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| 8 Poverty Resources You MUST Check Out Today. No Excuses Posted: 15 Oct 2008 01:10 AM PDT  There are 1 billion impoverished people in the world. There are only 8 causes in this list. It will take you 2 minutes to read it, and 1 minute to share one of the links with your friends. Why wouldn’t you act now and make a dent in the poverty problem? [This post is part of Blog Action Day: Mashable proudly supports bloggers, readers and social media users taking action to eradicate poverty worldwide.]
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Founded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, the Gates Foundation’s many aims include the elimination of poverty. Why Promote It? Because you’d like to support healthcare in developing countries and equal opportunities for people in the United States. Brooks World Poverty Institute - A section of the University of Manchester, the Brooks World Poverty Institute is a research institute dedicated to studying poverty, inequality and growth. The site has a lot of information about the actual program, but they also publish their findings here as well as maintain a blog for discussions. Why Promote It? Because you know we can’t fix the poverty issue until we understand it.
Chronic Poverty Research Centre - The Chronic Poverty Research Centre is a coalition of universities, research institutes and non-governmental organizations that are trying to educate people on the subject of chronic poverty while also trying to halve the estimated one billion impoverished people in the world by 2015. Why Promote It? Because you want to stimulate debate about the poverty issue at both national and international levels.
Global Call to Action Against Poverty - GCAP is a coalition of trade unions, community groups, faith groups, youth organizations and non-governmental organizations that aim to hold politicians to their promises regarding poverty. Why Promote It? Because you want to ensure world leaders meet their promises to end global poverty and inequality.
Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign - The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is built around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which establishes the rights of every human being to necessities like food, housing, communication and a job. Why Promote It? Because you believe everyone has the right to housing, health care, a living wage and an education.
RobinHood.org - The Robin Hood Foundation was founded in 1988 to help the poverty stricken residents of New York City. It is now considered a model for what organizations can do in other cities and has served as the inspiration for groups such as the Tipping Point Community in San Francisco. Why Promote It? Because you want to fight poverty in New York, and inspire other US cities to do the same.
STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) - STEPS is a research group studying the interactions between social, technological and environmental factors that lead to poverty, and how we need to get them all working together to solve the problem. Why Promote It? Because you believe that environmental sustainability is the route to better livelihoods and health for those in poverty.
The ONE Campaign - ONE was formed by eleven non-profit organizations to raise awareness of poverty in the world. They are currently carrying out the “ONE Vote ‘08″ campaign to engage presidential candidates with the issues of the world’s poor. This campaign is co-chaired by former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Bill Frist (R-TN). Why Promote It? Because you’d like to join more than 2 million people dedicated to bringing education to young people in Africa, supplying life-saving medication against AIDs and preventing deaths from malaria, measles and malnutrition. --- The iPoor Helps Fight Poverty in a Very Funny Way |
| Posted: 15 Oct 2008 12:37 AM PDT
The philosophy behind Flock is more: more of everything, and all packed directly into the browser. This design has its upsides and its downsides; and one downside is immediately apparent: it’s a memory hog. Well, maybe you have a fast computer and you won’t notice; that’s fine. But compared to Firefox and Chrome (and it’s only logical, I’m not complaining here) Flock is simply slower and needs more memory to operate. On the upside, you get more of everything right out of the box. The core of the Flock experience is social networking, and this is where Flock shines. Once you log in into various socnets, its People sidebar holds essential info and lets you use certain features of the site without visiting it. It’s done well; the amount of information may overwhelm you in the beginning, but you’ll get used to it in no time.
With all this comes another potential downside, at least for me. As much as it sounds tempting to have everything you need inside the browser, I like to visit the actual websites - Facebook, MySpace, Twitter. Not only because it’s my job and I need to see what’s happening on the actual site, but also because I feel strangely disconnected if I never visit them. Some users probably won’t care, but some, I reckon, will prefer to simply open their favorite socnets in a couple of tabs when they fire up their browser, skipping Flock’s social networking features altogether. It’s not only about social networking, though. Flock features a media bar that holds “media streams” from sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Digg etc. Want to quickly fire up recent public photos posted to Flickr, or YouTube’s top favorited videos? No problem.
