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It is time, friends, to turn our attention away from the Apple iPhone 4S onslaught to another platform and another gadget or two. Today at 12 p.m. ET, Motorola and partner Verizon will attempt to snatch the spotlight back away from Apple and point it at as many as three new Android-based products. Motorola’s already teased us with this image of the new Razr phone. The ultra-slim Motorola Droid Razr smartphone is likely the premiere gadget at the event. Motorola may also roll out the new, thinner Xoom II 10.1-inch Android tablet and a smaller 7-inch model. For now, all of this is conjecture. Motorola’s invite promises only “Faster. Thinner. Smarter. Stronger.” The invites also says “the next big innovation” and not “innovations,” which could point to a single product. In that case, the Razr is almost a sure thing. If that name sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The Motorola Razr was one of the most popular cellphones on the market almost a decade ago. It was also not a smartphone and as data-centric cellphones arrived, the thin, flip phone fell out of favor. According to leaked photos, this new Razr will not fold, but will be super slim for a large-screen superphone. While the Xoom II tablet launch now seems somewhat less likely, the Motorola’s tablet could use a boost. So far, the company has shipped less than a million units (no word on numbers sold) and it recently introduced a low-end, Wi-Fi-only, 16 GB model for just $379. That sounds attractive, but the Xoom is still struggling in the market against the Apple iPad, which has sold at least 25 million units, and both tablets face a new and formidable opponent in Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire, which arrives in November. Verizon’s presence — not unusual for a Droid launch — also likely means that every gadget on display today will be running on the company’s super-fast LTE network. Whatever Motorola and Verizon introduce today, Mashable will be on the scene, live blogging and grabbing photos so you don’t miss a thing. We’ll also do our best to get up-close-and-personal with all the products the two companies unveil today. Our live blog will kick off at approximately 11:45 AM ET. More About: android, cellphones, Motorola, smartphones, tablets, verizon 
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Gilt Home unveiled a redesigned site Tuesday, adding an expanded range of merchandise and editorial integration to its staple of flash sales offerings on home goods. The three-year-old site now offers four ways to shop: daily flash sales, which begin at noon every day; “shoppable” editorial features, directed by former Domino editor-at-large Tom Delavan; online boutiques with merchandise selected by established interior designers such as Alexa Hampton and Bunny Williams; and collections sorted by brand and category (such as kitchen essentials, or bedroom decor). Merchandise in the latter categories is still discounted in many instances, but not as extensively as those offered via flash sales (typically around 60%). We find the editorial integration particularly interesting. Among web retailers, Gilt has emerged as one of the pioneers of the “content and commerce” model, whereby magazine-like spreads, editorials and occasionally video are used to inspire, instruct and sell product. "I learned at Domino that if you show readers a beautiful room, a room that they crave, they really want you to show them how to put it together and where they can find it,” says Delavan. “At Gilt Home, we will do both—create the inspiration and then give our members access to the product.” In a phone interview, he said that developing editorial content for an ecommerce site has “not been that different” from working for a magazine. “Strangely I have even more freedom here. If a story idea interests me, I have been able to run with it,” he said, adding that he has adapted certain article formats, such as Domino‘s monthly “Inspiration Story” feature, and refigured it for the site. Meanwhile, magazines are integrating ecommerce into their own offerings. As both models evolve, it will be interesting to see where the line between online magazines and editorially enriched online retail is drawn. 
One of Gilt Home’s new designer boutiques. More About: content and commerce, gilt, gilt groupe, gilt home For more Business coverage: 
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About 56% of Facebook users who are aware of changes to the social network dislike them, according to a new poll. A telephone survey of 2,000 people conducted by USA Today and Gallup found that 26% of people who use the site daily are “very concerned” about privacy vs. 35% who use it once a week. Those figures are significant in light of Facebook’s new Timeline feature, which gives users the opportunity to share their histories on the site and gives Facebook more targeted information for advertisers. Facebook’s schedule to roll out Timeline is unclear. Facebook’s changes, however, are apparent to daily users, but not as much to the general public. Only 34% of the people surveyed were aware of the changes, although 87% of daily users were. Of users who were aware of the changes, 56% didn’t like them; 36% liked them. Those figures track closely to Mashable‘s poll of 3,200 users on Sept. 30. In that poll, about 59% of users said they couldn’t be bothered to fill in their Timelines. The survey shows that although Facebook may be a ubiquitous part of millions of people’s lives, for many it’s still merely a curiosity. What do you think? Do you like Facebook’s new changes? Let us know in the comments.
