7/22 Mashable!

DopplerPad: Music Remixing and Sampling on the iPhone July 21, 2009 at 10:17 pm We knew you could make great music on the iPhone. With instrument apps such as Smule's Ocarina and Leaf Trombone. Still, while they're cool and surprisingly rich mobile instruments, they're not all that practical for creating, sampling, and recording musical compositions on the fly. DopplerPad [iTunes Link] is a turntable-like instrument iPhone app built by one of the two creators of FourTrack [iTunes Link]. Unlike some other apps, this one doesn't feature just one instrument – it has 37. It doesn't just play notes; it lets you sample them, no matter where you are. And most of all, you can record and combine the beats to create your own electronic remix. Want to make a techno beat? DopplerPad takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of its interface, there's actually a lot you can do. It uses touch-based responses in order to create an instrumental piece. The 37 instruments we mentioned earlier are almost all techno or electronic-based beats: FM Bass, Cymbals, and even "Space Oddity" are available. You can fine tune the tone of the instruments as well. Once you're ready, the key to it is picking a beat count, a tempo, and recording your music. You're only allowed up to 16 beats, which is a little disappointing but more than enough to get the job done (and considering you can record more pieces, you can just combine them all later). Each time you touch the screen while recording, DopplerPad remembers it and plays it back the next time around. This allows you to add instrument after instrument. The DopplarPad video above gives you a good idea, although we want to note that it will take a lot of work before you can make music like they do on the video. At $9.99 though, this app may be a bit too expensive for most people's tastes. And because it focuses specifically on electronica beats, the music it can create may not be for everyone. If you're just a guy who likes to make funky sounds, DopplerPad works, but you really get the full benefit if you use it to create actual music and remixes. The app is strong enough to make a good dance club beat, but it'll take a bit of practice before you knock the socks of your friends at your next party. Tags: DopplerPad, iphone, iphone app, music LendingTree Launches MoneyRight to Challenge Mint in Personal Finance July 21, 2009 at 8:48 pm Personal finance tools on the web have been booming with both features and users. The combination of more powerful web technologies and a stinging recession have led people to tools like Mint, perhaps the hottest company in this sector. Meanwhile, LendingTree, the online lending exchange behind the well known "when banks compete, you win" commercials, has been furiously bringing its website into the Web 2.0 age. And while their website and design have been cleaned up, they quietly took a different product out of beta yesterday: MoneyRight, a new tool that helps you understand your financial situation and provides financial advice based on your finances and goals. MoneyRight: A Virtual Financial Advisor? MoneyRight has two core aspects: to show you where your money is and to show you what your money means. On the first point, LendingTree's new tool works like Mint: it pulls in data from your banks and credit cards and provides a simple overview of how much you have in income, how much you spent, the status of your savings, and where you're spending it. It's not as feature-rich as Mint in this department, but it doesn't skimp on features either. Its dashboard view is easy to comprehend. The second part, though, is where it separates itself from its competitors. The system has something called "moneywise," which provides you with information on whether you're meeting spending goals, the status of your financial health, and even can help you figure out how much $200 invested in retirement today (rather than spent on a new iPhone 3GS) will impact your financial future. MoneyRight and the new MyLendingTree suite are essentially virtual financial advisors. Their premise is that you don't need to go to an expensive financial planner when you have all the tools necessary to understand your finances on Lending Tree. It seems that Lending Tree's taken the time to think out the implementation so that it has the information you need without overwhelming you. So now you may be wondering: is it better than Mint? Truthfully, there isn't a yes or no answer to that question. If you want better visualization and management of your data, you're better off with Mint. However, if you like the idea of being able to plan out your finances (i.e. there's a tool that will tell you how many days you have until you're broke if you've been laid off), then LendingTree's MoneyRight app is a free and impressive choice (however, Mint Financial Fitness is also good for improving your financial wellness). See Also: HOW TO: Reorganize Finances Using the Web Reviews: Mint Tags: lendingtree, mint, personal finance Wait … Microsoft Had Its Own Version of YouTube? July 21, 2009 at 7:37 pm Is there any industry where Microsoft isn't competing with bitter rival Google? Think about it: Bing vs. Google Search, Google Docs vs. Microsoft Office (soon to be online), Gmail vs. Hotmail, Windows Mobile vs. Android, and let's not forget Windows vs. Google Chrome OS. With all of these high profile battles, you really can't blame us if we're saying "meh" to the news that Microsoft is closing Soapbox. Wait, what's Soapbox you ask? Why, that's their version of YouTube, and part of the far more popular MSN Video website. The YouTube clone opened up in early 2007, not long after Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. It just hasn't gained much traction though – thus why you've probably never heard of it. And when you've had a product out for over two years and you fail to make any inroads on your much larger competitor, it's a good time to quit. But hey, I hear Microsoft's embarking on a new venture: retail stores. Maybe they'll have better luck there. Reviews: Android, Gmail, Google, Google Docs, YouTube, bing Tags: bing, microsoft, Soapbox, youtube 10 Impressive New Implementations of Facebook Connect July 21, 2009 at 6:46 pm Facebook Connect is an exceptionally useful technology for web developers. Not only can they offer Facebook users one-click registration and sign-in, but by accessing profile and social graph information, Facebook Connect gives developers a way to create a richer experience for their visitors and gives publishers a brand new promotional channel. In January, we brought you a list of 10 great Facebook Connect implementations, and developers across the web have been busy since then coming up with new and innovative ways to integrate with Facebook. So below is a list of 10 more great implementations of Facebook Connect that stand out for their creativity, their usefulness, or their seamless integration. 