolt.

If Twitter decides to turn on the ad machine, how will users react? We’re interested in the possibility, so we’ve decided to explore the potential ramifications. More importantly though, we want your vote on whether you would be fine with ads on Twitter.

Ads on Twitter: The Possibilities

Not all ad formats are made equal, and because of this, not all user reactions are equal, either. There is a difference between a giant pop-up banner ad and a less intrusive sponsored tweet.

Some of the advertising possibilities:

1. Sponsored Tweets: A lot like Digg Ads, these tweets would appear in your stream (likely in a different-colored box) with a text-based advertisement and a link.

2. On-Page Ads: This would be akin to a Google Adsense ad on a web page or a banner ad. If you visit the Twitter homepage actually, you’ll see something similar – the Twitter definitions. There are areas to place ad spots. How users would take it is another story.

3. Mobile Ads: There is often extra character space at the end of Twitter text messages. Adding a small sponsored ad to the end could be lucrative but considered intrusive.

There are plenty of possibilities, some more innovative than others, but the end result would still be advertisers paying for space somewhere on Twitter.

Twitter has to make money to survive, but the introduction of any ad format will generate drama and attention. The more intrusive, the more anger. If you cannot opt out of the ads, it could generate more backlash. If it just appears without an announcement, it raises the same problem.

However, we think that Twitter has learned from the blunders of other companies and understands that if it is to introduce a new ad format, it has to be up-front about it and the format has to be novel.

Your Opinion

We want to know what you think, though. Would ads on Twitter ruin the experience, or would you tolerate them so that Twitter can expand and add more features (and more servers)?

With Twitter growing so dramatically and in so many directions over the last few months, it’s probably no surprise that they have decided to expand their Terms of Service – the core rules that govern the use of Twitter. The company announced the changes today in a detailed blog post.

The new TOS, which is far more expansive and specific than the old one, not only addresses privacy concerns, but ownership, spam, rights, and links. The microblogging company said that, now that they better understand how users utilize Twitter, they can update the TOS to match.

While there are many changes, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone highlighted four key areas in where they updated the TOS:

“Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.

Ownership—Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.

APIs—The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We’re also working on guidelines for use of the API.

SPAM—Abusive behavior and spam is also outlined in these terms according to the rules we’ve been operating under for some time.”

The new TOS has 15 sections which better encompasses potential issues on Twitter like privacy and ownership. This change, as well as the announcement, was probably a necessary move to avoid the Facebook Terms of Service fiasco that occurred back in February.

The two things that strike us though are the discussion of ads and that you own your tweets. This TOS seems to be a starting point for adding advertising to the Twitter platform. At the very least, it clearly says the option is open. It is a major potential source of revenue, after all.

On tweet ownership: we’re glad to hear that they are ours. We worked hard to make all of those witty 140 character remarks, after all.

Much of the content on this blog involves information on marketing your site through social media and social networking sites. However, maybe you want to create your own networking site to fill an existing void or rather than using some of those that already exist. If you are interested in building a networking site, you could of course have the site built from scratch, or you could use some type of existing platform to handle the back end of the site.

In this post we’ll look at 9 options for creating your own social network. Some are free options, and others are paid options that may be more appealing depending on your situation.

Ning

With Ning you can create your own social network very quickly for free. If you’re serious about building the site into something significant you can upgrade to a paid version with more features.

BuddyPress

For WordPress users, BuddyPress may be an attractive option. With BuddyPress you can turn a WordPress MU installation into a social networking site.

Pligg

Pligg is a common choice (open source) for social news sites, such as Sphinn and Design Float. Pligg gets criticized frequently for the poor security at Design Float, but the site doesn’t show any signs of being actively managed, so it’s hard to blame Pligg for that.

KickApps

KickApps is a paid option that will allow you to build a social network with a lot of features. Pricing starts at $39.95 per month for the smallest plan.

CrowdVine

CrowdVine allows you to create a simple networking site for your group or organization. There are both free and paid options available.

CollectiveX

CollectiveX will allow you to create a social site for your group, organization or association. There are several different packages available including a free plan. Paid plans start at $9 per month and there are several premium features that you can add on for an additional fee.

Drupal

Drupal is a popular open source content management system that can be used to create social networking and social media sites. Design Bump, a social news site for the design community, is built on Drupal. There are a number of modules that can be used for building a social networking site with Drupal, here is a list.