The New Facebook Profile: Timeline
Timeline is a radical departure from previous versions of the Facebook user profile. The most prominent feature is the addition of a cover photo at the top of the page. Users can change this to whatever they'd like it to be. Click here to view this gallery. More About: Facebook, Gallup, timelines 
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The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. Social networks have grown into social media and more recently into social business. It will change collaboration inside an organization and interactions with clients and prospects. IDG Global Solutions President Matt Yorke explains the far-reaching implications.
 Queen Latifah, Samsung Galaxy Tabs and dogs. Those aren’t the usual elements of a successful social media marketing campaign, but allergy medication Zyrtec seems to have pulled all those together and made it work.
What’s more, the brand used a fairly untested format for getting its message across: YouTube. Sure, pretty much every brand has a YouTube presence these days, but it’s often an afterthought — a place to dump old TV ads that have already premiered on Facebook. Zyrtec is one of the few — Pepto Bismol is another — to use YouTube as a forum for launching a social media game.
Launching Parks Unleashed
 Zyrtec worked with ad agency JWT in New York to launch the YouTube game Parks Unleashed on Sept. 5, the start of the fall allergy season. Modeled on 30 year-old text-based games like Zork, the game presented users with various scenarios in which they’d have to make a choice. The premise was that dogs have buried Samsung Galaxy Tabs all over the park and you, the user, have to find them. As the user ambles through the park, she is confronted by various characters, like the chatty hot dog man, who asks, "What can I do you for?" At that point the onscreen choices include "Seen a pug?" "Hot dog, please" and "Diamonds??” Each choice will set you on a different path. “We looked at every aspect of the traditional brand channel experience — beyond the videos, we looked at the various interfaces and page layout — and integrated them into a comprehensive meta-game inspired by those old-school graphic adventure PC games of the early ’90s,” says Josh Shabtai, experience design director at JWT. “Making a GrimFandango that my mom would want to play might have been on my mind throughout the initial development stages.”
Results
It turns out that there are a lot of moms who want to play GrimFandango, or at least the GF-inspired game that Zyrtec came up with. The Zyrtec YouTube Channel now has 2.2 million total views, almost all of which were drawn by the game — an impressive feat over a roughly six-week period. In addition, the “time spent” metrics were also impressive. Tim Nolan, creative director of JWT in New York, says the average player spent more than seven minutes playing the game. Some returning players were on for 30 minutes or more. “We took this approach to talk to our consumers using media that they already engage in, at a destination they spend their time, leveraging behaviors we know they love,” Nolan says. Of course, Zyrtec didn’t leave it to consumers to discover the game for themselves. The brand ran an online ad campaign promoting the game that included a YouTube masthead ad, a Yahoo Mail takeover and Facebook display ads, among other methods of outreach. The brand also tagged a TV spot with a prompt to visit YouTube.com/Zyrtec, but that campaign only ran for about a week and a half. Colleen Sellers, Zyrtec’s senior brand manager, says the brand got its money’s worth out of the buy: “YouTube is one of the most powerful channels online and using it for Zyrtec to reach such a massive audience, via Parks Unleashed, is a big win for us during the important fall allergy season.”
Unusual Outreach for the Category
Another element worth noting about the campaign, aside from its use of YouTube, is the fact that few pharma brands, even over-the-counter ones like Zyrtec, are engaging in social media. The ostensible reason is that they’re afraid, since the FDA doesn’t clearly delineate what they can and can’t do on the social web. Brands in the category that have ventured forth have often found that their cautious approach doesn’t translate. For instance, Facebook had to step in earlier this year to tell pharma marketers to allow comments on their brand pages. However, John Mack, who runs the Pharma Marketing Blog, says that the FDA’s lack of guidance is an easy excuse. The real issue, he says, is that the industry is too risk-averse. “What’s holding back the industry is the old axiom: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” Mack says. “Social media is alien to both pharmaceutical marketers and corporate communications executives who are used to ‘pushing’ messages out to ‘targets’ rather than engaging in two-way communications with peers, which is the essence of social media.” In this respect, Zyrtec was a notable exception and, possibly, a harbinger of more social media marketing from the segment.
