According to Search Engine Land, the state of Texas’ investigation is focused on whether Google manipulates its search results to the detriment of its competition. The investigation was sparked by complaints from vertical search engines Foundem, SourceTool/TradeComet and myTriggers. While none of these companies operate out of the state of Texas, they only need customers in the state to help spark an investigation.

Google has since responded to the report via a blog post from Deputy General Counsel Don Harrison. In it, Harrison addresses the questions about the “fairness” of the Google search engine while providing background on Foundem, SourceTool/TradeComet and MyTriggers. This background refutes each company’s argument that Google is engaging in anticompetitive behavior.

“We look forward to answering their questions because we’re confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users,” Harrison said in the company’s response.

Google is facing a similar investigation from the European Commission over whether it manipulates search results to stifle competition.

What do you think of the investigation? Do you think Google is engaging in antitrust behavior, or is this smoke and mirrors? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Antitrust, Google, investigation, privacy, texas

For more Tech coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Last week, Google stepped onto Skype’s turf with the launch of Google Voice integration in Gmail. Since its launch, Gmail users have made over 10 million calls through the new Google Voice integration.

Is Google Voice a threat to Skype’s longstanding dominance? On Monday we asked you, the readers, to choose which voice service you preferred. After the closest vote in the history of the Web Faceoff…

…Google Voice is the winner by just 20 votes. With 1,438 votes (42.87%), Google’s voice service beat Skype’s 1,418 tallies (42.28%). That’s barely more than a half-percent difference. 498 of you (14.85%) voted that it was a tie.

One of the big issues with Google Voice many commenters pointed out was that it’s only available in the U.S., while Skype is worldwide. Perhaps this is a debate we’ll have to revisit when Google’s offering is in the hands of the rest of the world. Let us know what you think of this week’s poll results in the comments.

More About: gmail, Google, Google Voice, poll, Skype, voip, web faceoff

For more Battles coverage:

• Follow Mashable Battles on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Battles channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Apple introduced Ping as the centerpiece of iTunes 10 at its music event earlier this week. It is a music-centric social network where users can follow updates from both their friends and their favorite music artists. It includes custom song and album charts, a news feed and 17,000+ concert listings.

Ping has had a rocky road since its launch late on Wednesday. Apple’s social network has been hit with comment spam and international availability issues. The company’s in up-and-down talks with Facebook over integrations and API use. It’s also received lackluster reviews from the media.

However, that hasn’t stopped droves of people from trying out the iTunes-based social network. Apple says that 1/3 of users that have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping.

Should we be surprised, though? More than 160 million people have iTunes, and curiosity is always at a high after an Apple event. However, while Ping may have 1 million registered users, that doesn’t mean they’ll still be using the social network three months from now. That is the numbers we’ll be interested in, because it is what will determine the fate of Ping as a service.

More About: apple, itunes, music, Ping, social networking, trending

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

The lawsuit dates back to February, when lawyers filed a class action complaint against Google on behalf of Eva Hibnick, a 24-year-old Florida resident and Harvard Law School student. The complaint alleged that Buzz violated several communication privacy laws related to protecting user privacy.

Google Buzz caught a lot of flak for its auto-follow and opt-in features, so much so that Google quickly made privacy fixes after launch. They weren’t enough to quell the criticism though, so Google launched a privacy reset for Buzz, giving users a new opportunity to adjust their privacy settings.

According to the settlement, these changes addressed the key privacy issues surrounding Buzz. “Google has made changes to the Google Buzz user interface that clarify Google Buzz’s operation and users’ options regarding Google Buzz,” it stated.

That’s not all, though. While the settlement acknowledges that Google Buzz’s privacy issues have been resolved, it says the company must do more to educate users about Google Buzz’s potential impact on privacy. The $8.5 million from the settelement will go towards lawyer fees (30%) and the seven named plaintiffs (up to $2,500 each), with the remainder going towards organizations and non-profits focused on Internet privacy.

Now that the privacy issues have been settled, Google can focus on a more important problem: actually producing a winner in the social media space.

[via AFP]

More About: Googl, google buzz, law, lawsuit, privacy

For more Business coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Name: Sprout Social

Quick Pitch: Sprout Social delivers comprehensive tools that allow businesses to efficiently and effectively manage and grow their social presence across multiple channels.

Genius Idea: Sprout Social is a social relationship manager designed to let small businesses, agencies and brands manage multiple social networks from one central dashboard.

It’s becoming more and more essential for companies and brands of all sizes to have a social media presence. One of the continuing hurdles that these companies continue to face, however, is how to manage multiple social channels.

The fundamental problem is that most social networks were designed for consumers, not for businesses. That means that the tools required to monitor and manage those networks are usually not built into the service itself.

In the last 12 months, more and more players have entered the social media management space. Some, like Involver and Vitrue, take a higher-level approach to big brands and also offer app-creation tools. Other services like HootSuite straddle the line between consumer- and business-friendly.

We like that Sprout Social is a solid offering for the smaller brand or agency; it offers more robust management tools, but it’s still affordable. Pricing starts at $9.99 per month for managing up to five identities. For $49.99 per month, 10 identities or locations can be managed and additional metrics and more advanced tracking data is available.

At the $9.99 per month plan, Sprout Social can monitor Twitter, Facebook (fan and personal pages) and LinkedIn. This means you can search and monitor those networks, cross-post to networks and do things like link and referral tracking.

For users that opt to spend $49.99 per month, Sprout Social adds Foursquare and Yelp support, geotargeting and the ability to create daily specials or offers. This makes Sprout Social a particularly useful tool for local businesses like restaurants or retail shops.

Check out this video to see what Sprout Social is all about. What tools does your business use to manage its social media presence? Let us know!

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: social media management, sprout social

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

In fact, it could be argued that Suarez is living the dream. In less than three years, he’s been able to reduce 90% of his incoming e-mail by communicating through social software, and he works full-time for IBM while living in the Canary Islands. The last six years of his 13-year IBM career have been spent working remotely from Gran Canaria, a place which he describes as “a paradise island,” and not just because his boss is 6,000 kilometers away.

So how does a man who works remotely for a major tech company manage to virtually eliminate his e-mail, and why does his mission even exist? We caught up with Suarez and asked.

Under his official title of Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist in the IBM Software Group division, Suarez promotes the use of social software for enterprise. But in 2008, he decided to take the promotion a bit further by actively showing colleagues how much more productive they could be using social tools on the web, instead of more traditional methods of intra-company communication.

“Around two and a half years ago in my role of software evangelism, one of the main hurdles we were hearing from people is … they perceive this software as another set of tools on top of what they were already using,” Suarez tells us. “They had this feeling that, you’re asking me to spend more time online with Twitter, Facebook and whatever the internal social software applications were.”

Suarez saw this as a challenge and decided he needed to prove to his colleagues that social software was the answer and not the problem. Two and a half years ago he began “a little experiment.”

“As a remote employee, I’m wanted to prove to everyone that I could keep working for the company without using e-mail, relying almost … exclusively on social software tools to communicate daily with my team members.”

His plan was to show his coworkers just how dependent they really were on e-mail, emphasizing how many times a day they were compelled to check it, and proving that it was no longer a productivity tool, but a procrastinator’s best friend.

He acknowledges that times have changed. Ten years ago, e-mail was absolutely necessary for business interactions. Yet in the last two and a half years, he’s advocated for social software to replace e-mail as the go-to communication method.

Rather than restricting file and data sharing conversations to personal inboxes, Suarez persuades employees to first share data more openly behind company firewalls, and then as they ease into the concept (and if it’s relevant), share it on wider social services.

“I’ve kept track of progress,” he says. “I’ve gone from 30 to 40 e-mails a day to an average of just 17 per week. Most of those are one-on-one private conversations, for which e-mail is still probably the best tool for anything sensitive or confidential.”

This is his proof, he says. The numbers show that social software isn’t about adding more work and stress, but looking for smarter ways to get the job done.

