Digital marketing company Razorfish has just launched its third annual FEED surveyof 1,000 "connected consumers." The survey is focused on online consumer behavior. This year Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. 40% of respondents "friended" brands on Facebook, while 25% reported following brands on Twitter. What's more, Razorfish found that consumers access brands on Twitter and Facebook mainly for deals and promotions.Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, nearly 44% reported that access to exclusive deals is the main reason. On Facebook or MySpace, 37% said that access to exclusive deals or offers was their main reason for friending brands.SponsorOver 1/4 of respondents reported having followed a brand on Twitter, which is encouraging news for companies wanting to use Twitter to promote themselves.43.5% reported following a brand to get "exclusive deals or offerings," which again is a statistic that companies should take note of. An even higher percentage of respondents have "friended" a brand on Facebook - a whopping 40%. Considering that Facebook is a social network that started out as a way for college kids to network, this is a statistic that will make companies and organizations take note. If you want brand recognition on the Web, according to these statistics there's a very good chance that Facebook is a place you want to be.A smaller percentage follow a brand on Facebook for exclusive deals or offers (36.9%) - but still a majority.Is this "connected consumer" crowd mainstream? Well, about 62% of the respondents still use Internet Explorer as their browser, with 30% on Firefox. So yes, they are.It's interesting then to look at what are the homepages of these people.While Google is unsurprisingly number 1 with 32.6%, Yahoo is close behind at 29.7%. MSN is still well used at 11.9%. We were most surprised that AOL is now only 7.9%. These statistics show that Yahoo remains a force among mainstream consumers, whereas AOL is slipping further behind.We reported last week that smartphones have almost overtaken 'feature phones'as the cellphones of choice for consumers. Razorfish's survey shows that 56% of connected consumers now use a smartphone - i.e. one that has email and web capabilities.As with the ChangeWave Research survey recently, Razorfish puts Blackberry (29.5%) ahead of Apple's iPhone (20.1%). Another illuminating statistic is the number of people who now get their news from Twitter and Facebook. While nearly 80% of respondents still access "traditional news web sites," 33% get news from Facebook and 19.5% from Twitter. Only 27.3% get news from "alternative news web sites" - but which we presume they mean blogs.Overall, these figures from Razorfish show that Facebook and Twitter are now major places for brands to be; as well as online sites where consumers get at least some of their news.Discuss

  Editor's note:we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interestingto our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.If you have discussed social media with small-business owners, you almost always get two questions:How do I manage all these social networks without going nuts?Are any tools out there that can help me be more productive and save time?SponsorThe first answer that any good social media thinker would offer a small-business owner would be to pick two or three networks where you can reach the majority of your customers or potential customers and concentrate on those, thus eliminating some of your stress. Fortunately, the second answer is "Yes": tools are out there to help you manage your time and workflow if you plan to spend some time and energy on the social Web.I polled a few folks who know a thing or two about social media, especially for small businesses, and collected a list of 10 tools, technologies and platforms that can help your small business succeed in social media and Internet marketing. These experts in the field include John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Becky McCray of Small Biz Survival, Mack Coller of The Viral Garden, Drew McLellan of Drew's Marketing Minuteand Kyle Lacy, author of the upcoming book "Twitter Marketing for Dummies."Based on their favorites (and some of my own), here are 10 killer tools forsmall-business success.1. JottHave you ever called yourself and left a voice mail so that you wouldn't forget something? Jott takes that idea a step further, transcribing the voice mail and sending it to your inbox. Instead of sending a quick memo to yourself to remember to email your vendor, you can dictate the email and save time. Upgrade to Jott Assistant and you can dictate to-do lists, automatic Web postings to your social networks, calendar items and more. Jott is a subscription-based service, and it starts at only $3.95 per month for a small Assistant account. For small-business owners on the go, it can be a life-saver.2. GrasshopperGrasshopper not only gives your business its very own toll-free 800 number, but it allows your customers to reach you even when you're on the go. Voice mails are delivered to your inbox, as are faxes (in PDF), so you can stay connected everywhere. You can have multiple extensions and extend the service to your employees as well. The service starts at $9.95 per month (plus a $25 activation fee) for 100 minutes. Other plans are $49 and $199 per month.3. MonitterIf your small business is on Twitter, keeping an eye on the conversations related to your product or service there makes sense. But if you're geographically focused like most small businesses, you probably hate having to weed through similarly named companies and mentions of your industry from folks 1,000 miles away. Monitter lets you search Twitter for keywords, but filters them by specified distances from a zip code. You get tweets about your category, industry and company from within your home territory, where it matters. Monitter is free to use.4. HootSuiteFor anyone who runs a Twitter account for business, a tool like HootSuite can be a productivity boon. Not only can you manage multiple people contributing