14 posts tagged “social software”
More money for social networks: college sports network Takkle will announce today that it has received additional financing from Sports Illustrated and the New York City Investment Fund. The amount isn’t being disclosed. The company’s original investment came from WMG Investments, Greycroft Partners, IJ Smith Enterprises LLC, and Jack Schneider.
It’s a sign of even closer ties between SI and Takkle: the paid have been cross promoting since at least December 2006. Sports Illustrated also bought sports social network FanNation earlier this year, and it seems probably that the Takkle investment will go the same way.
Recommended: MySpace News - MySpace Launching News Site
Mapping is a huge and growing sector, from social maps for sharing with friends, to mashing up Google Maps in every possible way. Trawling through all the mapping sites out there, we’ve compiled a list of the most interesting online mapping tools that some are referring to as “Maps 2.0″.
CUSTOMIZABLE AND COLLABORATIVE MAPS

Click2Map.com - Create custom Google Maps, manage your markers, publish and share your creations.
ClustrMaps.com - Get a visual representation of all the visitors to your website.
Geotag it - Add geo tags to Flickr and Del.icio.us posts and see where other links and photos come from.
MapBuilder.net - Uses Google Maps to help you build a custom tagged map you can add to your own website.
Mapicurious.com - Mark vacation spots, restaurants, bars, just about any place you would recommend.
Mappr.com - Another site allowing you to geo tag your Flickr photos to allow people to see them on a map.
Maptales.com - Tales of trips and more sorted on to a Google Map.
Maptrot.com - Create maps of interesting locales such as Route 66 or major sports stadiums, share them with the world.
Mkmap.com - Collaborative map that allows users to add things such as transit services and restaurants.
OpenStreetMap.org - A user editable map of the world to be worked on in collaboration.
Pixagogo.com - Add your own photos to a Google Map, give people a real feel for your neighborhood or vacation.
Planiglobe.com - Customize a map and download PostScript and Illustrator versions.
Quikmaps.com - Doodle on a Google Map, pass it around, embed in your site, or download it to your GPS.
Tagmaps - A way to visualize text on geographic maps, then can be used on your site.
Traffic.com - Check out traffic for your area on a map.
Trippermap.com - Tag your Flickr photos with a location; they get added to a flash based map for your website.
Useamap.com - Helps you publish a map for your event, provides a short url for easy use.
Wayfaring.com - Create and share maps, explore ones made by others.
Wayki.com - Tag locations and share with others, explore tags others have left.
YourGMap.com - Customizable and embeddable Google Maps with content you choose.
TRANSIT MAPPING

goDCgo.com - Look up Washington DC-specific information such as traffic, special events and car pooling.
IamCaltrain.com - Interactive map of the San Francisco metro area trains.
onNYturf.com - Interactive subway map of New York City.
Seattle Bus Monster - Plan your bus routes in the Seattle, WA area.
SUBJECT SPECIFIC MAPPING

DaylightMap.com - See where the sun is shining currently on this map.
Feedmap.net - Add a geo-code to your blog so people can look blogs up by location. You can also browse for areas that would interest you.
FlightAware.com - See how many planes are currently in the air and where they are.
Gruvr.com - Place to look up local music and add tour info.
HealthMap.org - A global disease outbreak map. For general interest or to suggest places you may wish to avoid.
Hotpotr.com - Map of Wi-Fi cafes and hotspots.
Incident1.com - Interactive map of 911 calls from around the United States.
Mailboxmap.com - Enter an address, get the locations of USPS mailboxes nearby.
Map-Runner.com - You can create a run route and assign a difficulty rating and a safety rating; it will be available to all runners using map runner, and they can rate it.
MAPLight.org - Shows geographical connections between congressional voting and money donations.
MapMyRun.com - Plot out your running course, indicate where water and bathrooms are, calculate your workout. They also have MapMyHike.com, MapMyRide.com, MapMyTri.com, and MapMyWalk.com.
MappyHour.com - Click anywhere on the map to display nearby bars and their happy hour specials.
MapWii.com - Enter your Wii number and see other players online to setup games all from a geographic map.
Moremap.com - Uses Google Maps as a basis to show earthquake activity, traffic reports, radio stations, and numerous other functions.
Platial.com - Add content from video, photos, stories, feeds and add it to your website.
PublicRoutes.com - A global map of mass-transit systems.
SignalMap.com - Find or add your own reports on cell strength to various locations and by carrier.
Tornado Paths - Visual history of tornado paths on a map.
VirtualVideoMap.com - Shows a Google Map with YouTube videos sorted by locations.
POPULAR MAPPING SERVICES

