We mixed up our weekly Web Faceoff series a bit this time, with a novel head-to-head battle between Twitter’s old and new style of retweets. In the previous 3-way matchup we saw Digg beat out Reddit and StumbleUpon for social news supremacy, and this week we saw another heated battle come to a close with perhaps a surprising winner.

It’s been a controversial topic since the new feature was first announced, and the results of this week’s poll show that it may still be a contested issue. Eager to see the full results? Head on to find out the final winner…

…old style text-based retweets rule the day! With a 1625 vote (64%) lead over the new style “official” retweets at 699 votes (27%), the old style “add commentary as you wish” version of amplifying someone else’s tweet took the victory by more than a 2 to 1 margin. Almost a tenth of you couldn’t decide between the two, with a 227 vote (9%) tie vote rounding out the poll.

Were you surprised by the results? Do you use one or either version exclusively, or both in context? Let us know in the comments, and tune in next week for the next edition of the Faceoff series.

Who would win in a fight: New or old style Twitter retweets?(poll)

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
- AT&T vs. Verizon
- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
- Google vs. Bing
- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
- Old versus new Twitter retweets
- WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Tags: poll, retweets, twitter, web faceoff

Drunk driving in Montgomery County, Texas, this holiday season? Expect to see your name in Tweets, as the local district attorney’s office has vowed to name and shame drunk drivers on Twitter.

The tactic, hoping to dissuade drunk drivers using the threat of public humiliation, will see DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) arrests documented on the @MontgomeryTXDAO Twitter account, owned by Montgomery County District Attorney, Brett Ligon.

The idea was conceived by County Vehicular Crimes Prosecutor Warren Diepraam, and it’s not entirely new: the information is a matter of public record and some newspapers print the names of people charged with such crimes as a deterrent.

Moving the practice to Twitter, however, is somewhat controversial: shaming people who have yet to be found guilty is a concept that some law bloggers are rallying against.

What do you think? Is Montgomery County right or wrong to publish these names on Twitter?

[via NetworkWorld]

[image credit: tsand on Flickr]

Tags: montgomery county, texas, twitter

‘Tis the season for all things shiny! For those who celebrate Christmas today, you’ve perhaps received a spiffy new gadget or slick new gizmo: what was it?

Are Mashable readers getting iPhones or Droids?

Was this the year for a new camera, or the biggest of big screen TVs?

What tech did you get? Let us know in the comments!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, acik

Tags: Christmas, gadgets, Holidays, tech

Nick Crocker is MD of Native Digital and co-founder of We Are Hunted.

It seems as though the first era of digital music may have come to an end. Napster died, P2P lived in some black market twilight zone, streaming services on ad-supported revenue were suffocated by unsustainably high licensing fees, and subscription services sputtered along, never quite capturing the imaginations of music fans. 2009 ended in a flurry of acquisitions (LaLa, iLike), launches (Vevo) and shutdowns (iMeem), which dramatically rearranged the digital music landscape. When the dust finally settles, expect digital music to begin anew.

With that in mind, here are my five predictions for music in 2010.

It’s been coming for more than a decade, but major labels are starting to grasp the digital opportunity. They’re licensing music on more sustainable terms, diversifying their business model, investing in new technology and, most critically, understanding more than ever what it means to be truly consumer-led.

As market leaders, major labels have the resources and the networks to profit most from the changes currently taking place. The move from physical to digital hasn’t been as fast as many people might have wished, but that’s because digital still doesn’t pay like physical does.

CDs, when they sell well, still mean big money. Digital isn’t like that. But that’s changing, and as major labels have shrunk, their capacity for change has increased. Expect 2010 to be the year that the bad press on the major labels starts becoming more favorable.

The promises of the digital age — deeper understanding of the music consumer, integrated ticketing and merchandise, direct-to-consumer sales, and fans as marketing teams — are all about to become a reality, and major labels will lead the charge.

To ensure at least one of my predictions comes true, I’m going to forecast that globally, sales of physical CDs will decline in 2010. That’s one thing you can definitely count on.

The traditional model of building buzz through radio singles followed by a carefully timed album launch will still be the norm for commercial pop music. But at the edges, we’re going to start seeing a new model for releasing music that’s more attuned to the diverse community of music consumers.

