What is Media Literacy? Media literacy is the ability to bring critical thinking skills and about asking pertinent questions about what's there, and noticing what's not there. And it's the instinct to question what lies behind media productions - the motives, the money, the values and the ownership— and to be aware of how these factors influence content. In our world of multi-tasking, commercialism, globalization and interactivity, media literacy isn't about having the right answers - it's about asking the right questions. (Source: Jane Tallim) Photo credit: lumingopereira Inside this Media Literacy Digest:

• Community Information Hubs - Finding relevant information about a local community is challenging in a sea of global information.
• How Social Media Is Changing College Admission - Instead of marketing to 100,000 students at once (mainstream media model) they now focus on connecting to groups of 10-20.
• Visualization and Search - Searching and finding useful information really shouldn’t be as difficult as it is today.
• Technology as Philosophy - Technology is a philosophy and we MUST understand what it embodies, discuss its future impact, and explore what we are becoming.
• LearnTrends - Jay Cross hosted a 24-hour learn-a-thon this week.
• Pay Attention! - ...attention is a skill that must be learned, shaped, practiced; this skill must evolve if we are to evolve.
• Rough Week for Higher Education - Established institutions like higher education are increasingly targeted as bloated, inefficient, and thoroughly corrupt.

If you are into understanding how technology improvements are shaping new and different paradigms in the way we conceive and experience education, this weekly digest provides you a good set of pointers, facts and resources to make sense of the challenges that awaits our society in a not-so-distant future. Here all the details:

Visible Measures, the online video tracking platform, has just published their list of the most watched viral videos of all time. The numbers are in and they’re astounding, so astounding that Visible Measures terms these 18 hits the 100 Million Views Club. You won’t see “100 million” on all the view counters on YouTube, however: that’s because the company tracks all the copies of the original video reposted to YouTube, plus other video sites too (it’s fair to say, however, that the vast majority of the views occurred on YouTube).

So which videos have accumulated more than 100 million views in total? The collection consists of 8 music videos, 4 movie trailers, 2 TV show clips, and 4 user created machinations.

Of course, worthy of mention is internet sensation Susan Boyle, coming in the number five spot with 186,000,000 million views in the less than a month.

The Top 5 Most Viewed Videos 1. 356,300,000 views: Crank Dat music video by Soldier Boy

2. 266,500,000 views: Twilight, the movie trailer

3. 230,200,000 views: Touch My Body music video by Mariah Carey

4. 196,500,000 views: Jeff Dunham - Achmed the Terrorist

5. 186,000,000 views: Susan Boyle of Britain’s Got Talent

Other Notable 100 Million Views Club Members 9. 172,500,000 views: Dark Knight, the movie trailer

11. 147,000,000 views: User generated video, Evolution of Dance

13. 136,000,000 views: User generated video, Charlie Bit My Finger…Again

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: video, views, viral, youtube

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

Name: Mixcloud

Quick Pitch: Mixcloud helps content creators promote their radio shows and podcasts, while helping listeners discover new radio content.

Genius Idea: Mixcloud is to audio as YouTube is to video. So, the idea is that DJs, broadcasters, and podcasters will have a platform to reach hungry music and audio content consumers. The private beta site offers a fresh take on music mixes that’s easy on the eyes and great for the ears, but you’ll have to wait until it enters public testing to take a proper look.

Mixcloud’s platform is beautiful and sleek for both listeners and content creators alike. The home page displays popular site mixes that can be filtered by genre, recent activity from the users you follow, featured content, and new additions.

For those aspiring audio stars, Mixcloud allows for up to 10 free radio shows, but doesn’t allow for individual tracks. Mixcloud’s intent on providing the best experience for both audiences, with the idea being that every content creator have a full show or mix, with track list, that listeners can appreciate in totality.

Listeners can browse the site for content, follow the artistically gifted content creators of their choosing, leave comments on track lists, and listen to complete mixes via media player in a new window.

We think Mixcloud is rocking the social music space and we look forward to seeing how they evolve the platform once it comes out of private beta.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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

Reviews: YouTube

Tags: mixcloud, mixes, music, playlists, podcasts, tracks

Social media really has come of age. Not only are we doing our part to educate readers on how to track Swine Flu online and how to make sense of swine flu on Twitter, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) are also embracing and promoting the social web for information sharing and consumption.

The CDC’s social media arsenal includes widgets and buttons, a mobile-optimized CDC web site, online instructional videos, podcasts, eCards, Swine Flu specific news feeds, 3 Twitter accounts, Flickr images, and several social network profiles.