Elgg

Elgg is an open source option that was created specifically to power social networking sites.

Dolphin

Dolphin is another free, open source option. It includes features like photo sharing and video sharing, among others.

If the Newspaper Association of America and Google were to display their relationship on Facebook, the description would read “It’s complicated.” As newspaper revenues continue to tank, the NAA has stepped up its sort of passive-aggressive lashing out at the search giant for, well, essentially being more effective at monetizing the distribution of its content than they are.

In a twist that’s probably a surprise to almost no one, the potential suitor for saving the newspapers from the bugaboo of Google might well be… Google. The company submitted a document indicating it is in the process of building a sophisticated micropayments system based on Google Checkout that would allow publishers to charge for individual pieces or bundles of content.

It’s clear that the system is still only in the very early planning stages at this point, but Google says in the document it expects the new payment structure to be “available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year.” That sounds like the micropayment system will be fast-tracked to deliver reportedly “extremely simple” merchant integration and a solution to the major problem of transaction costs that currently inhibits micropayment plans from being implemented widely on the web.

Google Micropayments: An iTunes-like Model?

We’ll give you one guess whose playbook Google plans to borrow from on the business model side of things: Apple’s App Store (1.8 billion downloads can’t be wrong, it seems). In a brief paragraph Google discusses a similar revenue share to the iTunes model as well as its own Android Market, which both take a 30% cut of the total revenue and pay out 70% to the developer (or in this case, publisher).

Still, they make sure to include a cautionary warning about the pipe dream notion that suddenly charging for content on the web is the solution to newspapers’ woes: “We do not believe it will be the norm for accessing content.”

Check out the full document Google submitted to the NAA below. Let us know in the comments: what would it take for you to spend money for online content? What kind of payment packages might make sense in a brave new world of micropayments? Or will ducking back inside the paywall only hasten print news’s demise?

Google’s proposal to the Newspaper Association of America

Users of WordPress hosted blogs (WordPress.com) received a new spell checking tool today, by way of parent company Automattic’s acquisition of After the Deadline, a tool that is “so much better than other checkers I’d used,” says Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg.

The features of After the Deadline – and now WordPress – are explained well in the video below, but like other recent Automattic acquisitions (PollDaddy, IntenseDebate, Gravatar), this seems to be all about taking a third-party blogging tool and giving it the scale to become far better than it could be on its own.

In the case of After the Deadline, this means “the technology is learning from millions of blog posts on WP.com to make the contextual parts of the checker smarter and smarter,” says Mullenweg. In other words, now that it’s part of every WordPress blog, After the Deadline is going to get much smarter, much faster, which should be good for everyone that uses it. That includes self-hosted WordPress blogs (WordPress.org) too, which can get After the Deadline by installing this plugin.

Google Wave arrives on September 30th. On that day, Google will start sending out 100,000 invites to non-developers to its much-anticipated real-time communication platform.

It’s not even released and it’s generating more hype than almost any other web product in recent memory. The reason stems from its game-changing features and their potential applications on business, education, customer service, email, social networking, and more.

So with Wave on the way, we wanted to explore some of the potential of Google’s upcoming product. We have a few of our own ideas and included some from Google Wave developers, but more than anything, we want your ideas, so be sure to leave your great Google Wave invention in the comments! Who knows, maybe we’ll feature them in the future!

1. Wave-Powered Forums

This idea’s actually been in my head before, but it’s articulated with some depth by Andrew Camel in the Google Wave API Google Group:

“So I thought that it would be an awesome feature of google wave to have it power a forum. Each thread, instead of being multiple different posts, it would just be a google wave. So, instead of having to try a discussion by posting and going back to the page and checking for new replies and while you were posting, you missed a new part of the discussion, you can post like you are having an instant-message session and you can also save the posts like forum threads. I really think that this would be a great use of the google wave api.”

Real-time threads? Saving waves like forum threads? Google Wave?! Sign us up!

2. Wave-powered Commenting System

“One possibility: Google Wave Embeds may be a real-time replacement to static comments. If Google perfects wave embeds, you could even see YouTube.com comments replaced with waves, although it is way too early to make any calls on the potential of this.”

Now that we’ve had some time to play with Wave, we think more than ever that Wave as a commenting system is a real possibility. Each blog post or YouTube video could have a new wave, where users could converse about practically anything in real-time. Anybody who comes in late can just play back the wave and get up to speed. It could be a whole new era for commenting.

