Whether you’re new to the world of authorship or a veteran trying to make the most of Web services and applications, there are a number of online tools for writers of all types. From blogging platforms to networking hotbeds, and job boards to real-world gatherings, and more, the supply of utilities is comprehensive, to say the least.
But finding them all can be hard-going, so we’ve taken the liberty to make the discovery process easier by arranging our top finds here for your perusal. Here are 35 of the best social media tools for writers.
Have one that you’d recommend? Tell us about your favorites in the comments!
Word ProcessingAs a writer, you may have grown comfortable with applications like Microsoft Word, the Open Office equivalent, or more basic text editors like Notepad for Windows or the Mac OS X mainstay known as TextEdit. But as you spend more time consuming information in your web browser, you might have a growing interest in producing material through the same piece of software. In that case, here are several that will likely suit most, if not all of your needs as narrator:

Google Docs - This is perhaps the most frequently mentioned processor of its kind, simply for the fact that it is a Google property. Whether the name association is good or bad in your eye, Google Docs is quite capable of replacing virtually all common tasks that your typical desktop-based whiteboard can manage.
Zoho Writer - This application is superb in all sorts of ways. It runs neck-and-neck with Google Docs insofar as features go, yet it’s got the added appeal of being an independent option. In a manner of speaking, Zoho Writer has big talent without the big title.
Adobe Buzzword - Like Google did with Docs (formerly known as Writely), Adobe purchased Buzzword. And like Google Docs and Zoho Writer, Buzzword happens to be a solid option. The most obvious difference with Buzzword is that the visual environment is considerably less light in tone. Adobe gray seems there to stay. Which has its appeal, we won’t deny.
ThinkFree Office Write - It doesn’t get spoken about very often, but ThinkFree’s Write application is able to swim with bigger fish if it’s tasked to do so. You may like or dislike it for various reasons, but technically speaking, it’s quite fortuitous.
picoWrite - Among picoScribe’s suite of applications, picoWrite is the one that makes wordplay happen. It’s not the most glamorous item listed in this first segment of services. You might think the toolbar provided is quite unattractive, in fact. Perhaps that adage of “don’t judge a book by its cover” is apt to restate here, however. Give it a go if you feel up to the challenge.
Microsoft Office Web - It’s not available for all to touch and see, but it’s coming. If you’re a Microsoft Word devotee, and can’t imagine having to transition to another brand for your writerly needs, just wait and you shall receive.

Some authors write blogs to complement their long-form work. Sometimes bloggers’ work becomes a long-form product. Journalists, meanwhile, are increasingly required to write blogs to get closer and more familiar with their readers. Social media is the general idea. If you’d like to join this increasingly mainstream movement among the industry’s professional keyboardists, here are several great picks to choose from.

TypePad - One of the premier blogging services in operation today, TypePad, a Six Apart creation, puts a premium on ease of use and functionality. This month the company introduced an option for journalists to obtain a 1 year pro-level membership free of charge, ordinarily a $150 value. They call it the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program. In addition to membership, Six Apart promises visible placement on Blogs.com and enrollment in an advertisement revenue sharing program.
Movable Type - Also from Six Apart, Movable Type is more a business-level class of blogging platform, with emphasis on multi-user management and enhanced customization. If your fledgling blog turns into something of a phenom requiring incorporation and a full-time staff of 20+, Movable Type may be the thing to jump to.
WordPress.com - Renowned for its simplicity, openness and extensibility, WordPress.com is a hosted blogging service of immense popularity - largely because it’s free.
WordPress.org - You can roll your own blog with a custom WordPress.org installation on a server of your choice with a domain name of your choice. WordPress is the choice of many top blogs, including Mashable.
Squarespace - Customization is key with Squarespace, but it’s very much a visual experience. Almost everything can be handled with the click of a mouse, as opposed to WordPress.org’s sometimes granular, code-heavy makeup.
Blogger - Another simple and very popular blogging engine, Blogger is a Google-run platform that puts emphasis on the basics like none other. In fact, it might be considered too easy for some.

Taking the blogging thing one step further, microblogging restricts the writer to a 140-character-per-post exercise. As you might imagine, this requires inventiveness to produce qualitative and engaging material, whether it be conversational or promotional (or both). And there are a number of ways to go about engaging an audience in this fashion.

Twitter - The most popular and most recognized microblogging solution presently in play, Twitter has many functions. It’s used as a marketing engine. It’s used to talk to “followers.” It’s even used to chronicle poems and verse, as well as brief novella-like inventions. NYTimes reporter Matt Richtel is one figure who employed the platform for creative ends.
Laconi.ca - A microblogging service created in much the same way as Twitter, Laconi.ca allows users to do with 140-character messaging what WordPress.org is able to do with blogging. You create your microblog as you wish, invite whomever you like into the mix, and you’ve effectively got yourself a personal Twitter of your own design. It’s not easy to set up, mind you. But the challenge may prove worthwhile.
Facebook - A network of over 100 million people, Facebook is perhaps the largest purveyor of status updates on the Web next to nifty away messages posted by users of instant messaging services like AIM and Google Talk, et al. Status updates typically denote what a user is doing at a certain moment in time. But the ability to free-form one’s thoughts allows Facebook to act as a microblogging engine of sorts. If you establish a great network of people, the power of this can be extraordinary.
Jotting IdeasMaybe you’re not ready to start on a book or short story or journalism piece. Maybe you just want to lay down your thoughts on certain matters to make better sense of your mission for a certain project. These services will keep those notes organized.

