While it seems that tablet-mania has us all in its grip, the more I thought of a slate running webOS the more excited I got about it. The graphical touch interface is already outstanding, but imagine it on a 7-inch display. The multitasking of webOS would enter new ground on such a screen. It would not only be a productive environment to use, it would actually be fun. If you ask me, Palm could use a little fun these days.

I am picturing a thin slate with a 7-inch screen even a tad bigger would be OK. The great PIM apps on webOS would be stellar if optimized for the larger display. Palm wouldn't have to add functionality, or even change the way they utilized touch, just optimize the display. The webOS browser is already quite good; It would only be better on a larger screen.

I believe Palm could produce this slate, given its history with device design and production. It should follow the Apple model and make sure all existing webOS apps work on the tablet, and provide incentives to developers who optimize existing apps for the bigger screen. Maybe even make a deal with Amazon to get a solid app to work with Amazon MP3. There are many ways for Palm to go with this slate, almost all of them good.

Palm could produce a Wi-Fi model of the slate, but also a Sprint 3G/4G model. This would compete with the iPad, and with the Sprint data network make a bold statement. I can see Palm making a tremendous splash with such a device, no matter what happens with its phone line. Having given this a lot of thought, I can only see an upside for beleaguered Palm with this. Given the tight integration webOS already has with Google services, this tablet would give Android tablets serious competition.

The only question I have about this tablet venture for Palm is what to call the product. There's the obvious Palm Pad, but I think they need something clever to make a splash. How about the Palm Pilot? Raise the original product name that made the company famous, and get people talking.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):

How To Clean Up the Mobile OS Mess

Haul is a great modern bike design from Globe Bicycles.

[via Stilsucht]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• notebook paperBe optimistic: bring lots.


• a clipboard or other hard surface if you like to work on the bed instead of a desk like I do.


• different colored pensI found it useful to write all the changes I wasn't sure I wanted to make in a different color pen. That way, if I changed my mind, I could easily find those particular changes and remove them.


• Post-It notesGood to bookmark pages when you flip back and forth between sections.


• different colored highlightersI learned a terrific exercise by attending a conference by Darcy Pattison. You shrink your manuscript to a font small enough to fit your entire manuscript onto 32 pages (play with the margins and single space). You then use different colored highlighters to highlight whatever you want to examine for flow in your novel. You then lay out your novel on the floor and can see the entire thing in one look.


• laptop computer (Note: ask ahead of time whether the hotel AND YOUR SPECIFIC ROOM have wireless. My room must have been just on the cusp of wireless coverage. I got a good 30 min. of online time and that's it. (It ended up being a good thing, as I didn't have access to time-sucking Facebook).


• keyboard, mouse, etc.It was worth it to me to have a mouse instead of using the touchpad of the laptop. I was fine with the mini-keyboard of the laptop, but if you're not, keep that in mind. Nothing's worse than having time to type and being uncomfortable.


• printerYes, you heard me correctly. I purchased a small HP printer from Walmart for $35 (color and black ink included). It was SO WORTH having with me. Sometimes I redo a page so extensively, I need to edit it a couple of times. It was helpful to be able to print it and write on a clean copy.


• printer paper


• flash driveIf you don't bring a printer, you still may want to print. By bringing a flash drive, you can print in the hotel's business center (or, you can always email yourself your manuscript and open it that way).


• scissorsin case you want to cut your story apart to lay out


• stapler or hole punchI keep my novel in a binder. After I printed some new pages, I wished I was able to stick them in my binder.


• synopsisIf you change your novel, you may want to update this as well


• other drafts of the novelI know I ended up referring to old copies of my novel for parts I had deleted from the most current version.
  

Non-writing Related

• snacksLots. Now's not the time to worry about calories. Okay, I'm rationalizing the fact that I brought a jumbo bag of M & Ms, Red Vines, and Sun Chips, but let's just refer to these foods as fuel for creativity.


• meal-ish FoodsI regret that I didn't pack anything that could count as a meal. Because my hotel had a HUGE children's chess tournament going on, the parking lot was packed. In an effort to not lose my great parking space, I refused to leave the hotel. That meant I had to eat at the restaurants at the hotel. Saturday morning, I spent $4 on a cup of Dannon yogurt and a microscopic box of Cheerios. I should have brought a couple granola bars, an apple, a box of raisins, etc.


• coolerAgain, for bringing your own food. My room didn't have a refrigerator. If it had, I could have packed my own yogurt for under a dollar (can you tell I'm still bummed my yogurt cost $2.50?)


• water


• hand soapAm I the only one that can't stand how hotels still provide a bar soap instead of having a pump by the sink? I bring my own instead of using the slimy bar. A tip for any hotel stay.


• ipod and headphones, workout clothes, etc.It was nice to take a break on the treadmill for a bit to clear my head. It also helped to work off about 4 M & Ms.


• swimsuitA hotel with a pool was a must for me. I forced myself to make it to a certain page before I could take a swim break though.

It's now three minutes later and I could totally creep her out I know her kids' names and where they go to school, her home address, her hobbies, spouse's name and place of employment. I also know the names of all her Facebook friends. Oh and don't forget it wouldn't have been all that hard for me to just snap a picture of her and share it with you here.

Moral of story? STFU when you're on your cell phone in public.

140proof, which is based in San Francisco and backed by a $2-million investment raised last summer from Blue Run Ventures and Founders Fund, said that its algorithm aims ads at users based on their profiles and other public data. Other Twitter advertising services include Ad.ly, which has gotten some press attention for paying celebrities such as Kim Kardashian thousands of dollars to endorse products to their followers, as well as Magpie, Assetize and IZEA.

The question all of these services will inevitably confront including Twitter itself, once it launches its own platform is how users will react to a wave of advertising in what was once an ad-free social network (in the case of 140proof, of course, you can simply not use HootSuite's mobile apps and you won't see them). Many of these services are only just ramping up in what will undoubtedly become a much bigger campaign to bring ads to the Twittersphere. So what will you do when ads start appearing in your Twitter stream?

Related content from GigaOm Pro (sub req'd):

How Human Users Are Holding Twitter Back

Anyone who's been to SXSW in the past few years, ever since the iPhone's release, knows that the AT&T network absolutely explodes during the festival. Texts, if they ever make it through, take hours; calls are dropped at an alarming rate, even by AT&T standards; and Internet access is essentially impossible. It's hard for AT&T to keep up because Austin, any other week of the year, isn't absolutely flooded with iPhone users mucking about, asking where the Facebook party is, or if they're on the list for the Gawker party. (I'm on the list, but I'm not going this year so it doesn't matter.) The point is, AT&T has its hands full that week, so let's give them an A for effort for trying to prevent another iPhone meltdown this year.

SXSW starts on March 12, and runs through March 21. It's a couple of days worth of tech, music, movies, and open bars. It's sort of an exaggeration, but every single attendee rocks the iPhone. It brings AT&T's network, already sorta meh, to it knees. This year, though, AT&T has prepared itself for the huge influx of users.

