Mashable: Latest 29 News Updates - including “Google Surprises Employees with a Bonus and a Raise”

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• Google Surprises Employees with a Bonus and a Raise
• Jay Z Debuts Glossy New Website to Celebrate His Greatest Hits
• HTML5 Project Brings Tablet Reading Experience to Any Browser
• Magic Fiddle Turns Your iPad Into a Violin, and It Rocks
• Merton the Chatroulette Piano Guy Puts on a Show at YouTube HQ [VIDEOS]
• New Startup Lets You Bookmark Movies as You Browse the Web
• Ask.com: The End of an Era for Search
• Twilio Raises $12M for Voice and SMS Apps
• Foursquare Improves Its Web App
• Kanye West’s New Album Leaks to Rave Reviews
• Hasbro Plans 3D Goggles For Your iPhone
• 6 Emerging Social Games Taking the Web by Storm
• For Employees, Facebook Counts as Free Speech
• 4 Creative Social Marketing Campaigns from Around the World
• Facebook “Mentions” Feature Shows What Friends Are Talking About
• YouTube Topics: A Better Way to Explore Web Video?
• Mobile Music: Top 4 Streaming Services Compared
• New Android App Controls YouTube on Your TV
• Kanye West Performs “Gold Digger” on Delta Flight [VIDEO]
• Zagat Launches Interactive Food Truck Finder
• HOW TO: Become a YouTube Sensation
• “Angry Birds” For Android Gets a Massive Update
• Movieclips.com Raises $3 Million to Help Bring Movie Clips to the Masses
• Join Mashable’s Support Community on GetSatisfaction
• Live Video Chat With Rainn Wilson [CONTEST]
• “The Washington Post” Comes to the iPad for Free
• HOW TO: Tastefully Use Social Media at Your Wedding
• Adobe Audition Comes to the Mac
• OK Go Gets Animated in Its Newest Video
• Social Media’s Impact on the Midterm Elections [INFOGRAPHICS]

Google Surprises Employees with a Bonus and a Raise Posted: 10 Nov 2010 01:19 AM PST There’s a reason why Google is routinely at the very top of Fortune’s list of best companies to work for. The company has given all its employees a salary increase of 10% or more, as well as a $1,000 cash holiday bonus, Business Insider has learned from a source. According to the same source, Google will pay the taxes for the cash bonus and give each employee an additional raise equivalent to their target bonus for the year. An internal memo from Google CEO Eric Schmidt confirms the raise and the bonuses. “We've heard from your feedback on Googlegeist and other surveys that salary is more important to you than any other component of pay (i.e., bonus and equity). To address that, we're moving a portion of your bonus into your base salary, so now it's income you can count on, every time you get your paycheck. That's also effective January 1st. You'll be receiving an email shortly with further details about these changes to your compensation. And one last thing…today we're announcing that everyone will get a holiday cash bonus, too,” the memo said. A Google spokesman didn’t provide any details, but also hasn’t outright denied the story. “While we don’t typically comment on internal matters, we do believe that competitive compensation plans are important to the future of the company,” the spokesman said. From the employees’ perspective, that’s a lot of good news. From Google’s perspective, that’s a significant cost: the Internet giant has over 23,000 employees, and only the cash bonus will cost it $23 million (plus taxes), while the raise might cost Google around $1 billion a year. Judging by Google’s impressive earnings report from October, however, Google can definitely afford such a move. With the economy still being weakened by the recession, Google obviously wants to show off its strength and make sure its workforce has a hard time finding greener pastures elsewhere. More About: bonus, employment, Google, raise, salary For more Business coverage: Follow Mashable Business on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Business channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Jay Z Debuts Glossy New Website to Celebrate His Greatest Hits Posted: 09 Nov 2010 11:14 PM PST Rap legend Jay Z has taken the wraps off a gorgeous new website created to promote his upcoming anthology, The Hits Collection, the first volume of which is due in stores November 22, 2010. Not only is the site a beautiful example of how to market music using technology; it’s also a great case study for implementing social media in any website for an organically interactive experience. The entire site, which was built with Flash, is fresh and visually intense, executed in stunning black and white with atmospheric, New York City photography and classic typography. The site is rich with multimedia features, including full-screen images and gorgeously produced videos. These highly visual elements dominate and recede at the click of a mouse; user controls are intuitive and unique at the same time. Pages are organized by time period; for each period, you can view images, videos, discography and milestones. An even cooler factor is the way the site incorporates tweets. The fans are actually given a rather large mic on this site, but Twitter’s constant stream of commentary is both powerfully and gracefully incorporated. Unlike the Skittles debacle of 2009, this page gives some (but not all) of its voice to fans, while giving them tools to enter the conversation and some very handy prompts for shaping the conversation, as well. Here’s the pop-up that appears when you click on the banner reading “Tweets is watching. Add your voice.” Tweets displayed on the site start off as an unobtrusive EQ line at the bottom of the page, with glowing bars and floating text as you mouse over each bar. When you click on a particular bar (representing a tweet), a carousel interface pops over the site, and you can see what people are tweeting about Jay Z. According to Agency Net, the firm that created the new site, their approach to social media integration, “was inspired by a very basic insight: fans love to use social media, particularly Twitter, to post Jay-Z lyrics and illustrate their dexterity.” “That said, after a few glances at the organic, fan-powered hashtags #jayzlyrics and #jayzquote, we were sold on including a mechanism for fans to offer homage in the way they're already doing so, but this time on the most credible platform ever: amongst the content itself and visualized by the world.” In other words, they joined the ongoing game rather than trying to force people to participate in a new one. Tweets sent through the site will appear in the timeline with the hashtag #jayzhits and a Bit.ly link to the specific page they refer to. The Hits Collection, Volume One will be in stores later this month; it’ll include classics such as “99 Problems” and “Big Pimpin’” as well as newer hits like “Empire State of Mind.” You can pre-order the CD and other collector’s editions via the website. Coincidentally, this anthology is dropping the same day as Kanye West’s recently leaked new album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. What do you think of the social media and design aspects of this new site? More About: hits collection, jay-z, music, website For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

HTML5 Project Brings Tablet Reading Experience to Any Browser Posted: 09 Nov 2010 09:53 PM PST On Tuesday the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C., debuted its first HTML5 project, designed to make lengthier stories more palatable for readers using desktop and mobile browsers. The Center has fashioned a template that mimics the in-app reading experience of newspapers like The Washington Post and magazines like Travel + Leisure — minus, of course, some of the interactive capabilities, such as swiping, offered by touchscreen devices — in a web browser. Content is displayed in a horizontal, widescreen format devoid of distracting banner ads and links to other content. Users can pull up a left-hand navigation bar to navigate between story sections, and click on arrows to tab between individual pages. The size and amount of text on display adjusts according to the size of the browser. Since the template (created in conjunction with digital reading platform Treesaver) is rendered in HTML5, the format is entirely mobile-friendly, bringing the app experience not only to desktops, but to any mobile device with an up-to-date web browser as well. It’s also significantly cheaper to produce than a mobile app for a complex operating system like iOS or Android, meaning that more news organizations will be able to render digital, app-like experiences without hiring a developer. [via Editors Weblog] Reviews: Android More About: center for public integrity, HTML5, journalism, media For more Dev & Design coverage: Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Magic Fiddle Turns Your iPad Into a Violin, and It Rocks Posted: 09 Nov 2010 08:52 PM PST Smule, makers of the musical iOS titles like Ocarina, I Am T-Pain, Glee Karaoke and Magic Piano, has just released its newest creation: Magic Fiddle for iPad [iTunes link]. What is Magic Fiddle, you might ask? It’s pure, unadulterated musical awesome. It turns your iPad into a string instrument — with a twist. The $2.99 app was just released in the App Store, but we got to spend some time speaking with Smule Co-founder, CTO and Chief Creative Officer Ge Wang earlier this week about the app and how it works. Describing Magic Fiddle doesn’t make a lot of sense until you see it in action. Smule created some demonstration videos showing off the app, and the fiddle, in action. Check out this example, which comes just in time for a certain plumber’s birthday: You play Magic Fiddle the same way you would play a stringed instrument like a violin or a fiddle. You place the device on your shoulder and then use your fingers to pluck the strings and your other hand acts as the bow. If you have ever played a string instrument before, catching on to the process is very easy. My fiancé was able to pick up Magic Fiddle in just a few minutes. I don’t have any previous experience with string instruments (I took piano lessons and never got that violin I always wanted), but thanks to the “Storybook” guiding mode, I too was able to pick up on the instrument’s nuances and learned proper finger position. The app really goes out of its way to anthropomorphize itself. When you first pick it up, this is how the app greets you: You tell the app your name and you can even name your fiddle. I named mine HAL. When we spoke to Wang about the app, he pointed these features out, emphasizing the importance of making the app easy to pick up and making it feel whimsical and fun. The idea is also for the app to be easy to get a feel for — whether you are already an expert at games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, you have previous experience with a stringed instrument, or you just love music and want to play. In addition to his work at Smule, Wang is also an Assistant Professor at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford. This is important, because just like the backends of apps like Ocarina, Glee Karaoke and I Am T-Pain were developed using some of the technology research pioneered at CCRMA, Magic Fiddle also gets some of its technological footing from the university. In particular, Wang pointed out to us that Magic Fiddle isn’t just playing pre-recorded notes. The device itself is actually creating music. Using physical modelings developed at Stanford, the iPad itself has been programmed, by way of the app, to be able to generate and create unique sounds. These sounds aren’t 100% accurate to a real fiddle or violin, but they follow the same models. The results are that you are able to do freestyles and solos that have a lot more personality and zing, rather than merely just trying to match certain notes. Making Music Fun Ultimately, what comes through with Magic Fiddle, as with all of Smule’s other apps, is just how much fun it can be to create music. Beyond that, however, Magic Fiddle is a testament to just how much can be accomplished on electronic devices like the iPhone or iPad. Two years ago — almost to the day — Ocarina was released for the iPhone. It was one of the first true “breakthrough” iPhone apps in that it showed that you could do something with an iPhone that most people probably never even expected to see: Play music based on blowing into the microphone. It helped kickstart a flurry of innovation in music-based apps and games that continues today. With Magic Fiddle, we think Smule is doing the same thing for the iPad. Magic Piano remains one of the iPad’s games most fun games, but Magic Fiddle, like Ocarina, really breaks the mold of what is possible and what is expected from the tablet device. Using multitouch for the strings and the bow — plus using Smule’s Global feature of connecting players with one another around the world, the game and app has tons of replay value and really makes the idea of making music on an electronic device feel natural. It’s also a ton of fun. Magic Fiddle comes with a Songbook bundled with 20 songs that you can play along with and learn. Smule will also sell song add-on packs, with more songs added as time goes on, to even further enhance the app. Magic Fiddle has put a child-like grin on my face. Give it a try; we think it’ll do the same for you. What do you think about the way smartphones and tablets are being used to create music? Let us know. Reviews: App Store More About: ipad, ipad apps, magic fiddle, magic piano, music, musical instruments, Smule For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Merton the Chatroulette Piano Guy Puts on a Show at YouTube HQ [VIDEOS] Posted: 09 Nov 2010 08:13 PM PST Earlier today, while YouTube was briefing the press on YouTube Remote for Android and YouTube Topics at its headquarters in Silicon Valley, the company welcomed a special guest through its doors: Merton of Chatroulette fame. Merton is the mysterious and hooded improv piano player who rose to Internet fame with a series of videos depicting him playing songs for random strangers on Chatroulette. His videos have garnered millions of views, helping him launch a musical career that now has him traveling across the country. Perhaps because YouTube played a major role in his rise to prominence, Merton (who hasn’t revealed his real name but isn’t Ben Folds) entertained the employees of the Google-owned web video company with his improvisational lyrics and musical jabs over YouTube’s changed rating system. The lobby of YouTube HQ quickly filled up with interested onlookers as Merton put on a show. While we couldn’t stay and record the whole thing, we did catch a few clips of Merton’s melodies for your listening pleasure. Enjoy! Reviews: Google, Internet, YouTube More About: chatroulette, merton, video, youtube For more Web Video coverage: Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Web Video channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