SpringNote - Founded on the wiki mantra, SprintNote is free, intuitive, enormously utilitarian, and even delivers an iPhone application to extend the experience. Because we all know that some of the best thoughts come when you least expect them - like when you’re walking a city street, without a notebook or desktop PC in view.
Evernote - This is a fantastic note management application that sports numerous access points, including the standard website, desktop applications for Mac and PC users, and even an iPhone-compatible application. All Evernote downloads can synchronize with a user’s account in the cloud.
Google Notebook - With desktop and mobile browser access, Google Notebook is simple, but powerful. Jot your ideas down quickly, wherever you might be, and have easy access when you get to your main terminal at home or at the office.
Zoho Notebook - Similar to Google’s application, Zoho Notebook puts emphasis on convenient information aggregation and collaboration. Need to run a concept by your editor for a manuscript or essay? This is a great way to do it. Wonderfully enough, login is provided for Zoho account owners as well as Google and Yahoo usernames.
Social NetworkingWriters may not be the most social folks to roam the planet, but networking on the Web is all but a necessity for people seeking maximum exposure - and maximum sales! Here are several sites to occupy your time away from your word processor.

Red Room - A social network for authors to maintain pages and readers to get better acquainted with those they know and those they may not know so well. Red Room is packed with blogs, essays, videos, podcasts, events and more. It’s one of those places which, the deeper you delve, the more engaging it feels. And it’s still in beta!
Writer’s Network - What may seem a bit plain at first glance is in fact a surprisingly voluminous database of words and the writers behind them. It’s free, with plenty of tips, how-tos, and voting features to see how users rate your work alongside everything else.
Shelfari - A social network with emphasis on what you and others are reading, Shelfari is less about connecting authors to their fans than sharing recommendations and reviews. Of course, authors generally are avid consumers of content, and sometimes only reluctant producers, so sharing a personal library, even if you have an ISBN tag to call your own, might be a fun endeavor.
GoodReads - Similar to Shelfari but constructed in a way that more quickly grants users access to its various components and sections. Also, status updates were recently introduced to GoodReads. If nothing else, GoodReads can be highlighted for its independent role. Shelfari, alternatively, was recently acquired by Amazon.
Gather.com - This is a social network with wide-ranging subject matter, so it cannot claim to be the exclusive domain of readers. Still, Gather has its book clubs, which authors could certainly tap into.
LinkedIn - A website famous for its business networking acumen, LinkedIn could be where you introduce yourself to agents, editors, fellow writers and other valuable connections. Time spent here can be rewarding, for sure.
Facebook - You need only look to pages like that of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, which have grossed roughly a half-million “fans” to see what kind of network effect you can get from Facebook. We mentioned it earlier in the microblogging portion of the roundup, and given the variety of active users, both in age and in occupation, it’s a clear fit in the social networking segment as well.

Hey, a writer’s gotta eat, eh? That’s the express reason for these two sites. Check them out, and if you’ve got suggestions for other services, shout ‘em out in the comments!

Freelancer’s Union - Want jobs? Want to meet important people? Want to advertise yourself and your business? Need insurance as an independently employed person? Freelancer’s Union delivers it all.
FreelanceWriting.com - It’s rough to browse and job leads can be a real pain to track, but FreelanceWriting.com presents lots of links. The more you frequent the site and watch the incoming streams of gigs offered to writers, the more you’ll get out of it.
Book Fairs/ShowsThere are many book fairs that take place throughout the year, but there are some major hotspots that all but require publishers’ attention, and by extension, authors as well. Here’s a run-through of some of the majors.

Paris Book Fair - With a 2009 schedule of March 13-18, the Paris Book Fair is just one of the events each year in the French nation where celebration of ideas is the order of each day.
London Book Fair - This event takes places in the spring season (April), and is one of Europe’s largest and most important.
BookExpo America - Occupying the halls of the Jacob Javits Center in New York City for four days in May 2009, BookExpo America is perhaps the pinnacle of book gatherings in the US. Plenty of events occur in the American capital and places elsewhere to argue otherwise, but the name here speaks volumes. Pun intended.
Frankfurt Book Fair - Also one of the largest and most important of gatherings in Europe for the publishing industry, the Frankfurt Book Fair carries the torch for the global book tour each year in October. The 2009 schedule has it for October 14-18 to be specific.
iPhone Apps:It’d be quite a feat of thumb work to punch out some serious, long-winded prose on your smartphone, but in the event that you want or need to read or blog an interesting bit of data, these iPhone apps make you that much more productive with your multi-touch screen.

WordPress [iTunes URL] - We noted both Wordpress.com and WordPress.org options in the blogging segment above, and we’d be amiss if we didn’t mention the mobile option for iPhone as well. You can access ‘.com’ and ‘.org’-style blogs with the application, as well as publish photos and preview such posts before they’re uploaded. The download is free.
TypePad [iTunes] - Yes, the competition between WordPress and TypePad carries over to the iPhone, and as we mentioned in a past review, the provision from Six Apart is aesthetically more pleasant and supports six languages in addition to English. It is a free download as well.
Stanza [iTunes] - A free application with the reverse purpose of purveying published works to the user, Stanza is as revered as any iPhone application released since the summer months. You can transfer books from the Lexcycle Online Library or text located on your desktop computer. Language support includes English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish.
More Resources for Writing OnlineImage courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl-Freelancers’ Toolbox - 30+ Online Freelance Resources
-30+ Tools For The Amateur Writer
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MySpace is not known for good design. Its garish profiles make designers nauseous. And yet, there are signs of hope: we’ve tracked down 50 MySpace music layouts that are quite remarkable. Stylish. Stunningly well-conceived. Beautiful, even.


















































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Or was your 












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Whether you’re a voice actor looking for work, or you’re on the other side of the divide and seeking someone to play a vocal role for your brand, script, etc., 



Google’s Gmail service has 









Would you pay for a job search application if you could get two others free of charge? The people behind 
As we’ve all learned,
serve advertisements on BitTorrent websites. (Not the ads in the screenshot to the left, though. That’s somebody else’s business.)
The last couple of years have had the questions of when and how the world of Big Media would embed itself in the burgeoning social media space recycled over and over again.








