Author: Jolie O’Dell

Seesmic’s announcement of Look, their brave new Twitter client, had the tubes positively humming yesterday.

Although it might be a great interface for newbies, that app isn’t recommended for power users. But we just found one that is – for desktop use, anyway. It’s an agile bit of hotness that’s as responsive and unobtrusive as you’d ever want, and it can also provide you with a stock-ticker-esque UI that will satiate all your info-social needs. Meet SocialVisor – the Twitter app.

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It runs primarily as a scrolling ticker on the top of your screen:

Here’s the skinny:

• You can run your social streams as a retractable bar above your desktop screen.
• You can login to Twitter and Facebook and choose to see either or both streams.
• You can group your buddies any way you want, regardless of which site they use.
• You can access DMs, retweets, replies and mentions.
• You can see threaded conversations from Twitter.
• You can share and view links, updates and pictures on either or both networks.

And more other common features for third-party apps, such as retweeting, following or unfollowing, replying, liking/favorite-ing, commenting and more. And when you want to update, links are automatically shortened with bit.ly and character counts are tracked as you type, all from a simple bar above your other windows.

If a user clicks his “exclamation” icon, there’s a slim popout for Facebook notifications. If you need to focus on other tasks, no problem – you can “pause” the entire firehose and resume any time you like.

When you don’t need it, it retreats conveniently into the background. There are no annoying popups flooding your screen when your stream gets a little noisy

The app has been live for about a month, and it’s just what the doctor ordered. It’s an OS-agnostic AIR application, so it’ll play nicely with Linux, Windows or Macs. We can see ourselves running this on the daily. One issue we had is that, while the visor does optionally dock at the top of the screen, when it’s locked on top, we were unable to access our menu bars for maximized windows. It’s still in beta, and a bit buggy, but what kind of early adopters would we be if we didn’t admit this app has huge potential, bugs and all?

Give it a shot, and let us know what you think in the comments.

Discuss

Once again, the weekend is upon us – time to unplug, unwind and relax!

But lest your brains turn to jelly during your time offline and away from work, load up your iPod with our weekly selection of podcasts sure to entertain and inform. The topic of this week’s parade is augmented reality (AR), the technology used to add a layer of data and visualizations over the real world in which we live. Download these discussions of a hot new area of tech, and give them a listen at your leisure!

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This week, we owe a huge hat-tip to our own Marshall Kirkpatrick, who is passionate and informed about the state of AR and has curated these podcasts at his Huffduffer page. We also owe a huge hat-tip to Huffduffer creator Jeremy Keith for making such a nifty tool for all us podcast lovers.

First up, here’s Daniel Klotz and Ryan Mast, two Lancaster, PA-based technologists, discuss the social web and how our online activities increasingly “augment” our lives in the physical world. What does the future hold for us as users of technology and as human beings? How do we remain civilized in a heavily augmented reality? This is a great podcast to start thinking about how AR works and what it does in general terms.

Download here or listen here. Running time: 32:43

Next, we have critical commentary from BusinessWeek’s tech editor Peter Coy and Steve Wildstrom, who feels that mobile AR isn’t real enough yet. Wildstrom makes the point that mobile devices don’t have accurate enough data to make AR work – not yet, at least. While he praises some apps, such as a subway finder, but still finds that most of the AR applications he’s tested haven’t been particularly helpful. Of course, Wildstrom does have a few ideas on how to improve the state of mobile AR – listen on for an idea of how developers and manufacturers should be raising the bar.

Download here or listen here. Running time: 8:36

Here’s an interesting conversation between the editors of All Points, a location technology blog. They discuss how AR works and how it relates to geospatial technology. And they get to the point of many end users’ concerns by questioning whether AR is simply a set of cool but essentially useless gimmicks or whether there are, in fact, real-world applications for these tools and – more importantly – money to be made in the AR market.

Download here or listen here. Running time: 23:03

Finally, check out mobile developers Roger Brinkley and Terrence Barr talk to Kenneth Andersson and Erik Hellman of Sony Ericsson about how to build non-visual AR apps, focusing on API access.

Download here or listen here. Running time: 22:44

To subscribe to the Podcast Parade, check out our Huffduffer page and feed, or just use this link to subscribe through iTunes. Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy!

Discuss

WordPress, the popular, open-source CMS/blogging software loved the world around, has just welcomed another addition to its homonymous family.

WordPress founder and Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg has just announced that his nonprofit, charitable foundation is officially an open shop. The WordPress Foundation is an organization dedicated to supporting and promoting the very mission of WordPress itself. Simply put, as on the Foundation website: “to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software.” Everybody dance!

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And not just WordPress; the Foundation will protect WordCamp and all related entities. From the Foundation’s brand new site:

The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is important to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base, that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come. As part of this mission, the Foundation will be responsible for protecting the WordPress, WordCamp, and related trademarks. A 501(c)3 non-profit organization, the WordPress Foundation will also pursue a charter to educate the public about WordPress and related open source software.

Citing the Mozilla Foundation and the creator of the GNU GPL license as inspirations, the Foundation says its philosophies to serve the public good will require all its projects to be utterly free – as in beer and as in speech.

So far, the Foundation’s projects include WordPress, its plugins and themes, the forum software bbPress and social network software BuddyPress.

All projects of the WordPress Foundation will meet the following criteria:

• The software should be licensed under the GNU Public License.
• The software should be freely available to anyone to use for any purpose, and without permission.
• The software should be open to modifications.
• Any modifications should be freely distributable at no cost and without permission from its creators.
• The software should provide a framework for translation to make it globally accessible to speakers of all languages.
• The software should provide a framework for extensions so modifications and enhancements can be made without modifying core code.