With technology changing rapidly, it’s worthwhile to wonder if ten years down the line, e-mail may still be as prominent in our lives as it is today.

“We will still have e-mail in ten years,” says Suarez. “I don’t want to kill all e-mail, but I want to help people re-purpose it. We will see traditional tools like e-mail redesigned to be used for what it was originally designed for.”

For Suarez, the e-mail of the future will look something like this:

“You get an alert, telling you how and where you can go and grab content … it won’t just be a notification system, but a read-write opportunity with the option to engage back so that information is no longer stuck in an inbox.”

While his work focuses on helping businesses make the most of social software, he has shared his how-to advice with us so that individuals can take steps to reduce the amount of e-mail they receive.

1. Don’t Reply

If you want to stop receiving so much e-mail, the number one rule is don’t reply to it. The more you reply, the more you will get back. If you break that chain, you are already on a good path to kill most of the e-mail you get.

2. Study Your Inbox

Next, study your inbox. Evaluate the kind of personal interactions that are taking place there. For example, you may find out that you subscribe to a hundred newsletters and you don’t read any of them.

After you’ve studied the way you use your inbox, try to group e-mails together into categories — newsletters, Q&As, e-mails from family members, etc.

3. Tackle One Area a Week

After you’ve evaluated you intake, slowly move one of those groups away from your inbox. Don’t try to cover them all in one go, because it will be too much.

One week, unsubscribe from newsletters and try and find alternative sources such as a feed reader or relevant Twitter accounts.

You may find that you are bombarded with e-mail questions from colleagues, and that you get one particular question 40 times from 40 different people in one month.

So the next week, sort out the Q&A. The way to deal with that is to set up a blog offering the answers. The blog will be indexed by Google, and your answers will be available to everyone out there. This means you are no longer part of the bottle neck, and you are helping people to feed themselves with the information that they need.

“Some people say to me, but you are lucky, you’re [at] a big IT company,” concludes Suarez. “It may seem easy for a big company, but with the huge amounts of options we have out there — all the various social software tools — there is no longer an excuse.”

You can read more from Luis Suarez on his Knowledge Management blog, Thinking Outside the Inbox.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 20 Cool Twitter Accounts for Daily Fun and Inspiration [PICS]
- 5 Free Ways to Never Miss a Twitter @Reply
- 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web
- HOW TO: Get Tweetable Moments from Your Presentations
- 5 Trends Affecting How We Connect Through Social Media

More About: business, email, IBM, interview, luis suarez, small business, social media, social software, telecommuting, trending, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Facebook appears to have quietly rolled out the beefed-up search offering some time over the past few days; it was first spotted by All Facebook.

From the looks of it, Facebook is ranking results based on how users engage with content via its social plugins. It’s unclear how Facebook is defining its formula — the formula seems to account for shares and Likes from a member’s friends as well as shares and Likes from everyone else to determine an item’s placement.

Just recently, Facebook was awarded a search patent for “ranking search results based on the frequency of clicks on the search results by members of a social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation.”

The company has yet to officially announce the new search functionality or explain how it works. We’ve reached out to Facebook for more information and will update this post when we know more.

For the time being, consider this yet another small step in Facebook’s designs to capture search share and harness the abundance of data available around their social plugins.

Update: Facebook responded to our inquiry explaining, “We launched the ability to see articles shared by your direct friends in the search typeahead. For instance, if your friend is on a news site and clicks “Like” under one of the articles (which will then go into News Feed), when you go to search for that article on Facebook, it will surface in the dropdown.”

More About: facebook, likes, Search

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

The 400M series features seven new processors, including the GTX 470M and GTX 460M monsters aimed at “enthusiast users,” as well as the GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M, intended for real-world use.

If you’re questioning why NVIDIA is releasing five GT GPUs, you’re not alone. While there will likely be a noticeable difference between GT and GTX models, the variations between any two of the GT processors are likely to be minimal.

Like all things currently graphics-related (or so it seems), the 400M will support stereoscopic 3D video. Those of you with a 3D TV will be pleased to know that the 400M GPUs include NVIDIA 3DTV Play software, which enables 3D content playback on compatible TVs.

More important, though, is the inclusion of NVIDIA Optimus, a technology that switches the GPU off in order to conserve battery power when its not processing graphics-heavy materials. This allows for flexibility in notebook longevity, while not degrading performance.

The GeForce 400M GPUs will be available in upcoming notebooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba.

More About: 3D, Acer, Asus, dell, GeForce, GPU, graphics, Hardware, lenovo, mobile computing, NVIDIA, samsung, Toshiba

For more Tech coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

So in honor of all the upcoming unburdening, we’ve made “Secrets” the theme of this week’s YouTube roundup.

The below vids, however, are less Tear-Your-Family-Apart and more Fun-For-The-Whole-Clan, so we suggest firing up the old laptop (or iPad) and gathering your brood around the screen for some thoroughly illuminating YouTube fare.

Snoop Dogg's Secret

Josh Catone: Snoop... seeeeeeecrets.

Beatboxing Flute Inspector Gadget Remix

Erica Swallow: Inspector Gadget can solve any secret with the help of his trusty friends Penny and Brain, but can he figure out how this guy plays the Inspector Gadget theme song on the flute while beatboxing simultaneously?

Scary Hidden Camera

Jay Irani: I'm so glad no one told these people about the hidden camera.

Turkey Scared Squirrel

Sarah Kessler: I'm glad no one told this squirrel about the hidden camera.

Inception Cat

Brenna Ehrlich: Psst... Your world is not real!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, bobbieo

More About: favorite-youtube-videos, Film, humor, music, pop culture, viral video, youtube

For more Web Video coverage:

• Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Web Video channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Advertise with us and get noticed.

Mashable is seeking out site sponsors for our large, diverse audience — social media users, venture capitalists, early adopters, developers, bloggers and many more. You’ll receive hundreds of thousands of views per day in addition to weekly recognition as part of our “thank you” to our premium sponsors. Are you interested? Contact us for more information and to receive our media kit and rate card.

This week, our valued sponsors are: FlippingBook, Gist, BlackBerry Torch, Ben & Jerry’s Joe, IDG, Clickatell, Microsoft BizSpark, MaxCDN, and Eventbrite.

Follow FlippingBook on Twitter and Facebook.

Your contacts are everywhere. In email, social networks, and many other sources. Gist brings your contacts into one place to give you the only full view of your network making it easy to find anyone, anytime.

Gist supports a Mashable series on the future of social media. Check it out here and follow Gist on Twitter and Facebook.

Discover the new BlackBerry Torch. With a touch screen, a slide out keyboard, and the new BlackBerry 6 OS — not to mention BlackBerry Messenger, integrated social feeds and improved web browsing — the BlackBerry Torch helps you do what you love.

BlackBerry supports a Mashable series on mobile messaging trends. Check it out here and follow BlackBerry on Twitter and Facebook.

Ben & Jerry’s Joe is Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. From Iced Joe (iced coffee the Ben & Jerry’s way) to The Pourover (a low-fat frozen treat) to the indulgent Frozen Latte (topped with fresh whipped cream), Ben & Jerry’s has a drink to meet every coffee lovers’ needs.

Ben & Jerry’s Joe supports a Mashable series on web design. Check it out here and follow Ben & Jerry’s on Twitter and Facebook.

IDG’s Strategic Marketing Services group works with tech marketers to deliver services that include integrated multimedia marketing programs, program consulting and IDG Amplify social media advertising.

IDG supports a Mashable series on the past five years on the web, in honor of Mashable’s five-year anniversary. Check it out here and follow IDG Knowledge Hub on Twitter and Facebook.

Clickatell was the first provider of Online SMS Gateway connectivity, and after 10 years, is still the leading provider. Clickatell can deliver your SMS text messages to over 818 mobile networks in more than 222 countries and territories.

Follow Clickatell on Twitter and Facebook.

BizSpark is a program which offers new software businesses and entrepreneurs access to Microsoft design, development and production tools with no upfront costs for up to three years. Learn more or connect with a Microsoft BizSpark advisor here.