to the same Twitter account (so that one person isn't solely responsible for tweeting), but you can manage multiple accounts with ease. The software has a bookmarklet for quick link-sharing and offers some cursory stats on your Twitter account as well. It's free to use.5. Survey MonkeyPerhaps the one luxury that many small businesses can't afford is market research. Survey Monkey enables you to conduct your own online surveys to gain insight into your customer base for free. The tool is easy to use, looks professional and produces a bevy of charts and graphs to help you understand your results. If you have trouble with online tools, Survey Monkey has several video tutorials that make it a snap to tap into customer insights.6. Simple Online Accounting SolutionsMcCray told me about a number of good online tools for bookkeeping and accounting, two really stand out for her. She recommends Outright.comfor single-person businesses and WorkingPoint.comfor more complex companies. The reason? Simplicity. Speaking as a business owner who is math-averse myself, I'll just say, "Amen!" The simpler, the better. Both of these are outstanding in that category. Outright is free to use. WorkingPoint is free for one user, $10 per month for two and only $80 per month for 10 users.7. ReQallNever before has a smart phone app been so incredibly useful! ReQall is a memory aide that enables you to record voice memos via a smartphone or regular phone, have those messages transcribed and then sent to you via email (a la Jott). But wait! There's more. The software uses natural-language processing and some additional analysis to determine whether you're dictating a calendar item or to-do list entry. It then adds those items to your calendar or to-do list. If you say, "Pick up milk at Circle K on Belmont Avenue by 4 pm," you'll get a calendar entry, probably with a Google map link, and a reminder beforehand. For the small-business owner on the go, this app is a must-have.8. Milog (iPhone App)While I hate to recommend an application that is limited to iPhone users, this one is worth mentioning. Milog, from SymplySoft, allows you to track your mileage simply, then email yourself neatly organized reports to print or send to your accountant for tax papers. When my CPA told me, "No one tracks their mileage well," I decided to prove her wrong. Milog helps me do that in literally a few seconds per day. The app stores locations for easy trip entry and allows you to add fields for parking, tolls and more. The full version is just $2.99 at the iPhone app store.9. MingglThis tool is new (the beta was released two weeks ago) but is very promising. A browser sidebar plugin, Minggl allows you to post status updates across six major social networks (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Digg and Delicious) but, unlike other broadcast services, also allows you to check your inboxes, notifications and public updates from friends on those networks. Add a Google Sidewiki-style annotation service and you've got a pretty useful tool that you won't have to change your habits much to use.10. BackupifyWhether you're dabbling in social media for your business, conducting full-scale sales calls via Twitter or Facebook or running everything you do through project management software like Google Docs, Zoho or Basecamp, you'd probably get mighty frustrated if one of those services went down and lost your data. Backupify.com serves as a daily or weekly (you decide) backup service for a variety of social media and Web 2.0 services that many small businesses depend on. The service is available at a low cost (accounts start at $4.95 per month) and backs up your important company data (Gmail, Google Docs, Basecamp, Zoho), plus your entire database for services like Flickr, Twitter and even WordPress. (Disclosure: Backupify is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor and a client of mine.)These applications, programs and platforms only skim the surface. I'm sure you have favorites of your own. Please share them in the comments for your fellow readers and help make this post a one-stop shop for killer small-business tools.Jason Falls is a social-media consultant based in Louisville, Kentucky. He blogs regularly at SocialMediaExplorer.com. He is also chief evangelist for Backupify.com, a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.Discuss

  Hey, Firefox, kids who were freshmen in college when you started now have pointless internships in big cities and colossal amounts of student debt. Congratulations! You're officially old by Internet standards. You've hit the one billion downloadsmark and captured a truly significant percentage of Internet browser users. And you've got a hardcore community of open-source developers and fans who contribute to the thousands of extensions, plugins, and skins that make the user experience so customizable. But most importantly, you helped pave the way for the creation and mainstream proliferation of a bunch of nifty alternative browsers and provided impetus for aggressive improvements to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.SponsorHere's a happy little video on how liberating and revolutionary the Firefox experience is for Internet users:Moving forward from the motivational fanfare, Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard at the Hacks.Mozilla.Org blog has a rather in-depth and interesting poston the rise of modern web browsing, the triumph of standards in web development, the hackable goodness that is browser UI customization, user generated content, and geeky stuff like RSS, APIs, and JSONHe concludes, "Mozilla has been at the heart of many of the issues of the Internet over the last five years. We've vastly improved the browsing experience for hundreds of millions of people around the world. We've managed to keep Microsoft honest and forced them to release newer versions of their browsers. Firefox's presence was a large factor in Apple being able to ship a browser to its user base as the Mac came back to the market. We've made it possible for third party browser vendors like Google to enter the market."He noted that future releases of Firefox with deal with issues such as users' sharing data with websites, more open video codecs, and improvements to mobile browsing.Over at the Mozilla blog, the company's flack Melissa Shapiro sharessome interesting stats. Since Mozilla's auspicious one-million-downloads-in-four-days start, she writes, "that number has swelled to over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users worldwide choose Firefox. Today, Firefox ships in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience."In fact, some websites report that nearly half their visitors are Firefox users. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg writesthat Firefox users represent nearly 46 percent of Wordpress' blog stats as opposed to Internet Explorer users, who comprise around 39 percent. "This is the first time I've ever seen Firefox pass IE in market share for a mainstream audience like WordPress.com has," said Mullenweg.Firefox is sharing its official, worldwide celebration with users everywhere via their special anniversary site, where folks can share pics and videos from their Firefox parties or submit commemorative poster designs.Discuss

  Twitter and LinkedIn are announcing a deal tonightthat will allow LinkedIn users to publish status updates to their Twitter profiles and pull in some or all Twitter updates to their LinkedIn accounts. Wait a minute...the two social media companies with the some of the most valuable, interesting data on the web made a deal and what do we get? Spammy Twitter streams clouding up our LinkedIn feeds and an occasional uptight Tweet on Twitter that was born inside LinkedIn? We're still waiting for the meaty announcements everyone says are coming someday soon - that Twitter and LinkedIn are open for business.SponsorI don't mean to be too grouchy, but this looks like just one more sweetheart Silicon Valley deal that has limited imagination and represents a lost opportunity for the kind of innovation everyone expects these kinds of companies to drive.In the announcement video recorded by LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman and Twitter's Biz Stone, both talked about how Twitter is great for business. What did they mean, though? They meant it's a marketing platform, a way to get your message out further, etc. If you have something you want to say to everyone on LinkedIn, why not say it on Twitter too?But is business just about broadcasting your marketing message? What about the listening part of doing business, thoughtful analysis, responding to actionable information and market conditions? Conversations with your customers and business partners?Twitter is arguably better for listening than it is for broadcast and conversion of marketing messages.This kind of cross-posting deal falls short of the huge potential latent in the data both of these companies control and instead appeals to the craven broadcast-model of marketing. Challenging that broadcast-model is where many people believe social media derives its meaning. What could this look like?It could look like an option to view the employer and job title of anyone you see on Twitter or through a 3rd party Twitter interface. It could look like Twitter opening up its fire hose for unfettered 3rd party analysis and development - then you'd see social graph and content analysis done that gave a big boost to the User Experience on LinkedIn. ("This LinkedIn user has been conversing with friends on Twitter who were talking about 'mobile,' 'Wisconsin' and 'gaming' over the last 2 weeks.")Whatever the case may be, both occupational data (LinkedIn) and social messaging data (Twitter) are rich green fields for mashups and analysis- but these two companies are holding back the tide of innovation by refusing to offer a clear path to their data by outside partners. LinkedIn partners with next to no one. Only large, established organizations like Business Week, the New York Times and now Twitter get access to LinkedIn data. Other services all around the web will tell you stories about reaching out to LinkedIn for API access and getting the cold shoulder.We wrote about this concern three weeks ago ("LinkedIn Hits 50 Million Users; Still a Roach Motel") and the company told us then and today that big changes are coming to its API soon. That's great. That's something to look forward to, if cautiously. We're years into the LinkedIn Platform todayand there's only a select few partners doing anything there so far.Likewise, Twitter is fabulously open with its data in some ways (one a per-item basis) - but it's leaving a substantial number of outside developers frustrated because they can't get their hands on the full feed of Twitter data (the fire hose) to analyze. Startup companies that do appear to have relationships with Twitter tell us things like "We won't describe our relationship with Twitter to you and neither will anyone else who has one." That's charming. It's unclear whether anyone but Google and Bing have access to all the Twitter data.Twitter investor and real-time web guru John Borthwick told us in another conversation todaythat he believes Twitter is just in its early days as a company, that there's nothing mysterious going on. "I'm hoping there will be a click-thru EULA[End User Licensing Agreement] to the firehose [someday]," he wrote. (Emphasis added.)That sounds good.So everybody's working on the wide-open web that so many of us want to see? Standards and APIs and open platforms to facilitate a new era of innovation are right around the corner?Sounds great. For now though what we get is a little cross-network message broadcasting. Hopefully it's just the beginning.Discuss