The Foundation will be setting up a donation process within the next few days.

WordPress fans (and others), let us know what you think in the comments!

Discuss

I’ve tried to pick some interesting and controversial topics for these open threads over the past few weeks, but if there’s one topic that’s sure to divide public opinion and light the sky with burning effigies, it’s this one.

I’m a woman, and I’m in technology, and I demand here and now that you stop catering to me. That’s right, I’m talking to YOU: brands, marketers, PR flaks, hardware manufacturers, advocacy groups and the women and men in my industry. And while we’re at it, stop referring to me and my female colleagues as “girls.”

How do you feel about women in tech? Let us know in the comments.

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Now that I’ve had my little rant, let me tell you why I’m so incensed.

For some time, I’ve been courted by a few organizations purporting to address the issues of women in technology. And issues there are, I’m sure. Certainly, many women have a hard time being taken seriously in what’s traditionally a male-dominated industry.

For example, those of us who are fortunate enough to have good hair days and decent posture get flaunted as sex symbols, and those who have better things to think about than what shade of lipgloss to wear get criticized, overlooked, underpaid, or even – gasp! – taken seriously.

I’ve been fortunate enough to (usually) be on the former end of that equation, and I can tell you it ain’t all roses for cute women, either, especially when you cross the line into “too cute” territory and are accused of being brainless, opportunistic, shallow and far, far worse.

It’s true that our male colleagues often undergo the same process of judgement and criticism, but to a much lesser degree. Still, we as a culture have come a long way from the days of Cosmopolitan’s 1967 article “The Computer Girls,” which vacillated between praising the intelligence of its female programmer subjects and talking about their marriage prospects and hair color.

Or have we?

Google’s still listing 8 million results for the search terms “sexy girls in tech” and around 4.5 million for “sexy girls in tech 2009,” in case you were wondering whether the sexism of the past was skewing the results. This is compared to a mere 1 million results for “sexy girls in tech 2008.” I have thus very unscientifically proven that tech is becoming more sexist, not less, by continuing to marginalize and objectify “sexy girls” in our industry.

Moving on from Google and sexy girls, how are brands treating women? Just last year, Dell tried to foist off a horrendously sexist site aimed at women; the content suggested that their pastel-hued laptops could help us count calories, plan meals and listen to Sarah McLachlan clones to our heart’s content. The site was ripped to shreds (rather brilliantly) by The Register and promptly removed from the tubes. In other hardware news, Sony’s just issued a Barbie pink Vaio (with a floral pattern!) that’s well out of the price range of the Barbie-buying market, and others just can’t stop pitching us on “fashionable” laptop cases to match our handbags.

So who’s responsible for putting women in a pink, perfumed corner? Is it the women-run groups, who segregate us from the rest of our colleagues and still insist on calling us “girls?” Is it the men who slaver shamelessly over “sexy geeky girl” posts with more regard for cup size than intellectual caliber? Is it the computer manufacturers who cater to women by slapping flowery shells onto devices and gadgets? Or is it women themselves, who sometimes rely too much on their gender and looks, counting on the fact that the “male-dominated” industry will more likely be charmed by those factors than impressed by their intelligence or talent?

Technologists don’t have to treat women like men, but perhaps we should all make an attempt to treat one another with a little more neutrality. And for goodness sake, can we all agree on a moratorium for script fonts, sparkles, the word “girl” and the color pink? We might be females, but we’re not 4-year-olds.

I’m fully aware that this point of view will tick off quite a few readers, so be sure to tell me exactly why in the comments. We welcome all opinions in these open threads, whether you disagree, concur or simply have a different point of view.

Read more ReadWriteWeb articles from the Gender & Tech archives. Also see these related articles on other websites from Clay Shirky, Jeanne of Feministing, danah boyd and Gina Trapani.

Discuss

Twitter’s Suggested Users List (SUL), a longstanding and much-disputed feature of the popular microblogging app, has finally bitten the dust.

In its place, we have an interesting method for suggesting accounts for new users to follow, this time based on categories of interest instead of a hard-and-fast, limited crew of A-listers and Internet-famous microcelebs. New users will now be given options to select accounts to follow based on their defined interests, their Web-based address books, and via search. It’s been a long time coming, but we think this new method will work much better for the general population as the service continues to scale into mainstream use.

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Disclosure: @RWW was previously on Twitter’s SUL and remains one of the suggested accounts in the new Technology category.

Twitter product staffer Josh Elman writes on the Twitter blog, “We’ve found that the power of suggestion can be a great thing to help people get started, but it’s important that we suggest things relevant to them… Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists. “

There are now 20 categories of suggested account types, and each category contains a wide variety of users. For example, here’s a partial list of suggested accounts in the “Music” category:

Elman continues, “These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new users who should be suggested in these lists and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed.”

As an example, we were checking out the list of suggested accounts for the Technology category, and as we refreshed the page, we saw top results fluctuate to show many different friends and colleagues. The list is also expandable to show more suggested accounts, but this feature still seems a bit buggy as certain accounts were duplicated in the list.

Still, having 30 or so suggestions for a particular category is a lot better than throwing 20 generic suggestions to every new user. Hopefully, this will help boost Twitter’s adoption rates and slow attrition of users who can’t figure out how or why to use the app.

