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1st
APR
Our Choice: 5 Funniest April Fools Jokes
Posted by Stan Schroeder under Mashable
OK, it’s become officially too overwhelming to keep covering all the jokes that are sprouting up everywhere, so I’ve decided to make a quick selection of some I find particularly well executed.
5. Destructoid turns to Foxtoid - The folks at Destructoid were always great when it comes to making fun of mainstream media, and this time is no different. Have a problem? Kid not doing well at school? Wife cheating on you? Blame the video games, man!
4. World Of Warcraft: Molten Core. If you have never played the game, skip this one. If, like me, you’ve spent endless days and nights in that damn instance (I was totally slacking though, enhancement Shaman ftw), it’ll make you laugh (and the addiction will resurface, hitting you like a ton of bricks. I almost bought another month.) Check the site out, there’s even a trailer there.
3. The Mahalo Daily Steve Jobs interview. Ok, the punchline is a bit stale, but the introduction is cool. They would have had me going if I haven’t seen 12438 April fools jokes today.
2. Revision3’s flipped videos - nifty idea. Seemingly, nothing is wrong with the site, but all the videos are flipped, which is particularly cool when there’s text on the video. NoitanggiD, anyone?
1. Betamax to HD-DVD - this actually made me laugh out loud. As ThinkGeek put it, “many folks that recorded home movies between the year 1975 and about 1984. Think Air Supply, Pat Benatar, and ‘Who Shot JR?’ and you’ll get the idea. So we took a trip to Awesome Town and picked up this nifty Betamax to HD-DVD converter - at a price that shouts “Totally Tubular”. Betamax and HD-DVD are like a match literally made in heaven (you know, that place you go when you die?), and now you can get a slice for yourself.” I don’t know about you, but I’m ordering one of these babies right now.
What are your favorites for this year? Please share them in the comments.
Popularity: unranked [?]
1st
Emma Cott Takes Your Profile Offline
Posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins under Mashable
One of the recurring themes of our site is convergence (makes sense, with a name like Mashable). I could give at least thirty examples of convergence between two or more different mediums or services that have been mentioned in the last couple of days or so, but one that hasn’t really been talked about is the merging of analogue and digital. This is the domain of Emma Cott, who is doing this not really as programmer or as a Web 2.0 startup in the traditional sense, but as a fashion designer.
The concept is simple, and is based around the technology known as QR codes. As an American, I was only marginally aware of what these things were, having seen them on packing slips and such in the past, but I’ve seen them discussed here and there before. Essentially, what they are, I’ve found out, is a barcode like system that encodes everything (numbers, alphanumeric characters and even binary data) into this little box-like code. It’s designed so that you can take a quick snapshot with the grade camera that typically comes on a mobile phone.
The mashup part comes in where you have a number of options in getting your apparrel from the site - you can pick which social network you wish to showcase, and your ‘motivation’ (that is to say, dating, marketing, selling, etc), and it will generate the QR code, put a bit of message around it, and smack it on a Spreadshirt for you to immediately purchase.
Simple, but interesting, and in Japan and parts of Europe, maybe even useful. I don’t think the QR code craze has hit America quite as hard as it has hit there (and Stan, our European editor tells me that where he is, it isn’t a thing of familiarity for the culture), but it easily could, it looks like, as the mobile software to interpret the codes are freely available.
Sure, it may be gimmicky, and it may be a bit of a simple hack, but it worked for me. I’ve got a shirt headed my way instructing all who see it to “Follow Me,” with the QR code underneath containing my Twitter profile.
Popularity: unranked [?]
1st
Virgin And Google Conquering The Red Planet
Posted by Stan Schroeder under Mashable
In case you didn’t know, terraforming Mars and sending people to live up there (or down there, depending on how you look at it) is only about cash, nothing else. Kim Stanley Robinson hasn’t got a clue. Now, three guys that have cash in abundance, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have agreed to finally take humanity to the stars and create a human settlement on Mars. For this endeavor, they formed a new company called…wait for it…Virgle!
I’m not going to get into details, but let’s just say that Mars will be “open source,” that Virgle plans to earn back their considerable investments (10-15 billion) by selling real estate, and that they have a “100 year plan” for the development of Mars. Hear it all straight from the mouths of Sergey and Larry in the video below.
Popularity: unranked [?]