New Startup Lets You Bookmark Movies as You Browse the Web Posted: 09 Nov 2010 07:12 PM PST This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Radbox Quick Pitch: Bookmark movies as you browse the web; view them all at Radbox when you have time. Genius Idea: People watch 2 billion videos every day on YouTube alone. Most television shows post their content or clips online, just about every major newspapers has video content, and people are increasingly linking to video content in their e-mails, tweets, and Facebook posts. The problem is that most people (at least those with full time jobs) don’t have time to watch the interesting videos they stumble across during the day. Sites like Instapaper and Read it Later helped solved this problem for online articles by allowing users to collect them for reading later. Radbox has applied the same solution to video. Once users have dragged and dropped a Radbox button into their bookmarks, they can add any video they find on a number of supported sites to their Radbox queues. There’s also a version of the Radbox bookmarklet that works on iPhones and Android, though it’s a bit tedious to install. Three months from its launch, Radbox has about 2,500 users. The company has not established a revenue stream, but it hopes to to leverage users’ video watching preferences to sell behavioral advertising. Nor has Radbox won funding; it’s currently running out of a $11,000 seed fund from a Y-Combinator styled investment firm called The Morpheus. “Practically speaking, we’re bootstrapping,” explains Co-founder Aditya Sahay — who describes himself and partner Tarun Arora as “bored-Oracle-senior-developers-turned-entrepreneurs.” As bootstrapped and new as it is, we think Radbox is targeting a niche it could own. While sites like Vimeo have mimicked the “watch later” function for their own content, they still can’t compete with the flexibility to save video from multiple sites. Video sites like Magma that do pull video from multiple sources require users to search for the clips they want to watch instead of adding to a personalized queue. As long as no sites with established user bases decide to develop a similar product (cough, Google), we think Radbox has a good shot. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, drxy Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. Reviews: Android, Facebook, Google, Read It Later (addon), Vimeo, YouTube, iStockphoto, instapaper, video More About: aggregation, bizspark, Online Videos, Radbox, youtube For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Ask.com: The End of an Era for Search Posted: 09 Nov 2010 05:40 PM PST Today marks the end of Ask.com as a search engine; the once-mighty search giant will lay off the vast majority of its engineers and concede its small piece of the search market to Google and Microsoft. Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, was once one of the world’s most recognizable search engines. It launched in 1996 and quickly grew in popularity with its focus on natural language queries in addition to keyword search. At its peak, Ask.com took care of 2 million queries per day. Its mascot, Jeeves the butler, was well known by millions of people. In 1999, the company held an IPO and everything looked peachy (as most things did during the Dot Com Bubble). You probably know the rest of the story though; Ask.com started to bleed money and quickly lost relevance in the face of a more agile competitor: Google. Its market share dwindled and its technology stagnated until it was eventually acquired by Internet conglomerate InterActiveCorp for $1.85 billion in 2005. Five years later, IAC hasn’t found a way to turn the Ask.com search engine into a contender, despite its best efforts. According to Bloomberg, IAC will cut 130 engineering jobs in New Jersey and China, cease development of its algorithmic search technology, and refocus its efforts on the Q&A service it launched this summer. What is the fate of Ask.com’s search engine, though? Ask.com President Doug Leeds says that it will deliver search results from one of its competitors, not unlike the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal signed last year. IAC already has an existing deal with Google, but Microsoft has been agressive with finding ways to expand Bing’s market share. From Jeeves to Google The IAC-owned website is still one of the web’s top destinations and its search revenue has grown in the last year (up 20% to $205 million), but that’s mostly due to its toolbar business. In the heavily competitive market of search, Ask.com didn’t stand a chance against competitors that are constantly launching new features. Ask.com and Ask Jeeves represent the spirit of the Web 1.0 era; with a good idea and a smart team, you could launch your idea and spread it across the world (and raise excessive amounts of funding in the process). Despite its decline since the tech bubble burst, it has fared much better than many of its other compadres (think Pets.com). It’s a testament to the fact that millions of people still rely on Ask.com as their portal to the rest of the web. While Google’s approach to search (speed and simplicity) won out, today still marks the end of Ask.com the search engine. It’s truly Google and Microsoft’s market now. Reviews: Google, Internet More About: Ask.com, Google, iac, InterActiveCorp, Search, search engine, trending For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Twilio Raises $12M for Voice and SMS Apps Posted: 09 Nov 2010 04:57 PM PST Twilio, a cloud communications startup, has just closed a $12 million Series B. This most recent round of funding was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and included Union Square Ventures (Fred Wilson’s firm) and 500 Startups (a new firm founded by Dave McClure), as well as other prominent angels. Twilio offers its clients pay-as-you-go communications services. It gives companies and their developers tools for making and receiving phone calls and communicating via text messages — all from computer programs and without human involvement. Basically, Twilio helps other companies build web-based communications apps. So far, the startup boasts around 20,000 customers — developers who’ve built apps ranging from web-integrated call centers to group-SMS and survey tools. Companies that use Twilio include Salesforce, eBay and Media Temple. You can see some of these companies and tools in the Twilio Gallery. Here’s a demo of a Twilio product that launched this year, OpenVBX for businesses: Bessemer was formerly a Skype investor, as well; clearly, this firm has an eye on the future of communications. Twilio will be using this new funding to expand its offerings and to hire sales and engineering talent — an increasingly competitive proposition in the current market in San Francisco. Reviews: Skype More About: cloud, funding, twilio For more Business coverage: Follow Mashable Business on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Business channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Foursquare Improves Its Web App Posted: 09 Nov 2010 03:49 PM PST The Foursquare web app has languished somewhat as the company focused on its mobile offerings, but the startup has finally announced some improvements for the users of Foursquare.com. This past fall saw a string of mobile app upgrades. Foursquare 2.0 arrived in the App Store for iPhone users in September, and the 2.0 version of the app came to the Android Market later that month. The company’s BlackBerry app also got some improvements around the same time. With those improvements rolled out, the Foursquare team has now turned its attention to the web application. The goal of the “nip and tuck” was to make using Foursquare easier even when you’re not around a mobile device. Improvements include a better interface for finding and managing friendships as well as a homepage that emphasizes recent activity from your friends. You can now add friends from Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and other email clients. Here’s the new homepage. You’ll see recent checkins are a main focus of the page, and recent mayorships occupy the right-hand column. What do you think of these tweaks to the website? What other features do you think the company should bring to Foursquare.com? Let us know in the comments. Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, foursquare, gmail More About: foursquare, web app For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Kanye West’s New Album Leaks to Rave Reviews Posted: 09 Nov 2010 02:51 PM PST Album leaks are not exactly uncommon nowadays, but the Internet is humming this afternoon with talk of Kanye West’s upcoming disc, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which oozed online today weeks before its November 22 drop date. According to All Hip Hop, the album is now available on the web (we’re not going to tell you where, just Google it) — but in an edited, clean version. So even if fans are able to snag the tunes today, they’re most likely going to have to wait for the full effect (or another leak). Kanye is no stranger to leaks. According to MTV, he suspended his G.O.O.D. Fridays series (in which he will give away a free, new song every Friday on his blog) for a week after the Bon Iver-sampling “Lost in the World” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy leaked. “Due to blogs leaking unfinished songs from my actual album I’ve decided to pass of Good Fridays this week,” West said in a tweet. "It's messed up that one hacker can mess everything up for everyone… I love to take a year to finish my songs and deliver them to you guys in there most completed form… It would have seemed like since I give free music every week even the lowest form of human being would respect that enough not to leak unfinished songs from my real album…" Although it seems like a leak would kill a record (You have the music for free, why buy it? Or the music is poor quality and people get turned off) the effects are more nuanced than that. I spoke to Adam Farrell, head of marketing for Beggars Group, after The National’s album, High Violet, leaked, and he told me, “A leak hurts a bad record, really. I’ve not really seen it hurt a really good record.” After The National’s disc hit the web, for instance, the band got creative, premiering a high-quality, advance stream of the disc on The New York Times's website. Add to that a Vevo livestream, and the band nabbed the number three spot on the Billboard Top 200 chart after one week of sales. We’re not saying the leak helped sales in the case of The National, but it didn’t kill the band members’ careers either. Well, judging from the reactions around the web at present, Kanye’s career is safe as well. Fans seem to be raving. (The five-star review on Rolling Stone didn’t hurt, either.) Twitter is abuzz with folks commending the rapper on his new disc and feverishly looking for downloads, and some bloggers are even writing glowing live blogs of the leak. The Village Voice, for its part, has written a rather amusing piece depicting how Kanye could possibly react to the thievery of his new jams (all CAPs rant, or “Imma let you finish…” real talk). West, however, has so far failed to say anything outright about the album going wide early, save to retweeting some of his fans’ glowing reviews, which, to us, reflects something Trent Reznor once said: “I felt furious when the record I'd worked on for a year, that my heart and soul's gone into, [leaked]. I'm pissed off at people that are listening to it. I'm mad that they're snubbing me — by what? By being excited about hearing my music? And that's wrong. I shouldn't be mad at these people. I should be glad that people are interested.” We’ll see what his reaction is in coming days, however, and what effect this leak (if any) has on sales. In the meantime, share your thoughts in the comments. Image courtesy of Flickr, MTV Music Reviews: Flickr, Google, blog More About: kanye west, leak, music, piracy For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Hasbro Plans 3D Goggles For Your iPhone Posted: 09 Nov 2010 02:25 PM PST If you’ve ever wanted to view 3D content on your iPhone or iPod touch, Hasbro has you covered. The toy-maker has just unveiled its newest creation, My3D, a pair of 3D glasses with a slot for an iPhone or iPod touch. It promises to deliver 3D content and 360-degree gaming. The Associated Press reports that the device is expected to retail for $30 and will be available in the spring. As CNET notes, the device has the appearance of a View-Master, but it’s targeted at both kids and adults. The AP reports that Hasbro was “guided by Apple during the development” of the product; 3D devices and add-ons have a lot of potential, but in the home setting, it becomes a question of available and valuable content. According to the AP, Hasbro says it is working with Dreamworks Animation to develop material. Dreamworks Animation has a number of successful 3D animated hits under its belt — including the recently released Megamind. Hasbro also says it will use content from 3D TV networks like the Discovery Channel and other content from Sony and IMAX. Other partnerships include the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, where 3D travel experiences are being created. The appeal for movie and television studios seems pretty clear — this is a way to promote upcoming 3D content in theaters or give users a taste of 3D entertainment at home. The bigger question, however, is if there is enough of a lure for consumers to purchase this sort of content and device — and just as importantly, if this is attractive to app developers. Creating 3D content isn’t inexpensive and that’s one of the hurdles that non-video content creators continue to face. For something like My3D to succeed, there need to be games and content that goes beyond advertisements for feature films. It’ll be interesting to see if Hasbro can pull this off. The $30 price point certainly puts My3D in the “why not?” purchase category. Now let’s just see if it can go beyond mere novelty. More About: 3D, hasbro, iphone, iPod Touch, my3d For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