Series supported by IDG
 The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. As people rush to join social networks, innovations around how people use networks grow, too. Social business promises to have dramatic effects on our work and business lives. Groupon is just one example cited in IDG Global Solutions President Matt Yorke's explanation of social business and its impact on us. More About: features, Gaming, Marketing, mashable, Modern Media Agency Series, social media marketing, viral videos, YouTube For more Business coverage: 
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If you tote around an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device, Waze offers an intelligent way to beat traffic. The social navigation application gets smarter with each new driver who passively or actively reports data from the road in real time. Waze revealed Tuesday that its service has ballooned to more than 7.3 million registered users worldwide. The company also announced that it has raised $30 million in financing in a round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “We’re touching people around the world with something they want and need,” says Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze. Waze first launched its social traffic service in Israel in January 2009. Today, the startup has 1.3 million drivers in the country. It’s a figure that represents a sizable chunk of Israel’s smartphone-owning population and has led to a critical mass of drivers using the application at the same time, Bardin says. Los Angeles, a city with a well-deserved reputation for roadway congestion, accounts for the largest concentration of Waze users in a single metropolitan area. The closure of the 405 freeway during a three-day period in July — that became known as “Carmageddon” — spurred Waze activity in the city. The startup partnered with the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles to promote its app and provide locals with ongoing on-air traffic reports, as crowdsourced by city drivers using Waze. Carmageddon’s disastrous effects on city traffic proved uplifting for Waze — 200,000 L.A. residents signed up for the service during the freeway shutdown. Now with 7 million drivers and a combined total of $67 million in funding, raised in three rounds, Waze is fast becoming a global phenomenon, Bardin says. “It takes time for the service to mature,” he says of the startup’s three-year build-up. “Once you hit a certain amount of data, then you can provide the value,” he adds, indicating that Waze usage has finally surpassed a tipping point in many cities around the world. The application has evolved to become an essential everyday utility for millions of drivers, Bardin says. But can Waze replace the traffic report as we know it? Bardin says yes — eventually. “It will take a while to replace … but what we’re providing is much more granular.” John Malloy of Blue Run Ventures and Jason Wong of Horizon Ventures are joining Waze’s board of directors. Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins, and Josh Silverman, former Skype CEO, are joining Waze as strategic advisors and board observers. More About: Startups, waze For more Business coverage: 
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Ahead of the official unveiling of the Motorola Droid RAZR on Tuesday, Motorola sent media outlets a code that lets you unlock an image of the device, piece by piece. Needless to say, it didn’t take very long for someone to crack the puzzle and publish the first official image of the Droid RAZR in all its glory. From what we can see on the image, the Droid RAZR will be an incredibly thin and stylish smartphone with rear and front cameras, a metal/carbon fiber case and four capacitive buttons on the front. You can also check out the official teaser video over at reveal.motorola.com, but the video merely proclaims that the Droid RAZR will be “faster, thinner, smarter and stronger” without actually showing us any imagery of the upcoming phone. [via DroidLife] More About: droid, Motorola, RAZR, smartphone For more Mobile coverage: 
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Ford is installing a feature in its new vehicles — and many of its older ones — that can read text messages out loud. The feature, which is intended to reduce texting while driving, is part of Ford’s voice-activated technology, Sync, and is already installed on all model 2012 Ford vehicles with the exception of the Ranger. Using a Bluetooth connection, it syncs with phones and alerts users when they receive text messages, reads them out loud and allows users to respond with a selection of standard pre-written messages without taking their hands off the wheel. On Tuesday, it will be made available as an upgrade to Sync vehicles that are model 2010 or later. In order to install the capability, owners can download the upgrade from the Ford Sync site onto a USB drive along with print-out instructions. Older Ford vehicles that have Sync will soon be able to make the update as well, says supervisor of Sync product development Mark Porter. We shouldn’t need data to convince us that texting and driving at the same time is a bad idea. But we have tons of it. A 2009 study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that texting while driving increased the risk of a truck getting into an accident by more than 23 times. A 2007 Clemson University study found that text messaging and iPods caused drivers to leave their lane 10% more often during driving simulations. And if you have doubts that texting is detrimental to driving performance, you can prove it to yourself with an interactive game that The New York Times has created to make the point. So in an age when most car companies have a Bluetooth integration features, why isn’t text-to-voice already a standard option? Several apps such as DriveSafe.ly and SMS Replier have created popular solutions, but only a few vehicle manufacturers such as Ford and BMW have integrated the feature into vehicles themselves. One factor in the slow adoption is that not many phones integrate with text-to-speech features like Ford’s. So far BlackBerry phones are the most notable devices compatible with the technology required. Some Android phones also support the technology. iPhones do not. Porter says that he thinks more phone and vehicle manufacturers will soon start to add it. “It's very similar to a couple of years ago when Bluetooth devices were just coming out and had a hands-free profile [for integrating with vehicles] and few phones supported it,” he says. “Now it's almost standard.” Image courtesy of istockphoto, jabejon More About: BMW, ford, safety, text messaging, trending For more Business coverage: 
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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says that Twitter’s monetization efforts are working and that new ad formats are coming soon. “That thing is working better than we could have ever hoped,” Costolo said of its efforts in advertising. Twitter launched Promoted Tweets last year as part of its effort to monetize its popular social media platform. Twitter followed up with Promoted Trends, and recently the company put Promoted Tweets in users’ timelines. Costolo also revealed during an interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Monday that the company will be testing other ad formats in the next few months and beyond. This includes rich media ads, meaning photo- and video-based advertising will appear in user timelines in the near future. Twitter’s CEO stressed that social network isn’t about to insert movie trailers into the timeline. Instead, Twitter is planning to find ways to experiment with lots of different ad formats that could be adopted across all users, depending on how users react. 