The king of Web video is finally set to join the live video realm today. In 30 minutes, 





Well, it took 6 months since we first heard 




Company Name



Having long played the part of a utility that allowed users fast access to places near and far, 

There are three kinds of items users of Microsoft’s Office application suite share with one another more than anything else: Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.
Company Name

The inputs you make are weighed collectively and against one another. Expected returns and risk measurements will be calculated, and you’ll ultimately be given recommendations on how to manipulate those possessions to make better use of the money you have floating. The service will also suggest stocks if you wish to shift gears or complement your established investments with different sets of ticker tape.
Maybe you’re a fan of Google’s 



Celebrants of the Thanksgiving holiday congregate around dinner tables all across the US next Thursday evening, but as any self-respecting feast and party planner would attest, preparations carry well into the preceding week.










Company Name


As virtually anyone would agree, it’s fantastic when technology works when required. But if
with reasonable haste and without having to employ a massive army of phone call responders. But all too often these changes have been implemented after the proverbial profanity has hit the fan.
The second set of data is telling in that the issue of impatience came up in more than half of all instances when attitudes were questioned. And if you grab the four stats together in succession, the feelings were of confidence, impatience, discouragement, and confusion.
Like many entries in the world of
And users will be content to know that the money management options provided are similarly well-design as the previously standard set of software. Ease of use is the order of the day. If your cost analysis job isn’t so rigorous as to require some serious machinery, these extensions will likely suffice for the day-to-day.
Plugins are great. As anyone who bothers to make their online lives enhanced with conveniences knows, browser 









I’m of two minds about about the world of to-do list applications populating the Web and our desktop and mobile devices. On one hand, there clearly are far too many. On the other, what suits Joe Taskmaster doesn’t necessary work for everyone.
There’s social networking of the MySpace and Facebook variety, and then there’s social networking of the premium, “classy,” “sophisticated,” “not-for-everyone” kind that carries a price to join. The latter formula is what 

There are only a few places around the world where the vice of art of consumerism is having a good day. Suffice it to say that 
Hey, hey, 












Government is increasingly putting much of its public records online, 




There are a number of microblogging engines in existence today that work the build-your-own angle of the market. The corporate and closed 



Depending on your familial makeup and your level of social engagement with peers and colleagues, gift giving can be easy, moderately cumbersome, or far too time consuming for your liking. To those who fit the last demographic, and perhaps the second as well, there is 

An 

To be perfectly truthful, the Times is still scheduled to get cash from me on a monthly basis - this time in the form of a Kindle-based subscription. But in the Kindle edition there are no ads whatsoever, so it’s like I’m dabbling in a fourth dimension and breaking the rules of economic normalcy. These $14 payments are probably a non-issue for the sender. Definitely not meat and potatoes for NYT Managing Director Bill Keller and the rest.
Playing off the age-old “





The folks who introduced 




There’s been a whole lot of love given to Apple’s 










After
Apart from a shift in
China has spent a great deal of time being portrayed as an oppressive force when it comes to information traveling into and out of the country. Talk of Internet censorship began to grab some steam in 2007, and the Communist Party hasn’t escaped that label since. Yet it’s critical for outside observers to take a few steps back from the day-to-day news cycle in order to get a more comprehensive view of where it’s been and where it may go in the months and years ahead. Here we give you one such timeline.
Forward to 2008, when we’ve seen many multinational corporations endure conflicts with China’s network of regulators. At the start of the year, Google saw
Before the games had begun, there was the crisis inflicted by
There are a lot of iPhone apps. Thousands of them. And a good percentage are location-aware. They function with the help of cellular tower spotting or GPS to give users real-world perspective on what surrounds them.

















The answer is nothing. Nada. Absolutely nil. I can’t conjure up one measly scenario in which the Web can’t be of guidance in some way or another.
Before the current economic crisis landed with a thwack on our plate and ensured that few would escape the beast unscathed, I was really long on peer-to-peer. Totally bullish. And paid P2P - selling content on those peer-to-peer systems that content owners tried to sue out of existence - made sense. I thought, “eventually those Big Media dolts will come around and see the light.” I’m not so sure anymore.






Big Stage
Though voicemail has become a less cumbersome thing with the advent of so-called “visual voicemail,” in which the recipient can pick and choose which recordings to listen to at a given time, text-based messaging is a route preferred by many people today.


Earlier this year, as Yahoo fought off an acquisition attempt by Microsoft, it began to entertain a search advertising deal with Google. They even even went so far as to conduct a live trial of such a measure. Now the two Internet giants have effectively
So you live in a major American city like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, or Chicago. You’re hungry. You know you’ve got tons of lunch menu options in a given area to choose from. But do you go for a standard recipes, or do you seek out one of the day’s specials?
AddToAny
The plugin and customization options are certain to draw the favor of many publishers wishing for a multifunctional gadget that can conform to their own designs. A standard delivery might suit many users, but some editors will surely appreciate what’s now available.


Qoof
You know those sweepstakes that go on in malls and on oceanside boardwalks? Organizers might ask you to offer up $50 for a single ticket with a chance to win a car when the final lottery drawing is made. 
We’re in the final 72 hours of the presidential campaign in the US, which many in the press and the blog space regard as one of the most 







Do you ever have the urge to explore new sites on the Web? Maybe you give the social search-discovery engine StumbleUpon a few minutes of your time every day, looking for interesting places to visit. Sort of like driving cross-country and seeing the sights.


