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The closing ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing has already been underway for some hours now, but if you’d like to follow it all through some good ol’ liveblogging action, we’ve scrounged up several choice picks. For an American audience, relegated to watching happenings time-delayed by nearly half a day, these will surely come in handy. NBC has no hold over the news media’s reportage of the celebration, as it does with broadcasts of the ceremony in the US prior to its own showing later today, so feel free to  venture over to The New York Times, The Washington Post, or USA Today to get a text-based grip on the big finale happening in China. The New York Times and USA Today appear to deliver the best reviews of the closer. They’re easiest to follow, while WaPo’s delivery is less substantive. WaPo’s commentary is nice an casual, though, so if you’re looking for a bit of humor to go with the liveblog process, there you have it. No imagery to go along with the jokes, however. Want images? Visit The New York Times. Quite a nice amount, I think. USA Today hosts one JPEG as I write this. Across the pond, the BBC has put together some good text for readers. Like WaPo, it is absent of anything shiny and bright to look at, but it otherwise makes for a decent source of information. The Telegraph packs quite a decent punch, too. And its commentary has that classic Telegraph tinge to it, which makes for fairly entertaining reading. Collectively, there’s certainly going to be ample overlap in terms of coverage among these various sources, but all told, they make for a rather thorough take of the event. Some of you will naturally prefer video entertainment to finish out the weekend, but this bunch will have to do for now. Surely there’ll be plenty to consume in short order within the folds of YouTube and DailyMotion and whathaveyou. If you feel it imperative to school us further on the ways in which the closing ceremony can be consumed, either in part or in full, speak your part in the comments. Educate us. ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Microsoft, NBC Join for Olympics Coverage OnlineMichael Phelps Has One Million Facebook FansNBC Extends Olympic Downloads to Vista Media CenterYahoo Photos Announces Closing Date; Options for Migrating Your ImagesBlogs are Going to the OlympicsOlympics Viewing Should Teach TV Studios to Embrace the WebNBC Chooses TVTonic to Provide Downloadable Olympics Coverage [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If it’s Bebo that you prefer to the larger social networks of the world, but want to enjoy the equivalent of Facebook Chat within your own friendly circle, how’s this. Bebo’s Emma Carlsgaard let it be known that a feature dubbed Bebo IM is now live. You can interact with contacts much the same as you would with a standalone instant messaging service. The functions involved are simple enough. Chat with one or more persons. Block people you dislike. Report vagrants. All that fun stuff. Some words of warning, though. Site members who’ve responded to the announcement are largely unimpressed. A number of users complain of its being dysfunctional. Others want it shut off. Only a minority of respondents appear to enjoy what’s come of Bebo developers’ labor. The IM option is relatively inconspicuous. It’s open by default and and sits in a partially collapsible box in the lower right corner of your browser window. Simply click on the miniaturized icon representing an IM contact list and you’re shown a summary of your friends. Click a name and start talking. Close any open windows when you’re done. If the initial user commentary is anything to go by, you may encounter buggy operation. But you may not, so give it a try, we say. Nothing to download, after all. There’s definitely merit to the popular suggestion of keeping with your preferred IM service for the simple fact that it is what’s known. Oppositely, Bebo had to deliver an answer to Facebook’s own service one way or another. Whatever the case, it seems some extra time in the cooker likely would’ve ensured a more celebratory debut. ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Bebo Debuts Personalized HomepageOrange Users Get Unlimited Bebo Access For £3 Each MonthBebo and AIM Partner to Offer Instant Messaging on ProfilesBebo Nation Launches: Million Dollar Homepage on a Map?Bebo Sends a Cryptic Teaser for Upcoming Widgets ReleaseBebo Platform Opens To The PublicWindows Live Messenger to Power IM on Bebo [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I’m still waiting for my text message. As the world now knows - courtesy of the CNNbrk Twitter feed, and now countless channels elsewhere - the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, has chosen the veteran legislator from Delaware, Joe Biden, to accompany him on the ticket for the final months of the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign. Speculation was palpable in the latter half of the week, Friday especially, but the guesswork has since been officially validated. And all it seemed to take was some well-financed, Big Media-driven investigative savvy. I must say I’m not surprised that the cart came before the horse on this one. As if the Obama for America campaign could really keep it shut all the way to Saturday morning, when it planned to distribute via mass SMS and email the senator’s pick for VP. Logic doth prove such an experiment’s success unlikely, if not impossible. If you do a good amount of pestering and sort of a Sudoku-esque cancellation of the no-goes, eventually you’ll get something. Indeed, if you happen to be an outfit such as CNN, well, doors tend to open, willingly or unwillingly. That being said, the promotional push being attempted was a smart one. The guy gets press for putting the people first, he gets said people to commit their digits, the giftwrap gets torn prematurely, and everyone’s abuzz. Voilà. The man knows how to market himself. It really is interesting to see how technology has pervaded the political scene the last year or so. Far more than 2004 and 2000, for sure. At those moments, online interaction was brewing, but it was not booming. The most highlighted stories to come out of recent elections past were the funding efforts taking place on the Web. Now there’s thunder. Now there are the social networking and social media components that have taken stride in ways that seem increasingly critical to the candidates’ success - Barack Obama’s especially. His campaign’s drive to lower the bar for access to information has gripped millions of people around the country. The most current example is of course the grand text-email login. He convinced a vast swath of the population to offer their cellular connections to his promotional engine, and it’s doubtful that he will do nothing but prosper further from it. Yes, grumblings about deflated followers will naturally be amplified over the weekend and could even loiter around a bit longer. The bandwagon, after all, which was en route to what they thought would be a special celebration via their inboxes, was prematurely shown billboards screaming a secret they’d wished to know before the press could deliver its affirmative fill. Alas, the spell was broken, and quite a few