3. Wave-Based Content Management System

A thread in the API group discusses the possibility of using Wave as a project management system. I’ll be honest – even I’ve been toying with this idea. Here’s what Jason Salas said in the thread:

I think that maybe many of the major CMS vendors will create extensions (if we don’t do it ourselves) to integrate their products with Wave. That’s what I’m working on now. But that is a neat idea to actually use Wave as its own CMS platform, with assumed features
like document creation/management, scheduling, RSS feeds, (micro) blogging, archival/search, etc.”

Can’t you see it?

4. Wave for Customer Support

This idea actually comes from a thread in the Google Wave development preview titled “What Will You Use it For?” It’s a remarkable discussion and brainstorming session over the potential of wave. One of the most fleshed-out ideas in the thread, though, is Wave for customer support. Here are some of the bullet-points for how Wave could be used in customer support:

- Sending trouble tickets
- Incident tracking can be a wave
- Call center analytics gadget
- Distribution list gadget
- Customer meta-data gadget
- Surveys can be a wave

Real-time customer support? Yeah, someone please build that.

5. Wave for Education

Google is giving some schools and businesses an early look at Google Wave. But why? What could Wave possibly accomplish in the realm of education and business? A lot, we firmly believe.

I refer once again to the “What Will You Use it For?” Wave in the dev preview for some ideas for how Wave can be used in education.

- Building a more interactive / creative learning environment
- Proofreading / writing papers
-Brainstorming potential project ideas
- Interactive tutoring from home
- Collaborative Environment for Cyber Schooling

With more widgets, you could embed streams and communicate with professors in real-time. We’re excited about Wave’s potential to transform education.

What Are Your Ideas?

We’ve highlighted some of our ideas and many ideas from enthusiasts across the web. So now it’s your turn. What is your idea for Google Wave? We want to hear your thoughts and your opinions in the comments.

Oh, and if you need a little inspiration for your idea, be sure to check out our comprehensive Google Wave coverage:

Twitter is good for a great many things, from sharing music to building your brand, from finding friends to playing games. But while we know all about what Twitter is good for, is it possible to actually do good on Twitter? How do you do it? As it turns out, there are many ways to help out others just by tweeting.

We’ve collected some of our favorites in the round up below. If you know of any other ways to do good on Twitter, please share them in the comments!

1. Follow Charities

Probably the simplest way to start doing good on Twitter, is to follow the Twitter accounts of your favorite charities. Charities use Twitter to spread information about their causes and campaigns, and you can stay connected to those issues by following them. For non-profit organizations, Twitter is an amazing way to reach constituents and you can help them extend their reach by retweeting the things that they tweet out to your network.

The Summer of Social Good campaign may have recently come to a close, but you can still support the charities involved by following them on Twitter – Oxfam America, The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, and WWF. There are also many other charities on Twitter, so follow your favorites and retweet their information.

2. Participate in Twitter Fund Drives

Twitter has proven to be an incredible way to raise money. Because information has the potential to spread so quickly, news of a fundraising drive can reach millions of people through retweets in a relatively short amount of time. As a result, Twitter becomes a great vehicle for encouraging people to donate to a cause, and a number of highly successful fundraising events have been held over Twitter.

The most well-know is probably Twestival, a collection of Twitter-organized festivals held all over the world last February that raised over $250,000 for charity: water.

But Twestival isn’t the only Twitter fundraising success story. Last November, Tweetsgiving raised over $11,000 to build a new classroom for a school in Tanzania, and 12for12k, an organization trying to raise $12,000 each for 12 charities over 12 months, has held a number of Twitter-based fundraisers. Perhaps the most successful Twitter fundraising campaign, was the one earlier this year that raised nearly a million dollars to help pay for a heart transplant for Eric De La Cruz, the brother of a CNN Internet correspondent. (Unfortunately, Eric died on July 4th of his rare heart condition, severe dilated cardiomyopathy.)

Twitter fundraising events are happening all the time, so keep your eyes open and be on the lookout for trending hashtags corresponding to a fundraising event. One currently running Twitter fundraising campaign is 140 Smiles by Operation Smile, an organization that raises money to provide children with cleft lips or palates with life-altering facial surgery, and is attempting to raise money for 140 such operations.