  Google has confirmed news todaythat bot herdersgained control of Google Apps to feed commands to networks of infected computers. According to Arbor Networks, the bot herd was discovered over the weekend. After being notified of the attack, Google quickly shut down the infected app engine.Also on Monday, the Koobface botnet was attacking Google Readerto send malicious links through Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.The breach is another sign that black hatters are taking a much keener interest in the cloud infrastructure for making attacks. And even Google is at risk. SponsorHere's the news of today's attack, showing in some respects the depth of the breach and the reaction it caused. It's an interesting look at the importance of knowing when an attack actually happens and then how to respond.Bot herders are a nasty lot. They infect people's computers, turning them into nodes on a zombie network. The network can then be used to serve malware for all kinds of purposes such as for stealing password information from Twitter and Facebook and then using that information to commit fraud such as depleting bank accounts. In this attack on GoogleApps, a url for downloading an infected application went across the network. This allowed the bots to feed commands to infect more computers and make them part of the network, too.Discuss

  Media titan and News Corp czar Rupert Murdoch seems to be on a warpath against Google's spiders, particularly with regard to Google News' indexing of News Corp items.In an interview today with Australian media outlet Sky News, Murdoch hinted that when News Corp sites start charging users for access to content around June 2010, said content will be de-indexed from all search engines. It's an old-school approach to the burgeoning threat of new media, but who wants to argue with a 78 year-old billionaire? And exactly how much share does News Corp hold in the search engine news v. old-guard media battle?SponsorAustralian-born Murdoch said in the interview, "There are no websites... anywhere in the world making any serious money. Some may be breaking even or maybe making a couple of million."Murdoch continues to criticize Google as plagiarists who steal News Corp content, just as he claims users should never have had access to free content in the first place. Take a look at this video of the interview. Beware: It's long and deeply fascinating:The most fascinating thing about the interview is that Murdoch points out the sticking points of traffic valuation and monetization that only a 4-billionaire has the right to comment on. Does inclusion in Google News results guarantee clickthroughs? Do clickthroughs guarantee loyal readership? Does loyal readership in any way convert to ad dollars?Taking it a step further, when one considers the absolutely abysmal rates of conversion of clickthrough users on advertisers' websites, does the funnel of Google News traffic generate revenue from consumers to advertises and thence to publishers?Or is it all a rhubarb goulash, as Murdoch would have it?Clearly, there are subtleties to the case, which carries with it every complexity ever pondered by those who attempt to provide value to users - most of whom indignantly refuse to pay for content and accept pirated content as a substitute - and those who guard the economic and cultural longevity of traditional media, many outlets of which continue to provide the most valuable and insightful commentary in a news environment that revolves around instant deadlines, fast-beats-best reportage, and shoddy fact-checking.But as much as the newsprint-and-ink old guarders among us can appreciate Murdoch's last stand, one appreciates - as a user and as a technologist - the cooperation and innovation of companies such as the New York Times, the BBC, and other very traditional news outlets that have seen the value of distribution, aggregation, and mass information.If, however, News Corp decides to deny Google bots access to its content, Google news will likely suffer little. Between the Associated Press, Reuters, and other print and broadcast news services, one wonders how much the absence of News Corp listings - primarily represented by the Wall Street Journal and FOX - will affect Google News.Discuss

  It's been two years since ReadWriteWeb last published the Thunderbird 2 review. Since then Thunderbird has been restructured away from Firefox into Mozilla Messaging and the group is finally releasing its desktop email application, Thunderbird 3. While the launch has been widely anticipated, the fact that the entire project is open source means that the company's point releases have been hashed out in clear view. ReadWriteWeb caught up with CEO of Mozilla Messaging David Ascher to hear about the latest updates to Thunderbird as well as the company's plans for open conversation aggregator Raindrop. SponsorAfter meeting Ascher in San Francisco and having recently covered both Waveand Novell Pulse-related stories, ReadWriteWeb's first question was obvious: Would Mozilla be merging Thunderbird and Raindrop for a Google Wave-like experience? Answered Ascher, "While some engineers in Mozilla Messaging are working on both Thunderbird and Raindrop, we have no immediate plans to merge the two services. Thunderbird is a desktop client and Raindrop is hosted on the browser. These are separate services for separate types of users."Ascher explained that Raindrop is still very much experimental and unlike Google Wave, Mozilla Messaging is not interested in creating a new protocol. Instead the service uses an open API to pull feeds and conversations out of existing communication tools. Meanwhile, Thunderbird is viewed as a desktop messaging client. For now, the group's priority is further improving both the Thunderbird product and the development environment. According to Ascher some of Thunderbird 3's best features include: 1. Search with Advanced Filtering: Thunderbird 3 allows users to search with a number of filters. Generally when we're searching for a note we know who some of the message participants are, we might remember if there is an attachment and we'd likely know who sent it. Thunderbird 3 also gives users the option to search by date via a timeline view and omit those who are not a part of the desired email. 2. Tabbed Email: Similar to Firefox's tabbed browsing, Thunderbird users can view emails in separate tabs and switch between tabs for easy referral. This is a great feature for group activities, travel and planning purposes. 