folk will let that be known in the coming hours - including myself and Mashable’s commander in chief. But soon enough Denver will be ablaze with talk of hope, unity, strength, and messianic worship of the Washingtonian kind, and the “botched” mobile messaging play will be a boo-boo on the heal. All in all, this whole spectacle makes for yet one more hefty bump for Obama. He gets press for thinking of you, lucky you; breaks your heart a bit; presumably does his rockstar thing in front of 80,000 or so disciples (with some opposing apples littered amongst the many); and continues on as he has done since June, likely none the worse for forgetting to send you 160 characters before letting slip to those gorgeous news people over there. Technology is fantastic, is it not? No one can argue with that. Especially when it is used effectively. Funnily enough, Obama didn’t have to make good on that front to make his latest splash. What’s the saying? All’s fair in love and ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are a number of topics that make the rounds in the tech blog world semi-regularly. One is VoIP. This has been the case throughout the summer, when names like Jajah , Gizmo , and Skype have either made news themselves or been associated with stories emerging from new developments. So what I’d like to consider now is where you currently see VoIP and where it is headed in terms of mobile use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I’m still waiting for my text message. As the world now knows - courtesy of CNN’s Twitter feed, and now countless channels elsewhere - the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, has chosen the veteran legislator from Delaware, Joe Biden, to accompany him on the ticket for the final months of the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign. Speculation was palpable in the latter half of the week, Friday especially, but the guesswork has since been officially validated. And all it seemed to take was some well-financed, Big Media-driven investigative savvy. I must say I’m not surprised that the cart came before the horse on this one. As if the Obama for America campaign could really keep it shut all the way to Saturday morning, when it planned to distribute via mass SMS and email the senator’s pick for VP. Logic doth prove such an experiment’s success unlikely, if not impossible. If you do a good amount of pestering and sort of a Sudoku-esque cancellation of the no-goes, eventually you’ll get something. Indeed, if you happen to be an outfit such as CNN, well, doors tend to open, willingly or unwillingly. That being said, the promotional push being attempted was a smart one. The guy gets press for putting the people first, he gets said people to commit their digits, the giftwrap gets torn prematurely, and everyone’s abuzz. Voilà. The man knows how to market himself. It really is interesting to see how technology has pervaded the political scene the last year or so. Far more than 2004 and 2000, for sure. At those moments, online interaction was brewing, but it was not booming. The most highlighted stories to come out of recent elections past were the funding efforts taking place on the Web. Now there’s thunder. Now there are the social networking and social media components that have taken stride in ways that seem increasingly critical to the candidates’ success - Barack Obama’s especially. His campaign’s drive to lower the bar for access to information has gripped millions of people around the country. The most current example is of course the grand text-email login. He convinced a vast swath of the population to offer their cellular connections to his promotional engine, and it’s doubtful that he will do nothing but prosper further from it. Yes, grumblings about deflated followers will naturally be amplified over the weekend and could even loiter around a bit longer. The bandwagon, after all, which was en route to what they thought would be a special celebration via their inboxes, was prematurely shown billboards screaming a secret they’d wished to know before the press could deliver its affirmative fill. Alas, the spell was broken, and quite a few folk will let that be known in the coming hours - including myself and Mashable’s commander in chief. But soon enough Denver will be ablaze with talk of hope, unity, strength, and messianic worship of the Washingtonian kind, and the “botched” mobile messaging play will be a boo-boo on the heal. All in all, this whole spectacle makes for yet one more hefty bump for Obama. He gets press for thinking of you, lucky you; breaks your heart a bit; presumably does his rockstar thing in front of 80,000 or so disciples (with some opposing apples littered amongst the many); and continues on as he has done since June, likely none the worse for forgetting to send you 160 characters before letting slip to those gorgeous news people over there. Technology is fantastic, is it not? No one can argue with that. Especially when it is used effectively. Funnily enough, Obama didn’t have to make good on that front to make his latest splash. What’s the saying? All’s fair in ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Earlier this week, I discussed a new advertising service called Lotame , which aims at finding out as much about you as possible and using that knowledge to give advertisers a far more targeted advertising experience than is currently available in the CPM model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reports showed up yesterday that Orange, scared of low demand, has hired actors to stand in lines for the iPhone in Poland. It was in rumor stage at some point, but now Orange has actually admitted to Reuters that the lines were, indeed, fake. Well, does that really surprise anyone? Did you really believe that everything Apple produces makes people wait pointlessly, spending nights and even weeks in front of stores to get a product which will probably be easily available a couple of hours later? I’m not familiar with the US consumer mentality so I can’t comment on that, but in Europe… no way. Sure, there are lines, sometimes. I remember waiting in line for World of Warcraft here in Zagreb. But that was different: there was actually a good chance that you were going to miss out on your copy if you were not among the first couple hundred buyers. iPhone in Poland, on the other hand, will definitely not get sold out in the first couple of hours, so let’s get realistic: no one wants to wait in a line if it’s not necessary. Don’t get me wrong, I like how Apple’s product placement division makes sure that every cool movie features only Macs, and I actually enjoy the hype - to some extent - around their products. But let’s not forget that most of it is just good PR, nothing more. [photo courtesy of Engadget] ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Rogers: Take Down that Fake iPhone Ad!The iPoor Helps Fight Poverty in a Very Funny WayWill the Real Steve Jobs Please Stand Up?iPhone Rumored For Canada On December 7thWorld’s Simplest iPhone AppOne Million iPhones and Ten Million iPhone Apps are a Good StartFake Facebook Profiles Will Get You Arrested [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Flickr slide shows sure do make it easier to view all those images being shared on a given