Then there’s the MyWorld feature, which is essentially Flock’s idea of a start page. It brings together your favorite feeds, friend activity, and favorite media in a slick page; I don’t see myself using it (I prefer my Netvibes), but for many users it’ll be better than a simple Google search form or some standard Web portal such as MSN.com. There’s more to Flock under the hood; features such as Photo Uploader (available from the Tools menu) will pleasantly surprise those who think that Flock is just a Firefox with some extra bling; it’s not. It has a rich feature set packed in a slick package, and I’m sure that many users will appreciate it. It will never be bigger than Firefox, but that’s not the idea; it’s a niche browser, and if you like what you’ve read here, give it a spin; it deserves it. --- Flock Public Beta Now Live |
| Loebner Prize Winner Announced; Is He Human? Posted: 14 Oct 2008 07:30 PM PDT
Yesterday we talked of the news of Siri, the ambitious and far-reaching AI project to recieve $8.5 Million in funding. Today I noticed the news that the Loebner Prize winners had been announced. In case you’re not familiar with the Loebner Prize, it’s a yearly contest held to determine which chatterbox AI is the most sentient as determined by the guidelines set forth by Alan Turing. Alan Turing a mathematician considered to be the father of computer science, tackled the then-philosophical question that as to whether a computer could think, and if so, how we could tell. The suggestion he put forth was that if the computer’s efforts at conversation were indistinguishable from human responses, then the computer could said to be thinking. The methodologies pioneered in the field that rose to take on this challenge are the basis for what a lot of modern semantic web technologies are based from. The Loebner Prize is conducted blindly, that is by way of a chat window, and judges are given a mix of human and AI participants. Success in the contest has several levels. There’s a Turing prize, which comes with a $100,000 cash reward and is measured by a machine who is able to fool humans in a Turing test that includes deciphering and understanding text, visual, and auditory input.
This year’s bronze winner was Elbot, the creation of Fred Roberts. Elbot was created in the Kiwilogic’s Lingubot Creator, a commercial platform created by a German company looking to augment or replace businesses reliance on human powered customer service. Those interested in playing with the bot who was able to fool Reporter Will Pavia of The Times this year into believing it was human can do so at Elbot’s home. Like most of us who fancy chatterbots, Roberts has grand visions for where he sees his creation’s eventual application. “I hope that some day they will build a life-size Elbot, implant the bot in his brain, and let him walk around and talk to people while I update him vie satellite,” Roberts said, while admitting it likely wasn’t all that feasible, at least “not with current technology.” I’ve tended to be partial to Alice over the years, a bot that’s been in the running since 1999, and has won the competition several times, but has recently not met with the level of success that her challengers have. Of this year’s entrants, the most interesting entrant to me was one which didn’t make it to the finals of the competition. Most chatterbox AIs focus on contextual replies, and don’t do much to make judgements and internal cognitive decisions. Mohan Embar saw this as an area of weakness, and set about creating a bot named Chip Vivant who’s primary function was to be able to make judgements like “which is bigger, my toe or a 747?” For this task, it performs surprisingly well, but falls short in most other areas of conversation. The whole field and contest is a fascinating subject, and for those even slightly interested in machine intelligence beyond Hollywood throws at us will find themselves spending a few hours playing around with the different entrants and wondering what could be. --- Google Challenges Kids to Build a Mobile Robot to the Moon |
| 17 Alternatives to Buying and Selling on Ebay Posted: 14 Oct 2008 03:35 PM PDT
With the declining economy, where can buyers and sellers turn? Where will one get rid of that junk that’s been sitting in their garage for years? Luckily eBay is not the only game in town, and we have a sampling of 17 different sites for you to try.
