This year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) festival is rapidly approaching. Beginning with the Interactive Media events on March 12th, Austin, Texas will be the place to connect with the brightest in tech and media and get the scoop on some exciting new ventures.

Whether you plan to physically attend or not, social media will be critical to how people connect and share ideas at this world-class event. If you want to keep in touch with all the goings-on, look no further than these tools that you can use on the web, your mobile device, and your favorite social networks.

---

For Those Headed to Austin

---

While in-person networking is the goal of many, social media will be key in bringing interested parties together across this vast festival that this year is spread across four separate campuses. If you’ll be in attendance, check out these resources for staying connected.

---

The Official SXSW First-Timers Guide

---

If you’re brand new to SXSW and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the scope, the first-timers guide has a wealth of resources to assist the uninitiated. These include links to online registration (if you still need to sign up), hotel booking, scheduling tools, maps, and this informative video.

---

my.SXSW and QR Coded Badges

---

The official social network of the festival is my.SXSW, and you are automatically invited to join upon registering. This closed network, just for attendees, allows users to build personalized conference schedules, join exclusive groups, and connect with others at the festival.

The addition of QR codes on registered badges gives attendees with smartphones an added way to solidify in-person connections. Simply scan a new friend’s personalized QR code and you’ll automatically be following him or her within the my.SXSW network.

For additional ways to utilize the my.SXSW network, check out the info on their tools page.

---

SXSW2010 Event Calendar on sched.org

---

Sched.org is an interactive calendar with social media integration that makes it ideal for festivals like SXSW. An “unofficial” but highly useful calendar has been created for SXSW that will give you an overview of each day’s events, talks and panels.

Sign in with Facebook Connect or Twitter and start compiling a list of the events you’ll be attending. By clicking on a particular event, you can also see who else is attending, and view real-time updates about the event from other attendees on social networks. With a bit of effort, this tool could become your go-to social dashboard and connection builder for the entire festival.

---

SitBy.Us

---

Social media aficionados will be converging on Austin from all over the U.S. and the world. It’s likely that some of your Twitter friends will be in attendance while you’re there.

Don’t let an opportunity for an in-person meeting slip by. SitBy.Us is a useful tool that lets you see which panels your Twitter friends will be attending, and even where in each room they will sit.

By logging in with your Twitter account (via OAuth), SitBy.Us provides a mobile-optimized web interface that allows you to plan and coordinate panel attendance with people you’re looking to connect with in person (and perhaps even avoid those you don’t!).

---

SXSW Badges for Foursquare

---

Foursquare has created 16 new SXSW-specific badges for those location-based networkers who are Austin bound. What’s more, if you do unlock a badge, you can track down a Foursquare team member at the festival and claim a temporary tattoo with the mark of honor.

---

Cliqset’s SXSW Map

---

Cliqset.com has created a real-time map that aggregates all of the geo-tagged activity in the festival area of Austin. Pulling in data from the major location-based social networks (Brightkite, Flickr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Qik, and Twitter), the map will give you a bird’s eye view of who is at SXSW, where they are, and what they’re doing.

Click a pinpoint on the map to expand the user’s status update. It should be interesting to see the map fill up with notes come festival time this Friday.

Disclosure: Cliqset is a Mashable sponsor

---

Mashable’s Austin Real-Time

---

Looking to connect with like-minded festival goers or other attendees from your hometown? Check out Mashable’s own Austin Real-Time Network. Sign in with your Twitter, Facebook, or Cliqset ID and browse or search for other festival patrons by common interest or location. By adding yourself to the network, you can also share what you’re doing and where you are via your favorite social networks.

---

For Those Who Will Watch from Afar

---

If you’re not able to make it to Austin this year, don’t fret. The magic of social media and the web can bring the festival within reach. While you may not be able to hob-knob with your favorite tech and music geeks in the warm Austin sun, you can still get your SXSW fix with these resources.

---

The Official SXSW Twitter and Facebook Accounts

---

Being the socially-savvy team that they are, the crew behind the festival does a good job keeping their fans and followers in the know. If you want to keep an eye on developments in Austin, be sure to add these official channels to your social feeds.

---

SXSW Videos

---

Though not officially connected to the festival, SXSW Videos is a user-generated destination for footage from the event.

Powered by Viddler, the site lets you browse videos that come out of SXSW (in various categories, including Interviews, Shows, Bands, etc.) as well as upload your own if you’re in attendance.

The content can be a bit of a grab-bag, but if you’re looking for some first-hand video accounts of what’s happening on the ground, check in there every once in a while.

---

SXSW Blogs

---

Searching for other ways to live vicariously through the SXSW attendees? Dedicated blogs are a good way to stay in the loop.

The Unofficial SXSW Insider’s Guide is a blog/community built with Ning where festival attendees (and interested parties who couldn’t make it) can blog, upload photos, and discuss events.

You can browse the site blog-style to see what people are up to, or connect with individual members to get a more social scoop.

SXSW Baby is another unofficial blog that will be covering the events throughout the festival.

Currently, they have quite a few tips for those who are enroute to Austin. But if you’ll be checking in from home, stay tuned for further updates as the festival kicks off this Friday.

---

Mashable’s SXSWi Channel

---

Of course you can always stay up to date on the latest news coming from Austin with Mashable’s own channel, dedicated to the Interactive Media portion of the festival. Members of our team will be on the ground in Austin to get you the social media and tech scoops that are sure to break in the days ahead.

---

More SXSW resources from Mashable:

---

- 3 Things to Do Before MashBash SXSWi This Sunday Night

- Coming to SXSW? Add Yourself to Austin Realtime!

Tags: BLOGS, cliqset, facebook, festival, foursquare, gowalla, location-based, networking, ning, social media, social networks, sxsw, sxsw2010, twitter

The App Store censorship horse may have been beaten to death, but mainstream German media—whose iPhone applications have been censored by Apple because of its content—are not surrendering. I'm glad. In fact, I hope they win this war. More »

[Important updates below - Facebook says the Daily Mail knew its story was untrue, but printed it anyway. Legal action is promised.]

In the early hours of this morning, the Daily Mail published an astonishing attack on Facebook under the title “I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.”

Here’s the opener:

Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on Facebook posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me.

I was deluged by strangers asking stomach-churning questions about my sexual experience. I was pressured to meet men with whom I’d never before communicated.

So I wasn’t surprised that a vulnerable teenager, Ashleigh Hall, was groomed on Facebook before being brutally raped and killed.

The article is written by Mark Williams-Thomas. Here’s his biog:

Mark is a former police detective who has far-reaching experience of working at the centre of high profile investigations. During Mark’s police service, he specialised in child protection and major crime and he is renowned throughout the UK’s police forces as well as the national media for his expertise in these areas.

It’s an odd story. Facebook isn’t really a chat site – and it’s certainly not Chatroulette, where there are plenty of men ready and waiting to jack off in front of you (sfw). Presumably Williams-Thomas set his privacy settings to zero and befriended loads of strangers. But how did those strangers find him (her) so quickly?

Fast forward twelve hours and the online version of Williams-Thomas’s article has undergone some editing. New title: I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you. And new text, with Facebook replaced with an unnamed ’social networking site’.

Even after 15 years in child protection, I was shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on a social networking site posing as a 14-year-old girl. Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me.

The url, though, has not been changed: I-posed-girl-14-Facebook-What-followed-sicken-you.html

So what gives? If it was Facebook that Williams-Thomas was using, then why turn so coy? And if it wasn’t, how on earth could the Mail have pretended it was?

Update: Via Twitter, I asked Williams-Thomas for clarification. Here’s his reply:

So why was Facebook named in the first place?

