Seesmic also includes a search capability for Twitter so that you can monitor names, hash tags, products, or anything in near real time. Imagine you are a product manager or competitive analyst and want to follow activity and sentiment about your products or competitors. Seesmic makes it easy.

Here is a screenshot. Note that you can arrange the columns in any order, resize them, individually scroll each one, and have as many columns open as you like. Also note the first two columns in the screenshot are from Twitter, the third from Facebook, and the fourth column from Twitter.

Seesmic is probably more well known for its super simple video chat service that allows you to capture video from your laptop or phone and immediately post it to the web. It allows video chats between multiple people that can

However comforting it might be to blame Southern California’s movie industry for unleashing Governor Terminator on the state’s economy, the real seeds of the current crisis were sewn further north, in the seemingly prosperous corporate parks of Silicon Valley. In fact, the dotcom boom and subsequent, inevitable bust are the real causes of our economic malaise. For while Californians were hit first, hardest and most directly by the rise of dotcom-style capitalism, the rest of us are soon to follow.

Put simply, California cannot afford to pay its bills because its tax base contracted at the same time as its investments tanked. Like any of us contending with the double-whammy of lower pay and shrinking portfolios, the state is getting slammed on both income and savings at the same time. Unable to secure credit, the state will instead be forced pay its bills to citizens and local governments with IOUs.

While the pundits point to real estate speculation and bank insolvencies as the chief cause of California–and the nation’s–financial distress, these are both direct results of the late 90’s explosion of computer innovation and Internet proliferation. That’s right: The Internet crashed the economy.

more….

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch Real Stream conference started with a panel of Ron Conway (Angel Investor) and John Borthwick (BetaWorks). Ron invested in Google at a $75M valuation. Valuation today is over $130B. That was just one of several home runs by Ron Conway. John Borthwick has invested in lots of Twitter style companies including Twitter, StockTwits, Bitly, and others. BetaWorks is an operating company that also invests in other companies.

Ron invests in people first, idea second, and then how much IP innovation they have. Ron is looking at lots of “real Time” investments. That means content that is being created spontaneously by everyone. That content can be categorized, manipulated, searched, managed, etc.

Mike Arrington says the dumbest thing Twitter could do is add friction (subscriptions) to an open process. Ron Conway says innovation is happening in Silicon Valley, not Sun Valley. This was a jab at the old media execs (John Malone,  RupertMurdoch, Barry Diller) meeting at Sun Valley this week.

Ron says Real Time apps like Twitter have brought lots of new content to the web. This new content will create a whole new industry. Real Time search will be big. Ron Conway believes this new wave of the  Real Time Web could be as big as the original dot com boom.

Top 10 monetization opportunities in Real Time from Ron Conway (More than $5B of revenue opportunities)

10. Lead generation – Twitter and other apps are great lead generators. Followers broadcast to their followers, etc.

9. Coupons – printed coupons is a huge business, even bigger on the RT web.

8. Analytics of the data – tons of RT data

Written by SHELLY BANJO

Consumers are paying closer attention to what they buy, how much they save, and where they invest. These resources can be a huge help. Even better, most of them are free.

It’s tougher than ever to plan your finances. But it’s also easier than ever to find help on the cheap.

There are a host of Web sites that help you lay out a budget and track your spending and investments. Some let you set up a plan for a long-term goal, like college or retirement, and others offer advice about where to put your money. And many of these services are free of charge.

To help you wade through all the choices, we scoured the Web to find some of the best online tools and got recommendations from personal-finance pros. Here’s a look at some of the best sites we turned up, in a range of categories.

1. Budgeting Your Money

The first and perhaps most effective step to managing your money online is signing up for basic budgeting sites such as Mint.com, from Mint Software Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.,

Written by Kevin Purdy

What’s inside Google’s just-announced Chrome Operating System? How does it work, exactly? Nobody outside Google knows. We can, however, build a dream operating system from the ground up, and that’s what we’re doing with some help from the hive mind.