CDC Official Content

The CDC has their own online TV channel, where videos like this one can be seen and shared. They’ve also created two podcasts, one on handwashing and the other on Swine Flu symptoms, that you can listen or subscribe to.

Should you want to provide relevant CDC Swine Flu content to your readers, you can grab one of a number of widgets (also available in Spanish), each of which includes U.S. and International information on the spread of infections, preventive measures, symptoms to look out for, and things you can do to help. All of the content is updated by the CDC, which means your widget will stay current with dynamic content.

If that’s not enough, you can even opt to send an eCard, or display a button with an instructional message.

CDC’s Social Profiles

You can find the CDC pretty much everywhere online. Not only have they setup shop on YouTube, MySpace, and DailyStrength, but they’re also tweeting flu updates via @CDCFlu, interactive media news via @cdc_ehealth, and emergency status updates via @CDCemergency. The CDC is also on Flickr, or you can view their public health image library.

See also: HOW TO: Track Swine Flu Online

Reviews: Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube

Tags: CDC, H1N1 flu, social media, swine flu, widgets

It’s official: the iPhone is becoming the battle ground for the slickest Twitter applications around.

Not too long along, we saw Tweetstack saunter into the ring and bring your TweetDeck columns to your phone. Now iPhone and desktop veteran, Twitterrific, from Iconfactory, has bulked up and shipped out “Twitterrific 2.0″. And, from the looks of it, this one will not disappoint.

So what’s new in Twitterrific 2.0? Multiple account support, filters for mentions, DMs, favorites, and marks (which are like personal favorites), trends, search by keyword, person, or location, saved searches, notes on users, retweet, conversations, custom shortcuts, the ability to follow/unfollow/block, expanded and condensed views, shrinkable text, and complete Twitter bios. Whoa, we’re out of breath just listing all that’s new, but we likey!

The app has been submitted to the iTunes App Store and is expected to be approved next week. In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at what Twitterrific 2.0 includes, courtesy of Steve Hemmerstoffer.

Reviews: Twitter, Twitterrific

Tags: iphone, iphone app, twitter, twitterrific

It’s Friday and you’ve probably already started celebrating the end of the work week and the start of the weekend. If you’re anything like us, though, figuring out what to do with all that free time can be a laborious process (ie. checking the paper, browsing online, asking friends).

Center’d, the Yelp-like site with event-planning tools, thinks that it can solve our weekend conundrums with a new local search service for quickly finding restaurants, attractions, events, and shopping based on your city and style.

The local search service works for members and non-members alike and is initiated when users select their city, choose a style, and pick a category. Styles try to satisfy your particular mood and include kid-friendly, romantic, group friendly, recession buster (ie. cheap), outdoors, and popular, to help you qualify your search for the perfect event or activity.

To power the search service, Center’d is running a custom built language processing program that analyzes conversations happening on site and off. Conversations are then categorized and indexed by activity to allow for proper filtering during the search process.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend and don’t want to waste an hour or two, check out Center’d and let us know what you think in the comments.

More Weekend Resources from Mashable

- 5 Facebook and iPhone Gams for a Work-Free Weekend

- Social Media: Essential Weekend Reading

- 8 Great Sites For Ordering Food Online

- 21 iPhone Food Apps to Eat Your Heart Out

Tags: activities, center'd, Events, local search

Soren Gordhamer is the author of Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected. You can follow him on Twitter.

With Oprah showcasing Twitter recently to her millions of soccer moms, and other traditional media taking notice, I’m guessing that people who are not big users of technology, either your mom or relatives, have recently asked you like they have asked me, “What is the big deal about Twitter? Is it just a fad or is it really impacting how we interact and use the web? And if the latter, in what ways?”

Below are the three areas where Twitter, in its rise as the next great social media site, is I think beginning to dethrone (or at least impact) several of the major players and technologies in the game.

The Social Dethrone: MySpace

I want to take my network with me

Of course, people will continue to use MySpace, but due to its heavy graphics MySpace is part of the past generation of social networks more suitable for computers. With its simplicity and ease of use, Twitter could be the first “everywhere social network,” almost as simple to use via mobile as via a computer. This makes Twitter much more suitable for our “constantly connected age,” where people want to share and read content from their handheld on a street corner as easily as they can while sitting at their desk at home.

The social networks of our times are not limited to any one device, and Twitter’s rise is in part because it has met this need.