AT&T has installed a distributed antenna system at the Austin Convention Center. In a perfect world, it adds the equivalent of eight cell towers to the covered area. AT&T has also three temporary cell sites for good measure. These things are typically installed during big, but temporary events. Think Super Bowl or, well, large conventions.

The company also says it has added fiber-optic connections to more than quadruple the backhaul capacity of each of the eight cell sites that serve the event area, and temporary sites will also be served by extensive backhaul. Whatever that means!

Fingers crossed, every SXSW attendee will be able to FourSquare till their battery dies. That's all you can ask for.

Flickr

As more wireless carriers adopt Google Android, many new consumers ask frequently how to do common tasks on their Android phone. This section is dedicated to offering Android Advice to new and experienced Android consumers. There will be more to come, however here are the top 6 frequently asked questions by new Android users:

1. What Android apps should I download?

There are many list all over the web, even many on our website (coming from Blackberry to Android see this list). We'll list a few must have best Android apps to get you started:

• Must Have: Astro File Manager, use this app to browse files on your SD card. Bar Code Scanner, use this app to scan the QR bard codes with all of our reviews to quick link you to apps in the Android Market!
• Task Management: TasKiller
• Battery/Power Management: Power Manager or Screebl
• Email: K9 Mail or Exchange by Touchdown
• Music: Pandora or Meridian Player
• Home Screen Customization: aHome or SlideScreen
• Productivity & Note-Taking: Astrid or Evernote

Keep visiting www.AndroidTapp.com for the best Android app recommendations.

2. How do I setup email accounts?

First gather your POP3 or IMAP protocol access information. Launch Email > type email address and password > Choose either POP3 or IMAP account > enter Incoming POP3 or IMAP protocol information > enter Outgoing information > choose whether email account is default.

3. How do I save battery power?

Try turning off Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS when not needed. Try to minimize update intervals of some apps such as Facebook and Twitter from the settings menu. There are apps to help manage battery power for you such as Power Manager.

4. How do I Customize my phone?

There are many home screen customization apps to give a completely different experience; popular apps include aHome, Open Home and SlideScreen.

5. How do I set Ringtones?

Either purchase them from sources like Amazon MP3 or download free with Mabilo Ringtones.

To place your own MP3 songs as ringtones go to the Android Market to download Rings Extended. Plug your phone to computer via USB cable. An icon will appear in the top left notification bar, slide the bar down (this is called the window shade). Tap USB connected > Mount > on your computer a new drive will appear > drag your own MP3 files to the drive > tap home button > Menu button > Settings > Sound & display > Phone ringtone > choose Rings Extended to browse your MP3 files on the phone.

6. How do I import my Contacts from SIM card?

From home screen tap Menu > Contacts > Menu > Import contacts > Import All (Import allows for single imports)

Have more questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below or Contact Us!

Post by Tim Trefren (Co-founder of Mixpanel, Inc.) guest posted at http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/social-analytics/

When most people think of web analytics, they think about pageview tracking; basically, measuring which pages on a website are being viewed. Pageview tracking is a well-established technology, but it's no longer meeting the needs of many of the most well-known companies in social media. Companies like Facebook, Zynga, Slide, and RockYou are spending tons of resources building their own internal analytics tools.

There's a reason for this: Social media is highly competitive, and the biggest advantage you can have is data. To improve and grow, these companies need to gather as much information as they can, and they need more than simple pageview tracking.

In the following sections I will cover three of the most important things to measure for social applications.

1. Funnel Analysis: Measuring Conversion Rates

---

One critical kind of analysis that social apps require is called Funnel Analysis. This is a way of measuring conversion rates, which is the lifeblood of all applications. The term conversion rate refers to the total number of visitors who came to a site, compared to the number of visitors who did a desired action (such as creating an account or purchasing an item).

What Funnel Analysis gives you is a more granular way of analyzing conversion rates. Instead of simply looking at signups divided by total visitors, you figure out the steps that have to be taken to get a user to sign up and measure the individual conversion rates between steps. As you can see from the image above, there's often a pretty steep dropoff between each step, giving you the namesake funnel shape. (Note: the image uses made up stats and is for illustration purposes only.)

This more granular look at conversion rates can have surprising results. Let's take a look at Twitter'ssignup funnel:

1. Hit homepage
2. Go to signup page, fill out registration form
3. Browse suggested topics
4. Add e-mail friends
5. Search for someone

As you can see, the signup process is pretty complicated, and will benefit from detailed analysis. We might find, for example, that there's a huge dropoff rate (a dropoff occurs when many of the people who made it to one step don't make it to the next) at the Add e-mail friends step. Once we've discovered a dropoff rate like this, we have to figure out the root cause. The dropoff rate at the Add e-mail friends step could mean that users are unsure how to continue, causing them to leave, or they might not want to add their e-mail information. We would have to test to make sure.

Ultimately, Funnel Analysis is about finding and improving trouble spots in a website. With continual analysis, changes can be measured and ideas can be tested over time.

2. Engagement Tracking: Measuring What People Do

---

As I mentioned earlier, pageview tracking is becoming less and less relevant for many web companies. Instead of the basic unit of measurement being the pageview, they are starting to track more directly relevant things, like the actions people are taking. Twitter, for example, may want to know how many tweets the average person sends and what they are searching for, not how many pages they viewed. Pageviews are just a way of approximating the information we really want, and as the web grows more interactive, they become less and less relevant.

Think about this: Sites exist today on which you never actually change the page. These are highly interactive sites, but they are impossible to track with pageviews, so traditional analytics tools are useless.

This will only become more common as time goes on and more companies develop highly interactive applications and adopt AJAX loading techniques.

3. Visitor Retention: How Many People Come Back?

---

This next technique measures a fairly complex but extremely valuable metric for successful web applications.

You can think of Visitor Retention as a measure of how sticky your site is. What we're really measuring is the percentage of people who come back again and again. The most common way of approaching this is to look at a group of users from a single time period (a week, for example) and track their behavior over time.

Here's an example of a retention table that should help clarify things:

Each row shows the weekly retention rates for a single group of users (sometimes known as a cohort). The first row, for example, is the cohort seen between December 7 and December 13, 2009. We can see that 15.15% of the users in that group came back after 1 week, 13.4% after 2 weeks, and so on.

This is crucial information, particularly for social applications, because most of the value lies in the size of the community. An application with low retention is like an empty shell many installs but few active users and you don't want to build an empty shell. You want a thriving, vibrant community.

Retention is a huge factor in building a strong community for a few reasons: You don't have much of a community if everyone is a newcomer (so more old users is a good thing), and the nature of retention is such that you get disproportionate returns on any increases you make. Without going into too much detail, an example would be that increasing retention by 33% might give you 50% more users in the long run.