1. Watchmen on Blu-Ray Back in May, Warner Bros. announced that the special Director's Cut Blu-ray edition of the movie Watchmen would utilize Facebook Connect. The disc arrived in stores today, and it does indeed feature Facebook Connect features for those with BD-Live enabled Blu-ray players. That means that people with both Facebook accounts and BD-Live players can invite friends for live viewing parties, exchange comments, and update their Facebook status. Yes, that's a lot of prerequisites, but still, the possibilities here are pretty neat. As we noted in May, the new Watchmen integration is "a huge step forward in bringing our social graph to entities beyond the Web." Also arriving today is a special edition Blu-ray version of the film 300 that also includes integrated Facebook features (300 and Watchmen were both directed by Zach Snyder). 2. Frenzied Waters One thing we're starting to see more and more is the use of Facebook Connect for clever, and in the case of the Disovery Channel's Frenzied Waters, exceptionally unsettling marketing campaigns. A couple of weeks ago, the Discovery Channel sent out packets to a handful of bloggers containing some gnawed swim trunks, a key with a floating keychain, a warning sign advising against swimming at the beach, and a copy of an obituary customized with personal details about the blogger the package was sent to. One final item in the package was a shark tooth attached to a piece of brass with the web address "FrenziedWaters.com" stamped on it. It was clearly an invitation to visit the web site, where of course, the ghoulishness continued. Frenzied Waters is an interactive flash movie designed to make watchers feel like they're in the water being attacked by a shark. If you click on the floating jar all the way to the right (on the splash screen), the application will ask you to connect with Facebook, where it will pull photos and information from your account to create a montage about your death by shark attack. Our best guess is that Frenzied Waters is a promotional campaign for the Discovery Channel's upcoming Shark Week (which runs on the network annually in August). If that's the case, it is definitely brilliant — very, very creepy, but brilliant nonetheless. 3. The Prototype Experience Like Frenzied Waters, the Prototype Experience uses Facebook Connect as a way to personalize a media campaign and insert you into a starring role. The site is a promotion for the "Prototype" video game from Activision and scores huge points for taking the normally static concept of a trailer and making it interactive. Once you connect with Facebook, the Prototype Experience pulls in photos and other information from your profile in order to customize the trailer and insert you into the video game's world. The site adds a viral element by asking you to "infect" your friends in order to enter for a chance to win an Xbox 360. 4. Beware of the Doghouse Beware of the Doghouse is a brilliant marketing campaign for retailer JCPenney from ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi that utilizes Facebook Connect. The site allows anyone to punish their significant other for a wrongdoing by putting them in the doghouse using Facebook. Once notified that someone has placed you in the doghouse, users can view a hilarious video about what life in the doghouse is like (above) or they can find out how to get out of the doghouse… by buying diamond jewelry from JCPenney, of course! 5. Eventbee Facebook has an amazing platform for virally publicizing events, but right now, it doesn't have any way to support ticket sales. Eventbee solves that problem using Facebook Connect in a very clever way. Not only can events be promoted on Facebook via your friends' news feeds, but Eventbee offers a way to turn your Facebook friends into ticket sellers. After your friends have connected to Eventbee via Facebook, they can become "Partners," and begin promoting your event to their own networks on Facebook. You can allow your partners to offer their friends a special discount rate on tickets and can even give Partners a sales commission on the event tickets they sell. 6. GirlsGuideTo GirlsGuideTo is a social network just for girls that uses Facebook Connect as its only login option. By using Facebook Connect, the site is able to make sure the network actually stays girls only. Because the vast majority of people don't lie on their Facebook profiles, GirlsGuideTo is able to fairly accurately determine the gender of people trying to access the site and keep the guys out. The creators of the site plan to open a sister (brother?) site for guys in the future, and invites any male user attempting to get into GirlsGuideTo to sign up for beta notifications. Sorry guys, we are still in our beta but the Guys Corner will be open soon. The "GC", as we call it, is where you can post content, give advice, lend your perspective and provide real time advice. Please fill out this form and we will send you a notice as soon as the Guys Corner is open. Thanks 7. Tweetpo.st For those of you who find yourselves spending more time on Twitter these days, but still don't want to give up on Facebook, there's Tweetpo.st. Tweetpo.st is an application that uses Facebook Connect as a way to automatically update your Facebook status based on your tweeting activity. The site will post any tweet (except @replies and those containing !fb) to Facebook as a status update, but has some nifty features to make your tweets read better on Facebook. For example, tweets that include a URL can be posted on your Wall as a shared link instead of as status updates, and tweets containing an @username can automatically swap out the username for that person's Twitter "real name." Further, tweets containing links can automatically be encoded with Awe.sm, for users of that service. 