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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo shared some interesting stats about Twitter’s growth, including that it has more than 100 million active users and that signups via iOS device have tripled since the launch of iOS 5. Twitter has been on a roll in recent months. The company surpassed 200 million tweets per day in June but has since jumped to nearly 250 million daily tweets. The growth has been tremendous: Twitter had around 100 million tweets per day in January 2011. Costolo shared these stats during an interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Of those 100 million global active users, half of them log in daily. “We had 30% of our monthly active users login in every day at the beginning of the year. Now it’s over 50%,” Costolo revealed. The company’s growth amounts to about 40% quarter on quarter. But perhaps the most interesting stat is the impact of iOS 5 on Twitter. Apple’s mobile OS directly integrates Twitter, and that has resulted in a boost for the company. Costolo revealed that Twitter signups via iOS 5 devices have tripled since the launch of that iOS update. More About: dick costolo, Twitter, Web 2.0 Summit 
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Oh, you know, Jessica just shared her photo album with me. No biggie. Actress Alba's subscribe updates range from concert photos to complaints about her husband (don't get too excited, guys -- they're harmless). She talks about heading to the gym (like she needs it) and explaining the word "ugly" to her daughter. All in all, a very rich and comprehensive look into the wholesome world of a movie star. Click here to view this gallery. Facebook‘s new Subscribe feature has got one thing on Twitter: You can now see Jessica Alba’s photo albums. So what are you waiting for? Last month, Facebook launched Subscribe, a tool that allows users to follow strangers’ publicly posted activity without having to send a friend request. SEE ALSO: 7 Top Journalists to Subscribe to | 5 Most Popular Musicians to Subscribe to Several mainstream celebs have already shared their posts with the world, providing an insider’s peek into red carpet life. Are you subscribing to any other celebrities’ News Feeds? Let us know. More About: celebrities, Entertainment, Facebook, facebook subscribe, features, Social Media For more Entertainment coverage: 
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Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo’s executive vice president of the Americas, says that the struggling Internet giant is in a great position to be the world’s premiere digital media company. However, he dodged a question about whether he was interested in becoming the company’s next CEO. “Honestly, It’s fine,” he stated Monday during an onstage interview at the Web 2.0 Summit, referring to Yahoo. Levinsohn was asked whether he was interested in the recently vacated CEO job. He said that he’s focused on his current job, but didn’t rule out the possibility of becoming CEO either. Federated Media’s John Battelle dug further into Yahoo’s issues, asking Levinsohn a question he has asked other Yahoo execs in the past: “What’s Yahoo?” It is an issue that has plagued Yahoo even before Carol Bartz took the reins of CEO in early 2009. “I think the opportunity for us is to create … the premiere digital media company for consumers,” Levinsohn responded. “That’s it.” He explained that Yahoo will accomplish this goal by delivering “rich media” to consumer across multiple platforms. He said he believes that nobody has successfully brought together “the best of technology and the best of content and media,” and that Yahoo is well-positioned to do just that. Levinsohn used the opportunity to discuss some of the company’s new initiatives, including a premium digital video portal and its recent Facebook integration with Yahoo News. He also boasted that Yahoo had its “biggest month ever” in September. Levinsohn declined to comment on whether Yahoo and AOL are talking about a potential acquisition. More About: Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo For more Business coverage: 
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The season two premiere for AMC’s The Walking Dead was a huge hit in the ratings and with socially engaged viewers. In the 18-49 demographic, which is what advertisers use to set ad rates, The Walking Dead set a record as the most-watched basic cable drama. More than 4.8 million viewers in the 18-49 demographic and 7.3 million total viewers tuned in to the 90-minute premiere. Beyond just being a hit in the ratings, the show also scored big points in social TV analytics. Entertainment checkin service GetGlue and social TV measuring company Bluefin Labs provided us with data from the premiere.
Increase in Checkins
 GetGlue tells us that 43,000 users used the service to check in to the season premiere. This was a substantial increase from last season.