The new model, pioneered by Topspin Media, will be the multi-tiered, staggered release. Artists will offer free, full streams and selected downloads early to the curious and the devoted, building their fanbase as they grow. Traditional release schedules will follow, in tandem with more innovative products, at more diverse prices, to more accurately segmented groups of fans.

Rather than just a plastic CD, we’ll start seeing multiple tiers of music product: free streams and low quality mp3s, simple digital and physical packages, enhanced audio and packaging on digital and physical releases, and then levels of premium products including vinyl, merchandise, and increased access to the artist.

We still think of music in its physical form as a CD on the shelf. Increasingly, we’re going to understand it as a suite of music products — T-Shirts, mugs, books, framed art, signed lyric sheets, USBs, and once-in-a-lifetime music experiences.

It’s been talked about for a number of years, but 2010 could be the year we start thinking of music less as a finite product and more as an infinite, on-demand reservoir to be accessed at any time for a fee.

This process will roll out in tandem with the evolution of music “products.” Even if music is universally accessible, it’s still key to people’s idenity. We still need something to put on a coffee table, something to pass to friends, something to put under the Christmas tree and something to signal to the world that “this music is part of me and I want you to know it.”

iTunes, as ever, is in the driver’s seat to make the most of this change. Its acquisition of LaLa could see them own the streaming market as it currently owns digital music.

Spotify’s buzz seems to have cooled, but it’s still the best-placed streaming service to take advantage of the cloud’s potential.

Grooveshark’s growth, if it continues, is going to make it a serious player in the streaming game.

MySpace, with iMeem and iLike in its back pocket may also consolidate its place in the land of the streaming.

And finally, Google –- who owns the bridge over the moat, digitally speaking –- could pull the rug from everyone and facilitate properly integrated music streaming into its search platform.

Whoever emerges at the front of this pack will be in new territory, providing access to the world’s music, anytime, anywhere on any device.

There’s some as-yet untested consumer models building momentum.

Guvera is promising the world, not just to the music industry, but to advertisers as well. Whether consumers buy into its advertisement for content exchange remains to be seen.

Rdio, with serious pedigree and some big money backing it, hasn’t poked its head up completely yet, but you can be assured that whatever it offers isn’t going to be lightweight.

Lost in all the buzz is the fact that some legacy digital music companies — Last.FM, Pandora and MySpace to name a few — still have the established brands, the existing customer base, and the revenue streams that preserve their lives beyond the froth of the tech/music blogosphere.

And of course, there’s Facebook. The biggest country in the world (or soon to be), Facebook and music have always been awkward bedfellows. If Zuckerberg and Co. can figure a way to integrate music with the Facebook platform, the existing user base would guarantee a big chunk of the market overnight.

It all adds up to create a big void of uncertainty, one that will be filled in the way the web knows best — by its end-users. What those end-users decide they love will ultimately determine the winners and losers in the digital music economy. As a passionate music fan, I can’t wait for the competition to heat up. For those on the digital frontier, music really is better than it’s ever been.

- Top 10 Facebook Applications for Music Lovers
- Social Music: Top 5 Sites to Build a Playlist
- 10 Ways to Share Music on Twitter
- Free Music Monday: Hip Hop Edition
- 18 of the Best Music Tumblelogs
- Social Music: Top 5 Recommendation Services

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alengo, enot-poloskun,cinek20

Tags: digital music, grooveshark, guvera, ilike, imeem, Lala, Last.FM, music, myspace, pandora, rdio, spotify, vevo

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, you can probably appreciate the joy that accompanies that singular moment of receiving that gift you really, really wanted. The experience can be emotional and powerful, yet it seems like video game consoles have some truly magical, awe-inspiring power to produce sheer maniacal happiness… especially when given at Christmas. Or maybe that’s the most likely time we have our cameras trained on our unsuspecting youth, perhaps with an inevitable golden YouTube moment in mind.

Few viral gift reactions have topped the original Nintendo 64 Kid, whose video is embedded below (along with a bonus N64 Kid Remix vid). But it may be time for N64 Kid to finally move over, for the new kid in town is now the Xbox 360 Kid, who goes wild upon receiving the titular Microsoft game console.

