Credit crisis. Blah, blah. Cut costs. Blah, blah. Don't you just love it when you get an alarm call from your hotel at 9.15 when your meeting is at 9.00? At ReadWriteWeb we have been sounding alarms about the economy for a year (here, here, here and here...enough already), suggesting strategies to cope with the coming downturn.

But what about now? This is the time to be audacious. The world has changed, totally and irrevocably. Change is the entrepreneur's friend.

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Forget About Tsunamis, It's The Little Waves That Matter

I call these Micro Trends. They are not the big obvious trends that everybody is riding - such as mobile, online advertising, search, social networking, globalization etc. If you spotted those 10 years ago, great. Now it is too late. Think surfing. If you see the wave building early on, you get a chance to ride it. If you catch it too late, you get crushed.

How Does The Last Few Weeks Change This List?

For some time I have had a list of Micro Trends on my personal blog. It seems a good time to revisit them to see what might change based on the global credit crisis.

1. Transparency. This wave has been building for a while, but it just got a big boost by recent events. Transparency in financial markets obviously. Then there is Obama's Google for Government initiative. Some of the smartest recent startups we have seen use a mix of technology, insight and hard work to expose the inner working of industries to eliminate information asymmetry and get lower prices for buyers. You can bet that there will be more.

2. Relocalization. We have already written about this here. Tough times will accentuate this trend. The solutions are not obvious (so Momentum VC won't touch them), they could be game changing.

3. Reduced power of gatekeepers. This relates to Transparency. Reduced information asymmetry reduces the power of gatekepeepers/intermediaries/tollbooths. The Financial Services industry is the mother of all gatekeepers. The Economist states that in the early 1980s, the financial services industry accounted for 10% of GDP, but last year it rose to 40%. One change arising from the recent turmoil we can be totally confident about is that the current financial services intermediaries are weakened and new models will arise. Who will do a craigslist on the financial services industry (or at least segments of that vast industry)?

4. Micro-trend Slopes replace Chasms. Alex Iskold started an interesting conversation about whether the Internet has made the Chasm adoption model less relevant. Biking up and down slopes may be the better analogy today. Catch a new trend and you can cruise down a slope, picking up speed effortlessly. As trend-spotting me-too ventures join the race (the Internet spreads ideas instantaneously) the slope flattens out and curves uphill. In good times, a bit of pushing gets you over the top and catching another micro trend slope on the way down. If your up slope coincides with a cyclical down turn (and we are certainly in a big cyclical downturn today), you will get a flat tire and have to carry your bike up the hill and mend it at the top. Don't worry, the other racers will have given up at that point. Starting in a cyclical downturn, make sure you are on a down slope!

5. Changing balance of power between big and small businesses. Yes we have been "banging on" about this for a long time. For the most long-winded description (sorry), read this. This could be the biggest micro trend, even a Tsunami that few people have spotted. Which the current crisis just accentuated. Which the incoming President might actually do something positive about for a change.

6. Self-organizing networks beat command and control structures. This is the story of Enterprise 2.0 - aka, social media meets the enterprise.

7. The end of mass markets. This relates to most of the other trends. Small, niche, specialist will beat mass produced. This is why Etsy may be a big winner from this Web 2.0 cycle. There are probably other opportunities around this trend.

8. Ad $$$ will flow to measurable ROI models. OK, that falls into the no-duh category! But surely Google Adwords is not the only winner in this category? There must be a better ad targeting model out there somewhere? Not better search, you can just use Yahoo Boss for search - that game was totally over well before the credit crisis. But better ad targeting that does not infringe privacy is a big winner.

9. Bubbles will form and pop faster. Bubbles are like booze. With a horrible hangover we say "never again". But guess what.... They don't reappear in the same place until a generation that was bruised has moved on. So the big bubble may be a thing of the past. But we will get lots of small ones. That is kind of like moderate drinking, actually quite good for us. My motto is "moderation in all things, including moderation".

10. The end of 11 point lists. I used to do 10 point lists until a commenter showed me this wonderful Spinal Tap video. Seriously, 10 point lists indicated limits and space on the Internet is unlimited. But then I noticed many people doing 11 point lists. In the spirit of back to basics discipline, 10 point lists will make a comeback.

Image credit: Thomas Hawk

See also: What's Next After Web 2.0

Shared by zetxek
Se ve que de películas buenas salen carteles buenos...

By Alessandro Cattaneo and Smashing Editorial Team

Movie posters are art and, unfortunately, the forgotten one. In the early years of cinema history, they were used just like advertising material. Displayed in theatres only, movie posters had the same function as a menu in a restaurant: what feast can I enjoy this evening? Nowadays, movie posters play a big role in cinema memorabilia collection. They have lost the “informative” tone to wear a more artistic and decorative dress. We want to change it with this post.

