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Good Bloggers Make Good Neighbors, New Survey Shows

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:01:00 GMT

Back in the day, it was assumed that heavy Internet geeks were a bunch of basement-dwelling, trenchcoat-wearing, socially maladjusted introverts.

However, a new study from the Pew Internet Project shows that geeks, including IM users and bloggers, are more likely to help neighbors, get out of the house, volunteer, and behave as upstanding members of their IRL communities.

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One of the most interesting findings of the study completely neutralizes the stereotype of the antisocial tech geek. "Mobile phone use, internet use, frequency of use, or participating in social networking services, blogging, photo sharing, or instant messaging, was found to have no relationship with the likelihood of face-to-face contact with neighbors." That is, Internet geeks are as likely to know and speak to their neighbors as are non-geeks. Factors such as age, marital/cohabitation status, and gender have a much greater impact on local social activity, actually.

And although the study found that Internet users were less likely to rely on neighbors for help, its finding also tell us that frequent or dedicated Internet users are a mighty friendly and helpful bunch when it comes to giving support to neighbors. Bloggers are almost 80 percent more likely to do small favors for their neighbors than other groups, and they're 84 percent more likely to help a neighbor care for a family member, e.g., offer babysitting help. And while Internet users, including photo-sharing folks and IM fans, are more likely across the board to help and hang out with people in their neighborhood, the study also showed that Internet users are almost 50 less likely to lend neighbors money. Insert a pun about teaching a man to phish here.

Folks who use sites such as BuildingBulletins or NeighborGoods to connect with people who live near them are also more likely to engage with their community, especially in terms of actively discussing community issues, listening to a neighbor's problems, or helping a neighbor with chores or errands.

Bloggers and mobile phone users are also 72 percent more likely to belong to a local group or organization such as a charitable organization, a youth sports league, or a religious group. For example, an average single, white person with no children has a 40 percent chance of belonging to at least one local voluntary group. However, that chance increases to 54 percent if that person users a mobile device and 72 percent if that person is also a blogger and frequent Internet user.

Another fascinating set of findings completely negate the stereotypical image of Internet geeks as agoraphobic recluses. Internet and mobile users are far more likely than non-users to hit up coffee shops, parks, and restaurants in their communities. Internet users in general are around 50 percent more likely to find themselves in public places than non-users, and bloggers specifically are 60 percent more likely than non-bloggers to spend time in a public park.

The study concludes, "As with other local community activities, the relationship between Internet use and participation in public and semi-public spaces is likely a combination of self-selection and an outcome of internet use... The Internet may also enable visits to public spaces through opportunities to coordinate rendezvous and search for new places to visit."

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One Mobile App for Multiple Platforms Almost a Reality

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:04:00 GMT

Finally, it feels like the holy grail of mobile development is at hand. This problem has persisted since Microsoft released its Palm-sized PC operating system to compete with the Palm OS a decade ago: as a mobile developer, the cost of supporting multiple mobile platforms, each with a relatively small user base and massive development learning curve, has been huge. That finally seems to be changing.

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(This guest post was written by Elia Freedman.)

In the Beginning

When handheld computers went mainstream, developers had only one choice: Palm Pilot. Within five years, they had Symbian and Pocket PC (later Windows Mobile) to consider also. By 2009, there were no less than eight major operating systems for smartphones: two versions of Windows Mobile, two versions for Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, and webOS, not to mention traditional feature phones running various flavors of Java.

The Impact

Developers were forced to make the tough choice of which operating system to develop for. Making it harder, customers were scattered and were requesting versions of a variety of platforms, with no one platform controlling the market, unlike the desktop world. Until a few months ago, they had only one choice: develop for each platform independently, picking and choosing which to support, each with huge costs and unknown payback.

That, however, is changing. Developers now have three ways to develop cross-platform. And while these technologies are still in their early days, they will evolve rapidly.

HTML 5 and the Mobile Web

One option is to forgo installed applications altogether and develop mobile Web applications. HTML 5, with its access to local databases, makes this possible. There are two major obstacles to this strategy right now: first, ubiquity of HTML 5-enabled browsers and, second, a willingness among customers to accept it as a standard.

While the first will be solved with time and pressure from other OS platforms, the second is a bigger problem. The customer's willingness to accept Web-based applications is a psychological change that takes years to evolve. Device owners have been trained that cell phone connections are inherently unstable. In many places the connection disappears, and until that is resolved this mental adjustment cannot begin to take hold.