8. Drop.io Drop.io's Facebook Connect integration essentially allows you to share files and other media through your Facebook news feed and status updates. Once you've connected your drop to Facebook, any time you add new media to the drop, your friends will be notified via a status update included in their news feeds. They can then click-through to the drop and interact with the media or download the file you've shared. For users that don't want to publicly share their files, Drop.io offers a "Friendlock" feature, which allows users to specify which friends get invited to a certain drop and get notifications of new media added to the drop. 9. Brightkite Location-based social network Brightkite is one of those obvious candidates for Facebook Connect integration, and they've done a wonderful job with it. Once you create an account and sign in (which can be done via Facebook Connect), visit your settings page to grant Brightkite deeper access to your Facebook account. You can specify settings for your checkins, notes, and posted photos, and whether you want those automatically added to your Facebook status, news feed, or photo albums. (Brightkite can also sync each of those types of updates with Twitter.) 10. The Washington Post In June, the Washington Post pushed out Facebook Connect integration. On the surface, this just adds a way for Facebook users to get by the annoying registration wall the paper puts on its content, and a way to easily share stories from the Post site with your Facebook friends. But on a deeper level, Facebook Connect could theoretically be very valuable for the newspaper. They could get better ad targeting information from user profiles, for example, or they could increase traffic by syndicating user actions (like commenting) back to Facebook, or they could personalize news based on your age, location, interests, or work — the possibilities are really endless, and show how Facebook Connect could be important for the future of the newspaper business. BONUS: Xbox Live Starting this fall, Xbox Live will get an update that will allow you to connect to Facebook directly from your console. That unlocks all sorts of possibilities — sharing scores with Facebook friends, challenging buddies to online games, making photo albums of in-game screenshots, etc. The actual details are a bit hazy now, so we'll have to wait until the update is rolled out this autumn to know for sure how cool (or lame) Facebook Connect on the Xbox really is. More Facebook resources from Mashable - 5 Great Examples of Facebook Connect on the iPhone - FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster - HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook - 9 Fantastic Facebook Pages for Fashion Reviews: Blu, Brightkite, Facebook, Twitter Tags: brightkite, drop.io, eventbee, facebook, facebook connect, frenzied waters, girlsguideto, jcpenney, Lists, prototype, tweetpo.st, washington post, watchmen, xbox, XBox live Digg Stops Hijacking Your Twitter Links, Not Sorry About It July 21, 2009 at 5:10 pm This weekend, Digg quietly made a small change to its Digg.com URL shortener with big implications. Instead of Digg short URLs directing you to the source of a story, they started directing you to a landing page on Digg.com. This also applied to URLs that were created months ago. In other words, Digg hijacked our Twitter links. The result was an uproar by content publishers and Digg's users. Blogs were steamed about the situation and Digg users pushed our story confirming the change past 1300 diggs while dropping over 230 comments, most of them critical of Digg. Now, Digg is back-peddling on the issue, sort of. Although links created before the change will now direct to the source, going forward, short links will continue to direct to Digg for non-logged in users. Nonetheless, the result is a shortsighted decision that breaks the trust that Digg had built with publishers and users. Digg's Reasoning In a blog post, Digg's CEO attempted to clarify their stance on the issue. We have quoted part of the post and bolded the parts we believe to be most important below: "As we've stated in the past, the DiggBar is meant to streamline the Digg experience and provide our registered users with the opportunity to catch up on comments, related stories and additional source content. Our strategy with Digg short URLs is to facilitate sharing of Digg content, not to be a conventional redirection service. Last week, we made a change that began directing non-logged in traffic generated from Digg short URLs to Digg story pages where they can view the comments and related content. In response to feedback, all short URLs that were generated *before* today will now behave as they did prior to last week's change by taking the user directly to the source content. Logged-in Digg users will continue to be directed to the source content with the DiggBar (if they have it turned on). Of course, if the content has never been submitted to Digg, viewers will continue to be sent directly to the source." We're glad that Digg had the sensibility to reverse its retroactive changes and old Digg links will go back to linking directly to the source. But the damage has been done, and worse yet, it's only the latest saga in a series of questionable decisions by the popular social media site. Back in April, Digg's DiggBar was (rightly) accused of hurting website SEO (search engine optimization), users began to block the DiggBar, and finally Digg caved to the pressure. Digg, It's About Trust The entire controversy could have been avoided if Digg had announced the change prior to implementation. It would have been even better if Digg had not misled its users about the purpose of DiggBar URLs and the publishers that work with it, regardless of whether or not it was intentional. When the Digg URL shortener launched, Digg's founder Kevin Rose said the following about it (I've embedded the video above): "The second I hit enter, now I am redirected to the same page but this time with the DiggBar at the top and a new, short Digg URL. This of course, is perfect for sending around email or sites such as Twitter or Facebook. The problem now is that Digg URLs are not perfect for sending links to your friends