Twitter is again a good example for us, as the network has been plagued by low retention rates. Twitter may seem successful now, but their low retention rate is troubling. In the past, companies that seemed to be extremely successful (think early Facebook apps) ultimately lost their edge because they couldn't retain their users.

It's entirely possible that Twitter itself could be a fad. With such low retention, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised but it is still too early to tell.

Conclusion

---

There's a lot to learn about analytics from the frontrunners in social media. The intense competition has resulted in many new and innovative ways to track and analyze visitor data.

We covered three such concepts in detail today: Funnel analysis, which lets you track conversion rates across whole parts of your site, engagement tracking, which is becoming more relevant than pageviews, and visitor retention analysis, which helps you understand and optimize the number of repeat visitors you get.

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Four months ago we asked you to vote in our Web Faceoff series for your preferred social network between the two current giants: Twitter versus Facebook. The results were pretty close, although Facebook edged out Twitter in a 48% to 40% victory. Now, there's a whole new game in town.

Google Buzz is now the new shiny, and represents Google's big push into social networking meets mobile social meets location services. We know it's still the early days for Buzz, but it seems like a good time to gauge the opinion of Mashable readers thus far.

Have you had a chance to spend some quality time with Buzz? Do you like the service? Are there parts about it you don't like? Does it draw you away from other social networks, or complement them? Let us know your vote for best social service in the poll below, and be sure to let us know why you picked your favored winner.

Tags: facebook, Google, google buzz, polls, social media, social networking, twitter, web faceoff

Earlier, I posted a video asking which format you prefer our YouTube videos to be recorded in. Going a step further, I can't help but wonder what it is that will make the community one big happy bundle of joy. What do you want to see? What directions do envision our community taking?

For instance, if I post an article or video related to Apple, the Windows fans go ballistic. Likewise, whenever I posted something Windows-related, the Mac fanboys blow a gasket. It's like there's no happy medium these days. I cannot possibly make everyone happy all at once. I'm not even going to try!

However, I DO strongly believe that what we're doing is about the community, not just for the community. So I want to know what YOU think. What do you want to see more of in the coming months? What things can you live without? Leave a follow-up comment here, or drop me an email with your thoughts.

• What is Homeland Security monitoring now?
• Is it difficult for a printed book to keep your attention?
• Could a mobile phone series based around Windows 7 be a big hit for Microsoft?
• Hawaii has said YES to Google!
• What, exactly, is the appeal of so-called reality shows?
• Very soon, Apple will have sold their ten millionth song.
• Redwood trees are being threatened by a lack of fog.
• We definitely need a tax cut!
• Could Intel and Nokia be entering into the mobile phone fray?
• Where can you go online to listen to music, and read the lyrics at the same time?
• What 97 things should every programmer know?
• What will you look like with a 4G network?
• What could possibly be better than Google.
• New research reveals that burglers have changed their shopping lists dramatically.
• Even Barbie is a Geek!

Don't forget to stop by our software center to see what new deals we have for you today!

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With each new milestone in technological evolution we've seen a company emerge as the clear leader. In the current landscape, we observe this happening in several key parts of the marketplace including networking, search and operating systems.

Cloud computing is a new disruptive force that makes us ask the question whether we'll see the future of the cloud dominated by a single company. In this multi-part series, we'll take a look at a handful companies and envision what the world might look like, if, in fact, they win it all. We'll also analyze what it will take for a new company to rise up and claim the leadership role in this chapter of computing.

Sponsor

Dominance Happens: A Bit of Recent History

There has been a love/hate relationship with companies that dominate markets. On one hand, it's us consumers that make it happen. But when they become giants we cheer as governement regulators and competitors knock them down.

Microsoft has faced this issue perhaps more than any company in the past few decades. When the browser battles were in full swing in the late 1990s, Microsoft was taken to court by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations.

In this note released in 2000 - Technology, Market Changes, and Antitrust Enforcement -Microsoft evaluated the idea of whether it was consistent with public welfare for a company to "win" a technology market, and what it means to have a network effect in technology.

Microsoft makes the point that no technology company will hold a dominant position for long if it doesn't innovate and expand the market definition. Additionally, if a company doesn't find the right balance of trust and pricing between its customers new technologies will find a way into the market and cause customers to defect.

Point: A Dominant Vendor Will Emerge in the Cloud

Taking these factors into consideration, we believe there are several points that can support the argument that a dominant player in cloud computing in the future. Due to the nature of market forces a single vendor will emerge as the clear leader in offering cloud solutions.

• First mover advantage: We're already seeing amazing things happen at first-movers like Amazon that are defining product and pricing. This gives them an advantage in fueling further growth and by learning and iterating the solutions in the market. Being first in an infrastructure-driven business will help them reach scale that others just can not reach easily - and potentially price it where others can't match.
• Vendor lock: Once you get started with an infrastructure provider it becomes interwoven into business operations. By the current nature of the cloud (e.g. little standards, a lot of innovation) being first with leading solutions adds more momentum to the first-mover that wins strategic customers.
• Strategic synergies: When we look at the combination of cloud computing and collaboration, we see a natural fit in services that meet more needs and take more market share. It may just work out that bundling works also in the cloud and creates the network effect that Microsoft is famous for. Cisco is also partnering across the landscape, with a focus on preparing the network for the cloud. By making it easier to manage your cloud with Cisco gear, it will provide IT leaders a reason to expand their relationships today, and stay tomorrow.
• Acquisitions and Partnerships: Companies that buy their way into the market will be a big factor in putting momentum behind their offerings. Companies to watch: VMware, Cisco, Oracle. These companies are already showing that the race is on to win the cloud through aggregation of capabilities. Cisco has a blog dedicated to Cloud Computing, Oracle is going on tour sharing its ambitions for the cloud

Counterpoint: A Dominant Company Will Not Emerge in the Cloud

Perhaps no single organization will have the ability to create a dominant foundation in cloud computing. Instead, we'll see many types of solutions as equal peers in the market.

In a way, this runs against the grain of existing technology landscape and our history with successful innovations. Maybe that is why we love the idea of the cloud itself?

• It's too big to own: One big reason to doubt a single dominant force in the cloud is that it feels like owning the Internet. Even Cisco with its strengths can't make such a claim. Perhaps the cloud is the perfect market, where the barriers of entry are low enough that continual evolution will occur.
• It's a movement, not a layer: Another argument against the cloud having a dominant player is its fuzzy definition. There are many parts and pieces to it, and it's not clear today what it would mean to "win" the cloud computing market.
• Portability will keep vendors in check: If customers demand solutions where they can move from vendor to vendor freely, it will impact the landscape. Companies with cloud solutions in the marketplace could be required by these customers to remove barriers to moving data and services between different entities. Additionally, standards and best practices may emerge that allow companies and individuals to move freely between providers. In this world, it will become a fluid market that prevents vendor lock and promotes pricing and trust as brand differentiators.

