See all the related top Digg stories whenever you do a Google, Yahoo! or Bing search with the new WebMynd Firefox extension.
WebMynd improves your search experience by focusing on the information sources that you most value. As well as Digg results, you can embed other sources such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and Twitter. You can also use WebMynd to remember and search your browsing history.
Every time you use Google, the WebMynd sidebar opens up to show you search results from your favorite places online. Choose from dozens of different search sources, including Twitter, Wikipedia, and YouTube. Find stuff faster by customizing your search experience.
RedesignGoogle lets you completely customize the look of Google Search by installing user-submitted designs from an online gallery. A stripped-down version of the WebMynd add-on applies your installed stylesheet whenever you’re on a Google search results page. (You can enable WebMynd’s other features if you like, but they’re turned off by default.)
Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demonstrate SixthSense technology in these TED Talk videos. ‘SixthSense’ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.
At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.
This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.
We’ve evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us. When we encounter something, someone or some place, we use our five natural senses to perceive information about it; that information helps us make decisions and chose the right actions to take. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online. Although the miniaturization of computing devices allows us to carry computers in our pockets, keeping us continually connected to the digital world, there is no link between our digital devices and our interactions with the physical world. Information is confined traditionally on paper or digitally on a screen. SixthSense bridges this gap, bringing intangible, digital information out into the tangible world, and allowing us to interact with this information via natural hand gestures. ‘SixthSense’ frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.
The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user’s hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.
The SixthSense prototype implements several applications that demonstrate the usefulness, viability and flexibility of the system. The map application lets the user navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures, similar to gestures supported by Multi-Touch based systems, letting the user zoom in, zoom out or pan using intuitive hand movements. The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index finger. SixthSense also recognizes user’s freehand gestures (postures). For example, the SixthSense system implements a gestural camera that takes photos of the scene the user is looking at by detecting the ‘framing’ gesture. The user can stop by any surface or wall and flick through the photos he/she has taken. SixthSense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing an ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The SixthSense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.
The current prototype system costs approximate $350 to build.
Creating great content is increasingly a cornerstone to lead generation and lead nurturing. In other words, it’s key to attracting new customers and to deepening relationships with existing ones.
But many companies have trouble creating enough of it. So blogs languish. Flip cameras gather dust. Your Twitter feed is as sparse as Oprah’s. How can you create and distribute a steady flow of stuff that your customers actually care about?
Think small. Creating a white paper or ebook is a huge task. Instead, create smaller chunks of content. A series of smaller blog posts will be easier to produce, more digestible for readers short on time and attention, and multiply your search love.
Think really small. Ask your Twitter followers for their take on a specific theme or topic related to your business, and create a blog post from it (with credit to them, of course). Something open-ended (no wrong answers) and that solicits personal suggestions or advice works best. Such as: What’s your favorite must-have iPhone app for business? What’s your must-read book on Widget Management for 2010? What’s your favorite social media tool?
Record presentations or speeches. Record the speeches or presentations you or your team gives at industry events, and post them on YouTube. Repurpose as needed to your blog, on Twitter, Facebook, or other social sites.
Post presentations on SlideShare. Upload PowerPoint presentations to share on SlideShare, and similarly share freely on Twitter, your blog, and so on.
Chat with customers. Arm your sales staff or other customer-facing folks with Flip cameras to capture face time with prospects or customers. Bring a camera along next time you attend a networking event. Not sure what to say? Try asking customers a single question to unify their answers and string them together for a compelling video. Something like: What’s your biggest marketing challenge? Name one business goal for 2010. What’s a strategy you’re using working to grow your business this year?
Interview luminaries. Q&A interviews with thought leaders, strategic partners, or flat-out interesting or creative thinkers makes for compelling text or audio content. (Bonus: It raises your profile with them, as well.) John Jantsch offers a great step-by-step approach to podcasting here. Alternatively, a simple text Q&A is easy to do via Skype, which allows for back-and-forth banter that gives an interview more energy and makes it more fun to read. Capture the text, edit for clarity, slap on a headline, and you’re done. (That’s how I did this interview, What’s a Dry Cleaner Doing on Twitter?)