We asked on Twitter what features users wanted to see in Google’s Linux-based, web-focused operating system, due to be released in code later this year, then on sponsored netbooks in the second half of 2010. We’ve compiled nine must-have features that we’d like to see from Google’s upcoming operating system here.

Speed, Speed, Speed

Just did this one on Tuesday evening, for the NY Tech Meet-Up. I was exhausted for this one, but it does manage to explain corporatism as an operating system gone awry.

Written by Sean Percival

In today’s modern world there are many things we take for granted, many things our fathers would have known how to do, and some others that might baffle them. Additionally, on average, Americans and European men are starting to get married older, meaning that there is now a need to be self-sufficient in things long-considered to be within the realm of the woman. Whether you’re out camping, or at home or work, there are some basic skills a man must possess. The following are fourteen of examples of these skills – if you don’t know them, you should learn them, or you may be caught unaware sooner than you think. If you can think of others, please leave them in the comments below.

Drive a Stick-Shift

Source

It’s a sad thought that more men, every day, are coming of age with absolutely no experience driving a stick-shift. To really

Written by Brandi Lynn

If I could have one superhero power it would be the ability to snap my fingers and get to any destination I could dream of. But I’m a mere mortal so I had to become a a wing-wearin’, heel-stomping, drink-slinging flight attendant.
People like asking the same questions over and over. My worst flight ever? Stuck with a passenger drunk off his socks. Favorite destination? Rome. Ever dated a pilot? Oh my god, NO.

But no one ever stops to ask me the question I’m dying to answer: What can a passenger do to annoy a flight attendant? So now it’s my turn. I present the 10 Most Annoying Passenger Habits.

10) Frowning Faces: I like smiles. I especially like them come row 40, so please, throw a smile my way. Sounds easy enough, right?

9) Misuse of Overhead Compartments: If you’re one of the first 10 passengers to board, shoving your jacket into the overhead bin is a total a-hole move. It’s

Web video is different - David Gale’s MTV division led the development of $5 Cover, a scripted reality show based on the music scene in Memphis, following upstart bands trying to make it in the city. The TV show airs Fridays on MTV. They have several other shows under development that will use the same formula; 8 minute web clips, half hour TV show, and potentially a feature length movie. This model requires a different approach to screen writing and story development. Mr.. Gale said the format works well for comedy, horror, and other forms because the audience expects to laugh every few minutes in a comedy, or see horror every couple minutes. Building the story from the ground up with a couple scenes in an 8 minute sequence works well for the web, and easily transitions to the 30 minute TV format. However, trying to work backwards from a 30 minute show and break it into web length clips doesn’t work so well, for obvious reasons.

The New York Times story says web video viewing trends are changing slowly;

“While online video is not going to replace

Web video is different - David Gale’s MTV division led the development of $5 Cover, a scripted reality show based on the music scene in Memphis, following upstart bands trying to make it in the city. The TV show airs Fridays on MTV. They have several other shows under development that will use the same formula; 8 minute web clips, half hour TV show, and potentially a feature length movie. This model requires a different approach to screen writing and story development. Mr.. Gale said the format works well for comedy, horror, and other forms because the audience expects to laugh every few minutes in a comedy, or see horror every couple minutes. Building the story from the ground up with a couple scenes in an 8 minute sequence works well for the web, and easily transitions to the 30 minute TV format. However, trying to work backwards from a 30 minute show and break it into web length clips doesn’t work so well, for obvious reasons.

The New York Times story says web video viewing trends are changing slowly;

“While online video is not going to replace

Written by Jim Rendon

1. “Good luck finding the best deal.”

When it comes to gas prices, most stations are branded — meaning the name of a major oil company hangs out front — and must buy gas from their proprietary company. They can’t shop around.

With a lock on sales, the oil companies charge each station a different price depending on various factors, such as the station’s competition and its location. That means a station might have to pay a lot more than one down the street, and that cost gets passed along to you.