Ask.com Maps - Ask.com’s driving directions solution.
Google Mars - Google’s interactive map of the fourth planet of our solar system, Mars.
Google Maps - Get directions, look up your house with satellite photos. The basis of many websites.
Mapquest.com - Look up local businesses, get driving directions.
Poly9 FreeEarth - A free, online interactive 3D globe with various layers you can apply.
Windows Live Local - Microsoft’s entrant in to the mapping game.
Worldmapper - Maps of the world resized based on various subjects such as land mass and population.
Yahoo! Local Maps - Get driving directions, find businesses and much more.
See also:
Work Together: 60+ Collaborative Tools for Groups
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Online Photography Toolbox: 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources
Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources
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The Ultimate RSS Toolbox - 120+ RSS Resources
Analytics Toolbox: 50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic
Google vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win
The Tagging Toolbox: 30+ Tagging Tools
Wiki Toolbox: 30+ Wiki Tools
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A new online mapping tool: WorkedHere has launched a social networked crossed with a mapping service that helps you find buddies from your old workplace. Find workplaces, create workplaces and add your profile.
The problem, of course, is that it requires a critical mass of users to be any use: with very few people on the site, the chances of you tracking down an old colleague are slim. No doubt that will improve when WorkedHere launches its planned Facebook app and MySpace widget.
Recommended: Piczo Layouts at Mashcodes!
Update: Facebook’s new hire Blake Ross reports in the comments that this is a bug and will be fixed. If only Facebook’s bugs were as amusing as MySpace’s.
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Argh. Facebook just removed the option to “Skip this Step” when adding a friend: you now have to state what your relationship is with that person before you can connect, then wait for them to confirm that relationship.
No doubt it’s concerned with Facebook’s aim to connect you to real life friends, but it’s also super, super annoying when you have a big backlog of requests.
Anyone else find this ultra-annoying? Leave a comment below; perhaps enough complaints can get this reversed.
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BzzAgent, the word-of-mouth media network, will launch a new social network within its service on Monday, entitled the Frogpond.
This new section will create a meeting place for consumers and online networks, where users can discover, experience and review online properties in the same manner as they do with other products. Being able to test a new site, track activity and gain user feedback is increasingly important with online communities, and the Frogpond is looking to allow businesses to reach out to an existing database of consumer reviewers (agents) that are willing to test and share information about the services they’ve tried out. The Frogpond will provide tracking tools for the businesses as well as additional sharing tools for the users, as an effort to encourage the “buzz” to start spreading. These tools will include links and badges, and the ability to share via email and instant messengers.
This is another way in which aspects of the offline world are being moved even further into an online world, and having a hub with access to a large, potential user base is something every start-up is looking for. The model has worked so far for TripAdvisor, and about 20 companies will be anxiously awaiting reviewers upon launch, including iVillage, Sportsvite, OurStage, Kayak, Joopz, and more. Similar services include Spigit and TryBeta.



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Los Angeles-based mobile service provider Amp’d will shut down at 12:01am Tuesday. Existing customers will be able to port their phone numbers to a new service, but Amp’d won’t help them do this, and their will be no customer service after Monday. Amp’d assets will be sold in an auction.
The company had 200,000 customers in April, but dropped half of them when they failed to pay their bills (Amp’d tried to boost subscriber numbers by accepting customers with low credit ratings). The company had taken $360 million in VC funding; more info for existing customers on their website.
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San Francisco-based social network hi5 has taken $20 million in funding in a round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. The site reports 30 million members and 200 million pageviews/day, making it one of the largest players. So why the lack of hype?
Speaking to the company a few months back, they defined themselves as an “international social network” - the features are fairly standard, but the trick was to regionalize more effectively than other sites. Major languages available include English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Romanian.
The fact that hi5 doesn’t have all its users in English-speaking countries probably explains the lack of hype compared to Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
[via Gigaom]
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With businesses and families spread out more and more, we’ve dug up 60+ sites that will help everyone be on the same page.
Business Productivity