6 Emerging Social Games Taking the Web by Storm Posted: 09 Nov 2010 01:53 PM PST This post originally appeared on My Life Scoop, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about using social media and technology for a more connected life. Games are inherently social — we like to post our high scores, compete against our friends, or simply share our digital exploits. But “social gaming” is a relatively new genre of games that is all about interacting, sharing, and connecting with friends. Often buried into social networks like Facebook, social games necessarily don’t have the same computing power or graphics as console or PC games. This has led some to question whether social games are really even “games,” or if the declining user base suggests it’s all just a fad. The popularity of social games may have gotten a boost from the popularity and mainstream acceptance of social networks, but they are indeed a strong and legitimate form of gaming with some new properties that are sure to keep your fingers moving through the new year. Read on for six social games that are taking the web by storm. 1. Minecraft Minecraft is an odd social experiment that is already a proven success. The game operates on a simple graphics engine, tasking players to build tools and shelter in order to survive zombie-infested nights. With more features still being added and tested, Minecraft is still very much a work in progress, and one that continues to get better. Co-op play has inspired users to create elaborate structures out of simple, square building blocks and to show off their creations, assuming they don’t get killed by zombies. 2. Cut the Rope Ah, the simple pleasures in life. Candy, monsters, and touch screens. Cut the Rope for iPhone and iPad ask players to cut a swinging rope with their finger to feed a monster. It’s a simple premise but one that is quickly moving up the App Store Best Sellers list. Much like Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope is about combining simple physics with visceral controls. 3. Nightclub City Do you like Farmville but would rather be pouring drinks and hiring bouncers instead of watering radishes? Nightclub City is a simulation game on Facebook that lets you build a digital nightclub and throw parties for other users. The better the party, the more experience you get. What sets it apart is the ability to hire other users to “work” your nightclub with special perks and skills for different roles — for example, bartenders can perform tricks to raise your tip level. Like Farmville, Nightclub City encourages you to build a community of friends to work — and play — together. 4. Crime City Crime City is sort of like a small version of Grand Theft Auto. Players start as part of the mafia and work their way up the ranks through nefarious means. Mafia games are not new to Facebook, with the already successful Mafia Wars being the most prominent. Crime City smoothes out the process by allowing users to travel freely between parts of the city without wading through menus. Users build up their own neighborhood, which they can use to attack the neighborhoods of other users. If you succeed, you earn respect and loot. It’s a little more aggressive than Nightclub City but succeeds at creating a lively, crime-ridden digital community. 5. Ravenwood Fair The most adorable game on this list, Ravenwood Fair is about a community of furry creatures trying to clear a haunted forest in order to hold, of course, a fair. It’s an unexpectedly lovable turn from John Romero, a designer behind gorey shooters like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. The game is as much about building your fair as it is making your furry village happy. It’s a simple premise that combines elements of SimCity with Tower Defense. Better still, you can visit other users’ fairs and check in on how they’re beating back the wood. 6. Instant Jam Instant Jam is like Guitar Hero/Rock Band but for your social network. This Facebook app offers the same button slamming gameplay, even allowing you to plug in the plastic guitar peripheral from those games if you don’t want to use a mouse and keyboard. Most interesting is the ability to auto-sync your music library with the game’s playable songs. Any overlaps will pop up in your library, letting you play along to your favorites. Those tracks are then available to listen to in your music library after you’ve played over them. While the songs aren’t perfect, the library is constantly being refreshed and expanded by Instant Jam coders/rockers. Keep an eye on the technology behind this one, the goal is to allow bands to create their own playlists that fans can then play and record, CEO Louis Castle told CNET. What games have you been playing? Let us know which social games you love or which emerging games you think are going to make a splash this year in the comments below. More Gaming Resources from Mashable: - 4 Frighteningly Fun Zombie iPhone Games - 5 Great Games for Learning Stock Market Strategy - 3 Innovative iPad Games That Use the iPhone as a Controller - 5 Free Ways to Improve Your Typing Skills Online - Minecraft: How Social Media Spawned a Gaming Sensation Reviews: Facebook More About: facebook, social game, social games, social gaming For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

For Employees, Facebook Counts as Free Speech Posted: 09 Nov 2010 01:24 PM PST A federal agency has declared Facebook posts are legally protected speech, even for employees who write negative things about their employers. In a lawsuit that probably won’t sit well with most employers trying to enforce social media policies, the National Labor Relations Board said that a recent Facebook-related termination was unlawful. The employee in question, Dawnmarie Souza, used some vulgar language to deride her boss on Facebook when he denied one of her requests. Several of Souza’s co-workers joined in on the thread, also making negative comments about the supervisor. Souza made these comments on her own time and on her own computer. An NLRB representative told The New York Times that company social media policies that prohibit making negative remarks about one’s boss or company online are actually in violation of labor laws that protect employees’ right to talk about things like wages and working conditions. Hence, Souza’s supervisors may not have had the right to fire her for what she did. Of course, not all Facebook activity is likely to be protected speech. Given the nuances of employment law, you may want to call an attorney before you post something derogatory about your boss or workplace — or perhaps just skip the public, online venting altogether. According to the NLRB’s Facebook page, Facebook comments can lose protected status depending on where the discussion takes place, the subject matter, the nature of the outburst and whether the comments were provoked by an employer’s unfair labor practice. What do you think: Should companies have the right to make and enforce social media policies about what you can and can’t say about them online? Or should your personal social networks be protected from any work-related consequences? Image courtesy of Flickr, escapedtowisconsin. Reviews: Facebook, Flickr More About: employees, employment, facebook, free speech, law, trending For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

