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Yelp, a site I have praised before, is continuing to grow and gain traction.  Today, TechCrunch profiled them and spoke of their success and new-found hate sites.  You see, business owners who have been given bad reviews on Yelp are trying to fight back.  Sorry businesses, but if you want to fight back, respond to the criticism by fixing what was being complained about.  Yelp has reached out to give business owners a way to reply to reviewers.

Yelp is one of the social media sites that defines what user generated content is all about.  Real people talking frankly about businesses in a frank and open manner.  If businesses can’t take the heat - perhaps they should just stick their head in the sand and ignore the feedback.  However, the feedback is free and will allow them to easily improve their business.

If you want to see my activity on yelp, check out my profile page.

One key advantage that Apple computers have over their PC counterparts is the inclusion of iChat.  This pre-installed and drop dead easy to use chat and video chat application is ready to go the minute you get your new Apple computer on the Internet.

To accompany the launch of their sexy Studio line of laptops,  Dell is including a new utility on their Studio line computers called Dell Video Chat which is powered by SightSpeed, a proven video conferencing application I’ve written about before.  The inclusion of this application will bring simple video conferencing amongst the new Dell users and will allow them to interface with friends, family, and colleagues who are on Windows, Linux, or Apple computers.

One competitive advantage SightSpeed brings to the table is their inclusion of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the standard VoIP protocol used on the internet and enabling you to make VoIP calls to almost any VoiP user on the globe.

Just for Dell, SightSpeed has a new UI just for the Studio laptops that is redesigned and slick.  Dell Video Chat includes free unlimited video, voice, and text chats worldwide to anyone else on SightSpeed and video conferencing with up to 4 people.

Techmeme is, by and large, a fantastic way to stay up on the present buzz occurring in the tech blogosphere.  However, I’m confused at how the system works so I’m hoping to shed some light on the subject with this post and the conversation that ensues.  In talking to other blogging friends, I’m not the only one who is curious about this subject.

From their “About” box, TechMeme states:

At this moment, the hottest stories in technology are scattered across dozens of news sites and blogs.

That’s an awful lot of sites for anyone to check.

Fortunately, Techmeme arranges all of these links into a single, easy-to-scan page. It’s auto-generated through a news-picking software system, so updates occur around the clock.

So, how does Techmeme decide which post is most worth of the primary link?  For example:

Earlier this month, Om Malik interviewed and wrote a post about Jeff Bezos. Anyways, Om did the work, then RoughType links to the post and embeds the video.  Then I see the Nick gets the primary post on Techmeme!?

How does Techmeme’s algorithm work?  I’d assume in this case, Om’s post would get the Techmeme, love, not the RoughType coverage of Om’s interview. This, in my opinion, is an injustice to Om as he is the original content creator.

See the screenshot below:

Additionally, a while back I posted on GigaOm about Strands acquisition of NetworthIQ.  My post on GigaOm went up first, (my post ran at 4:37PDT, and TechCrunch’s ran at 8:26AM) however TechCrunch’s story got the primary link, with my post was placed in the Discussion category.  Here’s a screenshot from that day:

This post is not intended to complain about Techmeme - just to educate myself and the community about how the selection process is conducted by Techmeme’s bots.  Is Techmeme handcoded or dynamically driven? Inquiring minds want to know

The notion behind social location based services is fantastic.  For example, depending where you are, an application that knows your location and the locations of your friends alerts you all to each other’s presence and good times ensue.  This is the idea behind Plazes, a German start-up that allows users to plan, record, and share their social activities.

There are two areas of concern I have with services like Plazes (along with Loopt and Whrrl).  I love the concept behind these services, however, who’s addressing the privacy concerns?  For example, I use Brightkite and have added a few friends, but I have declined the opportunity to advertise my Brightkite status on Twitter.  I don’t want everyone in my twitter stream to know my exact location for privacy reasons.

Also, before the Nokia acquisition, what revenue model did Plazes have?  My only guess is that after enough people signed up for Plazes, contextual ads could be served that are location-aware.

Nokia is the clear winner here, as they are adding 13 smart developers to their Services and Software unit.  Perhaps the new team can help add some social aspects to the useful Nokia Maps Application. Nokia has been delivering some great mobile applications that utilize location and GPS data as of late, so I’m very anxious to see how the Plazes team is positioned within the company and future offerings.