Made in many different sizes and versions, and released in different moments all along a movie’s life, posters immortalize in one static image the feeling and the atmosphere of a motion picture. Some posters can be dark or try to frighten the audience, others bedazzling with bright colors; some can be someway informative, while others can be fully teasing and may provide you only the date when movie will be released, even if you may not know what the movie is about.

In this post we present you a showcase of 50 beautiful movie posters. We went trought different decades of movie history and different genre, different graphical approach, colors and style. Movies the posters are about may be famous or not, this is not the point.

Movie posters put together the love for for two different visual arts: cinema and graphics. Enjoy!

Movie Posters

Star Wars (1977)

Walk the line (2005)

Grindhouse (2007)

The Spirit (Upcoming, December 2008)

Vacancy (2007)

Moulin Rouge (2001)

V For Vendetta (2006)

La Feria De Cepillin (2008)

The Thing (1982)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2007)

Dexter (TV-show)

The Dark Knight

Kill Bill (2003)

Fearless (2006)

Cloverfield (2008)

The Birds (1963)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Mean Streets (1973)

Amadeus (1984)

THX 1138 (1971)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

28 Weeks Later (2007)

The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Day Watch (2007)

Vertigo (1958)

Invasion (2008)

Planet of the apes (2001)

The Memory Thief (2007)

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Death Proof (2007)

The Good German (2006)

Perfume (2007)

The Shining (2008)

W (2008)

American Beauty (1999)

The Bank Job (2007)

Man With One Red Shoe (1985)

The Dark Crystal (1982)

Excalibur (1981)

Unforgiven (1992)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Zodiac (2007)

Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) (1964)

The Color Purple (1985)

Madea’s Family Reunion (2008)

Good The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
Italian version.

Rocky (1976)

Last Click

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (1956)
Please note the advice’s style (highlighted with the red circle) for the audience: an innocent suggestion or just marketing?.

Blestenation (2007)

The Fountain (2006)

Resources

• Film Posters History On Wikipedia
• Movie Genre Classification on Wikipedia
• impawards.com
  Internet Movie Poster Awards, with all the lates movie poster news and updates.
• imdb.com
  International Movie Data Base (IMDB), probably the most authoritative and well known movie website.
• A Gray Space Poster Gallery
  Some artistic Polish movie poster
• Cinemasterpieces.com
  A good place where to buy movie memorabilia: old and original movie posters.
• movieposteraddicted.com
  Another good site about movie and movie posters.
• Posterwire.com
  A movie poster weblog.
• Movieposter.com
  A huge archive of movie poster.
• Science-Fiction Movie Posters Archive
• 50 Incredible Film Posters From Poland
• Weird Posters: Wrong Side Of The Art
• PosterWhore
  Social bookmarking for movie posters.
• Internet Movie Posters Awards
• Kerry Ropper’s Selection
• Michael Heilemann’s Movie Posters Collection
• Movie Poster Blog
• Vintage Horror & Sci-Fi Posters through the 1940s
• Posters Flickr Pool
• Hand-Drawn Movie Posters
• A Grayspace Poster Gallery
• 31 Great Movie Posters

About the author

Alessandro Cattaneo is a communication specialist with great passion for web and design.

280 Slides is a notable online replacement for desktop presentation apps. It's fast, functional and very visual.

The Cappuccino Framework

In it, you can create a presentation, theme it, add graphics and video, and then present it, share it via Slideshare, or download it as a PowerPoint or PDF file. It's so smooth to use that it's hard to tell the difference in the experience between working in a traditional presentation app like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. It doesn't have a traditional app's over-the-top feature set, but it's so fast and easy to use you'll probably not notice that.

280 Slides is in beta, but I was able to create this three-slide presentation as easily as I would in Keynote, and more easily than if I had been using PowerPoint. Cappuccino turned 0.5.5 yesterday. Fellow CNET blogger Matt Asay calls it "exceptional"

280 Slides is written in JavaScript, in a new open-source framework that models how software gets written on Macs: something called Objective-J. Objective-J, the Cappuccino framework, and 280 Slides are the work of a small three-man start-up, 280North, composed of former Apple programming rock stars. This is one to watch.

I’m pleased to announce that at some stage in the last 24 hours, The Inquisitr has entered the top 1000 blogs on the planet according to Technorati.

As I write this, The Inquisitr is ranked at 995th. By the time you may be reading this it may have shifted in either direction, although we’re confident that number will keep going down, at least for the short term.