because you have no idea what page it's going to lead them to. If it's an old URL, it'll lead you to the original story. If it's a new URL, it could lead you to the original article, or maybe it'll lead you to Digg if someone has already submitted it. Oh, and it gets even more complicated if you're logged in. Does anyone else see the problem here? Digg's change may help with traffic in the short-term, but long-term it is a shortsighted move that continues a slow deterioration of trust between users and the people that make the site function. While users and publishers aren't going to be abandoning Digg over this, they will think twice when trusting Digg's word or any of its new products. These types of decisions are the type of thing that can destroy a brand – let's just hope that they remember that before making changes like this in the future. Reviews: Digg, Facebook, Twitter Tags: digg Australian Police Save Residents From Their Unsecure WiFi Networks July 21, 2009 at 4:18 pm As more and more people set up their personal/home WiFi networks, opportunistic WiFi hijackers are finding themselves free to roam around cities in search of unsecure networks. At the very least they're attempting to piggyback off the internet connections of unsuspecting individuals, but there's also the risk of far more serious issues like identity theft. The Queensland, Australia Police are wise to this growing trend, and in an effort to educate citizens and combat cyber crimes, they've decided to do something about it. Police in the area are now going on what they call "wardriving" missions to actively search for open and unsecure wireless networks so that they can notify people at risk. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the Queensland Police efforts are preemptive measures to protect their citizens, as would-be WiFi exploiters have criminal interests and are "now sharing information on satellite maps showing vulnerable areas with large numbers of unsecured networks." Queensland Police believe that they are the first department in the world to undertake wardriving. We're not sure if this is the case, though we're yet to hear of anything similar happening stateside, and we're impressed with their foresight and concern in protecting citizens from identity theft. Of course, it is a little unsettling to think about police roaming around trying to detect how secure our WiFi networks are (especially if you're not a fan of big brother), but we can only hope that the information is used for good, and that Queensland Police efforts help spread awareness around the issue. See Also: A Guide to Protecting Your Online Identity Tags: crime, cyber crime, identity theft, queensland police, wardriving, wifi Are Your Tweets Straight or Gay? July 21, 2009 at 4:17 pm Much like San Diego's Pride festival, which just occurred this past weekend, Stockholm Pride is Sweden's annual festival celebrating gay pride. With the event right around the corner, they've created a harmless and silly little web app that analyzes your tweets and tells you how hetero (or not) you are. The appropriately named How Hetero? is a simple little app that lets you enter the Twitter name of you, your friends, or your favorite Tweeting celebs, and find out their heterosexual percentage based on the words they use in their tweets. There's nothing extra special to the How Hetero? app, but depending on your curiosity it could prove to be a pretty entertaining distraction. Once you find out your score, or the score of anyone else, you can grab and embed the mini pride badge, publish the results on Facebook, or tweet it out to your followers. Even if you're not the pride celebrating type, you have to admit that it's a pretty cute way for Stockholm Pride to spread buzz about the event and their mission. So how hetero are your tweets? Feel free to share your score with us in the comments. [via Gawker] Reviews: Facebook, Twitter Tags: gay pride, how hetero, stockholm pride, twitter Facebook Connect Adds Foreign Language Support July 21, 2009 at 3:38 pm Thanks to its user-driven translation program, Facebook is available in 64 different languages. Now, the social network is extending its translations to Facebook Connect, the platform that lets third-party websites offer Facebook login to their users and push information back to the News Feed. These websites will be able to change the language that Connect features are rendered in with some simple code that Facebook has posted to its developer blog. Meanwhile, when users submit items back to Facebook – like a review or a blog comment – they will show up as they were written on the site.The translation option also applies to Facebook's recently released cut and paste Connect options like Fan Box and Live Stream Box. The move follows Google Friend Connect adding support for 47 different languages last week. At the time, Google wrote that some 5 million sites are using its identity tool, but as we noted, that's largely because it's a much easier implementation than Connect, requiring no technical expertise. Between its new copy/paste widgets and foreign language support, expect Facebook Connect to increase its reach significantly from the 15,000 websites it counts today. Reviews: Facebook, Google, google friend connect Google Wave is Coming: 100,000 Invites Go Out on September 30th July 21, 2009 at 3:06 pm Less than two months ago, Google dropped a spectacular surprise upon the world: Google Wave. The communication tool aspires to redefine not only email, but the entire web. And from our very first test of Google Wave to our complete Google Wave Guide, we have to say that it's a game changer. Well, in the last two months, Google and third-party developers have been hard at work testing out the system, fixing the kinks, and building some amazing extensions (which we discussed in-depth previously). Still, only a handful of people, almost all developers, have access. That's about to change soon though: on September 30th, Google will start sending out about 100,000 invites for the next version of Google Wave. Google Wave's Rollout Google made the big revelation in a blog post on the Google Wave developer's blog. The post is part of an update on the Google Wave Hackathon, which allows developers to come to the Googleplex and work with the Google Wave API to build