On 7 March 2010, we published an article by Zoe Margolis. In part of the first edition of the newspaper and online, this article carried the headline, “I was a hooker who became an agony aunt”. This was written by the newspaper not Ms Margolis. We accept that Ms Margolis is not and never has been “a hooker” or otherwise involved in the sex industry. The wording of the headline was a mistake and seriously defamatory of Ms Margolis. We offer our sincere apologies to Ms Margolis for the damage to her reputation and the distress and embarrassment which she has suffered.

* Zoe Margolis: I'm a good-time girl who became an agony aunt

Apple’s recent purge of sex-tinged iPhone apps, combined with its lesser-known ban of “cookie-cutter” apps, signifies the company’s new focus on quality, rather than quantity, in its App Store.

Last month, Apple removed about 5,000 apps with “overtly sexual content” from its App Store. And this week Apple told Mobile Roadie, a company that provides templates for clients to build iPhone apps, that the App Store would no longer accept “cookie-cutter” apps — apps made with app-generating services that do little more than reproduce websites or pull RSS feeds from the internet.

“This is a hot issue as more focus is being placed on app platforms to ensure they’re providing a quality user experience and content,” said Michael Schneider, CEO of Mobile Roadie. He stressed that his company was not a maker of “cookie-cutter” apps because its templates were highly customizable.

“I’m not going to comment on specific competitors, but I believe as a result of the recent changes at Apple many of them will be out of business,” Schneider later wrote in a blog post. “The ones that are left are going to have to step it up, which is a good thing for the App Store, for our business, and for consumers.”

Since the App Store’s early days, Apple has boasted about the number of apps served through the store and highlighted its rapid growth. The App Store launched with 800 third-party apps in July 2008, and by November 2009 it surpassed 100,000 apps. As of February, Apple’s App Store had accumulated about 150,000 apps.

That number has translated into a huge competitive advantage. In terms of quantity, the App Store has a commanding lead in the mobile space. Android is in a distant second with 19,300 apps. Windows Mobile’s store has 690 apps, Palm has 1,450, Nokia carries 6,120 and BlackBerry serves 4,760. Sure, you may not want to use the majority of the Apple store’s 150,000 apps, but the fact that customers have nearly eight times more selection than they do with Android phones and nearly 200 times more than with the Windows Marketplace is a convincing sales advantage for many.

In recent months, Apple has expedited its App Store approval policy to be much faster than it used to be. Several iPhone developers told Wired.com that the App Store has recently been approving their apps in as little as two days. Last year, an app approval could take between two weeks and two months.

Apple did not respond to Wired.com’s request for comment regarding major changes in the App Store. But Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing at Appcelerator, an app-building service, said it was likely that a larger staff as well as new automated tools are helping to speed up Apple’s approval process. As a result, that frees up bandwidth for Apple to institute bigger-picture changes to improve the quality of the App Store, he said.

“Now it’s a quality versus quantity issue,” Schwarzhoff said. “When they first started they wanted tons of apps, but now with 150,000 apps out there, there’s no need for Apple to have bigger numbers on its side as compared to quality applications.”

Without a doubt, those put out of business are chagrined by Apple’s capriciously changing App Store policy. For example, Fred Clarke, co-president of a small software company called On the Go Girls was making thousands of dollars each month earlier. Now, with 50 of his company’s sexy apps banned from the store, his salad days are over.

“It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?”

However, all of the developers contacted by Wired.com said they were happy with the change. They said that thanks to Apple’s new (albeit unclear) quality standard, the App Store will be less cluttered with trashy apps, which benefits both developers and consumers.

Eric Kerr, co-founder of AppLoop, shut down his company 10 months ago because of financial and personal reasons. AppLoop’s service, called App Generator, turned any online publication with an RSS feed into an app — something that might have fallen under Apple’s new ban of cookie-cutter apps. But Kerr sided with Apple on its decision to prohibit apps with extremely limited utility made with app generators.

“Apple doing this is really only accelerating the inevitable,” Kerr told Wired.com. “You have all these applications that don’t provide any additional value to users, and in the long run the market will determine they’re useless and people will not download them. Because of the application discovery problem, that might take a while for that to actually happen, and during that time period you have a bunch of low-quality apps clogging the system.”

Obscure Rules

Still, Apple has come under fire because of the lack of clarity regarding policy changes in the App Store. During Apple’s removal of apps containing overtly sexual content, many criticized the company for allowing sex-tinged apps from big companies such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated to remain in the store.

Apple’s vice president of marketing Phil Schiller said Apple had removed the sex-tinged iPhone apps in response to complaints from parents and women. However, he said the apps from Playboy and Sports Illustrated would remain because they came from reputable companies.

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller told NY Times.

But as Apple continues to push its new quality regime, a question arises: Where do you draw the line between raising quality standards and censorship? That’s already stirring some debate. Apple crossed the line with German tabloid Bild, whose iPhone app was pulled because of a feature containing sexual content, an act that the publication has called “a curtailing of press freedoms.”

“Today it is naked breasts, tomorrow it could be editorial content,” said Donata Hopfen, head of Bild’s digital media department, in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel. She said Bild was urging the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers to take action “in the interest of freedom of the press.”

That battle, however, will be a tough one for Bild. Apple is not a government, and thus it is not governed by the First Amendment, said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

In other words, the company’s rules may be arbitrary and unfair, but Apple has the right to make decisions about what it carries in its App Store.

The fact that it lacks significant competition may be making Apple act more high-handed than it would otherwise, Scheer noted.