The full list of categories includes:

• Art & Design
• Books
• Business
• Charity
• Cuisine
• Entertainment
• Family
• Fashion
• Funny
• Health
• Music
• News
• Politics
• Science
• Sports
• Staff Picks
• Staff Picks for Haiti
• Technology
• Travel
• Twitter

Check out more ReadWriteWeb articles on Twitter’s Suggested User List, its history and its problems.

Discuss

The good folks at UK open government consultancy Delib have just released a short documentary about the United States’ first year since President Obama’s Open Government memorandum.

The documentary was shot by Delib founder Chris Quigley over two months last year, both on location in Washington DC and via Skype.

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“On a visit to Washington to see our partners NAPA back in November,” writes Quigley on the Delib blog, “I thought it would be fun to interview a few of the Open Gov people I’d read about and worked with over the last 12 months… I discovered that Open Gov was bigger and more impactful that I first thought and decided to extend the ‘few interviews’ into a short film, and launch the film to mark the achievements of the Open Gov initiative on its one year anniversary.”

Quigley’s interviewees ended up ranging in scope from the White House’s head of the Open Gov initiative, Beth Noveck, to Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media.

To learn more about the interviews and process, check out Delib’s page on the film.

Check out these posts from ReadWriteWeb’s Government archives.

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So why do users keep expecting to consume it, reuse it, share it and store it without paying for it?

Let me explain: Someone, somewhere ends up putting out money for everything you do online, every piece of news you read, every web app you use. It takes professionals and hardware across a gigantic industry to make these things work. In terms of overhead alone, content costs a lot. So why do some users always kick and scream at the first suggestion of paid content? Do you think content is worth paying for, and if so, what are you personally willing to pay?

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[Image courtesy of Flickr user SFDenverLV.]

This trend has been a common one in our virtual newsroom lately. Whether we’re praising the latest startup that’s had the sense to launch with a freemium model or wondering how old-media models (see News Corp. and the New York Times) are dealing with new media revenue possibilities, the subject of who pays for content and how is a hot one.

As a journalist who came of age career-wise during the print era and as a musician who first recorded songs on these things called “tapes,” I understand the cultural value of great content, and I admire the men and women who make it. I also love being able to support the creators and publications that bring me the content I love.

On the other hand, as a typical NMD and one who lives almost entirely online, I have done my share of content scalping, whether that be lifting a copyrighted photo for a design project, illegally downloading a single or two from a multiplatinum artist or diving deep into the world of torrents, where all the films are gloriously free and inconveniently subtitled in Hungarian.

Like any petty thief, I tried to justify my actions to myself by saying that I’m only taking from those who can afford it. But let us speak frankly: The creative and publishing industries are all at a crisis point because of hundreds of millions of people like me who say the exact same thing. I’ve lately started to come to grips with my hypocrisy and start paying for content, whether that be a legitimate iTunes purchase or a Netflix subscription. I tell you, it feels like I’m giving money to a feed-the-children charity when I’m really just paying for something that should have never been free in the first place.

Today, YouTube has announced its plan to help indie filmmakers (and increase its own revenues) by asking users for a $5 fee to watch a selection of Sundance Film Festival movies. I’m wondering how many users will balk at the fee, and what will go through their heads when they do so.

Will they be thinking about the months or years each filmmaker spent creating the movie? Or the time the actors spent preparing for and performing their roles? Will they think about filming equipment rentals? Will they consider the cost of hosting online videos at a scale that accomodates huge volumes of traffic around the globe and around the clock? Will they think about the developers who work tirelessly to make the magic of online video possible?

Or will they simply knee-jerk and proclaim a loud “How dare they!” at the thought of paid content?

(As a side note, I’m also curious to see a Venn diagram showing the overlap of people who object to paying for online content while vigorously complaining about “distracting” online advertising.)

So, what makes the difference between the analog days, when creators charged for their creations and theft was theft, and these digital times, when anything that’s been transformed into ones and zeroes is fair game for free consumption, piracy, remixing and redistribution?

I’m curious: What kinds of online content, if any, are you willing to pay for? And how much will you pay for them?

Would you pay for news? Special, in-depth reports? Entertainment and multimedia? How about a blog subscription? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Discuss

Starting this weekend, YouTube will be dipping its toe into the waters of paid content.

This behavior follows a trend we’ve noted in traditional media outlets. First, media mogul Rupert Murdoch said no more freebies for search engines, then the New York Times hinted (and today confirmed) that users would have to start paying for a certain amount of access to articles. Now, YouTube is partnering with the Sundance Film Festival and filmmakers to charge users around $5 to view a range of movies from the 2009 and 2010 festivals. It’s still cheaper than a movie ticket – but is this a direction users will follow?

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Five Sundance films have been selected for this venture. It’s what we’d consider a test run to see how users will respond to paid content on the site, and whether this could be a new revenue stream for the web video giant, which has historically struggled with profitability.

The films include The Cove, an underwater adventure about dolphin capturing in Japan; Bass Ackwards, which chronicles an improvised road trip; Children of Invention, about two Bostonian orphans; One Too Many Mornings, a “coming of age comedy about two guys who are too old to be coming of age”; and Homewrecker, a comedy about a locksmith. The filmmakers will determine the exact asking price for viewing each movie, but all will be in the range of $5.

YouTube execs told USA Today the move is helping independent filmmakers find distribution avenues for their films. The movies will be shown without ads, which would be an aesthetic disaster for any director who chose to put his creation online.