General Auction Sites
Auction.com - Auction does not charge any listing or final value fees, but does charge you for enhancements like bolding your listing and so on. Traffic seems a bit low, and a lot of bells and whistles you’re used to seem to be missing. Bidtopia.com - Bidtopia has some unique ideas in that bidding and selling have to be done from separate accounts. The site only charges final value fees and focuses heavily on $.99 auctions. Bonanzle.com - The site allows you to import your existing items from eBay and Craigslist, encourages direct contact between buyers and sellers, and prides itself on a quick listing process. eBid.net - eBid offers several country specific sites, free registration, no listing fees for auctions, and even offers you the ability to pay for a lifetime membership that will remove all final value fees from your listings. ePier.com - ePier does not charge any listing fees, but their final value fees are fairly high. Focuses heavily on localized auctions with city listings for places like Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington DC and more. iOffer.com - iOffer is not an auction site, but lets you buy and sell after negotiating with other users. Offers you the chance to import your items and reputation from eBay and other sites. OnlineAuction.com - Basic Online Auction registration is free, but verification will cost you $4 a month, and selling will cost you $8 a month. Paying the selling fee will keep you from paying any final value fees. Overstock.com - Well known for their television ads and selling overstocked goods, Overstock allows users to list auctions on their site. They do have listing fees as well as final value fees. SalvageSale.com - SalvageSale specializes in bulk auctions and items a bit too large for your standard UPS delivery truck. This is the type of site you go to if you have pallets of products to unload, or large construction equipment. TheSOCExchange.com - SOC Exchange charges a flat rate of $1 a month or $10 a year for unlimited auction listings. Webidz.com - While it is free to list auctions, open a store and bid, Webidz charges you $5.00 to become a verified member, and you will be charged this fee any time you change your personal information. International Auction Sites
CQout.com -CQout is primarily UK-focused, but charges no listing fees, and only a 1.5% final value fee, which makes it one of the lowest in the industry that charge. Gmarket.co.kr - Gmarket, short for Global e-Market, is a popular auction site from Korea. The site is available in both Korean and English, and welcomes buyers and sellers from all over the world. OZtion.com.au - OZtion is free to register, and has no listing fees, but does charge final value fees with a maximum of $99.00. The site focuses primarily on auctions inside Australia. Souq.com - Souq focuses on auctions in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The site is available in both Arabic and English. Tazbar.com - UK-based site that offers four different levels of monthly subscription from free to £18.99 a month, which determines how many listings you may have and how much they will cost. TradeMe.co.nz - With approximately a quarter of all the residents of New Zeland having an account on TradeMe, it is considered the biggest website in the country. They have expanded into many other areas such as real estate and a classmate locator. --- eBay Launches Another Classifieds Site to Compete with Craigslist |
| Shwup Makes Creating Photo Albums and Muvees Easy Posted: 14 Oct 2008 02:16 PM PDT
You can create shareable online photo albums for photos as well as videos. Also, instead of just uploading your photos and videos one at a time or even in batches like similar services, shwup actually allows you to import photos from any website. So, you can create a new Photo Album with the contents from an album on your Flickr, Picasa, iPhoto or Facebook account. You can select all of the contents or just the photos you want to add to your shwup album.
The file size limit for uploading is a hefty 100 MB per file, which isn’t bad for photos but not so great for video files, which can get much larger than that. Still, you’ll be able to upload a boatload of photos without any problems. Once you create albums, you can actually create a muvee online. A muvee is a photo slideshow that you can customize with styles, themes and a music soundtrack. You simply drag and drop the photos you want to use in the muvee timeline. They recommend up to 25 photos for optimum performance but you can surpass that total if you want.
You then select the theme you want for muvee and choose from a collection of songs provided by shwup, or you can upload your own mp3 songs, which is a great option. The only downside is that any songs you upload do not stay online for future use. You have to upload them each and every time which isn’t very convenient. Still, it’s nice being able to use your own music.