The number is calculated on 6 months worth of links, and it was always our goal to hit the top 1000 by the 6 month mark. We’ve done it at 5 months and 1 week.

My thanks to our great team who has helped The Inquisitr get where it is today, but most importantly, a big thank you to you, our readers, who without your support and links along the way, this wouldn’t have been possible.

If you’re interested in advertising on The Inquisitr, see the details here

Bowers takes a look at the Washington Post's state presidential labels:

Obama +13.8%: Battleground state (PA)
Obama +10.4%: Battleground state (NH)
Obama +10.0%: Battleground state (NJ)
Obama +9.5%: Battleground state (IA)
Obama +9.0%: Battleground state (OR)
Obama +8.2%: Battleground state (MN)
Obama +8.2%: Battleground state (MI)
Obama +8.8%: Battleground state (WI)
Obama +7.3%: Battleground state (NM)
McCain +6.8%: Leaning Republican (GA)
Obama +5.1%: Battleground state (VA)
Obama +4.0%: Battleground state (CO)
McCain +3.8%: Leaning Republican (IN)
Obama +3.5%: Battleground state (OH)
Obama +3.1%: Battleground state (FL)
Obama +3.0%: Battleground state (NV)
McCain +2.2%: Leaning Republican (WV)

Get it? Every state in which McCain has a lead, even if it's just 2.2%, is a "leaning Republican". Every state in which Obama has the lead, even if it's over 10 percent, is a "battleground".

It goes to something that Bowers recently noticed:

Here are the latest electoral projections from independent, small media electoral forecasting websites:

Election Projection: Obama 364-174
Electoral-Vote.com: Obama 349, McCain 174, 15 tied
Fivethirtyeight: Obama 347.6-190.4 McCain
Pollster.com: Obama 320, McCain 158, Toss-up 60
Real Clear Politics: Obama 277, McCain 158, Toss-up 103

There are many more, but I'll stop there. The key point is that all small media election projection websites, including the Republican Election Projection and Real Clear Politics, have Obama over 270 electoral votes. This is because polls now objectively show that Obama is well over 270 electoral votes. However, none of the big, and so-called liberal, media websites show Obama over 270 right now. Every single one is even more favorable to McCain than Real Clear Politics:

MSNBC: Obama 264-174 McCain
CNN: Obama 264-174 McCain
New York Times: Obama 260--200 McCain

None of these websites can admit what is patently obvious to even Republican poll watchers right now: Obama is over 270 outside the margin of error. The inability of these big media sites to simply admit reality--reality that is evident in their own reporting about McCain playing from well behind right now--is pathetic.

Maybe they are afraid of being accused of pro-Obama bias (probably). Maybe they are just biased toward McCain (possibly). Maybe they just suck at electoral forecasting (definitely). Maybe they are invested in a close campaign (absolutely). Whatever it is, you would be well served to never, ever listen to big media for election forecasts and horserace information.

They are invested in the horserace for ratings purposes, and they are certainly fearful of being accused of pro-Obama bias. So instead of providing an accurate picture for their readers, they misinform them.

I mean, Washington Post really thinks New Jersey is a battleground state? Really?

Shared by Mitch Joel
that's impressive. 1.5 million pre-sold Google phones.

Apple may want to be keep a close eye on the sales of T-Mobile's G1 device. The G1 will be the first mobile phone to hit the market running Google's Android mobile OS. This may also be the mobile phone that puts a serious dent in Apple's iPhone sales. The G1 won't officially be available until October 22. Apparently no one wants to experience the same shortage and chaos as those that anxiously waited to get their hands on the iPhone 3G. Reports are in that up to 1.5 million G1 devices have been pre-sold and you can bet that more will be coming in.

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1.5 Million Pre-Sold

The G1 is set to take the world by storm at the end of this month. It may also take Apple's iPhone down a notch or two. Early adopters and those left out of the loop with the release of the iPhone 3G are making their way to the G1. Just days after going on pre-sale the G1 sold out fast, which sent T-Mobile scrambling to place more orders. T-Mobile tripled their original number of orders to HTC for G1 devices. Since then, all of those orders have been pre-sold. The amount of units pre-sold is reported to be around 1.5 million! That figure doesn't even include the number of pre-sale orders places in T-mobile retail stores. It is also being reported that about 1 million units have been pre-ordered from T-Mobile retail stores.

Is the G1 Set to Overthrow the iPhone?

At the moment, we don't think so. However, we're excited about all that Android will offer on the G1. T-Mobile is off to a great start with the number of G1 units pre-sold. Anticipation for both the device and the Android OS is higher than initial reactions led us to believe. It will be up to the performance of Google's Android mobile OS from this point forward to determine whether it's a worthy competitor to the iPhone. Be sure to cast your prediction on Google's Android versus Apple's iPhone and check out our top 10 picks of Android apps that we can't wait to use.