Share real-time photos. Configure your blog to work with Flickr, so that you can upload photos from industry events, meetups, or gatherings. Snap photos to share on Twitter via Twitpic. Speed matters here: The faster following an event you can get your photos up, the more likely it is that people will use them to refer to, share with others and drive traffic to your content. Rohit Bhargava offers more general advice on using Flickr here.
Ask customer service. The front line is a great source for content. Ask them: What are customers contacting us about? What problems do they have? How might you help them resolve their issues? This kind of content is great for regular content with a recurring “Questions from our customers” theme.
Go behind-the-scenes. Give readers or followers an insider’s view of your company. Twitpic a shot from a podcast or video in progress; share what content you’re working on producing on Twitter (Writing a post on the H1N1 vaccines for teenagers. Did you vaccinate your kid?); and so on.
Bust silos. Do you have a print newsletter? Do you produce a regular podcast? Run a version of a print article on the blog, upload the best headlines to Facebook, post transcripts of your podcast online, and chat everything up on Twitter. A lot of the ideas here reinforce the notion that you should not silo your content. Rather, sprinkle it freely across any of your platforms. It’s important to think like a publisher, and leverage any publishing platforms you’ve created.
I can’t believe my local Apple Store had them in stock and was selling them tonight! I took advantage of this OBVIOUS oversight and decided to buy one on the spot.
This is the $499 (16GB) model. As you can see, it runs just fine. Too bad it doesn’t support Adobe Flash.
failin.gs wants to help you answer that age-old question: “What do people think of me, really?”
As humans, we naturally want to know what others think of us, either to boost our egos or to help us know what skills we need to work on. Failin.gs puts the concept of brutal honesty to the test by letting you posit opinions from those who know you, without revealing who says what.
In the last few months, a number of services like Formspring.me and Tumblr’s Ask feature have opened the door to letting individuals answer questions submitted anonymously through the web. Failin.gs takes that concept one step further. Rather than having people ask you questions, you can solicit feedback to find out what people really think of you. Or to put it in failin.gs language, find out “What is wrong with me?”
Not only is this the ultimate test of ego versus curiosity, the system is also set up in such a way that you can limit the ability for people to anonymously ask you questions by restricting it to people who actually know you. How does that work? You can require submitters to answer a question that only people that actually know you can answer. That immediately makes the trolling aspect of these kinds of services much more difficult.
Comments can be categorized into areas like “I knew this about me,” “I had no idea” and “I totally disagree.” Other people can also comment on comments, agreeing or disagreeing with the statements. There’s also the ability for people to vote up or down individual critiques.
Feeling sick? Not sure what you’ve come down with? Let Google diagnose you! Enter your symptoms into the search box, and press “I’m Feeling Icky” to be diagnosed. Don’t like your options? Go back and get a “Second Opinion”.
The way we communicate online has gone through a sea-change over last few years – Infact, majority of netizens spend most of their time on social media / networking sites. Twitter has been a rage over past 1 year, Facebook has become one of the most visited sites on the web, Professionals are flocking Linkedin and keep their profiles updated. Do you want to know the numbers behind these uber-popular social media sites?
It’s around six months since EConsultancy last threw out some truly mindboggling pieces of data surrounding social media. So, what’s happened between then and now?
If six months ago, it wasn’t a compelling case to consider social media in the marketing mix, then this hopefully might change your mind…
Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours… A considerable increase from the previous 120m.
Twitter now has75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
LinkedIn has over50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.
Flickr now hosts more than 4bn images. A massive jump from the previous 3.6bn I wrote about.
More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day. This is 5m more than towards the end of July, 2009.
Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month – this was around a billion last time I covered this.
There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook. Last time around, this was only 50.
Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.
Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase. (Previously 30m). As before, it’s no secret that users who access Facebook through mobile devices are almost 50% more active than those who don’t.
There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.
Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.
The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
Purpose-built Facebook pages have created more than 5.3bn fans.
15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati’s new State of the Blogosphere.
At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10bn tweets in a single year.
About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.
India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.
More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.
38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.
The era of nuclear anxiety, the Red scare, and covert CIA plots forever changed the way we engage with the telephone. Voice on the Line is an animated, experimental social commentary that explores the ideas of the Cold War and ungrounded paranoia.