31st
MAR
NextWeb Web 2.0 MeetUp [Live Video]
Posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins under Mashable
A bit ago, we announced our sponsorship of the NextWeb Web 2.0 Expo - today the group is broadcasting live via Mogulus a meetup pertaining to the expo. Info after the video embed.
April 22-25, 2008: Mashable is proud to announce a media sponsorship for the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco from April 22-25, 2008. Web 2.0 Expo takes the pulse of the Web ecosystem and looks to its future, shining a spotlight across the Web 2.0 landscape to show how the Internet Revolution is being created and delivered. It showcases the latest Web 2.0 business models, development paradigms and design strategies for designers, developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketers, product managers and business strategists, from start-ups to enterprises.
Web 2.0 Expo is for the builders of the next generation web; people who have experiences to share and a passion for learning–the hot new thing, lessons from failures, innovations and inspirations, and the practical applications of all of the above. Discounts are still available for Mashable readers; visit our post for more Web 2.0 Expo information.
Popularity: unranked [?]
31st
Fav.or.it Conversation Tracking + API Will Let You Own Your Blog Comments
Posted by Adam Ostrow under Mashable
Although still in private beta, much like FriendFeed, fav.or.it is showing a knack for releasing features that play to some of the currently hot memes around the blogosphere. Today, the social RSS reader is showcasing a feature that they are dubbing a “conversation tracker,” aggregating all of your comments from around the blogosphere in one place and allowing you to keep tabs on the conversations that you’re involved in.
Since a major selling point of fav.or.it is that it allows you to comment within the reader and have it show up on the originating blog, this means that you can track conversations you’re having in the comment areas of Mashable (though technically, Mashable is not yet supported), CenterNetworks, paidContent, or whichever other blogs your frequent. You can then follow up on replies from within fav.or.it, in turn saving you a visit to all of those individual blogs (and costing us page views, hmm…). Here’s a demo showing how it works:
While distributed commenting systems like Disqus are also aggregating user comments, the big difference with fav.or.it is that as an RSS reader, it can aggregate comments from all of the blogs you read – not just those using Disqus or a similar product. Additionally, as the company indicates in a blog post, there will soon be an API for the conversation tracker so that any external service can make use of the data. In turn, this means fav.or.it will give you ownership of all of the comments you leave around the blogosphere, allowing you to integrate them into your own blog, web page, or web service of your choosing.
As I wrote in my initial review of fav.or.it, the biggest hurdle the company will face in gaining users isn’t in convincing user’s it’s a cool product - it has already done that, at least for me. The challenge is in overcoming the lock-in of other RSS readers - such as Google Reader with its Shared Items list. However, giving users ownership of all of their blog comments is a powerful value proposition, and one that could lure some power users over once fav.or.it launches to the public.
Editor’s Note: If you requested fav.or.it invites, they should be going out in the next day or two. Thank you for your patience!
Popularity: unranked [?]
31st
Audiobooks for Your Kids, on Kindle
Posted by Kristen Nicole under Mashable
Audible, the digital audiobooks company that was snatched up by Amazon earlier this year for $300 million, has launched a network just for kids. The new site, called AudibleKids, has about 4,000 titles from 75+ publishers available at the time of the launch, with exclusive stories from the likes of R.L. Stine (who didn’t love Goosebumps?).
Seeing as we’re living in the digital age and all, your 5 year-old probably knows how to work your iPhone as well as you do. So all of AudibleKids’ content is available for download to your favorite mobile media device, including iPods and Amazon’s good ol’ Kindle, too. AudibleKids is working with the Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) nonprofit organization in order to provide support to RIF’s mission. In doing so, AudibleKids also has a featured section where a select number of audiobooks are available for free download.
AudibleKids is more than just an online store for digital books–it’s also a social network. Parents will have to create accounts, though they can set up various profiles for each of their children, providing them different permissions than their own accounts. Content can be rated so that recommendations can be provided for the best digital audiobooks, and there are ratings, reviews and previews for each audiobook as well. The community is aimed to be an online resource and discussion platform for parents, educators and kids alike.
Popularity: unranked [?]
