Fan Appz launched a platform yesterday to help Facebook page administrators create and distribute brand-specific polls, quizzes and promotions that fans can share with friends to extend brand awareness and drive traffic.
The platform, called Professional, provides built-in social marketing tools for businesses at a monthly subscription fee of about $50. Each time a fan takes a quiz or participates in a poll, responses can publish to their Facebook stream.
Oh, Radian6…how you’ve fallen victim to the ploys of MTV’s latest garbage truck. Now visitors to MTV’s Jersey Shore site have just another way to see how “cool” the Jersey Shore cast is, through Radian6’s Twitter Tracker.
When I just tried to visit the site, it went black…obviously knowledgeable about the fact I would soon mock it. When Joe from PRNewserchecked, there were only 21 recent tweets about Snooki…I wonder if those were the same 21 people planning to attend Turtle Bay’s $1 Beer Wednesday’s with the Jersey Shore cast in NYC last night (yes, it’s shameful that I somehow got on that bar e-mail distribution list).
I hope Radian6 starts a Twitter Tracker for tweets solely about the absurdity of Jersey Shore. Maybe then, the heads of this ridiculous cast will finally explode and us actual NJ natives - who love our beautiful shore (not Seaside) - can have the last laugh.
When I first heard about Coke Zero’s Facial Profiler on Facebook a few months ago, I thought it was a really cool idea, so I uploaded my photo. The app aims to find your doppelganger via Facebook using face recognition technology. People I’ve never met before often tell me I look familiar, ask me if I have a sister (I don’t) or say I look like some girl they knew from camp (I didn’t even go to sleepaway camp). So I figured Coke Zero might be able to help me find this mysterious army of Alyssa clones. Or, at the very least, match me up with my own brother, since we look exactly alike.
It turns out, face recognition technology still needs a little work. The app did find me a match — her name is even Alyssa! — but she doesn’t look much like me. Our facial features are sort of in the same places and our heads are certainly turned at the same angle, but other than that, I don’t see the resemblance. In fact, I felt pretty good about the photo I uploaded until I saw it side-by-side with her professional headshot, and now I just kind of feel like the ugly sister. But it seems like others using the app have fared better - some of the “Top Matches” they show are uncanny in their resemblance, and make me think some of them might actually just be the exact same person with multiple Facebook profiles. Maybe I’ll try uploading another photo and see what other twinsies Coke can come up with for me.
—Alyssa
[Update: I tried again, and my new match was even worse. Bummer.]
As a dedicated BlackBerry fan I’ve often felt that the iPhone — and to some degree, its cultish following — was somewhat full of hot air about the greatness of the gadget. Turns out, now it literally is.
There’s a new app out now called Blower, which developers claim can be used to “blow out candles, herbs, and refresh your skin during hot summer nights.” Um, wow. How lazy can you be?! Basically, Blower just moves air through the speakers of your iPhone to create, which is exactly how the speakers work when playing music. Sorry, but this sounds like the most superfluous app ever created. I’ll stick to my BlackBerry — and to breathing myself, for that matter.
TechCrunchposted today about an interesting new iPhone application called iCurfew, which allows kids to send their parents an e-mail showing their location. Sort of like FourSquare, but that only the ‘rents can see. It’s certainly an interesting idea — when my brother and I were in high school, we usually preferred to check in with my mom via text message rather than a phone call. I suppose this would be one step easier and makes it harder for teens to be dishonest about their whereabouts (not that I ever was, since I was — and am — a total goody two-shoes). However, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington suggests that kids will find loopholes, like “pay[ing] off someone to hold onto your phone and hang out at the movie theater messaging nice things to your parents while you are off doing God knows what.”
Does this app build trust and encourage communication between parents and children like it claims, or is it too “Big Brother“-ish and will make kids go to greater lengths to conceal their whereabouts? Either way, I think the more important question here is, “Why does your 16-year-old have an iPhone in the first place?”