Today, the machines became a little smarter, as a computer named Elbot managed to achieve a 25% success rate when convincing a human being that they were talking to another human. The experiment is called the Turing Test, after mathematician Alan Turing, and Sunday's saw six Artificial Conversational Entities (ACEs) trying to ace the exam. Word is there was one human dunce in the mix, as all six computers managed to fool at least one interrogator into thinking they were speaking to another person, but none of the machines could officially pass Turing's strict standards.

The Turing Test states that to be considered "sentient," an artificial intelligence must achieve a 30% success rate. That means Elbot's accomplishment, while noteworthy, does not an AI make.

Organizer Kevin Warwick from the University of Reading's School of Systems Engineering was excited anyway, and readily compared today's events to the time in the 1997 when IBM's Big Blue defeated chess master Gary Kasparov. "This has been a very exciting day with two of the machines getting very close to passing the Turing Test for the first time," he said.

Perhaps even more impressive was just how believable the computers were, even if the human speaking with them knew they were speaking with a machine.

"Today's results actually show a more complex story than a straight pass or fail by one machine. Where the machines were identified correctly by the human interrogators as machines, the conversational abilities of each machine was scored at 80 and 90%. This demonstrates how close machines are getting to reaching the milestone of communicating with us in a way in which we are comfortable. That eventual day will herald a new phase in our relationship with machines, bringing closer the time in which robots start to play an active role in our daily lives."

Note to Warnick: Read anything on robots written by Isaac Asimov, then get back to me. [Telegraph]

Recently TechCrunch has initiated the rumors that eBay may be looking for a potential buyer for StumbleUpon (acquired for $75 million in May 2007) to sell this property for at least the amount it initially paid for it. Of course the blogosphere is actively engaged in various conversation of who could be the right buyer for StumbleUpon during the recession we are facing now. Earlier this week Om Malik has come up with an interesting suggestion for a potential buyer - Digg.

In the post Om mentions that his numerous sources make him believe that StumbleUpon generates from $5 to $7.5 million annual revenue so the price of $75 million could be a fair one for the popular (and possibly profitable) website/toolbar/community. But unfortunately right now the financial climate is not particularly suitable for anyone to consider buying StumbleUpon for the price right away. And here is where Om suggests an interesting idea for Digg. While it is obvious that Digg is not in the position to offer this amount in cash, the founders could make just the right move by merging the two social media properties and offering eBay equity in the resulting property as a payment for StumbleUpon.

This deal sounds like an unlikely one at first (and some people I discussed it with even called it a little ridiculous) but when you come to think of it deeper, I am sure you will see perfect sense in what Om suggests. Here are a few reasons why such a merger could make perfect sense for all the parties involved - Digg, eBay, StumbleUpon and even the web population in general.

Synergy

Of course we see numerous players in the social media playfield where new sites are launched virtually weekly and immediately dubbed Digg killers. The problem with such sites is that they are quickly forgotten. In general we have not seen all that many success stories in social voting and bookmarking - with Digg and StumbleUpon among those few exceptions that can be easily characterized as huge hits unlike any of their competitors.

Of course merging the two properties could result in incredible synergy effect where the ultimate destination for web content discovery could be born. What’s more, I can hardly imagine anyone actually managing to beat such a joined social media giant - so we will probably see no “killers” for a while at least.

eBay could still win

It is quite obvious that eBay is selling StumbleUpon (if the rumors are true, of course) for two main reasons: 1) it could not either make enough money off the property - enough to justify its presence in the portfolio and 2) it did not manage to integrate it into other services to provide any extra value to users. Of course letting Digg have StumbleUpon will not help eBay with integrations and will not even provide instant return of cash it once paid for the bookmarking site. But the joint venture will have much better chances of making money - and good money at that. Digg has a good advertising partnership with Microsoft while StumbleUpon has a solid approach to generating revenue by combining paid memberships with sponsored promotion campaigns. If both business models are combined, the revenue potential will be much stronger: for example, Digg could display sponsored content in addition to traditional display banners, at the same time offering paid memberships to users that would prefer not to be exposed to such sponsored content (same as StumbleUpon now does for paid members). There could be additional benefits for premium members - like they could have an unlimited number of submissions allowed during a month while free members could only submit a certain number of pages to StumbleUpon and/or Digg. I am quite sure that introducing such paid memberships to Digg could significantly increase the revenue potential of the new entity and eventually let eBay at least return the cash it initially paid for StumbleUpon.

