Create a Socially Integrated Online Shop in 60 Seconds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find out more about the service in the video below.

Evernote Competitor Springpad Launches Killer Android App

Springpad is an awesome app. Like Evernote, it allows you to save items in a virtual notebook of sorts.

But the app doesn’t stop at saving information; it also pulls in actionable links. For example, if you “save” a movie, you also save links to buy tickets for a local theatre or add that film to your Netflix queue. If you save a restaurant, that entry is accompanied by link to the menu and an Open Table link so you can quickly and easily make reservations.

The idea behind the app — that we no longer surf the web idly or without intention — has led to a highly effective product, one that’s just today launched in the Android Market. The app is free and also available as an iPhone application.

Users can make lists, save items by barcode, save images, save locations using geo-data only and access saved information from a variety of devices, including web browsers. And of course, users can choose to share items on the social web if they like.

Jeff Janer is Springpad’s CEO, and he was kind enough to give us a demo of the Android app today at Google I/O. Check it out, and if you’ve got an Android device, give Springpad and spin and let us know what you think.

5 Great Ways to Find Music That Suits Your Mood

Jessica Miller has written for Jewcy.com, The Jew and the Carrot, and is an avid digital music explorer. She holds a B.A. in religion from Barnard College, and blogs regularly on her own site, The Boomerang Blog.

You don’t have to be Oliver Sacks to know that music can have a profound effect on the human psyche. Music is undeniably important in shaping moods, and, likewise, certain frames of mind require certain kinds of songs.

Luckily for us, there are now several websites out there that feature mood searches. Instead of generating artists and songs by genre or title (as Pandora does), they are able to filter songs by emotions and activities.

So whether you’re feeling down and need a pick-me-up; you’re down and you’d like to stay that way for a bit — whether you’re in an “Empire State of Mind,” or it’s just another “Manic Monday” — we’ve hand picked our five most satisfying sites for finding the perfect songs to suit your mood.

1. Musicovery

Musicovery is a fun and colorful website that lets you find your mood-appropriate music with several adjustable options. First, it instructs you to chart your mood on a grid, with the x-axis going from dark to positive, and the y-axis ranging from energetic to calm. Then, below the chart, you can select which genres of music you’d like Musicovery to dig around in for you, and which music decades you’d like to be included in the search. (If you’re open minded, you can select them all!)

Musicovery then creates a brightly colored family tree of mood music for you. Each burst on the tree has a shade corresponding to a genre (rap is dark red, funk is light green, etc.). Although you have to register on the site in order to shuffle from one song to another, you can always alter your mood on the grid if you don’t like what’s coming up. You can also ban songs you don’t like, and you’ll get the next song in the lineup.

As an added perk, if you’re looking for something to dance to, there’s an additional grid to refine your search. This grid allows you to alter the dance-ability and tempo of your tunes. There’s also a discovery feature that will just plainly surf Musicovery’s library for you without any fuss.

Pros: Fun to look at, lots of fine-tuning options.

Cons: Registration is required to shuffle and choose specific songs.

2. AUPEO!

Despite the enthusiasm in its name, AUPEO! is not the flashiest website, but it gets the job done. Like Pandora, it is capable of creating a playlist for you based on a favorite artist, but it also contains an easy-to-use mood search feature.

Simply click the mood tab, and then select one of the ten provided emotions, which include aggressive, happy, relaxing, and dramatic. Then you can instruct AUPEO! to hunt for appropriate songs in all genres, or narrow its searches down to one specific classification. The menu includes nine genres ranging from pop, to country, to R&B. Hit the orange music notes icon and you’re in business. You can shuffle songs if you want something new, or change your search criteria. As you listen, AUPEO! will give you album covers to look at, which is nice.

Pros: Simple and easy to use. No fuss involved.

Cons: Must search for songs one emotion and genre at a time. Occasional ads.

3. Stereomood

There are three elements to Stereomood: Mood, activity, and artist.

To get started, you can either click on one of the tags on the homepage, or use the menu at the top. The tag cloud on the front page is a wacky jumble of emotions and activities varying from the more basic (e.g. sad, jogging) to the more eccentric (e.g. lost in thought, driving Route 66.) I prefer to use the menu at the top, which is a little more organized. The menu lets you search either the site, the moods, or the activities one at a time. If you search by mood or activity, a pull down menu will appear, and you can make a choice from that list.

