Link Post for July 16th through July 28th

This is the A2SM Link Post for July 16th through July 28th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Link Post for July 12th through July 16th

This is the A2SM Link Post for July 12th through July 16th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • DA Withdraws iPhone 4 Warrant, Returns Gizmodo Editor Jason Chen’s Possessions – The iPhone 4 may be available to the general public, but the police investigation into the leaked device that Gizmodo purchased last spring is still going strong. Now there’s been a new development: the EFF reports that the San Mateo District Attorney has withdrawn the warrant it used to search Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s house last April, when it confiscated multiple computers, hard drives, and other electronics.
  • U.S. Authorities Shut Down WordPress Host With 73,000 Blogs | TorrentFreak – After the U.S. Government took action against several sites connected to movie streaming recently, nerves are jangling over the possibility that this is just the beginning of a wider crackdown. Now it appears that a free blogging platform has been taken down by its hosting provider on orders from the U.S. authorities on grounds of “a history of abuse”. More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result.
  • How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made – How do you take the social web by storm in a day, winning over even the coldest of hearts and gaining international acclaim – with commercials?
  • Man Claims Ownership of Facebook – WSJ.com – A New York judge has issued a temporary restraining order restricting the transfer of Facebook Inc.'s assets, following a suit by a New York man who claims to own an 84% stake in the social-networking company.
  • Two Guys Conquer YouTube For Profit And Glory – I call them the YouTube cowboys: two guys who are rough around the edges, not obeying anyone’s rules, and steadfastly doing well by doing their own thing; they are crushing it. These relatively new YouTube channel owners are not just dominating their genre, they are often spanking the biggest brands in the world, bringing in hundreds of thousands of views to their content every day.
  • Make Your Own Rechargeable, Water-Powered Battery – We've covered how to make a beer battery before, but if you've yet to get into the home brewing scene, you can make a smaller battery with a copper rod and a bit of water or vinegar.

Link Post for July 9th through July 11th

This is the A2SM Link Post for July 9th through July 11th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Top 10 USB Thumb Drive Tricks – What can you do with a few gigabytes and a USB port? Quite a lot, with the right software. Learn how to encrypt your work, run whole systems, rescue Windows, and customize your thumb drive with these USB-geared tricks.
  • MediaPost Publications Mobile Devices Continue To Take Market Share 07/09/2010 – Advertisers wondering when mobile will catch on might want to take a big breath and hang on. Two separate reports released Thursday reveal that mobile device use, from smartphones to tablets, continues to increase.
  • Former Googler And White House Staffer Katie Jacobs Stanton Heads To Twitter – Twitter has made another key hire today: former Google vet and White House and State Department staffer Katie Jacobs Stanton. According to Stanton’s Tweet stream, she will be leaving her role at the State Department for greener pastures at Twitter. She will be based out of the company’s California office.
  • Why Facebook Killed A $100 Million Baby – This evening Facebook announced that they will officially kill the company’s gift shop on August 1st of this year. Currently generating tens of millions of dollars for the company a year, one has to wonder why the company would take such dramatic steps. Facebook regularly touts how few developers run each segment of their business, but even if the company was generating tens of millions on a couple of developers, apparently more can be generated with the small gifts team working on other projects. So what does this really mean?
  • Rich text signatures – Official Gmail Blog – Rich text signatures have long been one of our most widely requested features. Some of you have tried your own solutions, including Greasemonkey scripts, browser plugins, and even using canned responses from Gmail Labs. Others have simply lived with frustration of not being able to change the colors or font size of your signature, or insert images and links. Either way, you'll be happy to know that today we're launching the ability to write your own rich text signatures right in Gmail.

