My mobile device has become my lifeline in a lot of ways — and I know I’m not alone.

When I walk outside, it seems hard to find someone who’s not on their phone. Whether they’re looking up directions on a maps app, checking in to their current location on Foursquare or taking a photo with Instagram, many of us rely on mobile devices to get things done efficiently and conveniently — and to stay connected.

Long before Facebook bought Instagram last month, the mobile social networking boom was upon us. The $1 billion acquisition was just the icing on the cake.

Self-Expression in Real Time

Social networks were built on the notion of sharing. Whether we’re revealing interests, photos or life moments, these platforms have become the ultimate vehicles of self-expression.

The features built into mobile devices, such as cameras and GPS, enable even the most casual tech user to easily create his or her own media. Mobile editing and social apps help the content individuals produce to be more sophisticated, while remaining personal.

“I think people are excited to take a bit of their everyday life with their phone and augment it toward something beautiful and emotional to share,” says Steve Jang, co-founder and CEO of Soundtracking. “As long as there is a captive audience that is responsive to this stream of personal media captured and shared on the fly, then I think we’ll continue to see people flock to these mobile communities.”

Thirty-eight million Americans use mobile devices for social networking almost every day, comScore reports. It’s even surpassed gaming as the most-engaged mobile activity, according to Flurry. Like Jang said, these numbers will continue to rise alongside our desire to produce and engage with personal media.

As more people access social networks from smartphones and tablets, they’ll realize these devices do more than make sharing easier and content creation better. They also allow for instantaneous connections.

“It’s no longer good enough for some of us to come home from vacation or a night out to post our photos and thoughts,” says Brett Martin, co-founder and CEO of Sonar. “We’ve become so used to real-time sharing that it feels irrelevant to post pictures of and reactions to things that happened mere hours ago.”

This real-time self-expression was essentially non-existent before the rise of mobile devices — and now it’s the norm. We’ve become accustomed to knowing what’s going on with our friends and family or favorite celebrities and organizations at the moment it’s happening. This allows us to feel as though we’re experiencing these activities with them, radically changing how we feel and, ultimately, connect.

Stronger Relationships

This increased connectedness can help us feel closer to our contacts, both fortifying existing relationships and forging new ones.

Apps such as Face Time allow us to stay in touch with friends and family overseas while others, like Martin’s Sonar, help us discover new contacts through shared connections. These are the users “that know the value of relationships,” Martin says.

But those get togethers with friends where you look up and everyone is tweeting, checking in or uploading a photo instead of talking face-to-face, makes you wonder: Is mobile social networking really helping us make the right connections?

Jang says the stigma of people ignoring their IRL friends to engage on these networks “is outweighed by the benefit of being to stay in touch with a much larger group of friends and family and see, read, and listen to a vivid (albeit fleeting) snapshot of their lives.”

For Martin, it’s certainly a concern. “But the best apps won’t need to hold you hostage to the screen,” he says. Rather, they should add dimension to relationships and enable you to engage with others in unprecedented ways, making it “easier than ever to make and maintain real life relationships,” says Stein.

Enriched Lives

At the core of any community is connecting people with a passion for a common interest.

When it comes to mobile, the plethora of social apps make it easy for users to connect around any hobby or activity, no matter how niche or mainstream. Whether you’re looking for a restaurant or a relationship, apps allow you to do what you want to do better — right along with your community.

“The best communities being built by mobile app creators today are the ones that already existed offline, but hadn’t been provided with technology and tools to enrich their experiences and relationships,” says Stein. “There must be a distinction made between the apps that add utility and improve people’s lives rather than those designed to waste time — the former actually improves relationships and the quality of interactions rather than diminishing them.”

When asked if, as mobile app creators, they consider themselves community builders, Jang and Stein say the goal of each of their apps is to help an existing community build on what it’s already doing. For Soundtracking, it’s helping the music community share and engage with the songs they already love. For Stamped, it’s about providing people who enjoy sharing their favorites with technology that makes this easier.

What’s Next?

Mobile social networks are the communities of the future. So, what’s on the horizon for this up-and-coming space? Here’s what the panelists had to say:

• “It’s all about context, frictionless sharing and push-notification-driven user interfaces. The best apps won’t tell you about every random person or restaurant that you walk by; just the ones that will truly matter.” —Brett Martin, Co-founder and CEO, Sonar.
• “The combination of structured data with your social graph is the next big trend in mobile. There’s powerful structured data around places, objects and things that when combined with a social layer can generate and sustain a whole new class of apps. It’s easier than ever for developers to tap into APIs and publicly available data sources to build new sets of killer applications.” — Bart Stein, Co-founder, Stamped.
• “Moving forward, the mobile user experience of social networking will become more distributed across multiple apps… When Facebook launched its Messenger app, I loved that. It was a straightforward app that did one thing well and let me re-engage with the FB message feature again. Inside the all-in-one FB app, that feature was more difficult to use quickly and easily… It makes a lot of sense to think about a community’s social graph and data as an underlying network upon which you can develop simple, powerful and functionally-specific mobile apps.” — Steve Jang, Co-founder and CEO, Soundtracking.

