Reviews

Gifting your favorite social networking netizen this year doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg. A lot of entrepreneurial and social networking online store sites are selling some very unique social media-oriented gifts this holiday season. And with just a few mouse clicks, you can purchase that special gift that demonstrates just how social you are.

Sony, in its latest attempt to compete head-on with Amazon's Kindle's  and Barnes & Noble's Nook success is attempting to open a storefront online of its own. Despite its previous failure at a similar venture back in 2005, is Sony ready for a comeback?And if not, does Amazon's Kindle or Barnes & Noble's Nook win in this year's Holiday Sweepstakes?

SnazL and Flip.to are two of the first open source tools to bridge the gap between content and community. By allowing users to create and share their videos, photos and content from one central location, the user become the center of his or her own sphere of influence cross social media platforms.

The AeroGarden is an indoor gardening system that claims to grow herbs, tomatoes, and flowers at an increased rate and size with a minimum amount of time or effort on the part of the gardener.  But does it work?

What do you get when you cross legacy newspapers with an arch conservative right-wing publisher? Rupert Murdoch, that's who! In a new twist as how to not play nice with Google and the other top search engines, Murdoch's controversial approach might either become a new business model for other newspapers to emulate, or a crash and burn scenario that sees the rise and fall of his own Phoenix!

Cruise Ships are not usually the butt of a joke, or comedy-rich fodder for comedians. However, in the case of the largest cruise ship in the world, Seth Meyers has set his lampooning sites on Royal Caribbean's "Oasis of the Seas." Celebrating its global stage 'coming-out' party, Royal Caribbean knows they've made it when SNL takes their cruise ship out for a spin and the social media airwaves hype their maiden voyage.

You've got to "hand it to" the Spaniards. Differing markedly from our puritanical society, they're taking a very touchy subject matter and handing it off to their students...literally!  While some feel that pleasuring one's self should be taught behind closed doors or picked up in the streets, the country's Extremadura region has chosen to address it front and center in their classrooms.

Since the "location-based social network" train has left the station, Twitter has not only jumped on board, it appears to be the locomotive engineer. And now with 3rd party apps purchasing tickets on the "Twitter Local Express" the microblogging network is expanding its coordinates to offer up the longitude and latitude of all your tweets.

I rarely eat mashed potatoes except on Thanksgiving, and maybe Christmas. Of course, I always mashed the potatoes myself. It would kill my family to think that I'd whipped up instant mashed potatoes to serve to them. But, guess what? I'm going to serve instant mashed potatoes this Thanksgiving - the same kind my husband made for me....

An actual research study titled "Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search" was recently conducted by Microsoft researchers Ryen W. White and Eric Horvitz to analyze how the Web enables those obsessed in researching illnesses. A survey of 515 Microsoft employees determined that Internet surfing regarding health issues is on the rise. Inquiring minds want to know what's ailing them and why they are obsessed with tracking down health symptoms online from the common cold to cancer.

In the days of yore (3 years ago), when social networks were first making their mark on the digital landscape, there was a divide between those networks you chose for business and those selected for fun. Today, those worlds collide, as LinkedIn and Twitter formally get "linked" to each other. And the combination is sweeter than PB&J.

On November 9, EcoGreenHotel announced the official launch of it’s new online store, EcoGreenHotelStore.com. It's virtually a green marketplace for hotels and a one-stop marketplace of over 1000 products and services for the green hospitality industry. As more and more hotels become green-certified and more guests request "green" accommodations, the EcoGreenHotel Store is satisfying the needs of both the hotelier and the traveler.

Not only are teenagers 17 and younger allowed to watch certain movies, Xbox 360 just banished them from accessing social networks. Strange that the teen demographic that is the target market for Xbox systems are restricted from from the Xbox Live's new integration of Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. And with Christmas right around the corner!

When Rod Serling first uttered, "there is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity...this is the dimension of imagination," he might  have been giving us a prescient glimpse into the future of Junaio.

With the heightened buying frenzy surrounding the launch of Google's new smartphone, the Droid, it was no surprise that someone would piggyback off of the hype! While Google conducts its first-time TV advertising, Flipswap, a trade-in service aggressively jumped into the foray with a unique offer to swap cash for your old 'clunky' iPhones. ( Where was the Administration on this one?)

The Internet of Things is fast approaching and with it comes Web 3.0, where "social awareness" will replace "social networking." Soon tweets and status updates will become fully automated and generated by the world around us versus us ever having to touch a keyboard again.

November 5: Twitter rolls out Project Retweet to a limited audience. According to their recent blog post, the Twitter echelon wants to see how it  will "work in the wild," before offering it up to the Twitterverse.

Many have tried, but it's been over a decade and none have succeeded in out-Googlin' Google. Yet here we go again, with yet another search engine entering stage right trying to capture our "attention-deficit" attention. Repackaging online search as something new infers the Web has evolved. And while real-time and social search have certainly changed the alchemy of search, what does Leapfish know that has eluded Google et al?

While branding oneself takes time and effort to spin out a new product, re-branding can take several washes to redefine that same brand. Take for example the work United Airlines had to accomplish after breaking someone's guitar. Let alone the number of Twitter apologies issued forth by Chris Brown and Kanye West. But when others do it in reverse and run their good-guy image through a darkside wash cycle, the task might be a little easier. Such is the case with the re-engineering of one Mickey Mouse.

Did the "voice of jihad" just get a little louder? Afghan tribalism has origins that date back 1400 years to the early Muslim and Islamic civilizations. With a lifestyle based on jihad and an economy that thrives on opium trade, who would have thought that these warring factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan would ever embrace social media as a means to communicate.