A2SM Podcast #22 – Special Report: Robert Scoble on the Rackspace Cloud Going Open Source

Yes you heard us right, the Rackspace Cloud is going open source. A2SM Editor Seth Goldstein spoke to the Rackspace guru himself, Robert “The Scobleizer” Scoble about what this means for cloud computing and Social Media.

Link Post for June 16th through June 18th

This is the A2SM Link Post for June 16th through June 18th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Link Post for April 16th through April 18th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 16th through April 18th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • 12 Chatroulette Clones You Should Try – Chatroulette has been giving journalists reporting fodder for slow news days for a few months now — enough time, apparently, to spawn a number of clones.
  • 5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic – No matter how much quality information or witty repartee we send out into our social networks, first impressions are almost always visual. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the first thing we see when checking out a new Twitter (Twitter) follower, Facebook (Facebook) friend, or LinkedIn (LinkedIn) connection is a profile photo. And in a world of quick clicks and divergent attention, if the photo you present isn’t eye-catching, or illustrative of your personal brand, you may miss your shot at making a positive first impression.
  • HOW TO: Maximize Your Content’s Reach on the Social Web – We have all heard that “content is king” — Sumner Redstone deemed it so, then Rupert Murdoch upped the ante, calling it “emperor.” But how do we make sure content is delivered to the right places, at the right times? How can we measure the effectiveness of this content and its distribution?
  • Spam Suspect Uses Google Docs; FBI Happy | Threat Level | Wired.com – FBI agents targeting alleged criminal spammers last year obtained a trove of incriminating documents from a suspect’s Google Docs account, in what appears to be the first publicly acknowledged search warrant benefiting from a suspect’s reliance on cloud computing.
  • Study: Young adults do care about online privacy – Yahoo! News – But it's not quite true, a new study finds. Despite mounds of anecdotes about college students sharing booze-chugging party photos, posting raunchy messages and badmouthing potential employers online, young adults generally care as much about privacy as older Americans.
  • DOJ abandons warrantless attempt to read Yahoo e-mail | Politics and Law – CNET News – The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first. (via Matt Cutts)
  • Good Enough For A Pulitzer, But Not Good Enough For Apple | Techdirt – Just as online content only begins to get some recognition as being Pulitzer worthy, it looks like those content creators still have a major hurdle to overcome: namely, Apple's incredibly screwed up application approval process. Cartoonist Mark Fiore made Internet and journalism history this week as the first online-only journalist to win a Pulitzer prize for his work over at the San Francisco Chronicle. Much more difficult? Getting his iPhone cartoon application past Apple's application store guardians. Fiore says his application was rejected last December because, as an Apple letter phrased it, his satirical cartoons "ridicule public figures," a violation of Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