The Search Dethrone: Google

I want what is relevant today, not yesterday

Yes, I know, Google continues to grow, but Twitter is impacting search in two distinct ways: The first is that with the growth of social media, there are many more options for acquiring information. Want to find the best hosting service for your website? Sure, you can conduct a Google search, but now you can also quite easily ask your followers on Twitter for their suggestions. You can also conduct a keyword search on Twitter of a particular company and read what people have said about them, as well as a more general search on “webhosting” to read what people recommend or not.

Second, Google is excellent at providing the most relevant results over time, less helpful on current events happening right now. Twitter not only provides this, but also through the use hashtags allows a central place with which to comment and discuss these current events, something that one cannot do on Google. As information becomes more social, Twitter provides both a community and a much more effective means of finding emerging news and content than Google does.

The Communication Dethrone: Email

I want it to be short and public

Though few of us may have noticed it several years ago, it turns out there is a whole wealth of information people want to share for which email is not suitable. Had a great conversation with a friend? Come across a quote that you want to share? Found a really cool website? Going to visit San Francisco and wondering what events are happening . . . all these are not likely suitable as an email to friends or even a blog post, but perfect for a tweet. Indeed, some of us may even have asked ourselves, “What did people do with such information before Twitter?”

Email will not likely cease, but more people are realizing that much of the content they want to share fits in two categories: 1) it can be expressed in few words, and 2) it’s information that they are happy to make public. In this age of “open conversations” and the “free sharing of information” Twitter allows for the sharing of content – both that we create and that we find — much more than email.

Conclusion

To the extent that Twitter will begin to truly rule these areas is unknown, but I think it’s hard to argue that it is not already having an impact.

Twitter fits our time, but times change. Will people in the years to come want to live as constantly connected as they do today and prefer brief versus thorough content? Just how long will these interests last, and, thus Twitter continue to grow? No one knows, and no doubt there are “future Twitters” getting created in garages across the world that are trying to guess and address these future interests . . . but Twitter is clearly riding the waves of our time, and could have an even more significant impact on social networks, search, and communication than it does today. In this sense, the questions we get from non-techies about the role and importance of Twitter may just be beginning.

More Twitter resources from Mashable:

- The 7 Ways to Approach Twitter
- HOW TO: Build Your Thought Capital on Twitter
- The Twitter Followholic: An Epidemic
- Inside the Minds of Twitter Users
- 5 Ways to Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Pablo631.

Reviews: Google, MySpace, Twitter

Tags: email, Google, myspace, social media, twitter

As we’ve mentioned on Mashable before, online collaboration tools are a great way to get work done as a group. But it’s not all work and no play, there are also some fun and creative tools that let groups get together and create art…or just doodles.

Today, we’ve chosen to highlight five great tools to turn drawing into a shared experience. These are tools that are perfect for collaborating on business designs or just making masterpieces with your friends.

Have another favorite to add? Tell us about it in the comments.

1. OMGPOP: Draw My Thing

OMGPOP (formerly iminlikewithyou) is host to a very popular group drawing game called Draw My Thing, which is another fun variation of Pictionary. Try to guess what the other user is drawing and chat with fellow guests.

2. Scriblink

Scriblink is an online business tool for collaborative whiteboard projects and drawings. Invite people to draw on the board and work together on design specs from afar. Two of its most useful features are image uploads, which makes it easy to circle important points on images, and VOIP conference calling from within the application. Another similar business drawing tool is Skrbl.

3. RateMyDrawings

RateMyDrawings allows artists to enter virtual drawing competitions using an online canvas and drawing tools. But one of the coolest things about it is DrawChat, which allows users to draw and chat about a drawing together and then publish it to the site. This is definitely a drawing website for the serious artist.

4. Graffiti Facebook Application

Graffiti is a popular Facebook application that allows you to draw, sketch, and doodle your way into your friends’ hearts. Although you can’t collaborate on individual drawings, you can do “doodle-to-doodle,” which allows you to reply to graffiti with your own drawing.

In addition, Graffiti allows you to see how the drawing was made with the playback feature and embed drawings on your blog.

5. Drawball

Drawball is a canvas…but with thousands of people drawing on all different sections of it. Users can draw anything, so long as they have ink (you get more ink by waiting). But users can also erase other drawings and add on to existing ones.

There are some fantastic works of art on Drawball as well, which DrawBall makes sure to protect so others can’t doodle over them. eHow has a great article on how to get started.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, blackred

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: art, collaborative, drawing, Lists

Quicken Online, from Intuit, is a Mint competitor that offers a free way to manage your bank accounts and bills. In an attempt to make money management on-the-run easier, Intuit today released an iPhone companion to the online experience called Quicken Online Mobile.