31st
hi5 Launches Platform; First Network on OpenSocial with Messaging APIs
Posted by Adam Ostrow under Mashable
As expected, hi5 announced the launch of its developer platform today with support for OpenSocial. Additionally, the social network, which is most popular in Latin America, has announced that it has become a founding member of the OpenSocial Foundation, the non-profit organization announced last week between Google, Yahoo, and MySpace.
In regards to the actual platform, one interesting tidbit from hi5 is that it is the first OpenSocial supporting network to offer a messaging API. Thus, applications can include notifications, invites, friend updates, and other viral features that have helped apps on Facebook take off. Presently, this functionality is not offered by MySpace, the other major social network where OpenSocial applications can currently be deployed. Mark Pincus of Zynga, the social gaming maker, highlights this point in the press release, stating:
“hi5 is taking the right approach to launching their platform. By opening some reasonable viral channels and making the social map available to developers and their users, hi5 is highly likely to become one of the biggest application platforms and see widespread user adoption. This is key for social games, such as Poker and Triumph, which quickly enables users to start and play games with their friends.”
According to hi5, more than 7,700 developers have registered to build applications on the site. At present, applications can be monetized via their canvas pages.
One additional stat from hi5 that piqued my interest: despite having a reported 80 million users, hi5 claims that it has only 25% active user overlap with any other top social networks. This isn’t especially surprising given the network is usually cited for being popular outside the US, but highlights the significant reach OpenSocial offers.
Popularity: unranked [?]
31st
MashMeet LA Caught on Tape!
Posted by Adam Hirsch under Mashable
Video site Stickam conducted live interviews throughout the night at the massively successful MashMeet LA event on Saturday. Below, see Pete Cashmore, Veronica Belmont and a variety of startups giving their thoughts on the LA tech scene.
Thanks to Stickam for the interviews and free schwag, and Mixergy for co-hosting the event - not to mention Cinsay.com, our awesome sponsor.
Popularity: unranked [?]
31st
MashMeet LA Caught on Tape!
Posted by Adam Hirsch under Mashable
Video site Stickam conducted live interviews throughout the night at the massively successful MashMeet LA event on Saturday. Below, see Pete Cashmore, Veronica Belmont and a variety of startups giving their thoughts on the LA tech scene.
Thanks to Stickam for the interviews and free schwag, and Mixergy for co-hosting the event - not to mention Cinsay.com, our awesome sponsor.
Popularity: unranked [?]
30th
MAR
LiveStream: The Business of Blogging Panel [WordCamp Dallas]
Posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins under Mashable
I’m out here in Dallas, today, mingling and covering live the events from WordCamp Dallas 2008. Up next, the panelists will discuss how businesses of any size might better incorporate blogging and other forms of new media into their marketing and product development as well as the rise of professional blogging.
Mark (Madhujit) Ghosh is the lead editor of Weblog Tools Collection, a popular resource for bloggers of every platform covering blog and new media news, tips, plugins, widgets and themes.
Aaron Brazell is the Director of Technology at b5media, maintains an extremely popular blog covering technology and social media called Technosailor, hosts the District of Corruption and most recently began work on the anti-social social network Mokonji.
EatonWeb once called Liz Strauss, “…perhaps the most influential relational blogger on the Internet.” Strauss calls herself a, “Connector and Community Specialist” and she’s built a community of involved readers around Successful Blog, including an annual Chicago-area conference called SOBCon (Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference).
Popularity: unranked [?]
30th
Source: Buzznet Acquires Qloud’s Network of Music Apps
Posted by Adam Ostrow under Mashable
A source close to the company tells us that Qloud, the music application maker backed by Steve Case, has been sold to Buzznet for a “little over their last round valuation.” This 
news comes on the heels of Buzznet raising a rumored $25 million in fresh funding, first reported yesterday by Rafat Ali of PaidContent.
Qloud makes the “My Music” application on Facebook (with similar products on Bebo, Friendster, and hi5), which has 1.8 million installed users, according to Developer Analytics. The service offers free streaming of music and videos on your social network of choice based on your favorite artists and iTunes playlists, and lets you see what’s popular amongst your friends.
As you can see in the stats below, the vast majority of Qloud’s users fall into the teen-thru-twentysomething demographic that the pop culture social network Buzznet also targets. However, it is worth noting that only about 1% of My Music’s users are considered “daily active users.”
In addition to Steve Case, Qloud is backed by a number of high profile music industry veterans, including Chris Blackwell (Island Records), Paul Vidich (Warner Music), and Tom Ryan (EMI).