Whatever you choose, you will be taken to a playlist page where you can either select the specific songs you’d like to hear, or just put the songs on shuffle. There is also a menu on the left that will suggest other action, emotion, or artist playlists for you based on the one you’re currently in.

If you simply choose to search the site through the menu, you can put in whatever criteria you wish, including artists you like, or your own activities/emotions. The search results tend to be a little more literal when you put in your own keywords, but, for example, if you wanted to find a whole mess of songs that contain a specific word, this would be a good tool. If you search for an artist though, you can see what mood and activity playlists your favorite band is included in, which is kind of fun.

Also, regardless of how you search, each song that comes up contains a list of tags, so you can see what other playlists each one is in.

Pros: Shuffling, and even choosing specific songs you want to hear, is possible.

Cons: Slightly disorganized.

4. Last.fm

Maybe I’m the only one, but I never realized that it’s possible to search music by tags on Last.fm. Thanks to those user tags, Last.fm can be an excellent aid for finding songs appropriate to how you may be feeling.

Simply type an emotion into the music search field, and then click on the appropriate tag. You’ll get a station full of songs that other Last.fm-ers have tagged as being appropriate to that emotion. In addition, you’ll get a heads-up on the artists included in the station, and a list of suggested tags that might be related to what you’re looking for.

Pros: Very straightforward. Easy to pick up and contribute if you already use Last.fm

Cons: Somewhat less adventurous.

5. Thesixtyone

Thesixtyone  is different from the other sites because it has a strong visual component. The images and information it generates are usually nice, but can veer towards distracting or cluttered at times. Other than that, it’s a fun experiment in finding mood-appropriate music, and in finding new music in general. Since thesixtyone likes to highlight newer artists, you’re more likely to hear something you’ve never heard before on this site.

To get a mood station on thesixtyone, simply hover your mouse over where it says “popular” on the top right, then click on moods. A little menu will pop up with 12 moods listed (10 really, since “remix” and “covers” are not moods.) Just click on one and the station will start playing. If you’d like to shuffle forward or back, click on the green paddles on both sides of the window.

Pros: Nice photos and artist information. Backtracking is possible.

Cons: A little cluttered. Less user-friendly.

Have you found any other sites that can generate music playlists by mood? Let us know in the comments, and happy hunting!

(from mashable)

Group buying: A billion-dollar Web trend?

Can we all get a better deal by making purchases together?

That’s the idea behind a new breed of “group buying” Web sites — at least one of which may be valued at more than $1 billion.

It’s hardly a stretch to predict that group buying will become one of the biggest Web trends of 2010, and the market leader will be one of the most closely-watched sites of the year.

Groupon, which traces its origins back to 2008, has a simple premise: If enough people agree to buy something, they all get a big discount.

Today’s deal for those in New York: Save 50 percent on a $20 purchase of cupcakes from “ChikaLicious Dessert Club.” If 450 people agree to the deal, everyone saves money.

If that critical number is not reached, however, the deal is a dud. The site offers one deal per day in the cities it covers, and the number of cities in the network is growing fast.

It’s a good idea for sure, but it might also be an incredibly valuable one. Web rumors this week suggest Groupon may be in the process of raising a new round of venture capital at a $1.2 billion valuation. The money follows a $30 million round that valued Groupon at $250 million. In layman’s terms: Investors think Groupon is set to be the Web’s next breakout hit.

Groupon’s competitors are seeing big investment, too. Rival siteLivingSocial recently raised $25 million. BuyWithMe has raised $5.5 million. How many group buying sites are there now? Possibly dozens: SocialBuy, Groop Swoop and Scoop St., to name a few.

The dynamics of group buying mean that Groupon has a significant early advantage, however: The more users a site can gain, the more leverage it has to score big discounts from businesses.

It’s a hot market we should have seen coming. The top Web trendsat the start of the year included the “real-time Web” and “location.” With almost constant web connectivity provided by smartphones and free Wi-Fi at coffee shops, airports and bookstores — not to mention the immediacy of Twitter and Facebook — we’ve come to expect instant gratification online. Group buying meets that need.

Groupon is local, too, targeting deals to metropolitan areas. There’s a further trend Groupon capitalizes upon: Social networking brings us together to share opinions and experiences … why not deals too?

Is Groupon worth a billion dollars? Could the group buying market be worth multiple billions? Investors seem prepared to make that bet.