“They’re trying to create this aura of respectability and selectivity,” Scheer said. “Apple’s trying to create this censored environment. It’s a little like China. What China does to the whole internet with pornographic content is what Steve Jobs is trying to do in his neighborhood for the iPhone.”

With a big lead in the numbers game Apple’s move toward emphasizing quality might just help it retain its dominance in the mobile market. However, Scheer said if Apple’s moves continue to be construed as acts of censorship, it could drive customers to more open alternatives such as Google’s Android platform.

“Eventually you embitter a lot of people who don’t understand why they’re being denied access to something they’d like to have on a device they have and they own,” he said.

See Also:

• Apple Removes Porn Apps From App Store
• Apple Explains Semi-Ban of Sex Apps
• IPad Apps Could Put Apple in Charge of the News
• Rumor: Some iPhone Apps Scrapped From iPad by Steve Jobs
• For the iPhone’s App Store, Quantity Really Does Matter

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The iPad is now officially available for pre-order, which means that news is going to be flowing in all day about its various specs and features. We’ll keep you updated on said news with this handy-dandy, ever-changing post. Keep your eyes here for the latest.

If you’re still trying to figure out if you want to pre-order an iPad or not, check out the below to help you decide.

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iPad Features

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- Screen rotation lock: Apple has added a button to the side of the iPad that locks the screen in either a vertical or horizontal position, no matter which way you turn it. This is sure to make using the iPad in bed or on the couch easier.

- ePub support through iTunes: Apple’s website now has a dedicated i-books page that offers more information about the built-in e-reader and what formats it will support. If you already have DRM-free ePub titles, you can sync those books with the iPad using iTunes.

- VoiceOver Works with i-Books: Apple is integrating its VoiceOver technology into the entire device, including the i-books app. This means that blind or vision-impaired users can have the text read aloud. Sweet!

- Better video support: Apple didn’t highlight this feature, but on the Tech Specs page, we learn that the iPad will support more than just the standard Apple-approved video formats (*.mov, *.mp4, *.m4v) and will also support AVI and Motion JPEG. Apple has never supported AVI on its iPod/iPhone devices, so this is a great step.

- Share YouTube Videos on Facebook: The YouTube page has an interesting note at the bottom — you can easily e-mail a YouTube video to friends or share it on Facebook.

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More?

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Have you found any new info about the iPad? Let us know in the comments!

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Reviews: Facebook, YouTube

Tags: apple, iBooks, ipad, ipad guide, youtube

Having been to Paris, I can tell you that it’s a city you won’t be able to fully fathom in a week or a month — it takes a lifetime to see all the city has to offer. This was before, of course, this amazing 26-gigapixel panorama of Paris was created; it won’t replace actually visiting Paris, but with all of its amazing details, it gets pretty darn close.

Paris 26 Gigapixels is a stitching of 2,346 photos, which add up to a high-resolution panoramic view of Paris. When we say high-resolution, we mean it; the end result is a 26-gigapixel (354,159×75,570 px) interactive photo. You can move around by clicking anywhere on the image and moving your mouse, and you can zoom with your mouse wheel (alternatively, you can use the arrows and +/- keys on the keyboard).

It’s easy to get lost in this huge panorama, so Paris 26 Gigapixels features quick tours of 20 of Paris’ most impressive monuments, together with some textual information about them.

The entire project, created by Martin Loyer, Arnaud Frich and Kolor, is available in English and French; there’s also a special HD view (highly recommended), activated via an icon in the upper right portion of the page, which requires installation of an additional plugin.

Oh, and one more thing; this is one of those times when you’d want to switch to full-screen browser mode.

Tags: panorama, Paris, photo

Last August, we wrote about Lunch.com, a reviews site that’s setting out with the goal to make the world a better place by changing the way people think about each other (as I wrote then, it’s a pretty lofty goal). Today, the company is launching a new feature called Communities that lets users build their own review sites around any niche topic. If you’d like to try founding a community, you can do so using the beta code “techcrunch”.

The new feature can be likened to a ‘Ning for review sites’. As a community founder, you select a topic on whatever you’d like, then invite other users to contribute reviews and other content (you can elect to moderate this as it comes in). For examples, check out Strollerland, a new community that’s dedicated to reviewing strollers. There’s also Gluten Free Groupies, for (surprise) people who like to talk about gluten-free foods.

The benefits of this kind of niche-community setup are clear — if you cater to a group of people passionate about a given topic, they’re probably going to be more knowledgeable and engaged than your average user. I’d rather take recommendations from someone who reads about strollers all day than from a guy who liked the one he chose at random at Wal-Mart.

CEO J.R. Johnson says that Lunch’s system allows for the creation of multiple communities around the same topic (for example, there could be ten different reviews communities that revolved around bicycles). Because all of these niche review sites are built on the Lunch.com platform, the site can use its universal search and suggestion engine to recommend content you may be interested in, even if it’s found on a different community than the one you’re currently browsing.

However, it sounds like new communities may have some trouble getting off the ground.  Johnson says he expects that lots of the niche review sites will be launched by existing online communities (say, a Yahoo Group).  For them, the system should work well, but if you just want to launch a review site about stamps but don’t already have many friends who are interested in the topic, you may have trouble getting much traction.  That said, these niche communities will be exposed to search engines, and if you produce relevant content Lunch’s recommendation engine should also help introduce your community to new users.