What do you think: Would you pay $5 to watch an indie flick on YouTube? What other revenue models should YouTube be considering? Let us know in the comments.

For more on paid content, including movies, see today’s Open Thread: There’s No Such Thing As Free Content.

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Yesterday, I opined that not enough social media actions aside from donations actually benefit disaster relief or other humanitarian efforts.

However, it seems that at least one organization is helping Web users make their time and clicks count for a good cause, and I’ve never been happier to eat my words. The Haiti Earthquake Support Center, a project from The Extraordinaires (more on that later), allows users to make possible matches between submitted photos of missing persons and photos of Haitians post-earthquake.

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It’s something facial recognition software should be able to do, but in the absence of suitable technology, perhaps the power of human effort and social media will have some positive effects for those searching for loved ones.

The premise of The Extraordinaires is revolutionary but simple. Organizations can create missions. Users can complete micro-tasks from their mobile devices or computers toward those missions. Currently, the site has around 50 participating organizations and about 6,000 members who have completed in excess of 35,000 micro-tasks. Missions range from mapping safe places for children to play to helping first-aid responders reduce fatalities.

For this particular mission, photos of missing people are submitted to the site. Then, users are asked to tag images captured during disaster relief efforts. These images are sometimes graphic, depicting the living and dead, the wounded and children. So far, more than 30,000 tags have been recorded. Next, users are asked to spend time deciding whether a particular tagged image matches a photo of a missing person.

To date, the site has led to only three possible matches between missing persons in Haiti and people in images captured after the Haitian earthquake. Clearly, more users are needed to make this site’s mission a success.

Finally, if a family member or friend has Internet access, he or she can search for a missing person on the site using keywords that are likely to be used as image tags, such as “male” or “teenager.” So far, 640 such searches have been made.

We hope that you will take a few minutes (or longer) to use this site yourself and help tag or match images. Also, if you know of similar efforts for social media users to help with disaster relief in Haiti, please let us know in the comments.

Discuss

Amid rumors and artifacts of Twitter’s testing accounts managed by multiple users, we’ve found a startup focusing on precisely that problem.

The biggest and perhaps best known competitor in this space is CoTweet, a truly enterprise-scalable solution for Twitter accounts with multiple users. It’s well-suited to brands or news organizations in particular, but BirdHerd might provide a low-cost alternative for small- to medium-sized businesses or other groups.

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Here’s how it works: Users sign in via Twitter’s OAuth feature. They then choose which other Twitter users should have the ability to tweet from the chosen account.

The other users they choose can then direct message the original Twitter account at any time. The DMs appear in the original account’s timeline with a slash-via attribution system that lets users know who sent the tweet.

For example, I gave @Eston access to my account tonight, and he DM’d me this message, which was immediately broadcast to all my Twitter followers:

The BirdHerd website states, “At some point in the future, we will offer paid ‘pro’ plans with extra features, interesting stats and quicker response times.” At the moment, all accounts are free with an invite code, and future accounts will always be available free of charge to any user. Additionally, beta testers will receive 2 months of “pro” features free.

The app is a collaboration between self-described “code ninja” Colin Brumelle of Mixed Content and design studio twothirty.

To access the site and use its awesome, group- and team-friendly features, use the code “rww” to login and set up your account. That code will work for the first 200 users; after that, you’ll have to put yourself on a waiting list and hold your breath until the site goes public.

And do let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

Discuss

Welcome to the weekend, readers!

Your primary focus at this very moment might be your Friday night drink-ups, but we’ve got a new feature to help you maintain your mental clarity and conversational arsenal throughout the weekend – all while keeping you at a safe distance from your computer and allowing you to roam freely through the real world.

We’re happy to present the Friday Podcast Parade! Load up your iPod with this curation of experts on audio, and give these chats a listen while walking your dogs, working out or running errands. You’ll be smarter for it, we promise!

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This week’s topic was, next to the Haitian earthquake, the biggest story in tech news since Google made its controversial announcement on Tuesday afternoon.

Put briefly, the search giant has threatened to pull out of China entirely, shuttering its Google.cn portal and closing its offices due to a string of attacks carried out on Gmail accounts from what are presumed to be agents of the Chinese government – not to mention China’s longstanding censorship of search keywords and websites, which Google stated has long made the company uncomfortable.

First up, we have commentary from NPR’s All Things Considered. Although NPR’s reporter Laura Sydell said the attacks couldn’t be pinned directly on the Chinese government just yet, she did get to speak directly to Google’s SVP David Drummond, who makes an appearance in this podcast. Sydell also spoke to Gregory Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology and Jonathan Zittrain of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, who discuss the involvement of authoritarian governments in online activities.

Download here or listen here. Running time: 3:42

In our second offering, Adam Segal, Ira A. Lipman Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and National Security Studies for the Council for Foreign Relations, is interviewed about the situation and makes several interesting points.

As we’re all likely aware, this move on Google’s part comes at a tense moment in the U.S.-China relationship. “The Google decision also feeds into a broader sense of China as spoiler… I would suspect the next six months is going to be very bumpy,” he said.

Segal also sees the move as an indicator that the “world-wide” Web is breaking apart. With various tools widely used in some parts of the world and abandoned in others (e.g., Orkut in Brazil or Friendster in Southeast Asia), can we really argue with him? But Segal sees further fragmentation of the Internet into almost entirely separate entities, one based in the Western world and one in the East.