BizSpark supports Mashable’s weekly Spark of Genius series, which showcases promising startups. Check it out here and follow Microsoft BizSpark on Twitter and Facebook.

Mashable uses MaxCDN – Content Delivery Network to deliver its static content such as pictures, helping Mashable load much faster. Try it on your site now, and get a 25% discount with this coupon code: mashable.

Follow MaxCDN on Twitter and Facebook.

Eventbrite is an online events marketplace where tens of thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and sell tickets to their events. Make your event a success on Eventbrite.

Eventbrite sponsors Mashable’s weekly social media and marketing event guide. Check it out here and follow Eventbrite on Twitter and Facebook.

Additionally, thanks to the following partners for making Mashable happen:

Since 2007 W3 EDGE has assisted with creative, web development, and search and social media marketing for Mashable.com and its other web properties and projects. Day-to-day maintenance and support is handled by Frederick Townes and his W3 EDGE team.

Follow W3 EDGE on Twitter.

Rackspace is the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why.

Mashable.com is hosted on Rackspace. Follow Rackspace on Twitter.

iStockphoto offers easy, affordable inspiration with millions of safe, royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash® files. Browse the best stock library of royalty free content at prices anyone can afford. Mashable readers save 10%.

Mashable sources many of its photos from iStockphoto. Follow iStockphoto on Twitter and Facebook.

Dyn Inc. is a world leader in managed DNS, powering the best brands on the web including Gowalla, Mashable, Twitter, Wikia and more. For more information about Dyn Inc., visit www.dyn.com, e-mail hello@dyn.com or call +1-603-668-4998.

Mashable provides exclusive content on Dyn.com. Check it out here and follow Dyn on Twitter and Facebook.

ConcentricSky offers web development and strategic consulting services with a focus on emerging technologies such as Social Media and iPhone Apps. From simple websites to integrated web applications, it delivers innovative solutions that exceed your expectations, not your budget.

Concentric Sky is Mashable’s trusted partner in the social media, strategic consulting, and rapid development spaces. Learn more here and follow ConcentricSky on Twitter.

We can get your name out there.

Contact us for more information about supporting Mashable’s growth and development. Alternatively, visit our advertise section for more details about:

• Competitive direct ad sales
• Sponsorship Opportunities for Events and other channels
• Sponsored giveaways and contests
• Custom ad deals and partnerships

CPM-based advertising is available through our partner, Federated Media, but if you contact us directly, you’ll be entitled to exclusive unpublished discounts.

More About: Sponsors

Just because the economy is still depressed doesn’t mean you have to be. In fact, there are plenty of ways to live it up without seeing your bank balance plummet — especially if you know how to use social media to live the good life on tight budget.

Even the most reclusive social media shut-ins need to leave the house for some in-person networking at some point. And when you do, you don’t want to look like the poor slob who just threw on whichever pants were closest to the computer screen. Nor do you want to be the designer diva who can’t afford cab fare because she blew all her bucks on a brand name bag. Fortunately, thanks to a few online tips and tricks, high fashion doesn’t have to come with a high price tag.

Smell the Savings

Coco Chanel once said, “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.” While Coco may have been overstating her case a bit, it’s true that perfume and cologne are great accessories to any outfit. Of course, buying the good stuff can also be a great way to flush a fortune down the drain. That’s why sample sizes should be your new best body-odor-fighting friend.

Don’t let their small size fool you — one of these little bottles will still probably give you a good six months of sweet scents, depending on how heavily you use it. Sample perfumes start as low as $1.99 on Amazon, and because they’re so small, shipping is extremely cheap. If you buy from a bigger retailer like FragranceNet, they’ll also usually throw in other goodies like more perfume or makeup samples.

Personal Stylists Are Out of Style

Before you buy any clothes to go with that signature scent, use a site like Polyvore or ShopStyle to be your own personal wardrobe stylist — no hefty retainer required. These sartorial social networks let you “try before you buy” by giving you the tools to put together looks online, so you can see how clothes and accessories will work together.

With huge databases of designer duds, this is a great way to test drive an outfit before you spend cold, hard cash on it, and a great way to keep track of what you already have in your closet. Plus, with everyone posting different looks, these are also great places to get inspiration for new ways to wear the stuff you’ve already shelled out the cash for.

Keep Your Cash

When you are ready to make a big clothing or beauty purchase, make sure you use a service like eBates, which gives you a percentage of what you spend on their partner sites back as a cash rebate. So, it’s basically like you’re paying yourself to shop — or at least that’s what you can tell yourself to justify spending so much on shoes.

Sample Sale Sites

Of course, you can avoid spending full price on anything by signing up for a private sale site. These sites are the online equivalent of a sample sale, giving you exclusive access to amazing deals on designer looks. And, many of them will even e-mail you when a sale matching your particular preferences pops up.

With so many sale sites to choose from, it can sometimes be difficult to decide which ones are worth opening your inbox too. If you’re looking for basics like great jeans or tees, then BlueFly is probably your best bet. This mainstream online shopping mall also has a fantastic private sale area, where anyone can browse big discounts on designer duds from brands like Theory, Prada and Louboutin. You don’t even have to sign up to use it, although registered users can ask to be notified about new deals via e-mail.

If you’re into the higher end of high fashion, then Gilt Groupe, Net-A-Porter and Haute Look are all great bets for big name brands. Gilt Man gives guys the same exclusive deals on a site built just for them. Gilt Groupe even has an iPhone/iPad/Android app to let you shop sales on the go. Net-A-Porter lets you do the same from your iPhone/iPad.

For more unique, up-and-coming designers, head to Rue La La, which has a slightly younger aesthetic and a lot of fun, playful finds. If you’ve got little ones to outfit too, use Zulily. They’ve got great clothes and accessories for kids, and a few things for mom too.

Vintage: Everything Old is New Again

If brand new brands aren’t your bag, the web is also a great place to track down fabulous vintage finds, which often cost far less than their shiny new counterparts. In the dark ages before the Internet, finding that amazing designer piece of vintage clothing was like searching for the proverbial needle in a big, messy thrift store haystack. But now, there are some great options for perusing the previously worn racks from the comfort of your computer screen.

Etsy, Rusty Zipper, Archive Vintage and Posh Girl Vintage are just a few of the places where you can score hot looks with a little bit of history behind them. CMadeleines has a great listing of vintage duds by designers, including pieces by Chanel, Dior and Hermes. And, TheFrock has fantastic vintage dresses, including a great bridal boutique.

Speaking of brides, if you’re looking to accessorize all of those fabulous outfits you just bought online, you can score great jewelry deals — including deeply discounted bridal bling — at I Do, Now I Don’t. This site specializes in the sale of jewels by scorned exes who want to unload them fast for much less than what they were purchased for in the first place. You can bid on necklaces, bracelets, rings and more, or buy them outright. Just try to avoid reading the stories about why the items are being sold, unless you want to spend a whole lot more in retail therapy to get your mood back up.

Why Buy When You Can Rent?

If you just need a single look for a particular event, or you want to get all the benefits of a brand name buy without all that pesky commitment and cold, hard cash, then you want a runway rental service. These sites offer what A-list celebrities have been privy to for years; borrowing. Designer duds and amazing accessories can be rented for far less than you’d pay to actually own them.

It’s sort of like Netflix for your closet. Bag, Borrow or Steal and From Bags to Riches offer amazing purses and accessories, and Rent the Runway has clothing options guaranteed to get even the most finicky fashionista frothing at the mouth — or the keyboard, as the case may be.

Fashion Goes Social

Even if you’re not necessarily an online shopper — or renter — you can still get great gear at low prices using the web. You can follow brands like Louis Vuitton on Foursquare and Toms Shoes on Gowalla for insider info, good deals and the chance to win great stuff.