Socially Engaged Viewers
Bluefin provided us with some additional data about the social engagement surrounding the show. More than 82,000 social media comments from 57,000 different people were recorded for the show. This breaks down to an average of 1.4 comments per person. On the demographic side, 53.5% of the social TV engagement was from men vs. 46.5% women. The near-even split between genders shows that AMC has done a good job with its branding and messaging. After all, a drama about zombies based on a series of graphic novels doesn’t immediately jump out as being female friendly.  The sentiment for the show was favorable — with 74.6% of comments positive, 12.1% negative and 13.3% neutral. Bluefin also tells us that The Walking Dead was second only to the NFL in terms of social activity. The company shared with us an engagement graph that shows when activity was at its highest.  At 9:00 p.m. ET, the show hits its peak. A secondary peak hit at 10:30 p.m., right after the first airing of the show ended. When compared with the season or series premiers of other network TV shows, The Walking Dead outpaced Modern Family, The New Girl and Terra Nova. This is notable because these programs proved to have highly social pre-season buzz or large social followings. The big trick for AMC will be to see if the ratings — on TV and online — will be maintained in the coming weeks. More About: amc, Bluefin Labs, getglue, social tv, the walking dead For more Entertainment coverage: 
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What happens if you combine Twitter-like sharing, the depth of blogging and the voting mechanics of Reddit? You might get Chime.in, UberMedia’s take on social networking. Chime.in, which makes its public debut Tuesday, shares some similarities to Twitter’s interface, but UberMedia CEO Bill Gross argues that his social network tackles completely different problems than Twitter or Facebook. Unlike Twitter, which describes itself as an “information network,” Gross describes Chime.in as an “interest network.” Like other social networks, Chime.in lets users share content with others. It has a newsfeed, profile pages and a system for following other users. The social network doesn’t have status updates, though. Instead it has “chimes,” which are a cross between a Facebook status update and a blog post. Users are allowed to write short articles on Chime.in — up to 4,000 characters. A chime displays a headline, the first few sentences of a chime, a piece of multimedia (an image, a video, etc.), a profile picture, interest tags and options for liking, commenting and sharing. Chimes included threaded comments that include a Reddit-style up or downvote system for surfacing the best comments to the top of a chime. Gross says that having “yet another social network” isn’t a winning strategy, so Chime.in has a few differentiating factors that he believes will tip the scales in its favor. The biggest selling point is that users have control over their profiles, including the advertising and sponsors that run on the page. Users can include their own ads on the page and keep 100% of the revenue, or they can let UberMedia sell ads for their page and split the revenue 50-50. Gross believes that control over revenue makes Chime.in more appealing to publishers that want to monetize themselves in social media. UberMedia has already struck deals with E! Online, Disney, Bravo and other publishers who will promote Chime.in while keeping control of the revenue they generate from it. Chime.in is also built with the mobile world in mind. The mobile apps (iPhone, BlackBerry and Android) allow for all of the actions the website contains. Because of its complexity, the network isn’t available to feature phones, but in return the mobile versions of Chime.in work very much like the website. One of the problems the social network’s app solves, Gross argues, is quick access to content. Gross says that getting content from Twitter’s mobile apps is a painful process: one has to go to the tweet, open the link and wait for the page to load. In contrast, Chime.in content loads almost instantly, thanks to caching and Chime.in actually hosting content rather than just linking to it. UberMedia has a long road ahead to making Chime.in a success. The world is already flush with social networks and user fatigue. The company will have to convince millions of people that Chime.in is different enough and useful enough to use in addition to Facebook and Twitter. Gross believes that Chime.in’s focus on interests and its offer to let publishers keep the revenue they generate will make it an attractive choice for users, publishers and companies.  More About: Bill Gross, Chime.in, Twitter, UberMedia 
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Spotify investor and former Facebook President Sean Parker had some harsh words for his favorite social network: Its problem isn’t privacy, it’s that some of its most active users are leaving for other services. “The threat to Facebook is that power users have gone to Twitter or Google+,” Parker told the Web 2.0 Summit. They are leaving, he says, because Facebook isn’t giving them enough ways to manage a glut of information. Parker also defended Spotify’s decision to integrate the music service with Facebook, requiring users to sign up with a Facebook account. “It gives Spotify access to Facebook’s roughly 800 million users,” he said in an interview with Federated Media’s John Battelle. Battelle continued on the Facebook line, asking Parker what he thinks of the argument that Facebook is perceived as being a “little creepy.” After attempting to dodge the question — and pointing out that he is a major Facebook shareholder — Parker offered this immortal answer. “Look: There’s good creepy and there’s bad creepy,” he said. “Today’s creepy is tomorrow’s necessity.” SEE ALSO: Sean Parker Joins Twitter, With Apology to Mark Zuckerberg Parker also had some harsh words for the record labels, arguing that bands can simply bypass them. “You can now be a master of your own destiny,” he said. “I’m not sure why you would sign up with a record label.” Unless they desperately need an advance, Parker believes, bands are better off on their own. He apologized to his friends in the recording industry but offered the slow-to-grow success of indie band Foster The People as a prime example. Parker’s argument: The digital revolution has removed barriers to sharing music. It doesn’t cost extra to create another copy of a song anymore and it’s easier than ever to get recommendations for music from friends. The result is that labels are lagging behind because they have layers of bureaucracy and protocols they no longer need. Bands are responding by using other distribution mediums (such as Spotify) in order to take charge of their own destinies. Finally, Parker attempted to clarify the controversy over whether he was a co-founder of Napster or just an early employee. “I was a co-founder,” he said in a response to a question from Mashable. He explained that he was one of three people with founding shares when the company was first incorporated. More About: Airtime, Facebook, napster, sean parker, spotify 
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Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.