Faced with such instability, Gainesville, Fla., resident Steven King plans ahead: “If I know I’m going out of town, I try not to buy gas, so I can fill up after I leave.” King says he can save 10 cents a gallon by purchasing gas on the road. You’d be similarly wise to shop around because with prices constantly in motion, the cheapest gas may not be at the same station every time.

2. “I hate it when gas prices go

Back to Life Inc. The Book

Watch Life Inc. the Movie

More Life Inc. Dispatches

For more information about Douglas Rushkoff’s book, “LIFE INC. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back” check out
lifeincorporated.net and the LIFE INC. 9min movie

The LIFE INC. Dispatch = Brief weekly videos encapsulating key concepts and ready strategies from Douglas Rushkoff’s LIFE INC. for de-corporatizing our lives, abandoning the speculative economy, and rebuilding both commerce and community from the bottom up.
You can also download an MP3 audio

Written by holytaco

The 4th of July is a time to spend with family and friends, celebrating the things that make America what it is: beer, meat, fireworks, and more beer…and boobs, also. And you’re pretty much guaranteed four of those five things on the 4th of July. Be warned, though: if you decide to spend your 4th of July with your loved ones, there are 7 Things that Will Definitely Happen at Your Family’s 4th of July Barbecue:

1. Your Uncle Will Get Sick from Eating Spoiled Potato Salad

Potato salad is the one thing that’s always left over at the end of a hot, fun-filled 4th of July. Why? Because potato salad was on sale, and everyone at the barbecue brought it as a side dish. Most normal people know that eating potato salad that’s been sitting in the sun all day is like holding a sweaty, nervous guy’s briefcase for him at the airport. But your uncle has been shooting bottle rockets at squirrels and pounding MGD all day, and now he’s

I confess it took me a while to figure out Twitter. I rarely use SMS or texting either. These mediums strike me as one way bursts of irrelevant chatter for the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) crowd. Twitter users have evolved from simple updates of what they had for breakfast to more insightful quotes, inspiration, and pointers to interesting pictures, videos, and web content. If you haven't seen or used Twitter check out this old (2007) screen shot (left) of a Twitter message from Dave Winer for an example of where it was, and one from yesterday (right) for where it is now.  

Written by Jordan Valinsky

Bored with Pearl, the cursing toddler landlord demanding rent money? Not amused by those cutesy pictures of cats with the baby-speak captions?

Maybe you need some fresh sources of Internet humor. The Web is full of clever blogs and funny sites, including many that collect amusing gags from users and find comedy in real life.

Click away from the cats and replenish your list of favorite bookmarks with these 10 new or lesser-known humor sites:

Awkward Family Photos

Snapping the perfect family photo creates stress for anyone involved. Should we go casual and wear blue jeans with polo shirts on a beach or be a bit crazy, wear matching outfits and — wait for it — lean toward the camera? Ah, choices. This user-powered blog highlights the most well, awkward, family photos submitted by its contributors. Just don’t show this to your mom for portrait suggestions.

Download a PDF of Scientific American Worldview (3.9 MB)

Although numerous broad regional rankings exist, often comparing the United States, Europe and Asia, this project's goal was to dig deeper into the innovation potential of individual nations and the multiple factors that should be taken into consideration. For example, size must be considered and

Unfortunately, the nose dive has also brought to light a whole bushel-load of corporate, business practices that underline, perhaps more pointedly than anyone would’ve expected, how money is the only God big business respects. Perhaps the best example of this is the story about how Goldman Sachs were betting against the long-term future of US corporate giant AIG, making money on their eventual demise and then further recouping from the US government’s bail-out of AIG (when AIG had to pay Goldman Sachs back all the money it owed them). Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Life Inc, told Bookmunch that he understands how people can be overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. ‘The problem is just too big,’ he writes in his book. ‘Concern becomes cynicism, cynicism becomes despair and despair becomes self-preservation. Maybe I can insulate my family from the problem.’ But there are things we can do.

more…

Here’s one of the places we got:

Let’s talk about technology. In terms of administering a shared goods-and-services system, the internet might be a good match. But it also seems that the internet, and machines and technology in general, can stand in place of actual relationships, and can be a stumbling block. How do you negotiate between those ideas?