Flickr stream, and the ability to do so has even spurred a healthy-sized third market from developers that offer Flickr slide show tools as well. The dominant photo-sharing service has steadily been improving its slide show feature in order to make its users’ media more readily experienced and shared across the Web, and today’s slide show updates continue those initiatives. Three major new features for the Flickr slide show allow you to access the slide show viewing options from nearly every page on Flickr, embed the slide show in “bite-size” form, and view the slide show in full screen. The most notable new option, however, is the inclusion of the recently added Flickr videos as they appear in the slide shows. While the initial introduction of Flickr videos was met with some disappointment given Flickr’s seeming hesitance to move fully into the video-sharing realm, the addition of videos into native Flickr slide shows is another step towards fully integrating videos into the Flickr culture. When you come across a video in a slide show, it will immediately play, and then move on to the next item. Flickr company profile provided by TradeVibes ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Flickr Adds Send to Friend FeatureMyPlick Creates Interactive & Embeddable Slide ShowsPhotobucket’s Slide Show Upgrades for More CustomizationFlickr Facebook App is Now AvailableMochila Launches Slide Show Widget, with AdsImageLoop Offers Slide Show Creation Tool for WebmastersDiigo WebSlides Previews at Office 2.0 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For those of us who are active Google Talk (GTalk) users, sometimes chatting is not enough. Luckily, there are tools to make your GTalk experience more interesting like VOIP, translations, and more. Here are 10 third party tools and special features that will help you get the most out of the service. Which ones are your favorite? Know any more? Tell us in your comments. Extended Talk Extended Talk is a free addon for GTalk that brings in enhanced features such as making your chat windows transparent, changing font colors, message and typing areas, creating text filters, using smileys, and custom images. It also provides shortcuts to insert dates, time, IP address, email, etc. in your messages. Overall, the addon is non obstructive and fits quite well with the GTalk interface, while providing a few handy extra features. Google Talk Shell Google Talk Shell is another GTalk addon with some extra features that you might like. Firstly, it allows you to add several avatars and make them rotate in short intervals in your GTalk application. You can auto-hide the GTalk main window so that you have a large work area, or you can configure GTalk to always be on top of the desktop. You can also run several GTalk user names simultaneously using this addon. There is even an anti-boss hotkey to hide the GTalk window quickly. Translation bots Translation bots are described by Google as pieces of software that act as chat contacts and provide some fun or useful functionality. Whenever you need to translate any word or sentence from one language to another, you can send that as a message to one of the appropriate Google Chat translation bots. The bot then acts as a translator and replies to the translated version of your message. Of course you need to add the translation bot as your GTalk contact beforehand. Currently there are 50 bots available in two language pairs. The names of the bots have been made of two letter abbreviations of languages, the English to French translation bot is ‘en2fr.’ To add the bots as contacts, you simple need to add the email of the specific bot in this format: name_of_the_bot@bot.talk.google.com. For example, for English to French bot, it’s ‘en2fr@bot.talk.google.com.’ Transliteration bots Transliteration bots are somewhat similar to translation bots, but here they convert English sentences to scripts of various Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. You can add the bots using their names ‘en2hi’.translit, ‘en2kn.translit,’ ‘en2ml.translit,’ ‘en2ta.translit,’ and ‘en2te.translit,’ ending with ‘@bot.talk.google.com’. Chatback Badge Chatback badge is a nice little tool from Google that you can use to chat with non-Google users. The badge can be put on your blog, website, or anywhere you can embed an html code, and it will display your online status along with a ‘Chat with me’ message in a nice chat bubble. You can create the chatback badge in different styles as well. GTalk Sidebar GTalk Sidebar is a convenient way of chatting with your GTalk contacts using the Firefox sidebar. Every chat window opens in a new tab in the sidebar itself. You can make the GTalk application pop out in a new window if you wish. Although GTalk Sidebar doesn’t provide any additional feature, it can be another nice alternative, just in case you don’t want to open a Gmail window on your browser and don’t have the desktop client installed. An alternative to this addon is to save the GTalk Gadget as your Firefox bookmark and set the bookmark to load in the sidebar. GTalk Profile GTalk Profile is an online service that you can use ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WordPress blogs are getting increasingly social, giving readers the ability to bookmark your site to a number of services, get to know you better in more ways than just your comments section (and vice versa), and view your activity on a variety of social sites. We’ve compiled a list of more than 30 plugins that will let you make your WordPress blog more social. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The market of applications managing various Internet-related tasks is divided generally into three parts: Windows-based, Mac OS X-compatible, and Linux-friendly. Some function across all platforms, or perhaps the most mainstream and consumer-centric of the two. But it is unquestionably the case that the Linux world holds the least currency where desktop-to-Web and Web-to-desktop communication is concerned. Well, if you’re a Linux user, or perhaps just curious to know what’s now possible on Linux installations in order to better decide whether to “take the leap,” we’re going to do Tux a solid today and see what’s up in the land of “Net apps” to save you from having to search the open source galaxy yourself. Now, you’re probably aware of this. It is likely the most popular download for Linux. But what the hey, it’s good to hear once in a while. Mozilla’s well-renowned Firefox 3 browser, an open source fan-fave, is ready for Linux users to download. In every localized language version of the newest build, too. According to the official website, that leaves Firefox for Linux one better than the Mac OS X option. Do you speak Gujarati? Well, then you’ve got just two options: Windows and Linux. Enjoy. Also, if you’d like to go full-on with your allegiance to Mozilla, its email client, Thunderbird, now in its second major iteration, is Linux-enabled as well. As with Firefox, you’re given complete language support. Gujarati, however, is only listed as available for version Thunderbird version 1.5. Sorry, folks. Can’t have everything, evidently. Another email option for the Linux world comes in the form of Zimbra Desktop, a Yahoo-property (NASDAQ:YHOO) , circa 2007. And if we may