Link Post for March 13th through March 15th

This is the A2SM Link Post for March 13th through March 15th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Details: Twitter’s New @Anywhere Platform – Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced at SXSW that his company is taking another step to integrate with the rest of the web with a new platform called @anywhere. Operators of third-party websites will be able to plug in @anywhere to integrate some basic Twitter functionality without requiring their users to navigate away from a page.
  • Wait, Did Ev Williams Just Interview Umair Haque? Weird. – When SXSW sets up its festival, you have to assume they want the best and most engaging keynotes possible. If the public reaction to Umair Haque’s interview of Twitter co-founder Ev Williams is any indication, they failed. Badly.
  • First Dot-com Celebrates 25th Birthday – Exactly 25 years ago, computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc, registered the first .com web domain ever: symbolics.com. By today’s design standards, and considering how websites looked back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it’s quite decent, although a bit short on content.
  • Seesmic Announces Silverlight Desktop Platform with Plugins – Seesmic demonstrated a new desktop client for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn today. Since it’s based on Microsoft’s cross-platform Silverlight software, it works on both Windows and Mac computers. Seesmic has also opened the software up to third-party plug-in development.
  • The Rise of Foursquare in Numbers [STATS] – Despite that short amount of time, Foursquare has more than half a million users, 1.4 million venues and 15.5 million checkins, and it’s still growing. Experian Hitwise decided to use this milestone to analyze Foursquare’s growth.
  • On Google’s Impending China Decision, and How It Has Lost Its Impact – Two months ago, Google threatened to shut down its China search engine over censorship. Yet until today, its China search engine has stayed up with results still censored. Now the search company is finally expected to announce that it’s going to actually follow through and slowly shut down its China search engine.
  • New Version of Digg Revealed – At the “Bigg Digg Shindigg” event at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSWi), Digg CEO Jay Adelson revealed that the popular social bookmarking site is getting a major overhaul, teasing the audience about new features such as personalized feeds and the return of the Digg leaderboard.
  • What Google Will Do in China (SXSW Presentation) – Kaiser Kuo presented today at SXSW about Google in China. He spoke about how the Google situation will impact Chinese Internet users, other companies and the Chinese government.
  • OneLogin: Enterprise-Class Security Services and OpenID For The Small and Medium Sized Business – ReadWriteEnterprise – We're seeing a lot more discussion on the topic of single-sign on for SaaS environments. The issue is becoming more important as security emerges as a top concern for companies considering making the move to cloud-based environments.
  • Will Google’s Cloud be a Cozy Nest for Aviary? – ReadWriteCloud – Aviary, the online creative platform is a visionary tool. When it launched a few years back, the irony of a Flash based Photoshop competitor was, well, ironic.<br />
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    With the launch of Aviary in Google's App Marketplace, we can say that the company is close to making lightening strike twice, this time around creating a home for the creative professional and their most important assets.

Link Post for March 4th

This is the A2SM Link Post for March 4th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

  • Facebook Officially Launches Resized Photos – Looking to upload larger photos on Facebook? It’s now possible thanks to Facebook rolling out some features first announced in January. Images have now been increased “by almost 20 percent to 720 pixels to give [users] higher quality photos”. While on the surface this isn’t a big deal, Facebook run the largest online photo storage product which means this is a relatively substantial technical feat.
  • Ali Fedotowsky Dumps Facebook For “The Bachelorette” – Weeks after leaving ‘the Bachelor’ as a contender to keep her job at Facebook, Ali Fedotowsky has quit Facebook and is set to star in the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’. She made these revelations during her appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show.
  • Viral Facebook Page Wants To Make ‘Hella’ An Actual Number – You’ve probably seen some unusual Facebook Groups and Fan pages lately, and the petition to make “Hella” a real number is just one more. However its initial appeal to a small group may be ending as it’s beginning to catch fire and go viral.
  • Facebook’s Deal With Omniture Could Lure More Big Companies to Its Performance Ads – Although a range of companies provide analytics services for Facebook Pages and applications, and a handful offer automated purchasing of Facebook’s performance advertisement inventory, Facebook is now officially partnering with a big player in both areas: Omniture.
  • Bing’s Facebook Page Gets 400,000 New Fans in a Day Through Ad Offer in Farmville – In the latest example of brand advertising integrated into social games, Microsoft ran an advertising offer for Bing within Zynga’s hit game FarmVille on Tuesday. If users became a fan of Bing’s Facebook Page by clicking on a sponsored ad on the bottom right of the FarmVille main page, they’d receive 3 Farm Cash (FarmVille’s virtual currency). The effort was apparently successful, as Bing’s page went from slightly more than 100,000 fans on Monday to more than 500,000 as of earlier today.
  • Facebook Promotes Mobile Services to Users Who Log Off the Web Site – It’s already clear that Facebook believes mobile devices are a key way for users to access its service, and the company has occasionally tested ways of making its mobile site and mobile apps more obvious. But now it’s going even further.
  • Kwedit Gets Slammed On Colbert, But Raises $3.3 Million To Soften The Blow – Kwedit, the innovative new alternate payment product for social games and just about any other virtual good, is on a roll. They’ve raised a second round of financing – $3.3 million in a round led by Maveron. And they were also on the Colbert Report last night. Just, not so much in a good way.
  • WSJ: Facebook Revenues For 2010 Could Hit Between $1.2 To $2 Billion – Late last year, we published a list of the top 10 IPO candidates of 2010. Leading that list was Facebook, which has grown to 400 million users and is finally starting to turn on the revenue pumps as it works toward its inevitable IPO. But this evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article penned by Jessica Vascellaro that may dash the hopes of anyone who thinks that will happen in the immediate future. The lengthy piece, which is well worth reading in its entirety, touches on quite a few issues related to Facebook’s history and its future, and largely revolves around CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who doesn’t sound all that keen to take his company public.
  • Google: Desktops Will Be Irrelevant in Three Years’ Time – Speaking at the Digital Landscapes conference at UCD, European director of Google’s online sales John Herlihy said that Google is mostly oriented towards mobile devices, claiming they’ll become more important than desktop PCs.
  • Twitter Speeding Toward 10 Billion Tweets – About one year ago Twitter reached a huge milestone: one billion tweets. Four months ago, five billion tweets were served. And now, in about one day, Twitter should reach another very important milestone: 10 billion tweets.