The app, available now in the iTunes store, provides an immediate glimpse at your finances, activity across all accounts, financial goals, on-the-go expense additions, and a super-useful feature: an ATM finder.

Quicken Online users will no doubt love that they now have fast access to real-time information on the state of their financial well-being right from their iPhone. The primary screen conveniently displays how much money you have left in your account, and whether or not you’re at risk of going into overdraft or having a low balance. You can also get a visual glimpse at what’s left in your accounts, new money coming in, and future bill payments.

Another cool feature is Quicken Online Mobile’s cash tracking system. So, you can use the app as a virtual wallet monitoring system. For each item purchased with cash, just input the amount, payee, category, and add it to “My Wallet.” If used regularly, you’ll have a better way of keeping track of miscellaneous purchases. Plus, since the app syncs with your online account, you can access and view all of that activity online.

Quicken’s Online Mobile is a pretty sophisticated offering that seems to beat out competitor apps in terms of feature set and functionality. Are you a Quicken Online user? Let us know what you think of the new iPhone app in the comments.

For more on Quicken Online Mobile, watch this video:

See also: 50+ Free iPhone Apps to Make You Richer

Disclosure: Intuit was previously a Mashable sponsor.

Reviews: Mashable, Mint

Tags: iphone app, Quicken, quicken online mobile

How much is your Twitter username worth? $300? $400? $1000?

With only a limited number of Twitter names available and many of the good ones already taken, it was perhaps inevitable that a market would spring up for Twitter username sales.

That was the thought that occurred to Craig Agranoff, one of the founders of the crowdsourcing site VOIS.com: today he’s launching an aftermarket for Twitter names at Tweexchange.com. (Incidentally, Agranoff claims to have hired a developer for the project through the VOIS service itself for under $1000.)

It’s an inevitable idea, and one that raises the question, “what am I buying?”, since the Twitter names are still owned by Twitter. But you might also wonder if the brands with the biggest wallets would make use of such a service: if you’re Walmart and your Twitter name is taken, you go direct to Twitter or the user who took it.

It’s more likely, then, that Tweexchange will become a market for individual’s names and generic terms. To do so, however, it’ll need to get enough attention to reach a critical mass of high quality usernames.

We just hope that putting a price on Twitter usernames doesn’t lead people to hoard thousands in the hope they might sell them later: alas, it seems this is exactly what might happen.

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: tweexchange, twitter

Samir Balwani is a social media marketer who helps businesses create effective web strategies. You can follow him on Twitter and get his newsletter.

Too many marketers these days confuse what social media is. They don’t understand the difference between the evolution of marketing and what simply works right now. Social media is not just Facebook, Twitter, or even blogging. Instead of thinking about the platform, you have to think about the foundation that makes it effective.

The disconnect occurs when deciding on a social media plan. Telling someone to create a “Facebook strategy” or that they should “leverage Twitter” doesn’t always make sense. Instead of creating a plan around the goals of the campaign some marketers allow the platforms available to dictate the strategy.

So what are fundamentals? There are a number of lessons to be learned, and many come from experience, but here are four that I keep top of mind.

1. Always listen

Far too many brands get so excited about social media that they just jump right in. They don’t take the time to see what’s going on before engaging.

These brands are similar to the guy at a party that yells about his awesome TV while everyone else is talking about cars.

Comcast does an amazing job of listening. Their team monitors Twitter for any mentions of the brand and quickly responds to the consumer. Micro-blogging allows them to continually keep track of what is occurring in their space and offers them a platform to respond.

Social media takes time, patience, and vigilance to see and understand what your consumers are talking about. If you do it right, your consumers will embrace you instead of ignoring you.

2. The brand is public

Whether you like it or not, your brand is in the social sphere, but are you? No longer do you have full control over your marketing message, or what people see.

Consider the latest Dominoes fiasco. Two employees and a video camera damaged a multi-million dollar brand. Consumers don’t differentiate between, employees, customer service, and the brand.

Recognizing that fact and being prepared to act can save you from a potentially embarrassing turn of events.

3. Don’t forget a personality

Ever had a friend with no personality? What makes you think a consumer will interact with a corporate brand with no personality?

Find a way to humanize your company, empower enthusiastic employees to speak for you. Let your consumers get to know what makes your brand special.

My favorite brand personality is Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. His humor and style of writing builds the Zappos community, one friend at a time. However, the Zappos personality doesn’t end there. Each employee of the company, as well as their policies, convey how important every customer is and how dedicated they are to building a real relationship.

Invite your customers to join in the company culture, and show off your personality. The average person is so tired of marketers that having an honest ‘friend’ is a breath of fresh air. Use that trust to build a relationship, loyalty, and a connection.