Flash

Adobe recently announced its push into the mobile space, with Flash-enabled browsers for most platforms and a Flash-to-iPhone-app compiler for Apple's smartphones and handhelds. This would allow developers to write all of their apps in Flash and then deploy on multiple mobile browsers and the iPhone via a compiled application.

This still suffers from many of the same disadvantages of HTML 5, because it requires a psychological change in customers to accept running apps in the browser. In addition, Apple's hard-nosed stance against Flash in the browser will impede this movement because it will require two completely separate creation processes.

Finally, for Flash to take hold, operating system manufacturers will have to start treating Web-enabled applications the same as non-Web-enabled ones. For example, launching Web apps from the home page must become standard.

JavaScript Native Apps

A new class of applications has arisen. These are native applications that are compiled for a specific platform but that use Web technologies for the user interface. This has the most potential. The most prominent one currently is PhoneGap. Other solutions include Appcelerator, which uses PhoneGap technology under the hood, and Rhomobile, which uses the Ruby on Rails Web development language.

These technologies, all open sourced, enable developers to write back-end processes in the native code and all of the user interfaces in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This application is then compiled into a native application. It can be uploaded to app stores, distributed via downloading and installed directly to the device.

The fundamental problem with mobile development isn't the back end, though. The backbone of all of these platforms is C or Java, which is generally portable if written with that intention. The problem is user interface development, which requires deep knowledge and understanding of each mobile device. Making the UI cross-platform solves the vast majority of problems associated with this kind of development. If you had to point to where the approach falls short, it would be that cross-platform applications don't feel "native," a shortcoming that would be solved by good design and better CSS work!

Conclusion

As the smartphone market evolves, we are unlikely to see a clear winner as we did in the PC business; and because of that, developers will be forced to write for multiple platforms. But for the first time in a decade, developers have options for multiple-device development. The cost and learning curve associated with writing native apps for every platform can finally be mitigated.

While all of these technologies are early to market, the writing is clearly on the wall. After more than a decade of discussion, the combination of Flash, HTML 5 and JavaScript will make "write once, use everywhere" a reality.

Guest author: Elia Freedman is the CEO of Infinity Softworks, the leading provider of software calculators, with over 15 million distributed. In its 13-year history, Infinity Softworks has developed applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows, Palm OS and Windows Mobile. Elia writes about tech, mobile and running a business on his blog, eliainsider.com.

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40% of People "Friend" Brands on Facebook

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing company Razorfish has just launched its third annual FEED survey of 1,000 "connected consumers." The survey is focused on online consumer behavior. This year Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. 40% of respondents "friended" brands on Facebook, while 25% reported following brands on Twitter. What's more, Razorfish found that consumers access brands on Twitter and Facebook mainly for deals and promotions.

Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, nearly 44% reported that access to exclusive deals is the main reason. On Facebook or MySpace, 37% said that access to exclusive deals or offers was their main reason for friending brands.

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Over 1/4 of respondents reported having followed a brand on Twitter, which is encouraging news for companies wanting to use Twitter to promote themselves.

43.5% reported following a brand to get "exclusive deals or offerings," which again is a statistic that companies should take note of.

An even higher percentage of respondents have "friended" a brand on Facebook - a whopping 40%. Considering that Facebook is a social network that started out as a way for college kids to network, this is a statistic that will make companies and organizations take note. If you want brand recognition on the Web, according to these statistics there's a very good chance that Facebook is a place you want to be.

A smaller percentage follow a brand on Facebook for exclusive deals or offers (36.9%) - but still a majority.

Is this "connected consumer" crowd mainstream? Well, about 62% of the respondents still use Internet Explorer as their browser, with 30% on Firefox. So yes, they are.

It's interesting then to look at what are the homepages of these people.

While Google is unsurprisingly number 1 with 32.6%, Yahoo is close behind at 29.7%. MSN is still well used at 11.9%. We were most surprised that AOL is now only 7.9%. These statistics show that Yahoo remains a force among mainstream consumers, whereas AOL is slipping further behind.

We reported last week that smartphones have almost overtaken 'feature phones' as the cellphones of choice for consumers. Razorfish's survey shows that 56% of connected consumers now use a smartphone - i.e. one that has email and web capabilities.