A Glimpse at Potential Futures

We've compiled a list of companies worth reviewing as candidates as possible dominant players in cloud computing. We'll be looking at their brand and the available assets that could be leveraged to achieve this position. Finally, we'll take a fresh look at what it might feel like if they succeed and shape the brave new world of cloud computing.

The list of candidates we're analyzing includes: Google, Microsoft, Apple, VMware, IBM, HP, Cisco, Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook, and our favorite, Insert new startup to our list by adding a comment below.

Please let us know what you hopes and fears are with the cloud computing marketplace. Any companies we should we add to our list (or remove)? What's your take: Is there one company today that is best positioned to win the cloud?

Photo credit: reddodo & savingfutures

About twice a week I think, "Why don't I try this crazy idea and see if it works?" about some element of my career. With no label, no manager, and no inner voice of reason slow me down, I get to experiment all I want. 90% of my crazy ideas have to do with social networking -- which I spend half a lifetime doing, despite the crap I take from my family and Real Life friends. (Hey, some of us actually do bond over web comics, starship replicas, the fail whale, and photos of stuff on cats.) Mostly my nutty ideas work just a little bit. Some are epic failures. But my experimental flopping and floundering inches me closer to the day when I'll be totally financially independent as a full-time musician. Plus it's more fun than having a real job.

But every now and then a crazy idea works really really really good. Bam!

I planned to sell 20-40 of my little bootleg CD's. Silly me. I sold well over 200. My little stack of jewel cases looked so pathetic.

WholeWheatRadio.org broke every record for online listenership, CD sales, tips -- everything. The more listeners tuned in, the more tuned in, and the more money they gave, the more money they gave. The crowd online was thrilled to be breaking WWR records. I drove away from Talkeetna having earned about $4,000 in one night, with a new CD to produce in just a couple of days and an avalanche of e-mail and publicity requests to deal with. Seldom have I been so happy and so panicked.

Facebook users in the American West appear to move around a lot, and often have friends throughout the country, while users from Minnesota to Manhattan have connections much closer to home.

And in areas in and around Texas, on the edge of what's generally thought of as the Bible Belt, the Dallas Cowboys rank higher overall on users' fan pages than God.

These are just some of the interesting findings about Facebook users recently discovered by Pete Warden, a Colorado-based, British-born ex-Apple engineer who has spent the last six months gathering and analyzing data from more than 215 million public Facebook profile pages.

What he's discovered just might shed more light on the culture of connected America than the 2010 census.

"If you actually look at [Facebook user data] in the aggregate, it's like a painting," Warden told TechNewsDaily. "Each individual data point isn't interesting, but when you step back and look at the trends in millions of profiles, you start to see some pretty interesting pictures emerging."

Warden says he's been overwhelmed by the response he's gotten from this project, after working on similar projects in obscurity for years.

Among Warden's less surprising findings: Fox News host Glen Beck gets the number one spot on Facebook fan pages from users in Eastern Idaho. And the "Twilight" books, penned by Mormon author Stephenie Meyer, rank high in the heavily Mormon communities in and around Utah.

Facebook mining

These and other observations that Warden mined from the massive amount of Facebook data were posted on his blog last week, along with maps that break down the U.S. into seven regions based on Facebook user trends.

Now, after gathering the data from Facebook's site using software he designed and honed in the process, and making a first round of enticing observations, he wants to turn the raw data he's culled over to academia for further analysis. But he also hopes to steer investors and customers to his own software and services for further data gathering and aggregation.

"I'm much better at building the pipeline for processing the data than I am at doing really rigorous stuff with the results that come out at the end," Warden said in a telephone interview. "The patterns that I've blogged about in the U.S. data are very qualitative."

Indeed, much of the conclusions that Warden has drawn are open to interpretation, and his given names for America's regional social connection groups "Stayathomia" (the Northeast), "Socalistan" (Souther California), and "Mormonia" (the predominantly Mormon towns in Utah and Eastern Idaho) among them are playfully clever, but not very scientific.

Serious about privacy

But Warden is serious when it comes to people's privacy concerns, even though all the data being gathered is publicly available on Facebook's site, and can be found via Google. He says he wants to make the data useful for large-scale data analysis, but not for tracking down individuals.

"We want to make sure we don't help scammers, we don't help spammers, and we respect people's privacy," Warden said, "but also allow some sort of new insight to come out of this."

To that end, Warden has delayed releasing the data for the time being (he initially intended to release it yesterday, Feb. 9), after someone from Facebook contacted him, asking for some time to check the privacy implications.

Once Facebook clears the data for release to the academic world, Warden says he's ready to pass the task of interpreting all this data on to others and feature their conclusions on his blog more often than his own.

Meanwhile, Warden has some problems to patch in his data pipe, problems that have been helpfully pointed out by readers of his blog.

"One of the great things about getting this out there is having thousands of pairs of eyes to look over this stuff, like the fact that [the data shows] the top name in Alexandria, Louisiana is Mohamed," Warden said.

"When somebody pointed out that some of the profiles seemed to be coming from Alexandria, Egypt, that was a head-slapping moment."

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• Tips for Protecting Your Online Reputation

Now picture our perspective leaving our own experiences, zooming out and up until we can see how all the different groups are interacting on a worldwide social network. That bird's-eye view could be both beautiful and horrible if the resolution was clear enough. That's what a Ramen-eating, ex-Apple engineer named Pete Warden is about to release to the public this week.

Sponsor

This Wednesday, Warden will make Friend, Fan page and name data from hundreds of millions of Facebook users available to the academic research community. It's a move that Facebook has to have seen coming, a move that many in the data-centric community have been calling on the company itself to do for years, and an event that's been complicated by Facebook's recent privacy policy changes, which have muddied the waters of right and wrong but rendered even more data available for outside analysis.

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public. It's a very exciting future, and Warden is about to fire one of the earliest big shots in that direction.

Nerds in Space: Social Graph Analysis For Solving Large-Group Problems

Warden studied Computer Vision in college in the U.K., then got into game development. After moving to L.A., he spent six years building graphics drivers for the original Playstation and the XBox. Then he started his own independent business, where, thankfully, he open-sourced much of his work (something he's still doing today).

When he found out that starting his own business wasn't going to work with his immigration status, he was very fortunate to have also caught Apple's eye with the software he had been releasing to the public. Apple bought his company in order to bring him on board. The proceeds of that small sale are now sustaining his next project after going independent again.

After spending five years at Apple struggling to navigate the maze of people and connections and types of expertise in order to get the information he needed, Warden decided to go independent and build a company that solved exactly that kind of problem. "I can't think of a better big company to work for, but it was still a big company," he says. "It was hard to find the right people to talk to, whether for particular expertise or for contacts at external companies." And so Warden left Apple to build a company that would use social graph analysis to solve problems like that. He called the company Mailana, a play on "mail analysis" since he was initially focused on email social graph analysis.