I’ve said it twice before already, but I’ll reiterate: This is the
Indeed, if there’s anything that can bring more noisemakers to the fore in the land where user-generated content remains supreme - quantitatively, at least - it is the method of granting a single day of voting in order to elect a new leader of a nation of 300,000,000-plus people. (Not counting the many preceding days for so-called absentee ballots that one-quarter to one-third of the voting public has chosen to deliver to Uncle Sam, of course.)
Some people make goals for themselves to reach every day. Like an hour-long bike ride, or a walk or jog around the neighborhood each morning, noon, or night. Others like to work themselves up toward bigger things. Like climbing 










As anyone with a good perception on data rates demanded of video downloads knows, the “packaged” experience delivered by carriers is 1) nowhere near like using a desktop-sized Web browser, and 2) costly. These factors, compounded with unavailability of many media options and television channels and whatnot, do much to make media services somewhat unappealing to many people. New software breaches that barrier, no doubt, but such developments are young and far from a common convenience.
Don’t think
Not so much bigger, though. We recently shared a few notes on the 


You’ve done this plenty of times before. You share a clip from YouTube with someone, but you only recognize a small portion of the video as the main attraction. So you tell Joe Plumber (or whomever you associate with) to forward the progress bar to a specific time or moment once they load the page. And while sending off those instructions, you think to yourself how much easier it would be to have the option to automate a custom playback feature for just that purpose. Well, 



Comedy Central’s signature fake news programs, “
In addition to the standard set of
It wasn’t long ago that people took a hard look at the social networking world and saw that such activities didn’t quite jive with the typical workplace environment. Some employers solidified that notion by barring visits to such sites via their networks.
Bradwell and Reeves even think that placing restrictions on Web-based networking within
Anybody who has read The New York Times for an extended period of time knows that the paper cranks out a considerably large number of movie reviews. Tons of blockbusters, indie flicks, foreign titles, and a good share of DVD picks for both new and old productions to boot.



BigTent
You know that correlation frequently made between wisdom and age? And you know how generations of people tend to keep to themselves? If you’re 20-something, you’ll probably spend many of your days with 20-somethings. The same with the 30-, 40-, and 50-something folks. This seems to be the thinking behind the debut of 



Web traffic and user engagement analyst Nuconomy takes the private beta tag off its 




The number of photo sharing websites in operation is immense. No question about it But though 
Perhaps the stereotype holds no ground anymore, but I’ll venture to guess it’s still not often that you’ll see something big roll out for Canada that can’t be used by an American audience. Yet, such is the case with MySpace’s introduction of a “Profile 2.0″ upgrade option for 



Remember when all eyes were on
in the field of economics and a professor with similar title at Chapman University, presented an argument in the pages of
Here we are in 2008, more Web-connected than ever. It’s pretty great, right? You betcha. The ease, the speed, the mobility. To quote a famous young lad, “Please sir, can I have some more?”
Going back to Laycock’s notice, she echos social media manners voiced by Beth Harte, who directs Internet users to be real, be nice, be respectful, listen (then talk), give (then take), be consistent, apologize for errors, give thanks, not to “broadcast,” not to “stalk” others, etc. A pretty sensible set of tips, if you ask me. But how the average Web user checks off that list is a relatively open matter. Do you go with emoticons, profuse exclamation points, tons of LOLs, or do you take it long-form? Is it conditional on who you’re speaking with? I’m sure you could answer yes to all of those questions to some degree.
Just a few days ago, mobile social network
So it has more or less grown in tandem with the
Something tells me Sprint CEO Dan Hesse is a little bitter about his company getting passed by the #4 wireless telecom operator to become debut provider of an Android-based handset that the world has seen so far.
I imagine that future being one with most all carriers providing handsets featuring the major software options of the day. For example, T-Mobile will eventually support the
Yes, long live hackers. The good kind. The semi-sweet variety. All kinds.
Hackers are not always wearing their white hats to work, of course. Sometimes their ballcaps are grey. Sometimes they’re black. And some do certainly wreak havoc on the world. Millions, even billions of dollars worth of damage.
Apart from making music that sounds good to a sizable audience, there are some essentials that can help bands become increasingly successful. One of them is consistency in live performance scheduling.
Skoggins naturally isn’t without company in its sector of the market. Sites like
If you’ve had brothers or sisters or cousins older than yourself, there’s a reasonable chance that you’ve been the recipient of objects most frequently described as hand-me-downs.







The team at Yahoo Search has been involved with what is browser-based search assist for some time. For instance, they launched a feature literally titled
Yahoo and Inquisitor have made sure to maintain the visual traits of Inquisitor across the browsers now supported, which is just as well, given the fact that it always was a nice-looking bit of kit. But some enhancements beyond versions that have come before are in evidence and are certainly worth noting. This is particularly the case for those using IE 7 or 8. (Note: Inquisitor downloads now available for Firefox and IE are both in 1.0 beta stages.)


Imagine if you could rent anything to do with consumer and luxury goods - from Ferraris to Halloween costumes to fashion items to party equipment to tuxedos and beyond - all through one online venue. Would you be interested? The folks at 

Casual gaming on the Web has grown over the past year or so to become a fairly
The company has introduced today what it calls “Brand Overlays.” These in effect deliver floating advertisement spots in a portion of a window during gameplay for up to 10 seconds that, at the choosing of a marketer and game developer, can be situated in any of the four corners of the screen, or, alternatively, within slivers of real estate at the top or bottom of the screen. Call them header or footer banners, if you like.
Musicians separated by geography are known to collaborate on recordings regularly. Whether they do so easily is something else. Fortunately, services like 




So long as you’ve got a Wi-Fi signal to grab onto and a Web browser with Google’s Gears engine on board, Google is enabling Web developers near and far the option to locate users all around the world and feed them information relevant to their respective places on the map.
Web-based productivity applications and services are many. Variations on the idea comprise one of the most saturated markets in the cloudware space. Well, it’s time to make way for another. Called 

If you’re a teacher of a particular class in the K-12 bracket, and you would enjoy a quick and inexpensive way to piece together a website with all the necessary trappings to a schoolroom environment - such as a homework page, contact field, calendar, and perhaps even a grade report to be privately or publicly accessible - a service called 

This week, consumers in the US in select cities featuring 3G support by T-Mobile will be able to step into the carrier’s retail outlets and fork over $179 to have, to hold and to own an
Through Handango, paid applications can be designated to be one-time purchases or subscription-based downloads, for monthly, quarterly, or annual revenue generation. Developers can sign up for accounts if they haven’t already. Existing registrants, such as builders of
There are only a select number of instances when I consider it appealing to watch live video over the Web, such as news streams from sources like
Remember that thing Google put together a 

There’s word from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the NVCA, and Thompson Reuters telling of a drop in VC activity that has effectively diminished the flow of cash to companies to Q4 2006 numbers. Not terrible, mind you, at
For the last year or two, there were a great many reports delivered about various startups being funded and funded some more. Many, many reports. A collective number that might define a “get ready for another pop” sort of warning.
The battle each and every one of us has to get stuff done can be easy or daunting, or any number of stages in between. Particularly if what needs doing runs a considerably long lineup. The longer, the more impossible the job(s) seems to complete, right?
How much value do you place in Web design? More specifically, how important is the construction of a company or website logo to you? Do you pay a good amount of attention to such things, or is it all really non-critical and ancillary?

