3. Help Someone Find a Job

Twitter is a great way to find a job, but in the current tough global economy, those without work need all the help they can get finding work. And that’s the idea behind @JobAngels. It works like this: those in need of work, throw out a tweet using the hashtag #JobAngels, then others help those people find jobs.

To get started, just do a search for #jobangels or follow the Job Angels account to find those looking for work. If you know of a job that fits their need, tweet it out to them.

4. #BlameDrewsCancer

When social media guru Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, he didn’t roll over and complain, “Why me?” Instead, he did something radical. He launched Blame Drew’s Cancer, a Twitter campaign helping people blow off steam, beat up on cancer, and raise money for charity in the process.

The idea is simple. Whenever something goes wrong in your life, you simply blame Drew’s cancer by tweeting using the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. His sponsor, 23andme is donating $1 to LIVESTRONG for everything that’s blamed on his cancer (over 24,000 things so far!).

Drew is also holding a 24-hour Blame-a-thon on 09/09/09.

5. Give Twollars to Charity

Twollars is a really interesting way to pledge money to charity using Twitter. Essentially, Twollars are a Twitter-based currency with no hard money value. Users start with 50 Twollars and can give them to each other or to charities via Twitter. Twollars are worth nothing until someone buys them (at a rate of 10 Twollars per US$1). I know what you’re thinking: why would anyone buy something that’s worth nothing?

The reason is all about awareness. Twollars can only be redeemed for cash by charities, so businesses that buy Twollars are actually making donations to charities (for which they receive awareness) and users donating Twollars are really spreading awareness of that charity’s good work. By donating Twollars to the American Red Cross, for example, you’re actually saying, “I like what the Red Cross does, and I vote for some business to donate money to them.”

6. Start or Sign a Petition

One of the best ways to organize and raise awareness about an issue, is to start and sign a petition. Twitter has made it absolutely dead simple to create and spread petitions by combining both the means of signing and the means of spreading the word into the same action: the retweet.

There are many Twitter petition platforms out there, and each works a bit differently. One of the best is Act.ly, which is now also a platform for organizing tweetups.

BONUS: Organize a Tweetup

Which brings us to our final point. A tweetup is an offline meeting organized via Twitter, and they’re an incredible way to gather like-minded people and raise awareness for a cause, issue, or charitable organization. By bringing people together offline, you can make the issue at hand more real and get people more actively involved.

In what other ways can you use Twitter for good? Let us know in the comments.

Exactly one year ago today, the Google Chrome browser was launched to the world. And, in Google-like fashion, they took the unconventional route of announcing Chrome via comic book. Do you remember all of the discussion around Google’s decision to enter the browser market?

Now, 365 days later, Google is commemorating Chrome’s first birthday with some impressive stats. To get the full picture of where Chrome stands today though, we need to look at all the numbers.

The Chrome Road Ahead

While Google’s commemorative blog post talks a great deal about birthday cakes and birthday balloons, the numbers-oriented company did reveal a plethora of interesting facts about the browser. Here is what Google shared:

“Since September 2, 2008, there have been:

– 51 developer releases, 21 beta releases or updates, and 15 stable releases or updates
– Over 20,600 bugs filed (4367 of them were duplicates, 3505 have been fixed, which leaves a whole lot left to go!)
– 11 external committers and bug editors, 46 external code contributors
– 50 Chrome Experiments
– 26 posts on the Google Chrome blog
– 12 Chrome Shorts, a collection of short films about Google Chrome
– A sequel to the comic in Japanese

More importantly, we’ve improved by over 150% on Javascript performance since our initial beta.”

Those numbers are impressive, but they’re almost entirely development-related. The stat that industry analysts, media, and early adopters care about though, is market share. So in 12 months, how much ground has Google made?

The answer: not much. According to stats from Market Share/Net Applications, Chrome only has 2.84% of the market, far behind Internet Explorer’s 66.87% or Firefox’s 22.98%.

Still, it’s only had a year, and it isn’t even officially out for Mac yet (disappointingly). And big developments, like the the Google/Sony deal to pre-load Chrome on Sony PCs are going to boost its market share.

More time is needed before we know whether Chrome was a smart project or a failed endeavor. Will Google push Chrome even harder as it fixes the bugs and makes it into a viable browsing alternative? Or will Google lose focus as it builds the related Google Chrome OS? Only time will tell.

