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Make Phone Calls on Twitter With @Call

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:04:25 +0000

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.

Phone image from Balakov on Flickr

Reviews: Flickr, Twitter

Tags: jajah, jajah@call, twitter phone calls, voip

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Obama Calls Kanye a Jackass: There’s Video Too

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:03:47 +0000

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Just when you think this story is over … there’s now video of President Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass.” The clip first appeared earlier today on Politico, who then pulled it, writing that they “felt upon reflection that it was more respectful to a fellow news-gathering operation to take it down.”

CNN, however, felt otherwise, and decided to air it on their network. This all of course stems from the off-the-record “jackass” comment that was leaked on Twitter by an ABC News reporter on Monday, following West’s outburst at the VMAs on Sunday night. TMZ was able to obtain audio of the episode yesterday.

Is this the final chapter in Kanyegate? Perhaps, although “Kanye West” remains a top trending topic on Twitter and new parodies continue to pop up, so much so that our top 10 list may be quickly becoming out of date. In any event, here’s Obama calling Kanye a “jackass” in living color:

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: barack obama, kanye west, video

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Bing Is Now the Fastest Growing Search Engine

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:03:02 +0000

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According to a Nielsen report this week, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine is growing faster than any of its search competitors in the top 10.

Last time we looked, Bing was sitting at around 9.4% of the search market in July, but Nielsen’s new numbers confirm the search engine’s continued growth through the month of August, up to 10.7% of the total market.

The rankings for the top 11 engines are shown above, revealing Bing’s impressive growth rate at about 22% month-over-month. Compare this to the rest of the pack, none of whom breaks more than a 3% increase (Yahoo and Comcast are both losing share).

The growth is thanks in part to an enormous marketing campaign, but also surely to some of the innovations Microsoft is bringing to the table with Bing. The recently launched visual search feature is arguably flat out better for browsing certain types of information, and social sharing of search results will soon be coming to Bing as well for an interesting new twist.

Have you used Bing? What’s your impression of the new search engine so far?

Reviews: Bing

Tags: bing, market share, microsoft, Search, social search, visual search

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Real-Time Top 40: What Twitter Users Are Listening to Right Now

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:02:24 +0000

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Twitter’s trending topics play an important role in the Twitter ecosystem by highlighting the most popular subjects that people are tweeting about in real-time. We’ve seen plenty of different real-time search engines play with and tweak this concept, but we’ve yet to see trending tracks. Until now.

Vodafone has just launched Real-Time Top 40, to answer the question, what are you listening to? The automatically updating top 40 music chart (designed for the UK) is based on your tweeting behaviors, and provides a nifty look at the most popular artists and songs being talked about. The site also provides a quick way to vote for and buy tracks, and influence music trends.

Real-Time Top 40 instantly updates based on tweet activity, which means that you can tweet with the artist and track you’re listening to and directly affect the dynamically updating chart.

The Vodafone venture goes hand-in-hand with marketing the telecommunications company’s cell phone service. According to the site, all the tracks in the top 40 found can also be found in their music store, with customers able to download DRM free tracks at “49p per track and £7.99 per album” to their mobile phones.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, simonx.

Reviews: Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: music, real-time, top 40, twitter, vodafone

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Is Google Wave Ready for Its Debut?

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:01:45 +0000

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Exactly two weeks from today, Google Wave will make its debut on the world stage. It hasn’t even been four months since Google Wave was announced, but it has already captured the hearts and minds of communication, tech, and social media enthusiasts.

While we have explored whether the world is ready for Google Wave (and similarly, whether you are ready), perhaps this is the wrong question to be asking. You see, four months isn’t a lot of time to get a product as dynamic as Google Wave into a presentable format. The development version has had bugs and a high crash percentage.

So, with 100,000 invites going out on September 30th, is Google’s real-time communication platform ready for the spotlight? Or will Google have to push back the launch?

Google Wave Is Getting a Lot of Updates

Google Wave is still a developer product, which means that it’s supposed to be unstable, buggy, and under constant flux. But the September 30th release means that Google needs to have the product stable and (mostly) functional. Otherwise, the average consumer could lose faith in the product. If it crashes even 20% of the time, it will turn people off. These are things that developers will tolerate, but casual users will not.

That’s why Google’s been on an upgrading spree. On September 3rd, Google launched the “ChooChoo” update to Wave, which included new text editing options, a new menu for Google Wave Gadgets, and more.