Editor’s Note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He writes a weekly column about social networking and technology forCNN.com.

(Article from CNN)

Google Adds Calendar Invitations to Gmail Messages

If you’re a Gmail user, you may have noticed a surprising new feature in your e-mail account this morning: There’s now an “Insert: Invitation” link adjacent to the “Attach a file” link in each new message you compose.

The invitation addition makes scheduling meetings and setting up appointments via Gmail much easier. It also completes the circle between Gmail and Google Calendar’s Smart Rescheduler. You can now schedule an event and verify attendee availability right from the Compose Mail window.

Inserting a calendar invitation in a Gmail message is as simple as clicking on the “Insert: Invitation” link. A new window automatically appears showing your availability and the availability of the parties included in the email. You can then adjust the time, add a place and description, and specify which calendar to add the event to. Once you send the email, the event is automatically added to everyone’s calendar.

For users of more robust business e-mail programs, today’s Gmail update probably seems minor. But for those of us who use e-mail and calendar services in the cloud, it’s an important and time-saving update that ties together two key Google services.

[from mashable, Img credit: cinefil_]

OffiSync Now Lets You Co-Author Files With Most Versions Of Microsoft Office (And Google Docs)

OffiSyncis a plugin for Microsoft Office that serves as a bridge between Office and Google Docs. When it first launched, the app’s primary feature was to save Office documents to your Google account. It’s since integrated Google Image Serach into Office, and support for Google Sites. And today it’s getting another major upgrade: you’ll now be able to sync changes between the same document being edited simultaneously by multiple users using any modern version of Office and/or Google Docs.

That’s a big deal, because Microsoft has been heavily promoting real-time collaboration as one of the key features of Office 2010. With OffiSync, you wouldn’t necessarily need 2010 — you’d be able to coauthor a document using Microsoft 2003 and 2007 as well, and you won’t need SharePoint, either. The application allows you to do Office-to-Office collaboration, and you can also have users editing the same document from Google Docs’ online interface. Changes aren’t synced as you type in each character, but rather each time you hit the ’save’ button.

The new version of OffiSync adds support for the ‘any file upload‘ feature that Google Docs added in January. It also has better integration with Google Sites (it will automatically pull in your Google Sites file hierarchy within Office, and allows you to create a file on Sites from Office as well).

While OffiSync offers a free version of its product, most of these new upgrades (including coauthoring) are for premium users only. Premium seats cost $12 a year, or there’s an option for a $30 one-time fee. And, sorry Mac users — OffiSync is still only available for Windows.

OffiSync has been doing quite well lately — it’s currently the top rated app on the recently-launched Google Apps Marketplace, and has the third most installs on the Marketplace overall. CEO Oudi Antebi says that OffiSync now has over 300,000 users The company hasn’t disclosed its funding, but says that it closed a Series A round of over $1 million.

(via mashable)

Google Docs Adds Major New Features

Google has announced that it has rebuilt Google Docs from the ground-up. The result is a massive overhaul of Google Docs, including completely redesigned spreadsheet, document, and drawing editors, group chat functionality, and the ability to collaborate with real-time character-by-character mark-up, much like Google Wave. You can preview the new changes, starting today.

The one word that describes today’s updates is collaboration.Google  believes that “collaboration is broken”: People make revisions to the same document, but one bad save by a late person can ruin the whole document. Thus Google’s belief is that creating a browser version of collaboration software that bridges the gap between the desktop and the web is key to better collaboration and quicker innovation.

Google Docs: A Complete Rebuild

The rebuilt Google Docs focuses on addressing those issues, starting with the document editor. One of the biggest changes is that collaborators can now see what others are typing character-by-character. In addition, up to 50 people can now collaborate on one document. The company has also added a chat feature that allows collaborators to discuss a document in a popup that appears on the right-hand side.

Here’s what it looks like:

You might notice that Google Docs feels more like a word processor like Microsoft Word. This is no accident: Google deliberately added features such as rulers, tab stops, spell-check as you type and floating images.

Spreadsheets have also gotten a hefty upgrade: new features include auto-complete, the ability to drag-and-drop columns and faster load times. The best one, though, is probably autofill:

The final addition is a new “drawing editor” for Google Docs, which allows you to draw and download images that can be copied and pasted into multiple Google Docs. Up to 50 people can draw at the same time (we think that sounds chaotic, but haven’t tried to draw with 50 people yet). Finally, the images that you create can be published and embedded onto the web.