We've written here a number of times about Mailana's tool that analyzes the social graph of any Twitter user. Enter the username of someone on Twitter and Mailana will show you which 20 other people the user has exchanged the largest number of reciprocal public @ replies with. Find someone interesting or important? Mailana's Twitter analyzer will tell you who they most regularly interact with. See, for example, The Inner Circles of 10 Geek Rockstars on Twitter.

Pulling Down the Facebook Social Graph

Now Warden is about to unveil a much larger project along the same vein. For the past six months he's been crawling public profile pages on Facebook. He now has more than 215 million of them indexed and updated about once a month. When he began he was using the Web crawling service 80legs, but over time he had to build his own crawling infrastructure.

When I talked to him this afternoon, he had already begun uploading 100 GB of user data onto his server to make it available for academic research starting on Wednesday. Warden says he's removed identifying profile URLs but kept names, locations, Fan page lists and partial Friends lists. All those fields of data are just waiting to be analyzed and cross referenced. That's one very rich resource.

Yesterday Warden posted some of his own initial observations from the data on his personal blog. Those included:

• In almost every state in the Southern U.S., God is number one most popular Fan page among Facebook users. Among people in the L.A., San Francisco and Nevada regions? "God hardly makes an appearance on the fan pages, but sports aren't that popular either," Warden writes. "Michael Jackson is a particular favorite, and San Francisco puts Barack Obama in the top spot." In the Oregon and Idaho region? Starbucks is number one.
• In the Mormon-influenced areas of Utah and Eastern Idaho, the most popular Fan pages are The Book of Mormon, Glen Beck and the vampire book Twilight, which was authored by a Mormon.
• The bulk of Warden's posted analysis yesterday was about location networks. People in the western U.S. tend to have Facebook friends all over the country; people in the southern U.S. tend to mostly be friends with people who have remained in the same area.

Taking a Deeper Look

These observations are interesting, but they are only the beginning of what's possible. Name, location, friends and interests are great data points to analyze. Warden has written a program that will estimate gender as well, based on names. All these data points can be cross-referenced with outside data, too. Members of Facebook's own staff did this kind of analysis when they compared user last names to U.S. Census data, which allowed them to estimate changes in Facebook's racial composition over time based on the likelihood of people with particular last names to report a particular racial backgrounds.

"I'm mostly thinking 'What do I try first?'," Warden says. "There's so many interesting ways to slice the data - especially as I'm starting to get changes over time. I'm also trying to map out political networks in aggregate; how polarized the fans of particular politicians are - so how likely a Sarah Palin fan is to have any friends who are fans of Obama, and how that varies with location too. One of my favorite results is that Texans are more likely to be fans of the Dallas Cowboys than God."

Warden says he hasn't talked to anyone from Facebook since he started crawling the site, but he did get an email from someone on the security team asking him to take down instructions he'd posted that exposed a security hole that made harvesting peoples' email addresses easy. So the company is paying attention. "I'd love to see them put me out of business by putting decent data out there," Warden says. He says his Amazon Web Services bill was over $5,000 last month.

Why is he indexing all this content and why is he going to hand it over to the academic world later this week? "I am fascinated by how we can build tools to understand our world and connect people based on all the data we're just littering the Internet with," Warden says.

"Nobody thinks about how much valuable information they're generating just by friending people and fanning pages. It's like we're constantly voting in a hundred different ways every day. And I'm a starry-eyed believer that we'll be able to change the world for the better using that neglected information. It's like an x-ray for the whole country - we can see all sorts of hidden details of who we're friends with, where we live, what we like."

For a great example of the kind of social impact that data analysis can make, Warden points to some of the fascinating ways that GIS data is illuminating the intersection of race and public services. Data has shed light on social injustices for decades, and measurable information about the interactions of hundreds of millions of people every day on Facebook offers opportunities to discover both good and bad news about the contemporary human condition.

Warden says he's not yet been able to interest any investors in his ideas for businesses based on this data, so his girlfriend Liz Baumann, a former insurance actuary, stepped in to help and is now running much of the crawling. He says he's now focused on "working on ways of presenting all this information in a form that answers questions for people willing to pay." His first experiment along those lines is the very interesting FanPageAnalytics.com.

What does Pete Warden hope for from this week's public release of all this Facebook data? "Hopefully I'll get to see a bunch of interesting [academic research] papers come out of it, worst case. And I'd like to be the guy people turn to when they need stuff like this."

Already well-respected among a fringe group of bleeding-edge geeks, we hope that Warden's work on social graph analysis will end up impacting a far larger number of people than may ever know his name.

ViralHeat, a social media analytics firm, hopes to fill the space left empty by other, far more expensive services.

Sponsor

The Basics

ViralHeat has been around for just over six months, providing a low-price but full-featured social media analysis for the budget minded. We had a chance to chat with CEO Raj Kadam and founder Vishal Sankhla today before the relaunch, which is unveiling support for Facebook monitoring, a new user interface and API support.

The fully Web-based app gives full analytics by monitoring an array of blogs, over 200 video sites, Twitter and now Facebook for mentions of your brand, which is set up as a profile. Each profile exists as a simple logic search, wherein you can keep track of your brand by searching for phrases, domains and hashtags, all in the syntax we've become accustomed to from using from sites like Google.

Champagne Tastes on a Beer Budget?

While ViralHeat compares itself on price to services like Radian6, there is a primary difference between the two services. ViralHeat offers a full set of analytics features, from standard mention monitoring to sentiment analysis using a natural language algorithm, but this is where it stays. It does not venture over to the content creation side, where we find the more expensive and extensive services like Radian6. Other services might offer workflow management, scheduled content delivery and other conversational tools, but this would be overkill for the users we imagine at this app's usability sweetspot.

We see that as an additional merit: ViralHeat has both the price point and the feature set fit for the company that wants to get on top of its image and perception on the social Web but can't afford to bring a social media expert on board - and on salary. The learning curve is suitable for the DIY set and the analytics it provides are self explanatory, not riddled with indecipherable, industry jargon.

For those of you that like the pricing but want to do a little more with the data, the service also allows you to export data into Excel format and access your data using the API.

The Price is Right

Speaking of pricing, this is a point that really brings it home for ViralHeat. With today's relaunch of the site, ViralHeat offers a three tiered pricing system, starting with a basic package for $9.99, a professional package for $29.99 and a business package for $89.99. The Basic package offers standard mentions analysis for 5 profiles, while the other packages offer sentiment analysis and API access for 20 and 40 profiles, respectively.

If we haven't drilled it in enough quite yet, here's the bottom line: ViralHeat looks like a solid social media analysis tool that is priced and designed for the more casual user, while offering simple features like export and API interaction that keep it flexible enough for the more serious user.

The move would further turn Gmail, which revolutionized online e-mail, into a comprehensive communications hub. The intent is to keep people's attention centered on Google, by making Gmail, not Facebook, people's first stop online and their default place to send and receive messages. Gmail users can already chat via Jabber or AIM, make video calls, and send SMS messages from Gmail's web interface.