4 Creative Social Marketing Campaigns from Around the World Posted: 09 Nov 2010 01:09 PM PST Leyl Master Black is a managing director at Sparkpr, one of the world’s top independent PR agencies. Leyl has more than 15 years experience driving high-impact communications programs for emerging technology companies. Social media marketing is a global phenomenon, but we don’t always get to see the innovative work that’s happening abroad. Social media campaigns from around the world will be honored today in San Francisco at the Bees Awards, the first international social media marketing awards program. The new program attracted entries from more than 21 countries, with more than a dozen countries represented among the finalists. You can watch the ceremony live on Ustream at 7:30 p.m. PDT to hear more about all of the finalists. But in the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at some of the most inspiring international campaigns that are up for awards. 1. Creating a Personal Connection – Kraft Foods/Aladdin (Sweden) For the past 70 years, the Aladdin chocolate box has been a Christmas classic in Swedish homes. But even though the brand is well-known and liked, people no longer felt a personal connection to the brand. The challenge for Aladdin was to refresh the brand while staying true to its roots. With a new praline set to be introduced in the Aladdin box last Christmas, Aladdin and its agency, Prime, decided that instead of talking about the new praline, they would focus on the unfortunate chocolate that would have to go. Fans would have the opportunity to defend their favorites, thus reactivating their personal connection to the brand. Aladdin set up a digital polling station on a campaign site where Swedes could vote on their favorite chocolate four weeks before Christmas. Key media and influencers received information about the campaign in advance, and Facebook Pages and Groups were created in order to mobilize fans. Aladdin and Prime also developed an application on Facebook where users could take a personality test and receive a personality analysis based on their favorite praline. The campaign worked. Loyal fans turned out in droves to create films, posters, Groups on Facebook, fan pages, T-shirts and blogs dedicated to their favorite pralines. In four weeks, the campaign generated more than 400,000 votes (about 5% of the Swedish population), with more than 15,000 people becoming fans of the campaign and more than 140,000 people taking the praline test on Facebook. The financial numbers were just as sweet: Aladdin’s sales jumped more than 26% from the previous holiday season. 2. Bringing the “Like” Button into the Real World – Coca-Cola (Israel) Every year, Coca-Cola Israel brings 10,000 young people to the Coca-Cola Village, a summer holiday resort designed for teenagers. Coca-Cola’s agency, Publicis E-dologic, was tasked with raising awareness for the Village, while allowing those at home to be part of the experience. How do you promote an “experience” via social media? You make the experience social. And in this case, E-dologic took it one step further by introducing “The Like Machine,” a new approach to connecting the real-world experience to the online community and the world's first real-life RFID event tied to Facebook. Here’s how it worked. RFID devices were installed at facilities throughout the Village, and each guest received an ID bracelet that transmitted an RFID signal. The guests were then able to use the bracelet to “Like” each of the Coca Cola Village facilities. For example, a guest could place her bracelet next to the RFID device at the pool, and this would automatically post a Facebook message on her wall stating that she “Liked” the pool at the Village. There was also a photographer circulating throughout the Village with an RFID device; guests who were photographed could “touch” the photographer to automatically upload a pre-tagged picture to the Coca-Cola Village Facebook Page. The result was more than 54,000 “Likes” for the Coca-Cola Village Facebook Page, making it the most “Liked” fan page in Israel, and millions of social media interactions. 3. Turning Fans Into Brand Advocates – Reckitt Benckiser/Clearasil (Russia) Reckitt Benckiser’s Clearasil brand in Russia was looking for new ways to reach teenagers, many of whom watch little TV and spend more time online engaging with friends. Working with agency LLC Grape, they decided to launch a campaign that would enable teenagers to connect and share their experiences with Clearasil products, using the most popular social network in Russia, Vkontakte.ru. First, they created a special group page where users could share photos and videos, post news and discuss experts’ advice. They then designed a number of branded Clearasil apps that would enable users to interact with the brand, including “Profile Pictures,” an app that integrates the Clearasil brand into the experience of creating cool profile snaps. For example, with this app, teens could use a marker in the form of a Clearasil tube to remove pimples from their photos. Of course, if your product delivers great results, why not let the results (and the users) speak for themselves? To this end, the company developed an application called “CLEARBOOTH” that would allow users to take daily photos of themselves recording the changes they experienced using Clearasil and post them to the group, as well as create a video after four weeks of use. Within one year, users had uploaded more than 13,000 photos and posted more than 120,000 comments to these photos. All told, more than 500,000 people have participated in the group or used Clearasil’s apps on the social network. Clearasil’s sales picture also improved, gaining 30% during the year. 4. Making a Classic Social – Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (Canada) Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (TNM) in Montréal proves that you don’t need a big budget to make a big impact with social media. The theater’s challenge was getting a younger audience interested in traditional theater and promote an upcoming production of a classic Molière comedy with a very limited budget. Working with Pheremone, TNM decided to take an intentionally anachronistic approach: having 17th-century characters from the play communicate via Twitter. Twitter profiles were created for the play’s three main characters; writers were given a mandate to script dialogs and engage in character, as well as to develop a following among influencers using old language and anachronistic conversations. During the one-month campaign, these three characters issued more than a thousand tweets in Molière's style (language akin to Shakespeare's Elizabethan English) and built a following of more than 1,000 fans — pretty impressive considering the highly targeted audience of French-speaking theatergoers in Montréal. As a result of this fun, innovative campaign, TNM saw near sell-out crowds for its performances, and it even added four additional shows. Très bien fait! More Social Marketing Resources from Mashable: - What's the Value in a Brand Name? - 5 Musts for Mobile App Marketing - 5 Proven Strategies for B2B Social Media Marketing - 4 People Who Let the Crowd Control Their Destiny - 5 Tips for Marketing Online to an International Audience Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59 Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iStockphoto, ustream More About: Aladdin, business, Clearasil, coca cola, Coca-Cola Village, Kraft Foods, Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, List, Lists, MARKETING, Reckitt Benckiser, rfid, social media marketing For more Business coverage: Follow Mashable Business on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Business channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Facebook “Mentions” Feature Shows What Friends Are Talking About Posted: 09 Nov 2010 12:43 PM PST Ever wonder how many of your Facebook friends are currently discussing Justin Bieber’s luscious locks? Well, wonder no more. Facebook is currently testing a feature that will combine updates about similar topics in your News Feed for easy browsing. The feature was spotted today by Forbes, and confirmed by Facebook, who told us: “This feature looks for certain phrases in the text of feed stories and combines them into one story if it finds matches. It's currently being tested with a very small percentage of people.” So, basically, if your friends Kimberly and Tiffani both gush about the Biebs on Facebook, a post will appear in your News Feed that tells you that your friends both mentioned the teen star, links to his official Facebook Page and shows your friends’ continued convo below. The feature is very similar to what currently occurs when more than one friend shares the same link. None of us at Mashable are privy to these features yet, so we’re embedding one of Forbes’s screenshots below, which comes from reporter Oliver Chiang’s sister-in-law’s account: Chiang also points out that the feature is not limited to what your friends are talking about, but also what Groups and “Liked” Pages are discussing as well. See below, where an NPR update appears in the mix: This feature seems to be another effort by the social networking site to combine information and interactions into a more digestible format. Facebook tested a feature that would clean up Birthday Wall postings a few months back, and just recently rolled out Friendship Pages, which cleanly tell the story between two friends. This feature, along with the aforementioned collapsing of shared links, will make it easier to engage with your friends and follow their updates. Moreover, we imagine that it will draw more attention to official Facebook Pages, which could be a boon to celebrities and businesses, as well as advertisers. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, art-4-art Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, iStockphoto, pages More About: facebook, social media For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