Or you can use Stylophane to quickly find your favorite fashion brands on Facebook. If you want to find coupons you can use in the real world, CheapTweet will let quickly scan everyone who is sharing a fashion or beauty sale on Twitter in real time, so you know which coupons to print out and which ones to pass on. You can also send a tweet to @couponbot with the name of your favorite store, and see what deals come back.

Of course, you should also make sure you accessorize your favorite mobile device with an app like ShopSavvy, which lets you scan bar codes of stuff you’re thinking about buying to see if there’s a better price elsewhere. Because if you’re paying the bill for a decent smartphone data plan, you definitely can’t afford to pay full price for fashion when there’s a sale going on somewhere else.

No matter what your style, saving money is always in. Especially with the recession turning penny-pinching into the hottest trend for fall. But thanks to the Internet, you can be on top of that trend – and many more – without a lot of extra effort or energy. Because saving money on style is great. But saving money on style while sitting at home in your pajama pants is even better.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 14 Sites Changing the Way We Shop
- How the Fashion Magazine Industry Plans to Profit from Digital This Fall
- 10 Essential Accessories for the Fashionable Geek
- How the Fashion Industry is Embracing Social Media
- 5 Ways Social Media Changed Fashion in 2009

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Alija

More About: bag borow or steal, bluefly, chanel, cheeptweet, cmadeleines, cuponbot, ebates, Etsy, facebook, fashion, foursquare, fragrancenet, from bags to riches, gilt groupe, haute look, i do now i don't, ipad, iphone, louis vuitton, net a porter, polyvore, posh girl vintage, prada, rent the runway, rusty zipper, shopping, shopsavvy, shopstyle, social media, social media good life, stylophane, thefrock, theory, twitter, vintage, zulily

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

NASA HD is a free app that lets users view thousands of NASA images, information about current NASA images and videos, as well as live stream NASA TV.

The app also includes access to curated topic areas, like “Women in Space,” and to NASA Twitter feeds from around the agency.

While the satellite trackers and mission information is interesting, our favorite part of the app are the photographs. NASA has a huge archive of photographs — some of which were released to Flickr earlier this week — and thousands of these images are accessible in the app. You can also share photos and videos via Twitter and Facebook.

Check out this gallery to see the NASA HD app in action.

NASA iPad - Home Screen

NASA iPad - Home Screen

NASA iPad - Jupiter

NASA iPad - Satellite Views

You can go directly to specific satellites based on planet or orbiting object.

NASA iPad - Satellite Website

NASA iPad - Flash Fail

Someone forgot to tell NASA that the iPad doesn't support Flash.

NASA iPad - NASA Locations

NASA iPad - NASA Locations Details

NASA iPad - Moon

NASA iPad - Moon images

NASA iPad - Moon images share

NASA iPad - Photo Collections

NASA iPad - Photo Gallery

NASA iPad - Share Options

NASA iPad - Twitter Connection

NASA iPad - Tweeting Message

NASA iPad - Tweeting Message

NASA iPad - Tweet Sent

NASA iPad - Women in Space

NASA iPad - Launch Schedule

NASA iPad - NASA Website

NASA iPad - NASA TV

NASA iPad - NASA Playback

NASA iPad - Image of the Day

NASA iPad - Image of the Day Link

NASA iPad - Image Links

NASA iPad - Image Gallery

NASA iPad - NASA Tweets

NASA iPad - Glorious

[via CNET]

More About: ipad apps, NASA, NASA HD, NASA ipad, space

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Ping takes the “activity stream” format popularized by Twitter and Facebook and applies it to the music your friends are “talking about, listening to, and downloading”.

In theory, this should take us beyond mainstream hits and further down the so-called “long tail” of lesser known artists. It’s here that Ping fails to deliver: The network is currently just another way to follow Lady Gaga.

That’s the topic of my CNN column this week.

More About: apple, cnn, itunes, itunes ping, Ping, social media, social networking

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

We’re thrilled that the Associated Press has recently released an updated set of style rules specifically tailored to web and social media terms. But given how quickly new sites and their accompanying terms gain popularity, it can be difficult to keep up. Such is the case for geolocation services like Facebook Places, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite.

Geolocation services allow users to keep friends and followers posted on where they are at all times. We have a specific phrase to describe this action. However, said phrase raises some grammatical quandaries for social media grammar geeks such as myself. You might be familiar with this phrase by now, and it is more than likely that you have seen it represented a few different ways.

Check in? Checkin? Checked-in? Check-ed in?

You’ve probably seen all of these written one place or another, but which one is right? Is it two words or one? The answer is simple:

There are two forms of this phrase. One is a verb, the other a noun. “Checkin” is a noun. When used as such, the two words should be merged:

• Ex. “I have the most checkins at Blue Fountain Media. Does that mean I’m the Mayor?!”

“Check in” is a verb, and the two words should remain separate and unhyphenated:

• Ex. “I check in on Foursquare everywhere I go.”
• Ex. “I checked in with Facebook Places for the first time today”
• Ex. “Checking in must be really annoying if you don’t have a smartphone. How does anyone live like that?!”

“In to” or “Into”?

Now that we’ve settled the issue of checkin vs. check in, it’s time to move on to the advanced portion of this lesson. You know to say, “Did Foursquare count my most recent checkin?” but what about when you want to specify the place where you have just checked in? Would you say “checked in to” or “checked into?”

The distinction between “into” and “in to” is confusing for most people, not only in this particular context but in everyday grammar usage as well. Because in speech there is little audible difference between saying “into” and “in to,” most of us never bothered to learn how to use each one properly. There were many more important things to do in ninth grade English class than pay attention to grammar lessons, right?

So, in case you missed it while you were flirting with Suzy who sat behind you in class, “into” is one single preposition and is generally used as an expression of movement.

• Ex. “Alice met the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter when she fell into the rabbit hole.”

“Into” is also used to indicate a change of physical state.

• Ex. “Justin Bieber turned into a pop sensation overnight.”

The phrase “in to,” on the other hand, is two separate prepositions. It is correct to say: “Even though the wallet was stuffed with hundred dollar bills and obscenely large diamond rings, I turned it in to the police.”

If you wrote that you turned the wallet into the police, you would be indicating that you transformed a wallet into a police force, which is nonsensical at best. Instead, you want to indicate that you are handing over the wallet to the police.

To recap: Celebrities frequently check in to rehab centers. They also check in to exclusive hotels on Caribbean islands. So it follows that: “I check in to the Williamsburg Bridge when I ride my bike to work.” And “I didn’t check in to the theater when I went to see Twilight, because I didn’t want anyone to know I actually sort of like those movies.”

Oops…I guess the cat’s out of the bag on that one now.

This guide should help clear things up for you. Please comment and let us know if there are any other social media grammar rules that you aren’t quite clear about.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 20 Cool Twitter Accounts for Daily Fun and Inspiration [PICS]
- 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now
- The WikiLeaks Debate: Journalists Weigh In
- A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places
- 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, dalton00

More About: checkin, Facebook Places, foursquare, geolocation, gowalla, grammar, grammar freaks, nouns, prepositions, social media, verbs

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

As Sophos notes on its blog, a barrage of spam links are hitting the music-themed social network. Many of these links are to offers promising free iPad, iPhone or iPod touch devices.

Apple released iTunes 10 and iTunes Ping earlier this week and the rollout has been a little bit rocky. Beyond the latest spam attacks, issues with Facebook Connect, international access issues and unclear policies for musicians have plagued the service.

These messages, which you can see in the screenshot below, are showing up in comments to posts from iTunes Featured Artists or in responses to posts from other users who make their content accessible to anyone.

Online spam is perhaps the annoyance that unifies us all. No matter how big a company or network or blog is (or small), the spammers will come.

What’s curious is that it doesn’t appear that Apple has any spam safe-guards in place. While it’s true that iTunes Ping has a approval process for all profile photos used with Ping (presumably to prevent nude or other NSFW photos from showing up), the real-time nature of Ping prevents that sort of scrutiny for comments on posts.

Real time is actually pretty new for Apple. Users have long been able to leave reviews for music, movies and applications using iTunes, but like the profile photos in Ping, these reviews are held for review before publishing.