Looking for new contributors and fresh perspectives for your open source software project? Through the Google Summer of Code™ program, we fund students worldwide to work with mentors from the FLOSS community on a three month coding project. Over the past five years, we've successfully paired nearly 3,400 students "with more than 3,000 mentors from backgrounds spanning industry to academia, with some spectacular results: more than 8 million lines of source code produced and over $20M in funding in support of open source development. We're particularly excited by the social ties our students form through the course of the program. We've connected people in more than 100 countries, and hope to bring people from even more places into the Google Summer of Code community this year. We're looking forward to our sixth year and welcoming another group of 1,000 student developers to the program.

We're now accepting applications from open source projects who wish to act as mentoring organizations. We'll be taking mentoring organization applications until Friday, March 12th at 23:00 UTC. Our list of approved organizations will be published on the 2010 Google Summer of Code site on March 18th. Interested students will then have several days to discuss their ideas with the accepted organizations before student applications open on March 29th.

Check out our Frequently Asked Questions page for more details and a preview of the application. And remember, if you have any questions, you can always find us in the Google Summer of Code Discussion group or in #gsoc on Freenode. Best of luck to all of our applicants!

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

Now that the iPad is officially available for pre-order, the question that we want to know from our readers is: Will you pre-order? The Wi-Fi iPad will be available on April 3, 2010, and the Wi-Fi + 3G models will begin shipping at the end of April.

You can choose to either reserve a Wi-Fi model for in-store pickup on the third or opt to have it delivered to your house. If you pre-order the Wi-Fi + 3G model, it will ship directly to you once it comes out.

So, to pre-order or not to pre-order — take our poll and then let us know why you are (or are not pre-ordering) in the comments!

Apple wouldn’t be Apple if it didn’t offer some totally hot, yet totally over-priced accessories to accompany a new product launch. If you pre-order an iPad for home delivery, you can add some accessories to your order. These include a dock (with and without keyboard, a protective case/stand, an extra power adapter and a VGA connector. Are you adding any of these items to you pre-order? Let us know!

Tags: apple, ipad, ipad pre-order

Foursquare means business. The 1-year-old startup now has a huge brand — Starbucks — using its platform to test out an experimental customer rewards program.

Starting today, frequent Starbucks visitors who check in at retail locations using Foursquare will earn customer rewards. Although there’s no financial incentive or free coffee to begin with, customers can unlock the “Barista badge” after five checkins.

Of course that’s just the beginning; the coffee behemoth plans to use Foursquare as a testing ground for alternative reward strategies and to unlock “the pulse of the experience” for each store.

If you think this is a straight-up play to offer location-based mobile coupons, think again. The New York Times Bits Blog writes that the company is “hoping to use Foursquare to provide even more meaningful prizes, like invitations to special events, photo-sharing or online reputation scores.”

As Starbucks figures out how best to leverage the checkin, we have to step back and appreciate the magnitude of this decision. With Starbucks on board, there’s no question that Foursquare has all the tools necessary to appeal to — and reach — a mainstream audience. Plus, now that a second company (the first was Tasti D-Lite) is tapping into Foursquare as a loyalty program platform, the additional proof of concept will pave the way for other businesses to follow suit.

[img credit: Bits blog]

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Reviews: Foursquare

Tags: foursquare, MARKETING, starbucks

Being sued for libel is not only ruinously expensive, writes Simon Singh, it takes over your whole life. Which is why this will be his last column

Almost a year after writing my first column for this site, I would like to welcome you to my final article.

At first I was able to deliver my monthly column on time, but my submissions have become increasingly delayed, and this is my first since November. The problem is that I have spent the past two years being sued for libel, which has taken up huge amounts of time. And now all my remaining spare time is being devoted to campaigning for libel reform.

The crippling and prohibitive financial cost of defending a libel case is often highlighted, but the equally terrible cost in terms of time and stress is rarely mentioned.

I recently discussed this with Dr Peter Wilmshurst, the eminent cardiologist who is being sued for libel for commenting on the efficacy of a new heart device. Peter was put under immense stress when he received legal papers on Friday 21 December 2007 at 5.09pm, which was nine minutes after most solicitors closed for their Christmas holiday. It was not until the new year that Peter was able to get any legal advice, so it was an anxious Christmas.

Perhaps it was just as well that Peter was not aware of the full implications of what lay ahead of him, namely at least two years of anxiety, misery and the threat of bankruptcy. Almost all his spare time has been spent on the libel case. When finalising his defence, he took two weeks of annual leave to work on the documents. Moreover, dealing with ongoing legal issues has prevented him from carrying out his usual medical research, and a number of publications have been put on hold.

After chatting to Peter, I decided to count up how much time I had spent defending the article published in the Guardian in April 2008 that led to the British Chiropractic Association suing me for libel. I reckon I have spent 44 solid weeks on the libel action spread across two years.

I am in the very fortunate position of having no employees, being a freelancer, having financial resources and having a very supportive wife. In any other circumstance, I cannot imagine fighting a libel action because of the enormous sacrifices involved.

I should have started writing a new book a year ago, but as yet I cannot even develop proposals and talk to publishers because I have no idea how the next year or so will develop.

The case could easily continue for another two years. If I win then I will not recover all of my legal costs, but (worse still) I will never recover the time I have dedicated to poring over legal documents.

Before saying goodbye, I will urge you once more to sign up to the campaign for libel reform. If you remain unconvinced about the need for libel reform, try visiting the National Enquirer website. If you live in the UK then you will find a blank page except for the words "Page unavailable/under construction".

The reason is that the National Enquirer is so scared of English libel law that it no longer sells magazines in the UK or makes it web content available here.

You might feel that the unavailability of the National Enquirer is not enough to justify changing English law. However, more serious than the National Enquirer's position is the fear that other American publications will follow suit and that some key American magazines, newspapers and websites will be available everywhere in the world except in Britain.