Check out the reaction video below, along with the two N64 Kid videos and a special limited edition extra bonus video of 50 kids’ reactions upon receiving a Nintendo Wii as gifts. Let us know who should win the ultimate award for Best Reaction to a Game Console Gift (of all time!). Did you receive any crazy reaction-worthy gifts in your seasonal stash this year?

[via Gizmodo]

Tags: Christmas, game consoles, games, Gifts, N64, nintendo wii, video, Xbox 360, xbox 360 kid

It’s hard to argue that 2009 wasn’t the year of Twitter. Yes, the questions about monetization loomed over the young web company as soon as it started gaining popularity, and they’re still largely unanswered. But people loved this new way of communicating via 140 character messages that go out to everyone who wants to hear them. So much so, that everything else (even money) wasn’t very important.

It was a bumpy ride, though. Remember when Twitter was a joke? A perpetual joke about server instability? The amount of downtime Twitter had back in 2008, continuing into the first half of 2009, would have killed many web startups. No matter how good your service is, if people can’t use it, they’ll go elsewhere.

Surprisingly though, Twitter has proven to be resilient enough to withstand all that. When it went down, people would joke about it with nervous Fail Whale cracks on FriendFeed. When it came back up, everyone would start tweeting like nothing ever happened. And although these frequent downtimes continued for over a year, somewhere in the middle of 2009, Twitter finally found its balance. The users? Well, they’re still tweeting like nothing ever happened.

Many theories were spun about Twitter’s user base. Some said that teens aren’t using the service. Some said that’s not true. Much hubbub was made of the fact that many who signed up for Twitter don’t actively use the service.

But there are two things about Twitter users that largely contributed to its stellar rise in popularity. First, it’s used by regular folks, not just tech-savvy geeks. And second, it’s become the favorite service of TV, movie and music personalities. The most popular guy on Twitter is not Twitter’s founder — it’s Ashton Kutcher. After him comes Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Barack Obama, and Oprah Winfrey. When all these people are into something, you can bet that thousands will follow.

Furthermore, Twitter became a great way to run charity events, break news, promote your work and connect with your fans. Events like Michael Jackson’s death were followed on Twitter first, and major media outlets second, simply because Twitter’s tiny chunks of information travel faster than professionally written news stories. And when the Iran election results started a wave of riots across the country and protests worldwide, Twitter was the glue that held bits and pieces of the story together.

The result? You couldn’t watch TV for one day without Twitter being mentioned somewhere. Dana White, UFC’s head honcho, Tweets like crazy during every UFC event. CNN’s Don Lemon is also a very active user. Twitter hasn’t paid these folks to promote their service. They’re just using it because it’s valuable to them, because it’s simple, and because they like it. You can’t get better promotion than that. For a while, Twitter was on top of the world, and the founders could afford to shrug off monetization questions as if money was of no importance to them.

On the development side of things, 2009 was an immensely important year for Twitter. The notoriously feature-shy service was largely turned into what it is today by its users. Originally, features such as retweets and hashtags were forged by the user base, not the developers. Furthermore, third-party clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic raced to add the features that Twitter itself was lacking.

In late 2009, the folks behind Twitter decided to take a more active role in the shaping of the service by adding several important features, most notably Lists and built-in Retweets.

Adding Lists was a no-brainer. Twitter users pined for a tool to organize their friends into groups since Twitter’s beginnings. Retweets, however, were a slightly different take on the feature first invented by the community. Making such a change – even if it’s a subtle one – took some guts, as the community often greets such interventions with hostility. Luckily for Twitter, there were no mass riots over matters of retweeting.

During the summer of 2009, problems began to pile up again. Twitter (along with several other services) were more or less permanently blocked in China. More importantly, they stopped growing in the US. After their amazingly fast growth during 2008 and the first half of 2009, we assumed it was an anomaly. But it wasn’t. According to Compete, Twitter’s traffic has flatlined, and co-founder Evan Williams eventually admitted that their US traffic had stalled. And in the world of web startups, once you stop growing, the cheers and confetti soon get replaced by mockery and, ultimately, oblivion.