Once completed, the muvee can be added to your Album. You can then share the album with anyone you want by sending them the unique URL that’s created for every album you make. You can also share your albums on your social networks. The photos, videos and muvees will all appear in the album that you share. shwup appears to be a little plain at first glance without many bells and whistles, but when you dig deeper you start to see some cool features like the ability to important photos from other sites or being able to create multimedia muvees online. shwup isn’t just trying to compete with online photo sharing services like Flickr or Photobucket by allowing members to share their photo and video albums. They seem to be trying to carve their own niche by letting members create and share online multimedia muvees as well. |
| Trendrr Makes Graphs That Move With Time | The Startup Review Posted: 14 Oct 2008 12:37 PM PDT
Company Name20-Word DescriptionTrendrr tracks consumption trends across leading social media and e-commerce sites. Users can track, compare and share graphs easily for free. CEO’s PitchTrendrr is a service that tracks and graphs consumption trends and activity across the digital spectrum, including social networks, blogs, torrents, Amazon, Craigslist, Twitter, Google, MySpace and leading video sites. The platform allows users to track dynamic data trends over time; compare and mash up data using a virtual scratch pad, and share findings via embed codes, links and easy data exporting. Designed as a dynamic service for individuals who want to track trends for free with an enterprise level solution for businesses, Trendrr captures and illustrates accurate, real-time market intelligence in an easy to use, digestible format. Mashable’s Take If you want to track trends on the Web, you might watch some of the meme watchers. Techmeme, for instance. Or you might venture over to Technorati to see what's happening in the wide world of blogs. Perhaps Google Trends is your de facto keyword catcher. Well, if you're searching for something a bit more analytical and multi-faceted in looking at the whos, whats, wheres and whens of online movements past and present, Trendrr is something that you might well find useful. There isn't immense depth to what Trendrr can provide its users. This isn't a news reading engine molded through graphical flow charts. It's more a mix-and-mash utility, pulling information relevant to activity on social networks, blogs, torrent traffic, Amazon, Craigslist, Twitter, Google, and numerous video sites, and displaying said data in a visual fashion. Want to track sales of a certain music album? You can. Twitter users, headline-making politicians, and most anyone or anything else you might think of is also possible to put up on its own grid, to be parsed and prodded by anyone who happens to pay it attention. You can interact with Trendrr graphs whether you've assembled them yourself or are simply audience to another user's work. Drag the graph into the TrendrrScratchpad to be compared with another, post comments, vote for items you like, and embed finished products on webpages or social bookmarking and social news sites like Delicious, Digg, and Reddit. What is particularly appealing about Trendrr is that the relevance of data within a graph does not end with the publishing date. Data continues to arrive. For instance, a Trendrr graph created in late March 2008 with a focus on Google News stories having to do with the names "barack obama," "john mccain," and "hillary clinton," has progressed into the present day. If you're in search of a long-term, automated guide to specific subject matter, Trendrr just so happens to be a near ideal solution. Again, it's not hard on specifics insofar as news stories are concerned. But for a good number of users it’ll do the job. Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials |
| YouTube and PBS Let You ‘Video Your Vote’ Posted: 14 Oct 2008 12:12 PM PDT
Not only will the online world see you pledge your political allegiance, but some uploads - perhaps your own - will be featured by PBS amid its Election Day coverage. Whether it is to share your own perspective of events leading up to the final hours of the campaign, or document issues occurring in your district, YouTube is seeking submissions. The company highlights the tags "videoyourvote" and "pollproblem" as unique to the channel's mission.
Now the video service has established a place reserved for user input and an ombudsman-like view of the process. In addition to user submissions, features involving election experts, reports about this election and elections in years past will be shown. Given the sheer volume of content available on YouTube about the 2008 campaign, it may behoove the company to mold a comprehensive venue for all things to do with the race. From candidates' speeches and advertisements to news briefs to popular citizen endorsements, doing so simply by extending the YouChoose concept outward. But YouTube has made clear that the Video Your Vote project is a partnership with PBS, so it seems some exclusivity of purpose is called for. --- Download YouTube Video |
| Government 2.0: Crowdsourced Beltway Pandits Posted: 14 Oct 2008 10:37 AM PDT
In his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln mentioned that government is "of the people, by the people, [and] for the people," but interestingly among all the feedback I have received, no one has pointed out that all of my writing on Government 2.0 has been about what the government itself is doing. What's your role as a citizen? Using the power of mass collaboration for public good When people think about applying social technology to government, they often think of using it internally to share information and aid decision-making. But one area Mr. Williams mentioned that I have also written about in my description of what "social government" might look like, is the notion of reducing the barriers to participation in government. This means everything from local leaders working with government during disasters, to small businesses more easily winning government contracts, to the U.S. Patent Office crowdsourcing their enormous backlog of technical patent applications through their "Peer to Patent" initiative. Williams also had some interesting comments on "redrawing the division of labor in society" that I hadn't previously given a lot of thought to. The idea is, if we can outsource toy-making to China and customer service to India, can we outsource aspects of health care to Sweden, or education to Japan? It might sound strange, but why couldn't affordable specialist doctors in other countries look at our X-rays, and why can't homeschooled American children learn from teachers abroad? And conversely – what might other countries outsource to the United States? Participating on the Web But frankly there are too many other people talking and not doing. One of my senior colleagues who has spent a lifetime in public service likes to come into my office and ask, "What have you done for your country today?" The question always gives me pause, and I hope it does for the reader as well.