As with the ChangeWave Research survey recently, Razorfish puts Blackberry (29.5%) ahead of Apple's iPhone (20.1%).

Another illuminating statistic is the number of people who now get their news from Twitter and Facebook. While nearly 80% of respondents still access "traditional news web sites," 33% get news from Facebook and 19.5% from Twitter. Only 27.3% get news from "alternative news web sites" - but which we presume they mean blogs.

Overall, these figures from Razorfish show that Facebook and Twitter are now major places for brands to be; as well as online sites where consumers get at least some of their news.

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Happy Birthday to Firefox: Everybody Dance!

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:14:00 GMT

Hey, Firefox, kids who were freshmen in college when you started now have pointless internships in big cities and colossal amounts of student debt. Congratulations! You're officially old by Internet standards.

You've hit the one billion downloads mark and captured a truly significant percentage of Internet browser users. And you've got a hardcore community of open-source developers and fans who contribute to the thousands of extensions, plugins, and skins that make the user experience so customizable. But most importantly, you helped pave the way for the creation and mainstream proliferation of a bunch of nifty alternative browsers and provided impetus for aggressive improvements to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

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Here's a happy little video on how liberating and revolutionary the Firefox experience is for Internet users:

Moving forward from the motivational fanfare, Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard at the Hacks.Mozilla.Org blog has a rather in-depth and interesting post on the rise of modern web browsing, the triumph of standards in web development, the hackable goodness that is browser UI customization, user generated content, and geeky stuff like RSS, APIs, and JSON

He concludes, "Mozilla has been at the heart of many of the issues of the Internet over the last five years. We've vastly improved the browsing experience for hundreds of millions of people around the world. We've managed to keep Microsoft honest and forced them to release newer versions of their browsers. Firefox's presence was a large factor in Apple being able to ship a browser to its user base as the Mac came back to the market. We've made it possible for third party browser vendors like Google to enter the market."

He noted that future releases of Firefox with deal with issues such as users' sharing data with websites, more open video codecs, and improvements to mobile browsing.

Over at the Mozilla blog, the company's flack Melissa Shapiro shares some interesting stats. Since Mozilla's auspicious one-million-downloads-in-four-days start, she writes, "that number has swelled to over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users worldwide choose Firefox. Today, Firefox ships in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience."

In fact, some websites report that nearly half their visitors are Firefox users. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg writes that Firefox users represent nearly 46 percent of Wordpress' blog stats as opposed to Internet Explorer users, who comprise around 39 percent. "This is the first time I've ever seen Firefox pass IE in market share for a mainstream audience like WordPress.com has," said Mullenweg.

Firefox is sharing its official, worldwide celebration with users everywhere via their special anniversary site, where folks can share pics and videos from their Firefox parties or submit commemorative poster designs.

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Twitter, LinkedIn Cut Deal - We're Still Waiting for the Big Announcement

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Twitter and LinkedIn are announcing a deal tonight that will allow LinkedIn users to publish status updates to their Twitter profiles and pull in some or all Twitter updates to their LinkedIn accounts.

Wait a minute...the two social media companies with the some of the most valuable, interesting data on the web made a deal and what do we get? Spammy Twitter streams clouding up our LinkedIn feeds and an occasional uptight Tweet on Twitter that was born inside LinkedIn? We're still waiting for the meaty announcements everyone says are coming someday soon - that Twitter and LinkedIn are open for business.

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I don't mean to be too grouchy, but this looks like just one more sweetheart Silicon Valley deal that has limited imagination and represents a lost opportunity for the kind of innovation everyone expects these kinds of companies to drive.

In the announcement video recorded by LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman and Twitter's Biz Stone, both talked about how Twitter is great for business. What did they mean, though? They meant it's a marketing platform, a way to get your message out further, etc. If you have something you want to say to everyone on LinkedIn, why not say it on Twitter too?

But is business just about broadcasting your marketing message? What about the listening part of doing business, thoughtful analysis, responding to actionable information and market conditions? Conversations with your customers and business partners?

Twitter is arguably better for listening than it is for broadcast and conversion of marketing messages. This kind of cross-posting deal falls short of the huge potential latent in the data both of these companies control and instead appeals to the craven broadcast-model of marketing. Challenging that broadcast-model is where many people believe social media derives its meaning.