The momentum, however, was too strong. Real-time search — and Google’s inability to best Twitter at it — became a huge trend in 2009. Everyone wanted a piece of it, and Twitter had the goods. When you want to find out what’s happening right now, this very minute, Twitter’s search trumped Google, and Google had no choice but to react. Luckily for Twitter, the reaction came right on time. Both Bing and Google signed a deal with Twitter to incorporate real-time results from Twitter into web searches, just as Twitter’s flat traffic figures became impossible to hide. The effect of this deal is still unknown, but when Google sends you traffic, you can bet it’s going to be noticeable.

Twitter’s future is still uncertain. We still don’t know the overall business plan beyond a few hints at at least some current revenue, and we still don’t know if the service’s huge popularity boom in 2009 was just a passing fad. One thing is certain, though: The Google deal was the adrenaline injection Twitter needed. If Twitter is really destined to become the world’s new SMS, 2010 is the time to do it, and we’re happy to be along for the ride.

- The Tao of Tweeting
- HOW TO: Use Twitter’s New Retweet Feature
- 10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists
- 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets
- TWEET IDEAS: 13 Things to Do on Twitter Besides Tweet
- Twitter for Beginners: 5 Steps for Better Tweeting

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, janrysavy

Tags: 2009, social media, trending, twitter

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of Mashable’s readers, friends and partners!

Image credit: Stockphoto, loops7

Tags: happy holidays, Holidays, mashable

Based in New York City, Shane Snow is a graduate student in Digital Media at Columbia University and founder of Scordit.com. He’s fascinated with all things geeky, particularly social media and shiny gadgets he’ll never afford.

Just when you thought you had enough social networks in your life, two hot new ones are vying for your attention. Combine the benefits of sites like Yelp, Twitter, and Google Latitude, add in social gaming and some privacy measures, and you have the recipe that Foursquare, the app that’s been called “next year’s Twitter,” by Mashable’s own Pete Cashmore, and its chief competitor, Gowalla, are cooking. Each has attracted a rapidly growing user base in 2009, and each is rushing madly to beat the other to your smartphone in 2010.

Many of the world’s great inventions – television for example – have been developed in parallel, unbeknown to their authors. Both Foursquare and Gowalla started development in late 2008, and both launched in Austin at SXSW in March this year. At the time, Foursquare stole the show, drowning out any fanfare that the then-buggy Gowalla tried to muster.

When asked if he was nervous when he heard about Foursquare’s simultaneous launch, Gowalla founder Josh Williams said, “On the contrary, I felt like the presence of other innovative location services was simply confirmation that we might be onto something interesting.”

Nine months and millions of dollars of funding later, Gowalla has positioned itself as a serious contender in the space. Bugs have been ironed out, and according to Williams, Gowalla is now seeing 20,000 checkins a day. While each app has its own specialties, they share some remarkable similarities, even in the liner notes:

I’m not sure who ripped off whom on this one, but at least we all love everyone!

Regardless of who developed what first, these networks may soon work their way into your own social circles. The big question: Which should you use?

The answer may simply be, “Whichever one your friends are using.” But if you’re the early adopter in the group, the blow-by-blow comparison below can help you sway your social circle to sign up for the one that fits you best.

Cells shaded in orange indicate a feature that favors Gowalla, those in blue favor Foursquare, while crosshatching indicates a toss-up. However, opinions will vary on this, so please tell us what you think in the comments.

As you can see, Gowalla trumps Foursquare in design and availability, but Foursquare takes the cake when it comes to check-in location accuracy, device support, friend management, and value added features like a city guide, and to-do list. Both apps are equally impressive in the way they dole out in-game and real-life perks and rewards.

While Gowalla is very cool looking, my main beef is its tendency to emphasize you more, while Foursquare emphasizes your friends. One of the best things these apps have over other social networks is the ability to meet and interact with new, real people, meet up physically with your actual friends, and get recommendations from people you trust. I’m not saying you can’t do this with Gowalla, just that Foursquare seems to do it better. However, for those who enjoy the Pokemon-style gaming aspect, Gowalla with its pins and item swapping, is a definite first choice.