We don’t frequently pay mind to the world of adult-natured business on the Web. Only on occasion will we see what’s going on in “that part” of the networked world. For instance, sites like 
Mozilla first spoke about development of a mobile edition of its Firefox browser 







Ever since Apple introduced the TV option for iTunes consumers, it has had to service increasing demand for increasing amounts of programming titles and studios. And because it has had to contend with the 


SemantiNet

Graspr
Earlier today we noted the arrival of 

If you enjoy playing one-man cover band to the tune of popular standards from the 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond, you’ve got a number of options to choose from on the Web - 


Previously, YouTube presented an election destination dubbed
In this moment of cautionary investing, any word of capital exchanged carries an extra bit of weight. What JS-Kit intends to accomplish with secured financing is, simply put, the expansion of commercial accounts, with profitability being the logical goal. This will be achieved with the help of additional developer power, says CEO Khris Loux.
Online invoicing and business time management service 
JAJAH





The Internet radio and on-demand streaming music service 

If you want to share a webpage with one or more people, you might use a social bookmarking service such as 
The comment options available within Reframe It are fairly noteworthy. You can specify your message as a ‘General Comment,’ ‘Question,’ ‘Counter Argument,’ ‘Supporting Argument,’ which gives perspective to particularly busy pages. Furthermore, you can specify whether you only wish to share a comment with contacts within a group of users or the entire Reframe It membership. As you might suspect, this is quite useful, particularly if you happen to converse with multiple groups.
Yahoo has launched a 

Want your Firefox 3 browser to be location-savvy? Mozilla is making that possible with the release of 
When we talk about video content on the Web, it’s now customary to speak about control. Things like on-demand, skip forward, skip back, shuffle, etc., are pretty common. They’re expected, really.
BitGravity also talks about things like advertisement injection, virtual projections and so forth, all revolving around its engineering of an HD Flash- and H.264-based platform. An “


Google isn’t only having to play the patient party in the U.S. in its joint search advertising effort with Yahoo. According to a story in Monday’s edition of the Russian business daily 

As a individual who enjoys a good hike now and again, and who sees handheld GPS devices providing data for very many applications in the none-too-distant future, a Web service by the name of 

Google Knol
It’ll be two months until regulators within the European Commission responsible for issues concerning data protection will hold a hearing with U.S.-based search engines with reference to data retention timelines.
Ixquick claims a query deletion process of just 48 hours. Google, on the other hand, pledges to do so within 9 months (down from an 18-month standard
Yesterday we put questions to you 
If your interest is fashion content and networking, you might visit mainstay websites like 


Were you bullied in school or out of school by classmates or students from warring institutions? Would you tell a parent or guardian about it?
Well, making such changes is harder to do the advent of free online tools, and tools that essentially do away with physical barriers. Users cannot only just connect with people within their own communities, but with the world at large. Which on the one hand is a phenomenal convenience, but alternately is something that can carry a measure of permanence and inescapability. There’s no easy way to whitewash MySpace, in other words.
So who among you, if any, count yourselves among those subscribers, or subscribers for any other news channel feeds on YouTube or places elsewhere? If you tend not to watch news in that fashion, is it out of disinterest in the format? Would you prefer
If an all-in-one VoIP and IM client on your iPhone is what you’ve been yearning for since the multi-touch device first arrived on the scene, and particular since the popular App Store officially arrived, 


Steadfastness and fortuity can only hold up to so much scrutiny before it submits to external influences. Or so it goes with the Yahoo-plus-Google search advertisement revenue sharing deal that the two Web giants have been pushing
Statements made by executives at Google and Yahoo over the matter in the last month or two have certainly gone to reasonable lengths in making the technical case for their agreement. And Web-based discourse has not been short of arguments for and against the deal. Yet, those against seem to have spoken more loudly, and in greater numbers. Having groups like the
I don’t know how accurate it is to say Senator Barack Obama is a Mac to Senator John McCain’s PC, but those convinced of this premise will either delight in or scorn the fact that the Obama for America campaign has presented a 
YouTube has been experimenting with various ways to make its voluminous business a 
New York-based network 



Microsoft is working to “innovate” its search business model in one clearly visible way: perks. Perks, perks, and more perks. This time it’s about
Several hundred will grant you lots of sky miles on a choice of airlines. All business in the limited trial is to be completed by April 15. Also known as “Tax Day 2009.” If things are deemed go be going well, Microsoft will venture beyond America’s borders with its tickets and clocks.
This week’s release of 



Peter Gabriel and other backers of the free-streaming, ad-supported, as well as paid-for download service
The wait will either be treacherous or easygoing, depending on one’s current assessment of the We7 business model.

The last time we put forth the premise that 
Yet, as Ben Jones of
I’ve mulled the idea of writing this opinion for several days now. Mostly because I’ve wanted to give this one decent try before crying foul. But I’ve demurred enough. There’s no getting around it.
I know, I know. The existence of MySpace Music hinges on those two words that make up its label. MySpace and music. MySpace is arguably the reigning social network of the music world. It’s not the other way around. It’s not music plus a friendliness factor. (Though I’m confident many users do browse the site from that angle.) Furthermore, having the chance to share songs and playlists with friends is quite wonderful, especially given the opportunity to assemble personal libraries stuffed with full-length songs to listen to whenever one’s heart so desires. Now users get to have that familiar MySpace world with lots more content to share. Awesome, right? Absolutely.