Speaking at today’s Social Good Conference, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg made another announcement surrounding the Facebook Gift Shop: charity gifts.

In a test starting next week, (RED), Kiva, Toms, and WWF will each offer 1-2 gifts at $5 or $10 each. Facebook users will be able to buy these gifts for friends, and the proceeds will go to the charity associated with the gift. This is essentially an extension of an increasingly popular offline concept – the idea of giving a gift to a recipient’s favorite charity as a present.

This isn’t the first time Facebook is experimenting with virtual gifts for charity – earlier this year, they launched a similar initiative upon hitting the 200 million member milestone. However, as Facebook moves further into gifts and payments, charity gifts may become a staple of the site.

According a company spokesperson, “this is an alpha initiative and is not available to other charities at this time, but we may open up the program to new partners in the future pending the results. It is our goal to give our users a way to support the causes and issues that are important to them on a global scale.”

Facebook has been facing some heat in Canada for violation of that country’s privacy laws, and tomorrow the Canadian privacy commissioner will announce what the social networking company will be doing to address those concerns.

The issue surrounds retention of customer data even after a user cancels his or her account, which the Canadian privacy commission claims violates the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

There are also apparently concerns regarding how Facebook shares user information with third parties, particularly the now almost one million software developers making use of the Facebook application platform.

Though there’s no word yet on what exactly Facebook will do to address the privacy concerns, what is revealed at tomorrow’s press conference could have wider implications for other social networks and services surrounding privacy standards and the usage of customer data. Tamir Israel of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic said he also expects those changes to extend beyond Canadian borders as well and to possibly be implemented Facebook-wide.

Facebook has also informed us they’ll be doing a follow-up after tomorrow’s announcements:

“We will be having a media call tomorrow following the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s press conference. The call will be tomorrow (August 27) at 11:30 AM EDT.”

Do you think keeping customer data after an account is terminated is a violation of privacy? What privacy standards do you think social networks should adopt? Share your comments below.

Wikipedia is one of the most prominent cases for world collaboration and social media in action. Unlike the standard encyclopedia, often written by experts and sourced from the same, Wikipedia articles are entirely community-built, often without restrictions. If you can create an account, you can write and edit Wikipedia articles. It is that feature that as made it into one of the world’s most popular websites.

Now a core feature, perhaps a core principal, of “the free encyclopedia anyone can edit” is about to become restricted. According to The New York Times, editing articles about living people on Wikipedia will require approval from an experienced editor first.

Is this a fundamental shift to the Wikipedia philosophy, or a necessary step to assure that quality reigns over misinformation?

Flagged Revisions

The lengthy New York Times piece goes into detail about this plan. Or, as Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales called it, a test:

“It is a test. We will be interested to see all the questions raised. How long will it take for something to be approved? Will it take a couple of minutes, days, weeks?”

The new restrictions are called flagged revisions. Before any newbie or novice updates the Wikipedia page of a living person, a senior editor has to sign off on the change before it goes live. This will occur to the English edition of Wikipedia in the next few weeks. It’s been in testing already, as the German-language version already has this restriction on all articles.

Why the change now though? Wikimedia chairman Michael Snow had this to say to the NYT:

“We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. There was a time probably when the community was more forgiving of things that were inaccurate or fudged in some fashion — whether simply misunderstood or an author had some ax to grind. There is less tolerance for that sort of problem now.”

Wikipedia Turns the Page

As Wikipedia’s influence has grown, so has the amount of reliance people have placed in the social media non-profit. People go to Wikipedia first for information on almost every topic. It has replaced the paper and binder encyclopedias of old, especially for the new generation.

However, adding misinformation and inaccurate edits is relatively easy, and those changes could stay up for hours, days, or even weeks in some cases. It’s been one of Wikipedia’s major drawbacks. The new flagged revisions feature is really the only effective way to address the issue of inaccuracy. We won’t be surprised if the change is imposed on all articles eventually.

Still, we can’t help but feel a bit sad that this change had to happen. Wikipedia was egalitarian in the spread and use of information, and it treated everyone as equal contributors of knowledge. While that may not necessarily be true in the real world, it still was the driving force behind the creation of 3 million articles, more than any other encyclopedia could ever hope to boast.

The move was necessary, but it does mark a new chapter in the Wikipedia information age and the end of an old one.