Also, likely because of Gowalla’s slow start, although the service is available everywhere, even in New York City, where I live I rarely check in somewhere where an actual Gowalla user is also checked in. I bump into Foursquare users all over the place, though. If this were the board game Risk, Foursquare would be the guy who’s got 1,000 armies in Australia while Gowalla has one army everywhere else. Unless Gowalla is really lucky with the dice, it’s probably only a matter of time before it gets edged out everywhere else too.

As the location-based battle rages on, keep an eye on semi-competitors like Loopt and Brightkite who may soon enter this particular fray. “I think both Foursquare and Gowalla are great apps – using the real world as the backdrop for a game is a lot of fun,” Loopt CEO Sam Altman recently confessed. “It’s probably a safe assumption that we’ll add some gaming elements.”

See also: 6 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Foursquare

Tags: foursquare, gowalla, location, Mobile 2.0, real-time

It’s Christmas time, and there’s no need to stick to your standard company logo. At Christmas time, we let web designers have a bit of fun, and in our world of brand identity, we can spread a smile of joy.

But say a prayer; pray for all the other ones: all those weary web travelers who have woken up and jumped into their regular browsing routine. If it weren’t for all the Christmas-themed logos, would they know it’s Christmas time at all?

Yes, it’s Christmas, and you’ll find bits of holiday cheer on almost every major website. Like every year, we’ve scouted the web and listed a couple of Christmas logos we like.

Of course, if you know of any other cool examples, please let us know in the comments. And yes, Merry Christmas to you all!

Tags: Christmas, design, logos, web design

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Even in Apple Rumor Land – a magical place where the tiniest hints of info can be turned into full-fledged devices, concepts, plans and deals – this rumor is a long shot, but at least it has some solid proof to back it up.

MacRumors has discovered that Apple purchased the domain name islate.com (which currently doesn’t lead anywhere) back in 2007. Originally, the identity of the domain’s true owner was hidden, but for a couple of weeks in late 2007, Apple was listed as the owner, and MacRumors has the historic domain name record to prove this.

While iSlate sounds like a decent enough name for a tablet, companies such as Apple regularly buy domains that sound like their products (past, present, and potential) simply to prevent others from buying them; therefore, the fact that they own a domain doesn’t really prove much.

Still, now that we have the name, we can mull it over in our heads, trying to figure out if it’s good enough for a hyped device such as this one. iSlate? iSlaaate. iSlate! Yup, it doesn’t sound too bad.

Tags: apple, iSlate, Tablet, trending

Mark Ghuneim is the Founder/CEO of real-time digital marketing agency and technology incubator Wiredset and social media tracking service Trendrr.

As 2009 sneaks its way into the annals of history, many are taking this time of year to join for the holidays or reflect on the year that was. As the most measurable, social year in human history, the tools of 2009 showed us how fast something can catch on, who is talking about what and how small the world has become. In that spirit, we have created some data visualizations to show how Christmas buzz is taking shape and what products are being talked about on the web.

Christmas, though confined to a day or two in December, is a buzz term all year long, with an escalation of thousands per day starting in the Fall and ratcheting up to a fever pitch as the holiday grows closer. Though we haven’t seen the full spike mature yet, tweets containing either the term “xmas” or “Christmas’ are now nearing 20,000 per hour or over 300 per minute.

Compare this to last year when we showed a very similar graph and tweets for “Christmas” were topping out at 40k per day and you’ll get a sense of how much Twitter has exploded in 2009.

Since November 1, Google News is showing 111,493 new results and a massive 106 million new blog results for the term “Christmas”, driven in part by the indexing of tweets, as the search giant makes a meaningful move into the real-time future.

As the social web matured this year, photo and video sharing has become second nature to many. With more smartphones and applications making this type of engagement possible, expect to see these sectors flourishing in 2010. Notice below, videos tagged “Christmas” on YouTube pushed the video portal to its public API return max for a tag to 1 million by mid-December.

President Obama is one of the most talked about people on Twitter year round, but in this season, he and Santa duel for prominence in the public’s mind.

In the epic battle of love vs. hate, there is a clear winner on Twitter this holiday season.