Maps is great for finding your way with basic GPS functions but could definintely use some social features.  Especially with a GPS-enabled iPhone coming out soon and all the applications that will utilize its new hardware stack.  Because, like I said on GigaOm a while back, feature-packed phones are useless unless they are tied into our daily lives with useful software and services.

As I posted on GigaOM Strands.com is trying to get into the social aggregation space.  Currently the market dominated by FriendFeed which has gained an amazing among popularity amongst the web 2.0 crowd.  Today’s news follows the NetworthIQ news from earlier this month.

The service aims to take the social media aggregation FriendFeed offers to the next level by offering social recommendations on top of it.  The company aims to use your friends as a filter to “hot” content you’ll be interested in.

Along with giving you pointers to content you might be interested in, the new Strands.com will allow you to build a ‘taste profle’ to enable you to take your profile with you to other sites to further personalize those other services.

To highlight social media items to you, Strands.com has “Hot Posts” that will allow you to see what’s hot within your social group and allow you to see new things based on what your friends are suggesting.  Also, you can set groups and have granularity to which groups see what materials in your Strands.com stream.  To additionally filter out content, users can show content based on content type.  That is, if you only want to see your friends’ music items, you can have just this filtered data shown to you.

Does this type of service interest you, or is it just ANOTHER site to sign up for and adopt?

As I reported on GigaOm, local web application developer Ryan Williams‘ NetworthIQ has been acquired for an undisclosed amount by Strands, a Corvallis based startup who is heavily involved in social recommendation software.

Strands, formerly MyStrands, is a company known for social recommendation technologies mainly surrounding online media.  The company’s core product is a music recommendation engine that allows users to discover new songs.  Today the company has announced the acquisition of NetworthIQ to enhance the functionality of their private beta moneyStrands personal finance application.

Today’s news, combined with the previous acquisition of Expensr, shows that Strands is seeking to expand its social recommendation engine to other content areas, namely personal finance.

In my interview with Gabriel Aldamiz-Eschevarria, Strands’ VP of Communications, stated Strands’ intention to bring real solutions to the issue of Internet content overload and fragmentation.  For example, in the finance space, a person can see their checking account balance on Bank of America’s website, but have to go do American Express to see how much is owed.  moneyStrands will seek to aggregate these silos of content, give users insight into their finances, and with NetworthIQ’s functionality - compare these anonomously for financial benefit.

NetworthIQ’s functionality will be integrated into moneyStrands, Strands’ private beta web based personal finance application.  NetworthIQ was launched in 2005 by Furio and allows individuals to track their net worth on an aggregate level and share it with other NetworthIQ users.  This financial social networking site enables its users to gain knowledge based on the community’s financial experiences and insights.  This is done by exposing new ways for you to track, spend, and save your money, based on other’s experiences.

On the surface, NetworthIQ and Expensr (Strands’ previously announced acquisition) may seem very similar in nature.  However Expensr is focused on tracking expenses so a person knows how much they spend on a monthly basis.  NetworthIQ, rather, is focused on giving you a community for help and motivation regarding your investments and spending habits.

Strands has had phenomenal success building a mobile strategy into their music platform.  Aldamiz eluded that moneyStrands will have a mobile component that will include versions of moneyStrands for iPhone, Nokia (S60) browsers, and BlackBerry.  moneyStrands will allow users to quickly check their financials on the web.  Aldamiz noted that financial institutions today do now have an impressive presence in the mobile space and Strands’ seeks to change that.

moneyStrands faces competition from existing sites such as Wesebe and Mint.  With Strands’ treasure chest it will be interesting to see how they develop moneyStrands into a cohesive and usable product.

Up until just recently, Williams was working at a Tigard-based firm as a software developer.  NetworthIQ was a side project he worked on and built a business around with some colleagues at Fourio.  Let this serve as an example of how being passionate about a side project can translate into being able to someday have your side project become a full time job.

When I asked Ryan about his transition now working for Strands, he said,

Joining forces with Strands presents a great opportunity to utilize
the Strands recommendation platforms to help people make better
financial decisions, providing insight into the best ways to track,
spend, and invest their money.  Personally, it’s such a thrill for
NetworthIQ to be acquired and to join the Strands team.  When my
Fourio partners and I launched NetworthIQ in 2005, we were excited
about its potential, but weren’t really sure how it would turn out. If
people would really want to open up about their money this way, and
whether we’d find the time and enery to keep it going with so many
other events going on in life.  But people did and we were able to
carve out a simple and effective solution to help people manage their
money.  Considering how global the web is now, it’s pretty exciting to
find this match practically in my own backyard, with Strands being
headquartered in Oregon.  I’m really looking forward to working with
the Strands team on the moneyStrands project and seeing what we can
do.

