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[Ireland] Social media consultants Simplyzesty started using Twitter Lists to list blogs. However, a brainwave has lead them to take Twitter Lists to their logical conclusion: creating lists of Twitter users in entire countries. They’ve launched a Twitter list for the UK and the list of users in Ireland is currently going crazy. They call it “crowdsourcing populations”. Who knows – this could end up being a sort of crowd-sourced yellow pages/people directory. A couple of hours ago they launched a USA version with a script built to make the listings automatic.
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It’s time to kick off this week’s Faceoff challenge, wherein we pit two web services or software packages against each other in a knock-down, drag-out fight. Last week, Windows 7 went the distance to narrowly defeat Apple’s OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard operating system. This week, with Twitter Lists on the brain, it seemed like a great time to put two fantastic Twitter desktop clients in a head-to-head matchup. Seesmic Desktop may have already added support for lists, but TweetDeck promises they’ll release support soon as well.
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The UK’s Independent newspaper picks up on a curious study today: people who download music illegally also buy more music legally, according to a poll’s results. The study comes as the UK plans a controversial “three strikes and you’re out” rule that would disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet – it’s set to become law in April 2010.
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Twitter opened up Twitter Lists this week, allowing users to create their own “follow lists” of their favorite Twitter accounts. Todd Zeigler tallied the early stats this morning and found that – yowzers – our own humble @mashable account was the second most-listed on Twitter, trailing behind @barackobama. Obviously ranking on a list that includes President Obama is more to do with our super-supportive Twitter community than actually having anywhere near the influence of a world leader.
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For the last few months, we’ve been watching the progress Epix, a joint venture between Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM studios to create a new web destination and sister TV channel for all of their movies. The project has been compared to Hulu, the web television joint venture between News Corp (FOX), General Electric (NBC), and Disney (ABC). The Epix project, while similar to Hulu in many ways, is different in one big way: only those with access to the Epix TV channel can access EpixHD.com. Instead of being ad-supported, it is carrier-supported.
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It was inevitable: a big time pro athlete has been suspended for comments made on Twitter, and the price tag is a big one. The player is Larry Johnson of the Kansas City Chiefs and the cost of his offense is $213,000, the amount he would have earned for the game he’ll miss due to being suspended by the team. Johnson was suspended for the gay slurs he directed at a Twitter heckler earlier in the week, a comment he apparently repeated in the Chiefs’ locker room.
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Yeah ok it isn’t that Apple Tablet. But this is a picture, taken around 1990, of the Apple Pen Mac, a little known and never launched Apple tablet project. As far as we can tell there is no other image of this device anywhere on the Internet, and very few references to it at all. The Pen Mac was a fully functional Mac computer (it even played the Mac startup chime) with a pen based touch screen. The screen itself was identical to the Mac Portable, but with the addition of pen touch. And of course the case was a lot smaller than the Mac Portable.
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Google Voice is a great way to manage phone hell by giving you a single phone number that automatically rings your mobile, home, work and other phones based on your choice of rules and settings (who’s calling, when, etc.). But people are still stuck with their legacy phone numbers, and moving completely away from them is difficult. I solved the problem by simply porting my mobile number away from AT&T over to Google Voice, a feature that Google says will be launched more broadly eventually.
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With all of its SaaS offerings, Salesforce.com is consistently integrating with other forms of cutting edge technologies, such as Twitter, Box.net, and more to offer clients more diverse and appealing options. Today, the company is partnering with Adobe to offer the “Adobe Flash Builder,” off of Force.com, Salesforce’s platform to build and deploy enterprise applications. The new offering is meant to allow developers and IT departments to build cloud-based rich media applications off of Force.com. Developers can use Adobe Flash Builder for Force.
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A little before 9pm on Wednesday night and I’m standing on the ‘VIP’ balcony of San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom, holding a can of something called ‘MySpace Buzz’ and waiting for Weezer to take to the stage. It’s a weird scene, all told, and not just because I thought Weezer was dead.
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