Download here or listen here. Running time: 9:27

Finally, from The World, we have this double-whammy tech podcast, the first half of which is a discussion of affairs in Haiti and the second half of which focuses on the topic of this week’s parade. If you skip to the 10:33 mark, you’ll hear Clark Boyd recapping the news and an in-depth report from veteran East Asia correspondent Mary Kay Magistad, who has covered news in this region for almost six years. She states that surfing the web right now in Beijing is like being in a different world now that Google has unblocked search terms and content, leaving China’s censors scrambling to keep up. The rest of her report is a fascinating mosaic of interviews and insight – a must-listen for those who would be informed and sound intelligent on the Google-China debacle.

Download here or listen here. Running time: 19:06

To subscribe to the Podcast Parade, check out our Huffduffer page and feed, or just use this link to subscribe through iTunes. You can also check out other podcasts on this topic from our friends at CNET’s Buzz Out Loud and The Next Web, who told us their audio commentary will be published shortly on their blog.

We hope you’ll enjoy this new weekly feature! Please let us know what you think of our Podcast Parade in the comments, and if you have a recommendation for future installments, send us an email.

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In an ongoing effort to help the poorest country in the Americas survive and recover from a devastating earthquake, hackers around the world are participating in CrisisCamp Hackathons this Saturday, January 16.

The unconference-style events are free for attendees, who are asked to volunteer their time and expertise to create technology projects that provide data, information, maps and technical assistance to non-governmental organizations, relief agencies and the public.
The CrisisCamps being held this weekend will all directly benefit Haitian relief efforts.

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Volunteers of all kinds – the technically talented and others, too – are requested to sign up.

Hackathons are being organized in Silicon Valley, London, Washington DC and Boulder/Denver. Some of these events still need organization and leadership help; volunteers are asked to take charge and donate whatever time or resources they have available.

Proposed projects so far include a base layer map for Port Au Prince for NGOs and relief agencies, a family locator system, a volunteer skill matrix, a news aggregator to coordinate data feeds and ongoing definitions to support ongoing CrisisCamp efforts. For an idea of how these kinds of tech can help in times of national and natural disasters, check out Chad Catacchio’s post on crisis mapping.

CrisisCamp’s goal is to gather topic experts, app developers and emergency first responders to create better technology and practices for crisis management and disaster relief.

For updates and more information, follow CrisisCamp on Twitter.

For more on what technologists are doing to help relief efforts in Haiti, check out these other RWW posts:
Internet Rallies to Help Haiti: Here’s What You Can Do Right Now
Google Offers Satellite Images of Haiti, Post-Earthquake
CloudCamp for Haiti: How the Cloud Can Help Aid Efforts

Discuss

Call us cheesy, but the video below is just adorable.

Hallmark, manufacturers of fine greeting cards and pointlessly sentimental holdiays, have launched augmented reality (AR) greeting cards. Like some of the prototypes we’ve played around with, the whole affair involves a little real-world hardware (in this case a webcam and a Hallmark card) and a little AR magic. The cards come to life with animation and sound, and the recipient is presumably swept off his or her geeky little feet.

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Augmented reality is a term to describe the layering of digital content over real-world objects and images. It’s come into vogue over the past year or two with certain advances in image recognition, 3D video rendering and smartphone software.

Hallmark’s cards, called “webcam greetings” so as not to alarm the less technically savvy, will appear as an initial batch of ten for the saccharine love-fest on February 14. Additional greetings will be rolled out throughout the year.

The lucky recipients of these AR greeting cards will have to go to Hallmark’s website and follow a few directions using their webcam to view their animated song-and-dance. Project manager Monic Muldrew stated, “As Hallmark embarks upon our next 100 years in business, it’s important to continually identify new ways to help amplify the emotions our consumers feel when experiencing and sharing our products. With the experience available through these cards that come to life with a webcam, we hope consumers will fully explore and interact with this fun new way to connect.”

If Hallmark can demonstrate and market these cards correctly, they could help bring AR to the masses – all while turning a decent profit, as well. Most of the AR cards will retail for $2.99. Some will include a sound clip that plays when the recipient opens the card without going online. These deluxe bells-and-whistles editions will sell for $5.99. The entire line of AR cards will be available wherever Hallmark cards are sold.

What do you think: Are augmented reality greeting cards simply a gimmick, destined to be Hallmark’s equivalent of Crystal Pepsi? Or do you think the traditional company’s forward-looking direction will help it adapt and financially prosper in changing – and increasingly digital – times? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

We love AR tech at RWW – why not check out some of the goodies in our Augmented Reality Archives?

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I was distressed a few days ago when someone in a comment thread mockingly referred to recommendations made by a fairly notorious hacker, suggesting that a gray hat wouldn’t give sound advice about personal Internet security.

I shook my head for the world of end users to whom hacker is a derogatory term used to describe anyone from malevolent phishers to script kiddies who find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Certainly, I’ve seen hackers pull off feats of questionable legality and dubious utility.
But by and large, the hackers I’ve known and loved have gone on to have brilliant careers in infosec, network administration and even startup-building and application programming. Does the word hacker need a PR facelift? Do we need to educate folks in the real world about what a hacker is and does? What do you think a hacker is, anyway?

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I’m fascinated by hacker lore, such as the Jargon File. (Do NOT click that link unless you’ve got a couple hours to kill reading about the earliest days of what would eventually become the Internet. It’s truly enthralling stuff that will have you talking about Usenet heroes in archaic slang for months afterward.) I’m in love with this famous webcomic series about legendary hackers, and I can’t wait to go to DEFCON next year.