Still, it appears as though Apple did anticipate the problem, at least in part. On any post on your wall, there is a “Report” button next to “Like.” That button lets users report content for lots of reasons, including spam. Clearly Apple anticipated people using the post feature to spam friends or followers.

What isn’t an option, however, is the ability to report individual replies to those posts as spam.

A simple starter solution would be to reject any comments that contain “http://” or “www.” in the text box. Comments are not hyperlinked so this would stave off some of the automated spam that seems to be showing up right now.

What is clear is that Apple will need to institute a much stronger anti-spam algorithm into its commenting system to ebb the flow of spam on Ping.

More About: apple, itunes, itunes ping, Ping, spam

For more Apple coverage:

• Follow Mashable Apple on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Apple channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

According to The A.V. Club’s website, the idea was inspired by popular Chicago hot dog maker, Hot Doug. If you’ve ever been to Chi-Town, you’ve probably partaken in Hot Doug’s wondrous wares — dude even braved a fine for serving up foie gras hot dogs during the ban of that particular duck product in the Windy City. In short: He makes good hot dogs, and the line is often long to procure one.

First came a Twitter feed, designed to keep tabs on wait times, and then the Onion partnered with Invoke to develop WaitList, a free iPhone app for the hungry and the impatient. Basically, it’s like a super-specialized Foursquare. Simply send a tip with regard to your wait time the next time you’re stuck bar-side and other app users will benefit from your frustration. But, hey, if you pay it forward it will pay off for you eventually. Still, all users will have to be active on the app in order for it to really work.

This idea reminds us of Google’s Open Spot app, which crowd sources users to share news about open parking spots. Both require users to be active with checkins in order for the app to work best. (However, this particular app doesn’t encourage people to check in behind the wheel.)

Currently, the app is only available for the iPhone, which is a pain for all of us Android users out there. I hate waiting…

In the meantime, check out some screenshots below:

Image courtesy of Flickr, Geoff Peters 604

More About: App, Food, iphone

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

The last time Twitter went on the record with member registrations, it was touting 105 million registered users. That stat came just four months ago, which makes last night’s reveal quite significant and proves that Twitter is adding nearly 300,000 new users per day, as previously disclosed.

Of course, mobile plays a huge role in Twitter’s growth. Sixteen percent of new Twitter users now join via mobile device, as opposed to signing up on the web. The official Twitter mobile apps have significantly helped the company on this front.

This week’s Twitter for iPad unveiling could also help the company recruit even more new members through mobile. The application offers a fresh iPad-specific application experience with an innovative panel design.

Image courtesy of Matt Hamm, Flickr

More About: social media, twitter, twitter for ipad, twitter users

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

If you’re looking for some video entertainment to watch online during your lunch break, this chart is a great place to start. Just find a show you’re interested in and click the play button to the right to check it out.

The top 10 series received more views in July than in any previous month, so web video is growing, but there haven’t been any major shakeups since the June list. This month saw the return of Jake & Amir and a bunch of new content from long-time top performer Fred after a long dry spell. It gives some evidence that if you want to get to the top, you have to keep cranking out new content.

The Chart: July 2010

	Rank	Last Month’s Rank	Title	Studio	Genre	True Reach View Count	Change in Views	Sample Episode
	1 1 The Annoying Orange GagFilms Comedy 64,120,102 0% Play 2 2 Key of Awesome Next New Networks Comedy, Music 31,544,932 16% Play 3 5 Fred NA Comedy 30,544,860 42% Play 4 4 Happy Tree Friends MondoMedia Animation 20,903,739 -2% Play 5 5 Smosh Smosh LLC Comedy, Sketch 20,851,374 6% Play 6 6 The Station The Station Comedy 11,595,174 0% Play 7 9 Red Vs Blue Rooster Teeth Animation, Comedy 8,157,498 72% Play 8 Back On Chart Jake & Amir CollegeHumor Comedy, Sketch 6,082,068 Back On Chart Play 9 10 How it Should Have Ended Starz Media Animation 5,843,497 26% Play 10 8 Potter Puppet Pals NA Sketch 5,695,890 17% Play

*The Visible Measures Top 10 Webisodes Chart focuses on digital studio-driven Web series that appear on Internet video-sharing destinations and publisher microsites. Each Web series is measured on a True Reach™ basis, which includes viewership of both studio-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures platform, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 200 million Internet videos across more than 200 video destinations.

If you are a webisode publisher and would like clips from your microsites to be counted towards the chart, please contact Visible Measures.

Note: This chart does not include vloggers, interviews, how-to series, news shows, or product review shows. View-count results are incremental by month.

To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming Web series, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign’s overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.

If you’re interested in exploring this data further, go to visiblemeasures.com/mashable .

Fred’s Back!

Back in April we noted that YouTube superstar Fred had stopped producing new episodes regularly because he was working on a Nickelodean TV movie. Well, the movie has wrapped and Fred’s hiatus is at an end.

Thanks to new episodes, Fred broke 30 million for the first time since December — a 42% increase in views since June. That meant Fred was able to retain his #3 spot behind relative newcomers The Annoying Orange and Key of Awesome.

It pays to produce rather than rest on your laurels, it seems.

Jake & Amir Replaces Charlie the Unicorn

Charlie the Unicorn and Potter Puppet Pals both hung out on the chart for a while, riding entirely on content that was months or even years old.

For Charlie the Unicorn that came to an end this month; Jake & Amir returned to the chart in eight place and Charlie the Unicorn is no where to be seen.

There is such a thing as evergreen content for web series, but as with blogs and other online media, you can’t stay at the top of the heap without generating new content to supplement or support the old.

More About: Fred, happy tree friends, how it should have ended, jake & amir, key of awesome, monthly top webisodes, Potter Puppet Pals, Red Vs Blue, smosh, television, the annoying orange, the station, tv, video, visible measures, web series, webisodes, youtube

For more Web Video coverage:

• Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Web Video channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

So how do you win? Simple. All you have to do is answer the question: How would you use the camera if you won it?

We’ll pick two answers from readers each day that we think are creative, unique or demonstrate a need for the features offered by the camera (see the details below). We’ll be announcing two winners every day on our Tumblr account and updating this post with the winner’s names at the bottom. (The contest is limited to U.S. residents only. We’ll be having more international contests soon.)

How To Submit

• Simply click the “Like” button on our Facebook Page (below)
• Tweet @mashableHQ your answer using #mashcontest OR
• Submit your answer in the comments below OR
• Submit your answer to our Mashable HQ Tumblr

Please use your real identity in the submission so that we may contact you via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook to let you know that you’ve won.

Friday, September 3rd Winners:
Jamison Hiner from Omaha, Nebraska and Bill Collins from Franklin, Tennessee.

About the SANYO Dual Camera PD2

Now you can have both quality and convenience! The PD2 delivers archival quality 1080 30p HD video, 10MP photos, and 3x optical zoom in a very small compact body style. The Sanyo Dual Camera PD2 delivers excellent results with multiple features normally found on high priced camcorders. The PD2 fit is about the size of a deck of cards, is extremely portable and easy to use. It delivers 3x optical zoom for both video and photos. The PD2’s MPEG4/H.264 recording format, coupled with SANYO’s built-in software application makes sharing videos and photos via social networking sites including Facebook™, YouTube™ and Picassa™ a breeze. Capture more than just the moment. The PD2 allows you to easily capture and share memories.

More About: camera, contest, dual hd camera, photography, sanyo

For more Web Video coverage:

• Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Web Video channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

You have created a Facebook Fan Page. Now what? I bet these questions come to mind: “Is my page a success?” “Who is engaging with us?” “Is our engagement effective?” “Does our content strategy work?”

The Facebook Insights dashboard will help you answer some of these questions. As defined by Facebook, “Insights provides Facebook Page owners … with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, Page owners … are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook.”

So what’s the best way to use this relatively new tool? We’ve outlined some steps below that should have you measuring Facebook engagement in no time.