4. Creativity wins

A marketer with an understanding of social media and the need for engagement online tends to think outside the box. They don’t see Facebook or blogging, instead they see vessels for a conversation. Because of that mindset they’re poised to be creative with their social strategy.

One of the best examples of creativity is the Burger King “Sacrifice a Friend” application. The campaign encouraged users to delete 10 Facebook friends and get a free Whopper. It was fun, controversial, and a great idea. Consumers were excited about it, and it generated a huge amount of buzz. In the end, over 233,906 friends were sacrificed.

As more people fight for a shortening attention span, being creative and thinking of new ways to connect online is a necessity for social media marketing. Being fun and exciting motivates consumers to talk and interact, and although being first does not always guarantee success, it sure helps.

The more prevalent social media grows, the more likely a brand is to copy what someone else has already done. In social media, past successes don’t guarantee future results. That’s why it’s so important to understand the fundamentals, so you can take a strategy and evolve it for your specific brand.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- Colonel Tribune: Chicago’s Unlikely Social Media Pioneer
- Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media
- Facebook Shares Tips and Case Studies for Brand Marketers
- 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence
- 35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media in Action

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, paradaybertoni

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: brands, Lists, social media, social media marketing

CNET reports that the state of Minnesota has asked Internet service providers to block access to all gambling sites. The letter sent to the ISPs states that a federal law “requires upon notice by a law enforcement agency that you do not allow your systems to be used for the transmission of gambling information.”

The technical problem here is the fact that if you block one IP, you’re probably not blocking just one site, you’re blocking several, or even hundreds or thousands, many of which maybe have nothing to do with gambling.

There is also the question of whether these types of measures do more harm than good in terms of suppressing free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment. This kind of content filtering at the ISP level contributes to the fragmentation of the Internet, making us all less and less connected. Furthermore, if courts continue to force ISPs - which are usually private corporations - to police the Internet, it might turn into a very ugly place where your private data is monitored and the choice of information you can obtain is severely limited. Yes, forcing ISPs to block gambling sites will probably stop most people in Minnesota from gambling online, but how much overall damage will it do?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Yakobchuk

Tags: gambling, minnesota

Thanks to this week’s advertisers and partners for enabling us to bring you the latest social media news and resources. We’re particularly inspired by those brands that are engaging with our readers as part of our Twitter Brand Sponsors program: Mashable’s sponsors are as social media savvy as our readers!

Advertise with us and get noticed.

Help us to help you. Mashable is seeking out site sponsors for our large, diverse audience — social media users, venture capitalists, early adopters, developers, bloggers, and many more. You’ll receive hundreds of thousands of views a day in addition to weekly recognition to thank you as our premium sponsors. Are you interested? Contact us for more information and to receive our media kit and rate card.

This week, our valued sponsors are Influxis, EdgeCast, Microsoft BizSpark, MailChimp, 6S Marketing, Virgin America, Sun Startup Essentials, YieldSoftware, Woot, Boonex, Eventbrite, and Etsy.

Influxis is an official Adobe hosting partner and resource for the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server. Influxis provides Flash hosting plans for all levels of use – beginner to enterprise. With a reputation for exceptional customer service, Influxis provides an extremely reliable international network of FMS servers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

EdgeCast Networks offers a superior, cost-effective, global content delivery service that gives our customers competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media. Our world-class content delivery platform provides customers the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while liberating them from ISP contracts, capital investments and operational hassles.

BizSpark is a program which offers new software businesses and entrepreneurs access to Microsoft design, development, and production tools with no upfront costs for up to three years. Members can also connect with a nationwide community of Network Partners – investors, incubators, service providers, and entrepreneurial organizations – who are keen to help.

For more information, or to connect with a Microsoft BizSpark advisor, please visit MicrosoftStartupZone.com/BizSpark.

MailChimp is a powerful, easy-to-use email marketing service. You design, me deliver.

6S Marketing is an online marketing company that provides social media and search marketing services to companies around the planet. 6S is proud to support Mashable, the absolute leader in social news, and would like to thank them for making us look smarter on a daily basis.

Virgin America It’s time to make flying good again. It’s time to bring great service back to the skies. And while we’re at it, let’s not forget style, entertainment, and relaxation-all for an astonishingly reasonable fare. So every time one of our planes takes to the sky, it’s proof that there is a better way, that people can expect more from flying, and their happiness is worth fighting for. We believe this is how air travel should be, that this is how to fly. Virgin America.