Update 2: Apparently the story – with Facebook named – was a front page splash in the print edition, and then a double page spread inside.

Update 3: Just had a call from Facebook – they’re incandescent and say that:

• Williams-Thomas claims that he was 100% clear that his social network experiment had not involved Facebook.
• When the Mail sent him a first draft of the story with Facebook named, he asked for them to make a correction.
• Even so, they went ahead and published a story their own expert had warned them was untrue.

When Facebook protested, the Mail corrected the online story, but not the printed version, which had already hit the news stands. Their online retraction failed to include any apology or explanation of their mistake.

Facebook says that legal action against the Mail is pending. What an extraordinary piece of negligence and/or malice from the paper!

Related posts:

1. Daily Mail poll #fail (updated)
2. Facebook = Big Brother
3. Global Leaders on Facebook

More than 100 firefighters tackle a major fire at a restaurant and office block in central London.

Regular readers will know my love for all things location. In particular, these check-in location-based services fascinate me, mainly because I see them as a bridge between social networks as we’ve known it, and actual social interaction in the real world. Foursquare has been my app of choice over the past year (it launched almost exactly a year ago at SXSW). But the latest version of Gowalla has me thinking about switching sides. At the very least, I’ll be using both at all times now.

Gowalla version 2.0 for the iPhone just hit the App Store today. With it, you’ll notice a few different things. First and foremost, the overall look has been updated from a sort of Army green, to a more subtle light green that is much easier on the eyes. More significantly, the toolbar has been reworked so that now social activity is front and center when you load the app, while your own activity is the last tab. Both of these changes are things I’ve complained about since day one with Gowalla, so they’re certainly welcome. But that’s not why I’m excited for the app. I’m excited because it takes the idea of the check-in and extends it.

Specifically, you can now add pictures and comments to check-ins in Gowalla. This makes for a much richer social experience both using the app and the website (the data goes over there as well). As founder and CEO Josh Williams describes in the video below, there were a lot of people who wanted to talk about the social activity on Gowalla, but previously they had to text message or email their friends to say something like “hey I saw you check-in at the restaurant, want some company?” Now, that type of dialogue can take place all within the app.

Now, others have tried to add additional layers to check-ins in the past. Why I think it works with Gowalla 2.0 is because they keep it simple. The application is extremely handsome (since the beginning, everyone is quick to note how good the designers are working for the team) and intuitive. There are only a few basic things you can do, and all are obvious from the main screen. You can either check-in at a venue, comment on your friends’ check-ins (with the new chat bubble in the stream), look at the spots around you, see trips (pre-planned venue excursions), or look at your own activity.

Previously, with Gowalla, I thought the focus was too much on their virtual items. Those are now tucked away in your Passport (your profile). They’re still important, and will be increasingly so for Gowalla’s revenue model (trading virtual goods for real-world items), but they’re not in your face, confusing users.

All that said, there are two downsides still to the service. First, the social activity stream includes everybody that your friends with. With Foursquare, the people currently in the same city as you are highlighted; Gowalla doesn’t do that. I suspect that will be very annoying to my friends not going to Austin this week for SXSW. Their stream will be a constant reminder that they’re not there — and they likely could care less about my check-ins, since they can’t possibly come and meet me.

The second downside is that Gowalla’s API remains read-only. That means while other services can pull out Gowalla’s data, they can’t put anything back in. That means there will be no Gowalla apps besides the ones they make (at least for now). Williams explained the rationale behind this as Gowalla wants to stay in control of the user experience (a rather Apple-like argument). That makes some sense, since there are all these virtual goods that will be flying around, and it will be hard to make sure every third-party app is implementing them correctly. Also, Gowalla is much more strict about its location-based check-ins then say, Foursquare. They’re so strict, in fact, that it’s been an issue in the past (and in some cases, still is), with people not being able to check-in places they’re actually at because the GPS is wonky. At the same time, this helps a lot with gaming the system, and that will be increasingly important as Gowalla strikes deals with partners based around check-ins.

Listen to Williams talk more about the new app, as well as his thoughts on AT&T’s network, some SXSW specials, rivals, and yes, even the news that Facebook is apparently looking at federating some of Gowalla’s (and Foursquare’s) data for its own location offering. He also notes that with the new release, Gowalla is expanding the idea of checking-in to be more of a bucket of elements now, including images and comments. Interesting. (Sorry in advance that I shot the video vertically on my iPhone — gotta stop doing that.)

You can find Gowalla 2.0 in the App Store here. It’s a free download.

Web-based Twitter client Brizzly has three major developments to report: a new free iPhone app, a new Brizzly Guide (which gives trending topics on Twitter their own hub pages as permanent resources for information on the top Twitter discussion items over time), and the acquisition of WikiRank.

The Brizzly Guide is a user-editable area that fleshes out the backstory and adds contextual information to Twitter trends. Loading up the Guide shows the top 10 current trending topics at the left, and either a description of that topic or a prompt to be the first to explain the trend.

Taking cues from wiki-style user-editable sites like Wikipedia, the Brizzly Guide encourages users to curate the landing pages that will act as resources for current and past Twitter trends over time.

The free Brizzly iPhone app is available now in the App Store, featuring multiple account support, lists, photo uploads, saved searches syncing, classic-style retweet functionality, and support for the new Brizzly Guide with user-editable trends and news topics.

Further evidence of Brizzly’s adoption of wiki-style philosophy comes with the announcement of the company’s acquisition of Wikirank, an app that visualizes Wikipedia data and will soon, presumably, help visualize Brizzly data and build out a more robust Brizzly Guide. Wikirank displays popular and trending pages in a clean and easy-to-use interface. CEO Jason Shellen said of the acquisition, “We will be integrating Wikirank technology into the Brizzly Guide over the coming months,” so we should expect to see more from the Twitter client surrounding trending and data visualization in the near future.

Are you a Brizzly user? What do you currently use to monitor Twitter trends?

Tags: brizzly, iphone, iphone apps, twitter

Last week, an App Store error got the latest version of Foursquare for the iPhone into a few users hands a little bit early.

That hiccup resulted in the app briefly disappearing from the App Store before finally returning early yesterday. Now the newly designed version of the app is in the App Store and available for everyone to check out.

Foursquare 1.7 features a new design, faster checkins and shouts, plus an easy way to view your checkin history. The app also features pull-to-refresh, a la Tweetie 2 for the iPhone. The app is a lot more responsive in our tests and the new interface is a big enhancement.

This is a nice improvement from the old release and a fitting first-birthday gift of sorts as the app is arriving just before SXSW 2010 — where the app made its first big splash last year — begins.

What do you think of the new Foursquare app? Let us know!

Tags: foursquare, foursquare iphone, iphone apps

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Scordit

Quick Pitch: A social site where you share the stuff you’ve bought or want to get, and win prizes by doing it!

Genius Idea: It’s nice to share your new purchases or “scores” with friends or to let people know what stuff you really want to score in the future. Likewise, it’s fun to see what your friends are scoring or adding to their wishlists. Scordit handles both tasks, plus integrates with Facebook and Twitter, making sharing and wishlisting easy.

Similar services to Scordit exist — we covered one called Hollrr last month — but Scordit is a little bit different in that you can browse or search for items (and it can poll places like Amazon.com for images or product names) you both have and items you want.

Scordit also issues users points for doing certain tasks — like adding scores or wishes to your profile, inviting a friend to the service, or discussing products you already have. Each point gets you a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card each week and towards a bigger prize each month. The prize this month, for example is an iPad.

In the future Scordit will also let you earn coupons and discounts on items in your wishlist, based on the points you a have earned.

We like that Scordit supports account creation with both Twitter and Facebook and that you can selectively tweet or share your scores or wishes on those services.