Right? Just when you thought the 2012 GOP Presidential race couldn’t get any weirder, along comes Herman Cain, presidential hopeful, and former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. Here, Cain sings John Lennon’s classic peace-anthem “Imagine” with pizza-themed lyrics including — but not limited to — “Imagine there’s no pizza,” “Eating only tacos, or Kentucky Fried” and “You’re lucky you have pizza.” In the video, Cain provides a bit of entertainment as he sings at a Godfather’s event. While the video, dutifully dug up by Internet scroungers, harps on Cain’s background in fast food, the candidate’s credentials include a stint as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Cain’s probably going to get some backlash for the video even as he leads the GOP race in most polls. But come on, he didn’t sing at a GOP debate — the man was running a pizza chain when this video was filmed. In terms of skeletons in the closet, this isn’t a big deal. That, and his voice isn’t actually all that bad. Take a gander and let us know: Is this a career-crushing mistake or quirky aside? More About: 2012 election, Politics, republicans, Video, viral-video-of-the-day, YouTube For more Entertainment coverage: 
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Just how good is the video camera on the iPhone 4S? If a short video from Benjamin Dowie is any indication, we’re going to chalk it up to “amazing.” Dowie shot the footage just after getting his iPhone 4S and as he writes on Vimeo, “Couldn’t believe it came out of a phone.” Looking at the footage, we’re inclined to agree. Dowie gives strong marks to the automatic stabilization, but what really caught our eye was the amazing depth of field. The DoF on my Panasonic GF-1 with a 20mm prime lens just barely outpaces the iPhone 4S — and that’s really saying something. Of course, in the hands of a pro-shooter, any camera can produce good looking footage. Dowie, who runs Beanpole Productions in Australia, is a pro. Your own footage may not look quite as beautiful. Still, it’s impressive to see just how much camera optics are improving. Phones have already replaced the day-to-day pocket camera for many users — with the death of the Flip and improvements to video sensors, phones could start to replace low-level video cameras too. What do you think of this video? Are you considering replacing your video camera with an iPhone 4S? Let us know. [via John Gruber] More About: beanpole productions, iPhone 4S, Video For more Mobile coverage: 
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One month after the first protesters showed up on Wall Street, similar movements have popped up in cities throughout the world — and many more are being planned or discussed. As “Occupy Wall Street” evolves into “Occupy Everywhere,” several new services are mapping the social media chatter surrounding them. Similar to the dashboards news outlets like Al Jazeera and independent projects like IAmJan25 and HyperCities created to track social media surrounding the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street maps now show where relevant geotaged tweets, YouTube videos and Flickr images are being posted, in real time. “I don’t really have a strong political opinion,” says Humphrey Flowerdew, who started mapping Occupy Wall Street tweets on Cravify.com. “I’m just interested in technology and what practical things you can do with it.” He and his partner Trung Huynh, who are both based in London, originally built Cravify to aggregate and map real estate listings. When the London Riots started in August, however, they realized that they could use the same technology to track Tweets. The duo created a feature that would alert users when someone tweeted from their neighborhood. Once the feature launched, Huynh and Flowerdew started spreading word of the new service through their personal twitter accounts. Flowerdew says the page had 25,000 unique visitors within 24 hours. The Cravify riot site’s quickly accelerating userbase convinced Huynh and Flowerdew that there was a demand for this kind of mapping, and it was one factor in their decision to shift into tracking Occupy Wall Street tweets. In addition to seeing where the protests are gaining the most chatter, users can read individual tweets to see how the protests are being perceived in different areas. “It’s just a different way to get a quick snapshot of what is happening around the world,” Flowerdew says. 