At the Collaboration Project, a social community powered by the National Academy of Public Administration, they use the motto, "Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what we can do together." This is the right theme for moving forward with the next generation of government of, by, and for people like you. Rather than complain about Beltway Bandits, form a nation of Beltway Pandits. Dr. Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University in Washington, DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government. You can reach Mark by emailing Markd [at] mashable.com. --- Ringside Startup: Poland’s Wacky Idea |
| Widget Provider JS-Kit Nets $3.6M in Funding & Brings DataPortability Founder on to Advise Posted: 14 Oct 2008 09:45 AM PDT
JS-Kit was introduced to the world some two years ago, and has built itself into a 12-person operation serving widgets to over half a million registered websites. JS-Kit is especially involved with activity having to do with feedback of all kinds, be it comments or Digg-like voting solutions.
Also, the assistance of DataPortability co-founder Chris Saad, who has been given the title of strategic advisor for the widget venture, is being noted as key to JS-Kit's continuance in the field. --- Undisclosed Buzzd Funding Amount Finally Comes To Light |
| KallOut Wins BOSS Mashable Challenge, Socialmention Wins Runner Up Posted: 14 Oct 2008 09:40 AM PDT
The people have spoken and the grand prize winner of the Yahoo! Search BOSS Mashable Challenge, who will receive $2,000 and the chance to elaborate on their submission on Mashable is: KallOut! Congratulations! The “Runner Up” winner and recipient of $1,000 is: Socialmention! Congratulations and Kudos! KallOut, described by the developers as "Search is trapped inside the browser. KallOut sets it free. Get results in context over any website or Microsoft Office," has become a favorite application of mine since the submission came through. The ability to enhance the desktop applications I am addicted to, including Microsoft Outlook, has become an obsessions of mine. KallOut joins my ranks of best Outlook plugins with Xobni, LinkedIn Plugin and SimplyFile.
Socialmention, first covered by Mashable as “Twitter Search for the Whole Web,” is described by their developers as "Socialmention allows you to track conversations about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the Web's social media landscape." When it comes to brand management and tracking, socialmention is one of the top options available. While the site is relatively new, by offering an API, I’m sure we’ll see some interesting growth from them in the upcoming months.
Congratulations again to the winners, many thanks to all the developers who submitted and thanks to everyone who participated with your support, comments and votes. *As a note, PopGist and Duck Duck Go were removed from the voting platform due to malicious voting. No accusations are being made against the companies themselves, but after votes were discounted, the winning vote counts are represented above. Many thanks to the IP Security and analysis provided by PollDaddy. --- Announcing the Yahoo! Search BOSS Mashable Challenge ($3,000 in prizes) |
| Online Invoicing Service FreshBooks Takes Industry Benchmarks Public Posted: 14 Oct 2008 08:54 AM PDT
Why? To give the public at large a numerical hold on reported financial statistics as seen sector by sector. The thinking is that benchmarks help businesses reach goals (or keep above the fold), and so FreshBooks is placing a series of digits in public view to facilitate this processes, all from the pool of data garnered through its clientele. Whatever the focus of your business, you'll always have some level of competition to contend with. It's inevitable, really. It is what gives industry its name. So the more information you have about your performance relative to others is naturally a good thing. And while too much data can conflict with the interests of numerous parties involved directly or indirectly in the effort to aggregate material, the generalization employed by FreshBooks ends up being something of an aid to all - that goes for the contributors as well as the consumers. It helps put things in perspective, more or less, which is really how company managers make sense of their surroundings, both immediate and far-reaching.