Like Hollrr, we do wish that there was a bookmarklet that could make adding items to your scores or wishes even faster. These sorts of sharing sites have a lot of potential but being accessible from outside the main app is something we really want to see.

How do you share your scores with friends? Let us know!

Disclosure: Scordit is founded by Shane Snow, who has contributed to Mashable.

---

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

---

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: getglue, hollrr, product sharing, scordit

Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the “social rut.” What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they’re being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone.

While that may be a part of social networking (a rather large, hugely profitably part), it’s not really social. That’s why location-based networks excite me: they have the potential to bridge social networking with actual social activity. And that’s exactly how Pelago is positioning the latest version of its location-based app, Whrrl 3.

The core idea behind the new iPhone app (which launched in the store today) is that people inspire others to do things. So when you see a friend is out doing something fun, you may want to join them. Or it may entice you to go out and do something else, and hope others see it on Whrrl and join in. It’s the grouping of people with similar interests into “Societies” that is a key to Whrrl 3. For example, a basic society is that each venue in the application has its own set of “regulars.” If you visit the place enough times, you unlock the badge making you a regular, and giving you access to member-level activities, such as recommendations and specials nearby.

One of these societies, launching alongside the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas this week is the Austin Underground which “will provide members with at-your-fingertips access to the hottest parties, events, and other fun things to do at the conference,” according to Whrrl. Over 50 merchants in Austin are participating to provide exclusive offers, apparently. To unlock the membership, you have to check-in at some of the following places: Four Seasons Hotel Austin, Outback Steakhouse, Cool River Cafe, Chuggin’ Monkey, J Black’s, Red Fez and Third Base, and others.

Other key features of Whrrl 3 include Recommendations — you create these (with photos, if you choose), to let others in your social graph (or your society) know fun things to do in an area. Ideas, are recommendations served up to you from societies you’re a part of, your friends, or Whrrl’s algorithms. Fun Facts are shown each time you check-in to a venue, with information about it. And of course, there is a point system (Influence Points) that turn the whole thing into one big game. What’s interesting about Whrrl’s game is that you can get point by inspiring others to do things with the app. Points also allow you to level up in your societies for more special deals.

All of this is an extension of the “footstreams” idea that Whrrl launched last December. That’s where they also first introduced the society idea as well. The key to both of those is about real people doing real things in the real world.  That, in turn, shows what you’re interested in, and allows Whrrl to clump you into these groups with out like-minded people.

So that all sounds great, but will anyone use the app? After all, adoption has been a problem in the past and this isn’t the first time Whrrl is pivoting its product. In fact, they actually did exactly a year ago with Whrrl 2 just before SXSW.

Their main problem is convincing people to use Whrrl instead of the current location-based darlings, Foursquare and Gowalla. That’s going to be difficult because those networks are quickly building up social graphs and once those are established, users are less likely to leave. So Whrrl needs something to differentiate itself, and while their pitch to me is good, it’s an entirely different matter convincing users. And the things that would seem to help differentiate networks like Whrrl actually hurt them sometimes. For example, since location-based services are still new to so many people, it’s best to keep things as simple as possible. But Whrrl is piling on features that, while maybe cool, are likely to confuse new users.

Still, if Whrrl is able to secure some solid deals around Austin to get people using the app and checking-in, that could certainly get people using it. Of course, Foursquare and Gowalla have their own deals too. Then the problem becomes one I’ve had this past week while testing out all these location apps: fatigue. I can’t possibly check-in with each of these apps each time I move from place to place. The people I’m with have started rolling their eyes at me while I take my 10 minutes to check-in to all the different apps.

I’m not saying there can be only one. But one would sure be nice.

Find Whrrl 3 in the App Store here.

Digital spin-offs and extensions to shows on other BBC radio networks will follow closure of 6 Music and the Asian Network

The BBC is to reinvent its digital radio offering around brand extensions of its main five radio networks following the proposed closure of BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network.

It is understood that the BBC plans to spend some of the money saved by closing the two stations on digital spin-offs and extensions to programmes already being broadcast on BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live. The BBC spent £16m on content for 6 Music and the Asian Network in the year to the end of March 2009.

A similar tactic has proved successful on the BBC's TV channels, with spin-offs such as BBC3's Doctor Who Confidential and BBC2's Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two and The Apprentice: You're Fired.

ITV has also enjoyed success in using spin-offs to drive viewers to its digital TV station ITV2, with Britain's Got Talent and The X-Factor spawning Britain's Got More Talent and The Xtra Factor.

The mooted new services would be developed along the lines of BBC Radio 5 Live's digital sibling, 5 Live Sports Extra, a non-linear service which unlike 6 Music and the Asian Network does not broadcast around the clock and is relatively cheap to run. The extra digital radio content would also be available online for listening on demand.

"Just like the Xtra Factor goes backstage and tells you what happened at the X Factor, so Radio 2 could have spin-off digital shows with extra coverage from Glastonbury of the Electric Proms," said one industry executive.

One possibility, highlighted by 6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq, was an evening-only digital service comprising the best shows currently on 6 Music and called "Radio 2 Extra". Lamacq said it would be "a bit like having your four-bedroom house compulsorily purchased and replaced with a bedsit on the edge of Heathrow".

BBC director general Mark Thompson's strategy review, published last week, had already indicated that BBC Radio 7, the corporation's most successful digital-only network, will be rebranded Radio 4 Extra with closer ties to its parent speech station.

Industry sources suggested that the BBC would be looking to develop similar digital spin-off programming across its main radio networks, including BBC Radio 2, which was instructed by the BBC Trust last month to do more to encourage digital take-up among its listeners.

5 Live Sports Extra was praised in Thompson's review as providing a "very good model for how digital-only services can naturally complement their analogue sister stations".

The BBC has a third "extra" branded digital radio station, BBC Radio 1Xtra, which will be revamped over the next 18 months to strengthen its editorial ties with its parent station, Radio 1.

Radio 1Xtra already shares one of the BBC's best-known DJs, Tim Westwood, who recently complained on-air that the station's audience was so low that he had been broadcasting "to absolutely nobody for the last three hours ... It's soul-destroying."

So-called "pop-up" radio stations are already a feature of ABC Radio in Australia, which broadcasts on digital for a limited amount of time to cover big events such as the Melbourne arts and culture festival and the 40th anniversary of the moon landings.

A BBC spokesman said: "It's too early to speculate on how we might use the funds from the proposed closure of 6 Music, other than to reiterate our commitment to invest it in digital radio content."

A substantial digital radio offering from the BBC will be crucial if the industry is ever to achieve its goal of digital switchover.

Digital across all three platforms – digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio, digital TV and online – must account for at least 50% of all radio listening before a two-year switchover plan can kick in. It currently accounts for 20.9%.

The digital economy bill currently going through parliament included a target date of 2015 for switchover. Industry executives now say it may not happen until 2020.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

It seems like every city in America wants Google Fiber. And who can blame them? Ever since Google announced its plan last month to bring ultra-high speed Internet connections (as in, up to 100x faster than what most of the country has today) to between 50,000 and 500,000 people, cities across the U.S. have been clamoring to curry the favor of the search giant.

First there was Topeka, KS, which renamed itself by proclamation to Google, KS. Then Duluth, MN upped the ante by promising (comedically, we hope) to name all the town’s first-born children after Google. Then Greenville, SC entered the fray with their all-out “We Are Feeling Lucky” social media campaign that included a landing page, YouTube channel, Facebook events, and Twitter hashtag.

But will any of these efforts be enough?