Communities will win

It is a well-known fact that Digg still has not managed to build stronger communities outside of technology vertical where it initially started. And even though many early users complain that the site is getting worse with addition of non-tech content, the volume of such content in other verticals is still relatively small.

At the same time StumbleUpon has quite a diversified userbase and lots of content to discover in all the possible topics of interest. Here it does not really matter what type of content you are interested in or what topic it should be focused on - you will be sure to find something worthy anyway.

Merging the two communities into one could make Digg more diversified, at the same time sending some of the more serious content from Digg to StumbleUpon.

Web publishers will win

I think that if such a merger became a reality, it is obvious that the two algorithms would also be merged and if an article or a blog post was gaining attention and popularity on Digg, it could at the same time be pushed at more StumbleUpon users and vice versa. The combined popularity of the same URL in two communities could be a good measure of how actually good the piece of content is and how worth of extra visibility it is - which should be how the algorithm will serve pages and determine popularity of content. And of course web publishers will be the lucky winners here since they will be receiving higher traffic from both communities combined efforts.

Google could buy the combined social media giant

It is quite obvious that the two social media sites already have incredible volumes of information on how popular this or that piece of content is among web users and how often content from a certain website becomes popular on either Digg or StumbleUpon. All this information could be a measure of quality and reliability of a website and the company that could use this valuable aggregated information best is obviously Google. Google could use human-powered rankings from Digg and StumbleUpon to improve its own ranking algorithm and come up with a more sophisticated approach to search - powered by machine algorithm, at the same time using human contributions to determine how reliable web users believe this or that piece of information is.

I can agree with Om Malik 100% that such a combined entity could become a very appealing acquisition object. We have seen Google making attempts to use some human input into search by showing us various experiments where users can vote links on the search engine results pages up and down to show their opinion on content of the presented links. A simple acquisition could provide enough information to take human input into account without adding any new voting functionality to Google search itself.

So it looks like such an arrangement could be a win-win situation for all the participants so hopefully this will be something eBay and Digg will actually consider doing. And while it will obviously damage the competition among the social media websites, it will at least result in one healthy business along with some very probable enhancement of existing search technologies.

With Halloween just around the corner, DIY web site Instructables details how to build a killer costume with this living severed hand. All you need is some heavy gloves, a few household items, and a desire to impress on the 31st.

Social sites like Facebook supposedly capture our social graph: the collection of people we connect with on the web. But they don’t really let us do anything with the information. Sites like LinkedIn might let us message people a bit more easily, but there are no on-board tools to segment our information. What if, for instance, I want to mail everyone I know who is a prospective speaker for my upcoming conference? Can’t do it. I just figured out how. BatchBook.

I’ve been using BatchBook as a contact management system for a bunch of months. It’s web-based, so I can access it anywhere, but it also lets me download my contacts into a CSV file to use in other ways. Where it gets cool is that it’ll let me segment out a list based on tags that I’ve created, and download that as a segment. So, I can mail exactly the kind of person I want, based on any kind of tag I’ve given them: geography, where we’ve met, their capabilities, etc.

With BatchBook, I can get in there and do some extra things, too. They have a concept called “SuperTag.” Anything that you’ve used as a tag can be turned into a small database of its own, such that I can have a tag like “CommunityManager,” with subfields like “type,” so that I can make some of my community managers “enterprise,” some “startups,” and some “freelance.”

In the end, what I’m doing is making a database without having to be a database administrator. What does this mean? Apply it to how you do business, and how you will do business in the coming economic downturn. Maybe now’s a great time to get together all the web developers you know, all the virtual assistants, all the people in DC, etc. Having good contacts and knowing who to reach and how is always important. When you absolutely need the information, it’s indispensible.

You’ll no doubt recommend any number of applications that can do this differently, in Ruby on Rails, on my iPhone, whatever. What I like about BatchBook is that the people behind the product actually listen to their customers (me!), and that they’re growing the product slowly around expressed needs. But most of all, I like that it’s solving a need of mine: getting my social media “friends” into a database where I can actually reach out to them the way I want, and with lots of variation on the them.

Chris Brogan blogs at [chrisbrogan.com]

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

BatchBook Offers Customizable Contact Management Software
270+ Tools for Running a Business Online

The iPhone can run a lot of applications. Some of them are simple, some, like several of the games, are complex. Whether you think of it as such or not, the iPhone is a computer. Soon, it can be made to look more like a traditional one.

A company named Olo Computer has a new product coming soon that is basically a netbook (a small laptop) with a built-in dock for the iPhone. The dock, which resides where a trackpad would be on a regular laptop, apparently allows you to run what is on your iPhone on the netbook’s larger screen. With its small camera above the screen, keyboard with small spaces in between the keys and pure white case Olo’s device even looks like a MacBook (at least until the new ones come out on Tuesday).