YouTube Topics: A Better Way to Explore Web Video? Posted: 09 Nov 2010 12:13 PM PST YouTube will begin testing a new feature Wednesday evening that gives users the ability to explore broad topics and search terms through suggested searches. YouTube Topics, which will be available in TestTube, is essentially a dynamic cloud of suggested topics to explore based on your searches. For example, if you look for “supersonic,” YouTube will deliver a string of related topics at the top of the page. In the case of “supersonic,” you might get “fighter jet” or “sonic boom.” The feature appears as an “Explore” on every search engine results page, just below the search box and above the search results. It displays a list of approximately a half dozen related topics, most with a very faint background color. When you hover over a topic, you are given the option to perform a search. Clicking on it initiates the search. One other interesting feature of YouTube Topics is the “addition” button. A plus sign is next to all of these related topics. Clicking on it will add that search term to your current query and initiate a new search. Google cited “fighter jet” as an example of when you might want to use this feature. One of the related search queries is “Bugatti Veyron,” due to the popularity of several YouTube videos where the two machines race each other. Clicking the plus button will initiate a search for “fighter jet bugatti veyron.” It’s a more advanced way to explore and customize your searches. The problem YouTube is trying to solve is the issue of discovery. What if a user types in “lol” or “cars” as his or her search term? Both are very broad topics, making it unlikely that YouTube will deliver the right search results on the first try. That’s where Topics is supposed to help; it utilizes algorithmic data from tags, YouTube comments and more. YouTube engineer Palash Nandy calls it “conceptual autocomplete,” a system that helps complete your search by suggesting the topics you most likely wanted. YouTube Topics is intriguing as a concept, and we think it has the potential to be very useful. However, this type of feature might be a bit too advanced for the average user who just wants to browse, which may be something the online video juggernaut has to address in future releases. The current interface (a line of suggested topic at the top of the page) might not be the ideal way of delivering information to these casual users. It’s still unclear who this feature was built for; I don’t even think YouTube knows quite yet. The company just knows it needs to give users a better way to explore broad topics. YouTube Topics is a good start. Reviews: Google, YouTube More About: Google, Search, youtube, YouTube Topics For more Web Video coverage: Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Web Video channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Mobile Music: Top 4 Streaming Services Compared Posted: 09 Nov 2010 12:11 PM PST The Digital Entertainment Series is supported by the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10, the seriously entertaining smartphone that knows how to have fun. Check it out here. One of the best trends of 2010 was the rise in prominence of mobile applications for popular online music services. Companies like Pandora have had mobile apps for some time, but the past year has seen services like MOG, Rdio and Spotify (whose mobile apps are, admittedly, a bit more than a year old) get into the game as well. The distinction here is that, unlike Pandora, these other services enable listeners to carry with them their entire music libraries, allowing for listening to specific songs, albums or artists, on demand. Contrary to the iTunes approach, where listeners must pay for each track or album, they all function on the “all you can eat” subscription model. Since Android and iOS devices are finding their ways into the hands of more and more music lovers, we’ve decided to take a look how the mobile apps for these services stack up. 1. Pandora In some sense, Pandora is among the purest of music experiences. It replicates radio in a way most of us would have paid for back in the day of FM dominance. Through its underlying Music Genome Project, Pandora has mapped the attributes of about 1 million songs. So when you say, “I like ‘We Used to Wait,’ by Arcade Fire,” Pandora will create a station comprised of tracks with similar sequencing that usually plays close to your tastes. Its mobile application adheres to these principles, enabling you to both queue previously created stations and create new ones. Like its wired services, you can “like” and “dislike” tracks to further personalize your listening experience. The downside is that it doesn’t exactly allow you to listen to specific tracks, but it is unparalleled when it comes to easy listening — and, no, I don’t mean the “easy listening” genre, though you can probably get it on Pandora too, if you’re into that sort of thing. Most Pandora users opt for the free version, which allows 12 tracks to be skipped over 24 hours, and 40 hours of use per month. Listeners can sign up for the premium version for $36 per year. Pandora One provides unlimited ad-free listening, along with higher bit-rate (better quality) audio. It’s not a necessity, but if you like the service, it’s a nice upgrade. It’s available on Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre and Windows Mobile 6. Added bonus: If you own a TV, Blu-ray player or any other streaming device, Pandora is probably on it. 2. Rdio Rdio (pronounced ar-dee-oh) is the newest kid on the subscription block, but it was founded by two guys who know how to disrupt industries. Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis are probably best known for founding Skype, but before voice messaging service existed, the duo created a peer-to-peer file sharing service called Kazaa, where (mostly illegal) music and other files flowed freely. Fortunately, Rdio is a legitimate service with actual label relationships. For about $10 per month, users can utilize the Rdio mobile apps, which are available for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 — which was just announced on Monday. The mobile service brings with it all of the features found on its desktop service (which costs $5 per month), but allows the convenience of listening on the go, even when there isn’t a mobile connection. Through its sync-to-mobile feature, listeners can download music directly to their mobile devices for playback anywhere. Rdio has a fairly comprehensive database of tracks, but there are definitely gaps, particularly with some of the more indie faire. For instance, the service only features one album from Sufjan Stevens (Seven Swans), but it has most of Radiohead’s catalog. It also suffers from a less than intuitive interface across all of its mobile devices. But because the service launched publicly just a few months ago, these factors can be partially overlooked. We can’t, however, recommend it just yet. 3. Spotify Currently available only in Europe, Spotify has become something of an underdog in the space, despite having been around longer than many of its competitors. The problem is that Spotify has been threatening to launch in the U.S., but has so far failed to do so. Spotify does boast a more comprehensive collection than Rdio (all of Sufjan Stevens’ albums are here, as well as Radiohead, The Pixies and many of the other bands I’ve sought). At £10 (about $16) per month for its full mobile service, it also costs considerably more than its competitors. Having been around for a couple of years has enabled Spotify to refine its mobile applications. Like Rdio, you can sync tracks to your device for offline listening. You can also opt for 320Kbps music for higher quality listening. It’s also available for Android, iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile 6 and Sonos. Despite the price, if you’re in Europe, there isn’t a better option and for what it’s worth, it is a good option — it’s just not our favorite. 4. MOG MOG has actually been around since 2005, but not in its current incarnation. Back then, it was essentially a social network built around music. Members would catalog their collections, wax poetic about how music made them feel and share 30-second clips with their friends. These days it’s still home to some of the features that it was built on, but the focus now rests strongly on its subscription service. It’s home to about 10 million songs (though it too only has Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans), all of which are available through its mobile apps. While the MOG Basic online service is available for $5, you won’t be able to use its mobile apps without MOG Primo. The premium service costs $10 per month and allows both song caching for offline playback and 320Kbps audio. It’s currently only available for Android and iPhone, but both apps are well built. MOG’s ease of use combined with its comprehensive and constantly updated database and affordable subscription make it our current top pick in the mobile music space. Added bonus: MOG is available for Roku, so you can easily stream music collections through your home theater. Which music streaming services do you prefer? Let us know in the comments. Series Supported by Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 The Digital Entertainment Series is supported by the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10, the seriously entertaining smartphone that knows how to have fun. Check it out here. Reviews: Android, BlackBerry Rocks!, Pandora, Skype, Sonos, Spotify, Symbian S60, Windows Phone 7, iTunes More About: Digital Entertainment Series, mobile app, mobile application, mobile applications, mobile apps, mobile music, MOG, music, pandora, rdio, spotify For more Mobile coverage: Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Mobile channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

New Android App Controls YouTube on Your TV Posted: 09 Nov 2010 12:03 PM PST YouTube’s made-for-TV product, YouTube Leanback, now has a complementary remote control in the form of a mobile application: YouTube Remote for Android. The Android application is designed to drastically improve how users engage with YouTube from the comfort of their couches. “It’s like having an invisible HDMI cable from your phone to the television,” says Senior Product Manager Kuan Yong. The application, now available in the Android Marketplace for U.S. consumers, allows users to browse and play videos, control television volume and essentially do everything the YouTube Leanback product supports, but from their mobile handset. YouTube Remote is starting its life as a mobile application for Android only. The same functionalities available in the Android application, however, are said to be in the works for the standard YouTube mobile site and will soon be accessible to all smartphone users. YouTube collaborative programming is also on the roadmap for YouTube Remote, according to Senior Engineering Manager Ramesh Sarukkai. Eventually, the application will allow multiple individuals to control and queue up videos for the Leanback experience. Both Yong and Sarukkai describe YouTube Remote as one part of a larger real-time communication platform where all varities of YouTube devices can talk to one another seamlessly. The beta application is a smart enhancement to the Leanback product, and one that should help to sell the value and convenience of having YouTube in the living room via Google TV. Image courtesy of Flickr, D.Reichardt Reviews: Android, Flickr, YouTube More About: android, google tv, Mobile 2.0, youtube, YouTube Leanback, youtube remote For more Mobile coverage: Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Mobile channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Kanye West Performs “Gold Digger” on Delta Flight [VIDEO] Posted: 09 Nov 2010 11:22 AM PST And so continues Kanye West’s “Tour of Random Places.” Last Friday, passengers on a Delta flight from Minneapolis to New York were privy to an impromptu performance by the famous rapper, who took to the PA to serenade jet setters with songs like “Gold Digger” and “Good Life.” That’s almost as good as free Wi-Fi. Like everything else West touches (see: Twitter), the above video of the very special performance has been making its way across the web post haste these past few days — much like a vid of the rapper freestyling during a visit to Twitter headquarters a few months back, as well as another video of a similar gig at Facebook. Might we suggest Mashable HQ for your next impromptu performance, Mr. West? Just a thought… [via MTV] Image courtesy of Flickr, MTV Music Reviews: Flickr, Twitter More About: kanye west, music, twitter, video, viral video, youtube For more Web Video coverage: Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Web Video channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Zagat Launches Interactive Food Truck Finder Posted: 09 Nov 2010 10:54 AM PST This year, influential foodie guide Zagat added food carts to its list of must-go eateries. Today the guide made finding said trucks easier with the launch of Zagat Food Trucks, a web app that lets you pinpoint the locations of all your favorite fast food. The map, which was created by creative interactive agency JESS3 and announced on Zagat’s blog today, allows hungry folks to see all the trucks in their vicinity, complete with reviews, ratings and exact location. One can also drill down by cuisine and sort by ratings, as well as rate and review trucks. Trucks will also be able to make their wandering whereabouts known by tweeting their locations to @ZagatTrucks, which automatically updates the app. While there’s no mobile app version of this service, users can follow the action on their mobile browsers. The tool isn’t yet complete (which is natural, considering it’s in beta). While I could find a bevy of trucks around Mashable HQ, a search for mobile eateries around the Bedford area of Williamsburg, Brooklyn (a.k.a. home of tacos trucks and ice cream mobiles galore), came up cold. The service is also currently New York-only. Still, Zagat has informed us that more than 50 trucks will be added by the end of the year, and diners can also suggest new trucks by e-mailing zagattrucks@zagat.com. Zagat Food Truck isn’t the only mobile food finder in the location realm — Cartspotting (from the folks at Foodspotting) offers a pretty handy cart-finder as well. Reviews: Mashable More About: Food, Mobile 2.0, social media, twitter, zagat For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