---

The Competition

---

Topeka, Duluth, and Greenville are not alone in wanting Google to trick out their municipalities with super fast Internet speeds. A growing number of American cities are making their pitch to Google in advance of the March 26th deadline, and some of them are pretty creative.

Peoria, IL, for example, is playing off its reputation as the prototypical middle American town and the famous “Will it play in Peoria?” catchphrase. They’ve launched Google Plays in Peoria in an attempt to convince the company that their town is the perfect test-bed for Google’s new technology.

Perhaps taking a cue from Topeka, on the other hand, Sarasota, FL has also renamed itself… to Google Island. Their site includes the standard YouTube videos, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, and cleverly, a “Declaration of Independence from Narrowband Networks.”

Other cities have also pulled out all the stops in their campaign to get Big G to invest in their infrastructure. Baltimore, MD thinks a petition is the way to go, and presents their case using a Google Maps mashup, YouTube videos, and a list of local startups that could use a few more bits on their BmoreFiber.com pitch page.

Austin, TX, Charlottesville, VA, Greensboro, NC, Portland, OR, Grand Rapids, MI, and Indianapolis, IN are also in on the action with either official or citizen-led campaigns to catch Google’s attention.

---

Who Wins? Google, For One

---

Google has yet to reveal how it will pick where its magical fiber will be implemented — glitz and numbers may ultimately have nothing to do with it. However, no matter which city wins the ultimate prize of having Google come to town and pimp out their Internet connections the way Xhibit pimps out cars, Google itself is a big winner in the process. So are social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Google wins because they get to further their agenda. The stampede among cities to compete for Google’s trial has already demonstrated the desire that people and municipalities have for faster Internet infrastructure and “open access” networks. “It’s obvious the ISPs and incumbent utility providers don’t feel the incentive they need, the pressure they need, to keep themselves up to date,” wrote a commenter on a blog post from Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s office declaring their intention to compete for Google Fiber. Making the public more aware of the issues that Google cares about (better/faster infrastructure, universal access, net neutrality) is a win for Google, whose plans for the cloud-based computing hinge on faster and more ubiquitous broadband connections.

Facebook, meanwhile, has proven to be one of the most popular meeting grounds for Google Fiber advocates. Most of the campaigns already mentioned in this post have a presence on Facebook, and some communities and citizen-led groups have put the entirety of their energy on promoting the case to fellow citizens through the social network. There are growing Facebook groups for Google Fiber in Ventura, CA, Columbia, MO, Davis, CA, Huntsville, AL, Buffalo, NY, Baton Rouge, LA, Rochester, NY, Fresno, CA, Cincinnati, OH, San Luis Obispo, CA — to name just a few. In fact, a Groups search for “Google Fiber” on Facebook this morning yielded almost 250 results.

Other cities and towns are turning to Twitter to make their case. Madison, WI, for example, has a Twitter account and is using the hashtag #madfiber to spread the word about Google Fiber to other Madison residents. And Memphis, TN mayor A.C. Wharton, Jr. is using his Twitter account to tweet about his city’s pitch and encourage citizens to get involved using the #memphisgoogle hashtag.

Social gathering places like Facebook and Twitter are used all the time for campaigns bigger than the Google Fiber competition, so it may seem naive to call those sites winners here. But like Google, social networks would benefit immensely from faster, more universal broadband access, so getting their brands entangled in the movement early might be a major boon down the road.

Is your city gunning for Google Fiber? Which of these campaigns do you think will best catch Google’s attention? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: facebook, Fiber Optic, Google, google fiber, Google Kansas, ISP, isps, social media, tech, twitter, youtube

Last night at its Campfire One event, Google officially launched the Google Apps Marketplace. The Google Apps Marketplace offers third-party developers and services a way to integrate directly with the Google Apps platform and sell that integration at whatever price point they choose. This is a huge win for the cloud because it finally allows other cloud services to tap into some of Google’s APIs for things like Gmail and Google Docs at a much deeper level, which can benefit their own customers, as well as offering additional value to Google Apps itself.

Although the launch was yesterday, many companies and developers have been preparing for this event for quite some time and a number of very cool and useful apps are already available in the Marketplace. Here are just a few that stand out to us.

---

1. Zoho for Google Apps

---

Zoho and Google Apps actually offer a lot of the same services: hosted email, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools, wikis, chat, etc. However, that doesn’t mean that Zoho doesn’t benefit from Google Apps integration.

Plus, because Zoho also offers services that go beyond what Google Apps can do, direct integration can be a nice way for Zoho to keep customers using their product (or even make them more interested in checking it out).

Zoho has two products in the Google Apps Marketplace: Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects. Zoho CRM is free for up to three users and then $12 per month per user starting with the fourth user. Zoho Projects is free for one project and starts at $12 per month for unlimited projects.

Both tools allow users to plugin Google Apps into the Zoho CRM or Zoho Projects system.

---

2. Intuit Online Payroll

---

Intuit, makers of Quicken and Quickbooks, has an online payroll tool called Intuit Online Payroll. Intuit Online Payroll for Google Apps was one of the applications demoed at the Campfire One event yesterday and it lets users access their payroll or paychecks from anywhere in Google Apps.

For instance, paychecks can be retrieved from Google Calendar, users can print checks or E-File their taxes and run the payroll application from directly within Google Apps.

Pricing is $39 per month for one employee filing taxes in one state, each additional employee is $1.50 per month and each additional state for filing taxes is $12 per month.

---

3. Manymoon

---

Manymoon is a team collaboration application that integrates with Google Apps. Think of it as a project and task management tool.

The Manymoon app was built to deeply integrate with Google Docs, Google Calendar and Gmail. The company has also created a Google Gadget for managing and monitoring tasks.

Manymoon is free and is currently the highest rated app in the Google Apps Marketplace.

---

4. Aviary

---

Aviary offers web-based tools for things like image editing and creation, vector graphics, and audio editing. Now Aviary can integrate into Google Apps, which lets you use Aviary to create graphics that can be used and accessed within things like Google Docs and Google Sites.

The free app lets you do all kinds of stuff, like edit images for business cards, presentation slides and labels, create scalable vector art, record and remix audio and even edit the markup from websites or slides.

This is the sort of functionality that Google doesn’t have the resources to offer, which is why it’s great that Aviary can just plug into existing Google Apps accounts!

---

5. Expensify

---

Expensify is a service designed to make expense reporting less painful. Expensify’s Google Apps app integrates directly with Google Apps, which eliminates one more step in the expense-report creation process.

Once reports are submitted and approved, they can be exported to QuickBooks or other accounting solutions in one-step. Expensify is always free for report creation and submission and for two submitters a month, the approval process is free too. After that, approval for each individual submitter is only $5 a month.

---

6. Box.net

---

Like Zoho, Box.net shares some features with Google Apps. Box.net has really morphed from a file storage service into a full-fledged cloud-based content management system akin to something like Microsoft SharePoint. Many of the companies that are creating apps for the Google Apps Marketplace also have apps for Box.net’s OpenBox platform.

However, while there is some overlap in terms of services offered (especially since Google Docs added file storage support in January), there is even more opportunity for users of both services.

Box.net is offering a Cloud Content Management app for Google Docs that will let you basically access and integrate your Google files directly within the Box.net ecosystem.

That means you can create a Google Doc or Google Spreadsheet as a file type within Box, which means you can then utilize the collaboration tools of both platforms. You can also access and manipulate your Box content directly from within Gmail and Google Calendar — which really makes this attractive for companies that want to look at replacing both Exchange Server and SharePoint.

Existing Box.net users can call their account manager to start the setup process of integrating the two systems and new users can sign up for a free trial of Box.net and automagically add it to Google Apps, plus get 30% off upon sign-up.