But the picture of the device on Olo’s site is deceiving. The image on the screen shows the computer running Apple’s OS X operating system — the real version, not the version that runs on the iPhone, as iTWire points out. So unless Olo is planning to install OS X on its systems (which Apple doesn’t allow), there is no way the netbook could pull information from the iPhone to run full OS X.

It’s not really clear what the Olo system will be able to pull from the iPhone. If it can completely recreate the iPhone user experience on a larger screen while you use the iPhone’s touchscreen itself to control everything, that would be pretty cool. But how would the system know to use the full-sized keyboard of the device rather than the iPhone’s keyboard if you’re using that to control other aspects on screen?

It would seem that Olo will have some kind of customized application for the iPhone to handle the transition to the netbook screen, but would Apple allow such an application in its App Store? Maybe, or maybe not. Apple has come under fire for rejecting some applications that compete with its own apps. Apple also might not like one that changes the way the iPhone is used.

If it works, such a device could be very useful — especially for heavy travelers. Or it could be another Palm Foleo — a similar device for Palm that was cancelled shortly after it was introduced in 2007.

by Brian Solis

ITWire ran an interesting story that spotlights a new take on the netbook that may hit the market soon. Unlike most netbooks that are powered by either Linux or Windows XP, this netbook is powered by an iPhone.

What can only be described as the Palm Foleo 2.0, but for iPhones and not Treos, this interesting OLO device is rumored to use the OS of the iPhone to enable a more productive, notebook-friendly experience associated with Web browsing and day-to-day data entry in applications ranging from blog posts, online docs, email, and notes.

With OLO, the iPhone not only provides the OS, but also serves as the device’s trackpad.

While the Palm Foleo never made it to the market, I hailed it as a trendsetting device that would inevitbly force the migration and evolution of the phone becoming the central hub for all of our mobile communications and computing needs. It suffered from the right idea, but the wrong engineering and execution.

With the mass proliferation and enthusiasm of iPhones and their owners, the OLO may pave the way for a more successful venture in placing the phone at the center of everything.

Time will tell however, as will the specs and details of the OLO iPholeo (not the real name) when they’re available.

I am intrigued.

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Connect with me on:
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On Friday, word got out that come November 1 Verizon Wireless plans to tack on an extra 3-cent charge for every SMS message sent by Web information services to any of its mobile subscribers. That hike will be on top of the 20 cents per message that Verizon subscribers already pay (even those with “unlimited” plans). Thus, in one fell swoop, Verizon is attempting to boost its SMS revenues by about 15 percent.

While it may be good for Verizon, the additional charge is not good for any service that sends out millions of SMS messages each month. The move caught a lot of Internet companies, SMS aggregators, and media companies by surprise. For instance, I asked Twitter co-founder Biz Stone what impact it would have on the micro-blogging service, which lets users keep up with every Tweet they follow via SMS, and he didn’t know:

We’re still investigating with Verizon so I don’t have a definite answer for you right now.

In August, Twitter suspended the SMS feature in the UK and other foreign countries because it would have cost the company as much as $1,000/year/user. In the U.S., apparently it has more of a flat-rate pricing.

But that might change now with Verizon—and other U.S. mobile carriers as well, if Verizon’s competitors match the price hike. How long are they going to stand by and watch Verizon capture a 15 percent margin advantage in the booming SMS business? If the new 3-cent charge becomes the norm, it would cost companies $30,000 for every million SMS messages they send out.

I use Twitter here as an example, but it is by no means alone. Thousands of Web services use SMS as a communication channel. For example, Google lets you search by SMS and also lets people set up automatic SMS alerts from Google calender and other services. Nearly every sports, stock, and weather Website (not to mention the political campaigns) lets you get SMS alerts as well. Those are the heavy volume users. But this new charge could end up hurting SMS startups such as 3Jam, 4Info, or TextMarks the most.

Now, of course, the price hike could backfire on Verizon. Google, ESPN, Twitter, and others could just suspend their SMS features for Verizon customers, and its competitors could use that disparity to their marketing advantage. But if AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile decide that they too can squeeze out an extra three cents per SMS message, they might simply pile on board.

Forget for a moment that the mobile carriers are already making a huge profit margin on the 20 cents they charge users for each message. They know they cannot charge consumers any more, but Verizon at least thinks it can turn around and charge the Web services where the SMS information is originating. If the charge spreads to other carriers, those services might die or stop using SMS as a communications channel.