The Sun Startup Essentials program extends to startups all the benefits of our program; benefits designed to get startups sailing to success with the right IT infrastructure. These include introductions to interested investors; discounted servers, storage and desktops; open source software such as MySQL; discounted web hosting; and free technical support and advice from Sun engineers.

Yield’s Web Marketing Suite is a fully automated, integrated search marketing system that optimizes natural search, paid search, and landing pages. Accessible via any web browser, it is a complete, easy and profitable way for businesses to generate new traffic and get better conversion rates at a lower overall cost.

Woot.com thinks your time is valuable, but they think your money is more valuable. Every day, take 10 seconds to stop by and see the one thing Woot’s selling. Got more time? Peruse the product narrative and listen to the daily podcast. Is your time basically worthless? Dive into the communities, jump over to shirt.woot, wine.woot, and sellout.woot. By then it’s time for lunch.

BoonEx provides free, open-source, downloadable software for creating social networks, media sharing communities and online dating sites. BoonEx Dolphin comes with video chat, video player, music player, video comments, whiteboards, messenger, groups, events, media sharing, blogs, friends and much more. Control, customize and redesign your community site; change profile fields; change navigation and pages the way you like; deploy in different languages; run on servers cluster; experiment and enjoy!

Eventbrite is an online events marketplace where tens of thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and sell tickets to their events. Make your event a success on Eventbrite.

Etsy is the online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade. We connect consumers with independent creators to find the very best in handmade goods.

Additionally, thanks to the following partners for making Mashable happen:

Thanks to ConVerdge for implementing our My Mashable social network and W3 EDGE for the development and maintenance of Mashable.com

Mashable would also like to thank AttentionPR for their PR support. AttentionPR proves that PR today is measurable, transparent, and yes, social. Learn more about AttentionPR.

Rackspace is the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why.

JESS3 is a creative interactive agency led by Jesse Thomas. Jesse is as much a entrepreneur as he is an innovator, designer, visionary and eager learner. When it comes to the worlds of branding, data visualization and social media, Jesse is constantly pushing the limits and exploring new frontiers. JESS3 has the pleasure to design innovative solutions, directly or through other agencies for: Mashable, National Journal, Microsoft, Marriott Intl, Ace Hardware, C-SPAN, AARP, PepsiCo/Tropicana, Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal, Nestle, Pfizer, Shopzilla, SnagFilms, IndieWire, Advertising.com, National Press Foundation, Webgiftr, Busboys and Poets, New Media Strategies, Ashcroft Group, Heritage Foundation, Blue State Digital, Widmeyer Communications, DBC PR, Adfero and many more. In addition, JESS3 enjoys participating in the industry through partnerships with organizations such as WOMMA, Social Media Club, Barcamp, Facebook Developer Garage, AIGA and Art Directors Club.

Mashable values Search Engine Optimization and endorses Stone Temple Consulting as the industry’s leading Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click experts. Find out more about Stone Temple Consulting.

ConcentricSky offers web development and strategic consulting services with a focus on emerging technologies such as Social Media and iPhone Apps. From simple websites to integrated web applications, we deliver innovative solutions that exceed your expectations - not your budget.

Vladimir Prelovac is the author of WordPress Development book and popular articles about WordPress SEO, website optimization, customization, security and maintenance. He actively uses WordPress as a base for Internet enterprise strategy for small & mid-sized businesses.

We can get your name out there.

Contact us for more information about supporting Mashable’s growth and development. Alternatively, visit our advertise section for more details about:

-Competitive direct ad sales
-Sponsorship Opportunities for Events and other channels
-Sponsored giveaways and contests
-Custom ad deals and partnerships

CPM-based advertising is available through our partner, Federated Media, but if you contact us directly, you’ll be entitled to exclusive unpublished discounts.

Tags: advertisers, mashable, Sponsors

URL shorteners are all the rage lately, probably because they’re relatively easy to create, but also because they offer endless possibilities for geek fun. You can like them or hate them, but here we bring you a couple that’ll make you chuckle.

By the way, if you’re looking for a more comprehensive list of URL shorteners, check out our older list of over 90 such services.

DickensURL

Inspired by a comment from Reddit, DickensURL is probably the weirdest URL shortener we’ve seen. It turns URLs into (often lengthy) Charles Dickens quotes. Is it useful? No. Will it suddenly give you the urge to read Dickens? Maybe. Will it be treasured by hundreds of geeks to be used in that one situation where the Dickensian quote will fit perfectly as an uber-geeky meta-joke? Definitely.