Link Post for January 4th through January 6th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 4th through January 6th:

  • 28 Days Later: Say Goodbye to the Netflix New Release Rental – Today is sad day for Netflix customers. The online video rental supplier has just announced an agreement with Warner Bros. that will forever alter your online rental experience. Now should you wish to rent a Warner Bros. flick you’ll have to wait out a 28-day holding period after the film’s initial DVD release date.
  • Analysis: Yawn, Google Introduces iPhone Clone | Epicenter | Wired.com – Congratulations, Google. You’ve spent untold millions of dollars to produce another iPhone — two years late. That about sums up the company’s Nexus One phone launch today.
  • Exclusive: Apple to Buy Quattro Wireless for $275 Million | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD – Apple is set to announce that it has acquired Quattro Wireless for $275 million, several sources confirmed.
  • Make Video Encoding Easy and Affordable With Encoding.com – Encoding.com is the leading SaaS provider of studio-class video encoding services. It scales instantly and supports all popular media formats.
  • Yahoo to Unload E-mail Provider Zimbra on VMWare – As Yahoo continues to refine and redefine itself, it’s been offloading and shuttering some services in an effort to slim down (RIP Geocities!). One of the divisions that’s been on the auction block since September is Zimbra, an open-source e-mail company Yahoo acquired in September 2007 for $350 million.
  • 5 Superb Social Media Tools for Musicians – Musicians take notice
  • Eric Schmidt: The Baddest Man On Twitter – Stop what you’re doing right now (reading this) and go look at Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s latest Twitter profile picture. Now look closer. Yes, it appears he’s wearing a flak jacket, also known as a bullet-proof vest.
  • An Inside Look At A Twitter Style Guide: 140 Characters – We’ve all seen Twitter grow into the company that it is now, but what was it like when it first started — back when it was still called Odeo, and Twitter wasn’t in existence. As we know, Twitter was spun off from Evan William’s company Odeo, into what we know now as Twitter, the social networking service where you post short messages in 140 characters or less.
  • Nothing to celebrate on Public Domain Day 2010 in the US – What child has not sat starry-eyed around the fire, dreaming of the goodies to come on January 1—Public Domain Day? The thought of new books and movies and music coming out from copyright is enough to send sugarplums dancing through heads, unless you live in the US in 2010. In which case, you have nothing to celebrate, since nothing is entering the public domain this year.
  • Pearl Jam Gives A Song Away For A Tweet – Regular readers may know my affinity for Pearl Jam. The band, which released a new album, Backspacer, last year had a series of promotions with MySpace to promote the album. Now they’re turning to Twitter for some more.