extensions such as Wave in Wordpress, a bot that allows you to easily place Waves in WordPress posts. It looks as if the testing in the Google Wave sandbox is going well though – it opened up the sandbox to 6,000 new developers and up to 20,000 more will get access before the end of August. But this pales in comparison to the 100,000 users that will get access on starting September 30th. According to Google, at that point Google Wave will appear on Wave.Google.com, instead of the Wave Sandbox. They will help further test for bugs, provide feedback, and play with apps. Google intends to invite groups of users, so the invites may not come out all at once. If you want to be part of the next wave of testing (haha, get it?!), you can sign up for updates here. Until the invites go out though, you're going to have to get your Google Wave fix from our extensive Wave coverage and analysis: More Google Wave Resources from Mashable - Google Wave: A Complete Guide - Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal - The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave - Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look - Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication? - Twave: Google Wave + Twitter Reviews: Google, Google Wave, WordPress Tags: Google, Google Wave HOW TO: Start a Petition on Twitter July 21, 2009 at 2:13 pm Petitions are one of the most valuable tools organizers have to gather support for a cause and demonstrate the strength behind it. Even if they're not always ultimately successful in enacting their goal, petitions are an amazing way to bring people together around an issue, spread awareness, and show others how many people care about a cause. The web has made petitions easier to execute, by replacing knocking on doors with a clipboard and pen with emailing supporters a link, and Twitter has now made them more likely to go viral. Below are four startups that help facilitate petitions over Twitter. Got something on your mind that you wish would change? Why not start a Twitter petition and rally others to your cause! 1. Act.ly Act.ly is one of the slickest Twitter petition sites available. Once users have created a petition, it's tweeted out to followers, and others can sign and tweet the petition (using OAuth to connect with Twitter). With Twitter petitions, every unique tweet about the petition (i.e., each new tweet from a new user) is considered a signature, and Act.ly displays the number of tweets and recent signers. Act.ly has a pair of unique features: 1. you can direct a petition at a specific Twitter account, and Act.ly will track how long it takes for that account to issue a response. So, for example, if you're targeting your petition at US President Barack Obama, you can have Act.ly directly tweet the petition @BarackObama. And 2. Act.ly offers an embeddable "Tweet It" button, so petitions can easily be spread through blogs or other social networking profiles. 2. TinyPetition TinyPetition is one of the easiest to use and most popular petition sites on Twitter. It was created by Harkness Labs, the guys behind PetitionSpot, so you can rest assured that these guys know petitions. TinyPetition has over 1,300 petitions, and probably owes its popularity to its simplicity. All you have to do to create a petition is enter your email address, your petition's title, your message, and a short title (for a unique hashtag), and then tweet it out. Signers can connect to TinyPetition via Twitter's OAuth implementation. Disclosure: Harkness Labs is also responsible for Tinychat, which powers the Mashable Lounge. 3. Twitition Twitition isn't the prettiest Twitter petition site, but it is easily the most simple. Enter a title and body for your petition and go. That's it. The site then tracks tweets about your petition and notes how many signatures (tweets) you collect. Like Act.ly and TinyPetition, Twitition utilizes OAuth to connect signers to Twitter. The most active Twititions so far have been the pair of petitions launched in June to protest AT&T's and O2's upgrade costs for iPhone users. 4. Twibbon Twibbon is a different kind of petition site. Rather than just getting people to tweet to sign and support causes somewhat passively, Twibbon helps supporters of a cause overlay their Twitter avatars with an icon as a show of support and solidarity around an issue. This is akin to the ribbons people sometimes wear on their clothing or stick to their cars. One campaign on Twibbon to encourage the death of IE6 recently struck a chord with users and has attracted over 8,000 supporters. 5. Do It Yourself If you have the development chops, you could consider creating your own custom Twitter petition. Custom petitions can be designed to match a certain aesthetic (perhaps that of your group or cause), and they're more likely to get coverage in the press because they're harder to set up and more rare (so they stand out). In turn, that can actually lead to increased support. One recent DIY Twitter petition is the Fix Outlook campaign, which aims to encourage Microsoft to fix the HTML rendering engine in Outlook 2010. The campaign is more than just a petition – it is a beautiful Twitter mashup that demonstrates support for its cause in a stunningly visual way. So far over 25,000 people have signed onto the petition. More Twitter resources from Mashable: - 5 Ways to Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter - 30+ More Ways to Create Twitter Groups - 15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends - HOW TO: Get Retweeted on Twitter - 10 Ways to Find People on Twitter Twitter origami image via Paddy Donnelly. Reviews: TinyChat, Twitter, act.ly Tags: act.ly, petitions, tinypetition, Twibbon, twitition, twitter TweetCaster Brings Twitter Multi-Account Support to BlackBerry July 21, 2009 at 1:53 pm Finally, it seems as though BlackBerry users are getting some choices when it comes to Twitter applications. Recently, I reviewed UberTwitter, which I preferred to the ubiquitous TwitterBerry, and found comparable to SocialScope, another Twitter/Facebook BlackBerry app that's still in private beta. The latest app to emerge is called TweetCaster, and it offers one killer feature that the other BlackBerry Twitter apps don't currently have: multi-account support, a key feature of desktop applications like Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck as well as several iPhone apps. But does the rest of the app stack up to the competition? Setting up multiple accounts is fairly self-explanatory, and each time you fire up the app, you can choose which account you'd like to use. Like SocialScope, the interface is more visual than TwitterBerry (or UberTwitter), with a variety of icons to choose from at the top: standards like replies, messages, or jump to user profile, as well as more advanced options like view currently trending topics, an option to see nearby Twitter users via GPS (like UberTwitter), and Twitter search. The interface for all of these features is clean and intuitive, and frankly a bit more visually appealing than any of the alternatives. For each tweet throughout the applications, there are easy options to reply, retweet, add to favorites, or email the tweet to someone. The form for sending the tweets is also nice, telling you clearly how many characters you have remaining. However, it would be nice to be able to switch accounts at this point rather than having to back out and switch usernames. Using the photo feature of the app inexplicably crashed my BlackBerry, triggering the phone to go black and take pictures over and over again. I'll give the app the benefit of the doubt and blame this on pilot error, but if you experience a similar issue I'd love to hear about it (as opposed to pulling the battery out of the back of my phone and waiting for yet another reboot). There's also quick access to TinyURL, though inclusion of other URL shorteners would be a welcome addition. One other annoyance – to download the app, you need to tweet out a link promoting it. That seems rather obnoxious, as I'd rather actually test the app and make sure it's any good before sharing it with my followers. Overall, TweetCaster does solve one big problem for a certain subset of users – those with multiple accounts – and offers a mostly intuitive interface. But for now, my favorites for BlackBerry remain UberTwitter and SocialScope. Reviews: Seesmic Desktop, SocialScope, TweetDeck, Twitter Tags: blackberry, twitter 9 Fantastic Facebook Pages for Fashion July 21, 2009 at 12:37 pm Alison Driscoll is an interactive copywriter and social media consultant who specializes in Facebook. She authors a blog at alisondriscoll.com. The Internet has revolutionized the fashion world, making trends more accessible and affordable for everyone, and expanding where and when we can shop. Social media has taken fashion a step further, encouraging discourse on designers and providing real-time feedback on the looks that work, and the ones that don't. Facebook's extensive list of features lets users comment on, post and share their favorite outfits and accessories with just a few clicks, anytime, from virtually anywhere. This social network has proved itself to be popular with savvy social shoppers for its fashion-forward Facebook Pages; here are 9 that use photos, apps and fan discussions for maximum impact. For Deals 1. Rue La La Rue La La is one of the many invite-only shopping sites that are becoming increasingly popular on the web. They feature high-end designers at discount prices and hype their sales with previews, emails and Twitter teasers for days before—all leading up to prices that are 50% or more off retail. The catch? You need to know someone to get access to the savings. Some sites charge, and while Rue La La is free, it still requires an invite code. Becoming a fan of their Facebook Pages not only gets you in, but provides you with insider tips on how to best shop their sales and advance notice of upcoming designer deals—important information when people can swipe items out of your cart up until the last second. 2. ideeli ideeli is structured a lot like Rue La La, but they offer steeper discounts on more pricey pieces and designers (think Gucci versus Guess), as well as giveaways on super-luxe items like a custom-designed dress or $1,200 clutch. You can gain access to invite-only ideeli through their Facebook Page; you'll also receive lots of fashion tips and reminders about events through their Twitter feed, which is pulled into their Facebook news feed. Their focus isn't so much on the savings as how and where a sale fits into today's fashion, making this a great Facebook Page for following trends while sticking to a budget. 3. Hautelook Hautelook has tons of great deals, with the added bonus of a decidedly less snooty air than many other invite-only shopping sites. Their brands are on par with similar sites, and the discounts are just as deep; they also seem to have a bigger stock of items and never run out right as you're about to purchase. The Hautelook Facebook Page is a testament to their commitment to fashion, with 278 photo albums of designers they carry and tons of Notes and Updates about upcoming sales, including reviews of the item to help you decide if a deal is worth it or not. They love finding a fashionable bargain, and it shows in the amount of content they post to Facebook. But be warned, their excitement over clothes is contagious and could make you spend more than you planned. For "The Look" 4. Lord & Taylor I'm a huge fan of Lord & Taylor both online and off: they've got all the best brands, more promotions than I know what to do with, and clearance racks worth digging through to discover $6 designer t-shirts marked down from $100 (true story). I was pleasantly surprised to discover that their Facebook Page did not disappoint, particularly as a department store uniquely set up to deliver "the look" as well as the means to purchase each piece. Sign up for all kinds of savings (they're offering 20% off almost everything right now) that you can use on nearly every brand you can imagine; I've scored countless pairs of designer jeans dirt cheap here. Bonus for you marketing geeks: they also showcase their amusing email advertising that highlights the most of-the-minute items. 5. Hudson Jeans I've always loved the fit of Hudson jeans, but as a brand, they often get lost in the shuffle and seem to take a back seat to more status-symbol types of denim. But they are surprisingly into social media and really understand that jeans are more than pants; they're part of an outfit, and often exist to make something else look better. Their Facebook Page takes a sort of niche market product and makes an amazing fashion statement with tons to look at and loads of exclusive content, all packaged in a clean, cool design with a few funky details—just like their denim. They do a phenomenal job of showing how to rock your jeans for different looks, and blog about cool trends and styles they love, including, but not limited to, denim. 