The Flashback/Flashfake Trojan has been infecting Mac computers left and right. It disguises itself as a mainstream browser plug-in, but will steal your data if left unchecked. Antivirus companies estimate that more than 600,000 Macs have been infected so far.

Fortunately, Kaspersky’s free Flashfake Removal Tool will detect and remove this malware from your system. I recommend that all Mac users run it immediately.

Once your computer is clean, make sure you install the latest OS X update from Apple. It has a fix that will prevent Flashback/Flashfake from installing in the future.

According to business intelligence firm RJ Metrics, 17.2% of all pinboards are categorized under Home, followed by Arts and Crafts (12.4%), Style/Fashion (11.7%), Food (10.5%) and Inspiration/Education (9.0%). Of those, food is the fastest-growing category. It’s also the category that gets the most repins, generating on average more than 50% repins than the second most reshared category, Style and Fashion.

The results were drawn across a sample of approximately 1 million pins across 9,200 different users.

The study also identified the most popular board names on Pinterest. More than 3% of all boards are titled “For the Home,” followed by “My Style,” (1.97%), “Products I Love” (1.86%), “Books Worth Reading” (1.68%) and “Food” (1.23%). (UPDATE: One of our commenters pointed out that the first three of these are default boards Pinterest gives users when they sign up.) Interestingly, pinboards about products tend to generate the most “likes” from users.

• More than 80% of all pins are repins.
• Online crafts marketplace etsy.com is the most popular source for pins, accounting for a little more than 3% of all content on the site. Google.com, flickr.com, tumblr.com and weheartit.com round out the top five sources. 
  
• Users who have joined Pinterest more recently (between November 2011 and December 2011) are less active than those who joined the site between August 2011 and October 2011.

Given the above, it’s little wonder that Pinterest has become a top traffic driver to the websites of women’s lifestyle magazines as well as independent blogs. The two-year-old site has 11.7 million active registered users, according to estimates from AppData.com.

Top 10 Categories on Pinterest

1. Home (17.2%)
2. Arts and Crafts (12.4%)
3. Style/Fashion (11.7%)
4. Food (10.5%)
5. Inspiration/Education (9.0%)
6. Holidays/Seasonal (3.9%)
7. Humor (2.1%)
8. Products (2.1%)
9. Travel (1.9%)
10. Kids (1.8%)

10 Most Popular Board Names on Pinterest

1. For the Home (3.15%)
2. My Style (1.97%)
3. Products I Love (1.86%)
4. Books Worth Reading (1.68%)
5. Food (1.23%)
6. Favorite Places & Spaces (1.00%)
7. Recipes (0.75%)
8. Craft Ideas (0.74%)
9. Christmas (0.72%)
10. Crafts (0.65%)

The process of development for any project is extremely involved. The amount of time and effort spent preparing to write code can be just as involved as the actual act of writing code.

As the blog post discussed, the amount of thought required into understanding the infrastructure requirements to support an iOS app can be substantial. What does the app communicate with? Where is user data stored? How is it transferred? As slick as iOS is developing for it is not simply pulling in different components and flipping a switch.

The same can be said for just about any other type of development project. Many times we look to open source out-of-the-box solutions for our clients, but usually implementing these solutions is like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

There are two ways to look at a development problem:

You can either build a solution that conforms to the business OR you can conform the business to the solution.

That is why we like customized solutions – you look at how the business operates, what technical needs exist and then build something to match.

Doesn’t the cost of going custom far outweigh the benefit? Building a customized solution doesn’t mean that it is any more intensive than trying to customize an out-of-the-box solution. Trying to customize Magento for anyone other than a Zend Framework expert can be rather daunting. Looking at Magento code will reveal nested directories inside nested directories containing files with a 100 lines of code in each file with no clear way to connect the dots. Taking a request to add a form field to an existing form can involve changing template files and expanding the existing object (address object for example). Simple things can become rather complicated to implement and what might have been a 2 hour job becomes 8 hours.

So, don’t be fooled into believing that an out-of-the-box solution will be cheaper and less intensive to implement than a custom solution. Tedious application development even exists in the world of iOS applications despite the wealth of tools that Apple provides. Just like Magento, simple changes can require substantial code changes in iOS app development.

All the more reason to do proper planning and documentation before you even begin writing code. Lack of proper planning can easily double your development costs, waste precious months, and have you end up with the wrong solution to the problem.

Bottom line: Don’t skimp on your application development budget and be sure to include adequate time and money to do proper planning and documentation.

If you’d like some perspective and want to get an idea of what’s really involved in developing an iOS application read this post from a developer of Twitterrific.

Here is the Moore County Chamber press release announcing the award nominees and details of the Awards Banquet.

This one really got on my nerves and I just found the remedy:
When you copy an email address out of mac mail you end up with something like this: john doe <johndoe@johndoe.com>. So you have to delete the name and the < > characters every time you copy an address – doohh.

