Posts Tagged ‘Social’

Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping social network

Posted by admin at 1 September 2010

Category: Tech Industry

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Not a huge surprise here, but Apple’s just announced ITunes 10, complete with a brand new logo that finally ditches the CD. What is something of a surprise, however is the standout feature: Ping. That’s Apple’s take on a music-centered social network (think Last.fm), which will let you follow people (including artists), establish a “circle of friends,” post comments, check out custom song and album charts, and even find over 17,000 concert listings. Developing….

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Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping social network originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rumor: Social networking coming to iTunes

Posted by admin at 26 August 2010

Category: Apple

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There’s been lots of rumors in the past about iTunes going to some sort of a cloud-based service, with the ability to store or access music remotely over the Internet, but the new word around town is that what’s actually revealed at the event next week won’t be quite so ambitious. Peter Kafka over at All Things Digital now says that instead of streaming, the new iTunes might be more social, with iTunes accounts serving as nodes on which users can share recommendations for apps or songs, or even share playlists or song information. You wouldn’t actually be able to share music, but the idea would be to lay the groundwork on a more connected iTunes system, and set up the music software as not only a location to store your personal music, but to connect with others through the media.

Sounds interesting, and of course a rumor like that dovetails right into what Apple is working on with Game Center, where iTunes accounts will serve as the portal for connections in and around App Store games. This current round of speculation also includes improvements for the web-based version of iTunes pages, and presumably improved ways to browse and post app reviews and recommendations.

As always, we’ll have to see. Nothing’s confirmed until Steve walks out on stage and shows it to us, so even if Apple is working on a system like this, there’s no confirmation we’ll see it at the event next week until we, you know, do.

TUAWRumor: Social networking coming to iTunes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Social Bicycles bike sharing system powered by iPhone app to hit NYC this fall

Posted by admin at 11 August 2010

Category: Tech Industry

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Social Bicycles is a bike sharing system with a twist. Using an iPhone app, the system allows users to drop off, locate, and borrow a bike nearly anywhere. The bikes are equipped with a GPS device which is locked to one of the wheels, and when the bike is locked, it’s locatable using the app, so that someone can borrow it; when it’s in use and unlocked, it doesn’t appear in the app. The real upside to Social Bicycles is that the regular infrastructure required for bike lending systems — such as docking stations in a lot of convenient locations — are unnecessary with this system, which can get by with regular old bike racks, making it a much cheaper, fly-by-night option. It’s coming to New York City in very limited beta this fall, and we expect it to outperform Segs in the City in no time. Video is below.

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Social Bicycles bike sharing system powered by iPhone app to hit NYC this fall originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Aug 2010 21:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mozilla Labs’ Contacts add-on for Thunderbird is a social networking superstar

Posted by admin at 5 August 2010

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I’m not a fan of desktop email clients. I haven’t been for some time, and I’m not shy about extolling the benefits of a Web-based email app. Mozilla, however, decided to put together a slick new add-on for Thunderbird that has me seriously thinking about switching back.

Like the project they launched earlier this year for Firefox, Contacts for Thunderbird is all about connecting with your friends and acquaintances beyond your inbox and address book. Contacts can tap in to a number of sources, like Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, Gmail, and LinkedIn. It’s extensible, of course, so you’ll be able to add support for other sites (Orkut? Windows Live?).

Once you’ve logged in to a service the fun begins. Click on a Twitter user — Soluto’s Roee Adler, for example — and interaction options are presented under Services:. I can send Roee a DM or view his updates right in the Contacts tab. Click a Facebook friend and you can view their updates, photos, and photos in which they’ve been tagged. Unfortunately, no Facebook messaging options are available yet.

Just like other Mozilla Labs projects, you’re getting an early look at what could very well be a core feature in upcoming versions of Thunderbird. While it’s lacking some features now, rest assured they’re on the way — Contacts will eventually provide a powerful, centralized dashboard for both email and social networking conversation.

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Mozilla Labs’ Contacts add-on for Thunderbird is a social networking superstar originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Disney acquires social game firm Playdom

Posted by admin at 29 July 2010

Category: Apple

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Stick with me on this one — it’s not strictly Apple-related, but I think it will have a big effect on the App Store in the future. Last week at Comic-Con, I saw the head of Disney’s mobile gaming division, and I had to congratulate him; the company’s Toy Story 3 app nabbed over 1.7 million downloads from the App Store.

That’s huge for them; as he’d originally told me at GDC earlier this year, the Toy Story app was part of a test to see if “selling” an app for free would increase its audience (which could then be sold on in-app purchases and add-on content). That test was apparently passed with flying colors.

Then, of course, Disney purchased Tapulous a while back, and now they’ve picked up Playdom, an online social game developer, for a whopping $563 million. Connect the dots there, and it’s pretty apparent that Disney has big plans for both gaming and the App Store. Social networking games are the hottest thing around in terms of in-app purchases, so I would not be at all surprised to see Disney combine its brands and marketing experience with Playdom’s online gaming savvy and Tapulous’ iPhone development talent in order to go big on some major free-to-play titles for the iPad and iPhone.