We’ve contacted both companies for comment and will update our story with any new details that emerge.
Popularity: unranked [?]
30th
Source: Buzznet Acquires Qloud’s Network of Music Apps
Posted by Adam Ostrow under Mashable
A source close to the company tells us that Qloud, the music application maker backed by Steve Case, has been sold to Buzznet for a “little over their last round valuation.” This news comes on the heels of Buzznet raising a rumored $25 million in fresh funding, first reported yesterday by Rafat Ali of PaidContent.
Qloud makes the “My Music” application on Facebook (with similar products on Bebo, Friendster, and hi5), which has 1.8 million installed users, according to Developer Analytics. The service offers free streaming of music and videos on your social network of choice based on your favorite artists and iTunes playlists, and lets you see what’s popular amongst your friends.
As you can see in the stats below, the vast majority of Qloud’s users fall into the teen-thru-twentysomething demographic that the pop culture social network Buzznet also targets. However, it is worth noting that only about 1% of My Music’s users are considered “daily active users.”
In addition to Steve Case, Qloud is backed by a number of high profile music industry veterans, including Chris Blackwell (Island Records), Paul Vidich (Warner Music), and Tom Ryan (EMI).
We’ve contacted both companies for comment and will update our story with any new details that emerge.
Popularity: unranked [?]
30th
Mashable Conversations: Week in Review
Posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins under Mashable
The last week of March has been a great several days for Mashable Interview. Speaking strictly to the production schedule I’ve laid out for myself, it’s been one of the most ambitious I’ve embarked upon in a while. Speaking to all those folks has really provided us with some gems of conversations to listen to this week. If you’ve missed any of them, you probably aren’t a subscriber in your favorite feed reader or podcatcher. Below are the links to make that happen.
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating).
Add directly to your Zune here.
If that’s just too big of a commitment for you to handle, though, we’ll go over the words of the week and see what sort of stuff came out of my mouth.
JamBase, the original social network for live music aficionados and producers, recently celebrated 10 years on the web and 1 million listings in their database. The function of JamBase hasn’t legitimately changed in those ten years, but what we tech folks call it and the new sites we pressure them to be interoperable with have. Back when JamBase was first starting, we called them community portals. These days, they’re social networks.
I had a great conversation and we touched on all the interesting interactions we’d both had with indy music in the past (he had a touring rock band as well), as well as the future (how a Rock of Gibralter website like his maintains it’s relevance in the rapidly changing landscape of social media).
Last week had a bit of FriendFeed frenzy going on, particularly with the release of the FriendFeed API. Two of the four FriendFeed founders, Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor stopped by Mashable Conversations and talked about the launch of search for the service, as well as a bit about the API and conversation fragmentation memes that have been running around as well. It was a great conversation, and it’s been hard sitting on it and not boasting of it for the past week, so enjoy! 
I had a chance to sit down with the co-founders of crowdSPRING, Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Sampson. They were recently featured as our sponsored startup of the day.What crowdSPRING is, is a virtual marketplace to find the creative talents to fulfill just about any sort of digital endeavor one can conceive. With it’s ancestral roots in sites like GetAFreelancer and eLance, it tries to take the concept much further by presenting an even playing field where work product is judged on it’s merits, rather than a resume or CV.
Ross, Mike and I all talked about these challenges and the extreme amount of thought, testing and care they’ve put into trying to make this the most fair place to find, perform and hire creative work.
Tremor Media is a video advertising company targeting mid- to large- size publishers. We recently reported on their Series B funding round, where they raised $11 million to help accelerate the growth of the business. Jason Glickman, CEO at Tremor, came on by Mashable Conversations to talk about the challenges of video advertising.
This technically was from two weeks ago, but I really didn’t promote this podcast much on the blog (releasing it really as a Mashable Conversations Extra Edition). The KidZui Browser caught my attention when they released, though, and given that it is targeted for kids age 6 to 11, i figured that rather than to give a stodgy review based on my rather adult perspective, I sat down with my six year old son, AJ, and had him play with the browser for an hour and give his thoughts and experiences on it.
This interview cost me $19 in talent fees payable to my son to produce (invoice is in the mail, Pete). Enjoy!
Popularity: unranked [?]