HOW TO: Become a YouTube Sensation Posted: 09 Nov 2010 10:48 AM PST The Digital Influencers Series is supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE). To learn how to measure influence, visit http://waggeneredstrom.com/driveinfluence. Becoming a hit on YouTube is no easy task. Actually, correction: Becoming a hit on YouTube on purpose is no easy task. The popular video platform is loaded with viral videos of people doing silly or embarrassing things. But how do you get millions of followers like NigaHiga or RayWilliamJohnson? How do you become a YouTube sensation? There are some easy tips like, “do the best work you can,” and “keep at it,” but we decided to chat with a rising YouTube star, DeStorm Powers, to figure out just how he did it and what tricks you can put into practice. DeStorm, a multi-talented one-man band, runs the channel DeStorm with more than half a million subscribers. Offering a mix of rap, R&B, talk show, art and some pretty slick editing, DeStorm is part of a first generation of “YouTubers” who managed to monetize their videos. Read on for DeStorm’s story and his tips on becoming a YouTube star. Making Music Pleasing to the Eye DeStorm came to New York by way of Baltimore to be an intern and ghost writer for established record labels. He spent most of his time helping write songs while producing instrumentals, writing jingles, and trying to hustle his own music. After limited success, he saw YouTube as a way to set himself apart. “I was just using [YouTube] as a storage space and then I read an article or two about a few YouTubers and found out that people were actually using YouTube to post videos… I thought, ‘Ok, this is a way I can get my voice heard,’ ” DeStorm said. But the platform brought it’s own challenges: “YouTube is a video site, not just an audio site. If people wanted to hear you, they would just turn on the radio. I think people come to YouTube not just for the ear, but the eyes… If I find a way to make the music pleasurable for the eye, that would be something worth doing on the site,” DeStorm said. It’s an Investment Visuals matter, but beautiful visuals won’t appear on their own. High quality YouTube videos require an investment of both money and time. DeStorm suggested picking up a decent camera that can shoot in HD and the proper mics if you have the cash. That investment helped DeStorm get extra subscribers. “I got a better camera, I shot in HD. Even if you don’t like it, you can sit through it: ‘I may not like the music, but he did entertain me for a while.’ ” Aim to push out at least two videos a week, though the sweet spot is probably closer to three or four in order to keep your numbers up. Although DeStorm is at a point where he can be a full-time YouTuber (given the sponsorships and guest stars, it’s safe to assume he’s doing alright), he admits it takes a long time to get there. DeStorm quit his job as a personal trainer in order to devote himself to YouTube, to make the videos and edit them as professionally as he could. Despite eating instant noodles and missing bill payments, DeStorm remembers thinking, “If I can just grind it out, I can get to a place where I can live.” Now he gets upset if he gets less than 2,000 followers in one day. The grinding is paying off. Promote Via Other Networks If you want to make it on YouTube, you are probably familiar with social media and probably have Twitter and Facebook accounts (who doesn’t, right?). “Everything has to funnel to one direction, you can’t be all over the place,” DeStorm said. “When I’m on Facebook, I’m using that for YouTube. When I’m on Twitter, I’m using that for YouTube.” That kind of focus can help consolidate your identity to just one platform and make sure your fans are thinking of you as a YouTuber first and foremost. DeStorm sees YouTube as as subculture to Facebook, which has a much more diverse, dedicated user base. By branching out on popular social networks, you can grab viewers that might not otherwise find you through YouTube itself. DeStorm’s Facebook following also means that when he posts a new video, he has a better shot of hitting YouTube’s front page. The time spent on other networks can directly help your channel. Find New Audiences With Different Content While social networks can help you find new audiences you wouldn’t necessarily reach otherwise, make sure you’re using those sites to reach out with your videos. When DeStorm wanted to reach an older crowd, he did music videos based on funk, soul, or with nostalgic references to old Sonic the Hedgehog games or Double Dragon. Some of his recent art-based, storytelling videos are geared toward a younger crowd. “It helps to have variety,” DeStorm said. “People can pick and choose. I can give different tools to people, depending on what they like.” It’s also possible to grow by gaming the system: “The easy way, especially for a musician, is to spoof something really popular,” DeStorm said. “Or you can go the route to drop a music video before that music video [actually] drops.” This means that people looking for the actual video will stumble upon your fake version. If you put in the time, as in the “Power Hour” example below, it can really boost your presence. But while gaming the system can build numbers quickly, it can ultimately hurt your channel in the long run. “I thought about it a lot of times because it’s easy to do that and blow up, but you really don’t get any respect for that,” DeStorm said. Stop, Collaborate and Listen Yup, that’s Vanilla Ice and the lyric actually applies to figuring out a general game plan for YouTube success. Stop: “Your main goal is to become a YouTube partner,” DeStorm said. “You have to do your research, know what those limits are.” Before you post, look up what is required to become a partner and make some money off of your videos. The requirements usually aren’t too strenuous and should give a good metric of where you should be to start. Collaborations are an important way to boost your followers. DeStorm advised finding other YouTubers with similar amounts of subscribers and collaborating on videos: “Keep moving up, have good ideas and keep growing that way, pulling yourself through the charts.” If you’re not a musician, find people who you can write comedy skits with, or bring them on to chat about events that fit with your channel. Put extra time into any video you’re pitching to collaborate: “You only got one shot, you can’t just say this is a skeleton [idea]. You need to shoot it, hardcore.” Listen for topics that are trending on the Internet and find unique, creative ways to cover them. That’s part of the success of the Gregory Brothers (the YouTubers behind Auto-Tune the News). By parodying current events they were able to approach trending topics in a new, often hilarious way. “I used to look at trending topics, and as soon as I [saw] them I would run home and write about it,” DeStorm said, “because people wanted to see what you’re doing, and they’ll click on that and go to your channel.” Basic tips still also apply: Make sure to provide links in your videos so viewers can keep watching, make sure you put your face and name somewhere in the video so viewers can recognize you, and make sure you look at the camera — viewers like to think you’re talking to them rather than reading off a script. What’s Next DeStorm’s channel continues to grow at a rapid pace and he hopes to keep that going. Now in L.A., he’s hoping to eventually break into television while keeping his channel alive. He was able to hint at some major guest collaborations in the coming weeks that should hopefully put into practice all the tips he shared with us. While YouTube may still be considered a Wild West of the digital world, that also means it’s full of possibility. “I think that the Internet is the new world of media,” DeStorm said. “People should definitely try to get involved, because it’s not too late. In some years, it’s going to be impossible to blow up on YouTube, so you might want to get your camera now.” What do you think of DeStorm’s advice and his path to gaining more than half a million subscribers? What has worked for you or what would you do differently? Let us know in the comments below. Series Supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide The Digital Influencers Series is supported by Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE). How do you measure your brand's influence in fast-moving online mediums? Winning and maintaining social influence demands ongoing measurement of conversations, trends and responses. Waggener Edstrom Worldwide finds the most influential voices that have the biggest impact on campaigns. To learn how to measure influence, visit http://waggeneredstrom.com/driveinfluence. More Video Resources from Mashable: - HOW TO: Start Your Own Internet Talk Show - 4 People Who Let the Crowd Control Their Destiny - 3 Things Any Video Needs to Go Viral - 10 Memorable Viral Videos of 2010 - 10 Killer Tips for Creating a Branded YouTube Channel Reviews: Facebook, Internet, Twitter, YouTube, aim, news More About: channel, destorm, destorm powers, Digital Influencers Series, how to, most subscribed, video, web video, youtube For more Web Video coverage: Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Web Video channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