However, the backend changes are more important. Yesterday was the first of two major updates to prepare Google Wave for primetime, an overhaul of the Operational Transformation code of Wave. The goal was to improve the stability of Wave’s core. Here’s the explanation from Gregory Dalesandre, Google Wave’s Product Manager:

“We are just about ready to roll-out an overhaul of our Operational Transformation code. It enables both better stability at the core of Wave as well as (soon) the opportunity to talk to other Wave Servers that are being built outside of Google.”

…

“This sort of upgrade is something we can’t reasonably do once we’ve launched our wider preview on September 30, which means that we need to perform this upgrade now and another similar one in about a week.”

As an initial user of Wave, I have to tell you: things have gotten much more stable. It still has a slow response time in certain situations and it can still crash, but these things happen far less often than they used to.

So is Google Wave ready for its debut? Google certainly seems intent to meet its mark and if the next upgrade goes well, Google Wave may very well be prepped for the limelight at the end of this month.

More Google Wave Resources from Mashable

- Google Wave: A Complete Guide

- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

- Twave: Google Wave + Twitter

Reviews: Google, Google Wave

Tags: Google, Google Wave

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Skype’s Founders Sue eBay for $75 Million Per Day in Damages

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:00:56 +0000

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eBay may have sold the majority of Skype earlier this month, but that may not matter if the two original founders of Skype get their way. They have just sued eBay and Skype’s new investors for damages that they estimate total “a rate of more than $75 million daily.”

The case pits eBay against Joltid, which is owned by Skype’s founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom. The issue is around a core piece of peer-to-peer technology utilized in Skype. Joltid seems to have the rights to it and has been seeking to yank the code since at least March. Now, they have filed an injunction and are seeking damages in U.S. District Court.

The lawsuit cites eBay, Silver Lake Partners, and its investment partners, who combined own the popular peer-to-peer calling service. The potential damages cited by the lawsuit are stunning, though. They claim that eBay’s altering and misuse of their code could total to more than $75 million per day in damages, as each download of Skype is considered by them to be copyright infringement. If you do the math, that’s over $27 billion per year. How they came up with that extraordinary number we cannot even begin to comprehend.

Apparently this is not all that unusual for the Skype founders, according to The New York Times, who reports that they’ve developed a reputation for litigation, stemming from three lawsuits they filed against an investment banker who represented them in the original Skype sale to eBay.

[ img credit / CC BY-SA 2.0 ]

Reviews: Skype

Tags: ebay, Skype

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Little Girl Throws Ball Back, MLB Throws Embeds Away

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:00:24 +0000

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Last night something with the potential to go insanely viral happened at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game. Big time Phillies fan, Steve Monforto, caught his first foul ball, promptly handed it over to his 3-year-old daughter, Emily, who then immediately threw it back onto the field. After initial shock, the dad embraced his daughter in a very touching baseball moment.

The hilarious and heart-warming incident was caught on tape by the MLB, but also received the user-generated treatment appearing on YouTube in many forms, creating quite the social media stir almost instantly after the event took place.

Due the nature of the clip, it was poised to become a viral sensation on YouTube and around the Web. Unfortunately the MLB doesn’t want to play ball. They’ve decided to make copyright claims on all but their very own copy, which has no embed code to enable sharing.

The ball incident is one that has all the makings of an Internet hit: the catch was spectacular, the moment Emily threw the ball back is adorable, and the subsequent hug and fan cheering is memorable. As such, the family will appear on the Today Show tomorrow morning, and will reportedly receive a surprise gift.

It was a such a great moment for baseball, especially with the NFL season now underway, that we’re pretty disappointed by the MLB’s decision to issue copyright claims removing all traces of fan-created videos. We’re even more surprised by the fact that the MLB’s version of the video has no embed code, which means to watch it, you’re forced to visit their site. That practice seems pretty backwards in this day and age, and one that’s likely to prevent the video from living up to its viral potential.

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: MLB, Philadelphia Phillies, viral video

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Kanye West’s VMA Outburst Breaks Records at MTV.com

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:59:51 +0000

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This news should come as no surprise: Kanye West’s outburst at the VMAs resulted in all sorts of digital records over at MTV.com. The company shared some stats with us this afternoon:

2.7 million unique visitors hit MTV.com on Sunday – it’s highest VMA performance ever

5.5 million unique visitors hit MTV.com on Monday – the second best day in the site’s history

There were a total of 17.9 million video streams watched on the site Monday, the second highest stream total in the site’s history.