30th
Mashable Conversations: Week in Review
Posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins under Mashable
The last week of March has been a great several days for Mashable Interview. Speaking strictly to the production schedule I’ve laid out for myself, it’s been one of the most ambitious I’ve embarked upon in a while. Speaking to all those folks has really provided us with some gems of conversations to listen to this week. If you’ve missed any of them, you probably aren’t a subscriber in your favorite feed reader or podcatcher. Below are the links to make that happen.
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating).
Add directly to your Zune here.
If that’s just too big of a commitment for you to handle, though, we’ll go over the words of the week and see what sort of stuff came out of my mouth.
JamBase, the original social network for live music aficionados and producers, recently celebrated 10 years on the web and 1 million listings in their database. The function of JamBase hasn’t legitimately changed in those ten years, but what we tech folks call it and the new sites we pressure them to be interoperable with have. Back when JamBase was first starting, we called them community portals. These days, they’re social networks.
I had a great conversation and we touched on all the interesting interactions we’d both had with indy music in the past (he had a touring rock band as well), as well as the future (how a Rock of Gibralter website like his maintains it’s relevance in the rapidly changing landscape of social media).
Last week had a bit of FriendFeed frenzy going on, particularly with the release of the FriendFeed API. Two of the four FriendFeed founders, Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor stopped by Mashable Conversations and talked about the launch of search for the service, as well as a bit about the API and conversation fragmentation memes that have been running around as well. It was a great conversation, and it’s been hard sitting on it and not boasting of it for the past week, so enjoy! I had a chance to sit down with the co-founders of crowdSPRING, Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Sampson. They were recently featured as our sponsored startup of the day.What crowdSPRING is, is a virtual marketplace to find the creative talents to fulfill just about any sort of digital endeavor one can conceive. With it’s ancestral roots in sites like GetAFreelancer and eLance, it tries to take the concept much further by presenting an even playing field where work product is judged on it’s merits, rather than a resume or CV.
Ross, Mike and I all talked about these challenges and the extreme amount of thought, testing and care they’ve put into trying to make this the most fair place to find, perform and hire creative work.
Tremor Media is a video advertising company targeting mid- to large- size publishers. We recently reported on their Series B funding round, where they raised $11 million to help accelerate the growth of the business. Jason Glickman, CEO at Tremor, came on by Mashable Conversations to talk about the challenges of video advertising.
This technically was from two weeks ago, but I really didn’t promote this podcast much on the blog (releasing it really as a Mashable Conversations Extra Edition). The KidZui Browser caught my attention when they released, though, and given that it is targeted for kids age 6 to 11, i figured that rather than to give a stodgy review based on my rather adult perspective, I sat down with my six year old son, AJ, and had him play with the browser for an hour and give his thoughts and experiences on it.
This interview cost me $19 in talent fees payable to my son to produce (invoice is in the mail, Pete). Enjoy!
Popularity: unranked [?]
30th
LiveStream: MashMeet Los Angeles!
Posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins under Mashable
The MashMeet LA event is happening today. If you’re not there, you’re really missing out. Aside from Pete Cashmore and Adam Hirsch gracing LA with their presence, a number of names you probably recognize are going to be lurking around the crowd as well:
Kaila Yu, well known Asian model and pop star
Veronica Belmont, video star.
Sean Percival, former Mashable writer.
MG Siegler, author of ParisLemon.
There are probably other interesting or notable folks in the crowd - these are just the ones I’ve been given advance notice of. After the presentations segment, we’ll probably be playing a drinking game for those of us not at the event every time we spot someone we recognize.
Popularity: unranked [?]
30th
LiveStream: MashMeet Los Angeles!
Posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins under Mashable
The MashMeet LA event is happening today. If you’re not there, you’re really missing out. Aside from Pete Cashmore and Adam Hirsch gracing LA with their presence, a number of names you probably recognize are going to be lurking around the crowd as well:
Kaila Yu, well known Asian model and pop star
Veronica Belmont, video star.
Sean Percival, former Mashable writer.
MG Siegler, author of ParisLemon.
There are probably other interesting or notable folks in the crowd - these are just the ones I’ve been given advance notice of. After the presentations segment, we’ll probably be playing a drinking game for those of us not at the event every time we spot someone we recognize.
Popularity: unranked [?]
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