Here’s an image depicting the new drawing editor:

Google’s very proud of the newest version of Google Docs; it compares it very favorably against Microsoft Office, only conceding that Office has more advanced (or, in Google’s opinion, niche) formatting features. Collaboration, mobile access, multi-user editing and IM functionality are all things that Google touts.

(via mashable)

10 Fantastic Photoshop Tutorials on YouTube

Photoshop has been a mainstay of the design software pantheon for over 20 years, and it remains a great tool for pro artists and social media customizers alike.

But the sophisticated image editor has a daunting learning curve. With so many tools, features, and concepts to get a hold of, new users can be discouraged by dry help files and blind fumbling.

But fear not, gentle reader, for the collective wisdom of YouTubeYouTube is at your disposal. Photoshop tutorials abound on the video network. Some are superb, while others may not be worth your precious clickthrough. For help, check out the resourceful selections below. Whether you’re brand new to Photoshop or a seasoned veteran, there’s always something to learn from the screencasting community.

For Beginners

If you’re looking for a visual way to wrap your head around the basic functions of Photoshop, check out these “101″ resources that take it nice and slow, and don’t assume any prior experience.

1. Workspace Overview

If you’ve never taken up the virtual paintbrush before, get the lay of the land with this overview of the workspace. It will give you a good sense of where the most useful tools and menus live in Photoshop.

2. Tools and Layers

This two-part tutorial breaks down most of the basic tools you’ll need to start your graphic hacking adventures.

If you come away with only one concept from a Photoshop lesson, it should be about layers. Layers are key to everything in Photoshop, but jumping in head-first can often leave new users confused. In addition to rummaging through the toolbox, this video offers a concise, visual explanation of how layers work using a simple drawing exercise.

For Intermediate Users

If you’ve gotten a feel for the software and done your share of image touch-up and manipulation, you may want to kick the program into second gear and start exploring some of the more powerful and creative features. These tutorials will get you going.

3. Blending Modes

Blending modes are connected to layers and are integral for toning photographs and many other graphic manipulations. This screencast will take you through Photoshop’s many blending flavors and hopefully spark some creative ideas for your next epic FacebookFacebook photo.

4. Patching and Healing

So you’ve got your new Facebook photo perfectly toned for maximum epicness — except for that tiny blemish and your annoying little brother who insists on jumping into every frame. That’s where the healing tools come in. With these, you can remove unwanted elements and (with a bit of practice) smooth those adjustments right into the background.

5. Text Effects

Let’s face it: The black and white arial text your rendered in MS Paint simply won’t cut it as your blog’s logo anymore. It’s time to snazz it up with some creative texturing. Check out this two-part tutorial that showcases some of the powerful text manipulation tools at your disposal in Photoshop.

6. Creating Actions

As you start using the software more regularly, you may find you’re repeating the same processes (sizing, filtering, blending, etc.) over and over again. The “Actions” feature lets you record the steps you use frequently and execute them with a single time-saving click or hotkey combination.

For Advanced Users

If you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you surely know what some Photoshop wizards are capable of. While the truly amazing feats require actual artistic talent (for which there is not yet a software substitute), some advanced Photoshop knowhow can go a long way to impressing your social media pals. Even if you’re not up to speed on all the advanced tools, just following along with these example-based lessons will provide a lot of insight into how the pros work their magic.

7. Changing Eye and Hair Color

If you’re due for a new look, but don’t want to drop a pretty penny at the salon, check out this tutorial on how to change eye and hair color for some dramatic portrait results.

8. Photo Combination and Manipulation

And now for some of the cool stuff. Through some clever erasing, blending, smoothing, and layering, this tutorial grafts a roaring lion’s face onto an apple to make for some frightening fruit that even Adam and Eve would have stayed away from.

9. Environmental Effects: Beams of Light

If landscapes are your passion, you can add even more drama to your sweeping vistas with some Photoshop tricks. Here, the designer adds some cloud-bursting light to make for an awe-inspiring desktop wallpaper, or perhaps even a snazzy TwitterTwitter background.

10. Environmental Effects: Fog and Mist

If you’re looking to add a bit of mystery to your recent snapshot, check out this tutorial on adding some rolling fog.

Have you found any other useful Photoshop tutorials on YouTube? Be sure to post the links in the comments below.
(from mashable)

5 Insightful TED Talks on Social Media

As social media has become a game changer for industries across the board, you can bet the experts at this year’s TED conference will have their sights set on peeling back the hype and getting at the core of what social technology has in store for this year and beyond.