6. Who What Wear WhoWhatWear.com is a fantastic blog that dishes about what all the celebrities are wearing, and tells you how to get the look for yourself, in a way that looks great and is affordable in the real world, not just the runway. Becoming a fan of their Facebook Page is a great way to get your daily dose of fashion inspiration at a glance, updated throughout the day on a site you visit frequently anyway; their miniaturized blog posts are uploaded as uber-adorable Notes. For Accessories 7. Coach Coach has been hard at work to revitalize their brand with fun-loving patterns and prints that maintain the same high quality standards of their core line of leather goods. They've embraced color and branched out into funky flip-flops and oversized shades to appeal to younger customers who want well-made accessories that are worth the price tag. To fully realize their revamp, Coach turned to Facebook, and their Page is a testament to their commitment to their customers and the quality of their products. Fans are privy to awesome updates and unique previews, as well as special offers and sneak peeks at new lines. The result is a fun, colorful Page that works with Facebook instead of against it and provides real value to Fans. 8. Heels.com I love Heels.com for their fresh approach to foot fashion, and because they're open to letting people blog for shoes. They're active on Twitter and have more brands and search options than you can imagine, making it impossible not to find the shoe you desperately need (or just want). I hate generic Facebook Pages, but if you're looking for straight up shoe porn, check out the generic High Heels Page. However, if you want a place to actually buy shoes and get updates as soon as new designers come in, check out the Heels.com Facebook Page. They've got their own collection of shoe porn, as well as fun blog posts, and an obvious passion for shoes that they've matched well with social media. 9. PurseBlog The Purse Blog is a must-RSS for any bag-obsessed female; they've got oodles of purse porn, handbag reviews at every price point and oodles of contests and giveaways. Fanning their Facebook Page ensures you'll never miss an alert about a sale or giveaway, and always stay on top of the latest trends and celebrity bag sightings. Hints abound about upcoming contests, and the discussions and fan photos provide an outlet for showing off your latest arm candy. Bonus: Fabulous on Facebook Threadless I wouldn't exactly call Threadless fashion-forward, but their t-shirts are definitely funny and their use of Facebook deserves at least some mention. As any good fashionista knows, admiring outfits online often turns into actual shopping, and quite quickly; Threadless has made this even easier by incorporating ecommerce shopping cart functionality right into their Facebook Page. And any fashionable Facebooker can see the potential in that. Express Express' Facebook Page caught my eye not so much for its fashion sense—although I do love their clothes—but for their great use of Facebook. They've done an amazing job of engaging customers, on both Twitter and Facebook, and everything fits so well with the brand and style of clothes. Their Facebook Page has a clean design that mimics the look of the website and feel of shopping in the store with a great use of space and integration of clothes through photos and videos. It's a definite fashion "do" for Facebook Pages. More Facebook resources from Mashable - HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook - Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What's the Difference? - Killer Facebook Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies - How Charities are #FindingTheGood With Facebook Pages Reviews: Facebook, Twitter Tags: facebook, facebook pages, fashion, Lists, shopping Photo Tagger: Tag Your Facebook Friends in Bulk [Invites] July 21, 2009 at 12:02 pm Face.com is the facial recognition service behind Photo Finder, their private alpha photo finding app for Facebook. After scanning over 1 billion photos and identifying 400 million faces, they're ready to release a second tool into the wild. Photo Tagger, now live, is another private alpha Facebook app using facial recognition, but this one was made with the avid photo uploader and tagger in mind. You can use the tool to scan Facebook photo albums for faces and tag your friends in bulk. With the Photo Tagger application you can select from photo albums that belong to you or your friends, and use the app to scan the faces in each album. Once the scanning process is complete, Photo Tagger will return photos grouped by faces, some of which might already be identified by existing tags. You can then add a tag to a photo or a group of photos with the same face. Once you're done, Photo Tagger will publish the tags and your friends will be notified accordingly. In demoing the app for myself, I noticed that even if you can't identify a friend in a photo, the act of bulk tagging someone else sets up a chain reaction where they go in and tag their friends, and so on and so forth. Depending on the size of your albums and the quantity of your friends, the tool could prove instrumental in your Facebook photo tagging process. The app is still a bit buggy, but if you want to try it out for yourself, we've got 300 application invites. All you need to do to get the app is use this link and be one of the first 300 people to install it. Reviews: Facebook Tags: face.com, facebook, facial recognition, photo tagger Starbucks Free Pastry Day: A Social Media Triple Shot July 21, 2009 at 11:48 am American's love for free food knows no bounds. This morning's evidence: Starbuck's Free Pastry offering, a much-hyped event that you've no doubt caught wind of if you spend much time on social media websites. The company is offering up a free pastry alongside the purchase of any beverage until 10:30am local time (sorry east coasters), and as a quick tour of the social web shows, it's