This is a bit of a shocker. Facebook, who has seemingly been in a race to emulate many of Twitter’s features, just announced that it’s launching the ability for Facebook Page admins to simultaneously update both their Page and Twitter.

Facebook explains how this will work in a blog post:

“If you manage a Facebook Page, you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, links, photos, notes, events or all of them.

If you have multiple Pages, you will have the option to link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts. This new feature will only link Facebook Pages to Twitter, not your individual profile. It will soon be available at http://www.facebook.com/twitter”

While that makes a lot of sense from a convenience standpoint – many big time Twitter users also have popular Facebook Pages and vice versa – it’s surprising to see Facebook so openly acknowledge Twitter’s reach. That said, by giving users the ability to update both services via Facebook, they’re clearly hoping that the Facebook Page will become the first stop for admins.

That would mean lots of “via Facebook” messages showing up in tweets, and in fact, it’s not hard to imagine Facebook quickly becoming one of Twitter’s most popular clients. However, I wouldn’t expect this functionality to be extended to user profiles anytime soon, which would clearly be a bigger win for Twitter than Facebook.

While there are many unofficial Wikipedia iPhone apps on the market (some of which work really well), there’s never been an official one from Wikipedia itself. That changed today as the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that runs Wikipedia, has launched an official iPhone application: Wikipedia Mobile [iTunes Link].

The free app does exactly what you’d expect it to do: access Wikipedia. The focus, according to the Foundation, is “on being very simple and very fast.” The entire thing is community-built and open-source, and in the nature of Wikipedia, they’re looking for more people to contribute.

The app itself is nothing to rave over; it is indeed simple, but unfortunately not particularly fast-loading. Still, it gets you the information you’re looking for, it loads images, and it is easy to read. What you can’t do is save favorite pages, edit pages, or even browse tables of contents – things other apps like Wikipanion [iTunes Link] can do too.

For now, it’s a more convenient mobile version of Wikipedia, but with community power, it should gain new features rather quickly. It’s worth the download, although you may want to keep using third-party Wikipedia apps for the time being.

Google keeps on adding and testing new features for its Chrome browser. Things like extensions and Chrome for Mac are still missing, although available if you are adventurous and install Chromium, the open-source project for Google Chrome. Chromium has beta and development features that Google is testing before adding to the Chrome browswer.

Chromium got a new feature, as it occassionally does, but this one definitely caught our eye. The Chromium team announced the addition of bookmark syncing in the developer’s build of Chromium. The new feature will let you keep the same set of bookmarks on multiple machines as well as store them in your Google Docs. This is not unlike the very popular Firefox extension Xmarks.

Here’s how Google explained the new addition, as well as how to implement it:

As of today’s dev channel build, we’re adding a brand new feature to Google Chrome: bookmark sync. Many users have several machines, one at home and one at work for example. This new feature makes it easy to keep the same set of bookmarks on all your machines, and stores them alongside your Google Docs for easy web access.

To activate this feature, launch Google Chrome with the –enable-sync command-line flag. Once you set up sync from the Tools menu, Chrome will then upload and store your bookmarks in your Google Account. Anytime you add or change a bookmark, your changes will be sent to the cloud and immediately broadcast to all other computers for which you’ve activated bookmark sync (using the same XMPP technology as Google Talk).

A note: the Chromium Dev version is the least stable of the Chromium browsers. Windows can crash, new features can need tweaks, and we may never see bookmark syncing ever reach Google Chrome itself. However, this new feature still tickles our fancy, so if you’re brave, subscribe to the dev channel and get the update.

Beate Marie Eriksen (born 19 October 1960) is a Norwegian actress and film director. She acts in Hotel Cæsar, a popular Norwegian soap opera. The article about her on Wikipedia is the three millionth article there; another important milestone in the history of the people’s encyclopedia.

This latest milestone was announced on the front page of the English Wikipedia, but searching Wikipedia for itself reveals other interesting stats (for even more stats, read about the history of Wikipedia). It has about 10 million registered users and over 17 million pages. For comparison, the oldest English language encyclopedia, Britannica, has 40 million words on half a million topics. And yes, I also found that on Wikipedia.

Although the growth of Wikipedia has slowed down somewhat in recent years, it is, without question, one of the most important sources of knowledge today. The number of articles will never grow as explosively as it did in the early days, for obvious reasons: so many topics have already been covered.