3. Set up Wizard: Rather than being required to know your IMAP, SMTP, SSL/TLS settings, users can simply provide their name, email address and password to setup and sync new accounts. With this ease-of-use new staff and volunteers might actually have a chance to being up and running in the morning of their first day of employment. 4. Smart Folders: Users can view all of the incoming messages from their separate email accounts in one long stream or break them up in to separate folders. 5. Add-Ons Manager: Similar to Firefox's Add-On environment, Thunderbird is offering users the chance to download extensions, themes and plug-ins. Some of the most interesting ones include the Lightning Calendar clientas well as plans to build a service where users can track Twitter followers and follow them back from within the messaging client. Ascher sees this level of customization as one of Mozilla Messaging's strengths. Says Ascher, "Thunderbird is flexible for those who want to personalize it. As an organization, we've always empowered our users to choose the functionality of our products."To download Thunderbird visit getthunderbird.com. Discuss

  You have to give a company credit that takes a fun idea and turns it into a way to promote their product. It's even better when the product integrates real-time features and a clean user interface to provide an affordable service that has a certain personal touch.Opscotchis a help center service with a number of features that gives the support person real-time information to help connect with their end customers.SponsorFor example, Opscotch grabs address information to display local weather, a searchable Google map and street view. It has a micro blog style feature, for whatever the user might want to add. This may be a bit about the individual and summaries of a conversation. Let's call it "micro-blogging plus" as users have 250 character limits for their notes as opposed to Twitter's 140 limit.Co-founder Cathy Tullysmith says that she will usually open a customer's website, a map and weather in tabs when she's on the phone with a customer. Having these features and the notes integrated into the product is helpful for her to create better communication and "foster an empathetic, touchy feely even, client connection."Opscotch offers unlimited storage. It's in this respect that the cloud does become a differentiating factor. Tullysmith says that she has noticed other providers not offering free storage. But with the cloud, storage costs are so little that it makes sense to offer storage for free.Additional features include:Attachments can be uploaded to the service. Images such as screenshots can be viewed graphically and found visually.Adaptive phonetic search allows users to find clients in the system and help locate tickets. This is similar to Google's suggestions for a search when your spelling is incorrect.An adaptive UI. Users may choose either a light or dark contrast theme for making reading information easier.Opscotch definitely has an understanding of how to make a product personal. You can also see this in their promotions.Earlier this year they came out with techecards, where they placed an ad. The ad is getting more traffic for them than the Google Ad Word campaigns they are doing.Opscotch is free for the first 30 days. After that it is $8 per user on a per month basis.Discuss

  We've been lucky enough to get our hands on leaked screenshots from one version of Rdio, the forthcoming music app from Skype, KaZaA and Joost creators Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Zennstrom and Friis were the original financiers behind peer-to-peer file sharing site KaZaA, but Rdio won't be following a free-for-all sharing model. Instead, Rdio will be a subscription music site similar to Spotify. What will the men behind some of the most successful software of the online era do when it comes to music? Check out what we've discovered so far.SponsorCurrently being tested by a very small number ofpeople, Rdiois an on-demand streaming service where users pay per month for unlimited music and connect to share playlists and music reviews. The company plans on creating an additional revenue stream via 99 cent song downloads and $10 album downloads. These screenshots look cool at first glance, hopefully more retro than ugly. It will be interesting to see how the iPhone app looks and how it interacts with the touchscreen.According to Rdio's Get Satisfaction pagethe service will offer a desktop client, a Blackberry application, an iPhone app and a web interface. The company's Blackberry application (that's what's pictured here) is already available to beta testers. Users can control their community dashboard, listen to playlists, find other music in heavy rotation and stream collections. According to the company's blog, the application offers mobile playlist caching like Spotify's iPhone appand MOG'supcoming service. Rdio's iPhone and Android apps will offer the same functionality where users can continue listening even when they don't have access to a wireless network.On Saturday, TechCrunch wrote an article about the company's engineering team. Given Rdio's ties to Imeem, Songbirdand KaZaA, the team is more than equipped to build a decent streaming music site with a download client. Its success will probably depend on how it differentiates from other subscription products like Rhapsodyand Spotify Premium.The company has already closed deals with Warner Musicand smaller labels like The Orchard; however, deals with EMI, Sony and Universal have yet to solidify. In order for Rdio to stand a fighting chance against others with catalogues of more than 6 million tracks, the company will have to negotiate licensing deals with all four major labels. Its rumored that Spotify is hoping to accomplish the same feat before launching its US service. Rdio hopes to launch in 2010 but will presumably go live shortly after securing licensing deals. We're excited to see that happen.Discuss