I’ve long been a tad obsessed with personal finance, and on my most fastidious of days I check on my Mint.com account even before brushing my teeth in the morning. So this new site, Disciplanner.com, is intriguing to say the least. This online goal tracking program allows users to track long-term personal goals along the lines of “exercise more” or “learn piano,” and also encourages users to track those less-than-stellar habits, like how much time is being spent in front of the TV. Disciplanner keeps weekly and all-time records enabling users to keep track of their own progress and growth in areas that they indicate.
Best of all, Disciplanner will never nag you if you’re falling short of your goals one week. Unlike Mint, which I am convinced is trying to get me to forgo caffeine thanks to all their annoying text messages “reminding” me that I’ve gone over my monthly coffee budget. We won’t even go into the site’s opinion on my shoe closet.
Virgin Atlantic has released a “Flying Without Fear” iPhone app for travelers wary of flying high in the sky. The “course” is loaded with commentary from Richard Branson - who apparently states the facts over the fictions associated with flying - and offers exercises for relaxing while on the plane.
Not sure what is more shocking…the 98 percent success rate of the program or the fact that Whoopi Goldberg hasn’t flown in 13 years!
Honestly, they didn’t have to develop an iPhone app for this…they could just upgrade panicky fliers to business class, and I guarantee their fears would evaporate by 100 percent.
…about what to blog about today. I thought maybe I should talk about Google Chrome, and its new bookmark-syncing capabilities — but then I realized that I truly have no clue what Google Chrome is. (Let’s be honest, you probably don’t really, either.) And I kind of sort of don’t sync stuff, so that was pretty much out. But I do want to talk about widgets. Specifically, all the cool retailer widgets I’m about to download now that Halloween is over and Black Friday is 25 days away. So, yeah. It’s time to talk shopping, folks.
Gilt Groupe is one of my personal must-shop sites for impressive discounts on the best designer items. But it can be fickle, and thanks to its auction-oriented setup, the best garb goes quick. Just downloaded: Gilt’s countdown widget, providing a real-time countdown to the best sales. Geeeeniusssss.
Not that I do my holiday shopping on eBay or anything (okay, a few times, but just for my B-list recipients), but they’ve got a handy widget that allows you to easily monitor the auctions you’re watching — so nobody will outbid you on the Swarovski crystal duck paperweight you’re eyeing for your great aunt.
Shopping online is also almost always guaranteed to save you some cash, compared to in-store purchases. GoToDaily ensures that you’re always in the know about where to find the best cyber deals — all from the comfort of your very own desktop. Track down coupon codes, promo codes, printable in-store coupons and saving tips for thousands of stores. This coupon widget even comes with a mini search box that allows you to use to find your favorite online stores and coupons by keywords or store name.
There are 50 days ‘til Christmas Eve — get shopping!
If you’ve logged into Twitter.com since Friday, you may have noticed an announcement at the top of your homepage that a new feature called Twitter Lists has now been rolled out to all Twitter users (some especially active users got a sneak preview a couple weeks ago). You can now create various groupings of Twitter users that you follow, and share these lists with others. This is a great way to discover new people to follow or organize the people you already follow into various buckets.
It’s also another way to show a user’s influence, but some users — like social media influencer Chris Brogan — worry that the tool is exclusionary and contributes to the “popularity contest” mentality that pervades Twitter (meanwhile, his fellow influencer Robert Scoble thinks those people are crybabies). I’ve been added to 15 lists so far, and thankfully none of those are entitled “Jerks.”
Whether you love or hate the new Lists tool, we’ve created a list of M Boothers on Twitter, for your following ease.
Volkswagen has created a new iPhone application for the launch of its 2010 GTI model. The free app, called “Real Racing GTI,” allows users to compete by racing others and posting their scores on an online leaderboard. Users can also post their racing videos on YouTube if they wish.
How will Volkswagen’s app compete with other brands using mobile, you ask? By offering free cars!
“Players who download the app will be eligible for the 2010 GTI sweepstakes, which gives away a 2010 GTI Limited Edition Model every week for six weeks beginning Nov. 2nd. Each day that a player finishes a lap in the Real Racing GTI game he or she can enter into the sweepstakes.”