Note that only page administrators can view Insights data for the properties they own or administer.

Examine a Wide Range of Data

There are two types of Facebook insights:

• User Insights: Total page Likes, or a number of fans, daily active users, new Likes/Unlikes, Like sources, demographics, page views and unique page views, tab views, external referrers, media consumption.
• Interactions Insights: Daily story feedback (post Likes, post comments, per post impressions), daily page activity (mentions, discussions, reviews, wall posts, video posts).

The question then becomes: “What do you want to track and measure?” There is a lot of data offered, but you want to sort through it and identify what information is meaningful and will help you make decisions about your engagement and content strategy. If that data is not readily available, you might want to do some manual calculations to derive the numbers you’re looking for.

Below are the insights I recommend you pay attention to and track.

• Monthly fan size growth: Record the number of fans (or “Likers”) you have on the first of every month to see what your growth looks like. I’d say if you are growing organically and you have 10 to 13% monthly growth, you are doing extremely well. That is probably the highest organic growth number anyone can achieve. You can even go more granular and calculate weekly growth. Whatever you decide to do, make sure to watch for the spikes in fan growth and try to identify what contributes to those spikes.

• The average number of Likes or comments: These are your engagement measures. If you know the average number of times fans interacted with you for every single post, you will be able to identify which discussions are of more interest to your fans. Watch for unusual spikes or drops in this number. I love this metric because it is extremely helpful in making immediate decisions in your content strategy and changes to your editorial calendar. Increase the number of posts around the topic your fans are more engaged with and decrease the number of posts around topics they are not interested in.

• Unlikes and attrition rate: The fact is that you will always have some unsubscribes, no mater how great your engagement is, but hopefully it is just a small number. I usually just watch for spikes in the unlike numbers. You want to try and correlate them with the activity on your page and understand why people are leaving your page. It is rather hard to nail down the exact reason, but if there is an unusual spike, you will usually have a pretty good idea.

  The simple attrition rate formula is:

  Daily Unlikes / Daily Fan Count

  This metric will tell you how many of your fans are leaving your site. It is normal to have small constant attrition over time.

• Demographics: No matter what your objectives are, you can always find the demographics data useful: the gender of your fans, their ages and where they are from.

• Page views: I like this metric because it helps you identify the number of returned fans. If you take the number of page views and subtract the number of unique page views, you will see how many of your fans are actually coming back to your page. You can also look at the Daily Active Users metric.

• Mentions: This is the number of times someone tagged you in their post. The reason why this metric is important is because it is the easiest way for your fans’ friends to click through to your page. Every time someone tags you, the name of your Page appears as a link. It is much easier for someone to click on that link and learn more than to search for your Page manually. One of your goals should be to increase the number of mentions by your fans.

• Tab views: This is the new metric Facebook implemented a couple of months ago. If you have multiple tabs on your page, it will tell you which tab gets what percentage of traffic. This metric will help you decide on whether you would want to keep or maybe get rid of some of your tabs. This is especially helpful as you can only have six tabs visible on your page at one time, and this data will help you prioritize accordingly.
• Referrers: Another new metric that tells you where the traffic to your page comes from. You want to increase exposure to your page on the sites that bring you the most traffic.
• Impressions: If your page is over 10,000 fans, you will see the number of times your post was viewed –- impressions. This metric is not exact since every time someone’s page refreshes, it counts as an impression. This number is usually a little overblown, but can show you how many times your post has been seen.

Some of these metrics require constant manual tracking and analysis, which is a big downside. However, the above metrics will help you make decisions about your engagement and content strategy that would allow more effective interactions with your customers.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your Business Facebook Page
- 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now
- The WikiLeaks Debate: Journalists Weigh In
- A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places
- 5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl

More About: analytics, beginner, brand, business, comments, demographics, facebook, facebook insights, facebook page, likes, List, Lists, measurements, metrics, monitor, small business, social media monitoring

For more Business coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

In August 2010, Android had a 0.20% market share, Linux was at 0.85%, while iOS devices – the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad – had a 1.13% market share. Net Applications’ figures do not include device sales – they merely show which devices are being used to access the web.

“It’s something to take note of when a mobile operating system passes something that’s been around forever. Mobile’s growth curve is strong and mobile is becoming quite a phenomenon on the Internet.” said Net Applications’ vice president Vince Vizzaccaro.”

As always, take these numbers with a grain of salt; Linux users are more tech-savvy than most users and are thus more likely to block Net Applications from tracking their web usage. One could also argue in favor of Android devices being counted as Linux, since Android is based on the Linux kernel.

Regardless, one number stands out: put all the different mobile devices together, and they account for 2.6 percent of all devices accessing the web. And that’s just the beginning: the smartphone market has been growing fast in the last year, the iPad is still relatively new to the market, and first serious competitors are yet to make an impact.

More About: android, apple, Google, iOS, Linux, Mobile 2.0, smartphone

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Ubuntu 10.10 Beta Now Available

The first beta for the next version of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, dubbed Maverick Meerkat, is now available for testing.

While the final release isn’t expected to ship until October 10, users who aren’t afraid of encountering some bugs are encouraged to download and test the new version.

For netbook users, the Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition features a brand new default user interface designed to better take advantage of screen proportions for smaller devices. The desktop version will feature improvements to the Ubuntu Software Center and faster boot times.

Users can download Ubuntu 10.10 beta 1 from Ubuntu.com.

Plex Partners with LG to Take On Apple TV, Boxee

Plex, a popular media center for Mac OS X, has announced that it will be partnering with LG Electronics to bring the Plex platform to LG’s 2011 NetCast line of HDTVs and Blu-ray devices.

On the Plex blog, Co-founder Elan Feingold discusses how Plex will now be able to compete with Boxee and the Apple TV, while remaining free to use on a Mac or iOS device (Android coming soon) or via an LG HDTV or Blu-ray player.

Plex, which like Boxee is a fork of the original XBMC project, recently released its latest version, Plex Nine. For users interested in running their own home media server, Plex is a very attractive option.

Verizon Offers Pre-paid Data Plans for Some Smartphones

Verizon Wireless will be offering no-contract prepaid data plans for some smartphones later this month. The company will be offering a $30 per month unlimited data pay-as-you-go plan for eligible devices. Multimedia phones (non-smartphones with media features built in), customers can prepay $10 per month for 25MB of data, plus 20 cents per megabyte over that limit.

Eligible smartphones include select BlackBerry models (Curve, Storm, Storm2, Tour, Bold); the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus; Motorola’s DROID, DROID X and DROID 2; and HTC DROID Eris, HTC DROID Incredible.

Prepaid smartphone data plans will be available on September 28.

Further News

• Six Apart is shuttering its Vox blogging service on September 30. No new posts can be created after September 15, and blogs will be inaccessible after September 30. Vox has a page dedicated to helping users migrate their content to TypePad, Posterous or WordPress.com.
• Apple’s new iTunes Ping social network is off to a rocky start. Facebook turned off access to the app and musicians are confused as to how to actually use the service. Many international users continue to be unable to access the service.
• Google Wave may live on as its own stand-alone project known as “Wave in a Box.” Let the jokes begin!
• Facebook has just introduced a remote logout security feature. This means that when you accidentally decide to check Facebook from your boyfriend’s computer, you can log out before he gets smart to the fact that you’re chatting with other guys on the side.

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.

More About: Apple TV, boxee, first to know series, itunes ping, plex app, prepaid data plans, Ubuntu, verizon, Vox

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Wave still draws interest from users, although it turned out to be more of a niche product than a massively disruptive tool. Recently, Google promised to keep Wave alive, at least until the end of the year, and to open source some parts of it.

Now, Google has finally decided what to do with Wave. According to a recent blog post, Google will release most of the Wave code in the form of an (almost) complete application that Google calls “Wave in a Box.”

For exact details on what this bundle will include, go here.

Yes, Wave was a failure in Google’s hands, but we’re sure that developers will find a way to instill new life into the project. Who knows, maybe soon we’ll see a better Wave, and maybe this new version will (finally) conquer the hearts of users.