  Web annotation is a sexy and increasingly crowded space in the market. As in any such pool, the amount of elbow-rubbing between individuals and similarity between products can lead to suspicion of theft.Annotation startup Reframe It, a 14-person team, claims that Google's hot new product Sidewiki crosses the line between competitive innovation and IP infringement. And with a few Googlers caught with their hands in Reframe It's cookie jar, there might be some validity to this claim.SponsorWe first came across Reframe It about a year agowhen it first launched. The company's product allowed users to "basically write comments into the margins of the Internet" and was in heavy competition with services such as Diigo and SocialBrowse. When Reframe It added Twitter and Facebook integration and received an official nod from Mozilla this past spring, Diigo remained as a serious competitor, but Reframe It had the further advantage of a stellar advisory board.Fast-forwarding to this fall, Google launched Sidewikiin September, almost a full year after the debut of Reframe It. Looking at these demo videos back-to-back, the similarities are obvious:For an in-depth side-by-side comparison of both apps, see Google Watch's poston the subject. The basic conclusion is that the products look similar enough that Google's source code had better be drastically different from Reframe It's if they are to avoid a major lawsuit.But if we had a nickel for every time we spotted disgraceful similarities between web products, we'd be... Well, never mind what we'd be doing with that stack o' nickels. Here's the interesting part: Reframe It CEO Bobby Fishkin, who claims his company has neither the time nor the resources to take on tech behemoth and pop culture darling Google, told eWEEKthat there were several attempts to learn and assimilate his startup's technology and interface, right down to the icon designs.According to eWEEK, Fishkin claims that one of his board members, Terry Winograd, sat in on a Google meeting in July 2008 and told a top Google exec to take a look at Reframe It. The as-yet unnamed Googler said the startup looked interesting and that the info would be passed along.In the months that followed, at least six Reframe It accounts were registered to Google employees, which would allow engineers "plenty of time to explore every nook and cranny of our functionality," said Fishkin.But the real kicker is Google's alleged attempt to hire Reframe It co-founder and lead engineer Ben Taitelbaum just days before Sidewiki launched.And what was the official Google response to these reports?"The variety of existing products in this space and the increasing number of sites that enable user generated content shows that there is growing demand for allowing users to contribute to the Web," a Google rep wrote to eWEEK in a measured but definite dismissal of Reframe It's claims.Certainly, Google has been talking and thinking about annotation for years. And its end product has many differences from others on the market. And the market has a few notable competitors aside from Reframe It, all of which Google probably explored in due diligence processes. But if and when these two products face off in court, attorneys will be arguing whether the Google product - which, if only because it came after Reframe It's version, is without question a knockoff - is in actual violation of Reframe It's patents. And since Reframe It's patent application is still pending, they can amend the language to include Sidewiki's UX, technology, etc.The situation is, indeed, fraught with run-of-the-mill, workaday, tech IP drama. And we look forward to following up on these reports accordingly.Discuss

  In Google Docs, you can collaborate with other people when you are working online. Making edits to a document while offline can be an issue as the syncing capabilities get a bit tricky when you reconnect.The DocVerse teamknows the challenges of working on deeply collaborative technologies. The founders came from Microsoft where they worked on Sharepoint and SQL. SponsorThey left Microsoft to solve two problems:Make it simple to share documents.And provide the capability for multiple people to edit documents without having to go through the tedious process of tracking multiple versions of a document.DocVersedoes this by installing a lightweight plug-in that is installed in the background of the user's machine. The plug-in opens a widget in the document sidebar that includes a unique link. Any time a user makes an update, the plug-in syncs the web page that is associated with the document. Every modification gets synced. When multiple people work on a document, the updates are made through the plug-in and versions are stored online.With DocVerse, a document can be edited when a user is working offline. When the user connects again, the plug-in syncs and makes the update.Comments may be updated in a similar fashion. The plug-in has the capability to comment on a particular aspect of a document. When a comment is made, everyone who is working on the document also sees it.This is a feature similar to what CubeTreeprovides. DocVerse offers an on-premise solution as well as an online version. Jive Softwareis using the DocVerse functionality for their product add-on: Jive Connects for Microsoft Office. This is an enterprise product that works behind the firewall.Pricingfor DocVerse starts at $6 per month for an individual and $49.99 for teams.Discuss