An important trend for 2010, as recently described by Pete Cashmore, is location-based social networking. And in the spirit of special sharing, here is a new feature set we at Wiredset are rolling out with Trendrr for the very first time: Data surrounding “check-ins” on Foursquare. Here’s a sample look at possible holiday activity in the Big Apple, as shown in “check-ins” per day.

And where are the “Twitterati” spending their shopping time? This graph, first shown by Jennifer Van Grove in a piece on Black Friday, shows how the rest of the heavy shopping season buzz panned out — with Amazon staying on top of giant retailers on Twitter.

Here is a look at Twitter buzz for two personal devices that captured America’s attention, harnessed imagination, and drove innovation in 2009. To put the buzz in perspective, most TV shows get less than 5,000 tweets per week. This shows the conversation levels per day.

With an average of over 100 million blog results returned for a typical Google search, iPhone is clearly the hottest blog topic in the smartphone category. Here’s a look at some others in the blog space.

The multi-billion dollar gaming industry is here to stay and will be a staple this holiday season in many homes. You can see the peaks driven by a flurry of new game announcements this fall, followed by a look at how new games are fairing on Amazon.

Every year there is a product that comes out of nowhere to become a must-have for the kiddos. This year the Zhu Zhus — robotic hamsters — are the new entrant making waves in the children’s category. Even with a consumer group contending parts of the anatomy to be unsafe in early December, the fuzzy robots have made their mark on consumers this year.

Most know the song, but few can remember all the words to “The 12 Days of Christmas.” The first five days of Christmas are the most talked about on Twitter. Here is a look at them all.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Osuleo

Tags: charts, Christmas, graphs, Holidays, stats, trending

What are the hottest topics on Twitter, YouTube and social media sites this Christmas Eve? While “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” are trending high, a full 0.83% of Tweets at 5pm ET tonight mentioned the word “Pope”.

Pope Benedict was unfortunately knocked down by a woman before the Christmas Eve mass – he was unhurt, and completed the ceremony. Of course, we can rely on user-generated content to capture such remarkable events: in this case a bystander with a cellphone caught the moment on film while the TV cameras were pointed elsewhere.

It’s only the latest in a string of events – from the Hudson plane crash early this year, to the passing of Neda in Iran – where people on the ground captured shocking moments the media would otherwise have missed.

Tags: christmas eve, mass, pope, pope benedict, trending

Lots of television networks are starting to get into the mobile app business — the Discovery Channel, MSNBC, CNN and CNBC are just a few of the networks with iPhone-specific applications. Now we can add one more channel to that list: HBO.

The HBO iPhone app [iTunes link] offers subscribers (or even just fans) easy access to HBO programming guides and show information.

The HBO app has a nice interface and makes it easy to get SMS reminders of when your favorite show or movie is airing next. It’s also super simple to share shows or movies you like on Facebook or Twitter.

The app features a detailed schedule of programming on the various HBO channels as well as what movies and TV shows are available on HBO’s On Demand service. Most digital cable providers that offer HBO also offer HBO’s VOD content. Of all of the premium channels, I think HBO does the best job of offering a mix of new and cataloged content on its On Demand service. Having access to what programs are available and when they expire is super handy.

In HBO’s programming section, you can take a look at some new films and documentaries airing in the current month or peruse a more extensive library of episode information. Each TV show offers character backgrounds, an episode guide, episode previews and a feature that is a super-nice touch: the ability to buy selected episodes from Amazon.com or iTunes directly from the HBO app. So if you want to watch that episode of True Blood right this second and there isn’t a TV nearby, you can buy it from iTunes and then watch it on your phone. Or get it from Amazon for playback on your PC.

What I like about the app is that all of the features (except for video preview) are available even if you are offline. This means that you can check programming data (assuming it has been recently updated) and look at episode information even if you are using an iPod touch that doesn’t have Wi-Fi access.

The integration with Twitter and Facebook, as well as the SMS reminder support, add nice layers of interactivity to what could easily be merely a programming guide. If you’re an HBO subscriber, you should absolutely download this free app.

[via NewTeeVee]

Tags: hbo, iphone, television

Foursquare, the location-based game and social networking app, has been quietly testing its BlackBerry application with handful of users for the past month or so.

This afternoon, the company sent out an invite to about one thousand additional people so they can download and try the app too.