The “Twitter Tracker” setup for the event (pictured right) pulled in more than 2 million tweets about the event.

While Kanye crashing Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech gave MTV an incredibly viral piece of content, the company’s execution was also strong. They managed to keep the video off of YouTube while making their own version embeddable, allowing it to be shared incredibly quickly around the social web.

Meanwhile, parodies of the episode have taken on a life of their own. Be sure to check out our list: Top 10 Kanye West Interruption Parodies.

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: kanye west, mtv, taylor swift, vmas

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Murdoch’s Latest Money Grab: Charge for Mobile Access to WSJ

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:59:10 +0000

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Newspapers are finding themselves in tough economic circumstances, so it’s no surprise that News Corp is dead set on monetizing their digital content, with CEO Rupert Murdoch recently saying that his company is planning to “charge for all our news websites.”

In a somewhat surprising move, it turns out the monetization strategy is being applied to mobile consumption of content as well. Murdoch went on the record at a recent conference saying that WSJ readers should expect to pay $2/week for mobile content using the BlackBerry or iPhone WSJ application.

Application subscribers will be charged $2 per week, though subscribers to both print and online will not be charged extra. The charges are expected to be implemented sometime in the next few months, as Murdoch believes that “news is more valuable than ever.”

$2/week is a hefty sum to pay for mobile news content consumption, especially given the number of free mobile news apps available on the iPhone alone (NPR has an amazing, free iPhone offering). According to paidContent, Murdoch mentioned that the pay-per-view model will also be applied to Hulu content as well, though specific details were not disclosed.

While we do support revenue models built around news, we’re hard-pressed to believe that consumers will pay the $2/week subscription fee for iPhone or BlackBerry access to content. There’s just too much competition in the mobile space to warrant the charge.

Will you pay $2/week for WSJ news on your iPhone or BlackBerry? Let us know in the comments.

Newspaper stand image from wili_hybrid on Flickr

Reviews: Flickr, Hulu

Tags: News, rupert murdoch, subscription, WSJ, wsj iphone app

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HOW TO: Write a Novel Using the Web

Ty Wenzel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:58:28 +0000

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It took five years for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to go from idea to finished manuscript, but the results have very clearly been nothing short of spectacular. Perhaps you also have an idea for a novel kicking around in your head. Maybe it came to you in the shower one morning before work, or maybe it came to you one evening on the commute home. Maybe you’re planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November. Whatever the case, writing a novel is an ambitious endeavor, but one that the web is making a lot easier to accomplish.

Though you’ll still have to do your writing using the old fashioned method — one word at a time — web applications and social media have made the process of writing a novel considerably easier and arguably more enjoyable. Here is a toolkit for using the web to write a book. If you know of any other great applications useful to aspiring writers, please leave them in the comments.

1. Organize

One of the most important and perhaps most often overlooked aspects of writing a novel is staying organized. Without organization, it can make the already daunting task of putting your ideas down on paper even more difficult. Characters and places can become confused and the timeline of events in your novel can get mixed up in a hurry.

While your idea is still in the brainstorming phase, many people find it helpful to create a mind map as a way to figure out how all the events and characters in your story tie together. One of the best mind mapping applications on the web is Mindmeister, which gives users a way to create, edit, and collaborate on mind maps in an intuitive and visual manner. Once you know who your characters are and how they interact, you can start laying out the progression of your novel and keep track of what you still need to write by using an outline created using Loosestitch, and a timeline created using Timeglider. Both tools will help you visualize your novel while you put it down on paper so you always know what comes next and how the pieces that you’re writing will fit together.

If your story is very character heavy, keeping track of all the people in your novel, who they are, and how they interact will be vital to making sure the continuity isn’t interrupted. It may seem silly to treat your fictional characters as real people, but using an online CRM application like Highrise (which offers a free account good for 250 characters), can be a great way to keep track of the people in your book. Create an entry for each character and treat them like real people, attaching notes about their interactions, histories, and characteristics as you write.

To make sure you never forget an idea, check out Evernote, which is one of the web’s best note taking apps. It allows you to sync together text, audio, video, and images and offers mobile applications so you can be sure you’ll have a record of your thoughts any time inspiration strikes.

2. Research

Even if your novel takes place in a completely imagined fantasy world, research into the real world may be necessary to make sure your book has the level of realism necessary to allow readers to suspend belief and really identify with your story and characters. Research used to mean hours in the library pouring over dusty tomes, but the web is changing that.