What could this look like? It could look like an option to view the employer and job title of anyone you see on Twitter or through a 3rd party Twitter interface. It could look like Twitter opening up its fire hose for unfettered 3rd party analysis and development - then you'd see social graph and content analysis done that gave a big boost to the User Experience on LinkedIn. ("This LinkedIn user has been conversing with friends on Twitter who were talking about 'mobile,' 'Wisconsin' and 'gaming' over the last 2 weeks.")

Whatever the case may be, both occupational data (LinkedIn) and social messaging data (Twitter) are rich green fields for mashups and analysis - but these two companies are holding back the tide of innovation by refusing to offer a clear path to their data by outside partners.

LinkedIn partners with next to no one. Only large, established organizations like Business Week, the New York Times and now Twitter get access to LinkedIn data. Other services all around the web will tell you stories about reaching out to LinkedIn for API access and getting the cold shoulder.

We wrote about this concern three weeks ago ("LinkedIn Hits 50 Million Users; Still a Roach Motel") and the company told us then and today that big changes are coming to its API soon. That's great. That's something to look forward to, if cautiously. We're years into the LinkedIn Platform today and there's only a select few partners doing anything there so far.

Likewise, Twitter is fabulously open with its data in some ways (one a per-item basis) - but it's leaving a substantial number of outside developers frustrated because they can't get their hands on the full feed of Twitter data (the fire hose) to analyze. Startup companies that do appear to have relationships with Twitter tell us things like "We won't describe our relationship with Twitter to you and neither will anyone else who has one." That's charming. It's unclear whether anyone but Google and Bing have access to all the Twitter data.

Twitter investor and real-time web guru John Borthwick told us in another conversation today that he believes Twitter is just in its early days as a company, that there's nothing mysterious going on. "I'm hoping there will be a click-thru EULA [End User Licensing Agreement] to the firehose [someday]," he wrote. (Emphasis added.)

That sounds good.

So everybody's working on the wide-open web that so many of us want to see? Standards and APIs and open platforms to facilitate a new era of innovation are right around the corner?

Sounds great. For now though what we get is a little cross-network message broadcasting. Hopefully it's just the beginning.

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Google Looks to Dominate iPhone and Android Advertising With AdMob Acquisition

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:02:00 GMT

Google announced this morning that it has acquired 3-year old mobile display ad serving platform AdMob for $750 million, half the price it paid for YouTube in 2006. Why did Google make this move? Two reasons stand out.

First, AdMob is a very strong company in a sector (mobile advertising) that everyone expects to become much more important in the future. Second, this is a chance to make a big move towards monetizing on Apple's iPhone platform while making sure that no one else does something similar to Android in the future.

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AdMob puts display ads on mobile web pages and inside mobile applications. On Google's page detailing the acquisition today the company used imagery to say that mobile search ads had been its primary focus to date, while AdMob's focus was outside search and inside apps and pages. Google has an ad program for mobile apps to, though, called AdSense for Mobile Apps. You've probably seen it if you use the Pandora iPhone app.

AdMob is Strong in an Early Market

Apparently Google's mobile apps ad platform hasn't been doing so well, at least not compared to AdMob. AdMob has been growing fast. VentureBeat's Matt Marshall did some back of the envelope math and estimated that the company was pulling in $40m+ in annual revenue 18 months ago, which was just 18 months after it launched.

That was in a radically different time for the mobile market. As our own Sarah Perez wrote two weeks ago in a post about AdMob's latest mobile metrics report:

Believe it or not, it was only a year ago that the Motorola RAZR scored as the number one phone here in the U.S. while the iPhone was the only touchscreen device to even make the list of top ten handsets. Only a year later, and so much has changed.

That was durring the RAZR era that AdMob was at a pace that Matt Marshall said "looks headed to IPO-type revenues within three years."

Planting a Flag on the iPhone, Protecting the Android Inventory

Now the iPhone rules. AdMob's own numbers claimed that mobile traffic from the iPhone and iPod touch grew 19X over the last year. AdMob is making a strong play on the iPhone. TechCrunch reported this Spring that the company claims to be the biggest mobile app ad network on the iPhone and is working on a traffic exchange system for app promotion similar to what's been done on Facebook.

Now move those efforts over into the Google column and Google is making money off of the free apps on Apple's platform. That's probably not something Apple feels great about.