(For Twitter, at least, this may not be so dire. Although Stone would not confirm, my understanding form another source is that SMS accounts for less than 10 percent of Twitter’s overall message volume. That makes sense to me. I only use Twitter’s SMS functionality to send in Tweets from my phone, not to receive the barrage of Tweets that I follow).

The other way this could backfire for Verizon is that it could raise some serious Net neutrality issues. If it does not apply this charge evenly across the board, or starts carving out exceptions to do biz dev deals (and Verizon made some indications to Silicon Valley startups it was moving in this direction prior to the rate hike announcement), then it will be giving preferential treatment to one source of information over the other.

What if Verizon were charging the Obama campaign 3 cents per SMS message right now, but cut a deal with the McCain campaign to charge one cent per SMS? That is just a stark example, but you see where this can go. What if it charges the New York Times one rate, and the Wall Street Journal another? It becomes a freedom of speech issue. That is why it is better for the mobile carriers to charge consumers directly (and consistently), rather than try to sneak around and get an extra three cents per message from the Web content companies.

(Photo by Ti.mo).

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Due to the popularity of my first article regarding free alternatives to commercial Mac applications, I’ve decided to roll out a second part, shining the spotlight on more free applications for MakeUseOf’s Mac adopters. I hope you’ll like these applications just as well as their commercial counterparts, maybe even more since they’re free!

Jing, as an alternative to iShowU ($20)

Jing is a screen-casting program which has come a long way since it first started. Their current version is pretty impressive because it integrates sharing to Screencast.com, Flickr and uploads to any FTP; you’ll automatically get a download link which you can share with your friends (something like Skitch). It does everything iShowU does and it even records from the microphone. The one thing it doesn’t allow me to do is adjust the video output quality. But hey, it’s pretty decent for a free app.

Burn, as an alternative to Roxio’s Toast Titanium ($79.99)

Burn extends Mac’s native burning abilities by adding various options such as creating the regular Data as well as Video and Music disks. It can burn from cue and bin images. It’s not as fully equipped as Toast Titanium with Blu-Ray Disc burning but it does the good ol’ fashion burning job very well.

Cyberduck, as an alternative to Transmit ($29.95)

Both programs are pretty much the same, supporting Quicklook, WebDAV, Secure FTP, Amazon S3, synchronization and Growl notifications. So what’s the difference? Um, the price?

macam, as an alternative to IOExperts Webcam Drivers ($20)

My first Mac was a Mini and like all new Switchers, I was excited about Photo Booth and got myself a USB webcam. Little did I know that Mac has limited drivers for webcams. After extensive research, I was ready to fork out 20 bucks for IOExperts Webcam Drivers just to make my webcam work. Luckily, I managed to find macam in time. The name doesn’t instill a lot of confidence but trust me, it works. And it saved me $20.

Handbrake and MacTheRipper* and VisualHub, as alternatives to Roxio’s Popcorn 3 ($49.99)

Handbrake is a DVD to MPEG4 convertor. Everything is handled with a single-click. It’s a very simple, free program for those without high expectations. For others who require more control, there is MacTheRipper which performs a complete backup of your DVD. With the resulting Video_TS folder, you could use VisualHub to convert it to H.264 which provides high-quality encoding. And since VisualHub is no longer in development, I suspect you could just use it for free.

*MacTheRipper 3.0 is available only to those who donated. Check their forum for more details. You can also find the 3.0 version if you do a Google search.

Switch, as an alternative to EasyWMA ($10)

The thing about Windows Media Audio is it’s a proprietary codec unlike MP3. Hence, converting songs to and from WMA on a Mac isn’t free. For Switchers, this presents as a problem because when using Windows, iTunes recognizes WMA files and plays them without a hiccup. After transferring the iTunes library over to Mac, the songs can’t be played unless they’re converted. If you read my previous article about Migrating iTunes over to Mac, I basically teach you how to avoid this problem. If it’s too late for you and all you want is a WMA to MP3 convertor, there are EasyWMA and Switch. One is free, the other isn’t.

iGTD, as an alternative to Things ($49)

The fast-paced lifestyle most of us lead nowadays has driven notepads and To-Do lists to a whole new level. Getting Things Done (GTD) is now a zen-like teaching. iGTD is apparently the guru of all GTD applications. I’ve covered Things before when I first started writing for MakeUseOf. I would still recommend it but it isn’t free, however there is a free preview available now. So, you might want to get your hands on that while you still can.

My colleague Daniel listed five other GTD applications. Check it out.

WhatSize 10.3.91, as an alternative to WhatSize 4.3.1 ($12.99)

Yes, I realize that they’re both the same application but truthfully, I haven’t found a program which does what WhatSize can do. I’ve tried GrandPerspective but it doesn’t quite tickle my fancy. WhatSize is still easier to use and more pleasant on the eyes. I got pretty upset when it went from freeware to shareware without even a hint of an announcement. So, I did some searching and managed to find the older but more importantly, free version. DiskInventoryX is also worth a try, as an alternative to the alternative.