Incentives are important, especially in the oversaturated mobile app space.
File this away under, “Yes, there really is an app for that.”
Think of it like Facebook-meets-iTunes’ App Store. The newly launched AppBoy bills itself as “a social outlet for mobile app lovers.” Got a great app idea? Now you can submit it for review or trial to your online friends, who will provide feedback and vote if they like it. If your idea gets enough votes, you get a portion of the proceeds when your app goes on sale.
Too bad someone already thought of Shazam — I’d be all over that one.
By the time you read this, I should be boarding my plane and kicking off my vacation to Prague and Budapest! I recently heard about Lufthansa’s new MySkyStatus tool, which tracks your airplane’s journey and posts your flight status to Twitter and Facebook automatically, so I figured I’d try it out. (I’m flying Delta, but Lufthansa will track your flight on any airline, not just its own.) I know this will give my worried mom some peace of mind while I’m traveling. Check out my Twitter page to see if Lufthansa is mentioning the places I’m flying over — hope it works!
Many of you may have already seen New York Magazine’s article entitled ”What’s Your Widget?“ in which noteworthy Big Applers like Jimmy Fallon divulge their favorite web applications. According to the author, “you can tell a lot about people by their apps.” This is true, Miss Sarah Bernard. I especially enjoyed learning that IT specialist Philip Blake has a weak bladder and Gossip Girl actor Matthew Settle is deeply insecure. Riveting.
But what about app overload? Have we as a society become so used to having our problems instantly solved, our questions immediately answered and our boredom quickly curtailed by the false notion that we are engaged in combat (see Al Roker’s favorite app), that we are losing our collective patience and ability to be resourceful and creative during those moments when technology fails? With over 85,000 iPhone apps and 2,500 Blackberry apps, could these apps eventually wear away at those humanistic qualities that were once innate, but are becoming rare? Are we suffering from collective A.D.D.? Or are all these apps just allowing us to accomplish more in any given minute than generations before us?
These days, if you’re throwing a party, you probably just create a Facebook event to let all your friends know about it. But sometimes, if it’s a secret event that you don’t want the uninvited to know about, you might venture over to that old relic Evite and send out a stealth invitation, complete with hokey theme and annoying login requirements. However, now you have a better alternative, since the best e-card site in the world, Someecards, just launched an Invites section.
Within the next few weeks, the new tool will allow you to turn any Someecard into an invitation and send it to friends, who will be able to comment on the “Party Wall” and respond to the invitations with Someecards of their own. This would also be a great opportunity for brands who want to get in front of Someecard’s young, hip target demographic to advertise via sponsored e-cards/Invites, like Jose Cuervo and Puma have previously done. Eventually, the site plans to add Facebook Connect to integrate the invites with Facebook as well. Now you only have to hope that the party itself is as cool as the invitation.
![When I first heard about Coke Zero’s Facial Profiler on Facebook a few months ago, I thought it was a really cool idea, so I uploaded my photo. The app aims to find your doppelganger via Facebook using face recognition technology. People I’ve never met before often tell me I look familiar, ask me if I have a sister (I don’t) or say I look like some girl they knew from camp (I didn’t even go to sleepaway camp). So I figured Coke Zero might be able to help me find this mysterious army of Alyssa clones. Or, at the very least, match me up with my own brother, since we look exactly alike.
It turns out, face recognition technology still needs a little work. The app did find me a match — her name is even Alyssa! — but she doesn’t look much like me. Our facial features are sort of in the same places and our heads are certainly turned at the same angle, but other than that, I don’t see the resemblance. In fact, I felt pretty good about the photo I uploaded until I saw it side-by-side with her professional headshot, and now I just kind of feel like the ugly sister. But it seems like others using the app have fared better - some of the “Top Matches” they show are uncanny in their resemblance, and make me think some of them might actually just be the exact same person with multiple Facebook profiles. Maybe I’ll try uploading another photo and see what other twinsies Coke can come up with for me.
—Alyssa
[Update: I tried again, and my new match was even worse. Bummer.]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kub9xsDBeD1qznz4co1_500.png)