Meanwhile, Google's own Android mobile OS is no slouch, either. Admob reported this Fall that Android now accounts for the 2nd largest share of mobile web traffic (far) behind the iPhone, at 17% in the US, beating RIM and Windows Mobile.

Does Google want to see someone else leading the ad monetization on its own mobile OS just like it is now poised to do to Apple? No way. The answer? Buy AdMob.

It's a very smart move. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google's share price rose this morning to its highest point in almost 18 months.

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Shazam Now Doing Recommendations with Newly Launched App

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:53:00 GMT

Shazam, the music discovery iPhone application which gained widespread adoption thanks to its appearance in an iPhone TV commercial, is now getting a ton of new features thanks to the launch of a premium application called Shazam Encore. This new application adds music recommendations, trend charts, music searches and more to its core set of features already made available in the free version of Shazam.

Does this mean Shazam is about to give Pandora and the like a run for their money?

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About Shazam Encore

The free Shazam application is best known for its nifty tune identification trick. Mobile users can hold their iPhones up next to a speaker or other source of music and the application "listens" to what's being played in order to identify the song and artist. It also lets you read track and album reviews, read artist biographies and tag songs to share with friends over Facebook and Twitter.

The new application, Shazam Encore, adds even more functionality including improved speed performance, trend lists that highlight what's popular among other Shazam users, a search function that taps into a database of 8 million+ songs, music recommendations and a "drive-and-tag" feature that lets the app recognize when it's in an in-car dock so it can identify what's playing on the radio while you're driving.

But How are Those Recommendations?

Out of all the new features, however, it's the music recommendations option which is the most interesting. Recommendations are the killer feature which can either make or break a mobile application these days. With services like Last.fm and Pandora already providing mobile users with playlists based on a user's likes or dislikes, Shazam needs to be able to do recommendations well - really well - in order to compete with these already popular applications.

In addition, the up-and-comer streaming music service from Spotify also partnered with The Echo Nest's music intelligence platform earlier this year to help improve on Spotify's playlist and music discovery functions. The end results of that partnership have been touted as being like the iTunes' "Genius" feature, only better. Although not yet available in the U.S., Spotify's mobile application is one of the most highly anticipated applications as it provides a new way to enjoy music - through playlist creations that can be listened to both online and off. It, too, will be heavy competition for any application entering into the music recommendations game, including, of course, Shazam.

So where does that leave Shazam Encore? At the moment, its recommendations offering provides you with a list of other songs you might like based on the one track you have pulled up. While this might help you discover new music, you aren't able to create a playlist based on those songs. Instead, Shazam's focus remains more on the sharing of music via tagging and posting to Twitter and Facebook.

As far as how good Shazam's recommendations are, we would need to do a lot more testing before giving a solid opinion - the app is just too new. In fact, it's so new that it wasn't even showing up in an iTunes Store search at the time of writing. The provided screenshot in the App Store doesn't look all that encouraging, though. (Really, a fan of indie band My Sad Captains wants to listen to Katy Perry singing about "kissing a girl?" I don't think so...)

But whether or not the recommendations are up to speed, it remains to be seen whether iPhone app shoppers will be willing to fork over the $4.99 US (£2.99/ €3.99) to have access to them, especially when there's no playlist option included.

Those interested in trying the new Encore application can find it now in the App Store by clicking here.

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5 Years On: ReadWriteWeb's 2004 Interview With Tim O'Reilly

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:53:00 GMT

Five years ago I interviewed tech publisher Tim O'Reilly about a new term that his company had just coined: Web 2.0. The first Web 2.0 conference had been held the previous month, October 2004, and O'Reilly had graciously agreed to give an interview to yours truly - "an unknown blogger from New Zealand," as I put it back then. The interview ran in a 3-part series (see also part 2 and part 3) and covered Web 2.0, new business models, social software and eBooks.

I've always been a big believer in learning from history as we look to the future. So let's re-visit this interview from five years ago and see how prescient the father of Web 2.0 was.

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Microsoft and Web 2.0

In 2004 the leading Web 2.0 companies were Google, Yahoo! and Amazon. But what of the dominant software company of the previous generation, Microsoft? I asked Tim O'Reilly back in November 2004 whether Microsoft's core strategy of software lock-in would survive in web 2.0?

O'Reilly argued that Microsoft would have to change: "I think that the business of Microsoft, the company of Microsoft, is going to continue to succeed. But I think the business model of Microsoft is going to have to change."