Here is the solution:
Shut down Mail app – Enter the following line into your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

Finally – pew ….

When done right, social media can create a “black hole effect” around a brand in which customers not only create excitement around your brand but also immerse themselves in it. The keyword here being “customer”. The secret is to put yourself in their shoes and portrait this way of thinking on your web presences. In essence it is not about your company and products but about the clients and how they see your world.

“We like to look at topics differently here at Tangram Media”, says Jamie Adams who is their Director of Social Media. Once marketers “get hold of something, they tend to ruin it,” he says. “Most brands are trying to control the social media conversation. Many firms have poured resources into social media and now they’re scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make money from it. Our approach is more about participating in the community and celebrating it.”

That is a direction we’ll see more companies taking, he predicts, it’s based on a really simple idea: treat your customers the way they want to be treated.

Adams says the first thing a retailer getting into social media needs to consider is “what are you going to talk about?” A lot of companies come out “blabbing about themselves all the time basically,” and that’s the wrong way to go. “People like to associate themselves with brands,” Adams says, “But they don’t want to hear about them all the time.”

“Stop trying to use social media as an acquisition channel.” In fact, he says, company’s would be better off putting their social media into the hands of staff responsible for customer satisfaction rather than acquisition. “Put it in retention, not acquisition,” he says.

What brought the customer to you in the first place?

Be careful before you outsource your social media functions, he warns. “A lot of large firms outsource to PR companies or corporate communications. Those folks are not always in touch with your brand, so that may not be the best strategy. Find someone in your company who uses social media and is passionate about your brand. That’s the type of person you want handling your social media.

He suggests, “Think about what draws that customer to you in the first place.” In Tangram Media’s case, he notes, “We’re a forward looking company and we celebrate the fact that the marketing landscape is changing. Everything will evolve into a customer orientated ecosphere where selling yourself becomes unnecessary.” One way to get the customer involved is to spin stories around your products and services. “Get into it,” he says. “Interact with followers. Point out other people in the community.”

Adams says you should do as much tracking as you can, but don’t obsess over it. “We’re very heavily into analytics and insights so it’s in my nature to collect a lot of data and analyze it. But don’t obsess. Build tracking in where ever you can.”

It’s probably a mistake to look at social media just for ROI, he notes. “When you’re really good at social media, you get a black hole effect,” he says. “Social media sharing creates deep interest in a brand. People get excited about what you’re doing and share it, creating excitement around your trademark.”

James Adams Director of Social Media at Tangram Media Inc.

Here are a few pointers to help ease your mind!

There’s a seven-day review period. Once upgraded, Facebook users will be able to work through their Timeline and get things ready before it goes public. During the seven-day review period, the Facebook user will be able to publish it at any time. If he or she chooses to wait, it will automatically go live after the week is up.

Your cover photo is your chance to make a splash. The most striking feature at the top of the new Facebook profile is the cover photo, which stretches across the page’s width. The Facebook user’s profile photo, which is seen across the site, is now just a small square. Most are using this opportunity to make the profile photo a simple face shot and have used the cover photo to show something more personal, like a pet or favorite vacation spot.

For the business owner, you can get very creative and import an image that you have added business info or content too. Remember, you still want to give it a personal feel.

Keep in mind, you can not add links but certainly add call to actions such as “Follow me”

Another thing is to try and place contact and call to actions in the lower third of the image. That is because at times that is the only portion of image displayed until the viewer expands it.

No new information is being shared. Yes, Timeline is bringing back a bunch of old posts. But these posts have long been viewable on Facebook. Before, a friend would have had to go to a profile and click again and again for more posts, but would eventually travel back in time.

Your privacy settings on old posts will remain. A post shared four years ago that was set to be viewable to just friends will continue to be viewable to just friends. The only concern here lies in how a user’s definition of friend has changed. A photo or status update that in college that was OK for friends might not be OK for friends now, which might include coworkers.

Posts can be expanded. Timeline already tries to guess which of your posts will be the most interesting and it makes those viewable. It can try and guess here by how many likes or comments a post has received. If there is a post that should be expanded and is not — like a new job or college graduation — you can expand it.

The Activity Log is the best place to edit a Timeline. Facebook has built a very helpful new page called the Activity Log, which can be accessed from a profile page, that shows every single piece of content Facebook has from a user. Each item can be deleted or tweaked from this page.

For your eyes only. If there is a post in your Timeline that you don’t want to zap completely from Facebook, but don’t want anyone to see, you can change the post’s visibility to “Only Me.”

Users can add other life events. Facebook is hoping that users flesh out their Timeline with information from B.F. (Before Facebook), too. Anything added to the Timeline can now be given a date. So, if a user uploads an old photo from summer camp, he or she can set the date to June 1995 so that it appears chronologically in the Timeline.

As with all change it will take time but this is one change that I think most users will come to embrace.

Information gathered from Mashable.com and USA Today Tech News