You might feel that I am being alarmist, but major US newspapers, such as the Boston Globe and The New York Times, sent a memo last year to the House of Commons select committee on media, libel and privacy. They warned that they are considering stopping the sale of their publications in Britain due to the threat of libel. The benefits of selling newspapers here in terms of profit are outweighed by the potential losses in libel cases.

If publishers stopped selling hard copies in Britain, they would almost certainly also block their online content, because otherwise the threat of libel would remain.

Thereafter, it would be sensible for everything from academic journals to blogs to follow suit. Very quickly Britain could become an isolated society. In terms of free speech and access to information, our nation would become the European equivalent of China.

That's just one of the reasons you need to sign the petition for libel reform.

Chris Allison is a social media strategist at NeboWeb, where he helps clients make the most of the social web. You can follow him on Twitter as the voice behind @Neboweb.

As social media marketing becomes more widely practiced, the questions of the day are less frequently focused on the benefits of social media and more often focused on its implementation. Justifying social media to superiors is no longer the marketer’s biggest challenge.

Instead, marketers are being challenged not on the potential benefits, of which there is ample evidence, but rather on how to get those benefits. Where to start?

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Social Media as a Catalyst

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With this challenge in mind, it’s vital to understand that social media is neither the end nor the beginning of any marketing effort. Rather, social media is a catalyst that works most effectively when it is finely woven into the fabric of a brand’s other activity.

When putting together a puzzle, it helps to take a look at the big picture on the front of the box. Likewise, when putting together a social media strategy it’s necessary to zoom out a little and examine how social media will fit into the context of your other business activities. Below are four pieces of the puzzle that brands can mesh with social media to maximize results.

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1. Cause Marketing

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The socialization of the web has made it evident that brands that want to succeed online must feel and act like humans, not like desperate, distant corporations. Accordingly, some social media marketers have taken on the role of teaching brands how to be human: don’t say stupid things, don’t feed the trolls, and don’t dominate the conversation – pretty fundamental stuff that somehow got lost during the incorporation process.

However, guidelines for not screwing up aren’t enough for brands to really benefit from social media. Until you bring something interesting to the table — something that inspires passion, laughter, or curiosity — nobody will care if you have a Twitter account.

One of the most effective, simple ways to get people to care about what you’re doing is to do something worth caring about: get behind a cause. Brands have been benefiting from cause marketing for a long time, but the catalytic nature of social media has brought three additional benefits to the cause marketing table:

1. Access to increased publicity
2. The ability to be a vocal activist instead of a silent philanthropist by joining conversations
3. The ability to bring customers into the support process

Pepsi is one of the best examples of a brand that has recently seized the opportunity to leverage a mix of social media and cause marketing. Their Refresh Everything project incorporates votes from users to decide where Pepsi will donate their funds as well as a variety of other simple social media features: single sign-on, a Facebook Fan Page, and a blog.

By involving users with a voting process, Pepsi has effectively done three things. First, instead of just doing good themselves, they’ve helped their customers do good, which helps establish a very positive brand association. They have also created a situation that will compel users to share with their friends (in order to accrue votes for the cause of their choice). Finally, they have built a feedback mechanism that will ensure the causes they support are also the most popular among their customers (which is great PR).

Brands can benefit greatly from integrating social media with cause marketing, and they can learn a lot about how to get started from the tactics that Pepsi has used.

Disclosure: Pepsi sponsored Mashable’s NextUp NYC: The Future Journalist event.

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2. The Offline World

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Isolating the impact of social media to the web is an easy mistake to make. It seems natural enough to meet online goals with online activity, but the tangible world of physical objects, locations, and events can often provide a compelling medium to drive fans to engage with you online, or vice versa, you can use your social media efforts to drive activity to guerrilla marketing events like Red Bull’s stash, or simply to brick and mortar stores.

Integrating your social media efforts with real products, store locations, or activities is an important way to acknowledge that you care about the complete customer experience, and that you’re not just in the social media space because it’s popular.

Some of the most successful campaigns, such as Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice, have been focused on driving the purchase of offline products. Similarly, customer support profiles like Comcast Cares would be much less successful if they didn’t have the power to influence real offline change by working with customer support representatives that can help customers on location.

On the surface, social media may look like a simple set of social networks that people use to communicate, but when marketers look deeper they find that it presents a whole new venue for empowering all of their existing services, online as well as off.

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3. Media Coverage

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Though citizen journalism and user generated content have proven to be extremely powerful (Iran’s election crisis, Barack Obama’s massive online get out the vote efforts, etc.), it is important to remember that brands can still benefit enormously from traditional media coverage.

When it comes to social media, or any marketing for that matter, brands must find ways to leverage all of their assets in the same direction. Just like the offline world can easily be used for online gain, so too can traditional media be leveraged in the new media space.

Amit Gupta, founder of several wonderful startups like Photojojo and Jelly, sheds some light on how his businesses have benefited from traditional coverage:

Mainstream press is harder to get, but still drives significant awareness, especially among ‘everyday’ people who aren’t spending all day on the internet. And the names of old media carry
significant cache, enough to drive double-digit increases in conversion rates simple because of the credibility their names lend.

I exchanged e-mails with Amit and he was kind of enough to lend some extended insight on what to expect from traditional media. TV, web, and radio are all able to generate fast, measurable results. With these mediums, people are either interested, or they aren’t. There are comparatively few lagging responses. Newspapers and magazines on the other hand, while carrying significant credibility, produce results that are harder to measure because their content is often read over days, weeks, or even months.