FreshBooks wouldn't be able to compile a truly qualitative level of information if it were a small operation in and of itself. It counts some 500,000 users to date, a collection of members to which it has given these very data points that it is now delivering to the public for the past year and a half. So, might this be considered a teaser to non-subscribers? Perhaps. The numbers given by FreshBooks today are sourced via the platform, so there's clearly a sales pitch to be had here. However, even with Freshbook's own marketing push, there's value to be had. For some users it may not be giving enough. Others may regard it as needlessly generous. But it's probable that a healthy majority will take FreshBooks' slightly open approach with open arms. It's hard to see any outstanding negatives, and the positives are quite clear. The benchmarks are concise and presumably helpful to some, if not many. A smart move on FreshBooks' part, for sure. --- Freshbooks Launches Estimates Service |
| Yahoo Sets Out to Prove that Advertising Search Engines Doesn’t Work Posted: 14 Oct 2008 08:25 AM PDT
Considering that YouTube now does more search queries than Yahoo, it's not surprising that the company is ramping up its efforts to re-gain marketshare. But as history has taught us time after time, advertising search engines does not lead to meaningful customer gains. The most memorable recent attempt to lure search users through advertising was Ask.com, who through a variety of confusing billboards and television ads spent roughly $100 million with the "it's the algorithm" campaign. Ultimately, the campaign was maligned by critics and left Ask.com's marketshare mostly unchanged, with Google still commanding upwards of 60-70% of search queries depending on which report you read. Of course, Google has famously spent $0 on advertising its search engine throughout its decade of existence. That's not to say that all ad campaigns are completely fruitless. Microsoft is reportedly seeing small gains by paying people to use its search engine through its Cashback Rewards program. But without such incentive, switching search engines generally entails switching one's start page, browser toolbar, and general Web usage habits – tasks that I have a hard time believing any brand advertising campaign can help change. Much like how Google unseated the likes of Excite, Altavista, and Yahoo by offering a superior product that people told their friends and colleagues about, meaningful gains in search are going to come through technology that wows people with its approach. So far, that technology still hasn’t surfaced, either at Yahoo or at the hundreds of startups hoping to be the next Google. --- Yahoo Starts Layoffs While Deciding What To Do Next |
| Baveo Gives New Parents a Place to Share Their Experiences With Family and Friends Posted: 14 Oct 2008 08:00 AM PDT
Baveo is entering a field already occupied with heavy hitters such as iVillage, CafeMom, ParentsConnect, Kaboose, ClubMom, BabyCenter, and Minti. What sets Baveo apart is the incorporation of registries, the focus on expecting parents, and the ability to use Baveo as a means to control how your family and friends receive your updates (SMS, RSS or email).
The founders of Baveo intended to create a site that was simple and straightforward, something parents, grandparents and other friends and relatives would find easy to use. With its big print to make grandparents who have graduated to the large print section of the library happy, its simple and bright buttons for the expecting parent in a hurry and its simple input options, Baveo may have found a way to reach that goal of ease of use. Baveo will be allowing parents to customize their public Baveo page with themes and colors, though the options are a bit limited right now. The Baveo default colors are bright, and the graphics have an overall bouncy feeling. It made me feel a bit like I was stuck in a child’s nursery room, but they definitely hit the mark on their target audience when it comes to design. Everything about the site practically screams “baby!”