The word that describes digital for me is discrete. For example, take sounds. With an actual sound, no matter how hard we zoom in, it’s still a real thing. There’s still more fidelity, more information to be found. If I scan or sample it, I’ve now translated that sound in the real world into a number. Something that was an event, in nature, in the world, is now a number. It’s a derivative of reality. That number encapsulates as many metrics and as much information about the sound as I’m capable of including, and I can then make copies of the number and manipulate them. So there’s greater choice in that way. But the only things the number can reproduce about that sound are the things I’ve told it to reproduce.

It only knows what it’s supposed to measure.

The reproduction process also involves a sampling rate, which necessarily leaves stuff out. Even if the sampling rate is so good, so super-mp3, that

A speedy recovery is highly unlikely given the financial conditions of American households, whose spending represents 70% of GDP. Household net worth has fallen more than 20% since its mid-2007 peak.

For more go to following LINKS:

C-Span video of the White House event.

"Every sector has been impacted by the current economic downturn, but high-tech centers will come out on top," says project director Ross C. DeVol. "In 2003, many said that the era of technology-based economic development was over. However, the industry defied the naysayers and grew rapidly in the following years, proving that regions that promote and sustain the vital inputs to a high-tech sector are best prepared to recover and generate broader stability and growth." According to the study, which ranks the top high-tech centers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, most of the top tech metros are well known – like Seattle, Cambridge, Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco. But there are many lesser-known regions that have made tremendous inroads in the past decade to build their technology assets, such as Toronto, Canada; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and even Baja California. The top-ten rankings for the preeminent high-tech metros in North America:

Written by DrewWilson

The admins of The Pirate Bay have stressed that in order for the Bay to stay alive, they need to adapt the site to a legitimate one, selling the site for $7.8 Million in the process. While some users showed their support for the infamous website, others are already jumping ship, demanding that their accounts be removed in the process. We were curious to know what alternatives there are out there these days and have come up with 5 alternative websites.

It seemed almost unfathomable right up to the announcement of the website being sold, but it has indeed happened. While sites like the once mighty SuprNova fell in it’s wake, The Pirate Bay stood proud long after other sites succumbed to pressure from copyright entities. The length the site lasted seemed like the site became very symbol of defiance toward the copyright industry as a whole. Really how many sites can be named that lasted as long as The Pirate Bay? To drive the point home, the admins even created a page of legal threats they received and included

USA Today says "Social Network Sites Work To Turn Users Into Profits" and summarizes the problem with this quote;

"Short of striking it rich with online ads or creating a new revenue stream, how can so many sites leverage their vast audiences? In many respects, it is the same query that dogged portal companies in the mid-1990s and search engines in the early '90s. Some were sold. Some went public. Some went belly up.

The ongoing challenge is to concoct a potion — be it through banner ads, premium subscriptions or licensing agreements — that no one has perfected. Facebook, crown jewel of the field, is valued at $15 billion but barely turns a profit."

CPM versus CPC - Big audiences are great but how you monetize them is the key to financial success. Google and the search companies are able to sell Cost Per Click (CPC) ads and command very high rates. Content sites and social networks don't have a search term to key off so they charge Cost Per Thousand (Mil) or CPM rates. In some cases it can take 1,000 page views to generate the same revenue as one click on an ad.

A penny for your thoughts? I talked to a Facebook App developer at the ReMix conference a few weeks ago. He told me his app is generating 300 million page views per month. Wow! Then I asked what

And while I’m glad people think there’s a book in this, I really do want them to know I’ve actually already written one. So it seems my fear of “over marketing” and thus distorting the purpose of my book has actually led to under-communicating its very existence. Live and learn.