Word is spreading fast, and the download link quickly found its way into our inbox, so I decided to try it out. In all, the app certainly marks a big advance for BlackBerry users (who thus far have been relegated to using the Foursquare mobile site — m.foursquare.com) and includes most of the features users of Foursquare on iPhone and Android are already familiar with.

Upon logging in, you’ll immediately see where your friends are at, and have the options to either checkin or shout. Like the Android and iPhone apps, Foursquare will show you nearby venues too based on either GPS or nearby cell towers (though I’m currently out of range of any listed venues, so can’t verify the accuracy). You’ll be able to see each venue on a map, who the mayor is, and who has checked in recently.

When viewing your friend’s profiles, you can quickly call, text, email them, or jump to their Twitter profile. You can also opt to have Foursquare show pop-up alerts when your friends check-in. Foursquare’s recent addition of Facebook support is also included, so you can broadcast any of your check-ins to your friends on there too.

In all, as a relative newcomer to Foursquare with both a BlackBerry and a Droid, the app seems fairly complete – especially for a beta – and quite good for a BlackBerry app in general. We’ll humor Foursquare and not post the download link (per their email), but if you’re one of the folks who has checked it out, let us know what you think in the comments.

Tags: blackberry, foursquare, Mobile 2.0

We’ve seen umpteen innovative ways the iPhone is helping people make music — from individual and small group performances all the way up to full-fledged orchestras. But what about a little help from the non-humans?

A project at Georgia Tech has developed what may be the world’s first “socially dynamic band mate.” The multiple-armed robot can play the marimbas with a musical partner, plus actually listen and improvise based on what its companion plays as well as responding to commands from an associated iPhone app, ZoozBeat (no robot required to use the app on its own to record and loop tunes as well).

The robot, lovingly dubbed Shimon, not only plays a mean set of wood blocks, but has some pretty suave dance moves to boot. Check out its signature bobbing cyclops head in the video below and tell us it doesn’t keep time better than some of the humans you know.

Tags: ai, improvisation, iphone, marimbas, music, Robot, zoozbeat

While the ink is still fresh on the most recent Apple Tablet rumors, a real tablet device has been promised a debut at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in January, according to PC World.

Coming from an Indian startup dubbed Notion Ink, the reportedly 10.1-inch-screened tablet will run Google’s Android OS, which is finding its way into more and more devices that are not phones.

Also notable for the as-yet-unnamed device — other than the fact that it’s actually real — is the technology powering the screen. The display is made by a company called Pixel Qi, which has been demoing its hybrid E Ink and LCD screens (check out a video courtesy of Engadget) and promising an oft-delayed ship date sometime in 2009. Consequently, Wired included Pixel Qi on its top 10 vaporware list this year. The combination of E Ink and LCD promises low power usage and glare-free viewing even in bright sunlight (pic of a Pixel Qi screen in the sun at right), but with the added benefit of color that eludes current E Ink screens on the market.

The tablet will feature Wi-Fi, 3G, 1GB RAM, 16 or 32GB flash storage options, and USB charging in addition to the typical power adapter. It’s powered by an unannounced Nvidia system-on-a-chip in the Tegra family and will weigh less than 1.7 pounds — all for a reported price tag less than $400. Drooling yet? We are. What remains unknown (besides the name!) is the ship date for the device, which Notion Ink says will be dependent on the availability of Nvidia’s chip.

No matter how you slice it, the the great tablet race of 2010 is shaping up to be wild. With Dell, Asus, Microsoft and Apple all rumored to have devices in this form factor in the works, and now Notion Ink’s and Innovative Converged Devices’ Vega models both confirmed, you might want to lock up your credit cards for the coming year. Are you excited about any of these devices?

Tags: e-ink, LCD, notion ink, pixel qi, Tablet

Earlier in the week, we got wind of a host of design changes for Firefox 4. As it turns out, you can play an integral part in Mozilla’s design process as it pertains to the new Home Tab.

The new Home Tab is a pretty huge departure from the existing Home button, as it lives in Firefox instead of on the web.

As part of the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge, Mozilla staff want your answer to this question in video form: “The Home Tab – What are some interesting uses of a Firefox-hosted start page?”

