Archive for October 8th, 2008
By Ben Haber
By Ben Haber
As Kyle mentioned last week, Larry Weber is on the radio every Tuesday at noon. This week he spoke with Charlene Li, an independent thought leader on emerging technologies, about the future of social technologies.
Charlene is the co-author of the business bestseller, Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies. She is one of the most frequently-quoted industry analysts and has appeared on 60 Minutes, The McNeil NewsHour, ABC News, CNN, and CNBC. She is also frequently quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Reuters, and the Associated Press.
Charlene is a much sought after public speakers and has presented at top technology conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo and adTech, and was also named as one of the 50 most influential people in Silicon Valley by NowPublic.
For more information on Charlene, you can check out her Website, blog or follow her on Twitter.
October 8th, 2008
By Guest Author
By Michele Moore
I find it really hard to keep track of every social network I’m a part of and even harder to keep my status on those networks updated. That’s why I was excited to see on gadgetell that there’s a way for me to update all my networks with a simple phone call.
Ping.fm and SpinVox are bringing this service to the mainstream by using a Voice Message Conversion System that converts spoken words into text. Instead of manually updating all your networks individually, the service lets you update everything at once with one phone call. The voice-to-text idea was the brainchild of SpinVox co-founder and CEO Christina Domecq who wanted a simpler way to get her voice messages, so in 2003 she created SpinVox. Until recently, Ping.fm was a private beta site; today it supports over 26 social networks including Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and LinkedIn.
Creating a Ping account is simple. Just to go Ping.fm and enter in your user name and pass code for each of the social networks you want updated – I chose my Twitter account – then use your cell phone to call the Ping through SpinVox number and say your message. The voice recognition technology of SpinVox converts what you say into text and updates your social networks within minutes.
I gave the service a try and I must say I’m impressed with the results: within a few minutes of ending the call my twitter status updated with my message. While I really like the ease-of-use to create a message and I like the idea of updating all my networks at once, you really have to think about what you’re going to say – will what you make sense for all your status updates, or will it fit in the 140-character limit of Twitter? Overall though, the ability to update everything in one place outweighs the limitations.
October 8th, 2008
By Guest Author
By Lindsey Scott
Yesterday Google engineer Jon Perlow announced a new feature on the official Gmail blog called “Mail Goggles.” The premise of the new feature is simple: users who want to send emails after a certain time on weekends (once enabled the time preferences can be customized for each account) will be required to solve a series of fairly basic math problems before their message can be sent.
The new feature is intended to prevent Gmail users from sending emails they’ll later regret — presumably after an evening filled with one too many cosmos — although AP writer Jessica Mintz notes that Mail Goggles could protect users at other “emotionally vulnerable times,” including before the morning cup of coffee or right after an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Although TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington worries that this announcement might be another one of Google’s well-publicized hoaxes, our only question is – will this be coupled with Android into a mobile version that prevents similar mishaps of the text message variety?
October 8th, 2008