The Cravify Occupy Wall Street map shows tweets from throughout the world with the hashtags such as #occupywallst, #occupylsx, #occupyrome, #occupytokyo that are frequently updated. A similar map, being maintained by geographic system software firm Esri, is more than just a hack, it’s the company’s business. Esri makes software that has been used by organizations such as the State of Texas and FEMA to map disasters in real time. Its Occupy Wall Street map includes information from Flickr and YouTube, in addition to tweets. Their maps can be tweaked to search for specific terms in a given area. There’s also an embed option that allows anyone to post a map with their specifications on their own website. While its true neither of these maps show where actions in the physical world take place (Mother Jones and ABC have both taken on this task), they do give an interesting look at where in the world the protests are being most discussed online and how those discussions differ. “If you zoom out to the whole world and see the tweets coming out of American and the Western world and compare those to the tweets coming out of Asia,” Flowerdew says. “It’s interesting to see the perspective people take. And those are different than [the tweets coming] from South America and Africa … It conveys the world-wide nature of it” 
Esri’s Occupy Wall Street map includes geotagged Flickr, YouTube and Twitter posts and can be embedded anywhere. More About: Cravify, Esri, Occupy Wall Street, ows, social media maps, trending 
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The f–king Internet keeps coming up with cool new ways to help charity. This time, SwearJar will get you to pay every time you use a curse word on Twitter. By signing up with SwearJar, users pledge to donate £1 (about $1.55) or any other value you want to enter, every time they swear. The site will then track how often you swear in tweets and tells you which cuss words you use most. At the end of the week it then sends you a link asking you to pay up. The site obviously doesn’t take itself too seriously since it also asks users to start tweeting swear words to up their suggested donations. SwearJar is focused on the famine in East Africa with donations going to help UNICEF’s efforts in the region. While SwearJar might be a folksy take on the old-school swear jars, the issues it’s trying to fix are serious. The UN reports that a child dies every six minutes in East Africa with 12 million people seriously at risk. SwearJar was built by a crew of organizations but it is nested under the 50/50 Good project, a coalition of nearly 50 different digital projects that pool resources and funding to help fight the famine in Africa. For anyone who wants to get some sh_t done, the rules are simple: 1. For frickety-frick's sake, don't swear if your followers will be offended.
2. It's £1 per swear (or whatever you can afford).
3. The retweeter pays for retweeted swears (not the original tweeter).
Can a novel idea like SwearJar fight the famine? How often do you swear online? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Image courtesy of Flickr, ppelisek More About: africa, charity, Social Good, World For more Social Good coverage: 
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The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo does not just manufacture technology. They make Do machines — super-powered creation engines designed to help the people who do, do more, do better, do in brand new ways.
 So many consumer electronics have touchscreens these days, and we tend to take them for granted. Sure, they might break or crack, but they’ve gotten considerably more durable over the years. That’s thanks in large part to innovation by a team at Corning, manufacturers of Gorilla Glass.
You may not know Corning by name, but you’re certainly familiar with its accomplishments. The New York-based company produced the first glass light bulbs for Thomas Edison in 1879, pioneered Pyrex cookware in 1915, supplied the windows for the spacecraft Friendship 7 (which was flown by John Glenn for the first U.S. manned orbital flight), created missile nose cones during the Cold War, and was the site of Frank Hyde’s serendipitous discovery of high-purity fused silica in 1932 — the precursor to the optical fibers that connect us to the Internet today. One of the company’s most recent accomplishments is the development of Gorilla Glass, which actually evolved from the 1962 invention of ChemCor. These days, consumers want more out of their smartphones and tablets — the increased demand also comes with a desire for thinner, lighter, more durable and aesthetically pleasing devices with perfectly sensitive touchscreens. That’s not to say that Gorilla Glass is shatterproof, but it’s definitely more resilient in the face of tumbles, water and general clumsiness than previous glass displays. Mashable spoke with Dr. Shashi Shashidhar, Corning’s business development manager, about Gorilla Glass’ history, how it’s made, how it’s tested and why it’s so strong.
Where You’ll Find It
 Corning has a list on its website that names devices with Gorilla Glass, like the Samsung Galaxy S II, Sony Bravia TVs and the HTC Sensation, to name a few. Noticeably missing is any mention of Apple devices — Apple is notoriously secretive about their products and processes, but Gorilla Glass indeed protects the iPhone’s retina display. The Corning site says, “Your favorite device may include Gorilla Glass, even if you don't see it listed.” Gorilla Glass can be found in 200 million devices, roughly 20% of the handsets in the world. It’s 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, which explains its popularity in the CE world.
What Is It?