Hackers, it seems to me, do what they do in the name of envelope-pushing and pure curiosity. “What’s this button do?” and “I wonder if I can get in there?” and “How could I make this thing/program perform that action/function?” are the fundamental questions in a hacker-like mind.

Hackers come in all shapes and sizes, and relatively few of them are breaking into your Gmail account or trying to steal your credit card number. There are hardware hackers who will try to make the world’s smallest netbook run Snow Leopard or do dazzling demonstrations with robots or LED displays. There are some hackers who want to expose vulnerabilities in order to build a better firewall or improve network security, and there are hackers who believe strongly in the freedom of information. There are – or were, at least – phone system hackers who figured out how to dial numbers using trinkets in cereal boxes.

These days, we’re seeing more mobile hackers, too. Remember the story about that iPhone hacker who gave the world a RickRoll worm, then got hired for his ingenuity?

And not least by any means are the hackers who make up a huge chunk of today’s startup community, the young men and women who take all the lovely, big-picture ideas from executives and Photoshop files from UI designers and then work their magic to make it go. I think that’s what makes me particularly indignant: Internet users using technology built by hackers to complain about hackers.

Also, the open-source movement would be completely dead if not for hackers, whose combination of creativity and anti-authoritarianism gave them the ability to stick it to the man and give us all a lot of great free software. Think about that the next time you’re happily pointing and clicking your way through a free web app based on Python and perhaps written by some dude working on a Linux machine.

What’s gone wrong with the world? When did hackers start becoming so misunderstood and under-appreciated? Yes, it’s true that some hackers cross boundaries, both civil and criminal, when pushing their various envelopes. But the true criminals – those who’d run DDoS attacks on social services or steal users’ bank logins – aren’t really what you’d call hackers at all. They’re under-skilled lowlifes, and there are other designations altogether for that type of person. (This is not to downplay the importance of national information security, however, and you might be wrong if you think that hackers do more harm than good for that cause, as well. Exposing vulnerabilities in the networks of our intelligence and military communities is something many white- and gray-hat hackers do routinely, and they do so without selling the information to foreign governments or any such nonsense.)

That’s my rather long-winded and subjective definition (and defense) of the term hacker. But let’s hear what you think about it in the comments. Are hackers our heroes? Should they be handsomely compensated for their special brands of magic? Or are they still just digital vigilantes, mischievous at best and criminal at worst?

How do you define the word “hacker”?

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As some of our readers know, I was clumsy enough to hack off a chunk of my finger while making dinner a couple nights ago. This incident has severely curtailed my blogging activity, but it’s led to a fortunate inspiration, as well!

For those of you who are differently-abled – temporarily or otherwise – or for those of you who are simply too lazy to type, here are a handful of resources for hands-free Internet use, from blog posting to Twitter updates to straight-up voice-to-text transcription services. I hope you find these apps as useful as I have.

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Jott

Jott is a transcription service that takes your speech and converts it to text. With tiered subscription plans that run a modest gamut of around $4 per month to $13 per month, and a pay-as-you-go option that seems perfectly geared toward casual users, Jott is competitively priced for both a satisfied userbase and profitability.

The site allows users to send in 15- or 30-second snippets of audio to be converted into text. Jott also offers services for consumers (voicemail transcription) and the enterprise (a Salesforce integration), as well.

The company started in Seattle in 2006. Since then, they’ve integrated Twitter functions and a suite of mobile apps for various devices.

QuickTate

A similar service we found is QuickTate. This service allows users to leave audio messages for themselves via phone; the messages are then transcribed to text and delivered to the user via SMS or email depending on one’s account settings. Text messages are also available on the web.

QuickTate also allows provides a voicemail transcription service and has a handy iPhone-optimized widget. It too offers tiered subscription plans, with a convenient free option for occasional users and monthly plans ranging from $3.50 to $30 a month for up to 200 transcribed messages.

We actually tested this one firsthand and found the vocie-to-text process both quick and extremely accurate – Google Voice transcription this was not. Each word was correctly spelled, and sentences were adequately punctuated.

TweetCall

TweetCall was another simple, free and accurate service we tested for posting updates to Twitter. There are many similar apps on the market, including TwitterFone (still in private beta after more than a year and a half since inception), but we appreciated the quick and easy nature of TweetCall.

Signing up for the service took no more than a minute, after which we were able to dial (877) TweetCall, enter an optional PIN and leave a message to be transcribed to a 140-character tweet.

The service worked just fine, and the text of the message was transcribed beautifully.

We were not too surprised to learn that TweetCall is, in fact, powered by QuickTate. We were curious enough to dig around to find out why each product had such quick and accurate transcriptions; we found both are affiliated with iDictate, a long-standing figure in the voice-to-text space that employs actual human beings to get voice messages into text formats.

It might not be the most technologically innovative or scalable solution, but these two apps certainly did everything we needed them to, and with a higher degree of accuracy than similar applications that rely on machine transcription of messages.

Audio Blogging on Tumblr

Lots of blogging software applications have tools for audio posts, but few are as simple as Tumblr’s. Tumblr has the distinct advantage of giving users a completely free offering, as well.

Early last year, Tumblr gave users the ability to post audio entries to their blogs. While this function doesn’t provide any text transcription, it does do the trick for most casual bloggers who might need to call one in on occasion.

We tested it out, and weren’t too disappointed. The sound was a little muffled, though, and it’s definitely not a feature that would be of any use to professional or enterprise bloggers.