Link Post for June 4th through June 8th

This is the A2SM Link Post for June 4th through June 8th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Recording Industry Wants $1 Billion From LimeWire – After winning a ruling against peer-to-peer file-sharing service LimeWire last month, the recording industry has told a federal judge it aims to recoup “over a billion dollars” from the defendant as well.
  • Starbucks Used Social Media to Get One Million to Stores in One Day
  • Twitpic Launches Face Tagging – Just one week after announcing Events grouping for photos, Twitpic is rolling out Face Tagging.<br />
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    Just as you do on Facebook, you can now tag images of you and your friends and acquaintances on Twitpic. Below the image in question, just click the blue link reading “Add/Edit Faces.”
  • Smartphone Faceoff: HTC Evo 4G vs. iPhone 4 – Last week in our Web Faceoff series, we asked you, the readers, to help us answer a question: Where do you get more of your news: Twitter or newspapers?<br />
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    At least among Mashable’s (Mashable) readers, social media was the clear winner. Twitter dominated the faceoff with 1,005 (52%) while newspapers as a whole only garnered 418 (22%). 282 of you said neither, while another 211 voted that both were equal sources of news.
  • Twitter Hits 2 Billion Tweets Per Month – According to Twitter CTO Dick Costolo, about 65 million tweets are sent on Twitter each day. This equates to roughly 1.96 billion tweets per month, a stat that’s corroborated by Pingdom’s estimate of 2 billion tweets per month.
  • Foursquare Now Experimenting with Badge Rewards – Foursquare is fast-approaching 1.6 million members and has just released CNN World Cup badges.<br />
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    These interesting tidbits were revealed today when Foursquare Co-founder Dennis Crowley took the stage at the Mashable Media Summit to field questions from our Editor-in-Chief, Adam Ostrow.
  • BP Buys Top Google Result for "Oil Spill" – BP has purchased sponsored links that appear at the top of Google and Yahoo’s search results for terms like “oil spill” in its attempts to improve its public image in the wake of its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Install a Full Power Panel in Your Car – This project is a bit more involved than the aforementioned USB hack, but it will give you quite a bit of versatility in terms of charging your electronic devices. You'll need a strip of aluminum for the panel, a power inverter, some inline fuses, a 12 volt extension plug, and some wire and connectors to hook it all up. You'll also need a soldering iron as well as a few other basic tools to get behind your dashboard and to mold the panel to your liking.
  • Yahoo Wants HuffPo Badly – Yahoo is clearly positioning itself to become a stronger player in the online content game, as evidenced by its recent acquisition of Associated Content. But we are hearing that the real prize they want is the Huffington Post.

Link Post for May 17th through May 19th

This is the A2SM Link Post for May 17th through May 19th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Google Wave Now Open to Everyone – Google Wave – Lifehacker – Google Wave now lets anyone with a Google account to jump in and see what the early adopters have been squawking (and snarking) about. Head to wave.google.com now to get Waving, but read on for some beginner tips and use cases.
  • Facebook to Simplify Privacy Options – Following a drawn-out media and PR debacle, Facebook has decided to simplify privacy options for users.
  • 5 Essential Facebook Privacy Tips – The latest changes to Facebook have seen their fair share of criticism, with many users examining more closely the definition of “public vs. private.” Some users have been turned off enough by Facebook’s envelope pushing when it comes to privacy to go so far as to contemplate a mass Facebook exodus.
  • Facebook Launches 0.facebook.com, A Mobile Site That Incurs Zero Data Fees – Facebook just got a lot more accessible to international users. The social network has launched 0.facebook.com, a special mobile-only site that can be accessed free of charge on select carriers. The lightweight site omits photos but includes core functionality like News Feed, status updates, profile Walls and messaging. And most important, Facebook has partnered with over 50 mobile carriers to offer free access to the site, without any data fees.
  • Mayors of Starbucks Now Get Discounts Nationwide with Foursquare – Starbucks, a company that already rewards frequent customers with the Barista badge on social gaming app Foursquare — is officially turning on the rewards side of its experimental Foursquare loyalty program with the first-ever nationwide mayor special.