“Angry Birds” For Android Gets a Massive Update Posted: 09 Nov 2010 10:24 AM PST Rovio, the team behind the insanely popular Angry Birds mobile games, has just released its first big update for Angry Birds for Android. Since its release last month, Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 2 million times for Android devices. The new update not only provides some bug fixes, but in true Angry Birds fashion, offers up a serving of new content as well. Angry Birds 1.4.3 for Android now supports QVGA graphics — meaning users who have compact screens can now play the game without issue on their phones. The update also fixes some problems some users had running Angry Birds on Android 1.6, including blank screens and white textures. The big news, however, is the inclusion of the episode “The Big Setup.” This is the most recent Angry Birds episode series and it brings Angry Birds for Android up to 195 total levels, which is on-par with Angry Birds for the iPhone and iPad. The levels in “The Big Setup” introduce bigger birds, more puzzles and more hidden golden eggs. Rovio isn’t content with just selling Angry Birds games, it’s also decided to sell Angry Birds plush toys. The plush toys are 8 inches, come in five different bird types and are available for pre-order now. Each plush is $14.99 and shipments will start in December. If you haven’t already downloaded Angry Birds from the Android Market from GetJar, you’re running out of excuses. Reviews: Android, Android Market, Angry Birds, iPhone More About: Android apps, angry birds, angry birds android, games, rovio For more Mobile coverage: Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Mobile channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Movieclips.com Raises $3 Million to Help Bring Movie Clips to the Masses Posted: 09 Nov 2010 10:11 AM PST Movieclips.com, a site that lets you legally watch, share and embed movie clips all over the world, just announced its first round of institutional funding, a Series A for $3 million. Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures — one of the investors in this round — will be joining the Movieclips board of directors. Movieclips plans to use this round to continue investing in and expanding its offerings of movie discovery and curation tools. We spoke with Movieclips co-founder Zach James about the round, some of the new discovery features Movieclips has already put into place, as well as some plans for the future. When Movieclips launched last December, we loved the service because it filled a void: It offered free, legal movie clips that users could watch, share and embed in their own blogs. In March, Movieclips upped the ante even more by making all of its content viewable worldwide. Movieclips now has the largest collection of licensed Hollywood movie clips on the web — these scenes have been tagged with more than 1,000 data points for things like actor, genre, mood, lines of dialogue, director, theme and more. This information can be really useful as a discovery tool. Movieclips has had this data for quite some time, but much of it wasn’t really open to users. Now, when you visit a movie clip or you look at a selection of clips from a film, you also get access to a ton of organized related clips. These clips are easy to browse and are in categories like actor, director, primary genre, studio, prop, setting and more. Since launching this new feature, pageviews have increased by more than 200%. Additionally, James told us that Movieclips now opens up its data feeds for these categories and tags to any developer who wants to use them. These content feeds are massive and are finely distilled down into all kind of interesting categories. You can subscribe to a feed for a certain actor, a certain action, a producer, a prop and more. You can then use these feeds to fill out your own site or web app. Mashups and Top 10 Lists Movieclips is also spending time — and James tells us, will be continuing to invest — in curating content by creating themed mashups and top 10 lists. Movieclips employs some talented editors that scroll through all the footage they have from the films in its collection to make this content. Check out this mashup with the uber-awesome theme, “Just Die Already:” Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com You can also check out this Top 10 list of “Meltdowns” (warning, adult language in some of these hilarious scenes): Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com Making it Easier to Buy or Watch James told us that Movieclips is also working on making it easier to go from watching the clip to actually watching a movie. You can now add a movie to your Netflix queue — either Instant or DVD — with one click. If a film isn’t available on the Instant Queue, you’ll get a little note. The next step is to easily integrate the Movieclips.com experience into set-top boxes and Internet TVs. James wouldn’t give us the specific details on that front, except to say it is something the company is very interested in pursuing. Movieclips.com is a strong discovery platform — integrating the offering with other streaming or purchasing services makes a ton of sense. A Movieclips.com Boxee or Roku app, as an example, would be fantastic. Movieclips.com is also working on making its video HTML5 friendly for mobile and tablet watching. Again, James wouldn’t give us too many specifics on this, except to say it’s in the works. Like Hulu or Vevo, But From Regular Joes Movieclips.com, as a service, is similar to Hulu and VEVO. It’s a collection of legal clips that can be shared, embedded and watched online. The clips are from A-list movies and studios, and the library is growing all the time. The big difference is that unlike Vevo and Hulu, which had corporate backings and the partnership of the very same studios they license content from, Movieclips.com is not a billion-dollar company. It’s a company that just closed its first round and isn’t even in Silicon Valley — it’s in Santa Monica. The fact that outsiders have been able to go through the red tape and create not just a legal, licensed library of movie clips — but a library that is accessible, tagged and usable by everyone — is something we think is pretty special. Based on the selection of clips, the site’s featureset and its plans for the future, it is clear the people behind Movieclips.com love movies. Reviews: Boxee, Hulu More About: Film, hulu, movieclips, movieclips.com, Movies, vevo, youtube For more Business coverage: Follow Mashable Business on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Business channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Join Mashable’s Support Community on GetSatisfaction Posted: 09 Nov 2010 09:39 AM PST To better support our readers and fans, we’ve created a Mashable support community on GetSatisfaction. This is a community you can join to have your questions about Mashable content, products and events answered. It’s also a place for you to share ideas, report bugs or problems you’re having, and of course offer any praises. We’ve added eight Mashable-related products to give the community some structure, which include Mashable.com, Mashable Awards, Mashable Mobile Apps, Mashable Events, Mashable E-mail Newsletter, Mashable Jobs, Mashable Twitter Lists Directory and Mashable HQ. If you have a question, complaint, an idea or some general feedback, please check to see if someone has already posted something similar before posting so that we can avoid duplicates. We’ll have our team answering your questions and gathering your ideas. We’d love for you to jump in and help answer other people’s questions if you’re able to answer them. How You Can Participate 1. Join the community. 2. Submit questions, ideas, report problems, offer positive feedback. 3. Help answer other people’s questions. 4. Rate Mashable products. 5. Start by trying the search below: People-Powered Customer Service for Mashable Ask a question, share an idea, or report a problem. Get Satisfaction support network Reviews: Mashable More About: community, GetSatisfaction, mashable, support For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Live Video Chat With Rainn Wilson [CONTEST] Posted: 09 Nov 2010 09:12 AM PST Rainn Wilson has been feeding us laughs for years as loveable weirdo Dwight Schrute on The Office. Now he’s hoping to feed our souls — with pancakes? Turns out the actor is a pretty spiritual guy and is tapping into the web community with his site SoulPancake. It’s intended to provide a space for people to consider life’s big questions and explore why they believe what they believe. Mashable News Editor Brenna Ehrlich will hold a live video chat with Rainn on Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET. They’ll talk about the inspiration behind — as well as the mission of — SoulPancake, which is now a book. Rainn will also be taking your big life questions — and giving away his book. He’ll choose five reader questions to answer, and we’ll award the askers with a signed copy of SoulPancake. Join us during the live chat to see if your question is answered. How to Enter the Contest Tell us your big life question for Rainn Wilson Tweet @mashableHQ your question using #mashcontest OR Submit your question in the comments below OR Submit your question to our Mashable HQ Tumblr Submit your question by Wednesday, November 10 at 12 p.m. ET. Please use your real identity in the submission so that we may contact you via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook to let you know that you’ve won. We’ll announce the winners as their questions are asked during the live chat. The contest is limited to those 18 and older in the U.S. Image courtesy Eric Charbonneau and Vivien Killilea for WireImage. Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter More About: contest, Live Chat, rainn wilson For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

“The Washington Post” Comes to the iPad for Free Posted: 09 Nov 2010 08:36 AM PST The Washington Post’s iPad edition has arrived in the App Store, serving up its entire library of daily content for free — at least for now. The iPad edition [iTunes link] includes all of the news, opinion and feature stories, as well as photo galleries and videos, found on the publication’s website. The app renders in both vertical and horizontal mode. Readers can navigate through front-page sections as they would the online and print versions, or swipe to quickly tab between sections and articles. The format is not nearly as elegant as The Guardian’s edition for the iPad [iTunes link] — some of the images are painfully low-res, and awkwardly placed in some cases — but nevertheless, it is functional. Users can also download individual articles for offline reading, as well as share them via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. The app’s most novel feature is its Live Topics section, a curated section that combines top stories with relevant content from around the web — primarily related stories from other news sources — as well as conversation streams from select sources on Twitter and Facebook. Readers can join the discussion by tweeting and posting to Facebook directly from the app. The app will provide full access to The Washington Post until February 15, 2011, after which periods users can opt to subscribe to the iPad edition for $3.99 per month ($0.99 per month for print subscribers). Promo Commercial Featuring Bob Woodward Reviews: Facebook, Twitter More About: ipad, media, newspaper, washington post For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

