Reviews

Something has to be up when Google, salt of the Internet decides to use an antiquated form of 'push marketing' (namely billboards) to spread the word? It appears Google is desperate to be taken seriously in the corporate world, where customers remain reluctant to switch from Microsoft’s desktop Office Suite in favour of a cloudier option such as Google Apps. So Google is taking it to the street with outdoor advertising.

As legacy newspapers continue to seek out new ways to survive beyond their antiquated twentieth century business model, the Wall Street Journal has strapped on some big guns in an attempt to build a name in the Wild West terrain of Web 2.0. Leaked rumors indicate its jonesing for a mano-a-mano duel with LinkedIn in an attempt to attract some of that business network's 15 million monthly netizens.

Social Media has been used for a lot of things, but fueling the the fire of an ongoing feud is a new twist. A singer and a rapper are using the tools of social media to expose their basest instincts.

Location-based mobile social networking is growing by leaps and bounds. As smartphones proliferate around the world, more and more people are connecting to their mobiles versus their stationary computers to share experiences with others.

Once an innovation on the Web catches hold in the market, there's often a "lock-in mechanism" that freezes out radical changes to that innovation. In the 1970s, Irving L. Janis's book "Victims of Groupthink" described it as  "a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures." In the Age of Social Media, where social networks like Twitter and Facebook have consumed our lives, has Digital Man evolved into the the current version of "Groupthink" or the herd mentality?

If you are a fan of Showtime's award-winning comedy "Weeds" you know how dangerous locating, procuring and purchasing marijuana can be. However if you have a prescription from your physician, iPhone is going to make that whole process a whole lot easier.

One of the rules of Fight Club is "If this is your first night at Fight Club, you HAVE to fight." Analogous to a schoolyard brawl, where stolen lunch money is cause for retaliation, these two industry chums have come to blows over hacked documents.

The Smooth Away offers an alternative for women who are tired of lathering up and using a razor to shave their legs.  But does it work?

Since Hollywood has given a thumbs up to 'Facebook, the Movie,' shouldn't the movie moguls be considering some fresh new faces to star in this biopic, with the working title "Social Network". Perhaps social media rockstars like Pete Cashmore, Gary Vaynerchuk or Guy Kawasaki could be cast in the starring role of Mark Zuckerberg? Instead of method movie-actors, why not use the illustrious members of the digerati that work in the social networking trenches, on a day to day to basis?

Trying to tame the new social media space with an effective advertising model is a daunting task for any platform in the social media space. Add the desirable real-time stream of consciousness component to the mix and you've even got the big boys like Google and Bing salivating all over the digital landscape. Tinker is tinkering around with monetizing Twitter, a feat that even their founders can't figure out. And now you have DIGG, the slightly dated social bookmarking site trying to reinvent itself by posting ads to their news content delivery process. Sounds a little like 'what's old is new again?'

The average humpback whale weighs about 36 tons, yet it is one of the most graceful swimmers, divers, and jumpers in the sea. WhalePower's new wind turbine technology owes its performance to what it has learned from from studying just what makes the humpback whale so aerodynamic.

Do you know any bloggers of authority? Bloggers who are distinguished not only by how popular their sites are, but also how often other sites link to their blogs. Those that know TMZ, Gawker and the Huffington Post know that the top blogs of the world have slowly stolen the spotlight away from newspapers and mainstream media in general. Those that know Twitter know how important real-time updates have become. Now with the unveiling of Technorati's new service, one can traverse the terrain where the blogosphere crosses the Twittersphere, at an intersection called Twittorati.

What does social networking look like by country? Sure, Twitter, Facebook. LinkedIn and MySpace have huge international followings, but indigenous social networks have also grown up within certain countries that are beginning to reach beyond their own borders. So considering Intranets other than the dominant players in the US, take a look at the TOP TEN social networks that are flourishing around the globe.

Have you ever expressed the guilty pleasure of "I have to have an iPhone," "I've gotta get a netbook," or "I need to buy a Wii." If so, you might be suffering from 'gadgetnitus', the obsessive desire to own the latest and greatest gadgetry in the market. Gadget freaks are a growing breed of man (and woman) who revel in possessing the current technological toys-du-jour while becoming savvy technophiles.

Remember those great newspaper movies of the 1940s that portrayed zany journalists racing for the phones to call in their breaking news stories? Well, in a little less than 70 years, today's journalists are now bloggers and videographers who are able to not only submit a story via their mobile phones, but also capable of uploading a video to accompany their news articles.

Are Twitter and Facebook lacking because they don't offer a complement of collaborative tools including threaded replies, RSS feeds, photo and file sharing? Have other microblogging platforms found a chink in their armor? Is 'enterprise microblogging' the next step in the evolutionary process of social networking? Yes, it appears that several new collaboration suites have emerged to fill this void...and in advance of Google Wave's scheduled debut in the Fall.

What if you were able to harness all the conversations on Twitter about any one topic and sell it to advertisers that were looking to target those like-minded potential consumers? Glam Media has created a micro-blogging ad network platform called 'Tinker' that is looking to do just that. Comparable to a matching service like Harmony.com, Tinker will link up Super-Bloggers with Mega-Advertisers. Dissimilar to a dating site, Tinker is all about getting down to business.

Statistics often color our perceptions, and in the sphere of social networking this is most certainly true. We like to make assumptions based on the numbers. However, most often when 'pacing' is omitted from the equation, we lose our perspective as to what the numbers are really telling us. Is Facebook the dominant player in social networking or does its growth numbers tell us something more about where it will be a year from now?

What do Gollum, Kong, The Silver Surfer, the Polar Express, Beowulf and Benjamin Button have in common? They all utilized the innovative technique of 'performance capture" where an actor's movements and expressions are electronically tracked and translated into computer generated imagery (CGI) to make the real-life actor resonate in a hybrid world of animation.

We've seen the ads. The Ove Glove is touted as a revolutionary cooking mitt that insures you won't fry your hands when retrieving that big pan of macaroni & cheese from the oven. But does it work?