It is important to note that Wikipedia actually has 13 million articles, if you count the versions in other languages, which still have tremendous room to grow. Therefore, I’m sure that the largest online encyclopedia hasn’t will reach many more milestones in the future.

Ever since a Financial Times article in July reported that an Apple Tablet would be launching before Christmas, the entire web’s been buzzing nonstop over the potential device. But with no information to feed the insatiable curiosity of tech enthusiasts, the rumor mill has exploded instead. Analysts claiming they tested it and rumored launch dates only scratch the surface. The rumors are getting out of control.

That’s why we think it’s time to get everybody on the same page on the Apple Tablet. We’ve taken the most common tablet rumors, analyzed them, and provide you with our assessment of each rumor. Be prepared for a reality check, though. We probably know more about extraterrestrial life than we do about the Apple Tablet.

Rumor 1: There Is an Apple Tablet

Status: Unconfirmed, but likely.

Analysis: With all of this talk about the Apple Tablet or the Apple iTablet, it’s easy to forget that there has been no announcement about it. Rumors about an Apple Tablet have swirled around since at least 2007.

However, our impression is that the tablet is real, and that it’s coming very soon. Most sources have said that the Tablet exists. Apple patents and reports from multiple reputable media organizations add to the credibility of the rumors.

Our take: It’s very likely that the Tablet exists.

Rumor 2: Apple Will Announce It During the Week of September 7th

Status: Possible, due to Apple’s history.

Analysis: AllThingsD put out a report a few days ago claiming that Apple is having a keynote on September 7th. We’ve heard these reports from other sources as well. This wouldn’t be surprising if true – apple has had a big keynote to launch new products (especially iPod lines) generally after Labor Day, Sept. 7th.

Whether Apple will actually announce the Apple Tablet is an entirely different story. While many believe that the Tablet will make its debut at this supposed keynote, Former MacWorld editor Jim Dalrymple says that it will not see the light of day until 2010, meaning an announcement wouldn’t come until then.

Our take: We’re fairly confident a keynote is coming. We’re not as sure about the Tablet, though. Still, there’s a decent chance.

Rumor 3: The Apple Tablet Doesn’t Arrive Until 2010

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Status: Unknown.

Analysis: Some reports say it will arrive before the Christmas season (if it even exists). Some say not until early 2010. There’s nothing definitive that points to either time frame, although Mr. Dalrymple does have his sources within Apple. Really it depends on how far development has gone (and how many snags Apple has hit). Launching for the X-mas season is ideal.

Our take: If they announce it at the keynote, expect 2009. Otherwise, 2010.

Rumor 4: It Will Run iPhone Apps

Status: Well, it’s got to run an OS, right?

Analysis: The tablet will run one of three things: the iPhone 3.1 OS (or a variation thereof), the Mac OS X 10 (or a variation), or a brand new OS. Building another OS seems like a waste in time, so we’re focused on the first two possibilities. Out of those two, it’s more likely to run apps. Most rumors describe the table as a giant version of the iPod Touch or iPhone, meaning it should run apps on a big screen. It could even be the “iProd” found in the most recent iPhone OS configuration, though that’s more likely to be the new iPod Touch line.

Our take: More likely than not this thing runs apps.

Rumor 5: This Is the Apple Tablet:

Status: Pretty much debunked.

Analysis: Looks right, feels right, but as Engadget has already been tipped to, the “Welcome” graphic is easily found on Google Image search. Besides, having a button in the very middle just isn’t practical from a usability standpoint.

Our take: Can you say “Photoshop”?

Conclusion

There are a lot more rumors, but the point is that not a single thing about this Apple Tablet is confirmed. Not even its existence. The tablet could be announced in September. It could appear in 2010. It may not even exist. This is all speculation.

Until someone from Apple confirms its existence publicly, be wary of tablet rumors and pics. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Soon enough we’ll have the truth.

Aside from battling recent DDoS attacks, Twitter has also been hit with a variety of phishing, spam, and malware threats over the past few months. The latest involves something known as a botnet posting obfuscated code as tweets to spread viruses.