Visual Voicemail

For an extensive and thorough look at voice-to-text voicemail transcription services, check out this post from Baratunde Thurston. I did not test voicemail transcription services because I, dear reader, make a point of not checking my voicemail, ever.

Although Google Voice and similar services’ audio message (mis)translations can be humorously wrong, they’re often helpful for getting the gist of a communiqué without having to reroute through the labyrinthine depths of one’s voicemail inbox.

Let me know your favorite voice-to-text apps in the comments – I’ll need them while I’m resting up and trying to regenerate my finger down in the basement of ReadWriteLabs.

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Have you ever wanted to share a set of memories with some of your Twitter friends, keeping the content private while still allowing for collaboration between certain folks?

It’s not anything we thought we wanted, either, but after playing with TwitAlbums, we find the concept charming. Here’s how it works: Using Twitter’s OAuth function, users log in and create collections or “albums” containing multimedia content and text comments. They can invite whatever users they like to join them in adding files, and only the users they invite can see the content or comments. Best of all it looks like this little app already has a monetization strategy in place.

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The concept is inherently charming. Users create an album with a single click. They can then proceed to upload movies, pictures and audio files. We’d like to see options for adding more file types, such as web pages, text files and more.

Users can then choose others to collaborate with them on the album. A tweet is sent inviting the collaborators to the album, and they are prompted to sign in via OAuth when they click the tweet in the link. This immediate request for account access without an explanation of the app might be a bit disconcerting for some, however. If an uninvited Twitter user clicks the link, they are given an “invite only” notice and denied access to the content.

Collaborators can add content, leave comments and invite other users, depending on the permissions set by the original album creator.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that the app’s creators have built in a mechanism for modest financial returns. Each uploaded file costs the user a single onsite credit, called a TwitSeed. Accounts come with 50 TwitSeeds, and more can be purchased in bundles of 100 for $1, 500 for $4, or 1000 for $8.

One thing we don’t like is that the app pushes a ton of link- and hashtag-studded notifications into the user’s Twitter stream. As with other apps that gain access via OAuth, from the infamous Spymaster to the successful TinyChat, this is a very fine line that most users would appreciate the app not cross.

Generally speaking, users won’t have a problem with a single tweet or two, but a constant stream of app-related messages when the user is active on the site can only end badly. Worst of all, we don’t see a way to opt out of these notifications, so we’ve had to delete these tweets manually, which does nothing to mitigate the swarm of updates for our friends using Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck. Particularly since the content is set up to be private, it doesn’t make sense to broadcast tweets about each user’s on-site activity.

We think this app would work well for younger users, social media addicts and long-distance friends, especially if the above-mentioned issues are addressed. What do you folks think so far; does TwitAlbums have what it takes to become a widely used Twitter application? Would you use it, and what would you use it for? Let us know in the comments.

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We love site-building and story-telling applications, and social webizens love sharing their content – particularly multimedia content – in new and compelling ways.

YouTellYou is a fun and simple tool that allows users to grab, annotate, tag and share their pictures in an online magazine-type format. Users can pull in photos from Smugmug, Facebook, Flickr or one’s own computer, then go to town in a frenzy of sequences, captions and true pictorial story-weaving.

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In about 10 minutes, we created this story about SxSW 2009. We were able to get access to all the needed Flickr photos through a simple interface. Pics were then organized into layouts of one or two photos per section with optional captions for most layouts.

When we published, we were pleased to see links with each photo to enlarge it or to find the original URL for each pic. The finished product also has a thorough commenting system and the option to share zines via email and Twitter.

Our wishlist for this app would be a drag-and-drop interface for pulling photos into the magazine, Facebook Connect for easier account creation, some kind of theming for finished zines, the ability to add photos from other users and the ability to reblog or share the content we created in more ways. Finally, the site navigation and overall design needs improvement; however, for a free app with no advertising, we can’t complain too much.

We’re torn on whether we personally would use the app again – for most on the RWW team, it’d be worth the effort to just build a webpage from scratch. But for end users, this kind of tool is indicative of a trend for amateur content creation and sharing in more polished ways than a simple Flickr slideshow or Facebook set.

What do you think – would you use YouTellYou to tell a story with your photos? Let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

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Being a technology blogger is like having a license for an around-the-clock gadget and Web addiction.

No one expects you to leave your house during the day. You’re allowed to spend the majority of your life in front of a glowing screen, and flipping out over WiFi issues is par for the course. And you’re never far from the Web, since your mobile is always in hand when you have to leave your laptop behind for some incomprehensible reason.

But even with such a license in hand, I have to make a case for periodically disconnecting. What do you think?

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More and more, I am trying to set aside unplugged hours and even days for Internet-free, mobile-free, “Luddite time.” Time for asking a stranger for directions, time for talking to the people you’re with rather than the people you “follow,” time for interacting with the world around you in ways that don’t include clicking, scrolling or downloading. Time that’s increasingly being destroyed by smart phones, “super” phones and what ever “super duper” devices are in the pipeline.

Sitting in front of these glowing screens (as most of us do) for around eight hours a day for work and additional hours for leisure can’t be good for us as living, breathing organisms. Have you ever spent the whole day absorbed in the web – the rabbit holes of YouTube, the breadcrumb trails of Wikipedia, the party line of Twitter and the bottomless virtual library of blog posts – to find yourself startled by actual human interaction, in a strange and unrestul intellectual state. With enough consecutive days of online-only living, you might realize you’re making more connections between online entities and content, but you’re losing opportunities to have fresh, original thought or observations about your own world.