---

More to Come

---

We’re only scratching the surface in terms of what the Google Apps Marketplace can potentially offer users — as well as developers and other providers — but just looking at some of the apps and integrations that already exist, we have to say, this is exciting.

The power of the “cloud” really isn’t realized until you can see how easy it is to not just access files from various places (like on mobile phones), but also when you can easily share and integrate with other services. For small business users especially, the extensibility options offered to Google Apps via the Marketplace makes Google’s platform even more compelling.

Have you tried any of the new Google Apps apps? What do you think? Let us know!

Tags: Aviary, box.net, cloud computing, Expensify, google apps, Google Apps Marketplace, intuit, manymoon, Zoho

Google has just released an alternative player for Google Reader that gives those with a penchant for browsing news the ability to do so in an image-heavy, TV-like fashion.

Dubbed Google Reader Play, the new tool is an experimental Google Labs project that presents stories one by one — based on their Recommend Items technology — using enlarged photos and auto-playing videos (in lieu of text) on a black backdrop. Viewers can redefine categories and star, like or share stories, with those behaviors further contributing to what Google displays.

Google Reader Play could be both an entertainment utility for browsing the web and a complement to your Google Reader experience. Actions that you take in Reader or Reader Play are shared between the two products, and the recommendations in Reader Play are personalized based on the people you’re following in Reader.

Google Reader Play is certainly eye-catching, but it’s more pop than it is substance. In fact, given that Google Reader appeals to fairly narrow audience today, we believe the product was intended to up the entertainment factor and introduce Reader-esque features to a much broader set of users.

It’s nice to look at and worth a try; whether or not that’s enough to attract the attention of those outside the web/tech realm remains to be seen. We do, however, think that Google Reader Play on an iPad or actual TV set, say via something like Boxee Box, would be worth watching.

Tags: Google, google reader, google reader play, tv

Whatever happened to that dreamy Line 6 / Apple tie-up? Who knows, right? While those two sort out their future behind the scenes, Paul Reed Smith Guitars is stepping up to take advantage of an obvious market opportunity. The newly announced Guitarbud is a simplistic accessory that allows axe slingers to jack their guitar into an iPhone or second-generation iPod touch, all while providing a headphone output in order to keep the noise making to yourself. We're told that the device works with pretty much any recording-supported app (even Apple's own Voice Memos), though PRS obviously recommends that you check out its JamApp guitar amp simulator / tuner / training tool. Best of all, it's available today for £29.95 (or $29.95 here in the States), putting you just a few yard mowings away from securing your own personal aural sanctuary. Too bad the reviews from early adopters aren't so promising...

PRS Guitarbud jacks your axe, ego into iPhone / iPod touch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink ShinyShiny  |  MusicRadar, Musician's Friend  | Email this | Comments

Think the semantic web is all hype with no bite? Paul Allen backed semantic startup Evri will announce tomorrow that it has been acquired, we've learned from a reliable source. The service specializes in extracting the names of people, places and things from raw streams of text in order to facilitate smart user navigation and related content recommendation. The company launched a striking new version of its website earlier today.

Evri launched just short of two years ago and raised $8 million from Vulcan, the fund of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. More interesting than the business side of this story, though, is the technology. Evri brings the semantic and the real-time web together in some very interesting ways.

Sponsor

We profiled Evri as one of 10 intriguing companies in the real-time web space in our recent research report The Real-Time Web and Its Future. Also included was the now Google-acquired Aardvark. (See our coverage: How I Loved and Lost an Aardvark)

Here's how we described the real time part of what Evri does in that report:

Evri is a semantic Web recommendation service for online publishers. The company tracks the real-time Web to know when it needs to create or update a topic page for one of its emerging news topics.

Evri watches news sources to see when a news topic is trending, including articles on Wikipedia that publicly available data shows have leaped in page views. Then it visits structured databases like Wikipedia and FreeBase to check for updates to entries about related entities. It then creates or updates a topic page with news links, photos and Twitter search results. The language used in those Twitter posts is analyzed and the names of news entities in the posts are linked to other Evri topic pages, like pivots.

Evri has done lots of other things as well, including a blog widget, an iPhone app, automated content portals for publishers and a sentiment analysis product. The company didn't see a particularly large amount of hype but was closely watched. Robert Scoble, for example, named Evri one of his top startups to watch for 2010, even a year and a half after it launched.

We haven't been able to identify the company that has acquired Evri yet but the most obvious candidate would be its neighbor and kin Microsoft, where the service would compliment the Powerset team nicely and change the Bing user experience in news search dramatically. Now that we know that Google is working on building a real-time index of the web (our coverage) the prospect of a competitor upping the ante with near real-time semantic parsing, riding on top of real-time indexing, sounds like a hot move.

A number of people have raised the possibility of an Amazon acquisition as well. Evri was also tested out by Yahoo! starting last Fall as a way to facilitate navigation throughout its Sports content pages.

Take that, semantic web doubters.

We'll update this post when the acquiring party is identified. Geeky types interested in an in-depth explanation of Evri's work would be well served by checking out a 6 part video series on YouTube wherein Deep Dhillon, CTO of Evri, discusses the company's technology with students at the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.

Discuss

Opera Mini 5 Beta was first introduced about 5 months ago, but owners of Android-based smartphones had to wait until now to get their hands on Opera’s nifty mobile browser.

This version is nearly identical to the Opera Mini 5 Beta for other handsets; biggest improvements are speed dial, tabbed browsing, password management and better optimization for touchscreen phones. Compared to the old Opera Mini 4.2, it’s a world of difference, so if you’re an Opera Mini user, you should definitely try out, even though it’s a beta.

To get Opera Mini 5 Beta, point your mobile browser to m.opera.com/next, you can also search for “Opera Mini” in the Android Market.

Tags: Mobile 2.0, opera mini, web browsers

Nokia VP, David Rivas, was in San Francisco yesterday touting Symbian^3 improvements. While we've heard and seen plenty about Symbian Three's enhanced user experience already, it's still worthy of another look considering Symbian's dominant marketshare. Besides, David provides a very detailed look as he walks us though elements like the customizable (and more finger friendly) homescreens meant to provide quick access to call features and at-a-glance data. Rivas also reiterates speed improvement claims over existing S60 5th devices (about a 3x improvement in graphics performance) that should "very very pleasantly surprise" users. Naturally, a faster UI coupled with a Symbian device running on something better than ARM 11 will also help here -- Nokia's only Cortex A8 device is the N900 running Maemo, not Symbian. David takes a veiled shot at Microsoft's new WP7 platform when discussing Symbian's true multitaking capabilities without any "tricks" -- apps are actually running in the background, not just freezing their state until you return. Multitouch screen control on capacitive and resistive (really?) touchscreen displays with Cover Flow-like album art navigation? Yup, it's all in there, as are hundreds of usability improvements (and fewer nags!) that should bring Symbian^3 up to the level of what everyone expects from a modern smartphone, according to Rivas. In other words, we'll have to wait for S^4 on early 2011 devices to see any real innovation. While the live demo was run on a laptop, we suspect it won't be long until Nokia starts showing off its live OS on a production handset. Until then, check the video after the break -- it's all we've got.

[Thanks, Rafael C.]

Continue reading Nokia Symbian^3 UI demonstrated in detail, seeks multitouch devices (video)

Nokia Symbian^3 UI demonstrated in detail, seeks multitouch devices (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  PhoneDog  | Email this | Comments

Uh, whoa. When we heard Google's threatened pullout of China had prompted Motorola to seek out an alternative search provider for its China-bound handsets, we can't say we were expecting a partnership with Microsoft to result. But here we are, staring at a press release announcing the Bing search and Maps will be the default on Moto's Chinese Android phones starting in Q1 -- and the partnership is described as "global," so there's a chance it could spread. That's just one more slap in Google's face from Moto, following the release of the Yahoo-powered AT&T Backflip -- and another step away from the tight relationship that produced the Droid. And does this mean Motorola might yet build a Windows Phone 7 Series device, despite a very public commitment to Android? We'd say Eric and Sanjay have some unresolved differences to work through.