I’m going to try erring on the other side and see what happens. Anyway, here is the link to the Life Inc Dispatches page. We’ll be creating a way to subscribe via rss and iTunes as soon as we can figure that part out. In the meantime, subscribing to the rss of this blog will certainly get you links to those dispatches when they come out. Here’s #1: “Crisis as Opportunity”

• Science and Technology Parks 3.0 - incremental change
• The Rise of Research Clouds - disruptive competition
• Dematerialized Innovation - research parks in decline

Download:

More business leaders are speaking out on the issues of innovation and competitiveness, a dialogue too often dominated by pundits, self proclaimed experts and politicians.

General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt speaking to the Economic Club of Detroit called for an American industrial renewal driven by emphasis on manufacturing and exports, investment in new technology and research and development, innovations in clean energy and affordable health care. American manufacturing can be reinvigorated through investment in research and development, infrastructure and training, and by fostering public-private partnerships. He called for the U.S. to set a target for manufacturing to account for 20% of total employment as part of a "dramatic industrial renewal" of America. "There is nothing predestined or inevitable about the industrial decline of the U.S., if we as a people are prepared to reverse it," he said. He said the country

"At the heart of U.S. economic success is really quite a simple fact: American companies are the best in the world, bar none, at turning new ideas into successful products and successful services. But how do we continue in every industry, from the automotive industry to the technology industry, how do we continue to be the best? And I think there are two things that are essential.

First, we really do have to deepen our commitment to innovation by investing more in research and taking a longer term view of the role that innovation plays in creating business success. Too many American companies I think have overemphasized – sounds like a funny thing to say – but overemphasized short-term profits over the kinds of long term investments in R&D which are necessary. And too many American companies failed to focus in on the type of business model innovation that really turns technology into successful, sustainable and profitable products.

The second thing we have to do, absolutely must do is provide a first-class education to everyone in this country. At a time when

Written by Smashing Editorial

Effective writing skills are to a writer what petrol is to a car. Like the petrol and car relationship, without solid skills writers cannot move ahead. These skills don’t come overnight, and they require patience and determination. You have to work smart and hard to acquire them. Only with experience, you can enter the realm of effective, always-in-demand writers.

Of course, effective writing requires a good command of the language in which you write or want to write. Once you have that command, you need to learn some tips and tricks so that you can have an edge over others in this hard-to-succeed world of writers. There are some gifted writers, granted. But gifted writers also need to polish their skills frequently in order to stay ahead of competition and earn their livelihood.

We collected over 50 useful and practical tools and resources that will help you to improve your writing skills. You will find copywriting blogs, dictionaries, references, teaching classes, articles, tools as well as related articles from other blogs. Something is missing? Please let us know in the comments to this post!

1. Grammar, Punctuation & Co.

Seattle's bid to lure Russell Investments from Tacoma is a losing strategy no matter who wins

By Jim Kastama and Lisa Brown

RECENTLY, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels offered Russell Investments a tax break if the global financial company will agree to leave Tacoma for Seattle.

Although we are confident Tacoma can hold its own in this contest, Nickels' overture demonstrates an economic-development strategy whose time is past — the poaching of businesses from one region to another. Moving a company 35 miles up the freeway is not economic growth.

Any city or state that believes it can grow only by luring companies with tax breaks will be left behind in today's increasingly competitive global economy. Businesses favor communities that are rich in intellectual capital, produce workers who are adaptable to quickly changing needs, and most of all, offer an environment with innovative people who can develop products or services that are a step ahead of the rest of the world.

Written by Zombologist

There was a great article on how to meet and woo Nerdy Girls and I’ve recently seen lots of posts on how to catch/date/seduce the female Geek.

But I haven’t seen a lot suggestions for the ladies on how to deal with the Geek Male.

Being a female Geek, I tend to approach my Geek Males a bit differently since I’m into the things they’re into.

Now, I’ll admit. I did ask for a little help with this one, as I am not male and perspective is key. So, with the help of @zombologist and tongue firmly in cheek, I offer:

5 Tips on Proper Geek Male Maintenance

1. Geek Males often work in fields that cause them to have to think a great deal and work long or irregular hours. This generally results in what I call