Perhaps the best part of the TED conferences is that videos of the talks are archived and free to view right on the organization’s website. Given the wealth of insight we’re sure to see tomorrow, we thought we’d whet your appetite by highlighting a few recent and exceptional talks from TED’s past, with a focus on social media.

1. Alexis Ohanian: How To Make a Splash in Social Media

We’ll start things off with a real-life social media parable about how the biggest and most effective forces on the web usually take shape by accident. Alexis Ohanian of Reddit.com tells the quick and hilarious story of how the social web provided some unexpected help to Greenpeace in halting the Japanese whaling industry. Internet marketers take note: The meme is all powerful, and it cannot be controlled.

2. Clay Shirky: How Social Media Can Make History

In this talk, consultant, professor and author Clay Shirky discusses the unprecedented immediacy of real-time citizen journalism made possible by social media and the nearly ubiquitous access to mobile web technologies. From the election crisis in Iran to the massive earthquake that shook China in May of 2008, Shirky discusses how media is made on the ground, as-it-happens, via the social web.

3. Evan Williams: Listening to Twitter Users

With a couple of anecdotes building the ultimate social media case study, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams discusses how a little side project called Twitter became a game-changing phenomenon with the help and input of the very users who made the service a success. From innovative marketing uses to core functionality, Williams provides the evidence for what we knew all along: Users know best.

4. Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy

As social media changes our social lives, speculation has abounded for years on how the web may be disconnecting us from intimate interactions in favor of meaningless quests to rack up followers and “friends.” Not so, says Stefana Broadbent, who explains that social networks function the same way online as they do in real life. While we may have lots of friends, we only really communicate regularly and meaningfully with a handful of them, and social technologies like e-mail, texting, and tweeting allow us to do so more often across time and space.

5. Seth Godin: The Tribes We Lead

From professional sports mascots to balloon animal makers, some communities are so extremely niche that they could only properly thrive on the Internet. So argues blogger and author Seth Godin, who believes that our revolutionary new connectedness has brought human culture back to its roots, and that tribes (groups of people mobilized around a shared interest) are the present and future of all web content.

(from mashable)

Google Real-Time Search Invades the Intranet

Google’s freshly launched real-time search is the big news of the week. And as it turns out, real-time search is not just limited to public searches on Google.com, but is also available to Google Search Appliance users.

Now, if your intranet or Web site search is powered by Google’s enterprise universal search appliance, you too can take in real-time tweets related to search queries.

There are two key differences to point out between Google.com and Google Search Appliance. Google Search Appliance users will notice that real-time search is limited to just Twitter feeds for the time being (you’ll have to forgo Facebook Page updates and the like for now), and tweets are displayed in a separate search box. So while Google.com’s implementation shows tweets appearing inline with other results, intranet search will highlight them separately.

If you’re a GSA user, you’ll want to have an administrator follow these instructions to turn on real-time tweets for search. You’ll also have the option to enable the functionality for all users, individual users, or allow for users to self-select their real-time preferences.

The Google Enterprise Blog writes:

“Social information is important for businesses: employees searching for information needed to do their jobs benefit from real-time news too. They might be developing a new breakfast cereal, or designing a marketing plan for a clothing line, or writing strategy report for a political campaign. In all of these cases, understanding what is being said just as Twitter users are saying it can be invaluable.”

The addition of Twitter updates to enterprise search seems like an natural extension of Google’s new-found focus on real-time. If you’re a GSA user, share your thoughts on the development below.

Amazon Improves Kindle Battery Life and Adds PDF Reader

Just in time to remind holiday shoppers, Amazon has announced an 85% battery life increase as well as a native PDF reader application for the Kindle digital book reader. Whereas the previous battery life topped out at about four days with wireless access turned on, the updated Kindle will run for seven days without needing to be charged.

The native PDF reading support is nice too, since previously users either had to pay a $0.10 per conversion charge or go through several steps in order to convert documents from PDF to the Kindle format used by the eReader. Now PDF can simply be transferred via USB connection or emailed to the user’s @kindle.com email address to be added to the Kindle.

While the native PDF support will also be made available to existing owners of the Kindle (or at least, some of them — Amazon’s announcement doesn’t specify what the requirements are) via a wireless firmware update, the new battery life-infused Kindle will apparently only be rolling out to new buyers.