More About: Google, open source, wave

For more Tech coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

But NASA will be sending a spacecraft into the Sun’s atmosphere, approximately four million miles from its surface. The project, called Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch sometime before 2018.

Four million miles doesn’t sound very close, but it’s still very exciting, since this is a region no other spacecraft (created by us) has ever encountered. NASA plans for the project to “unlock the sun’s biggest mysteries.”

Although the spacecraft will be relatively far from our star’s surface, its carbon-composite heat shield will have to withstand intense radiation, as well as temperatures exceeding 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics — why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system?” said Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington.

“We’ve been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers,” said Fisher.

Images courtesy of NASA

More About: mission, NASA, space, spacecraft, sun, Sunshine, trending

For more Tech coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Push notifications would enable users to get instant, real-time updates for certain types of tweets — probably DMs and @replies and perhaps other kinds of tweets, as well.

A few lucky users accidentally got the new feature with the Twitter for iPad application, which was recently released.

“When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users,” wrote a Twitter spokesperson. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app.”

“We’ve been testing push notifications internally,” the rep continued. “Push isn’t ready yet, but we look forward to rolling this out soon.”

Twitter for iPhone, formerly known as Tweetie, was made available to the public three months ago. Since then, it’s skyrocketed to a top spot as one of the most-used Twitter interfaces. In fact, 8% of all users of Twitter access the app via Twitter for iPhone.

As for Twitter’s official iPad app, which just launched late last night, we don’t yet have any data on how much use that app is getting, but we do know that its interface is exciting and well-designed enough to get geeks around the web pretty excited; stay tuned for our full write-up and review later tonight.

What do you think of push notifications for Twitter mobile apps? Are you looking forward to getting real-time updates from those you follow?

Image courtesy of Flickr, tsevis

More About: ipad, iphone, push, twitter

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Sounding like something between a schoolteacher and a public service announcement, the Internet safety act will require online dating websites to warn their users about the potential perils of web-based romance.

The caveats seem like the kind of best practices any mindful Internet user would have internalized years ago. Things like not giving out your physical address and providing your own transportation on initial dates, for example, are no-brainers.

But the act also includes clauses about not revealing your employer or last name; a simple search engine could be used as a tool for stalking or much worse in the grimmest scenarios.

And another point made in the act is proof of how much dating has changed in the past 20 years: Users are warned against giving out their phone numbers in the first volley of e-mails back and forth between themselves and any strangers they may meet on a dating site.

Basically, the government is trying to make sure dating websites do everything they can to keep users from releasing identifying information until it’s safe and appropriate.

Although online dating is a huge business, we can’t imagine many companies having a problem with this requirement of consumer awareness, depending on how it’s carried out. In fact, such a law might even be beneficial on a national level. One other state — New Jersey — has enacted a similar law already.

What do you think of the Internet safety act in New York? Do you think it’s an appropriate, common-sense measure for dating websites to have to take? Or is it a futile reaction to Internet-linked violent crimes, which may have little to do with dating sites specifically?

Let us know your opinions in the comments.

More About: dating website, internet safety act, law, new york, online dating

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Twitter CEO Ev Williams wrote just now on the company blog that mobile usage of the site has gone up 62% in just over four months, and 16% of all new Twitter users are starting out on mobile devices as opposed to web signups (this number is up from just 5% earlier this year).

In the days before Twitter started issuing official apps on a platform-by-platform basis, the company wasn’t seeing the kind of mobile adoption it had hoped for. Williams wrote, “Even though there was a plethora of third-party Twitter apps, people were having trouble finding and selecting one because none were called ‘Twitter.’ This kept them from using Twitter at all.”

The company adopted a new strategy for mobile; rather than leaving all the mobile app development to third parties, Twitter decided to consolidate efforts. In the short term, this caused some consternation for third-party devs; however, looking at Twitter’s stats, it’s clear the company did the right thing for its shareholders and bottom line.

Twitter acquired Tweetie in May this year; this was our first indication that it would be creating and distributing its own mobile apps for a change.

Tweetie was revamped and renamed Twitter for iPhone in May. A BlackBerry app was released in April, and the company’s official Android Twitter app was released later the same month.

Twitter is also seeing strong growth in its mobile site and SMS service, and Williams notes that third-party apps such as TweetDeck continue to be valuable and important parts of the Twitter mobile landscape.

And as for the long tail, Williams writes: “There are a tremendous number of other apps that people are using, not necessarily as their main Twitter client, but as an alternative way to create or view Tweets. The number of registered OAuth applications is now at almost 300,000 — this number has nearly tripled since Chirp [Twitter's developer conference, which was held in April in San Francisco].”

While the above chart shows percentages of unique users per app, we’d also love to see a breakdown by volume of tweets.

Has your own mobile usage of Twitter changed or grown at all with Twitter’s releasing several official apps? Do you still use third-party applications for tweeting on the go? Let us know what you think about these stats in the comments.

More About: apps, Mobile 2.0, twitter

For more Mobile coverage:

• Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Mobile channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

President Obama has declared a state of emergency for North Carolina, and FEMA has deployed teams to North Carolina, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine.

Whether you live near the National Hurricane Center’s official “Forecast Cone” or you’re one of the 34.4 million people who planned a trip for this weekend, you’ll want to keep an eye on Earl. Here are some resources to kickstart your tracking:

Government Resources

The National Weather Service

Get your weather warnings and advisories right from the source on top of a color-coded map. You can also use the site to check in on where Earl is likely to hit and whether or not hurricane force winds are probable in your area.

NOAA’s nowCOAST

Make a customized, real-time map using NOAA data. Decide what location, information, and time you’d like to view and what data layers you’d like to activate, and nowCOAST will make a map for your request. This is a great tool for people who actually know something about weather, but it can leave the beginner hurricane tracker a bit confused.

NASA Earth Science Office

See what the hurricane looks like from outer space by taking a look at the latest satellite pictures direct from NASA’s Earth Science Office. The site offers a number of different satellite views, include infrared and water vapor readings.

Weather Media Resources

MyFoxHurricane.com

Very helpful for connecting with other hurricane tracking nerds, this dedicated hurricane website from MyFoxTampaBay and the FOX Network hosts a live chat in addition to its other hurricane resources. Interesting maps include the hurricane’s predicted path map, the wave height near the storm and a radar map that zooms in on the Outer Banks.

The Weather Channel

The Weather Channel’s Hurricane Central allows you to view where Hurricane Earl has been and where it’s projected to go. There are also separate maps for hurricane advisories, tropical storm advisories, wind speeds and wave heights; the site also has satellite maps for specific regions. The maps aren’t as flashy as some of the other sites on this list, but they are very easy to read and understand.

AccuWeather.com

If you want to see what Hurricane Earl looks like – and we’re not talking radar – watch this footage taken from directly above the eye of the storm. These brave NASA pilots apparently let an AccuWeather videographer on board. Hopefully this is as close to Earl as you will get.

The site’s frequent video coverage of Hurricane Earl is also a great resource.

Google Maps Mashups

Ibiseye

Ibiseye puts the storm’s history, projected path and at-risk areas on one Google map. It’s especially useful for finding at what time and with what intensity the storm is expected to reach a specific point. A graphical synopsis of the storm’s winds, pressure and wind field is also available.

StormAdvisory

Another Google Maps-based resource, StormAdvisory plots Hurricane Earl’s actual path and wind speeds as well as its projected path and wind speeds.

Weather Underground

The tropical weather section of Weather Underground includes radar, satellite, wind and forecast maps. The stand-out feature, however, is the site’s trademarked “Wundermap,” on which you can choose layers of information to display.

Stormpulse: A Hurricane Tracking Dashboard

Stormpulse is all you need to track Hurricane Earl’s vital stats. The dashboard displays every the essential detail, including current category, wind speed and movement, on one screen. You can switch the map to radar or satellite and select a point on the map to calculate its distance from the hurricane.