This has turned out to be the case. Over the past 5 years, Microsoft has slowly rolled out a "software plus services" strategy under the catch-all phrase 'Live.' While the Windows OS and desktop software such as Office continue to be Microsoft's mainstay products, some of the functionality gradually moved into the cloud - e.g. syncing over devices. Vista, the current generation of Windows, began that transition. In 2009, Microsoft is even taking steps to put Office online.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think O'Reilly nailed it in 2004 with this statement: "Microsoft will continue to dominate on the PC, but the PC is going to be a smaller and smaller part of the entire business."

The Mobile Web, for one, has taken attention away from Microsoft. Which is where Apple comes in...

Apple and Web 2.0

At the inaugural 2004 Web 2.0 Conference, Apple was a no-show. In talking about Apple's position in the Web industry back then, O'Reilly said that "Apple is in a position they've been in a lot of times before. They're like Moses showing the way to the promised land, but they don't actually go there."

Although Apple never did open up, as O'Reilly foresaw, nevertheless they went on to create the most successful new gadget of the past decade: the iPhone. Apple also created a thriving iPhone app ecosystem.

So in the case of the Mobile Web, Moses (a.k.a. Steve Jobs) actually did lead us to the promised land!

Facebook and Data Lock-in

In 2004 I noted that "a lot of what Web 2.0 is about is users producing content and not just consuming it." I pointed to O'Reilly's own example at the time: Amazon compared to the Barnes & Noble website. However, I said that "the other side of that coin [...] is the "data lock-in" of users, where users may not necessarily have control over their content." I asked O'Reilly if that was something for users to be concerned about?

O'Reilly replied, in November 2004, that "there are companies that are trying to use data lock-in as a competitive tool - and there will eventually be a recognition that this is a problem."

This has indeed happened - and data lock-in is nowhere more of a problem than on the world's most popular social network circa 2009, Facebook. Over the past few years we at ReadWriteWeb have written many articles about Facebook's 'walled garden' approach to user data. Users can't take their personal data elsewhere. What's more, there have been bungled attempts to use that data for commercial means.

Remember that Facebook had just launched in February 2004 and was confined to some selected American Universities (Harvard to Stanford, Columbia and Yale). It had yet to reach the 1 million users mark. While O'Reilly couldn't have known that Facebook would turn into the juggernaut it now is, he did accurately predict that data lock-in would become a major issue:

"I believe that data lock-in of various kinds is going to be one of the key tools of business advantage in the internet era. I think that as companies realize this, they will figure out how to be evil - so to speak (to use Google's terminology) - and I predict that we will in fact have some major battles in that area."

Conclusion

It is remarkable how much can change in the Web industry in five years. Back in 2004, Facebook was a baby and Twitter wasn't even a glint in the milkman's eye. Among the big companies of that time, Apple hadn't yet given birth to the revolutionary iPhone and Microsoft was entering its mid-life crisis.

On reflection, Tim O'Reilly did extremely well in his 2004 predictions - considering how fast the Internet evolves. And I'm still grateful to him for giving an interview to an unknown New Zealand blogger. How times change...

Image credits: Niall Kennedy; Shht!; Alex Eckford

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Life360 Protects Your Family & Property Via Web, Mobile, & More

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:18:00 GMT

Life360 is often described as an "OnStar for life," providing its users with tools to track and protect people and things through a variety of interfaces.

The company offers IRL services such as child identification paraphernalia, medical IDs, and credit and identity protection; but they also have a cool suite of features that revolve around Internet and mobile tracking of people, objects, and even pets. Their Android application for tracking and securely messaging people even netted them a seed round from Google

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The concept for the company, which was founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, revolves around disaster preparedness and emergency messaging. Currently, the available features include an emergency messenger that uses email, web, SMS, and phone to get messages through to emergency contacts; a thorough, web-enabled ID service that gives first responders instant access to critical information; a service for cataloging and tracking valuable items via coded tags; and identity protection services.

The mobile tracking feature - which got the company a $300,000 investment from Google - allows users to locate family members using the web interface or the mobile application. Custom privacy settings allow users to find loved ones in an emergency, check their locations, see their statuses, and retrace their previous locations. While the company states this will not make family members feel stalked, we see this app as Cheaters fodder as well as a great way to keep track of the ones you care about most during times of crisis.