ICanHaz

This service works pretty much the same as other URL shorteners. However, it uses lolcats language on the site. So, if you despise proper grammar and spelling and want to see messages such as “I maded you a url!” or “I maded you nuthin’ - tries another Short URL?”, this is the one for you.

Bacn.me

It’s just a regular URL shortener as far as functionality goes, but it’s…baconized. And that, my friends, is reason enough to use it.

Tinyarro.ws

By using Unicode, tinyarro.ws displays shortest possible URLs. They really are short, but they also look so weird that they’ll probably scare most people you send them to. For geeks who regularly read The Unicode Standard, it’s definitely the one to use.

HugeURL

Sometimes, you don’t want a short URL, and you don’t want a long URL. You want an enormously, inexplicably, flabbergastingly HUGE URL. You ask, and HugeURL delivers; I’d paste one, but it would mess the entire page, so you’ll just have to trust me that the URLs it creates are, indeed, huge.

Have any favorite URL shorteners that are funny or just plain odd? Please name them in the comments!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ahlobystov

Tags: URL lengtheners, url shorteners

Every Friday, Twitter users recommend friends and favorite accounts to follow on the service in a game called #FollowFriday.

In March, the creator of #FollowFriday explained how the phenomenon began in the Mashable article #FollowFriday: The Anatomy of a Twitter Trend, and we previously produced a short post on FollowFriday for beginners called How FollowFriday Works - it’s a basic introduction to this Twitter game.

But what if we could use #FollowFriday to generate interest in good causes? That’s what we’re doing regularly by suggesting our favorite 5 charities and non-profits to follow on Twitter. Don’t forget to check out our Follow for Good section for more great Twitter charities to follow.

Which 5 “follow for good” Twitter accounts should we recommend next time? Let us know in the comments!

Follow Friday: Recommended Twitter Follows 1. The Association for International Cancer Research

@AICR - The Association for International Cancer Research (AICR) funds cutting edge cancer research projects globally: it is currently funding 233 projects and with your help, could fund even more. Follower count: 302

2. Operation Smile

@operationsmile - Operation Smile aims to improve children’s lives worldwide by repairing childhood facial deformities including cleft lips and cleft palates. Follower count: 1,246

3. Malaria No More

@malarianomore - Did you forget to tweet about World Malaria Day last week? You can still stay up to speed with current developments and events on the Malaria No More Twitter account, which supports the organization’s aim of ending malaria deaths worldwide. Follower count: 3,985

4. David Lynch Foundation Television

@dlftv - The David Lynch Foundation, founded by the famous film director, screenwriter and producer, aims to teach Transcendental Meditation to 1 million at-risk youths. The foundation uses Twitter to post documentaries and exclusive content. Follower count: 1,996

5. Stamp Out Hunger

@stampouthunger - Stamp Out Hunger is America’s Largest Single-Day Food Drive, helping to feed the hungry in the US. The drive takes place May 9th, so there’s plenty of time to get involved. Follower count: 191

Tags: follow, followforgood, twitter

There are a lot of times when an email or an instant messaging conversation triggers me to search for something. Usually, that means simply opening a new tab and searching Google, then returning to Gmail. But now, there’s yet another feature in Gmail Labs that does this from inside the Gmail interface.

Once enabled (go to Settings, then Labs), the feature turns on a small Google search box on the left-hand navigation of Gmail. Enter a search term into it and you get a pop-up box with the top results for your query, along with a pull-down menu that lets you do something with the result, like email it, IM it, or copy the URL.

Game changing? Not exactly, though Google makes it sound like a bit bigger of a problem than the current setup is in a blog entry posted this evening:

“I used to have a problem. People would ask me questions, over chat or email, and I’d have to leave Gmail to search Google for an answer. Then I’d have to select the answer, copy it, go back to Gmail and paste the answer into the chat window or my reply. Sometimes I’d get distracted and forget to go back to Gmail, and I’d have to go through it all again when I remembered what I’d been doing.”

Nonetheless, considering that this scenario probably does happen a few times every day, over the course of your lifetime, Google Search inside of Gmail could give you at least a few hours back. Not bad.

More Gmail Resources From Mashable

- HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Gmail Labs

- GMAIL TOOLBOX: 60+ Tools for Gmail

- 13 Gmail Extensions for Firefox 3

- 7 Ways to Send HUGE Files: 25X Bigger than Gmail

Reviews: Gmail, Google

Tags: gmail, Google

Twitter today launched a new interface for all users, adding search and trending topics to the sidebar for all those using Twitter.com.