I think the most useful features of this launch are being able to see all of an expecting parent or couple’s gift registries in one place and the ability to update your followers using three distinct methods once the big day approaches. That ensures that no one misses their chance to see the little prince or princess the moment they are born. The silliest feature (but probably the most fun) is the Delivery Date Countdown, an actual countdown featured on the expecting parent or couple’s profile page. All of this should make any expecting mom happy. |
| When 140 Characters Isn’t Enough: Send a Group Voice Message with Tatango Posted: 14 Oct 2008 07:02 AM PDT
Similar to its group texting product we profiled earlier this year, Tatango Voice offers a freemium business model. In other words, if you want free service, all of your calls will include advertisements before the voice message is heard by recipients, but for a monthly fee, you can have the advertising removed. Free group texts include a 30 character advertisement at the end.  While to some extent, Tatango's group text messaging service could be replaced by one of the many emerging "enterprise Twitter" startups, the voice offering is something that could be really useful for group organizers, especially considering there is only so much you can say in 140 characters. Meanwhile, since Tatango is a "one-to-many" platform, you don't get the noise that accompanies a group microblogging service. --- Tatango Makes Group SMS Speedy and Cheap (The Startup Review) |
| Apps for Democracy: Win Prizes for Innovative Mashups Utilizing DC Government Data Posted: 14 Oct 2008 05:01 AM PDT
We've seen some great mashups combining public data with other Web services, such as Postacrime, the service that plots public surveillance cameras on Google Maps. A new contest is encouraging the development of dozens of such apps - specifically those that utilize Washington DC's data catalog, which includes items like building permits, service requests, and juvenile arrests. The Apps for Democracy contest, being run in conjunction with the DC Government's Office of the Chief Technology Officer, is offering $20,000 in prizes to be distributed to up to 60 different application creators. Developers are encouraged to build a wide variety of mashups, including Web apps, widgets, map maships, iPhone apps, and Facebook/OpenSocial apps. The goal of the contest is "to reward technology developers with cash prizes and public recognition for creating applications that are useful for the DC government and the citizens, visitors and businesses of Washington, DC." There are a number of developer-themed events in the Washington DC area that correspond with the contest, which is sponsored in part by Mashable. More details are available on the Apps for Democracy website, and you can also follow the contest on Twitter or through the Facebook Group. --- Mozilla Invests in Democracy TV |
| Personal Finance Site Mint Opens to The Public With New Features Posted: 14 Oct 2008 03:30 AM PDT
Mint, the personal finance site that tries to connect most financial aspects of your life in one well-rounded, free package, has announced several updates today. The first of which is that after a full year of testing it’s out of beta. The service is also launching a bunch of new features. Originally, Mint was all about personal finance; it expanded its scope to investment 5 months ago, and this functionality, which was only available to a small portion of users, is now open to everyone. It includes a full featured 401(k) management center, portfolio asset allocation info, and comparison of your investments against major indexes such as S&P and Dow Jones.
Although there are many finance-related sites out there, with these new additions Mint now really offers nearly everything in one place; from tracking your daily expenses to evaluating your stock portfolio. Of course, it still cannot match specific applications (some of which are completely free when you register with an online broker) for portfolio management or fundamental analysis of stocks, but it can be an important starting point of your financial life. --- Mint.com Launches Redesign with New Financial Resources and Educational Tools |
How exactly did this happen? For so long, Internet Explorer was the dominant browser, and Firefox was the up and coming alternative; the Web browser space seemed so dull just a couple of years ago. Now, suddenly, we have it all: IE is the tired old guy trying to keep up with the times, Chrome is the shy one sitting in a corner, Firefox is the life of the party, talking to everyone at the same time, Opera is trying so hard to be funnier than Firefox, and 
While eBay has been the champion of online auctions in the United states for years, lately there has been 
Want to tell millions of people which lever you intend to pull on November 4th during the U.S. presidential election? YouTube has launched a channel called 
Previously, YouTube presented an election destination dubbed 
This is part of an ongoing series about government 2.0 written by Dr. Mark Drapeau. To view previous posts in the series 
JS-Kit
In this moment of cautionary investing, any word of capital exchanged carries an extra bit of weight. What JS-Kit intends to accomplish with secured financing is, simply put, the expansion of commercial accounts, with profitability being the logical goal. This will be achieved with the help of additional developer power, says CEO Khris Loux.
A month ago, Mashable and Yahoo! Search challenged the developer community to showcase what they could do with the 
Online invoicing and business time management service 
Following in the footsteps of many other search engines not named Google, Yahoo is setting out on a 
It seems that pretty much everyone who deals with personal finance has decided that this is the day for announcements. They’re right. The stock market seems to be ready for another upward rally, and the overall interest in investing, saving, or simply making the most out of the situation has never been bigger. 
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