  Google announced this morningthat it has acquired 3-year old mobile display ad serving platform AdMobfor $750 million, half the price it paid for YouTube in 2006. Why did Google make this move? Two reasons stand out.First, AdMob is a very strong company in a sector (mobile advertising) that everyone expects to become much more important in the future. Second, this is a chance to make a big move towards monetizing on Apple's iPhone platform while making sure that no one else does something similar to Android in the future. SponsorAdMob puts display ads on mobile web pages and inside mobile applications. On Google's page detailing the acquisition todaythe company used imagery to say that mobile search ads had been its primary focus to date, while AdMob's focus was outside search and inside apps and pages. Google has an ad program for mobile apps to, though, called AdSense for Mobile Apps. You've probably seen it if you use the Pandora iPhone app. AdMob is Strong in an Early MarketApparently Google's mobile apps ad platform hasn't been doing so well, at least not compared to AdMob. AdMob has been growing fast. VentureBeat's Matt Marshall did some back of the envelope mathand estimated that the company was pulling in $40m+ in annual revenue 18 months ago, which was just 18 months after it launched. That was in a radically different time for the mobile market. As our own Sarah Perez wrote two weeks ago in a post about AdMob's latest mobile metrics report:Believe it or not, it was only a year ago that the Motorola RAZR scored as the number one phone here in the U.S. while the iPhone was the only touchscreen device to even make the list of top ten handsets. Only a year later, and so much has changed.That was durring the RAZR era that AdMob was at a pace that Matt Marshall said "looks headed to IPO-type revenues within three years."Newspaper guy turned real-time, mobile content delivery founder at NozzlMediaSteve Woodward puts it like this: "Google now has a way to extend its advertising dominance into mobile, which is growing faster than any other medium. Together, they have the delivery system, the analytics and the know-how to capture not only high-end advertising but also the medium and smaller business advertisers that Google caters to. It will be interesting to see how online publishers react, since a Google-AdMob network could sell ads at lower CPMs than its competitors, driving down revenue for publishers."Planting a Flag on the iPhone, Protecting the Android InventoryNow the iPhone rules. AdMob's own numbers claimed that mobile traffic from the iPhone and iPod touch grew 19X over the last year. AdMob is making a strong play on the iPhone. TechCrunch reported this Springthat the company claims to be the biggest mobile app ad network on the iPhone and is working on a traffic exchange system for app promotion similar to what's been done on Facebook.Now move those efforts over into the Google column and Google is making money off of the free apps on Apple's platform. That's probably not something Apple feels great about.Meanwhile, Google's own Android mobile OS is no slouch, either. Admob reported this Fall that Android now accounts for the 2nd largest share of mobile web traffic (far) behind the iPhone, at 17% in the US, beating RIM and Windows Mobile. Does Google want to see someone else leading the ad monetization on its own mobile OS just like it is now poised to do to Apple? No way. The answer? Buy AdMob.It's a very smart move. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google's share pricerose this morning to its highest point in almost 18 months.Discuss

  Shazam, the music discovery iPhone application which gained widespread adoption thanks to its appearance in an iPhone TV commercial, is now getting a ton of new features thanks to the launch of a premium application called Shazam Encore. This new application adds music recommendations, trend charts, music searches and more to its core set of features already made available in the free version of Shazam.Does this mean Shazam is about to give Pandora and the like a run for their money?SponsorAbout Shazam EncoreThe free Shazam application is best known for its nifty tune identification trick. Mobile users can hold their iPhones up next to a speaker or other source of music and the application "listens" to what's being played in order to identify the song and artist. It also lets you read track and album reviews, read artist biographies and tag songs to share with friends over Facebook and Twitter. The new application, Shazam Encore, adds even more functionality including improved speed performance, trend lists that highlight what's popular among other Shazam users, a search function that taps into a database of 8 million+ songs, music recommendations and a "drive-and-tag" feature that lets the app recognize when it's in an in-car dock so it can identify what's playing on the radio while you're driving.But How are Those Recommendations?Out of all the new features, however, it's the music recommendations option which is the most interesting. Recommendations are thekiller feature which can either make or break a mobile application these days. With services like Last.fmand Pandoraalready providing mobile users with playlists based on a user's likes or dislikes, Shazam needs to be able to do recommendations well - really well- in order to compete with these already popular applications. In addition, the up-and-comer streaming music service from Spotify also partnered with The Echo Nest'smusic intelligence platform earlier this year to help improve on Spotify's playlist and music discovery functions. The end results of that partnership have been toutedas being like the iTunes' "Genius" feature, only better. Although not yet available in the U.S., Spotify's mobile applicationis one of the most highly anticipated applications as it provides a new way to enjoy music - through playlist creations that can be listened to both online and off. It, too, will be heavy competition for any application entering into the music recommendations game, including, of course, Shazam. So where does that leave Shazam Encore? At the moment, its recommendations offering provides you with a list of other songs you might like based on the one track you have pulled up. While this might help you discover new music, you aren't able to create a playlist based on those songs. Instead, Shazam's focus remains more on the sharing of music via tagging and posting to Twitter and Facebook.As far as how good Shazam's recommendations are, we would need to do a lot more testing before giving a solid opinion - the app is just too new. In fact, it's so new that it wasn't even showing up in an iTunes Store search at the time of writing. The provided screenshot in the App Store doesn't look all that encouraging, though. (Really, a fan of indie band My Sad Captains wants to listen to Katy Perry singing about "kissing a girl?" I don't think so...)But whether or not the recommendations are up to speed, it remains to be seen whether iPhone app shoppers will be willing to fork over the $4.99 US (£2.99/ €3.99) to have access to them, especially when there's no playlist option included. Those interested in trying the new Encore application can find it now in the App Store by clicking here. Discuss