Motorola partners with Microsoft, will use Bing search and maps on Chinese Android phones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  PR Newswire  | Email this | Comments

At last, we've felt Sony's long awaited motion controller, now at last officially known as "PlayStation Move," in our unworthy, sweaty hands. We have a bunch of videos on the way, but for now you can revel in our first close-ups of the controllers in the gallery below. Here are some of our initial thoughts:

• The controllers are light. Much more akin to the DualShock3 than the Wiimote in heft, and we're guessing that's due to Sony's continued love of rechargeable batteries.
• The main controller does have some subtle vibration (not DualShock or Wiimote level, but present), but we're not sure yet about the subcontroller.
• We hate to say this about "pre-alpha" software, but we're feeling lag. An on-rails shooter we tried out, dubbed The Shoot, was discernibly inferior to shooting experiences we've had on the Wii, both in precision and refresh rate of the aiming cursor.
• The gladiator game is about as fun as it looks, we'll have video after the break momentarily. Unfortunately, while it's less of a defined experience than something like the sword game on Wii Sports Resort, you're still working through a library of sensed, pre-defined actions instead of a true 1:1 fighting game with simulated physics. Not that it isn't possible with PlayStation Move, just that it's not this.
• The lightness of the controllers means we might be feeling less of that Wiimote fatigue, always a good thing! There's an aspect of the controller that feels a little cheap, but at the same time we wouldn't call it fragile.
• As far as we can tell, the control scheme for Socom 4 is quite similar to dual-controller shooter setups on the Wii, with the camera moving based on your aiming cursor hitting the edge. It's hard to see this as the preferred hardcore setup, but we're told it's configurable, so we'll try and see what else is on offer.
• The system seemed to have a bit of trouble understanding the configuration of our body in a swordfighting stance: even though we selected "left handed," it was putting our sword arm forward instead of our shield. Right-handers didn't seem to have similar problems, and we're sure this will be ironed out in time, but it certainly shows that the controllers aren't magical in their space-detection prowess.
• As would be expected, you're supposed to stand relatively center on the TV, and at a certain optimal distance. The system is forgiving, but there's a sweet spot that users will undoubtedly have to learn.

Update: We've got our first video up after the break. 23 seconds of unadulterated action! Not to be missed, folks.

Update 2: Added in a longer video -- are you ready for three minutes of nonstop excitement?

Continue reading PlayStation Move first hands-on (update: video!)

PlayStation Move first hands-on (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Regional newspaper group says revenues are stabilising and it has 'no immediate plans to raise capital' despite tough 2009

Johnston Press has reported that its pre-tax profits fell 56% last year to £43m, with ad revenues plummeting almost 27% year on year as the recession took hold.

The regional newspaper group, which owns the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post, said that like-for-like ad revenue fell by 26.5%. Total group revenues plunged by almost 20% to £428m for the 53 weeks to 2 January.

The company said that despite difficult trading conditions the advertising slump hit its nadir in the first half of 2009, with the first quarter ad revenues down 34% year on year compared with just 11% by the final quarter last year.

"Despite tough conditions, the period since Q2 2009 has seen a measure of month on month stability returning to markets in which we operate," the company said. Johnston Press said that the "improving trend" in the market had carried through to 2010 with a like-for-like decline in ad revenue of just 7.3% in the first nine weeks of this year.

The Johnston Press chief executive, John Fry, said that the company "had no immediate plans to raise capital" – which many analysts had predicted – and said that the company was "well positioned to take advantage of any upturn as it occurs".

"The year ended with the group in a much stronger position than it began," said Fry. "Advertising is more stable, circulation trends have improved, digital revenues are growing, our cost base has reduced significantly and we have renegotiated finance facilities for three years."

The group's net debt was down by £55.3m to £422.1m as at 2 January.

The company confirmed that Freddie Johnston, the last family member on the board, would leave on 30 April, meaning Johnston Press board would be missing a family member for the first time in 243 years. Directors Peter Cawdron and Martina King will also leave.

"Freddie's departure from the board is a genuine landmark for the company. He has served as a director for over 50 years and, of course, for many years was chief executive before becoming chairman. He will be greatly missed," said chairman Ian Russell.

The former managing director of Times Newspapers and News Group Newspapers, Camilla Rhodes, and the former group finance director of Abbey National group, Mark Pain, joined the board last year, while Mastercard's head of e-commerce, Geoff Iddison, joined the board this year.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

There’s a ton of chatter on Techmeme today regarding iPad and Flash and HTML 5. Again. In particular don’t miss posts from ReadWriteWeb regarding Flash vs. HTML 5 speed and PC World’s comparison of HP’s new Slate vs. the iPad and how the focus will be on Flash.

Yesterday I sat down with top execs from Adobe’s Flash team. I filmed two videos:

1. A video demo of a variety of things Adobe announced at the Mobile World Congress, including a new Flash player for Android and Palm Pre (I played with it yesterday, very nice).
2. A response to Apple about Flash’s appropriateness for including on iPhone and iPad.

Why won’t the iPad have Adobe Flash technology? Anup Murarka director of technology strategy and partner development for the Adobe Flash platform and Aaron Filner, group product manager of Flash platform, focusing on AIR, answer some of the reasons why Steve Jobs doesn’t put Adobe Flash onto the iPad in one of the videos I filmed yesterday when I visited Adobe’s offices in San Francisco. Things like:

1. It will chew up battery.
2. It will crash or be buggy.
3. It doesn’t work with touch interfaces.
4. It won’t perform well enough.

They take on each of these complaints about Adobe Flash and explain what has changed with the Flash 10.1 player.

My thoughts? I’m buying an iPad anyway (we’re even having a party at the Palo Alto store all night on the evening of April 2nd) and I have iPhones. My life would be better if Flash shipped on iPad, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. So, developers are going to be forced to build two versions of their web pages if they care about reaching me as a customer and one of those versions will need to have no Flash or Silverlight (Apple is also resisting including Microsoft’s Silverlight platform).

But Adobe is doing a pretty good job of keeping Flash developers’ skills relevant. You can build apps for iPhones or iPads in Flash and compile them using some new tools that Adobe has been showing off and will ship before July. Even Adobe’s own Photoshop app on the iPhone was built in Flash and compiled using these new tools. That’s a compelling story.

I have to admit, though, that I will be checking out other competitive devices from Google and others. I already have a Droid, which will use the new Flash 10.1 player just fine and I expect I’ll check out the new HP tablet and, especially, ones that will come with the Google Chrome OS later this year. Those, I expect, will support Flash and that could be a big deal in future device decisions.

How about you? Will you decide not to buy Apple products just because they won’t run Flash in Web pages?

The Facebook platform game FarmVille now supports the Facebook Credits virtual currency.

The popular online game uses two units of in-game currency: Farm Cash and Farm Coins. Previously, you could buy them with a credit card or PayPal. Now the game offers Facebook Credits as an option.

Facebook Credits are the number-one option, actually. They’re the default payment choice, featured at the top of the list pictured here.

We recently learned that Facebook takes 30% of developers’ Facebook Credits revenue — the same percentage that Apple takes from its iPhone and iPod touch App Store sales. Analysts have speculated that Facebook might surpass $1 billion in revenue this year, and the social network’s virtual currency could be a vital part of growth beyond that.