Ten months ago 
It took
Then at 8:29 p.m. came the summary of the House decision: “Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection. On motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended Agreed to by voice vote.”
As for the critical detail that facilitated the vote, Sandoval said that the passage of the bill hinged on a deadline set for any negotiations over a new rate. WSA co-sponsor Howard Berman is said to have agreed to extend the original date of December 15, 2008 to February 15, 2009 to convince NAB representatives to drop their objections.
Just
Now, Wal-Mart doesn’t insist that you purchase recordable discs from its own shelves, of course. To do so would be tantamount to a near complete abrogation of corporate propriety. But there’s a good chance you did spend (or will do so in the coming weeks) that other bit of cash for that physical media with the same species consumis gigantis. So…you know…there it is.
This isn’t a one-off for Xbox Live users. In mid to late April, 
You might have known him as
Just over two months ago, 

This has been a busy September for the company. It has put forth
In addition to the festive front page greeting it’s presented visitors with today, the company has produced
So here we are at another crucial point in Pandora’s attempt to evade a “



Residential real estate receives an enormous amount of attention from sites around the Web. Commercial, a bit less so. And according to 


Paying bills collectively with friends is common, but keeping track of such matters, particularly for recurring charges or moments of extensive cost write-ups (vacations, for example), can be a taxing process in and of itself. You might do it by way of the age-old paper-and-pencil routine. Or through a spreadsheet king like Microsoft Excel. But if in the case that you reside somewhere in the middle and need a quick and simple application to get the job done, a utility by the name of 


Digg
Adelson of course describes this as “big news.” For a U.S.-based company with a claimed 30 million unique monthly users, nearly half of which reside beyond America’s borders, it’s rather hard to argue the opposite. Digg is not only up against the likes of
There are quite a few mobile utilities that allow you to network with friends (and even people you don’t know so much) with a map as a backdrop. Some have been around for years, to greater or lesser effect. Relative to 
AdBrite
AdBrite has never seemed to slow in its drive for more powerful distribution and audience interaction. Last year it 
Searching for things through a service that scours multiple engines is one thing. Searching for things through a service that scours certain aspects of the news and social discussion space is another. This is what a new invention called 

Roadways in parts of New York City are having their annual crisis of non-motion, a result of the gathering of the United Nations General Assembly. So what better time for the utilitarian folk at Google to ply the five boroughs and areas beyond for all manner of details concerning the mass transit options of the region?

LightPole acts as a window through which users gain access to an ever larger number of services custom tailored to small screens - so long as independent publishers opt to distribute their content through LightPole’s Publishing Services component.
Are you a college student, graduate or undergraduate? How would you like to work for Facebook someday? Sound nice? Zuckerberg and company hope you think so. Because they’ll be paying your place of higher learning a visit. As long as your campus is one of twenty or so listed
Have you devised an answer to the questions posited above? Really, consider your options, if you are indeed in the collegiate class. Do you put yourself out for a position at Facebook, or do work for some other company? Alternatively, do you brave entrepreneurship yourself?

A UK-based social shopping service called 

As we rehash
is part and parcel of the sales process. It is, in short, what determines the value advertising. Advertisers pay considerably more to Google for ads that are more or less equal in size and shape to Yahoo’s own placements because Google’s audience is naturally much larger, and is growing still. (If third party analysts’ readings are accurate, Yahoo, Microsoft and others of the upper echelon of the Web search industry are either growing much more slowly, have become stagnant, or are decreasing in share.)
I have to say that it’s also a bit humorous to see Stross hedge some of his argument on an advertising deal made between Google and Ask.com, which started in 2002 and registered renewals in 2004 and 2007.
There are only so many ways to draw a 


The itinerary is fairly well detailed. So much so that readers might well stumble while the play is in progress? Who knows. Probably not. The route, in several words or more, goes from Nashua, New Hampshire up to Maine’s famous Portland Head Light, and meets a castle, a garden, a cove, and a lighthouse along the way.
Just a few days ago,
Google Apps extensibility in particular is something that might pique interest in Pringo, which touts itself as eminently customizable. So much so that the company does nothing less than offer a front-page claim stating its developers “were able to create an exact replica of Facebook - on our own platform - in less than 24 hours.” (What’s the saying? Video or it didn’t happen?)
The industry that is New Media is very much about two-way communication. We all recognize this. Rather than content simply being doled out to the masses, data on the Web travel in all directions. And while this arrangement hugely effective for a myriad of parties, there are the odd apples which, with barriers lowered, can damage a process.
Remember when Comcast got
Just to lather some background on to this revelation, Comcast was pinned earlier this year for purposely slowing BitTorrent traffic, which opponents of the silent measure said tossed legitimate and legal transfers in with illicit, copyright-breaking behavior. (
Perhaps the percentage is true, given the volume of users Comcast presumably serves. But the stated absence of any customer complaints seems absurd on its face, and raises several questions: Were customers aware? Did they notice? If so, did they fail to register calls to Comcast customer service for the fact that they were using peer-to-peer software and feared repercussions (for any number of reasons)? Were throttling measures so sporadic and fleeting that all was well minutes or hours after subscribers had noticed a drop in network performance?
Favtape
Some additions to Favtape will of course garner less applause than others, but the changes made will please many listeners for sure. For one, Favtape is now said to deliver millions more songs. Bigger surely is better in that respect. Also, the ability to embed a Favtape player in a website makes for easy sharing with those who would otherwise not bother with a visit to the homepage. This goes for everything from 

If you’ve been following Zoho’s company blog closely the past several days, you’ll know that the company has written in a memo explaining that its 