37Signals.com - Maker of collaboration tools including Basecamp (others listed below).
8apps.com - A mixture of social network and productivity applications.
BlueTie.com - Online collaboration directed towards small and medium sized businesses.
Businessitonline.com - Centralized cash flow, documents, calendars and more for a team or small business.
CentralDesktop.com - A full work suite for project teams including spreadsheets, file sharing, calendar and more.
Colligo.com - Allows you to work on projects off-line and then sync them when you can login.
ConceptShare.com - Share concept designs and allow invited workers to mark-up, comment, and give feedback.
Confluence - An enterprise-class wiki with features such as PDF exporting.
ContactOffice.com - Allows groups to share documents, calandars, contacts, and files. They can then access them from a number of different mobile devices.
Coventi.com - Upload your documents, share, and allow others to highlight portions or edit.
Copperproject.com - Share projects, tasks, documents and timelines with your entire team.
CrossLoop.com - Allows two computers to connect securely to share their desktops for collaborative work and transfer of files.
Eloops.com - Share files, calenders, projects, and then create RSS feeds to share your public ones.
Foldera.com - Allows for communication over projects, and centralizes work to make sure version is always current.
Glide - Facilitates group meetings to review projects together.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets - From the behemoth known as Google, collaborative documents and spreadsheets.
GroupSharp.com - Allows you to share lists, databases, file sharing, and wikis for your team.
Huddle.net - Designed for collaborative work in the fields of PR, advertising, marketing, design and more.
Instacoll.com - Allows real-time sharing of documents to work on them with colleagues.
Joyent.com - Get collaborative software and backup services in one package.
Longjump.com - Offers standard collaboration, but also the ability to build new applications for your team to use and even market.
Mindquarry.com - Work on projects online or off-line, then synchronize as soon as you are back.
Near-Time.net - Build wikis, blogs,create documents for your team to work on, and have the ability to sell your content and expertise.
Nexo.com - Share files and notes amongst your company, or even with other companies you invite.
Octopz.com - Allows your team to work a wide range of documents including video, audio, and flash animations.
OpenTeams.com - Allows your team to create cPages of your project.
QuickBase.com - A collaborative tool from Intuit, the makers of Quicken.
PlanHQ.com - Specifically for groups working on business plans.
ProjectSpaces.com - Share and work on documents, notify team members via RSS and email.
Solodox.com - Create, access, edit, share, and collaborate on documents & projects.
TeamWorkLive.com - Track tasks, centralize communication, share documents and files, then collaborate with clients and remote teams.
TheOpenDoc.com - Create multiple workspaces with multiple documents, then share them for group editing.
Thinkature.com - Collaborative workspace with voice chat and numerous drawing tools.
Tracbac.com - Workspace for your group that features versioning, IM, VoIP ad more.
Uhroo.com - Focuses on working on goals, estimates, client feedback and more.
Vyew.com - Your team can work on a project and then publish it directly to where you choose on the web.
WebOffice.com - Work on documents and more with live web meetings.
Wrike.com - Project management that allows you to assign tasks and then let people work in teams on them.
Writewith.com - Create documents and invite others to edit and chat while you do so.
Yugma.com - A catch-all collaboration site for files, tech support, presentations and more.
Zimbra.com - Email service with collaboration tools.
Zoho.com - Create documents and grant permissions for others to work on an entire page or just one portion or object.
Creative Collaboration

Kalabo.net - Site for musicians to collaborate on compositions together.
Freepository.com - Specifically for computer program development and allows storage of code to be worked on from anywhere.
Glypho.com - Site for group writing of fictional stories.
Novlet.com - Collaborative writing of non-linear stories in any language.
WebBrush - Focuses more on graphical sharing and includes drawing tools.
Writeboard.com - From 37signals, perfect for collaborative writing, journalists, bloggers and more.
WriteMaps.com - Designed specifically for creating and sharing sitemaps amongst web teams.
Family and Social Collaboration

Cozi.com - Helps families organize and communicate in a web based method.
Famundo.com - Built for families or small groups to organize and share contacts, calendars, and projects.
Grouptivity.com - Uses email to start a group discussion on any subject of your choice.
LooseStitch.com - Create to do lists and share them with whomever you choose.
Mecanbe.com - Post your goals in life, get suggestions on how to achieve them.
Stixy.com - Share documents, photos, to do lists and more with family and friends.
Wamily - For teams, families, clubs and everything in-between. Share photos, run a wiki, have conversations.
Mindmapping