HOW TO: Tastefully Use Social Media at Your Wedding Posted: 09 Nov 2010 08:34 AM PST The Wedding Tech Series is supported by Blue Nile's “Ring It. Sing It. Contest.” One lucky couple will win a perfect proposal in New York City. Enter by November 16 at Facebook.com/BlueNile. As social media becomes more and more a part of our lives, etiquette failures can occur when there are so few precedents. A wedding day is the perfect example of this. You want to share your special day with your social circle, especially those who can’t attend, but where do you draw the line? We’ve talked to experts in the wedding industry and a recent bride to try and establish the ground rules for tastefully using social media at your wedding. Check out their advice and let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. 1. Pre-Wedding Preparations Introducing wedding attendees online before the big day can help you avoid any day-of awkwardness. This will give people the chance to break the ice and virtually get to know a little about everyone else. “Help your wedding guests mix, mingle and stay in the loop with a private social network created just for engaged couples, like OneWed’s Wedding Pre-Party,” suggests Azure Nelson, the marketing manager and editorial director of OneWed. “Wedding Pre-Party allows wedding guests to see who’s invited to the wedding (and lets the singles scope potential hotties before they meet face-to-face), interact and post comments on a wall, upload photos from pre-wedding parties and post-wedding, and much more.” If you’d like to skip the specialized sites route, you could also create a pre-party on Facebook using its “Groups” functionality. This can be a clever way to avoid cluttering the news feeds of folks not invited to the wedding, both before and after the event. 2. Stay Offline During the Ceremony “We’ve all seen these goofballs that bring social media right to the forefront of their ‘I dos,’ and in my opinion, there’s nothing tasteful about this,” says Nelson. “Tastefully using social media at your wedding means incorporating it before and after the actual wedding. The wedding ceremony should be off limits.” There’s plenty of time during a wedding day to connect with the online world. Doing so during the ceremony is definitely not the right time for the principle players or even the guests. Mindy Howard of @TweetMyWedding has some advice for attendees: “Be polite. Don’t tweet when you should be participating and listening, specifically during the liturgy or the ceremony.” 3. Appoint a Chief Tweeter If you want your wedding to be recorded for posterity in 140-character posts, then let people know and even encourage them to get involved by creating a hashtag. “Tell your bridal party it’s OK to tweet!” says Howard. “Create a hashtag for sharing your event. This will make all tweets from your day easy to find later on and helps to create a feeling of celebration for your guests. “Print up some tented cards on your menu or program with the hashtag for your event and encourage your guests to send you their well wishes, touching moments and snap shots. These are moments that otherwise would have been missed.” You can take this even further by appointing a “Chief Tweeter” — or several — to document the day. “Have an Official Tweeter and Well Wishing Station — have one or more ‘Tweets of Honor.’ Have some technologically obsessed friends? This is a great job for them! These folks can quietly tweet from a corner as not to be obtrusive or can come out of the shadows and provide you with a full on social media guest book station,” says Howard. And you can even incorporate social media into the more traditional parts of the day. In addition to reading cards and messages out loud from family and friends that couldn’t make it, why not read messages from Facebook and Twitter too? “Have your Tweet of Honor compile some well wishes that have been tweeted out and share them during the toasts. This can be a very fun twist on the traditional toasting time,” suggests Howard. 4. Set Up a Social Media Station There’s a way to keep a traditional look and feel to a wedding celebration and still make room for social media. A “social media station” is a place where those who want to connect or comment online can do so, without forcing the issue onto the uninterested. “For the especially geeky — set up a station,” advises Howard. “Have a laptop, a projector and screen. Encourage guests to come by, tweet their well wishes and watch others’ tweets scroll over the screen.” This can also work for photos, as well as text-based communications. A live stream of photos from the event can be a fun way to engage people and encouraging sharing. “Ditch the tacky disposable cameras and set up a shared Flickr account so that guests can upload any photos they may take,” says Liene Stevens, former wedding planner and CEO of Splendid Communications. “This doesn’t replace hiring a professional photographer, of course, but it does allow you and your guests to share in their view of your wedding,” Stevens says. Jodie Welton, a founding partner of Connected PR who got married this summer, went down this route and had a huge projector showing images of the day for her evening reception, as well as a separate area for filming. “We thought it was important that the guests are absorbed in the wedding and that social media enhanced the experience, rather than distract from it. So, to keep it ‘away from the party’ we had a designated area for guests to be filmed,” explains Welton. “The DJ also took pictures and uploaded to Flickr there and then. As a nice touch, he then projected the Flickr stream across the walls so guests saw images of themselves. The DJ gave everyone the Flickr URL so all of the guests could view and add to it later.” 5. Live Stream for Those Who Can’t Make It Thanks to the wonders of modern tech, nowadays you can share your special moments with people who can’t make it in person. Ustream is one such site that can help you share your ceremony with those well-wishing from afar. “Live weddings give our users an opportunity to experience Ustream in a completely new way. It’s very exciting to see our broadcasters offer unfiltered access to the best moments of their lives. That’s one of the many reasons we’re here,” says Ustream’s Tony Riggins. Howard notes it’s a particularly useful option for anyone getting married abroad or far from home. “The use of Ustream to share (publicly or privately) your day live online for friends and family that cannot make it to your ceremony is especially useful for those having destination weddings. If Great Grandmother cannot make it, she can still virtually attend and share in your joy,” Howard says. And don’t think this means you’re spilling private moments all over the web; there are ways to make this a private process, Stevens points out: “If you have loved ones who are unable to attend the wedding, collaborate with your videographer on showing a live feed of the ceremony via Ustream or another online video streaming service. You can make these password protected if you’d like, so that you can share your joy only with people you know and not random Internet strangers.” Welton streamed some of her special day to far-flung elderly relatives, and even got them involved in the speeches: “Some of my family in Italy couldn’t make it to our wedding and we wanted them to get a sense of our big day. Being able to stream live video and pictures meant they could get a more authentic sense of the atmosphere. Amazingly, they even broadcast a live message (they are in their 80s!) after the speeches.” 6. Don’t Forget to Enjoy the Moment “Changing a Facebook status from engaged to married just after the vows is a growing trend, but don’t miss taking in those moments with the people actually there with you. Put down the phone and enjoy the company of those who came to celebrate with you,” says Stevens. You only get one wedding day — if things go as planned, anyway — so don’t waste any precious moments you could be interacting with real-life people. Rest assured anyone who is following your day online will certainly understand your priorities. “When you’re one of the major participants, you need to unplug for the day and focus on the people who are actually there with you. Weddings go by in a flash anyway, and you don’t want to sacrifice seeing your crazy Uncle Wally doing The Worm because you’re crafting some clever tweet. Leave that to your guests,” says Sally Kilbridge, BRIDES deputy editor. “In fact, part of the fun of weddings nowadays is seeing how fast they can make that video of Uncle Wally go viral.” That, of course, is a whole other story… Series Supported by Blue Nile The Wedding Tech Series is supported by Blue Nile's “Ring It. Sing It. Contest.” Enter to win a New York Dream Proposal and diamond engagement ring (to propose to her in New York on November 29 live at the NASDAQ MarketSite), or a personal song performed by Green River Ordinance. Visit Blue Nile or download the Blue Nile iPhone app to find the perfect jewelry gift this holiday season. More Wedding-Related Resources from Mashable: - Social Media Weddings: 4 Tips From the Pros - 12 Tech Toys for a Geeked-Out Wedding - Top 10 Geekiest Marriage Proposals - Top 10 Wedding Dance Videos on YouTube - HOW TO: Plan a DIY Wedding Using Social Media Images courtesy of iStockphoto — sharpen1234, Flickr — Print North East, Simon Shaw Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Internet, Twitter, iStockphoto, ustream More About: advice, facebook, flickr, how to, List, Lists, social media, twitter, wedding, Wedding Tech Series, weddings For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Adobe Audition Comes to the Mac Posted: 09 Nov 2010 08:16 AM PST Adobe has announced that the public beta of Adobe Audition, its professional audio editing suite, is now available for Mac OS X. Adobe Audition has been available for Windows since 2003 (when Adobe acquired the Windows program, Cool Edit Pro) but this beta marks its first appearance on the Mac. Audition is a digital audio workstation, similar to Pro Tools or Logic Pro. Adobe Audition for Mac boasts a fast new audio playback engine, native multi-channel support for 5.1 surround sound, noise reduction capabilities and audio effects like de-hummers and volume leveling. In a company announcement, Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager for Dynamic Media at Adobe, said Audition for Mac is part of an ongoing mission to provide “industry leading, cross-platform content creation tools for creative professionals.” Mac users can download the beta version of Adobe Audition at labs.adobe.com/technologies/audition. The program requires an Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.5.7 or Mac OS X 10.6. There is no serial number or activation for this download, but it will expire when the beta period ends. Adobe also offers Adobe Soundbooth, its audio package for users that are not audio professionals. In other words, it’s more of a consumer-grade tool. On its FAQ page, Adobe says that one priority of bringing Audition to the Mac is to improve workflows by providing solid integration with Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe has put a lot of work into making Premiere Pro more competitive with Apple’s Final Cut Studio — especially in CS5. In my own experience (which isn’t in a professional capacity, but does include multi-track, multi-source editing), I’ve found Premiere Pro CS5 for Mac to be better and more efficient than Final Cut Studio in many arenas. However, while Final Cut Studio can easily integrate with Logic Pro and Avid’s Media Composer can integrate with Pro Tools, Premiere Pro for Mac lacks its own professional audio component. With Audition for Mac, that gap is now filled. It’s exciting to see Adobe bring its professional audio toolset to Mac OS X. We look forward to bugging our audio professional friends to see how it stacks up against the competition, especially in Adobe-laden workflows. More About: adobe, adobe audition, audio applications, mac apps, mac software, professional audio For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

OK Go Gets Animated in Its Newest Video Posted: 09 Nov 2010 07:48 AM PST Indie band and YouTube darlings OK Go have a new video out today, and it’s a bit more animated than usual — in that it’s actually animated. “Last Leaf,” which premiered today on the band’s MySpace page, was made possible in part by Samsung, who spurred the creation of the video by asking, “What’s your next project?” The band told the electronics company that it wanted to work with Nadeem Mazen and Ali Mohammad, founders of Serious Business Design, on a sketchy concept — literally. Samsung then furnished the guys with a Samsung NX100 camera, with which the project was shot (each second of the video is a sequence of 15 photographs). Geoff Mcfetridge, founder of Champion Graphics, provided the animation itself. You can check out some behind-the-scenes footage on Samsung’s website. Like all other videos off of OK Go’s newest disc, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, “Last Leaf” is embeddable, a trend that started after controversy surrounding the first video for their song "This Too Shall Pass.” The first iteration of the video premiered several months ago with embeds disabled by then-label EMI and YouTube. The band released another, embeddable video for the song about a month later with help from State Farm, and left EMI soon after to start its own label, Paracadute Recordings. Since cutting ties (which was likely a smart move considering recent turmoil), the band has been doing exceedingly well. The State Farm version of “This Too Shall Pass” (featuring a kick-ass Rube Goldberg machine) has been viewed more than 18 million times to date, and Of the Blue Colour of the Sky debuted in the Top 40 of The Billboard 200. And don’t forget the band’s Webby for Film & Video Artist of the Year. Take a look at OK Go’s new vid above and let us know what you think in the comments. Personally, I think it’s a lovely little jam that sets a perfectly autumnal mood. Reviews: YouTube More About: EMI, music, OK Go, viral video, youtube For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Social Media’s Impact on the Midterm Elections [INFOGRAPHICS] Posted: 09 Nov 2010 07:27 AM PST Anthony Calabrese is a journalist based in Washington, D.C., who specializes in digital storytelling. He is a contributor to MediaShift where he writes about data visualization and online journalism. You can follow him on Twitter @2mrw. Social media is changing the face of democracy in the U.S., and Facebook is leading the way. The 2010 congressional elections were just the latest example of how the social web is driving real-world change in ways the founding fathers never dreamed of. On Facebook, more than 12 million people used the "I voted" button this year compared with the 5.4 million who used it in 2008, according to data from Facebook’s U.S. Politics Page. To put these numbers in perspective, early estimates from the United States Elections Project at George Mason University show that nearly 88 million Americans voted last Tuesday. The Facebook Data Team used profile information to produce some interesting insights on Election Day turnout. "Looking at these data across a number of dimensions offers insight into what types of people decided to vote, when they went to the polls, and which factors may have influenced the election," the Data Team said. The world's largest social network also reported that in tracking 98 hotly contested races for House seats, 74% of candidates with the most Facebook fans won. Looking at 19 Senate races, 81% of those with more fans won. Before last week's elections, Republican Senate candidates held a significant social media advantage over their Democratic opponents. The infographics below illustrate the social media race in the Senate and the margin of victory. Online Innovation Reaches New Heights Not to be outdone, Foursquare, Google and Gowalla offered location-based services and election day goodies like the I Voted Badge, Google Election Center and a location-aware campaign toolkit. In addition to being a social indicator, Twitter was used extensively as a tool to report election results around the web and on cable news. The 2010 elections broke web traffic records, surpassing both the election of Barack Obama and the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners in peak pageviews per minute. Only the World Cup was more popular, according to Akamai's Net Usage Index for News. In the realm of search, Google provided fresh data on the most-searched candidates and the Project for Excellence in Journalism ranked the newsmakers of the 2010 election cycle. The infographic below shows who voters are searching for online and who is getting the most media attention. You can use the source data to learn more about social media and the elections or create your own data visualization. Do you think that social media played an important role in the midterms or is the phenomenon over-hyped? Share your thoughts in the comments. More Political Resources from Mashable: - The Future of Social Media and Politics - How the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" Nailed Social Media - Social Media: The New Battleground for Politics - How Brazil is Blazing a Trail for Electronic Democracy - How Political Campaigns Are Using Social Media for Real Results Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ermek Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Gowalla, Twitter, iStockphoto, news More About: data, facebook, Google, government, infographic, midterm elections, politics, social media, stats, twitter For more Social Media coverage: Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Media channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

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