This new option in FarmVille is arguably bigger for Facebook Credits than it is for the game. FarmVille has more than 80 million users, making it bigger than Twitter. Exposure to an audience that large is an important milestone for the Facebook Credits project, which has been a slowly expanding experiment up until now.

Tags: facebook, facebook credits, facebook platform, farmville, microtransactions, online games, virtual currency, Zynga

Sony unveils its new motion controller the PlayStation Move, as a contender to market leader Nintendo Wii.

Developing nations storm Forbes rich list as America Movil's Carlos Slim beats Microsoft's Bill Gates to top spot

The old order is under threat at the world's billionaires club. Traditionally dominated by Americans and Europeans, the top ranks of the world's richest people have been infiltrated by scores of ultra-rich entrepreneurs from the developing world – capped by the Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim.

Today, Slim, the titan of mobile phones in Mexico, criticised as a ruthless monopolist, was crowned as the richest person in the world by Forbes magazine, which calculated his net worth at $53.5bn (£35.7bn). Bolstered by a surge in the share price of his America Movil empire, Slim's wealth edged ahead of the $53bn fortune amassed by the Microsoft boss Bill Gates, making the portly cigar-smoking 70-year-old the first non-American to hold the top spot since 1994.

In third place was the legendary Nebraska-based stockpicker Warren Buffett with $47bn, completing a triumvirate that has occupied the top three positions for five successive years. Britain's top entrant into the global rich list, the Duke of Westminster, could only muster 45th position as his vast landownings gave him a net worth of $12bn.

Below the top few individuals, however, the lower ranks of Forbes's closely watched annual list showed a substantial shifting in the sands of wealth, with Asian entrepreneurs catapulted into remarkable riches by a swift bounceback in emerging financial markets. The number of billionaires from Asian and Australasian nations leapt from 130 to 234 last year, with the net worth of the region's super-rich doubling from $357bn to $729bn.

"Asia is leading the comeback," said Forbes's editor-in-chief, Steve Forbes. "There are remarkable changes taking place in the global economy."

He pointed out that as the number of billionaires in the world swelled from 793 to 1,011, the proportion of Americans dropped from 45% to 40%: "The US still dominates but it's lagging. It's not doing as well as the rest of the world in coming back from the financial crisis."

Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, became the fourth-richest person on the planet with $29bn, as his textiles-to-petrol Reliance Industries empire prospered. Pakistan also produced its first billionaire, banking magnate Mian Mhammad Mansha, and the number of Chinese billionaires leapt by 27 to 64.

Among those enjoying an upsurge in fortunes was Robin Li, founder of the Chinese internet search engine Baidu, whose wealth reached $3.5bn as his company prospered on Google's abrupt withdrawal from China, due to censorship concerns. Another Chinese tycoon, property magnate Wu Yajun, has emerged as the world's richest self-made woman with $3.9bn from her Longfor Properties empire, which spans apartments, townhouses, luxury villas and commercial property across China.

The upsurge in the number of super-rich individuals from less affluent nations went beyond Asia. The number of billionaires from Russia almost doubled from 32 to 62. The owner of the Evening Standard, Alexander Lebedev, re-entered the ranks with $2bn, after threatening to sue Forbes a year ago for claiming that losses in the financial crisis had stripped him of his billionaire status. And Alisher Usmanov, a shareholder of Arsenal, often touted as a future buyer of the football club, enjoyed a lucrative year at his metals conglomerate with his net worth surging from $1.7bn to $7.2bn.

Turkey saw its legion of billionaires swell from 12 to 28. And from South America, a commodities tycoon, Eike Batista, became the first Brazilian to make the world's top 10 for wealth. Batista, 52, a college dropout who made his fortune from gold, oil and diamonds, and has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for Rio's 2016 Olympics, is ranked eighth in the world with $27bn.

Economists say that a rapid rise in super-wealthy individuals from the developing world reflects the pace of globalisation, with cross-border stockmarkets allowing international investors to pump funds at the touch of a button into major corporations in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

"It's symptomatic of the spread of globalisation, the spread of market economies and the maturing of financial markets in these countries," said Homi Kharas, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "These are paper billionaires. The values being placed on their companies have shot up and that's a result of stock exchanges in these countries being a bit better developed and being able to gain foreign investment." But, Kharas added, it also points to a widening in inequality between the "haves" and the "have nots" in poorer parts of the world. "In India, for example, you see some particularly conspicuous consumption and when that's juxtaposed against the grinding poverty of the rest of the nation, it surely does have an effect on social stability," he said.

In British terms, little changed among the ranks of the super-rich. Behind the Duke of Westminster came property developers David and Simon Reuben, the Top Shop boss Sir Philip Green and Virgin supremo Sir Richard Branson. Two new British names joined the billionaires' club – financier Alan Howard, who runs the hedge fund Brevan Howard, and China-based property developer Xiu Li Hawken of Renhe Commercial Holdings, who holds British citizenship.

For the newly crowned richest person on the planet, topping the rich list cements a rapid rise to global fame. A spokesman for Carlos Slim offered no comment, although in the past, the Mexican tycoon has disdained such competitions.

However, he is only top thanks to the generosity of a rival – if Bill Gates had not chosen to hand a huge chunk of his wealth to his Gates Foundation to fight disease in the developing world, the software supremo would be worth as much as $80bn.

New boy in billionaires' club

An astute reading of imminent danger helped the publicity-shy City financier Alan Howard become one of Britain's newest billionaires, as his Brevan Howard hedge fund liquidated 80% of its investments into cash at an early point in the global financial crisis.

A former Salomon Brothers bond trader, Howard, 45, founded Brevan Howard in 2003 and the firm, based in Marks & Spencer's former headquarters on Baker Street, has grown to become the world's fourth-largest hedge fund with $30bn (£20bn) run by 300 staff.

Following a global macro strategy of betting on international financial trends, Brevan Howard's key fund produced a 21% return in 2008 while most of its rivals suffered. Forbes magazine put Howard's personal fortune at $1.8bn, ranking him 556th among the world's richest people.

In a rare interview with Bloomberg News last year, Howard, who is a diminutive 5ft 5in, admitted he prefers to minimise publicity: "We're a company that prefers to have a low profile. That's just the way we are."

A stalwart supporter of the Tories, Howard is acquainted with top figures including George Osborne and has served on the board of Conservative Friends of Israel. But his spokesman denied persistent reports that he is a donor to the Conservative party.

[UK] Anything that makes the form-filling associated with claiming a refund less tedious is a win for consumers. But it’s also a potential nightmare for governments and companies that provide the services we rely on. Les paper work, more claims.

Enter Tube Refund, an iPhone app that aims to significantly reduce the time and effort it takes to file for a refund for a delayed train journey on London’s Underground (metro).

The app utilizes the iPhone’s form filling functionality to complete the refund form and then submit it to London Underground’s website with “almost no work from the user”, after the initial set-up at least. A user’s main details are stored in the app so that to make a claim requires only a few extra details thereafter, such as the station and time of scheduled travel and when the actual train arrived. A delay of over 15 minutes on London Underground qualifies for a refund.

As well as making the form filling easier, Tube Refund could also help solve the problem of actually remembering to file the claim itself. Because the iPhone is carried with you, it’s arguably more likely that you’ll get around to submitting a claim as soon as you arrive or possibly during the actual journey.

The company behind Tube Refund says that there were approximately 1,996 delays across the tube network in 2009 (which works out to 38 delays a week), therefore the app, which costs 59p, could pay for itself pretty quickly.

A quick search in the iTunes App Store reveals that Tube Refund isn’t the only iPhone app to tackle this problem – iRefund (iTunes link) also does the same job, although appears to be getting less favorable user reviews.