Drop.io
Cisco is frequently one to write checks for things it has not made itself but indeed wants as its own. Aside from its rise as one of the critical elements of the telecom boom, it’s made quite a name as an acquirer of things big and small. The latest name to be taken under Cisco’s wing is 


In late June, Microsoft was said to be 

If you want to take social networking and do something productive with it, within a local setting, 

If academic learning via the Web is something that intrigues you, there are a number of places to go. But if you’re interested specifically in learning via live video instruction and tutoring, the name 

Word that T-Mobile would be launching the first Android-based device sometime in autumn has been floating around 
For a good while
And big it needs to be in order to successfully contend with the likes of 


For a good while 
There’s no doubt that 

Think mobile video is going to be big stuff? German mobile social networking outfit
A look at Itsmy.com will show a three-part puzzle. Itsmy.com stands as the mobile social networking hub. Itsmy.tv touts itself as “the number one personal TV service - 1000TV shows/day.” And then there is
As we noted last Friday,
Adweek
We’re going into the third week of September, and while it’s more or less a general rule of thumb to consider the first of the month, or the Labor Day in “Labor Day Weekend,” the time when summer breaks come to a close, both for the working and academic classes, there inevitably is some spillover into the dozen days or so that follow. Which raises the question: How did you spend the year’s warmest moments? Did you escape technological excess? Or did you dive deeper still?
As we all know, the options availed through broadband are quite extraordinarily. Therefore, does playing games on Facebook with friends and relatives in far reaches of the US, Europe, Australia, Asia, and elsewhere make things a bit easier? Are your social circles so enthralled by what has come from Web development that you’ve taken full advantage of services available today, and thus find any decrease or halt in travel not much of a detriment at all?
Spring, summer, fall, and winter are all inviting of new. Lots and lots of new. You get more ways to talk, as well as more ways to ingest information.
Could you link the most important aspects of your online life in ten lines or less? Your email, your 

Way back in early July, we made note of a little video aggregation engine called 

The past week in technology has been packed with launches. Lots of names coming out of the
This fact is only compounded by Spore’s performance not only on store shelves but the proliferation of illicit downloads on BitTorrent websites. On Friday morning, Andy Greenberg and Mary Jane Irwin of 
YouTube isn’t looking for fantastical amounts of user submissions in this effort. It’s only given ten unique subjects for Average Joe and Jane to address. But the company is nonetheless guaranteed to see ample material flow its way. With just short of a month to create quick clips on things like editing videos, creating playlists, uploading content, the basics of annotations, and the sometimes treacherous camera-to-computer transfer of footage, do-gooders will likely manage to issue tons walkthroughs for both curious and troubled viewers to consume.

But it has told of investment made in its efforts, which has helped spur plans of expansion beyond the nation’s capital. In its own words: “Within the next six months, uBoast’s potential and mass use will be taken through the nation in order to utilize its features that allow for global recruitment.”
We shed light on
Company Name





Whether you’re into professional or collegiate sports like football and basketball, or follow NASCAR, NHL, PGA, Soccer, or MLB, it’s often the case to take your pick of teams, players, or driver, and see how they do against the opposition - and also how your choices score against those of your friends. This tendency is the basis for 




AT&T introduced a development this week, assembled by mobile social networking software specialist
To put it concisely, My Communities is merely a checklist of partnerships established by Intercasting. Intercasting, the proprietor of ANTHEM, operates in a way that binds carriers, content providers, social networking services, and advertising networks together into one channel, in order to reach a large audience in relatively uniform fashion. Indeed, Mashable previously touched on ANTHEM’s integration with 



$2.99 might seem a charge too steep for many viewers, but it is not without precedent. Studios such as HBO recently introduced content to the iTunes Store at a similar rate. Whether consumers will be sold on the option is of course another matter. Apple is broadening the availability of HD-quality TV content to the general pool of iTunes users, a greatly expanded supply of potential buyers to, say, the Apple TV-only crowd, who have for several months been given the option to download HD movies when released. In total, Apple CEO Steve Jobs today revealed that iTunes is supplied to some 65 million people.
Family network
Of course, figuratively speaking, it is already quite far reaching, encompassing a multi-lingual usership that involves French-, Spanish-, Italian-, Russian-, and Norwegian-speaking peoples, just to count several available options.


Picking and choosing your way to a furnished home is rarely a perfect science. Appliances you think would go well with your kitchen blueprint, for example, may not fit so well with things once you take delivery. The planning process is inevitably followed by tweaking, compromise, and reserved acceptance that things will not go as originally desired. But with the advent of Web-based services, you can perhaps find a more complete view of what’s to come. 

The objective for 


Higher still is GoToMyCamera’s Business plan, costing $30/month for service with a 10-camera allowance, 10 users, 500 MB included cloud storage. For each additional 500MB, it is $1.50.
VP Tim Twerdhal says that consumers’ choice of downstream video bitrates allows Roku to safely stay within the bounds set by Comcast. A valid point. Equally valid is his explanation that visual quality will be sustained while bitrates drop as the technologies involved improve and advance. But such progress is a relative unknown to Comcast’s very real “cut-off.”
Germany’s Office for Information Security, also known as the
All this conversation about Google this and Google that, Google so easy and Google so smart.
As we noted earlier, the 





So a whole lot of people thought Microsoft’s
NFL.com, too, displayed Thursday’s game and will routinely cover Sunday matches here on in.
An interesting position for Silverlight to find itself in, for sure. As it is basically known, Silverlight is a platform for developing rich Internet applications. More so with the 2.0 beta than with versions to come before, given its support for .NET and so forth. Therefore, juxtapositions with both Flash and JavaScript are rightfully made. Which means that if Silverlight is to have any chance at the kind of ubiquity shown by its more common competitors, it needs to do far more than solidify video delivery partnerships with the likes of NBC. It must inhabit a vast supply of Web applications of all types. Which, to speak reasonably here, isn’t so inevitable. Years of assimilation among Web users needs to happen to achieve an all-around permanence. Flash and JavaScript developers know this. Unfortunately for Microsoft, those forces didn’t have monsters of such dimensions to spar with.