Link Post for May 15th through May 17th

This is the A2SM Link Post for May 15th through May 17th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Doctors Seeing a Rise In "Google-itis" – It's one of the fastest-growing health issues that doctors now face: "Google-itis." Everyone from concerned mothers to businessmen on their lunch break are typing in symptoms and coming up with rare diseases or just plain wrong information. Many doctors are bringing computers into examination rooms now so they can search along with patients to alleviate their fears. "I'm not looking for a relationship where the patient accepts my word as the gospel truth," says Dr. James Valek. "I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."
  • Delete Your Facebook Account: ‘Quit Facebook Day’ Wants Users To Leave – As controversy swells around Facebook's latest changes to its privacy policy–which is now longer than the Constitution and offers some 50 settings and over 170 options–users' interest in deleting their Facebook accounts has soared.
  • How to Quit Facebook Without Actually Quitting Facebook – Facebook – Lifehacker – With all the privacy issues surrounding Facebook, many people are considering quitting the site altogether. If you're not ready to take it that far, here's how to avoid the privacy breaches without completely deleting your account and losing touch with your friends.
  • Gink: The Next Great Social Network? [PARODY] – Sketch troupe Derrick Comedy has tackled social networking as the topic of their latest video on CollegeHumor by creating the next next-generation social network: Gink. What is Gink? Well, it’s simple, really: “Gink is a fun made-up word, combining the words gibble and spink, both of which are also made up.”
  • Mashable Readers Miss Being “Fans” on Facebook – In the good old days, Facebook users “became a fan” of their favorite teams, celebrities, objects, and personalities. A month and a half ago though, that all changed. Facebook Pages switched from “Become a Fan” to “Like” in order to lower the bar for users to engage and connect with brands.

Link Post for May 10th through May 11th

This is the A2SM Link Post for May 10th through May 11th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Link Post for April 26th

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 26th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

  • Cechriecom.com.js.php – WordPress Hacked on Godaddy | Case Study | WPSecurityLock – WordPress blogs hosted on Godaddy were hacked by another malicious attack on April 24, 2010 at 6:54am. What was visible in the source code was <script src="http://cechirecom.com/js.php"> located just above the </body> tag on all .php files.
  • Steve Wozniak On Apple Security, Employee Termination, and Gray Powell – Steve Wozniak – Gizmodo – The Woz speaks out!
  • Bebo speak: Teenagers create secret language to hide partying and drinking | Mail Online – Teenagers on social networking site Bebo have created a secret language to stop adults knowing what they are up to, researchers say.
  • How To Use Hot Chicks To Spread Your Brand Message On YouTube – Brands are trying to figure out this whole social marketing thing, but the success stories are still few and far between. “I think everyone is grappling with how to use digital these days,” says Judy Hu, who is in charge of advertising and branding for General Electric. She oversees one of the world’s largest advertising budgets which spans TV, print, and the Web. I spoke with her last week about one early success GE is seeing with an online video campaign organized by Howcast that is generating millions of video views on YouTube as part of its larger Healthyimagination branding effort.
  • Blippy’s Security Plan: The Details – As I mentioned in Sunday’s post, Blippy’s founders were hammering out a new security plan to assure users that all their information, especially their credit card numbers, would be safe. They delivered this morning, in their latest blog post, issuing new details about the blunder, how it worked with Google, and the framework for a go-forward plan. In addition, Blippy sounded more contrite about the situation. On Friday their post said, “it’s a lot less bad than it looks,” this Monday the tone is less defensive and more apologetic: “However, this is a very serious issue and simply apologizing is not enough. We’ve spent the last 48 hours working around the clock to dissect the issues, reach out to affected users, and put together a plan to ensure this never happens again.”
  • The Age Of Facebook – Two years ago I was on the Charlie Rose show and we talked about, among other startups and trends, Facebook. It wasn’t clear then that Facebook had what it took to become one of the great technology companies. They had conquered the college market and were destroying the hopes and dreams of MySpace. But they were also reeling from the Beacon debacle and hadn’t proven that they could turn those massive reach and page view numbers into sustainable revenue streams.
  • HOW TO: Spring Clean Your Twitter Account – It’s no secret that we love Twitter. It’s a fantastic social media tool, a window on the world that can keep you updated on the big things, such as global news and events, the little things, like where your buddies are headed on a Friday night, and just about anything in between.
  • 10 Killer Tips for Creating a Branded YouTube Channel – There was a time when YouTube was considered a wild-wild west of content — a place where marketers shied away from uploading their commercials, let alone building a branded channel. But these days, YouTube has become more mini-van than stagecoach. From Toyota Sienna’s high-profile television commercials urging consumers to visit their YouTube channel, to (what might be considered the anti-minivan) Harley Davidson’s fan-centric YouTube universe, there has been a noticeable shift in corporate adoption of the platform.
  • The Wall Street Journal Partners with Foursquare – Foursquare’s bread-and-butter is the partnerships that seed the location-based social network with curated content. Now, that includes editorial tips and badges from the renowned business publication The Wall Street Journal.
  • Google Adds Local Business Annotations to Street View – While Google works to extend Street View to the inside of stores — at least according to rumor — for the time being they’ve released a handy utility for better browsing with Google Street View: local business annotations.