having a noticeable impact on not just lines at the store, but Internet chatter as well. At the moment, Starbucks is the top topic on Twitter, with Twist indicating that nearly 1 percent of total tweets mention the brand. That's nearly 10x the amount of mentions on a typical day, though needless to say, many people's typical day still starts at Starbucks regardless of a free pastry. Meanwhile, something I've been watching on Facebook leading up to today is the event page that's been setup for it. As of this morning, there nearly 600,000 confirmed "attendees," a number that has snowballed as more people caught wind of it as friends signed up. That success isn't too surprising – the coffee chain is up to more than 3.6 million fans on the social network. One humorous anecdote in meandering around the Web for information about Free Pastry Day: "Starbucks nutrition" has cracked into Google's top 100 search trends. Apparently, a good number of people want to know exactly how fattening that scone is before indulging. Reviews: Facebook, Twitter Tags: free pastry day, social media, starbucks SiteJabber: A Power to the People Tool for Reviewing Online Businesses July 21, 2009 at 9:02 am Yelp has emerged as a great site for sharing your restaurant reviews and offline merchant experiences. As such, over the years it's managed to become one of the standby sites that many of you check for user reviews before heading out for a night on the town. Now SiteJabber, which launches today, is hoping to be the Yelp for websites and online businesses. The new site is almost an exact replica of the Yelp model, and it gives members the ability to voice their stellar and not so stellar reviews of online businesses. Once you sign up for SiteJabber — or login using Facebook Connect — you can start reviewing sites of your choosing and catch up on the reviews of friends and other site members, as well as research online businesses before you buy. When reviewing a site, you simply enter the name and type of site, choose from one of four colorful ways to describe it (like "meh."), and add your review. Your reviews can also be published on Facebook. On the home page, you can also view the most loved and hated sites of the day, as well as check out your friends' reviews, and adjust the reviews you see by selecting topics of interest. Should you want a specific site reviewed, you can use SiteJabber to request it, and they'll highlight your request to other members. The idea behind SiteJabber isn't one that's completely new, but it could turn out to be a worthwhile site if they can attract a large community of honest online business reviewers. As we wait for the SiteJabber community to propagate, we're curious about whether or not you plan to use it to research online businesses and share your online shopping experiences. Let us know your thoughts on the site in the comments. See Also: 10+ Sites for Product Reviews from Experts and Consumers Reviews: Facebook, Yelp Tags: consumer reviews, online businesses, sitejabber HOW TO: See the Longest Solar Eclipse of the Century Online July 21, 2009 at 7:15 am Tomorrow, on the 22nd of July 2009. the longest solar eclipse of this century will occur; it will last over six and a half minutes, and it will be visible, among other places, in parts of India, Butan, Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Japan, and the Marshall Islands. It is an extraordinary event; the next solar eclipse that'll last that long will occur on 13th of June, 2132. If your location doesn't permit you to see the eclipse directly, worry not, as you can still follow it online. We've gathered some resources where you can find information about the eclipse, photos, and live video streams from various parts of the world. NASA's official page for this solar eclipse includes detailed information about the event, including an interactive map of the eclipse path, various data tables and other info mostly interesting to astronomers. If you just want to sit back and enjoy the view, you can see a live video stream of the eclipse from several locations in the world. LIVE! UNIVERSE webcast will display a live webcast from Japan; for the latest info (in Japanese), follow their Twitter page here. The University of North Dakota has sent an expedition which will broadcast a live webcast from China; it starts on July 22, 2009 at 00:14:54 UTC. You can follow the live stream here. For another webcast from Mainland China, follow this link (site in Chinese). Grupo Saros will also have a live webcast from China, and on Ustream.TV you can follow the eclipse from Guwahati. Finally, for some more info on this eclipse, check out the amazingly resourceful Eclipse Chasers, the Exploratorium, and, of course, the Wikipedia page for the solar eclipse of July 22nd. [Images courtesy of LIVE! UNIVERSE, Wikipedia] Reviews: Wikipedia, ustream Tags: Solar eclipse Beastie Boys Reveal Cancer, Cancel Tour via YouTube July 21, 2009 at 2:02 am It's never easy when you find out that you have cancer, but when you're Adam Yauch (aka MCA) of the legendary Beastie Boys, and you're going on tour, it's got to be even harder. Adam was diagnosed with cancer in his parotid (salivary) gland last week, and thus the Beastie Boys have had to cancel all of their upcoming appearances. Instead of holding a press conference or putting out a statement to announce the news though, MCA and bandmate Adam Horovitz made and released a short, simple, and somewhat lighthearted YouTube video where they break the news. In it, both Adams discuss the news and try to place a lighter spin on it for the fans (and themselves). Once again, social media proves to be one of the most effective, intimate, and genuine ways to reach an audience (the video's already surpassed 50,000 views). We're sure Beastie Boy fans are disappointed they won't get to see the boys in person for a while, but understand that MCA has to deal with his cancer head-on. Luckily, it looks as if the cancer was caught early and is treatable. We wish MCA the best of luck with his recovery from cancer. Here's the announcement video: And because we don't want to end on such a somber note, here are the Beastie Boys playing Sabotage live (I wanted to embed "Fight for Your Right" but embedding is disabled for their music videos). Reviews: YouTube Tags: beastie boys, youtube