Online resources like Wikipedia and Google Books give you access to thousands of articles and volumes on a wide range of subjects. If you need to know, for example, about popular ladies clothing in Victorian France, there is no reason that information can’t be found online (or at the very least, web research can provide you with a comfortable foundation on which to build with more in depth library research).

Though it costs $19.95/month, another good resource is Questia, which offers full text, searchable access to over 1.5 million books, journal and magazine articles, and newspapers. Be sure to also check out The Free Library, which has a library of over 5.7 million articles and books available, and the Smithsonian: Research page, on which writers can find materials from many of the institution’s museum collections.

If you’re suffering from a case of writer’s block, a trip over to the Project Gutenberg page may prove fruitful. Gutenberg lets anyone read — for free — from a library of nearly 30,000 classic books. What better way to unstick your writing muscle than by revisiting the classics?

3. Write

Once you actually get down to the business of writing, the web can make that easier as well. If you need a full-featured word processor, the leader of the pack in terms of price (free), feature set, ease of use, and reliability might be Google Docs. One great thing about using an online word processing environment is that your work is stored online and can be accessed from anywhere. You can also collaborate on writing projects with fellow authors. One of my favorite books, Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, was written in the late 1980s by mailing floppy disks back and forth between authors — imagine how much easier it would have been for the two writers had they had access to a web app like Google Docs!

For those who need a more distraction-free writing environment, check out the recently launched MyWritingNook, a full-browser-screen writing application that is great for just getting your ideas down without worrying about formatting or anything else. MyWritingNook auto-saves as your work, provides sidebar access to a dictionary and thesaurus (the sidebar can be turned off, though), and lets you easily create and switch between multiple documents, so you can separate chapters as you write. It’s an ideal tool for your first draft, when the focus should be about the big picture and just getting your ideas out of your head and onto the page.

If you’re a Mac user and a fan of the popular WriteRoom software, another distraction-free, full-screen writing environment, check out their new iPhone application. It automatically syncs with your WriteRoom files, and lets you read and edit on the go, including in landscape mode.

Of course, the web is a social medium, so if you crave a more collaborative writing environment, look no further than Protagonize. Protagonize is a collaborative writing community on which writers share, develop, discuss, and refine works of creative writing with one another. In the nearly two years since opening, authors on Protagonize have shared over 25,000 pages of writing with one another.

4. Connect

Writing can be a very solitary task. The image we have of writers is often that of a lonely person, sitting in their attic or locked in a hotel room typing away until they go mad (like Johnny Depp’s character in “Secret Window”). Social media has brought us all closer, including those of use for whom putting words down on paper is a trade.

One of the most established social networks for writers is Red Room, on which wordsmiths — including a large number of well-known published authors — connect and discuss their craft. Of course, the most well-known social resource for writers is probably Writing.com. Though it’s a little old school, the site has over 650,000 members and thriving forums for writers.

If you’re looking for feedback on your work, check out WritingRoom and 1000Keyboards.com, social networks targeted at authors that both offer peer review functions. Or visit The Book Oven, a new site on which users can upload stories and then invite friends, colleagues, or perfect strangers to help polish and edit their work.

5. Publish

It could take years to write your manuscript, or it could take a few weeks. But whenever you’re done, once you have your book in a publishable form, the web can also help you get it onto bookstore shelves. Print-on-demand publishing services like Lulu and Amazon’s CreateSpace can not only publish your book in a number and variety of great looking formats, they can also help you with the details, like securing an ISBN, getting your book listed in the Bowker’s Books in Print catalog, and helping make your book available in store shelves — both real and virtual.

If writing is more of a personal hobby and not a vocation for you, then Blurb might be a good choice for printing your book up in a very beautiful and readable format that you can share with family and friends. Whichever service you choose, if you go the self-publishing route, you can make your book even more professional looking and make it stand out more on store shelves by having a cover designed by the crowd using a service like 99designs or crowdSPRING.

Before you turn to self-publishing, though, it can’t hurt to at least try to find a traditional publisher. In that case, you’ll probably need an agent, in which case AgentQuery is an excellent service. The site’s free, searchable database of literary agents has gotten it recognition as one of the best web sites for writers by Writer’s Digest magazine five years in a row.

So, now you have the web-based tools that can help you go from idea to book — the rest is up to you. Stop procrastinating and start writing. Good luck!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MiquelMunill

Reviews: Evernote, Google Docs, Wikipedia, blurb, harry potter, iStockphoto

Tags: author, book, book publishing, how to, Lists, novel, writers, writing

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