Bubbl.us -Create and share your mind map with your team, also embed in to your website or blog.
Comapping.com - Mind mapping for everyone from students working together to project management.
Gliffy.com - Draw & share mind mapping diagrams.
Kayuda.com - Mind mapping for individuals or organizations.
Mind42.com - Mind mapping for one, or multiple users.
Mindomo.com - Has both free and premium accounts for mind mapping.
Mindmeister.com - A mind mapping tool you can share with an unlimited number of simultaneous users.
See also:
ONLINE PRODUCTIVITY GOD: 400+ Resources To Make You Smarter, Faster & a Demon in the Sack
30+ AJAX-Powered WordPress Plugins
70+ Tools For Job Hunting 2.0
40+ Firefox Add-ons for High Speed Blogging
20 Ways To Aggregate Your Social Networking Profiles
Online Music: 90+ Essential Music and Audio Websites
Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources
Blogging Toolbox: 120+ Resources for Bloggers
14 Personalized Homepages Compared, Feature by Feature
230+ Keyboard Shortcuts for Top Web Services
Online Photography Toolbox: 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources
Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources
Online Productivity Toolbox: 30+ Resources to Get Things Done
The Ultimate RSS Toolbox - 120+ RSS Resources
Analytics Toolbox: 50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic
Google vs Everyone: 10 Markets Where Google Wants to Win
The Tagging Toolbox: 30+ Tagging Tools
Wiki Toolbox: 30+ Wiki Tools
Recommended: MySpace News - MySpace Launching News Site
PayPerPost, the site that pays people to write about certain products and services on their blogs, has launched a Facebook application. For now, its functionality is limited: it lists Marketplace Opportunities, lists the subjects you’ve written about and (mainly) acts as an affiliate advertisement to put on your Facebook profile and make money when your referrals sign up.
Coupled with the Facebook news feed, however, PPP could potentially become an annoyance on Facebook. You can imagine a scenario in which people could be paid for writing on Facebook blogs, posting certain Facebook apps to their profiles or (worse) filling the News Feed with commercial information like ads. It’s a risk that also increases as more Facebook ad networks spring up: hopefully Facebookers will disown friends that use such services. If not, Facebook itself may need guidelines about what constitutes excessive “feed spam”.
[via]
Recommended: MySpace MP3 Player at Mashcodes!

Greasemonkey, the Firefox extension that lets you customize the look and features of any website using scripts in your browser, provides endless possibilities. For StumbleUpon fans, that means new features and fixes for minor annoyances. Today, we’ve brought together the top 12 Greasemonkey scripts for StumbleUpon, ranked by the number of installs.
Images are included where relevant - not all of these are very photogenic.
1. StumbleUpon Sticky Helper - Create a “sticky” post that stays at the top of your SU blog even when you add new posts. It carries a few warnings about how to use it properly, but 2,434 people have nonetheless installed it.

2. StumbleUpon Tag Toplist - Displays a top list of the most-used tags, and allows you to sort sort alphabetically or by tag count. 1981 installs can’t be wrong.
3. StumbleUpon Best Friends - Create an area for your top friends, just like on MySpace and other networks. There’s no limit to the number of best friends you can add, and no one else will see them. Friends are arranged in alphabetical order, and with 1891 installs, this one is going strong.

4. StumbleUpon WYSIWYG Editor - format your reviews and comments in a WYSIWG editor. with 1874 installs, maybe StumbleUpon should consider adding this as a feature.

5. Colorize StumbleUpon Thumbs - rating items using a blue thumbs up or thumbs down is too boring, apparently: Stumblers want to change them to green and red. At least, 1472 of them do.

6. Preview StumbleUpon Posts - Adds a preview button to the StumbleUpon forums and your inbox.This one got 1203 installs.

7. StumbleUpon Quick Tag - Suggests popular tags and top personal tags to help you tags your links faster (see image). 1184 installs so far.

8. StumbleUpon Copy URL Button - Allows you to copy a link directly to tag pages, since StumbleUpon uses ajax here and therefore prevents direct linking. 1123 installs.
9. StumbleUpon Edit Fix - Once you’ve done editing a post, this plugin directs you to the page you were editing (by default, StumbleUpon would show you the latest page on your blog, rather than the one you just edited). 1106 people liked this one.
10. Count StumbleUpon Likes - Adds the number of “Likes” (a Like is an expression of liking something) to the Prefs and About sections on the StumbleUpon site. 793 people liked this enough to install it.
11. Compare StumbleUpon Likes - More messing around with Likes. This one highlights common Likes on StumbleUpon About pages (sign up and you’ll understand that). 788 people found this useful.
12. StumbleUpon Hover Enlarge - Make the userpics bigger when you hover over them. 758 people think bigger is better, and grabbed this script.
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