  Numerous reports have surfaced over the weekend regarding the first iPhone worm spotted in the wild. The worm, known as iKee, only affects modified handsets also known as "jailbroken" devices. These devices have been hacked by their owners to allow for the installation of unapproved, third-party programs that aren't allowed in the iTunes App Store. Currently, the worm doesn't appear to be all that malicious - it simply changes the phone's background image to a photo of singer Rick Astley, the man whose song "Never Gonna Give You Up" has become a well-known internet meme called "rickrolling," a joke where users are tricked into clicking links that redirect them to Astley's YouTube video. Despite the relatively innocuous nature of this particular attack, it may be the precursor to future attacks of a more malicious nature. But how dangerous will these attacks be to the iPhone-owning population as a whole? Is there really a need for concern? SponsorAbout the iKee WormAccording to the hacker, 21-year-old Ashley Towns, a student living in New South Wales, Australia, iKee was created to highlight the iPhone's poor security. Apparently unrepentant about his creation, Towns has made no attempt to hide his identity, posting on internet forumsand on his Twitter pageabout his hack. He even cheekily tweets a response to a post on security firm's Sophos blogwhere the writer had sought out the hacker's identity via Google searches: "You know man if you wanted my number you could have asked."And he wasn't kidding - Towns has been happily responding to media requests via his Twitter account. For example, he told ABC Newsthat he had personally infected 100 iPhones with the worm. From those phones, he explained, the worm will then try to spread to other devices. Perhaps the reason for his transparency has to do with the relatively harmless nature of the attack. The worm just changes the iPhone wallpaper on the affected devices. However, as the Sophos' postpoints out, "accessing someone else's computing device and changing their data without permission is an offence in many countries."While that may be true, it's clear that Towns feels as if he's almost doing a public service by exposing a security vulnerability that many jailbroken iPhones face. More Hacks Expected?While this particular worm appears to be localized to Australia, it could have spread to other countries and eventually, worldwide. It also comes directly on the heels of another similar attack on jailbroken devices. Only last week, a Dutch hacker broke into jailbroken iPhonesand then displayed a message on the comprised devices demanding a ransom of 5 Euros. This attack was also made possible through the same vulnerability that the iKee worm uses.Graham Cluley of Sophos predicts thatother hackers will be tempted to write their own code now that they've seen what's possible. In addition, some hackers may be more malicious with their creations than what we've seen so far. But Who is Really Being Affected?However, even if the attacks escalate, the fact of the matter is that the potential victims are a minor subset of Apple iPhone users. To begin with, they're relatively tech-savvy to have managed to jailbreak their phonesto begin with - a process which involves using downloadable software tools that unlock Apple's control mechanisms on the device. While not overly complex, most mainstream iPhone users won't bother to take this action, content with the iTunes App Store and its 100,000 or so available applications. And then there is the fact that the attacks don't even affect all jailbroken iPhone owners - they only affect those who have also installed a program called SSH on their devices. The program allows users to access the iPhone's filesystem with the username of "root" and password of "alpine." Since few SSH users had bothered to change this root password, that left their phones open to attack. Still, how many people are we talking about here? And what sort of iPhone user are they? Although exact numbers of jailbreakers are unknown, mobile analytics firm Pinch Media recently revealed datashowing there are at least 4 million of these jailbroken devices in the iPhone ecosystem. It's not known how many of these users have also installed SSH. For the most part, it's likely that those who have done so are knowledgeable enough to prevent future attacks on their devices even if they had become a victim of one of these recent hacks. At the very least, they're now aware of the issue and can follow the straightforward instructions available on the web that explain how to change the root passwordso it's no longer the default. More Dangerous than the iPhone Worm: Dishonest DevelopersDespite all the media hoopla over this "first iPhone worm," it's not something that most iPhone owners will have to worry about. What's more concerning are the claims that a supposedly legitimate iPhone development firm has been collecting personally identifiable information from the users of its App Store-approvediPhone games which have been installed over 20 million times. According to a suit filed in the U.S. District Court in Northern California, the firm, Storm8, has been using a backdoor method which allowed them to collect the phone numbers of anyone who had installed their applications. This wouldn't be the first timethat an iPhone developer has done this, either. Apple actually provides an easy wayfor developers to tap into this information, if they so desire. If anything, this is the real threat that the media should be focused on, not the iPhone worm. Discuss