say so ourselves, it’s quite good. Plus, it’s free. And it’s open source. And it can be matched with Zimbra’s Collaboration Suite of applications. That calls for a booyah. There are some relatively small trinkets for Linux users that will have greater or less relevance to your day-to-day interests. One that will pique the eyebrows of music fans: the Amazon MP3 Downloader. It is available for Ubuntu 7.10, as well as Debian 4, Fedora 8, and OpenSUSE 10.3. Visit the main page for specific installation instructions. I’m no scientist, but I venture to guess that DRM-free downloads sound better on open-source software. What do you think? Want a piece of musical software a bit more robust and full-featured? Take a trip down Songbird lane. The first few releases of this software weren’t stellar, but having just tried it once more this week, it’s safe to say the thing has evolved quite a bit since its days as a youngling. Worth a peek! Let’s not forget that there are plugins and lightweight software systems to make your Web browsing and PC-based interaction with the cloud more enjoyable, too. Adobe Flash version 9.0 is out as a 3MB-large .tar.gz download. Something to consider adding to your Firefox and/or SeaMonkey browser(s), for sure. And though Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) doesn’t officially support Linux with its Silverlight development, you might be interested to know of an independent project from Mono called Moonlight. Packages are dubbed experimental, with the latest update said to have been issued on August 7, 2008. If you consider yourself the adventurous type, why not give it a try. Adobe also has stored in its Labs division a Linux version of its AIR platform. But it is unfortunately only an “alpha-quality” release at this point. In short, things that function on the latest AIR builds for Windows and Mac may not perform on ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I just finished watching the first two episodes of the new NBC Web Series Gemini Division . It’s an intriguing story that’s already got me convinced I’ll be watching all of the next 48 episodes slated to be released, something I never quite thought I’d say about a Web video play by NBC. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Would you use a time-tracking application to help you determine and manage your “real” social network? timeXchange hopes so, with some of its latest updates. Instead of becoming stagnant as a tool that merely tracks time for employees, contractors or the self-employed, timeXchange is going the social route, hoping to use its service as a way to provide more immediate value as a relationship-management tool that focuses on working relationships. If you invite a collaborator to your project on timeXchange, you’ll now also have that person as a contact in relation to that overlapping project, making this service a multifaceted management tool for both projects and relationships. As we use Web-based services to handle more and more of our business and personal relationships’ transactions, we find that there are many groups that overlap with each other within our own social graph. And managing the overlap can be problematic–it’s an ongoing issue that has spurred the development of privacy settings for various types of networks, and helped niche networks remain so for all intents and purposes. So when we look at the people we actually keep in contact with in person, via phone conversations or Web-based applications, we can begin to factor this into our “actual” social networks. Skydeck made this abundantly clear with the release of its phone call tracking service, which organizes your contacts based on your real level of interaction with each individual. As Skydeck moves to integrate further with some of the other existing social networks out there through things like its developer tools and plug-in options, timeXchange will hopefully move in this direction as well, enabling users to continue their networking capabilities outside of timeXchange and carrying them over into other networks like Facebook. Perhaps timeXchange will even recommend who they should befriend on third party sites and integrate some of the scheduling and time-tracking capabilities. There’s a new iPhone app that timeXchange launched earlier this week, so additional integration on this end would be helpful as well (get it here). ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:timeXchange Updates to Attract New UsersWeb Ascent Events: Introducing our PresentersWeb Ascent Event Wrap Up. Thanks to All Who Made it Out!Orbitz Launches Incentives for Traveler Update ServiceFirefox 2.0.0.8 Released; Enables Leopard CompatibilityWordPress 2.5 Is Finally OutiPhone Update Renders Unlocked Devices Useless [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Intel and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) on Wednesday announced a partnership that not only makes it one of the most interesting announcements of the day, but also could have a major impact on the way you enjoy television. Dubbed Widget Channel, the new brainchild of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Yahoo is a “TV application framework” that’s specifically designed to interface with TV and consumer devices that employ Intel Architecture. The Widget Channel will give consumers the ability to use rich Internet applications designed for TV while watching different shows. The Widget Channel is powered by Yahoo’s Widget Engine and will provide TV viewers with a set of TV widgets that aim at improving the way you watch TV and interact with the shows you’re watching at any given time. Developers who want to exploit the Widget Channel will be able to design widgets with Javascript, XML, HTML, and Flash, and according to Yahoo, will range from video streams to stock tickers, to updated news, all found directly on the TV. Yahoo said it has already inked quite a few companies and more should be coming on-board as the new service launches. So far, the company said that a slew of services are being developed and deployed by Blockbuster, CBS Interactive, CinemaNow, Cinequest, Disney-ABC Television Group, eBay, GE (NYSE:GE) , Group M, Joost, MTV, Samsung, Schematic, Showtime, Toshiba, and Twitter. And although this idea sounds absolutely delectable, I’ll be interested to see how it all pans out. Will it make watching TV much harder due to annoying pop-ups and ugly widgets? Or will it extend the capability of TV in ways we never thought possible and totally revolutionize the business? ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Bebo Sends a Cryptic Teaser for Upcoming Widgets ReleaseHelp Catch the Bad Guys with New Widgets from the FBIWidgetbox Chosen by Forbes for Widget DistributionChange.org Application Now Live on FacebookJoost API, Joost Widgets!DoSomething Widgets Match Users with ProjectsAmazon Affiliate Widgets! [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Residents of Massachusetts and California led the nation in googling the term “social networking” during the last 12 months according to Google Insights for Search, a new search analysis tool. Launched on August 6, Google Insights for Search is a free service that allows users to track the popularity of phrases and words that have been typed into Google’s search engine from 2004 until the present day. The resource enables users to sort data by country, sub-region, time and industry. The application also includes heat maps that display the geographic location of where terms are most popular, the top searches related to a term or phrase, and the fastest rising searches. As of August 8, Massachusetts and California each had a search volume index or SVI of 100 for regional interest in social networking, tops in the nation for the past 12 months. The term “search volume index” or SVI is a measurement that reflects how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. Rounding out the top ten were New York (SVI=96), the District of Columbia (96), Washington (88), Maryland (86), Illinois (84), Georgia (80), New Jersey (80) and Utah (80). (click to enlarge) Nationwide, the top three related searches to social networking were “social networking sites,” “social networking site,” and “social network.” The fastest rising searches were “social networking trends,” “social networking tools,” and “social networking scripts.” By city, Google searches for the term “social networking” was highest in Pleasanton (SVI=100), a suburb of San Francisco. Close behind were New York (92), San Francisco (91), Austin (76), Washington (76), Los Angeles (73), Boston (71), Reston (69), Chicago (66) and Atlanta (63). (click to enlarge) Also of interest: How search volumes for the term “social networking” have changed over time. After periods of relatively minimal interest for the term in 2004 and 2005, search volumes took off in first quarter 2006 and peaked in November, 2007. After a sharp dip in December, 2007, search volumes have shown steady upward growth throughout the first half of 2008. (click to enlarge) Google cautions that the results show the likelihood of users in a particular area to Google search a term on a relative basis. In this case, just because a particular city, say Minneapolis, didn’t rank in the top ten, it could mean Minneapolis residents don’t use Google to search for social networking information (maybe Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) ? MSN?). They may also use a different phrase or term to search for social networking information (social media? Facebook?). Another caveat: I suspect Google hasn’t worked out all the bugs in the data just yet, but they’re not letting on. Case in point: On August 7, I used Google Insights for Search to track regional interest by state for the term “social networking” in the last 12 months On August 8, just 24 hours later, I ran the same search, and the results were significantly different. Why the big differences in the ranking and the scores, especially if the results captured data from the last 12 months? Small sample size? Data glitch? Human error? Maybe it was an issue at my end with my Internet connection. Perhaps I misunderstood something? A difference of one day shouldn’t make that much of an impact in the rankings, right? My suspicion is that Google launched this application only a day or so before and they’re still tinkering with its algorithms and ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Group Dating isn’t new in Japan, where compa or gokon parties have become a regular part of their dating scene. The word compa comes from the word companion and gokon is a combination of the words goudo (group) and compa (companion). It is said that this practice evolved from the difficulties of finding a partner due to the pervasive shyness that exists in Japanese society. Group dating gatherings usually take place at public venues such as restaurants where each attendee brings a couple of eligible friends. The thing that people seem to like best about this concept, besides the whole law of averages, is the fact that if all else goes wrong and you don’t find a match you still wind up having a good time out with your friends. (Traditionally, compa isn’t for one-night stands but obviously there are many that will seek this type of experience.) The trend has become a cultural phenomenon, gaining popularity in the UK and now the US. Here are some popular online services that cater to the group dating/compa concept: Ignighter Ignighter is a new group dating service from the TechStars camp that hand-picks the top ten best startups out of four hundred entries they receive every year. You can use their free service on their site or via their facebook app. The key to the service is the group profile that you create which is similar to the kind filled out on standard dating services, except this one describes everyone in your gang. Once two groups agree to meet up they just decide where they want to hang out: Dinner and a movie, coffee house, happy hour, Tapas, ballgame, etc. Team Dating Team Dating is from the well-known www.Match.com which focuses on group dating. They claim to be different than the rest by not requiring as much profile information to get started. They also state that they require less personal information which means more privacy. Here’s a video about Team Dating from the company itself: Date-My-Mates Date-My-Mates Started in the UK in 2006 so its database serves that corner of the world. The same concept applies, just in a different area. Just because you don’t live in the UK doesn’t mean you can’t use this service. If you and your pals are planning a group trip to that region then this service could make the journey all the more fun. Let’s Meet Out Let’s Meet Out serves only the New York City area at this time so it won’t be for everyone. However, NYC is one of the most popular places for tourists so you could make arrangements with your friends to meet another NYC group. PlanJam PlanJam has a slogan that says it all, “From your screen to the scene.” They aren’t actually a group dating site but they can facilitate such an event. Their event planner is impressive as it can calculate what the entire evening will cost you in addition to gathering all of the details you will need to know. I Am Free Tonight I Am Free Tonight is owned by eTwine and offers not one but two Facebook apps called Meet New people and Are YOU Interested? The website looks like something from the late 1990s so it’s doubtful that much action is taking place there, but I would venture to guess that a great deal of activity is going on with the Facebook apps. I’d like to test it out myself, but the wifey frowns upon such behavior. Conclusion Group dating seems like a fun and useful experience. Marrying the technology of online dating services with the real world benefits of group activities is also a brilliant idea. The services that make the best use of social networking and provide the easiest interface will come out on top. Give these a try and share your experiences in the comments area. Also share any other group dating services we might have missed this time around. ---Related Articles ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If you check Gmail’s settings, the last option under the “General” tab lets you “always use https” when accessing Gmail. It’s a fairly new option, and it might sound strange; isn’t Gmail secured by SSL (Secure Socket Layer) by default (hence switching to “https://gmail.com” when you type in “gmail.com” in your browser)? The answer is: yes and no. Once you log in, Gmail reverts back to an unencrypted connection, since SSL connections are slower than regular ones. This means that whatever you do on Gmail is unencrypted from now on, and someone sniffing traffic on your network can easily obtain sensitive data. Of course, not everyone has the skills to do that, so the chances of it actually happening are pretty small. Or, better put, they were small until now. As reported by Hacking Truths, a tool has been presented at DEFCON that makes stealing session IDs from Gmail a relatively easy affair. And once someone has your session ID, he/she can log in to your Gmail account without authentication. In practice, this means that not having the “always use https” option checked, especially if you’re accessing Gmail through a wireless hotspot, or any other unsecure network, has become a hazard, and is not recommended. Google has been fairly silent about this, letting users decide what they want to do, but I’ve switched to SSL and I recommend you do, too, especially if you use Gmail for business purposes. ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Gmail Security Flaw Spotted, Spam Filters SubvertedSevere Gmail Malware FixedSecurity Vulnerability Found in AOL Instant MessengerGmail Reaches 25GB of Storage; For Corporate UsersGMail Phasing In IMAPGmail Mobile Gets an UpdateGoogle Vulnerabilities Reveal Your Gmail Contacts & Messages [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many of us prefer using online note taking applications for research, bookmarking sites, or quickly jotting down ideas. While there are many online note taking applications, we searched around the Web and compiled a list of those we felt were richer in features and usability. Here are the top ten, in no particular order. Which note taking applications do you use and why? Let us know in the comments. Evernote Evernote is one of the most talked about online note taking applications. One special feature here is the drag-and-drop desktop version that allows you to see your notes and clips offline. You can use the Evernote mobile application for your Windows Mobile phone or iphone to capture pictures and record audio to send to your Evernote account. You can also email notes to Evernote using a secret email address. Google Notes Google Notes has some nice features including collaboration among multiple users, a publishing feature, integration with Google Bookmarks, the ‘Unfiled bookmarks’ link on the left sidebar of the Google Notes Web interface that sorts and displays all the urls you have saved, quick clippings of Web pages with the ’star’ button, and the export to Google Docs feature. UberNote UberNote works in the same manner as Google Notes. However, one neat feature here is that you can add your tasks in any note that you are working on. Later, you can view the ‘Open Tasks’ link on the sidebar of the UberNote interface to open all notes with incomplete tasks. Similarly, you can integrate your bookmarks with any note and find it later with the ‘Bookmarks’ link. Other nice things to know about UberNote are that it runs on AJAX and has a history feature that will save all the revisions you make on your notes. You can clip notes with the UberNote online dashboard, with the browser extension, email your notes to a personal email address, or from an AOL IM application. Springnote Springnote is an OpenID enabled online note taking application that takes a different approach than the ones mentioned above. This one is not for writing short notes and clipping websites, but longer notes, and comes out just a bit different than an average online office suite. The Springnote note editor is feature rich and you can choose from a variety of templates, plugins , and insert video and audio to enhance your notes. You can collaborate, share your notes with friends, or post them on your blog. WebAsyst Notes WebAsyst Notes comes with features for including attachments to your notes. You can sort the notes into specific folders and share the folders with your contacts. WebAsyst also has features to add files, photos, contacts, mail, projects, an issue tracker, pages, and a shopping cart. Luminotes Luminotes,a personal wiki notebook, as the site describes itself, is an easy to use wiki that lets you create notes. You can attach files to your wiki, and share them with your friends. Features such as automatic saving and revision tracking are very useful. Once you have completed your wiki, you can download it as well. This is not one of the conventional online notebooks but a key reason why you might want to use this is because of one feature that allows you to hyperlink one word or sentence in a notebook to another. Stikkit Stikkit wants to be a smart application without being clever. What it does is pick up specific terms from your notes and arrange your notes as to-do lists, calendars, contacts (peeps), bookmarks and tags list. Now is that smart enough? You can also choose to share your Stikkit notes with your contacts and receive comments. For quick Web clippings, it provides a bookmarklet for Firefox and Safari, and a right click menu option for Internet Explorer users. Fruitnotes Fruitnotes allows you to create notes by calling a specific phone number, though currently they have only listed a US and UK ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A new series called Model.Live is debuting this week on Bebo (see here ). As you may have guessed, the show is about models. Produced by IMG Media and Vogue.TV, this made-for-Web series follows three female models, Austria Alcantara, Cato van Ee and Madeline Kragh along their journeys from their homes to the catwalk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Firefox can be made into so much more than just a browser via its huge extension base.  Yes, this means you can replace some of your instant messenger, chat and microblogging needs by adding just a few extensions. Here are 18 tools that will let you turn your Firefox 3 browser into a communications portal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Yahoo announced today that Buzz is now open to the public and anyone who wants to submit stories is free to do so.  Prior to this, only a handful of publishers were allowed to post stories as Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) tried to get the kinks out. But now that Yahoo Buzz is officially ready for business, It’s an apropos time to discuss whether or not this site will have an impact on Digg, the de facto leader in this space.  And although some would claim that Digg isn’t really a competitor to Buzz because the latter is somewhat controlled by human intervention, I think it absolutely is a competitor and one that could have a major impact on Digg’s value in prospective acquisitions. Since April, when traffic reached its peak, Digg’s numbers have been slumping.  Granted, they’re not slumping too much and the site is still performing extremely well, but it is down nonetheless.  And although the reason for that could be practically anything, I think Digg slowly lost its appeal when it stopped becoming a tech-savvy haven and tried to expand into areas that its tech-influenced crowd didn’t care about. Let's face it -- does Digg really want to compete head-on with Yahoo?  Sure, Digg is a known quantity and it has slayed beasts before, but I don't think it has enough in the tank to beat Yahoo Buzz.  