This is a fairly important question to consider, I think. The gaming industry clocks in billions of dollars in revenue each year, a good portion of which is devoted to mobile sales. Yet if mobile Web use is going to continue climb at the solid clip, and mobile phones are to be smart and powerful enough to conquer interactive entertainment, is there room for platforms devoted primarily to gaming?
Yes, it’s important to emphasize this new and very big nail in the coffin of convention. It’s a point that has been echoed with increased volume in recent months. The ever-present mobile Web. If game developers take up the task of engineering titles to connect players with one another without limit to place or time - or, reversely, dependent on place and time - the sort of gaming that comes with the
To be sure, this is a good thing. Change rarely does good things for nostalgia, but it enables progress to continue on. The sheer volume of possible applications of GPS- and 3G- and 4G-infused networking, let alone gameplay, piques the interest of millions of people. Privacy is of course an ever-present concern. But gamers have made plain their desire to take the multiplayer experience as far as it can allow. That has been the case with Xbox Live fans, PC-based MMORPG devotees, and it will also be true for mobile gamers, too. Heck, the possibilities given via the Nintendo DS specifically have intrigued a global supply of users. So gaming over wireless cellular telephony spectrum is really just upping the ante. It is very much within reach.
Naturally a search base of 15,000 sites and sources is absolutely immense, and gives Mefeedia something to trumpet in its sector of the market. But what sort of experience such depth provides is what in the end gives Mefeedia some real-world purpose. It’s not only how much a user’s search delivers, but what is presented on request. And that is what makes the service’s latest enhancements important. They help to further the relevance of Mefeedia. The breadth of premium content in the space is growing in great strides, and Mefeedia must at once make sense of user-generated material as items from professional producers large and small.
Google Chrome

















You know those thumbnail images that Facebook labels as $1-or-less digital gifts to share with friends? According to 

A number of analysts find that viewers of video content on the Web are said to favor original material created solely for the online audience. Such success has been exhibited by the results of projects like “





A quick Web search will bring an event dubbed “
As has been made very clear by the media, the presidential candidates chosen to represent the two major parties of the United States for the election this November will be spending precious primetime airspace sparring over issues which pollsters of America deem most important to the nation’s people. Those who dislike watching the matches will of course stray to different stations. But millions of others will remain transfixed. And given the social componentry now available to Web users, a large swath of the population - democrats, republicans and independents alike - will undoubtedly continue to toss one-liners and Google-searched investigative research every which way in any and all Internet channels available.









It’s just that I imagine Facebook users don’t expect the experience that a traditional search engine delivers. Sure, the network has displayed considerable ambition to become something of a social operating system for Web users all over the globe. So you can say, why not make search look a bit more like [insert big-name search engine here]? And frankly, 





Some say what happens on an NCAA football field beats NFL play in excitement and intensity. 




So whispers that Facebook will supplant its main business-level competition may in fact hold more credibility as the seasons pass. Money talks, right? Facebook is arguably in a better position in that respect. The question to ask then is: Will LinkedIn move ahead with 




And as it does expand with time, the option to give feedback will help organize the database and ensure that a decent level of quality is maintained. The better the submissions, the greater the praise. And vice versa.


And of course, media added to the pages of Kidbook can include photos and graphs, as one would expect (lest SharedBook manage to produce phenomenally inexpensive color-enhanced e-paper, videos naturally remain out in the cloud).



In the world of paid digital music downloads, there’s 


is his response to judicial qualms over what some consider possibly imperialist tendencies by the “Mad Men” of Mountain View.

Or 

YouTube of losing itself, and the user-generated stuff manufactured by Average Joe and Jane would presumably decline. Or at least waver on a more stagnant plane, because of all the corporate whatever that’s impinging on users’ experience.









This new release only seems to differ in a couple of ways. Functions such as inviting friends to the service or sharing a song are more intertwined with the network than they are at home base.



If you find the need to add anything extra to a presentation, SlideBoom allows for graphic annotations. These can help direct viewers more easily through the process. Whether you’re simply running your draft by co-workers or clients before heading out on stage, or doing the official roundabout, SlideBoom promises an elementary control panel to get you from A to B to Z without wasting time.
They have unveiled a partnership that allows Photobucket users to order photo prints through a Target store nearby.











Yet the growth of Yandex may not impact Google world ranking as much as some, like the Times, have intimated. 33 million Russian citizens are said to be using the Web. That number is expected to nearly double in five years’ time. A sizable figure, for sure. Looking at recent estimates of Russia’s total population, however, which sits at around
The closing ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing has already been underway for some hours now, but if you’d like to follow it all through some good ol’ liveblogging action, we’ve scrounged up several choice picks. For an American audience, relegated to watching happenings time-delayed by nearly half a day, these will surely come in handy.



The functions involved are simple enough. Chat with one or more persons. Block people you dislike. Report vagrants. All that fun stuff. Some words of warning, though. Site members who’ve responded to the announcement are largely unimpressed. A number of users complain of its being dysfunctional. Others want it shut off. Only a minority of respondents appear to enjoy what’s come of 
Something from Amazon of the 
There are a number of topics that make the rounds in the tech blog world semi-regularly. One is VoIP. This has been the case throughout the summer, when names like
Back in the latter half of June, I asked a fairly simple question concerning NBC’s Olympic foray on the Web:
A sports advertising benchmark cited by the WSJ for the world of Web-streaming video was CBS’s ability to garner some 
His campaign’s drive to lower the bar for access to information has gripped millions of people around the country. The most current example is of course the grand text-email login. He convinced a vast swath of the population to offer their cellular connections to his promotional engine, and it’s doubtful that he will do nothing but prosper further from it.