As the Post reports:

Google has been trying to fashion Gmail into more than an e-mail service for years. The service currently lets users set an away message, which can be a link to a Web page, that their friends see when they instant-message them. Now, it plans to launch a new interface that will aggregate updates from more friends in a stream.

The new stream will also eventually include content that a user's connections share through its YouTube video site and Picasa photo service, according to one person familiar with the matter. But whether those features will also be announced in the coming days remains unclear.

The full extent of the new features remain unclear, but Google is inviting reporters to a launch event Tuesday on its Mountain View, California, campus promising some innovations in two of our most popular products, according to an e-mail sent to reporters.

Yahoo has included similar features in its e-mail service, letting users see what photos their contacts have uploaded to Flickr, for example.

Google could integrate updates from a user's Twitter account, since most of that is public. And it could likely make it easy for Gmail users to post to Twitter as well, due to Twitter's liberal API policy.

Facebook, however, will not likely let its rival re-publish status updates, or allow users to publish to their Facebook pages through Gmail. Facebook, much like AOL and Compuserve back in the early '90s, is a controlled and sanitized version of the larger internet, but it relies on closed protocols.

via Google to Add Social Feature to Gmail - WSJ.com.

See Also:

• April 1, 2004: Gmail Hits Webmail G-Spot
• Google Turns on Gmail Encryption to Protect Wi-Fi Users
• Gmail's New 'Undo Send' Feature Saves You From Outbox Regret
• AOL Announces Lifestream App for Twitter, Facebook, SMS
• Walled Garden No More, AOL Adds Social Networks to Homepage

Nina Bruun is a student at the t The Danish Designschool in Copenhagen. Her Fold chair, which was just completed, will be shown at the Stockholm Furniture Fair. She was inspired by origami and wanted the chair to be fold-able with references to both Scandinavian and Japanese design.

The frame consists of 10 mm plywood cut into six profiles and assembled with hinges. The shell is six pieces of hard plastic, and padded with 3 mm foam on both sides of the plastic. Finally, the chair is upholstered with woolen felt. All the seams on the chair were hand sewn, which took Nina a total of 105 hours!

She says, The seams are visible to create a more industrially expression and to create sharp edges which gives the chair a lighter expression. It was important for me to achieve this light expression', so the chair doesn't have too many references to elder heavy upholstery chairs.

LittleSis API: LittleSis is a free database tracking the key relationships of politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions (also described as an involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited). The LittleSis API exposes the raw data used on the LittleSis website. The data consists of basic information about people and organizations, and the relationships between them. It uses a RESTful interface and responses are formatted in XML and JSON.

Mixpanel API: Mixpanel is a web service that lets companies track how users engage with their websites in real-time. The Mixpanel API allows users to post and access the data that Mixpanel is analyzing. This is a RESTful API and responses are returned in JSON format.

Mood of the Nation API: Mood of the Nation API allows clients to retrieve the raw trending data associated with the free Mood of the Nation iPhone application. The application collects mood information (physical, mental, emotional) from users and trends over day, week, month.

Motime API: The Motime Open Access platform is an affiliate program based on the APIs of the Motime service which allows partners/affiliates to advertise Motime ringtone content on their own web or mobile sites and earn money for each referral given to Motime. The search API offers a REST protocol to allow developers to link their content with Motime's catalog of ringtones.

Muselius API: The Muselius API can be used to display information on up to 99 museums in an area on your own web site. The information about museums can be used to enrich your art related sites, hotels and tourist sites. Muselius is a global directory of museums. Our mission is to facilitate the information you need for visiting museums all over the world. Muselius is created and maintained with the help of many users who update and complete the data we have about each museum.

OpenSRS API: OpenSRS API is intended for resellers who offer domains and supporting services to their customers. Resellers can provide functionality to their customers by integrating data from the RESTful API functions (includes SSL support). Developers can use the API to run queries or automate tasks that would otherwise be performed manually using the Domain Name Control Panel.

My Thoughts On Techcrunch And Daniel Brusilovsky

The Bucky Table by Demacker Design is a side table with a bucket-shaped foot that can serve as a home for your belongings, magazines or even floral decoration.

Love Native Shoes just discovered them via Design Catwalk. Website coming soon, but you can preview the collection here.

News hit this Monday that Powered has acquired three social media agencies: crayon, Drillteam and StepChange. I just had a skype video conversation with Aaron Strout and Joseph Jaffe to learn more, here's my take. You can read crayon founder Joseph's take and Aaron Strout the CMO of Powered and a quick mention in NYT.

A Solution Set of Services Bolsters a Marketing Platform
I've heard of crayon, and have many conversations and even podcasts with founder Joseph Jaffe, I've also spent time with the Powered executive team last year. Stepchange is a 13 person team out of Portland focused on Facebook Apps and mobile, and Drillteam, from NY, has been around for 10 years and focuses on experitntial and advocacy marketing, such as connecting events to online like street teams, guerrilla, and ambassador programs. Powered isn't just a community platform, I learned they have other marketing features that really intent to provide a suite of offerings.

Natural Evolution Of A Growing Market:

• Consolidation happens in downturned markets. As the recession starts to show signs of it lifting, now's a great time for companies to come together and create a greater value. We saw this type of acquisition behavior from agencies during the first boom, and we should expect similar patterns here.
• Acquisition provides key services software platforms can't fill. It makes sense for Powered platform to partner up with a service(s) teams that have already been successful for some time, this improves the time to market to deployment. In addition to coming with a book of business, they can quickly deploy the Powered platform, expanding the software footprint. Joseph Jaffe has strong thought leadership, an existing marketing brand, and reach needed to the group.
• Yet, brings risk for Powered and new partners. First of all, there are some big names coming together, the real stress will be can these cultures, and their strong willed leaders, be able to jive together. Secondly, it'll be interseting to see if Crayon and services teams forces stragies on their clients that involve the Powered platform. I asked if there are any layoffs coming from consolidation, they haven't made any plans, but when you have 4 companies coming together expect redundancy.

Impacts To Customers, Partners and Competitors:

• Social Agencies should rekindle and bolster relationships. This impacts other social agencies like Stage Two Consulting, Social Media Group, AdHoc, Ant's Eye View, ForumOne, Community Roundtable, Shift Communications, Dachis, FutureWorks, New Marketing Labs, who may be at medium and small tier, they should quickly partner up with other firms to increase their value.
• Customers of crayon, Drillteam, and Stepchange should request agnostic recommendations. Any client of these three agencies should make sure that the strategy they are being offered includes other vendors and platforms not just the Powered platform and Facebook platform. Remember, first find out where your customers are online before choosing the tools to use.
• This is competition for larger agencies yet savvy agencies will partner. This is a threat to large agencies like Organic, Razorfish, Ogilvy, and Edelman. Yet the smart agencies won't get defensive, they should partner with this team, and figure out what offerings they can offer that they don't have in their portfolio.