At this point, you might be curious what exactly “obfuscated code” and botnets might be. Symantec explained the threat on their blog, and shows what to be on the lookout for via an account that his since been suspended by Twitter:

“Obfuscated Twitter status messages are being used to send out new download links to malware that Symantec calls Downloader.Sninfs …

… Our investigation and analysis of Downloader.Sninfs is ongoing but has so far shown that it reads a specific Twitter.com RSS feed only once. The RSS feed is simply a text file similar to other RSS feeds found on other Internet sites. The RSS text file contains information as to where Downloader.Sninfs can find additional threats to download onto the compromised system. In this way the RSS file acts like a config file for the malware.”

Essentially, the idea seems to be when a user consumes tweets with the code, it could be used to cause additional harm (by way of downloading new malware unbeknownst to the user) to those that have already been infected with Downloader.Sninfs.

Thus, it would seem that the best way to protect against this is to avoid downloading the malware in the first place by being skeptical of short links with dubious claims and avoiding new Twitter apps that ask for your username and password instead of Twitter OAuth. Symantec also offers removal instructions if you think you’ve been infected.

Facebook’s been evolving right before our very eyes. It started back in March, when Facebook rolled out a new homepage design and redesigned Facebook Pages. At the same time, they started announcing changes to open up the platform: public profiles, profile fans, public status updates, real-time search, and earlier this morning, Facebook Lite. Facebook’s been busy.

All of this is part of a process we sometimes describe as Twitterification. Facebook is opening up in parts in order to combat Twitter – another reason why Facebook completed that blockbuster acquisition of FriendFeed. But since these privacy and profile changes have occurred in parts, they have created a lot of confusion.

That’s why we have written this guide to Facebook’s most recent changes to profiles, status updates, and privacy features. We highlight the big changes and explain what is likely to come next. Here’s how the new Facebook is set up:

Profiles

In terms of privacy, there have been two major changes. The first one, which occurred back in March, is that you can make your Facebook profile public. You can make all elements or just parts of your profile public: photos, details, videos, work information, etc. This can be managed in Facebook’s profile privacy settings.

The other major change to profiles, announced in June, is the ability to have profile fans. It’s just like Twitter followers: they will be able to see your updates and info without you friending them. This feature is not yet launched, but will be coming soon:

Status Updates

Status updates have also changed. In the past, only your friends could see your publish posts and status updates (you know, that big “What’s on your mind?” box at the top of the homepage). But as of June, you have the ability to post status updates not only to your friends, but to friends of friends, to your networks, and to everyone. You may need to activate it in your Facebook profile privacy settings.

You’ll also notice that there’s a custom setting. You can post status updates just to specific friend lists. For example, post a personal update just to your top 20 friends, or you can let everyone on Facebook find your update about your big tweetup next week.

The change brings it more in line with Twitter, which is public by default. Really though, this was the prelude to yesterday’s big Facebook Search launch.

Realtime Search

As we covered in-depth yesterday, Facebook is currently rolling out realtime search. While the old search only could find things like apps, groups, and people, the new search is like a beefed-up version of Twitter Search. The new search crawls the last 30 days of news feed activity – photos, notes, images, videos, links, and status updates – and lets users search them all by keyword. Want to learn more about the FriendFeed acquisition or chatter about Mashable on Facebook? The new search helps:

So where does Facebook privacy play into all of this? The search covers all of your friends, but on top of that, it searches all public profiles and public status updates. So if you want to be found in search, you better change your Facebook privacy settings. Remember though, what you say will be visible to everyone then, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t discuss on your public Twitter feed.

What’s Next?

Facebook’s many new features can all be described with one word: openness. It has seen Twitter steal the spotlight and the attention, especially when breaking news and world events occur. Facebook, with its hundreds of millions of users, should be able to do the same thing, but cannot due to the network restrictions that have existed since Facebook’s inception as a college social network.

Facebook will encourage all of its users to join in on the world conversation by opening up their profiles, making their status updates public, and promoting its new realtime search tool. It will also promote users having conversations around news items – a la FriendFeed. The acquisition provides Facebook with a lot of technology that focuses on realtime updates, public conversations, and in-depth discussions. You will see integration with the world’s largest social network very quickly. FriendFeed may even become the model for public discussions on Facebook.

Luckily, you have a choice in these matters. If you want to keep your Facebook profile private between you and your closest friends, you can – just adjust your privacy settings to your network of friends. However, as Facebook opens up more and more, the pressure to open up your profile will increase as well. So prepare yourself for a new Facebook, one that intends to take down Twitter and even give Google a run for its money.