 You’re probably wondering what makes Gorilla Glass so unique. Its durability comes courtesy of an ion-exchange process that leaves a thin layer of alkali-aluminosilicate compressed around the glass. This provides extra strength and protection for your displays, says Shashidhar. The glass belongs to a family of ion-exchangeable glass that was marketed as ChemCor in the 1960s, but the particular composition in Gorilla Glass has been improved to provide better protection and usability in consumer electronic. “We looked at why things break and what we need to do in this compression layer to give you a better glass. So even though it came from the 1960s, it was modified about five years ago to be adaptable for consumer electronics,” Shashidhar explains. “When we were making ChemCor, the glass was pretty thick, and one of the things we had to figure out was how to make it work for a thin glass — ‘thin’ being one millimeter thick and below,” says Shashidhar. Gorilla Glass creates an “armor that protects the glass from breaking, from scratches, and makes it less prone to breakage than normal glass,” he says. “The armor that we have is built is the strongest of any commercial glass.” It’s stronger because its compression layer is deeper than other glasses, allowing more flexibility and durability. In addition to being strong, it’s also remarkably thin — from .5 mm to 2 mm — so the glass can replace acoustic glass and is superior to other glass in terms of power conduction and other technical aspects. Plus, its thinness means the devices it protects are lighter, which saves on shipping costs.
How Does It Work?
If you’ve dropped a smartphone a million times and seen it survive every one without suffering a spiderweb of glass shards, you’re probably wondering how Gorilla Glass is tested to endure such trauma. Shashidhar says Corning tests each product based on the way it’s used or creates a test that’s similar to the way it’s used. And if your phone’s screen has shattered into smithereens, it wasn’t sent back to the factory in vain — the damage helps Corning determine how to make glass even stronger. “We look at all the broken phones and devices that come back, and we go through what's called a 'failure analysis' to figure out exactly how the glass broke. We can look at all the glass pieces and tell that the glass started to break exactly at this point, and from here it spread out,” says Shashidhar, adding that most consumer electronics fall victim to a "sharp fall" – like dropping it on cement or some other high impact event. “Once we find out the cause, we do an indentation testing — we take a diamond tip and press it on the glass and apply a certain load … and see if it starts to break. The threshold at which it starts to crack tells us how much damage the glass can take. That's a very effective test, and that's a good way to see if a glass is good for a consumer electronics or not." For reference, Shashidhar says that if you do perform this indentation test on a window glass, you can apply about 400 grams — less than a pound — before it starts to crack. But Gorilla Glass can sustain up six kilograms before it shows signs of distress.  Shashidhar says that putting Gorilla Glass on consumer electronics “has really changed the user experience.” Before Gorilla Glass was there, you'd have to press "very deeply" on a plastic screen in order to register that you were touching it. But with the thin and sensitive Gorilla Glass, you barely have to apply pressure. Says Shashidhar, “I would say that getting the glass has really changed the aesthetic look of the devices and also the touch user experience.” Disclosure: Gorilla Glass is used in some Lenovo products.
Series Supported by Lenovo
The Tech Innovators Series is supported by Lenovo. Lenovo makes machines specifically for the innovators. The creators. The people who move the world forward. Machines like the Lenovo ThinkPad and IdeaPad, meticulously engineered with visibly smart second-generation Intel® CoreTM processors to help the people who do, do what’s never been done. More About: features, gorilla glass, mashable, Tech Innovators Series For more Dev & Design coverage: 
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New U.S. regulations will require that wireless providers send customers usage notifications when they’ve hit their monthly limits or are roaming overseas. Mobile users will receive updates before and after hitting their voice, text and data limits, and they’ll receive roaming notifications while travelling overseas, announced the CTIA, Federal Communications Commission and Consumers Union in a statement Monday. The Wireless Consumer Usage Notification Guidelines, which will affect 97% of U.S. mobile users, will become part of the FCC’s Consumer Code for Wireless Service. According to a 2011 poll by Consumers Union, 60% of U.S. mobile customers support “bill shock” legislation. “Far too many Americans know what it's like to open up their cellphone bill and be shocked by hundreds or even thousands of dollars in unexpected fees and charges,” says President Barack Obama, who supports the legislation. “But we can put an end to that with a simple step: An alert warning consumers that they're about to hit their limit before fees and charges add up.” The free and automatic notifications will come by voice or text message. Providers must offer two of the four notifications — overseas, text, voice and data — by Oct. 17, 2012, and must provide all four by April 17, 2013. Would you like to receive usage notifications from your mobile provider? Let us know in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, webphotographeer More About: consumer protection, mobile usage, US Government For more Mobile coverage: 
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