The ultimate success of a social media strategy depends on your ability to recognize problems and seize opportunities to solve them. When considering the needs of your campaign, whether it’s brand equity or an immediate spike in interest, consider traditional media as another tool in your toolbox that could meet those needs. However, remember that part of your strategy should involve doing, saying, or making something interesting and worth talking about. If you don’t do that, no amount of good press can save you.

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4. Technology

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Lastly, your social media strategy is inherently paired with technology. Without technology, social media cannot exist. However, technology’s role in creating a social media strategy often goes understated.

At SoCon10, a social media conference in Atlanta, Carol Kruse (head of interactive marketing at Coke) described the pain her team went through creating a Facebook application, only to find two months later that changes in Facebook’s design would require Coke to restructure the application – a maintenance cost that hadn’t been anticipated. Having a plan in place for making technological changes on the fly is an important ingredient in the fast-paced social media world.

But technology is more than just a potential cost that bloats social media campaigns; it’s also the life that fuels them. Applications like the recently launched MySpace Fan Video are powered by collaboration between experienced creatives and programmers, not just one or the other. Thus, perhaps the most important synergy to be formed by any company delving into social media is one between their technology team, internal or external, and their marketing team driving the strategy.

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Conclusion

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Synergy is the name of the social media game. Whether you’re coming from a small company or a well-known brand, starting as far back as possible, zooming out and staring at the big picture, is crucial to creating a strategy that makes sense.

These are four of the most important pieces to the social media puzzle. If you can think of more or have something to add to these listed, please leave a note in the comments.

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More business resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL

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Reviews: Facebook, Iran , Mashable, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: cause marketing, List, Lists, mainstream media, MARKETING, PUBLIC RELATIONS, social media, technology

It’s Apple iPad day, and every early adopter worth their salt is pre-ordering one of the soon to be ubiquitous little devices and counting the days until they get their hands on it on April 3. You’ve been waiting on this thing since December 2008, after all.

We know you’ve already bought two for yourselves, the limit, because that’s how TechCrunch readers roll. We know this because we’ve told our advertisers that every single one of our 9.2 million monthly readers is a high disposable income influencer in technology and media that just loves to try out new things that they see advertised on TechCrunch. And since those advertisers believe us, we have the means to buy an extra iPad and give it to you. Even though you’ll then have three of them. Because you, dear reader, are a high disposable income influencer.

Anyhow back to the iPad. This isn’ the 3G version, which comes later in April. This is the 16GB Wifi iPad, a $499 retail device, that we’ll give away to one lucky reader chosen at random who comments below or retweets this post. Just fan the TechCrunch Facebook page and then do one of two things: either retweet this post, and make sure to include the #crunch hashtag, or leave a comment below telling us why this device must be yours. The contest ends at noon California time on Saturday. Please only tweet the message once, anyone tweeting repeatedly will be disqualified. We’ll pick a winner tomorrow afternoon and contact you for more details. Anyone in the world is eligible, as long as you can receive delivered packages (our Nexus One winner lives in Romania). And we’ll throw in a TechCrunch tshirt.

This morning, Google launched an "extensions" gallery for their real-time communications product, Google Wave. Within the new gallery, you'll find the tools and add-ons that have been created by the developer community to add additional functionality to the Wave service. Among the extensions are those some Wave users have probably seen before - like the popular "yes/no" voting gadget, for example, which lets you create polls via Wave. However, there are others that you may not have seen yet - like the "iFrame Gadget" that lets you embed webpages into a Wave or the "Likey Gadget" that provides a "like" (and "dislike!") button for showing support for a particular topic, similar to those found on Facebook or Google Buzz.

Sponsor

According to the Google blog post, developers interested in submitting their extensions for inclusion in this gallery can do so by first submitting them for approval here. Google has also released a new Google Wave robots API (v2) for developers to try.

The complete list of extensions includes the following:

• Wave Sudoku (play Sodoku with friends in a Wave)
• Extension Installer (for developers only)
• Colcrop (game)
• Yellow highlighter (highlight text)
• Napkin gadget (for doodles)
• Waffle (date-picker)
• Iframe gadget (embed webpages in a Wave)
• Yes/No/Maybe gadget (for polls)
• Map gadget (insert maps)
• Video Chat Experience (chat in Waves)
• Phone Conference (call your friends)
• Mind Map gadget (collaborate on diagrams)
• Likey gadget (like/dislike a topic)
• Pollo gadget (for surveys)
• Take-out gadget (for ordering out)
• AccuWeather (weather forecasts)

Will Extensions Bring You Back to Wave?

With Google Wave soon becoming a member of the Google Apps family of products sometime this year, it's good to see development work continue on this innovative, if somewhat confusing, real-time tool. Although members of the tech community have expressed mixed feelings about the product in its current state, what Google has presented is definitely a unique service and one that may still be useful in several niche scenarios, if not as the email replacement some hoped it would be. For example, small teams in the workplace needing to collaborate with one another may find Wave a better option than sending multiple emails back and forth.

That being said, traffic to Google Wave has been declining sharply since November or December of 2009, depending which analytics service you use. Looking at the numbers, it's clear that Wave has been abandoned by many of its earliest adopters - users who were once clamoring for invites in ways that haven't been seen since Google first launched Gmail. (On that note, we actually have several spare invites sitting around - if you want one, comment and ask.)

Will extensions actually bring those one-time Wavers back? Probably not - at least, not for longer than a quick look at most. On the flip side, however, Wave advocates feel that there's great potential in this experimental project. Still, even most of those folks have to admit there's a lot of work that needs to be done before Wave could attract a mainstream audience.