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 19th through March 21st

This is the A2SM Link Post for March 19th through March 21st. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

  • Sprint Makes Your iPhone 4G [VIDEO] – The iPhone 4G (next generation iPhone) is yet to be released, but Sprint is cleverly advertising “4G speeds” on your iPhone thanks to its Sierra Wireless Overdrive 4G WiFi hotspot.
  • Yelp for Business: 4 Steps for Success – For local small businesses, Yelp (Yelp) isn’t just an option — it’s a necessity. People in urban centers use it to choose where to go to dinner, where to buy clothes, and where to be entertained. Users decide where and how to spend their money using Yelp, so if your business is local, you need to curate your Yelp page.
  • 4 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Google Buzz – When a green field lies before you, so does opportunity. Some non-profits stand to gain from being part of the early Buzz adopter community. Whether a cause needs to further the dialogue with a tech-savvy crowd, or is attracted to the functionality of Gmail (Gmail) integration, Buzz does bring some new capabilities to bear.
  • Ben Folds Plays Chatroulette Live in Concert [VIDEO] – Singer-songwriter Ben Folds visited the random video chat site Chatroulette during a recent live concert in Charlotte, North Carolina, playing improv piano tunes about the people he was connected with.
  • New Twitter Phishing Attack: “You’re On Here?” [WARNING] – Twitter users are reporting a new attempt to extract their usernames and passwords — a Direct Message attack that asks “You’re on here?” with a link. Others report DMs linking to a site called “mhansenhome” with the message “’someone posted on their blog about you”.
  • Happy Birthday Twitter! – Sunday, March 21st (a few hours from now on the West Coast) marks Twitter’s 4th birthday — exactly four years since Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent his first Tweet and, along with Evan Williams and Biz Stone, started a phenomenon.
  • In choosing its battle names, the military must know its target audience – washingtonpost.com – Names are important, especially in war. Like a good advertising jingle, war names must be catchy and concise. But above all else, they have to sell — all sorts of things, to all sorts of people: inspiration to the troops, righteousness to Americans at home, partnership to allied countries, peace and promise to non-combatant civilians.
  • Social Media & Scott Monty @ Ford Motor Company – Online Marketing Blog – When you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated a tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle that wasn’t available to the public yet. (Great summary on Jeff Bullas’s blog) At the same time, it inspired a community to engage, create content and continue discussions about the Fiesta with over 7 million video views.
  • Social Media Optimization Tools – Online Marketing Blog – Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Heck, we’ve been blogging about SMO since 2006! Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.
  • Responsibilities of Community Managers » Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg – Every time I tell someone I’m a Community Manager, I get a varied response. But the response doesn’t vary enough. The response is usually something along the lines of “Wow! So you tweet and facebook for a living! Kewlz!” or “So do you blog on the interwebs all day, or sumthin?” Another favorite is “What’s that?” That last one might be the most honest of the three, since asking a Community Manager whether they tweet for a living is like asking a construction worker if they cat-call for a living, or a doctor if he asks people to say “ah!” for a living.