And let’s not forget that a certain black-turtlenecked CEO happens to be on Disney’s board of directors, too. I doubt that he’s solely masterminding any of these purchases, but Jobs would definitely have the access and intelligence to see the power of free downloads on the App Store, and how those apps can use programs like iAds and in-app purchases to make a big splash. I expect we’ll see some really big initiatives by Disney thanks to these Tapulous and Playdom purchases — it’s only a matter of time.

TUAWDisney acquires social game firm Playdom originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flipboard turns social network content into a virtual magazine

Posted by admin at 21 July 2010

Category: Apple

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The latest hotness wandering around the blogs is this iPad app called Flipboard, which turns your favorite social network content into an easy-to-read magazine-styled layout. It does look good — the idea is that pictures and text are all pulled in from various social feeds, and then assembled together by the app to make a full-color, full-featured magazine that you can flip through instead of pulling up various feeds and/or running a bunch of different clients. We saw a similar app at WWDC this year that pulled content from RSS and styled it in a magazine fashion.

Personally, I’m not entirely sold — I have the same problem with this app as I did with RSS readers for a long time, which is that I like to see content in the format it’s generated for. If someone likes something or posts a link on Facebook, I’d rather see what it looks like in the same space they created it for, not crammed into an app’s magazine-style formatting. You may make the argument that information is increasingly growing context in-sensitive, and you’d be right — I do use an RSS reader now, after many years of trying to read blog items on their own blogs, and social networks are growing more interchangeable as they fight to find their own spots in your attention.

Flipboard may work well (and at the low, low price of free, it’s hard to argue against at least trying it out, though word is that the servers are hammered at launch), but I think there’s still something to be said for seeing your tweets in your Twitter client and your friends’ pictures on Flickr. I’m not quite ready to completely separate all of my social network content from its original form quite yet.

TUAWFlipboard turns social network content into a virtual magazine originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Glue: The social network and iPhone app you can get stuck in

Posted by admin at 16 July 2010

Category: Apple

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Although it drives my wife nuts, I like social networking apps. I’ve been tweeting since the Twitter bird first hatched from a little blue egg and I leave a trail of FourSquare check-ins wherever I wander. On the other hand, it seems like that for every really cool social network that appears, there are a lot of them that I use once and then drop.

When I first heard about Glue, my instinct was to give it a try and then move on. However, what I’ve found is another fun tool that is quite a bit different from FourSquare (which is all about locations) and Twitter. Glue is described as a “social network for entertainment,” and that’s a very good description.

Instead of FourSquare’s “Where am I now?” and Twitter’s “What am I doing?,” Glue asks what you’re currently up to — watching a TV show, listening to music, reading a book, watching a movie, playing a video game, chatting about a celebrity, thinking about a topic, or drinking wine.

Glue builds a profile of your likes and dislikes by letting you rate a number of items in each category. Like FourSquare, Glue rewards your activity with stickers (FourSquare calls them badges) that give you bragging rights among your peers. I’m happy to report that due to my vast amounts of dislikes when it comes to current movies and music, I have acquired the “Debbie Downer” sticker. Unlike FourSquare, once you’ve unlocked 7 stickers, Glue gives you a way to get real (not virtual) stickers to paste on your laptop, iPad case, or children.

TUAWGlue: The social network and iPhone app you can get stuck in originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PopCap: Social features coming to “all existing games”

Posted by admin at 13 July 2010

Category: Tech Industry

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PopCap Senior Designer David Bishop said today that the company is “looking to add social features to all our existing games going forward.”

Speaking at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Bishop wouldn’t elaborate on what kind of social features we could expect to see or which existing games might get the social treatment first, but he did mention sending cross-platform taunts and challenges in Peggle as a hypothetical example. When questioned, Bishop said we could expect to see these features rolling out in the next six to 12 months.

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JoystiqPopCap: Social features coming to “all existing games” originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EpicWin aims to turn your real-life tasks into a social game

Posted by admin at 10 July 2010

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Given the amount of iPhone and iPad apps coming out these days, I’m not all that interested in getting excited about an app before it comes out. There’s already plenty of games and apps available now, so worrying about not-yet-released apps isn’t all that important. That said, this app called EpicWin is gaining quite a bit of attention — it’s a very originally designed to-do list masquerading as a game that gives points for accomplishing things in real life.

If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it before — Booyah Society was supposed to be a game that rewarded you for real-life accomplishments, and there have been a few other apps like it poking around. Most of them haven’t worked very well — the issue has always been that there’s no validation, no proof that you’ve done what you said you did in real-life. But EpicWin has some solid developers behind it (the folks that worked on Little Big Planet for the PS3, and MiniSquadron for the iPhone), and a very intriguing art style and tone, so maybe it’ll be more intriguing than what we’ve seen along these lines in the past.

EpicWin is “coming soon” to the App Store — we’ll keep an eye out for it, and let you know when it’s out.

TUAWEpicWin aims to turn your real-life tasks into a social game originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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