Congrats to the Powered, crayon, Drilldteam and Stepchange team for this merger, I'm excited to see the industry emerge from small disparate startups to a larger entity going forward.

Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation's top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

Social networks have truly come of age in the last year. No longer viewed as lonely outposts for youthful college slackers, the reach of these platforms has grown exponentially. Today, more than two-thirds of the world's Internet users visit the social networking sites that reel in billions of eyeballs every 24 hours.

Yet, despite the staggering growth of social networking, determining how to monetize social media platforms remains a tough code to crack for even the savviest of companies. As such, identifying new revenue models will be instrumental in kicking off the next cycle of the social networking phenomenon in 2010.

If Anyone Can Do It, Facebook Can

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Facebook, social networking's acknowledged leader, has surpassed every platform on the market today, corralling more than 350 million unique users globally. If any social network is poised to design a winning formula for successful revenue streams in 2010, it's Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has set an aggressive agenda for the company, publically stating that he expects social networks to become as essential as web browsers and operating systems, and he has set the lofty yet entirely realistic goal of 1 billion users worldwide.

In the less than five years since it expanded beyond scholastic audiences, Facebook has not only grabbed the lion's share of users, it has engaged them like no other platform on the Internet. The average Facebook user visits the site at least once a day and spends an astounding 55 minutes engaging friends and family - statistics that another Zucker (Jeff) would probably kill for over at NBC.

While translating such popularity into dollars and cents isn't easy - especially in an industry whose users have grown accustomed to getting something for nothing - Facebook could potentially provide a monetization template that would revolutionize social networking as we know it.

The Next Level of Advertising Revenue

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Advertising has traditionally provided the simplest means of generating revenue. PricewaterhouseCoopers reported in October that Internet advertising revenues totaled $10.9 billion for the first half of 2009. It's been estimated that Facebook alone took in $435 million of that total. But for a site with nearly half a billion users, a quarter of which spend more time within the network than watching television, these numbers represent just the beginning potential.

First, Facebook needs to admit to itself that it is in the business of selling ads. By better managing its advertising network, intelligently expanding its marketing options, and developing workable social ads that leverage the branding power of friends and connections, Facebook can begin to capture its rightful share of online ad revenues. The final piece is to increase awareness and understanding of Facebook ads among corporate decision makers.

For example, every executive in America today understands the value of purchasing Google ads - and that didn't happen by accident. Google understood that what caused it to dominate online search wasn't going to ultimately position the company as a global corporate powerhouse valued at nearly $200 billion. Google's aggressive marketing, communications, and lobbying shops have worked to ensure every ad buyer, political campaign, marketing executive, and public relations flack knows the value of the service and has direct and easy access to account executives who explain the much worshiped ROI Google ads provide.

Today, Facebook stands on the precipice Google inhabited just before it became a top money-maker. By taking a page from the Google playbook, and aggressively marketing and explaining its power to influence buying decisions, Facebook ads could become as essential to 21st Century marketing as the yellow pages were in the 20th Century.

E-Commerce Stop Sending Customers Away

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The launch of Facebook as a true e-commerce site holds immense potential as a business solution and could forever change the way we shop. Online purchases through the first three quarters of 2009 totaled $98.3 billion according to the Department of Commerce. For the majority of companies selling products online who are also engaged on Facebook, opening Facebook fully to direct e-commerce transactions will dramatically change how businesses advertise and how consumers buy goods online.

Consumers and companies would flock to a Facebook storefront for one simple reason: We do everything else there. Imagine an integrated, one-click solution whereby your friends see your recent purchases (because you were incentivized by the brand to share your information) in their feed and are able to simply point, click, and purchase the same item.

With a few adjustments, companies can make timely offers of birthday gifts for friends, travel arrangements for event items, or the latest music from favorite artists - and make the sale without forcing the user to leave Facebook or put in new login information.

Rather than driving their 350 million users away from the platform to close the deal with retailers and purchase the item on an external platform, Facebook could benefit financially by charging companies a percentage of sales, a fixed rate to have a storefront, or from increased advertising opportunities.

Premium Subscription Options

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Finally, whether users like it or not, Facebook will do itself a long term disservice if it does not consider premium subscription options. Users (whether they are corporations or teenagers) are amenable to paying for even the simplest features and functionality, as evidenced by the success of Facebook gifts.

Nothing good in life is free. It's a stark, mature reality that Facebook (and its users) need to face in 2010. By leveraging economies of scale, Facebook can churn a sizable profit without alienating users. Would you pay one dollar a month to share higher-resolution photos or upload higher-quality or longer videos? Last month, 2.5 billion photos were uploaded to Facebook. Even if only a quarter of the site's active users opted for premium options, this one change would generate more than $1 billion in annual revenues.

Improving advertising, developing an e-commerce platform, and adding subscription services will not only generate the revenue necessary to make the transition from highly adopted to highly profitable, it will open revenue streams as Google did before for the next generation of digital developments.

More business resources from Mashable:

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- Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right
- 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Avoid Social Media Panic
- HOW TO: Take Advantage of Social Media in Your E-mail Marketing
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- 18 Online Productivity Tools for Your Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, peterspiro

Tags: advertising, business, e-commerce, facebook, MARKETING, monetization, monetizing, money, social media, social networks

iPad - image courtesy of Apple Inc.

The world has waited quite awhile for Apple to finally release its tablet. The world wanted it so much that in a way it worked against Apple. People built up their expectations of the iPad so high that it was going to be tough for Apple to surpass it. Did they? The simple answer is no. The iPad falls short of the world's lofty expectations. Is it Apple's fault? Not totally.

The world wanted Apple to produce a breakthrough device so much that when Jason Calcanis, founder of Engadget fired of tweets saying that he had been a beta tester for Apple and started to rattle off specs that were too good to be true, people believed him (this writer included). Why not? He's been writing about the tech industry and is one of the more recognizable names in the blogosphere that it seemed plausible. I hindsight, the solar panels should have been a dead giveaway.

On to the iPad. At first glance it does indeed just look like a big iPod Touch. Is it revolutionary and magically as Apple said it is? It should be had the world not been exposed to the iPhone and iPod Touch prior to it. On its on it is still revolutionary. Here's why.

1. The size is a big factor Sure it may look like a big iPod Touch but the bigger form factor just opens up a lot more possibilities. I've been a long time user of the iPod Touch and iPhone. I have both the first generation of iPod Touch and iPhone and thus have a little bit of experience with the devices. They both are great mobile devices. For checking important emails, looking up stock and weather quotes, reading a short article on the internet that really can't wait both these devices are top notch. But for reading books, watching movies, etc. It's just ok. After awhile your head starts to spin because of the eye strain and makes you want to put it down. The iPhone and iPod Touch are great mobile devices that can be used for short periods.