It’s not a totally new concept: Twitter has been testing this interface for months and new accounts were already seeing it, along with selected groups of users. Seemingly content with how those trials went, Twitter has now deployed these features across all Twitter accounts.

The update adds two major features: search and Twitter trends. Both are smart additions: search is a vital part of Twitter that until now required typing “search.twitter.com” in your browser. You can now save those searches, too. Trends, meanwhile, fosters more engagement by showing you what everyone else is talking about.

Twitter is famously shy of adding new features, believing simplicity is the route to success. With essentials like search and trends now present, might they eventually add retweeting to the interface, as a new petition at Retweet.com is demanding?

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: twitter

Automattic, the company behind WordPress, is moving into social networking, with the 1.0 launch of BuddyPress, an installable, open source software platform that runs on your own website. The software is freely available, and can be downloaded from BuddyPress.org.

The move comes more than a year after WordPress acquired BuddyPress, which at the time was essentially a series of plugins for adding social features to your WordPress blog. Today, it describes itself as “a suite of WordPress plugins and themes” that includes a fairly thorough set of features, like activity streams, groups, and forums.

What exactly is the need for yet another social networking platform at this stage in the game? Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg writes about it on the WordPress development blog. “I don’t think BuddyPress will be something you use instead of your existing social networks … but if you wanted to start something new maybe with more control, friendlier terms of service, or just something customized and tweaked to fit exactly into your existing site, then BuddyPress is a great framework to use,” he says.

And I agree – I don’t think it’s for everybody, including every type of blog publisher. Between tools like Disqus (which we use here on Mashable), Google Friend Connect, and MyBlogLog, there are already a lot of ways to add community to your blog. Not to mention, your blog needs to have a fairly significant following and passionate fanbase to make an entire social network successful, let alone a few simple cut and paste social networking widgets.

That said, if there is anyone that can make it work, it’s Automattic, who already powers more of the top 100 blogs in the world than anyone else. Some of those, as well as other popular blogs hungry for more page views, may very well be looking for a solution like BuddyPress, that can keep readers on their sites for longer, engaging both around the content and with each other.

Reviews: Disqus, Mashable, WordPress

Tags: automattic, BuddyPress, social networking, Wordpress

Mike Rundle is a familiar name in the design community, having co-founded the blog network 9rules and designed many truly gorgeous blogs and websites. Today Mike weighed in on the desktop Twitter app game, with a pre-release of his new Twitter client for the Mac, Beak.

Normally a pre-release is code for “ugly and a bit broken”, but Beak is simplistically pretty…if lacking in differentiating features. Unlike TweetDeck, Beak sticks to a single column of updates for each section: Tweets, Mentions, Messages, Faves, Search and - a new one - Stats. Statistics are there because Beak - like Bit.ly and other URL shorteners - offers to condense URLs and track clicks within the app. Tweets in the stream can be retweeted, replied to or favorited.

There’s not much emphasis on actually posting Tweets, however: perhaps to save room in the interface, the posting box requires a click to open it up.

The bottom line: Beak is feature-light but still more refined than you might expect from a pre-release. Those looking for a no-frills Twitter client for Mac should at least take a few minutes to try it out. Even so, Tweetie for Mac remains a more fully-featured Twitter app on the Mac, and will likely take the lead among Mac fans.

Reviews: TweetDeck, Tweetie for Mac, Twitter

Tags: twitter

Facebook might be known as the world’s biggest social network, but it’s also an enormous photo sharing site. The latest numbers the company has shared with us include 15 billion photos uploaded in total, an average of 220 million new pictures posted each week, and at its busiest, 550,000 images being loaded each second.

In the past month or so, a small team at Facebook has quietly rolled out a new infrastructure – dubbed Haystack - for supporting this massive storage and bandwidth hog. According to the engineers behind it, Haystack represents a 3x performance improvement for Facebook, translating into “substantial” cost savings and more efficient photo loading for users.

Without getting into all of the technical details (Facebook’s engineering blog has an extensive description), the basic change behind the scenes is that a single server now has a lot more capacity for serving and storing photos. With Facebook reportedly spending a ton of money on hardware, that could be big news for the company’s bottom line.

One interesting tidbit for Facebook users that I learned while talking with the engineers behind the project - Doug Beaver, Peter Vaigel, and Jason Sobel – is that when you load a photo from within an album, Facebook actually pre-loads the 3 photos to the right and the left of the one you’re looking at. This is what makes the experience of clicking “previous” and “next” almost instantaneous. I always assumed something like this was the case, but actually reading all the details is fairly interesting - if you’re into that sort of thing.

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: facebook, infrastructure, photo sharing, servers