2010

Despite ongoing questions about privacy, Facebook’s new social plugins continue to expand their footprint across the web, with the company announcing on Tuesday that more than 100,000 websites have now deployed them. The plugins –- which allow websites to add Facebook-powered social features without requiring users to log in –- were announced less than a month ago at Facebook’s developer conference, and attracted more than 50,000 publishers in the first week. ...

“What would people most like to see in 3D? Probably a naked lady.” Those are the words of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whose magazine will soon include a centerfold playmate photographed naked and in 3D. The 3D centerfold will appear in the June issue, which hits newsstands this Friday with 3D glasses included. The subject of the photos is 51st Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk. Consider this a grab for attention more than anything; Playboy editorial director Jimmy Jellinek was quoted by MSNBC saying, “In today’s print environment you have to create newsstand events.” The environment he’s talking about is one in which Playboy circulation has dropped almost 60% in just four years. ...

Foursquare is moving to make the list of “Places” one sees when one loads one’s mobile app of choice more relevant. The company announced this morning that it has recently made changes to improve its algorithms for serving up this data, taking into account things like time of day, proximity, and popularity of the venue in determining which places to show you. This should be a welcome change for users of Foursquare. As the service has taken off in popularity, it’s also seen an increase in venues that “you are very unlikely to check into” –- Foursquare’s words for the abundance of user-created venues popping up that are only relevant to a small number of people (if anyone, “Ostrow Castle” not withstanding). ...

We need a native iPad app for Facebook but until Facebook HQ gets around to making one, the next best thing has just arrived via social media aggregator sobees. sobees for Facebook [iTunes link] is an iPad app that lets you manage your Facebook experience in a native app designed to take advantage of the iPad’s enlarged screen. The app, which is free through the end of May, provides many of the features that Facebook fans have been looking for in an iPad app. This includes the ability to: ...

We know, we know — you don’t give a damn about celebrities and what they’re tweeting about (neither do we — especially when they’re narcissistically freaking out about a Twitter bug that everyone was victim to), but when someone does something creative with these 140-character pearls of not-quite-wisdom, we’re admittedly amused. Enter, “Celebritweets Theater.” We’re already fans of Odessa Begay’s inspired “Museum of Modern Tweets,” in which the artist composes surrealistic pictures of the strange things famous people say. “Celebritweets Theater” is basically a horse of the same color — short cartoons that tell the story behind the tweet. A dude that goes by “KCS Cougar” draws these cartoons for celebrity news site Wonderwall, and they have a rather Dr. Katz-esque vibe. I’ve embedded my favorite — which mocks Lady Gaga — below.

Square is a mobile credit card transaction application founded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame. The app became available for the iPad about one month ago, and now it’s also available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices. The app is free, but in order to work, you need a small credit card reader that connects to the iPhone via the 2.5mm headphone jack. The app looks beautiful and has lots of nifty features, such as SMS receipts, the ability to track of your sales online, as well as tip and tax calculation. However, in its current iteration it also has certain drawbacks; for example, you cannot delete or refund transactions. ...

With Clearwire and Sprint pushing for mobile WiMAX coverage in 80 U.S. markets by the end of 2010, and promising three new WiMAX-powered smartphones in the near future, it’s easy to lose sight of the wireless technology as a solution for rural residential broadband. Today, Kansas Broadband Internet (KBI) announced it is moving ahead with the construction of its own WiMAX network with PureWave as the exclusive hardware provider. The finished network will cover 18 counties, and more than 12,000 square miles. With only 33 residents per square mile, Kansas is one of the United States’ ten least densely populated states. ...

Macro Monday Theme: Life is Hard Credit cards and debt make life hard. It seems so easy at the time, but after time, you realize what a mistake it is. Strobist: Canon 430ex II at 1/4 power through a softbox camera left. Triggered with a Cactus V4.” Macro Monday Theme: Life is HardCredit cards and debt make life hard. It seems so easy at the time, but after time, you realize what a mistake it is.Strobist: Canon 430ex II at 1/4 power through a softbox camera left. Triggered with a Cactus V4.” ...

Google began offering free turn-by-turn navigation with Android 2.0 in late 2009, and Nokia announced at the beginning of 2010 that Ovi Maps navigation would be free on all its future handsets. Today Microsoft announced that it is following suit with free turn-by-turn navigation for Windows 6.x and up phones, powered by Bing Maps. When getting directions with Bing, there will now be a “Navigate” button which starts the turn-by-turn voice navigation. The voice navigation feature was developed by the Microsoft Tellme team. ...

Last week, VMware and Salesforce.com announced a new partnership around VMforce, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering aimed at enterprise Java developers. The companies’ CEOs Paul Maritz (VMware) and Marc Benioff (Salesforce) described VMforce as an enterprise cloud designed to serve the needs of more than six million enterprise Java developers, including some two million who are using the Spring framework VMware acquired last August when it purchased SpringSource. ...

The first significant change to Internet domain names in many years was made today when ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved and deployed three domain names using a non-Latin script: Arabic. You can already visit http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/ and two other Arabic script domain names, though they might not display correctly if your browser doesn’t have IDN (International Domain Name) support. Using Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3 and Google Chrome Developer Build 5.0.375.29 for Mac, I was able to visit that web address but it displayed incorrectly in the address bar. When I visited the site in Apple Safari 4.0.5, it was written out correctly. ...

In February we learned that a future version of Google Googles would translate text in photos. The future is here — Google Goggles v.1.1 for Android 1.6 and higher can now read and translate English, French, Italian, German and Spanish language text. The Google Goggles translation feature is pretty simple to use. Simply point-and-shot a word or phrase by drawing a box around desired text and snapping a photo. Should Google recognize the text, you can then select the translate button and define the source and destination languages for translation. ...

Facebook has extended its “Gross National Happiness” prototype app to 18 new countries. The app analyzes words in status updates like “awesome” or “tragic” to track changes in the collective emotional state of its users. When Facebook applied the methods to its U.S. userbase last year, it found that happiness went way up on holidays and way down when celebrities like Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger passed away. While the results of the study weren’t surprising, the idea of using status updates to measure national happiness was a novel one. ...

Information has leaked that Facebook is set to roll out location-based features for users and brands as soon as this month. According to Advertising Age, users could see location options any day now. These features include the ability to check in at various locations, including retail spots and restaurants. We’re unclear as to whether users will be able to add or customize their own locations, but we are fairly positive that this move will put Foursquare, Brightkite, Gowalla and other location-based services in an uncomfortable position. ...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has finally begun to enable top-level domain names based on non-Latin alphabets. The first three country code top level domains (ccTLD) written in Arabic script are now available for use. The three new top-level domains are: “Al-Saudiah,” “Emarat, and “Misr,” and they allow site names to be written right-to-left. ICANN began testing internationalized domain name (IDN) back in the Fall of 2006, and tested 11 languages — Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil. ...