So will Wave ever replace email? Perhaps not. But we wouldn't be surprised if some of the innovations developed in the Wave playground ended up in our Gmail inboxes one day. And for that, we'll keep one eye on Wave...even if we're not entirely embracing it just yet.

Discuss

Google’s new social network, Google Buzz, is getting some additional refinement, based on user feedback. Today’s news: The search giant is testing new features that will give you control over the flood of Buzz e-mail notifications.

Google Buzz has the benefit of being integrated directly into Gmail. Not only does it have a prominent tab in millions of inboxes, but it also sends e-mail notifications of recent buzz activity to your inbox. If you’re like us, the e-mail flood can get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly. Plus, anytime someone comments on a buzz thread, the e-mail pops right back up.

Google’s heard you loud and clear. In a buzz post, the Buzz team revealed that it is testing two changes to e-mail notifications to help you better manage your inbox. While these changes are not live yet, they should be up in the next few days.

The first change is something we’ve been seeking for some time: The ability to choose which items get sent to your inbox. If you just want an e-mail when someone comments on your post, it will soon be possible. If you want just posts where you are @replied, that’s possible as well. The second feature is a “Mute” link on individual buzz posts, which will stop a buzz post from reappearing in your inbox every time someone comments.

Both changes are necessary if Buzz is to be usable as a product. Still, Google hasn’t addressed our number-one request: collapsible comment threads.

[via CNET]

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Reviews: Gmail, Google, Google Buzz

Tags: email, gmail, Google, google buzz, social media

Google has just rolled out the first version of the Google Wave extensions gallery, making it easier for users to take advantage of some of the cool add-ons developers are building into the service.

After making a big slash at Google I/O last year, Google Wave (the real-time communication platform that is still in preview) has re-gained some momentum, thanks to an improved API and the addition of e-mail notifications. The addition of an extensions gallery speaks to even more growth on the service’s part.

If you have a Google Wave account, you’ll see an “Extensions” item in your navigation panel. Click on it and you can see what extensions are available to install and then use.

Here’s a rundown of some of the extensions you can install and use now:

Wave Sudoku – Play Sudoku with a friend in real-time using Wave

Developers Extension Installer — Developers can use this to create an embeddable installer for extensions they create

Yellow Highlighter — Adds a yellow highlighter tool to your toolbar

Trippy — Useful for planning trips with friends

Video Chat Experience — Video chat in Wave

Pollo Gadget — Conduct polls and surveys across Wave

AccuWeather — See the weather of people in the Wave or from places you are planning on visiting

Once you install an extension, in most cases it is added to your toolbar and can then be accessed within a wave.

There are more extensions in the gallery and developers can submit their own to be included by going to this submission page for Google to review.

What Google Wave extensions are you using? Let us know!

Disclosure: Mashable has teamed with Google for the Google Wave API Challenge.

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Reviews: Google, Google Wave, Mashable, video

Tags: Google Wave, google wave extensions

Greg Rollett runs a music marketing company from his laptop in Orlando, FL. He is an advocate of the New Music Economy and very hopeful that artists can still live the rock star lifestyle in the digital age. Connect with Greg on Twitter, @g_ro.

Today’s musicians, both mainstream and indie, are using social media to connect with fans, build anticipation, and generate revenue in new and unique ways. The products range from singles to mix tapes to digital six-packs, even oddly shaped USB sticks, vinyl, and the occasional traditional album.

But how are these artists reaching their new fan bases online through social channels? Much like the business world, social media promotion for musicians is still a very new game, with no exact recipe for platinum success.

There are however, some innovations being put forth, and a new connection is being formed between artists and fans — a connection that empowers both to give each other what they are looking for.

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Fan-Funded Projects

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We have all heard about the success of micro lending organizations like Kiva, which use multiple small payments to contribute to a larger goal. The same process is being applied to creating an album or a music-based project.

One such project is the Washington D.C.-based indie hip-hop group Panacea. The producer/MC duo listed their project on Kickstater, a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers, and others.

The project was posted on the morning of February 26th. According to Jeremy Calvery, the group’s Director of Digital Media and Promotion, “We were at $1,000 before the end of the first day. We had to increase the number of $200 packages from three to five over the weekend because people were e-mailing and literally begging for the chance to ‘buy’ the whole back catalog. Less than five full days from the first e-mail to the list, we had reached the funding goal of $3,800, which was set to be just a bit more than what the minimum press of 250 vinyl copies was going to cost.”

Another hip-hop outfit, the Get Busy Committee, also launched a project on Kickstarter. In their drive to raise $3,218, they included one premium pledge level at $1,000 — an investment that netted the donor a song about him or herself to be included on the record, as well as a platinum plaque. They sold this spot within 24 hours.

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Using Video to Create Buzz

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Another approach musicians are taking is the use of web video series. Indie pop artist Mike Posner has been telling his story over the course of a video series titled “One Foot Out The Door.” Daniel Weisman, Mike’s manager, stated that he was attempting to create an income stream for Mike while he was finishing college and working on his debut album.

Daniel and his management company Elitaste were approached by the shoe company Puma about integrated artist campaigns. Puma ended up sponsoring Mike’s last semester in college, and provided a camera crew to follow him from classes, to the studio, to shows all over the country.

Daniel wanted to do something special for the Mashable readers when I reached out to him, so fresh off the upload, here is the premier of Episode #10 of “One Foot Out The Door.”