The Android app allows users to access all their Life360 services from their phones. Right now, Android devices are supported, with a BlackBerry app coming soon and an iPhone app stuck in App Store purgatory.

Another "coming soon" service we thought was cool - and also excellent Cheaters fodder - is a GPS-enabled tracking dongle that can be thrown in a bag, duct-taped to the underside of a car, tossed onto a pet's collar, stapled to a child - you name it. Life360 founder Chris Hulls told us in an email that he hopes to roll out the hardware within the next six months. "There will be an additional fee, probably in the neighborhood of $100 for the device and $10 per month for each tracked person," he said.

Some other GPS- and mobile-enabled features Hulls plans to release within the next year are a Curfew 2.0 app, a check-in system for "distributed" families to touch base, and customized alerts for emergency notifications in a user's specific location.

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 7 November 2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Here is this week's events guide. You can download the entire event calendar in iCal format or import it into your Google Calendar. You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. This events guide is a weekly feature here on ReadWriteWeb. We publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.

Know of an event taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

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6 – 8 November 2009: Savannah, Georgia

Geekend 2009

Geekend 2009 is an interactive conference that brings together geeks from all walks of life for three days of cutting edge speakers, expert panels, afterparties, networking and mash-up opportunities. Speaker highlights include Major Nelson of Xbox Live, renowned designer David Carson, Eric Snowden of Atlantic Records, Joey Hasty of Disney, and Matias Corea of Behance, among many others. Get your geek on and enter "RWW" for $30 off the full price weekend badge.

9 – 10 November 2009: Santa Clara, California

Social Networking World Forum — California

This event taking place at the Santa Clara Convention Center actually consists of three conferences: two days dedicated to social networking, one day dedicated to enterprise social media, and one day dedicated to social TV. Key speakers include social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, and more.

Joint exhibition combining social networking and enterprise social media formats
Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
Discount for early booking (expires September 25th)
Free pass for exhibition only

10 – 13 November 2009: Las Vegas

PubCon Vegas

PubCon Las Vegas is a multi-track educational conference hosted by SearchEngineWorld & WebmasterWorld. PubCon events are for thought leaders and professionals in search engine and Internet marketing to gather and to share best practices in the design, development, promotion and marketing of their Internet businesses and brands. PubCon London 2009 is a social networking event.

11 – 12 November 2009: Denver, Colorado

Defrag 2009 Conference

As online data is growing and fragmenting at an exponential pace, individuals, groups and organizations are struggling to discover, assemble, organize, act on and gather feedback from that data. In the largest sense, we're all looking to augment the pace at which we achieve insights on raw data -- to accelerate the "A-ha" moment.

Defrag explores the intersection of topics like:

Business intelligence
Business process management
Social computing and analytics
Next-level discovery
Enterprise 2.0
Next-gen email
The semantic Web

18 – 19 November 2009: San Francisco

GreenBeat 2009

VentureBeat, the leading innovation-focused business blog, will host the seminal conference on The Smart Grid, November 18-19 in San Francisco. GreenBeat 2009 brings together the nation's 500 leading entrepreneurs, investors, utility and technology executives, policymakers and press to affect accelerated development of a leaner, more efficient electrical grid. With participation by Al Gore, former Vice President and Nobel Prize Winner; John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins; and industry leaders, including from Cisco, Tendril, PG&E, expect lively discussion and power networking. The program will highlight new technologies and explore the opportunities afforded by the stimulus package. For more, visit www.greenbeat2009.com.

ReadWriteWeb readers, save 20% on regular price tickets with discount code GREENRWW09 here.

19 November 2009: Mountain View, California

Under the Radar

Featuring the most cutting-edge mobile startups from around the globe, Under the Radar will get you dialed in to what the 2010 mobile innovation marketplace will look like. It's a must-attend event for dealmakers from global carriers, brands, media companies, and handset manufacturers responsible for helping their companies leverage new mobile technology and innovation in the fast-evolving digital landscape.

Save $200: book by 2 October 2009, and get the early-bird rate.

30 November 2009

New Way to Work

Do you have a great story about your work environment? Job marketplace Elance and Vator.tv have partnered to host the "New Way to Work" competition, with a grand prize of $10,000 in cash or health insurance for the most compelling story. You can tell your story on Vator.tv, the premier platform for entrepreneurs to broadcast their voice, by uploading a video, posting an update, linking to a blog entry, or sharing a photo. Hurry, the competition ends on 30 November 2009.