The Home Tab’s new placement creates a wealth of opportunity for the browser-maker to improve upon the existing Home page experience. The briefing on the Challenge asserts that they’re not going for yet another iGoogle start page copycat.

The team writes:

“This page will have access to a lot more of the user’s information since it never leaves the browser — history, add-ons, bookmarks, and pretty much anything you can see in Firefox at the moment. This opens up a lot of possibilities, and we’d like to see what you can do with this new-found superpower.”

The challenge isn’t for the faint of heart, however, as you’ll need to create a video — no longer than three minutes — detailing your ideas with a mock-up of your Home Tab ideas. Mozilla has provided a few templates to help with the brainstorming. When you’re ready, upload your video online and tag it with “mozconcept,” and don’t forget to complete the submission form.

Participants have until February 14 to submit their video, at which time voting will begin. On March 15, 2010, Mozilla will announce the Best in Class honor awards for Innovation, Interaction Producible and People’s Choice categories.

[via GigaOm]

Tags: MARKETING, social media

The definition of a Christmas miracle is pretty broad — most probably include either an undying belief in magic or rampant consumerism. Well, my friends who persist in lingering on the Internets on Christmas Eve, do I have a miracle for you.

Behold: The timeless holiday tale, Home Alone, told entirely via Twitter lists. Currently the project, which has been going on since December 22, only has 126 followers. You can get in on the action here. Put down the spiked eggnog and step away from the mistletoe, this is a real holiday treat.

At this point in what’s being called “The Home Alone Project,” we’re roughly at the part in the movie where Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin) announces, “When those guys come back, I’ll be ready…”, signifying his intention to give the robbers a run for their money. Still, the tweets are coming in slowly (one every hour or so), meaning the movie still has a ways to go before the credits roll.

While we’ve seen online technology used to tell stories in unconventional ways before, this project has an air of teamwork to it that really gets us in the holiday spirit (provided there’re actually 22 Twitter accounts lending their typing talents). Kudos to the Nation design studio in London, England, for making this Christmas miracle manifest.

You can also check out the widget below if you’re not inclined to follow:

new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'list', rpp: 30, interval: 6000, title: 'The Home Alone Project', subject: '', width: 250, height: 300, theme: { shell: { background: '#ed0c0c', color: '#ffffff' }, tweets: { background: '#49f016', color: '#444444', links: '#db1533' } }, features: { scrollbar: true, loop: false, live: true, hashtags: true, timestamp: true, avatars: true, behavior: 'all' } }).render().setList('@HATProject', 'homealone').start();

Tags: Film, home alone, humor, twitter

Dave Borgenicht is the coauthor of the best-selling Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, which has spawned numerous sequels, games, t-shirts, a TV show and more. For more tips, check out the official blog or follow the Worst-Case Twitter feed @WorstCaseBooks.

Disconnection from the web can be traumatic, expecially when it’s a sudden or abrupt loss of signal. If you’re not prepared, disconnect anxiety can take a heavy toll. Here are some coping mechanisms that should help if you’re ever struck by an outage.

When your connection to the Internet appears to be lost, before panicking, refresh your browser several times to make sure the connection is really out, and not just “being weird.”

Remind yourself that the connection has gone out before, and always returned. Loss of connectivity is not a permanent condition.

Put your PDA away where you will not check it every five seconds, but where you can feel its reassuring physical presence against your thigh.

Do not try to engage in full-fledged conversations with other off-line humans right away. Speak in simple sentences like “Net’s out” and “I can’t get online.” Use abbreviations such as LOL and OMG.

The site of a non-pixilated human face can be disconcerting. Do not look directly at other people until you feel comfortable.

Avail yourself of the opportunity to repeatedly touch anything “clickable,” such as thermos lids or elevator buttons. In a pinch, click your fingers against your palm.

As you adjust to not checking for new e-mails every ten seconds, you will find more time available to have substantial, meaningful interactions with those around you, offering a new sense of the joys and possibilities of life.

See also: HOW TO: Outsmart Phishers [HUMOR]

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, smilingworld, apcuk, TwilightEye

Tags: disconnection, humor, internet, Lists, social media