Live streaming has also been worthwhile for big announcements. Underground artists the Kottonmouth Kings turned to Ustream to tell their fans all about their new album and when they could expect it in local stores.

The video was watched live and formatted like a press conference, with fans getting the chance to ask questions and share their feedback. It was a smart way to bring their fans into the experience and give back to the community that has supported them for 10+ years.

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Creativity From the Fans

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Rob And Kal are a pop/rock act from the UK who are taking fans inside their studio and the music creation process. They call it Mubla 2.0, which Rob defined as “our interactive recording project where we come up with song ideas and you help us develop them with your comments, suggestions and musicianship.”

So far they have five songs in progress with fans like Adam saying, “I just feel the intro has a little too much going on and 2.33 to 2.56 I almost want the piano to play and pull at the heart strings.” Another commenter named Russell gave tips like, “Think drums and a bit more of heavier guitar would go down nicely particularly near end.”

This concept empowers fans and gives them a product they feel responsible for and connected to. The project can only strengthen the bond between fans and artists, and result in an easier sale when the time comes to release an album.

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Reaching Out to Non-Music Bloggers

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Glasses Malone, a new artist signed with Cash Money Records, is turning to bloggers to get the word out about his new album “Beach Cruiser.” What makes his campaign unique is that unlike traditional artists who look to get their tracks on highly trafficked MP3 blogs and review sites, Glasses and his team are focused on adding value to bloggers whose primary focus is not on music.

A marketing rep for Glasses told me, “These bloggers are more open to running contests and integrated campaigns than traditional music bloggers because they are not accustomed to being pitched by a major label artist. We have found blogs that love unique and fresh content that will separate them from their peers and competition, and it is working out very well for us so far.”

Armed with a research team, they have been targeting biking blogs, college blogs, beach lifestyle sites and more, all with the hope of driving new traffic to Glasses’ site and generating some pre-album buzz.

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Conclusion

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No matter what the labels and corporations are doing, musicians are taking it upon themselves to use social channels to connect with fans, offer value, and create relationship. This has ultimately led to new business models and revenue streams from sponsorships, touring and live appearances, custom products, and social monetization through advertising.

What are your expectations from artists in today’s music industry? What other unique social media promotions have you seen from your favorite musicians? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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More social media resources from Mashable:

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- How The Roxy Became the #1 Venue on Twitter [INTERVIEW]
- 8 Great Spotify Hints, Tips and Tricks
- The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
- How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data
- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, karimhesham

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Reviews: Mashable, iStockphoto

Tags: bands, BLOGS, music, record labels, social media, trending, ustream, video, Vimeo, web video, web video series

On Friday, Netflix announced on its corporate blog that it has settled a lawsuit related to its Netflix Prize, a $1 million contest that challenged machine learning experts to use Netflix's data to produce better recommendations than the movie giant could serve up themselves.

The lawsuit called attention to academic research that suggests that Netflix indirectly exposed the movie preferences of its users by publishing anonymized customer data. In the suit, plaintiff Paul Navarro and others sought an injunction preventing Netflix from going through the so-called "Netflix Prize II," a follow-up challenge that Netflix promised would offer up even more personal data such as genders and zipcodes.

"Netflix is not going to pursue a sequel to the Netflix Prize," says spokesman Steve Swasey. "We looked at this, we heard some dissension and so we've settled it, resolved the issues and are moving on."

Netflix's decision to forestall the so-called "Netflix Prize II" was part of the settlement agreement, says Scott Kamber, the plaintiff's attorney. Also part of the settlement and per industry norms, Netflix is not admitting any wrongdoing.

According to the company's blog post, Netflix has also settled an until now-unknown negotiation with the Federal Trade Commission.

The financial terms--if any--remain undisclosed, but Kamber has been involved in multi-million dollar privacy suits before, including the $10 million Facebook Beacon settlement.

The movie rental company captured the world's attention when it announced the Netflix Prize in October 2006, offering a reward to anyone who could improve upon Netflix's personalized movie recommendations by a 10% margin. That mandate wasn't achieved for close to three years and, at one point, was generally thought to be impossible.

Several competing teams ended up joining forces and the contest quickly became so close that nobody knew which of two amalgamated teams would end up on top. It was a mashup of three competing teams, dubbed "BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos," that ended up taking home the check from Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings last September.

The Netflix Prize's great draw--and ultimate flaw-- was capturing the world's imagination and some of its greatest minds. Like the folkloric John Henry and the steam engine, the contest drew machine learning experts from leading academic and private research firms and the attention of publications like The New York Times and Forbes.

James Bennett, then vice president of recommendations at Netflix, issued the initial proclamation at a highly specialized industry conference in Spain. In the end, 50,000 contestants wound up participating.

"We thought that it would generated some big interest among a couple hundred machine learning experts," says Swasey. "It became a news-making machine."

The surprise popularity of the contest, however, came with the unintended consequence of also gaining attention from privacy researchers like Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, who showed that a second set of information such as comments on the popular Internet Movie Database could help third parties triangulate the identity of the "anonymous" Netflix customers.

Kamber, who brought the suit, says that it was in part the massive attention to the Netflix prize that brought clients to him and compelled some of them to seek an injunction against the announced follow-up. He argues that his clients don't want to prevent the kind of technological and academic innovation that Netflix was trying to encourage, but rather just want to make sure Netflix's customers' privacy is protected.

"My clients specifically expressed an interest in making sure that those opportunities were not foreclosed," says Kamber. "The resolution allows Netfix to potentially tap into that community in the future, but do so in a way that makes customers confident that their information is going to be safeguard."