On the areas that the iPod Touch and iPhone are lacking, I think this is where the iPad starts to shine. Its size makes for an excellent device to watch videos on. The screen is large enough for personal viewing that it doesn't become such a chore. Reading books should be easier too although I shall reserve judgment on that until I actually get to try it.

2. Keeping it Simple - I've heard about a lot of people saying that the iPad lacks multi-tasking, etc. but I believe that Apple's attitude of keeping the iPad simple is actually is a strength. We've been surrounded by a culture of multitasking that it's gotten to a point that it's become a hindrance rather than helpful. When we work on our computers, we often find ourselves doing email, chatting, reading web pages all at the same time. It's becoming confusing and our concentration is suffering. I'm not saying this is always bad but in some cases keeping focus on things is good.

I also believe that the target users for the iPad are really people who aren't that techie. Let me qualify this. I'm not saying these people don't like technology or are adverse to it. I'm saying these people are the ones that like technology that just works. That's why a lot of people play games on consoles. Sure they can play games on the PC but it takes so much work to do so. Consoles are simple. You place the game, you play. Simple. The iPad is pretty much simple as well. It won't take rocket science to figure it out.

3. Touch me - The touch interface feels natural. It's been around for awhile but Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch interface that has been adapted for the iPad is the most natural touch interface I've seen. It's not a PC interface that has been adapted for touch. It's actually designed with the touch interface in mind. Therefore it just feels natural. People who aren't tech oriented really don't have a hard time figuring it out. Case in point, my tech challenged mother didn't have a hard time learning her iPhone.

4. It's what inside that counts In this case, one of the biggest things about the iPad announcement is actually the processor. Apple now has it's own processor inside one of its devices. It actually looks pretty good. If the impressions of people that have had a chance to play with the iPad. This thing screams and isn't power hungry. If this chip finds it way to the iPhone, we'll have quite the smart phone on our hands.

The iPad was designed to fill a gap between the netbook and a smar tphone. Will it do that? I think to a certain extent it will. I envision people buying this to have them in their homes and have easy access to email, photos, videos. Sometimes you just want to share photos with a friend and not necessarily project it on the TV. The iPad is a good alternative.

I also see it as a good addition to people who have desktops but want something portable to bring around the house to check emails, watch videos from anywhere and yes that includes the bathroom. I don't think it will get hot enough to burn your crotch as a MacBook/MacBook Pro does.

Will it revolutionize the way the iPod has? It has the potential to do so but only time will tell. For a 1.0 product it's good. I'm sure as with the iPod and iPhone the succeeding versions will only be better.

Post from: EveryJoe

Apple iPad: Breakthrough or Breakdown?

Less than 100 tickets remain for Mashable's Social Media Week event, NextUp NYC The Future Journalist on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 92YTribeca.

Join us for networking and a conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan (Professor and Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor of DNAinfo.com) and Vadim Lavrusik (new media journalist and digital media graduate student at Columbia University Journalism School).

Details

Location: 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013

Socialize: Facebook Event Page

Pricing: $20 in advance, $25 at door. Tickets on Sale Now.

Food and drink: Full cash bar and food menu available

Schedule

• 6:00 7:15 = Open Networking
• 7:15 8:45 = Conversation and Q&A with Sree Sreenivasan and Vadim Lavrusik
• 8:45 Bar Close = Open Networking

A Conversation and Q&A with:

Sree Sreenivasan Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia Journalism School Dean of Student Affairs and contributing editor, DNAinfo.com.

Sree Sreenivasan is a tech evangelist and skeptic specializing in explaining technology to non-techies. He is a professor and dean of students affairs at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches in the digital media program. Sreenivasan is contributing editor at DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan-news startup he helped launch in 2009 with Joe Ricketts, the founder of Ameritrade and whose family just bought the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field. He also has been a fixture on NYC-area television. For more than eight years, he served as technology reporter for WABC-TV and WNBC-TV and now occasionally appears on various TV shows (on CNN, NBC's Today Show, CNBC and elsewhere) to talk tech. He has written articles for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Rolling Stone, National Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes and Popular Science. You can find him on Twitter at twitter.com/sreenet and on the Web at sree.net.

Vadim Lavrusik Online journalist and M.S. candidate in Digital Media at Columbia Journalism School

Vadim Lavrusik is a new media journalist and social media consultant studying digital media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he is launching NYC 3.0, a tech start-up news site as part of his Master's project. He's reported for publications like the Star Tribune, The Minnesota Daily, the Mpls./St. Paul Business Journal and most recently was a guest feature writer for Mashable.com, where he covered trends in news media, and contributed to Poynter Online's E-Media Tidbits. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/lavrusik and the Web lavrusik.com.

Thanks to our Sponsors

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Thanks to our Partner

Tags: Events, nextup-nyc, social media week

Having just experienced a seriously nerd hyped event in the last week that let me down, I'm sure hoping that Apple can live up to the hype.

If they can pull off a Twitter type coup they are set.

When Twitter launched even the nerds were saying things, I don't get it and What's the point of these short messages? And now, Twitter rules the communication buzz and has taken in over $100m in funding.

Apple doesn't need the funding but as a computer company that has become an electronics company with a few key products, this new tablet and its success are paramount for the growth of the company over the next 5 years. Even with their billions in the bank, the iPod and iPhone are getting tired.

The success of the tablet depends heavily on the user experience that can be created for it. The most important elements that create that experience will first be the form factor. Judging on Apple's reputation for impeccable industrial design, I would suspect they have nailed this one.

Next in that line of elements is speed. It needs to boot instant on with the ability to be used immediately. That goes for any software that is on the device, even if it is web connected. There shouldn't be any lag time in getting up an running. It's the real-time web and this needs to be the real-time tablet.

Lots of news on this today and we'll follow it diligently for you and throw in our two cents.

If you're looking for updates throughout the day check out @tabletville on Twitter.

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Apple Device Needs to be the Real-Time Tablet is a post from: TechStartups.com

Giants of trip hop visit the lounge for the very first time this week, as do several friends old and new. Plus, we're giving away four free copies of Artemis' new EP Auralei. Check out my Twitter feed for more details.

Playlist for Dave's Lounge #182:

1. Massive Attack, "Girl I Love You (feat. Horace Andy)" Free download from: RCRD LBL
2. Jazzra, "The Only One" Buy from: iTunes | eMusic
3. SoulAvenue feat. LazyGrooves, "Walk With Me" Buy from: iTunes
4. Colette, "Like the Sun" Buy from: iTunes | eMusic
5. Artemis, "Ella" Buy from: Bandcamp
6. Adani & Wolf, "Lady in Black" Buy from: iTunes
7. Water (feat. Fay Lovsky), "Hold Me" Buy from: iTunes
8. Yubaba, "One" Buy from: iTunes | eMusic

Not an eMusic member? Click here to sign up for a free 15-day trial and receive 25 free MP3 downloads, plus 35 MP3s a month for only $15.89. It's a great value for indie music lovers and a great way to support both the artists and this podcast.

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Enjoy the show!

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