Mobile Resources

• The Weather Channel App for iPhone or BlackBerry

  The free version of the Weather Channel’s app for both iPhone and BlackBerry will alert you to weather advisories in your area and check in on the current forecast. The iPhone version comes with an updated local video forecast as well. If you want more from your weather source, a $3.99 iPhone version of the app comes with access to an entire video center and a database of beach condition reports. The Weather Channel also claims this is the only weather app with animated future radar.

• Hurricane iPhone App

  Anything a storm tracker could want: animated satellite and radar, computer models, NHC bulletins, forecasts, your distance from each forecast point and all the vital stats (including wind speed, direction and pressure). You can keep this $1.99 app on your phone after Earl has passed for the latest updates from government hurricane centers.

• Hurricane Wallpaper Android App

  Download this $0.99 Android app, and you’ll never be without your weather map. You can keep the current National Hurricane Center’s Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity image up on your phone as your wallpaper.

• MyFoxHurricane iPhone App

  The resources of MyFoxHurricane.com (as discussed earlier in this post) in a $3.99 iPhone app. Get access to breaking news and videocasts from the site as well as radar and satellite images. You can also look at past hurricanes in your area to see how Earl compares.

• Hurricane Hound Android App

  This Android app shows the storm’s current position, projected storm track and storm warnings on a Google map. It also lets you know how far away you are from the storm at any given moment. And it’s free, which we like.

• AccuWeather.com iPhone App

  Not fancy but still free, AccuWeather.com’s iPhone app will alert you to weather advisories in your zip code. Aside from accessing the usual web forecast, you can also access video forecasts for your area.

• Hurricane Central Web App

  Tired of downloading apps? Hurricane Central is a bare-bones mobile site for hurricane information. It pulls maps, advisories and other hurricane announcements from the National Hurricane Center.

Twitter Resources

• @VisitNC: The official tourism site for North Carolina, the state which is predicted to take the brunt of the blow, is tweeting travel conditions and beach closings as well as posing some interesting questions, such as, “What message in the sand would you write for Hurricane #Earl?” It’s good to see them keeping a sense of humor.
• @CNNweather: Breaking news from CNN, including new weather warnings and forecasts.
• @breakingweather: AccuWeather.com’s Twitter feed for breaking news (including hurricanes).
• @TWCBreaking: If you prefer the Weather Channel to AccuWeather, this is its very similar breaking news Twitter feed.
• @MyFoxHurricane: Twitter resource from Fox’s dedicated hurricane website (mentioned above).
• @hurricanes: The Science News Blog’s hurricane coverage, which focuses on the Atlantic region.
• @wunderground: Severe weather warnings and updates from Weather Underground.
• @stormpulse: Frequent storm updates and advisories on tropical storms and hurricanes.
• @NASAHurricane: NASA is equipped like no other organization to cover hurricanes (e.g., they’re able to fly directly into the eye of a hurricane). Follow this feed so you don’t miss their updates.
• @hurricanetrack: Let someone else track the hurricane in person. Get live video streams from HurricaneTrack.com.

---

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

---

- 5 Fun FarmVille Accessories
- Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy
- A Brief History of Digg
- 20 Cool Twitter Accounts for Daily Fun and Inspiration
- 7 Cool Chrome Extensions for Twitter

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, EricHood

---

Reviews: Android, BlackBerry Rocks!, Google, Twitter, iPhone, iStockphoto

More About: accuweather.com, hurricane, Hurricane Earl, hurricane tracking apps, ibiseye, mobile apps, myfoxhurricane, NASA, NHC, stormadvisory, stormpulse, the weather channel, tracking apps, twitter, weather underground

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad





]]> http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/track-hurricane-earl/feed/ 13 http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/track-hurricane-earl/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/GI-LFNUNILo/ http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:11:28 +0000 Jolie O'Dell http://mashable.com/?p=372858 <p><a target="_blank" href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/&#038;service=bit.ly"></a><a target="_blank" class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/&#038;title=Facebook Testing a &#8220;Stalker Button&#8221;&#038;srcTitle=Mashable&#038;srcUrl=http://mashable.com"></a><a target="_blank" share_url="http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/" type="box_count" name="fb_share" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/&#038;src=sp" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis/login?url=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/&#038;title=Facebook Testing a &#8220;Stalker Button&#8221;&#038;related=true&#038;style=true"></a>Facebook is apparently testing a new subscription feature that would allow users to receive alerts any time a specific friend takes certain actions on the social network.</p><p><a href="http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-subscribe-to-2010-09" target="_blank">AllFacebook</a> reports that it has noticed the new feature popping up on friends&#8217;&#8230;</p>



Facebook is apparently testing a new subscription feature that would allow users to receive alerts any time a specific friend takes certain actions on the social network.

AllFacebook reports that it has noticed the new feature popping up on friends’ profiles. Facebook told the blog, “This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links or notes).”

In other words, when you click to subscribe to a user, you’ll get a new Facebook notification in your notifications bar at the top of the site or on the mobile device of your choosing any time that other user posts content. We’re not sure yet if you can subscribe to someone who’s not a friend, which is much more stalker-like, or if notifications include likes and comments (right now, it sounds like they won’t).






We at Mashable are hoping this is an opt-in (or at least an opt-out) feature. If Facebook thinks subscriptions are a useful for the majority of average users, people who might want to get special notifications for family members’ or loved ones’ activities, they’re also potentially damaging if rolled out to jealous “frenemies,” vindictive exes or nosy bosses.

What do you think of the “subscribe” button? Is there anyone in your life you’d subscribe to? What about others subscribing to you — would you like or dislike that feature?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

[img credits: AllFacebook and jvk]

---

Reviews: Facebook, Mashable

More About: facebook, Subscribe, trending

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad





]]> http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/feed/ 181 http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-subscribe/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/5ClUyeHRlEw/ http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:20:27 +0000 Ben Parr http://mashable.com/?p=372796 <p><a target="_blank" href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/&#038;service=bit.ly"></a><a target="_blank" class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/&#038;title=Facebook Beefs Up Security with Remote Logout Feature&#038;srcTitle=Mashable&#038;srcUrl=http://mashable.com"></a><a target="_blank" share_url="http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/" type="box_count" name="fb_share" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/&#038;src=sp" style="text-decoration: none;"></a><a href="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis/login?url=http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/&#038;title=Facebook Beefs Up Security with Remote Logout Feature&#038;related=true&#038;style=true"></a><a href="http://mashable.com/category/facebook">Facebook</a> is bolstering the security of user accounts through the launch of a new feature that gives users the ability to see their overall account activity and remotely log out of active sessions.</p><p>Have you ever logged into your Facebook&#8230;</p>



Facebook is bolstering the security of user accounts through the launch of a new feature that gives users the ability to see their overall account activity and remotely log out of active sessions.

Have you ever logged into your Facebook at a public computer, but forgot to log out when you left? What if you left your Facebook account open at home with a snooping brother, sister or spouse? They would have access to sensitive personal information or could wreak havoc by posing as you.

These are the problems that Facebook is attempting to address with the gradual rollout of remote logout. The new feature appears under the “Account Security” section of Account Settings. Account Security displays the most recent activity related to your account, including location, device name, time and device type/browser. This should give you a clue as to whether you left Facebook open at a public computer or just left it running at the office PC.

That’s not all, though. To the right of any active account is a link for remotely logging out of your Facebook account. “In the unlikely case that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can shut down the unauthorized login before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer,” the Facebook team explained in blog post published earlier today.

This is a welcome security update from the world’s largest social network. For many, Facebook accounts hold information as sensitive as e-mail (and Gmail has had remote logout since 2008). Anything that provides more control over a user’s security is a win in our books.

Have you ever wanted a remote logout feature for your Facebook account? Let us know in the comments.

---

Reviews: Facebook, Gmail

More About: facebook, security

For more Tech coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad





]]> http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/feed/ 16 http://mashable.com/2010/09/02/facebook-remote-log-out/