Why?  Because Yahoo Buzz can offer publishers a flood of traffic that beats Digg's huge numbers and will be a favorite of publishers and users, alike. Yahoo Buzz is taking the Digg idea, improving it by reducing the frequency of people gaming it, and launching with a focus on all topics with its own main page to back it up.  How can Digg compete on any one of those levels? When Digg was firmly focused on tech and didn’t try to improve algorithms to make upcoming stories last longer before they went popular, or stop certain “influencers” from being too successful, people found some value in using the site.  It was a place to find the best stories on the best topics from a wide array of sites. But now, it’s nothing more than a placeholder of derivative stories and outrageous comment threads.  Even worse, it’s a site with little focus and one that’s trying desperately to get to the mainstream when all it really needs to do is hold on to its niche and not let go until a company finally decides to acquire it. But alas, Digg won’t do that and it’ll try desperately to fight Yahoo Buzz on every topic.  And in the process, it’ll lose value and prospective buyers will ask why they should pay $200 million for a site that’s trying desperately to compete with Yahoo. Yahoo Buzz is built for the masses.  And although Digg wasn’t originally built to appeal to the masses, the company is trying desperately to do just that.  And in so doing, it’s fighting the wrong company for dominance. Digg company profile provided by TradeVibes ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Yahoo Buzz: Upcoming Competitor to Digg or Google?Yahoo Buzz Introduces Widgets and RSS Feeds to Take On DiggYahoo Buzz Is Bigger Than Digg, According To comScoreYahoo! Tech Buzz Game Tests Wisdom of CrowdsSneak Peek: Yahoo BuzzYahoo Buzz - Absolutely No Threat to DiggYahoo’s Quest for Open: Inconceivable [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Yesterday we saw the official release of Blogs.com . Blogs.com is making top ten lists of blogs in several categories “to help you discover the best sites that you never knew existed.” The site looks well-designed, but a question remains, what are we trying to solve? The inclusion of celebrity (including people like Alyssa Milano ) top ten lists implies that this could be a mainstream blog directory in the same mold as Alltop . So, what is the point of Blogs.com? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If there is one thing that can be said for the Web 2.0 movement and social media it is that its proponents are strong believers in openness and transparency. They are such strong believers that they have no problems leaving things like their cell phone numbers on their blogs, their addresses on their blog about pages or their complete traveling itinerary viewable by all on sites like Dopplr. Back in September of 2007 I wrote a post on my own blog titled Who needs Carnivore when you have lifestreams. The idea was that there was no real need for any secret government data mining project since we all seemed to be so willing to give away our information for nothing. This idea of online security has been going on for almost as long as two people could talk to each other over the Internet. With Web 2.0, social networking and social media there came the idea that security online was non-existent and the sooner we got used to that fact the better off we would be. I have never been a fully fledged proponent of this transparency idea to the degree that some seem to be. For me, I still believe that some modicum of personal information security is needed, despite having relaxed over the years from my original feelings on the matter. For me, security and the protection of my personal data on the Web is extremely important and it is something I don’t believe that those involved with Web 2.0 or any social media service take seriously enough. Even today Chris Miller here on Mashable wrote about the idea of Social Network Identity theft and how users; unless you are someone like Robert Scoble, don’t have any rights should they find that someone has stolen their identity on some new social network. Smaller social networking companies seem to be more open to step in the middle and assist in clearing up someone purporting themselves as you. However, who is to say there cannot be two people of the same name at a company? Who wins in that regard? First come first served? Why would any site wish to step in the middle, when deleting accounts or editing information holds them more liable in many people’s eyes. Larger companies, such as Google, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook seem to stay far away from the matter. You are hard pressed to find a statement or help item on the subject, much less who to contact when you are the victim. However, as minor as this idea of social media identity theft might seem, it’s really on the tip of a potentially huge iceberg of danger that could face us as we open up more about ourselves on the Web. This was made abundantly clear in an excellent article today by Alexander van Elsas as he looked at  both a popular Web service for travelers and a technology that is becoming commonplace in vehicles these days. The first he talked about was Dopplr which is a social network that lets you enter in your travel plans primarily as private for friends and families. The person he used in his example was Robert Scoble and the fact that there are still a lot of details about his travel plans that are made available as you can see here. While this might seem slightly innocuous on the service Alexander quite rightly points out that this provides anyone in the mood for committing burglary the perfect time table and place to do the crime. As far as the second idea, it requires nothing more than a nice expensive vehicle with built-in GPS being parked on the extended stay section of just about any airport. Something like this isn’t as far fetched as one might think as Alexander provides a true event where this happened It turns out that car thieves in the Netherlands had found a very lucrative thieving method. They would go to the long parking area of our national airport and steal expensive cars with integrated car navigation systems. Then they would choose the “home” address on the navigation system and ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It’s getting easier to add our own faces into games, greeting cards and other online offerings. We’ve all seen those goofy customizable ElfYourself greeting cards that everyone and their mother were clogging email systems with last year. Well, the idea is spreading to other formats due to its extreme popularity and viral marketing stickiness. We’ve put together a list of 18 ways to quite literally get your head in the game. What’s your favorite? Tell us more about it in the comments. - JibJab - Has been around a long time and was one of the first services to let you add your own noggin to their online greeting cards. Some of their humor is rather racy and not very family friendly, but sometimes their stuff is hilarious too. Being able to add yourself, your friends and family in the mix makes it even funnier. The only downside is that there isn’t a lot of free stuff