I’m not saying that the Internet makes you stupid. I am saying that, if left to run wild across the vast territories of the Web, your mind can turn into a laboratory hamster, frantically pulling levers and running in wheels while his environment remains essentially static and his motivations essentially artificial.

Another detriment to a constantly wired life is that you’re not truly present with the folks around you every day, and you begin to forget how polite, normal people communicate. You become too easily distracted by notifications from your mobile, glazing over and tuning out to parse your RSS feeds while real conversations are going on without you. And being accustomed to ignoring your surroundings in favor of your online life numbs you to the fact that often, your friends are doing the same to you. If you’ve ever sat through a dinner with your significant other or a group of geek friends as you all happily tapped away on your mobiles, you know this is true. And while being able to buck conventional table manners and geek out together is a wonderful thing, aren’t you cheating yourself out of valuable face-to-face interaction by doing so?

And very often, an preoccupation with the Web leads to a total loss of perspective. If you have ever stayed awake until 2 or 3 in the morning entrenched in a furious debate on Scoble’s FriendFeed over something that the entire world had completely forgotten 12 hours later (guilty!), you have definitely lost perspective. Not typically the most empathetic people, we begin to give more attention and emotion to minor tech events (Google Wave, anyone?) than to major world events. If it didn’t trend on Twitter and hit Digg’s front page, we tend to not notice or care. Although the social web can occasionally be used as a power for good, notably through efforts such as those carried out during the Iranian election/debacle or on World Aids Day, this circle is notoriously self-obsessed and navel-gazing to the obfuscation of much more important matters.

Finally, being constantly online is probably fairly bad for your health. A few of the people I’ve spoken to tonight tell me that to distract themselves from Internet obsessions, they turn to physical activity, such as gym workouts, yoga or running. These dear souls are escaping the sedentary lifestyle to which we’ve all grown fairly accustomed and which most certainly has negative effects on how we look, how we feel, our metabolism and energy level and so much more. And although mobile and AR technologies are making it easier for us to get out and about while still connected, more often they act as a tether to larger, more stationary devices.

I personally want to spend many hours in 2010 offline and off my mobile. I want to do things like watch an old movie, go for a walk, have a dinner date or read an honest-to-god newspaper without checking in on Foursquare or posting an “overheard” on Twitter. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m aging. Many of my contemporaries say their sole offline time is sleeping. I’ve certainly lived that way, too, and I spend many days now online for 14-18 hours. But I don’t want every day to be like that.

What about you, dear readers? Do you currently plan for and enforce offline hours for yourself, your significant other or your family? If so, how and when do you take your breaks? Or are you a tireless defender of the Internet junkie lifestyle?

Most importantly, what do you see as the explicit benefits or detriments of being online around the clock – or of taking periodic furloughs?

Let us know your opinions and best practices in the comments.

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Another popular service has made its way from the Apple App Store to the Android Market.

GOGII’s textPlus allows for unlimited and multiplayer chat and SMS features. TextPlus allows for ad-supported free and unlimited messaging for Android users. Users can hold instant group text conversations with friends on almost all U.S. carriers, even without a text messaging plan.

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From casual SMS texters to folks who use text messaging as their preferred medium – and even distributed work groups – textPlus provides an excellent solution for a wide range of user types. It allows both old-school, one-on-one texting as well as what the company calls “next-generation texting – rich, engaging environments and instant group text conversations.”

textPlus’ reply-all feature functions like the homonymous email function, making SMS texting into a chat environment for users to carry on party line-esque conversations, make plans with several other users at once, or make text-based intros.

Here’s a quick demo of how textPlus’ group text features work on Apple devices (and now for Android devices, too):

Android users can choose to make textPlus their preferred SMS client for U.S. and international SMS messaging. Users can also text with the app even when the text recipient isn’t a textPlus user.

As of today, the textPlus iPhone and iPod Touch app has been downloaded around 3.5 million times. The app’s parent company, GOGII, moreover just announced an $8.2 million Series B round last month. The company’s currently looking for beta testers for a BlackBerry version of the service, too.

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Every now and then, we come across cool apps that allow geeks to conveniently manage their musical tastes in a way that encourages more real-world fun.

Last year, we met up with Livekick’s founders in New York to talk about their very thorough site for helping web geeks get out to more shows and concerts. Today, we’ve discovered Roadie, a much simpler app that focuses on album releases. Roadie creates an RSS feed or iCal based on a user’s Last.fm favorite acts or a custom list of manually entered bands. Essentially, it allows users to keep up with album releases quickly and painlessly.

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The Last.fm import is a super simple way to get users quickly into using the site’s features, but we also wish they’d allow for an iTunes artist scan:

The RSS feed, which we quickly popped into Google Reader, shows recent and upcoming releases:

And the iCal was just as easily added to Google Calendar, for those who prefer those kinds of notifications:

Users can upload other folks’ Last.fm faves, as well, if gift-giving ideas are in needed. Other features that would make this app even more useful would be a Twitter OAuth to receive DMs the day before and/or the day of an album’s release. And of course, we’d love to see a location-based feature that added tour dates to the mix.

Roadie comes from Portuguese web and mobile dev shop Think Orange, which was founded by a couple Ruby on Rails geeks. Roadie is an experimental side project for them, and they’re looking forward to creating many more projects in 2010. We’re looking forward to seeing what they cook up, as well!

Give Roadie a spin, and let us know what you think in the comments. Is this app useful for you?

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