Interestingly, privacy expert Larry Ponemon says that Netflix could have likely avoided the matter altogether by using a technique called "data masking" that would have randomized its data set while still keeping the data relevant to developers.

A spokesperson for Dataguise, a data masking company, says that it would have cost the company around $50,000 for a license.

Mostly-instrumental dance-rockers and festival mainstays Holy Fuck have a new album all loaded up and ready to go. On May 11, Young Turks/XL will release Latin, the band's follow-up to 2007's LP.

The band announced the album's imminent release yesterday via the deeply sketchy internet chat service Chatroulette. Supposedly first single "Latin America" is streaming on Chatroulette today, if you can find it. When I tried just now, the service randomly paired me up with some dude jerking off. I seriously almost barfed. So be prepared for that to happen if you really need to hear the song. (It will be released as an mp3 next week.)

For this album, the band locked its once-rotating lineup down to the the four core dudes who make up the touring band. Band member Graham Walsh engineered Latin, and the band mixed it themselves along with a murderer's row of outside producers: former Broken Social Scene member/producer Dave Newfeld, Paul "Phones" Epworth, Girls Against Boys' Eli Janney, and Nine Inch Nails/Johnny Cash producer D. Sardy.

After the Oscars last weekend, I started to think about which movies have really inspired me as an entrepreneur. Here are three films I believe that you should not only see, but also share with your teams. Each ties to an important entrepreneurial and leadership lesson.

Man on Wire
A story of the fanatical pursuit of a dream. Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker, was consumed by the idea of walking a wire between New York's former World Trade twin towers. To do so, he would need years of planning and would have to do it as a covert mission. When I first watched this film, I did not know if it was based on a true story or not. The narrative and grainy black-and-white shots made me constantly question whether I was wishing for this to be true or if it was just brilliant story-telling. The fact that Petit is real and actually accomplished the feat in August of 1974 is beyond incredible. In an earlier post, I wrote about the thin line that great entrepreneurs balance between what Oscar Levant described as genius and insanity. You want someone like Petit to succeed because it seems so improbable and outlandish that it takes a creative visionary with some degree of craziness to pull it off. Seeing this movie is an inspiration for those who dare to think differently and push the boundaries.

More than a Game
This is the inspiring story of a high school basketball team and their quest for the national title. It is also happens to be the documentary of the high school basketball team on which superstar Lebron James played. I loved this movie for so many reasons, but the inspiration for entrepreneurs is in the unfolding of how Lebron and four of his closest friends from childhood pursued a dream, Starting as a team of fifth graders playing and growing up together in some of the poorest neighborhoods and practicing in a Salvation Army basketball court with linoleum floors. The movie highlights how the journey is always as important as the ultimate goal and inspires us to believe that almost anything is possible with the right people and right dedication.

Slumdog Millionaire
A hugely successful film about how you can create your own luck. So many successful entrepreneurs I have met talk about the role of luck in their careers, but it is equally true that they put themselves in the pathway of opportunity. In some ways this movie was like a modern day Bollywood version of Forrest Gump (we all need a little Bubba Gump shrimp luck in our lives). Both are believable tales because of the attitudes of the protagonists who, like great entrepreneurs, have a boundless optimism and openness that allow luck to come to them.

That's it for my Siskel and Ebert moment. I'll see you all at Netflix.

For the past five months, Justin Vincent's Twitter application went largely unnoticed by the social networking and microblogging site, until last week that is, when Tweetminer was randomly suspended by Twitter.

Founded in October of 2009, by last week, with little to no advertising or marketing, Tweetminer had grown to include 3,000 users. Justin, a solo entrepreneur, is constantly improving the application based on customer feedback and requests, and since he's a one-man operation, he takes a very active and hands-on approach to every aspect of his business, including customer support, where he alone answers all customer questions. And, as a programmer and stand-up guy, he knows better than most what it takes to stay in compliance when developing and managing a third-party app like Tweetminer.

After Tweetminer's suspension, one might think Justin's customers would have been angry with him. After all, many of them pay between $5 and $20 a month to use the service (which helps individuals and businesses grow and maintain a targeted following on Twitter). Not so. Tweetminer's customers quickly rallied to Justin's defense and began a Twitter campaign using the hash tag #FreeTheTweetMiner3000 (the number 3,000 was chosen because Tweetminer has about that many customers).

While the ad-hoc campaign to reinstate the app was in full swing, Justin worked with Twitter to figure out how to get Tweetminer reinstated himself, and at times wondered if he would be able to continue his business at all."I was suspended without any warning," Justin says. "This was devastating for me, my 3,000+ registered users, and especially my paying customers. I honestly felt that everything I'd been working toward for the past six months was all going to be in vain."As Justin worked with Twitter throughout the day last Friday, his customers continued to tweet #FreeTheTweetMiner3000. By the end of the day, Twitter apparently got the message. Justin and Twitter reached an agreement that afternoon and Tweetminer was back up and running before day's end. Justin wrote about all of this on his blog (read I'm playing in Twitter's sandpit, and they're playing fair).

Justin told me he was amazed at the support his customers sent his way.

"Twitter has shown an understanding that rules and policies do have grey areas and that not everyone should be tarred with the same brush. That doesn't sound like the kind of corporate line I'm used to. I'm surprised and impressed with Twitter today, and I'm glad to be playing in their sandpit--they play fair."

Justin Vincent's story intrigued me as an example of two key tenets in business. First, customers will be loyal to you if you give them great customer service. Second, sometimes the big corporate players will actually listen when the "little guy" speaks with more than one voice.