It’s a couple of minor but nice updates, and a good excuse for Amazon to capitalize on the fact that the holiday season’s other hot digital book reader, the Barnes & Noble nook, is already completely sold out for reportedly the remainder of the holiday gift-giving season. That’s more bad news for B&N, who are also busy fending off a lawsuit from Spring Design over its Alex eReader — which shares some of the key design principles with the nook, a similarity Spring Design says is no accident.

Are you considering picking up a digital book reader for yourself or a loved one this holiday season?

How Google Wave is Changing the News

It’s not too often that legacy media learns a new mass communication tool along with its audience. But that’s exactly what’s going on now because of Google Wave. Although it’s still invitation only and in preview, the real-time wiki collaboration platform is being used by some media companies for community building, real-time discussion, crowdsourcing, collaboration both inside and outside the newsroom, and for cross publishing content.

Google Wave may seem familiar to older users of the Internet, who have been using the parts that make up the whole of the platform for years. Wave, however, brings those pieces together cohesively to allow users to share photos, embed videos, and converge other Google applications such asGoogle Maps and Google Calendar to create customized blocks of user-editable content on the fly. Here are four ways that newsrooms are using Wave.

Using Waves to Foster Engagement

Using Google Wave allows newsrooms to reach out to their audiences and invite their active participation on news stories. In the process, waves become a vehicle to create an engaged local community who can also play a role in the newsroom. That may redefine how news is gathered, reported and presented to its audience, blurring the boundary between newsroom and community bulletin board.

Chicago Tribune’s RedEye blog started its first public wave on November 10, and since then it has attracted more than 300 blips. Following that success, Stephanie Yiu, RedEye’s web editor, and Scott Kleinberg, senior editor of digital and print, now lead a half-hour public wave session every day.

“It’s a lot more live than Twitter because it’s like you can see people typing and everybody gets to know each other,” she told me. “It’s really about connecting with our readers on a new platform. We’re learning with our readers and moving forward together.”

RedEye sends out tweets promoting each wave with a link asking Twitter followers (those that have access to Google Wave) to join the conversation. Yiu told me the daily wave is a discussion about RedEye’s cover story. During the last 10 minutes they ask participants for suggestions on how to make the wave better.

What makes Google Wave so useful is the community building aspect, according to Yiu. “The great thing is once it ends at 11 o’clock, it keeps on going. They keep on talking,” she said. Yiu is hoping it will be a cool way to get feedback, such as movie reviews, from their readers that that they can also run in the RedEye print product, which is something they’re already doing with Twitter.

Using Waves As ‘Town Squares’

Robert Quigley, social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, has started two public waves so far. “People are enthusiastic and they want to talk about news. I was surprised how much discussion there was about the news,” he said.

However, said Quigley, the challenge right now is keeping public waves on topic. If they get more than 50 blips discussion grinds to a halt, reported Quigley. He added that in order for Google Wave to work during a news event, there needs to be the ability to moderate and or easily spin something into another wave and link to it in the first wave to keep it on topic. He stressed Google Wave is in its early stages and in preview, but there’s definitely potential with it, so these are issues that could be addressed in the future.

“We’ve been looking for years for collaboration with the public in a meaningful way and this could be the tool,” he said.

Quigley is eager to keep pushing the envelope with Google Wave to see what it possible. He told me, for example, that he wants to try a participant’s suggestion to embed a Google Calendar with links to waves listed within it so users can follow that calendar with the wave schedule. He also hopes to try the map gadget the next time Austin gets hit with an ice storm. He said he would embed a map into a Google Wave and then people could report conditions at their house. Users could edit the map as weather conditions change.

Google Wave has the potential to become a virtual “town square,” where otherwise separate gadgets applied to content created by journalists and enhanced by the wave’s users can be used to provide an accurate, detailed description of what’s happening locally.

Wave as a Newsroom Content Planning Tool

Chris Taylor, online editor at TBO.com, is also the online breaking news editor in charge of planning content for his converged newsroom (which includes the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and TBO.com). Each night he emails a content budget to the deadline team, but he is now also using a daily wave that others in the newsroom can add to, edit, etc. Taylor said there are about 15 people on this wave and he has requested more invites from Google to get more people involved.