Dictionary Plugins, as an alternative to TranslateIt! (17€ for a 1-year license)

TranslateIt is a very popular multilingual translator for Mac. Mac’s Dictionary application comes with every Mac OS X. It’s pretty expandable too, because you can add more dictionaries to it if you can find them. Rather than paying close to $25 for a dictionary, you can just spend a little bit of time to download a free dictionary database (which I may have already found for you) and add it to your Mac’s Dictionary.

Fruux, as an alternative to Spanning Sync ($65)

Spanning Sync is a very well-known commercial app which allows synchronization of Google Calendar with iCal and Google Contacts with Address Book. It can also sync calendars and contacts between several Macs. Fruux is a very fresh and free preference pane which will also allow you to sync your iCal, Address Book, Bookmarks and Task between Macs. It lacks the Google Calendar and Contact syncing, though. It’s possible to set that up yourself, with a bit of manual labour. I ain’t spendin’ $65 for that.

That concludes the second part of my Free Alternatives to 10 (now 20) Commercial Mac Applications. I hope you enjoyed it and managed to save the money you would’ve spent if you hadn’t read this post.

Are there any other applications you paid for? Share with us in the comments, maybe we’re able to find a free alternative for it!

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time medical student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.

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Shocking figures, See how much money is being spent on unplanned purchases. I know I'm really guilty of this. Ooh, that looks nice. Oh look, shiny objects.

Personal finance blogger J.D. Roth points out that the more frequently you go to the grocery store, the more likely you are to impulse-buy unplanned items. Quoting the book America's Cheapest Family, Roth writes:

• “Shoppers making a ‘quick trip’ to the store to pick up a few specific items usually purchase 54 percent more than they planned.”
• "Forty-seven percent of shoppers go to the store three or four times each week.”
• “Consumers graze at the grocery store, with impulse buys making up between 50.8 and 67.7 percent of total purchase.”

To limit unplanned pickups at the grocery store, Roth is reducing his shopping trips to twice a month. (Authors of the quoted book grocery shop only once a month.) Infrequent trips require lots of planning and list-making, and can impact how and when you eat fresh fruits and veggies, but it also can turn out to be a big money saver. How do you avoid plucking that thing off the grocery shelf you never intended to buy? Let us know in the comments.

Connecting your laptop to the local coffee shop's Wi-Fi without a good firewall and thinking you're secure is like using a condom with thousands of holes in it and calling it safe sex. Your antivirus application is a good start, but if you want to make sure you're computer is safe while you're connected to the internet, a solid firewall is a must. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite Windows firewall, and today we're back with the five most popular answers. Keep reading for a closer look at the five best Windows firewalls, then cast your vote for your favorite.

Comodo Firewall Pro (Freeware)

Comodo Firewall Pro is a powerful, free firewall utility. The application's simple, clean interface belies its power, but make no mistake: Comodo is an excellent firewall packed with advanced options. In addition to the firewall, Comodo also comes packaged with an anti-malware tool called Defense+. If all you want is the firewall, be sure to select that option during installation.

ESET Smart Security (Shareware)

ESET Smart Security comes from the same company that makes NOD32, one of the five most popular antivirus applications. ESET Smart Security includes the NOD32 Antivirus along with a firewall and anti-spam filter. As a full-service solution, ESET Smart Security isn't cheap at $60, but a 30-day trial is available. Like NOD32, Smart Security is a powerful tool with a small memory footprint.

ZoneAlarm Free Firewall (Freeware)

ZoneAlarm is a free software firewall from a company called Check Point. Not only does ZoneAlarm detect inbound intrusions, but it also lets you set per-application limits for outbound connections—meaning you can stop Google Chrome or iTunes from phoning home whenever they want, for example.

Your Router's Built-In Firewall

Despite our request for a software firewall, many of you were still adamant about sticking with the firewall that's built into the router you're using on your home network. Fact is, if you don't use your computer outside of your home, you don't necessarily need a software firewall—and you don't have to run a separate application eating up RAM to get great firewall protection. However, as soon as you and your laptop leave the safety of your home, your laptop has essentially no protection if you don't set up some sort of software firewall. So while your router's firewall may be great, just remember: It can't follow you out the door.

Windows Firewall

Arguing that it gets a bad rap because it's a Microsoft product, many of you are perfectly happy with the default Windows Firewall. It's built directly into Windows, runs quietly in the background, and blocks suspicious attacks without requiring you to install any third-party software.