anymore. You can create and share a few things but you will need a premium account in order to access most of the best material. Here’s an example of one: Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today! - MushyGushy - Obviously inspired by JibJab, but they do offer a great deal more free content than their predecessors. Their interface to makes it very easy to customize your photographs. It’s one of my favorite sites to visit with the kids because they have a blast with the results. - Faceinhole - Provides a bunch of well-known images with faces cut out and ready for your mugshot of choice. It’s rather simple but the results can be funny. - Fix8 - A little different than all the rest. You have to download its player which works with your webcam to record your face. It’s also not free, but there is a free 30-day trial period if you want to give it a test run with the kiddies. They sell additional avatars and accessories to decorate yourself. You can watch their YouTube video here. - Camroid - Lets you use snapshots from your webcam to create some funny effects. You can share them easily with anyone too. It’s similar to the PhotoBooth app that Mac users enjoy. - Phozi - Yet another service that lets you have fun with your snapshots from your webcam and you can embed the results on your online profiles. - Gizmoz - Lets you animate any photo you upload as well as record your own voice to create a little movie scene. Here’s an example. More Head Games! - BeFunky - Allows you to transform your photo into a cartoon version which is all the rage these days with online profiles and avatars on Twitter. - MyHeritage Face Recognition is a cool morphing service that will let you morph your photo into any celebrity that most resembles you! - All My Magic - Offers two picture editing tools called PhotoGenie and WizCard that let create images for your online profiles like MySpace. - Putty Face - Upload a photo of your face (or a friend) and play with it like silly putty with hilarious results. - Diary of the Dead Zombie Face Changer - Takes a while to load but it’s worth the wait if you’re the type of sicko that enjoys mutilating their own photo to look like a dead person. - Piki Kids - Creates a comic strip with you and your friends. - Create Your Own Yearbook Picture - Create a high school yearbook picture with your own photo. From the movie “Just Friends.” - MagMyPic - Lets you create magazine covers with your photo or anyone else’s that you want. Cool and easy. - GlassGiant - Offers several different types of things you can do to your headshots such as creating a Most Wanted poster, snow globes, a jumbotron and more. - Glogster - Provides the ability to create professional looking posters with your image of choice. - Insert-a-photo Dart Board - Just for fun, this dart board will let you use any photo you want as ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Twitter announced on its blog today that it would no longer deliver outbound SMS over its UK number. In its place, the company claims, “Twitter will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe, in the coming weeks and months. These new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for all the folks who have been using SMS to send long-distance updates through our UK number.” Twitter said that it simply can’t afford to support long-distance SMS Twittering anymore and the company claims “it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US.” And while I can understand where it’s coming from, isn’t this the perfect time for Twitter to wake up and establish a real business model?  So far, the site has added users and paid millions to keep it running with nothing to show for it but some venture funding.  And considering it barely escaped ruin after numerous downtimes over the past few months, now is the best time for the service to pull its head out of the sand and create a business model. So what can it do?  That’s a tough call.  Some believe that it should add advertising to the timeline and others think ads should be placed within each message.  But in reality, there’s no easy way for Twitter to add advertising to the service and it’s going to take a full-fledged analysis of what users would be happy with before it can move forward. But the clock is ticking.  Instead of spending money, Twitter needs to start making money if it wants to survive and keep its new investors happy.  And if this news highlights anything, it illustrates one point: Twitter seems lost about its business model and it needs to come to quickly if it wants to keep its full offering afloat. Twitter company profile provided by TradeVibes ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:tweetSMS to Bring SMS Updates Back to UK Twitter UsersTwitter Mobile InterfaceQuick Fix For Twitter TroublesDon’t Send Bac’n: Use TwitterSearchPyzam and Others Shunned by MySpaceMosio Uses Twitter For Mobile Q&ATwitter Adds GMail Contacts Import [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

CBS will host live coverage of the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions online for the first time in the company’s history, it reported today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A class-action lawsuit filed in California court on Thursday charges Facebook, Blockbuster, Fandango, and a handful of other companies with violating online privacy laws in relation to Facebook’s Beacon system. The lawsuit claims Facebook gathered online users’ activity without asking them if they wanted that information to be posted to their profiles, which is nothing new, considering the amount of heat Facebook has taken over the entire Beacon initiative. “By the time any user was notified that Facebook was (at a minimum), an observing party to the transaction, and that Facebook was asking for an approval to publicly broadcast identifying information regarding the event, personally identifying information had already been communicated to Facebook,” the suit alleges. The suit also claims that although Facebook has made Beacon an opt-out program, it’s too difficult for users to do so, because they are forced to visit each of Beacon’s 44 affiliate Web site to do just that. To add even more fuel to the Beacon fire, the lawsuit also claims that Facebook retrieved data on all users who had any impact on the program, regardless of whether they were Facebook users or not. “Thus, non-Facebook persons who utilized the Facebook Beacon Activated Affiliate Websites were not told that their transaction, and indeed, every transaction they engaged in upon the Website was being communicated to a third party (Facebook) with whom they had no relationship whatsoever,” the suit claims. Facebook claims that it has yet to receive the lawsuit, but will consult it closely to see if it has any merit. [Image credit: Radiant Core] ---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Blockbuster Bears Brunt of Facebook BeaconRobert Tur Jumps On YouTube Class Action LawsuitClass Action Lawsuit Brought Against Apple for iPhone BrickingFirst Class Action Lawsuit Against Apple and AT&T (NYSE:SBT) (NYSE:T) Eminem Sues Apple for Music RightsNetwork Solutions and ICANN Named in Class Action LawsuitThe Daily Poll: Will Facebook Cave to Beacon Critics? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]