Arrest of 'cat lady', suspected of plot to kill Prophet cartoonist, linked to terror suspects held in Ireland

She lived in Main Street, Pennsburg, which in hindsight is about as rich a paradox as could be. Her apartment on the second floor of a block of flats in the Pennsylvania town was nondescript, except for some wind chimes and a star hanging from the balcony.

But today the world learned of Colleen LaRose's alleged second life, one quite out of keeping with the low-key figure she presented. She was blonde, blue-eyed, 5ft 2ins tall and wholly unassuming, according to a former boyfriend, Kurt Gorman. "She seemed normal to me. She was a good person," he told the Philadelphia Daily News.

But to the FBI agents who had been tracking her every move from at least as early as July last year, she was potentially a dangerous would-be terrorist intent on martyrdom and using the aliases Jihad Jane and Fatima LaRose.

Today, an indictment was unsealed accusing her of plotting to murder a Swedish man in order to frighten "the whole Kufar (nonbeliever) world".

Although the indictment does not name him, her intended victim is reported to have been Lars Vilks, a cartoonist who drew a satirical picture of the head of the prophet Muhammad on top of a dog's body.

US media have reported that LaRose's case is linked to the arrest in Ireland on Tuesday of seven suspected plotters from Algeria, Croatia, Palestine, Libya and the US. Al-Qaida had placed a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on Vilks's head.

The arrest of LaRose, 46, has been seized on by US national security officials as a warning that terrorist groups want to recruit white Americans to circumvent tight travel controls.

David Kris of the justice department said the allegation "that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas ... underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face".

The US prosecutor for Pennsylvania, Michael Levy, said: "The case demonstrates that terrorists are looking for Americans to join them in their cause, and it shatters any lingering thought that we can spot a terrorist based on appearance."

LaRose was arrested on 15 October as she returned to the US from a trip to Europe, but details have only now been released to allow international agents to track her contacts. She is being held at a federal prison in Philadelphia.

She grew up in Texas but moved to Philadelphia in 2004. Neighbours in Pennsburg told the Los Angeles Times she had a reputation for eccentricity. "She was the weird, weird, weird lady who lived across the hall. We always called her the crazy lady," said Eric Newell, adding that despite that he never thought she was dangerous. His wife, Kristy, said LaRose used to talk a lot to her cats.

Why and when LaRose converted to Islam is not known, but the indictment pinpoints her involvement in jihadist conspiracy to June 2008, when she allegedly posted a comment on YouTube under the alias Jihad Jane, saying she was "desperate to do something somehow to help" the suffering Muslim people.

The charges detail how over the next few months she came into contact through the internet with five separate unnamed but known jihadists in Europe and south Asia. The first connection was allegedly in December 2008 with a south Asian resident who wanted to "wage jihad and become a 'shaheed' (martyr)".

LaRose replied she too wanted to martyr herself, the indictment says. On 20 February last year she sent an email saying that her physical appearance would allow her to "blend in with many people", which "may be a way to achieve what is in my heart", the indictment says.

The following month one of her contacts suggests she "can get access to many places due to ur nationality". LaRose is also alleged to have used the internet to recruit women with passports and easy travel access around Europe in support of violent jihad.

The FBI questioned her about soliciting funds for terrorism and posting on terrorist websites under the username Jihad Jane in July last year. But LaRose showed considerable naivety.

On 23 August she suddenly disappeared from her apartment, to her boyfriend's amazement. "I came home and she's gone," he said, adding that she stole his passport, for which she has also been charged.

That day she travelled to Europe and by September, the indictment says, she was actively searching for her Swedish target, becoming a "citizen" of the artist's cyber community. On 30 September she sent an email saying it was "an honour & great pleasure to die or kill" and pledging that "only death will stop me here that i am so close to the target!"

It is not clear why, but she did not go through with the attack and returned to the US on 15 October, when she was arrested.

If convicted she faces life in prison and fines of up to $1m.

Homegrown terrorism

News of the existence of "Jihad Jane" comes at a time of mounting anxiety in the US about the incidence of American citizens engaging in jihadist activities. It is a phenomenon of homegrown terrorism that has previously been considered rare in the country.

In December last year FBI agents and their Pakistani colleagues interrogated five young American Muslims who were suspected of being on their way to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, against US-led forces. The five, aged 19 to 25, had formed a close-knit social group in the Alexandria area of Virginia. They had all disappeared from their family homes in late November, reportedly leaving behind a video featuring war scenes and statements about the defence of Muslims.

Earlier in December, another US citizen, David Headley, was charged with helping to plan the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people in 2008. Headley, 49, who lived in Chicago, is accused of conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and maim people, and to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group. Headley was born in Washington DC to a Pakistani diplomat based at the country's embassy and an American mother. He adopted his mother's surname in 2006, which investigators claim allowed him to move more easily across borders.

Mark Zuckerberg has long signaled that the future of Facebook will be off Facebook.com.  His social network will take a big step toward that future at a developers conference in April.

That's when, according to a WSJ report, Facebook plans to launch a tool set for Web developers who want to make their off-Facebook Web sites look and work more like on-Facebook "pages."

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• Mark Zuckerberg's Early Misdeeds Gain Mainstream Media Attention
• What It's Like To Work With Mark Zuckerberg
• What Is It Like Working At Facebook?

Facebook may have secured a patent for its news feed technology, and Google for location-based ads, but that doesn’t make the two companies immune to other patent challengers. In fact, both Google and Facebook are being sued by Winksite over mobile social networking technology.

The complaint, first reported by Bloomberg, was said to be filed by Winksite yesterday in a Manhattan federal court, and points to patent infringement claims around Facebook Mobile and Google Buzz. The company is looking for reparation in financial form (though specific amounts have yet to be disclosed). More importantly, it is also seeking “a court order to prevent further use of its invention.”

Winksite was awarded the patent in question — United States Patent No. 7,599,983 “Method, apparatus and system for management of information content for enhanced accessibility over wireless communication networks”  – in October of last year, though its mobile application technology dates back to 2004. Given this, Winksite’s lawyer Jeremy Pitcock believes that both the social networking and search giant were aware of the patent and are thus liable for damages.

The patent summary reads:

“In accordance with one aspect of the invention, information content is managed in a network-based communication system by providing a content management site accessible to a user of the system. The content management site is configured so as to permit the user to enter information in accordance with a specified format comprising a plurality of selectable mobile information channels each corresponding to an information category. The entered information is processed to generate for the user a mobile site comprising information content that is accessible via one or more mobile devices over a wireless network of the system.

“By way of example, the content management site and the mobile site may each comprise web sites accessible over the Internet. A given mobile site may be shared by a group of members having a common interest. The mobile site may comprise, for example, a collaborative workspace, a data mailbox, a collaborative community, or other similar element(s). The information content of the mobile site is preferably configured such that a persistent version of the content is accessible via one or more mobile devices over the wireless network.

“In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the information content of the mobile site is configured so as to integrate therewith information associated with at least one messaging action, collaboration action, location-based service action, or other wireless networking functionality of the wireless network. The information associated with the wireless networking functionality of the wireless network may be determinable based on one or more parameters associated with one or more of the mobile information channels of the content management site. “

Both Google and Facebook are said to be reviewing the complaint but have yet to put out public statements addressing the matter.

We’re curious to see how the court and companies respond, but until then we will dig into the case and original patent to see if we can get more clarity on the specific technologies that Winksite feels are being unlawfully used in Buzz and Facebook Mobile.

[img credit: KLH49, iStockphoto]

Tags: facebook mobile, google buzz, lawsuit, patent, patent infringement