The daily wave accounts for all the content the newsroom knows is coming or is chasing down. There are about 40 stories in a wave and each story gets a paragraph and after each story is a blip. “Anything we can do in a newsroom of this size [to help] the content we produce to keep from falling through the cracks is a plus,” Taylor said.

When Taylor comes into work in the morning he can immediately get caught up on the status of all items in the newsroom budget by checking the wave. He said reviewing the wave at his desk takes one-tenth the time of having meetings.

“I think using it for this will get people comfortable with wave, which is my ultimate goal,” he said. “As we get more comfortable with it, we’ll be able to be where our audience is.”

Turning Blog Posts Into Public Waves

Andrew Nystrom, senior producer of social media and emerging platforms at the Los Angeles Times, collaborated with social media reporter Mark Milian on the blog post “How Google Wave Could Transform Journalism” that ran on the newspaper’s web site a couple of months ago.

Among some of the ideas listed in the post were: collaborative reporting, smarter story updates, live editing, discussing while reading, and a transparent writing process. Nystrom said in an email interview they’re looking at all the potential uses that Milian posited in the blog post. In a case of “eating his own dogfood,” so to speak, Milian even embedded the post as a wave and it has since received more than 350 blips.

“That experiment was definitely an eye-opener. My understanding of Wave has always been that it’s a valuable tool for small-team collaboration. So to see it succeed as a larger-scale crowdsourcing tool was unexpected to say the least,” Nystrom said by email. “People quickly swarmed the wave and provided a ton of really smart insights. Things we had never thought of.”

He added that they’ll definitely do more of this and that it’s just a matter of identifying which topics would benefit from collaboration.

“Ideally, every post would plug into wave because I love the inline commenting system. But I don’t want to flood the ocean,” according to Milian. “When we do another piece on Google Wave, or on something that begs for crowdsourcing, you will definitely see it in Wave.”

(from mashable)

Google Translate Now Talks and Translates in Real-time

Google’s tool for translating text between 51 languages, Google Translate, has just added some very nifty and very useful features, with the biggest change being the addition of instant, real-time translations.

While the company hasn’t removed the “translate” button from its service, it should because now the proper translation will appear in real-time below the text box. It’s actually quite amazing: you can type in complex words and see their roots as you type. It also allows you to craft sentences faster and more efficiently in other languages.

Google Translate’s two other additions are nearly as impressive. Another new feature helps English speakers pronounce and read non-roman languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Clicking “Show romanizaiton” will provide you a phonetic representation of the translation so you can read it off instantly. Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian aren’t supported yet. However, Arabic, Persian, and Hindi now have a feature that allows you to type out the words as they sound (in English) and convert them to native script.

Finally, Google’s added text-to-speech support for English translations: just click the speaker icon to hear your translation. Overall, these new features are a good upgrade to Google Translate, especially the real-time translations, which we think may change how people interact with the tool.

If you want to learn more, Google’s provided a video demoing these new features:

Now Anyone Can Host Their Own (Experimental) Google Wave Server

Google promise to let developers improve the code and they did. They promised federation for Wave, meaning that anyone could take the Wave code and run their own private or public wave server. Google took the first step towards the full federation of its real-time communication platform by announcing that the developer sandbox version of Google Wave is open for experimental federation.

Let’s be clear: this is a very early stage test of federating the Google Wave code onto non-Google servers. It only affects the developer sandbox, meaning that the preview version of Wave that most people are using is not a part of this test. However, it is a big step in making it a widespread product, rather than only a tool of early adopters. Businesses and individuals can begin testing their own local copy of Wave. This is just the beginning of Google’s legitimate attempt to upend email as the standard for web correspondence and communication.

If you’re a developer with a sandbox account and want to get started, Google has published some installation instructions for a Java version. Be warned though: there will be a lot of changes occurring over the next few weeks, many of them based on developer feedback.

Barnes and Noble going International

Want to be the head of Barnesandnoble.com’s international business? Because they’re definitely hiring a whole team, and they’re starting at the top.

Recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates is representing Barnes & Noble in a search for the “head of their international business,” according to a source who was contacted about the position. The job entails building the international business for BN.com from scratch, hiring the team and “building the infrastructure outside the U.S.” They prefer the executive live in New York, but Europe is ok, too. Global ecommerce experience is preferred.

Barnes & Noble is no Amazon, but it is a billion dollar company and they have an upcoming ebook reader that kicks the Kindle’s butt (it’s so easy to love unlaunched products, isn’t it?).