1 – 3 December 2009: London, England

Online Information & IMS 2009

Online Information and IMS together create the largest event dedicated to the information industry. Consisting of an exhibition delivering over 9,000 visitors from 70 countries, a conference and a show-floor seminar program, the event provides an annual meeting place for the global information industry.

Online Information is once again set to play host to thousands of information professionals, information end-users and publishers from around the globe, meeting suppliers of online content, e-publishing, and library management solutions. IMS provides a forum for IT, business, and information management professionals to find unlimited, relevant advice, educational content and compare solutions under one roof. Attend IMS and meet suppliers of content management, search solutions, and Web 2.0 technologies.

1 – 3 December 2009: Boston, Massachusetts

Gilbane Conference Boston

Join us at the sixth annual "Gilbane Conference Boston: Content, Collaboration and Customers."

Your content is your business, and you need to make your Web content part of an integrated platform for customers. You need to know solutions and technologies that are ready to be implemented today. Gilbane Conference Boston is built around the four major areas of how enterprises use Web and content technologies:

Web business and engagement;
Managing collaboration and social media: internal and external;
Enterprise content: searching, integrating and publishing;
Content infrastructure.

Visit www.gilbaneboston.com for conference details. ReadWriteWeb readers, use the discount code "GILBANE" to save an additional $200. Register today!

1 – 3 December 2009: San Francisco

Supernova

The Supernova Conference is the thought-leadership forum for the network age. It brings together over 500 business, government and technology influencers to understand how decentralization and pervasive connectivity are changing our world. It's the only conference to focus on how networks have become the main instruments of change from both business and social perspectives. An ever-evolving network itself, the conference has become the place for highly interactive and spirited debates, making significant business connections and revelations on new innovation. ReadWriteWeb readers get a discount of $700 off the regular price when registering by 16 October 2009. Use code "RRW09". After October 16th, the discount changes to $200 off the regular price. Register here.

7 December 2009: San Francisco

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit brings together 600+ visionaries in the music/technology space, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music/business/technology eco-system in a proactive environment, highly conducive to deal making. Register with a great ReadWriteWeb 15% discount.

7 – 11 December 2009: Chicago, Illinois

Search Engine Strategies 2009

From social media to local search to video SEO, Search Engine Strategies Chicago puts you in front of the experts who will help you sort which technologies and channel will take you to the next level and which are just hype.

Search Engine Strategies is the pioneer of educational conference series in search engine marketing. It's the venue where the industry visionaries and thought leaders gather each year to discuss the newest trends, share insights and present the strategic action plans you need to grow your business. Sessions include:

SEO Through Blogs and Feeds
Duplicate Content and Multiple Site Issues
What's the Link Between Search and Social?
Online PR: Where to Next?
Search Analytics

See more at www.SearchEngineStrategies.com/chicago. ReadWriteWeb readers receive a 15% discount when registering here using RWW15 code.

11 December 2009: Mountain View, California

Add-on-Con

Add-on-Con is a single-day conference focused on the future of the browser and its emergence as a platform.

Developer sessions will cover best practices, cross-browser development and mash-ups. Marketing sessions will focus on monetization opportunities, distribution strategies and stats. Join 200+ individuals involved in add-on development to help define an emerging new market in the Web's eco-system.

ReadWriteWeb readers save $50 by using the discount code "addoncon09RRW."

27 – 28 January 2010: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI?

This senior executive event will bring together decision makers from the Top Fortune companies to discuss innovative strategies on how to maximise business performance through social media engagement. The event will include keynote speeches, best-practice presentations as well as interactive discussion sessions.

The summit will provide excellent opportunities for you to hear international experts discuss best practices on how to drive business performance using Web 2.0 and social media. Key issues to be discussed include:

How to integrate social media programs successfully into business strategies?
Building business momentum, visibility and market growth through social media
Measuring success and influence using metrics and analytics: what are the tools and techniques
Integrating viral marketing and social media into traditional marketing mix
Developing and activating audiences using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs

15 – 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

Social Networking World Forum
Enterprise social media
Social TV World Forum
Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

Full workshop program within exhibition area
Evening networking reception
Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
Free pass for exhibition only

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

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