Nice job Ryan!  We can’t wait to see what awaits with Strands and the new moneyStrands product!

I deleted my Pownce account today.  I’m on twitter and jaiku, and a crapload of other sites.  I have forgotten about my Pownce account, except for the emails I get whenever someone in my pownce circle sends out a message.

I have become saturated with requests for my time and I just don’t have time to keep up to date on Pownce as well.  Plus, Pownce doesn’t really present much of a value proposition over Twitter.  Additionally Twitter is where most of my friends are.

I have been trying to get Qik installed on my Nokia N81 8GB ever since reading Scoble’s experience with the software last week.

For those of you unaware, Qik is software that allows you to stream live video from your Nokia NSeries’ webcam, complete with audio. Qik uses the data plan on your mobile phone for network. 3G with AT&T is probably the best way to go, but I’ll be using T-Mobile’s EDGE data access and wi-fi, when I’m in range of an access point.

Think ustream.tv, but in your pocket, making you able to do live video casts whenever the mood strikes you. This has major implications. You can do your own live video conference or shoot live video whenever you want. You can become your own live news story if per chance you see a burning building or car accident.

Eager to try Qik out, I went on the site, entered in my phone number, and waited for the introductory SMS to come to my phone. The SMS never came, so I emailed Qik support. After a while, the introductory SMS came so I fired up my mobile browser and verified my phone number through their mobile web system. I was then told I’d have to wait for another SMS with a link to the application install file. That SMS never came so again I emailed Qik support. I heard back from a Qik person and was off and running!

I fired up the Qik application and since I was at home, told Qik to use my wi-fi. Having Qik.com up on my mac, within 3 seconds I saw the video and heard the noises that I was making in the room coming through my web-connected computer. pretty freaky to think I can do a live video cast from my mobile phone and make it available to web users who go to my qik site.

The next test…how would Qik work over EDGE, considering it has only a fraction of the bandwidth as my wi-fi. Well, I reset the Qik application after specifying T-Mobile’s edge connection and again I saw my video streaming live on the web. The delay was only 5-7 seconds…not much worse than the wi-fi uplink from before.

At this point I’d say Qik is easily a disruptive technology. At any point in time I can fire up Qik and do on-the-go interviews or videocasts. How amazing!

This also speaks volumes for the Nokia Nseries hardware platform. Qik was able to use the Nokia because of it’s great built-in camera, wi-fi (or cellular data access), and open Symbian operating system as a platform for building this fantastic application.

I’m so excited!

PS: I found Qik’s tech support team, notably Bhaskar Roy to be very helpful! Thanks guys!!

The Nokia N95

Introduction

To the person in the elevator, I’d describe the Nokia N95 Multimedia computer as a Swiss army knife of personal entertainment and connectivity. From the college-student to the Internet content creator to the business professional, the Nokia N95 will keep you in touch with your peeps and will entertain you all along the way. The N95 I was able to review (and sadly have to send back) is the North American version. This is an update to the N95-1 that supported the 3G networks in Europe. The new N95 has support for the US 3G network (AT&T HSDPA),more RAM, and a larger battery. The price is steep at around $600. This phone is not subsidized by any carrier, which is a good thing! I’ll post about that on a later blog entry, but basically by not bowing to pressure from US carriers such as AT&T or T-Mobile, Nokia delivers a phone that doesn’t have any features locked out.

At First Glance

Out of the box, you can tell Nokia took a lot of time in designing the N95 to wow the customer. The phone has a dual-sliding action, one side revealing the numeric keypad and the other side featuring the media controls. The gorgeous 2.6″ QVGA display is good but not great, and the screen is easily visible in direct sunlight. The phone is great to handle and has a rubberized back side that makes this phone impossible to slip out of your hand. With so many features loaded into the N95, you’d expect it to be heavy and bulky. But not so, the phone is a little thick but overall feels great in your pocket or in your hand.

The Basics

First and foremost, this is a standard quad-band GSM cellular phone. And as a basic phone, the Nokia N95 is outstanding. Call quality is fabulous both to me and the people I talk to. I used this phone on T-Mobile USA and AT&T and on my end people sounded clear and crisp. When asked how I sounded, callers couldn’t tell I was on a mobile phone. There was a slight high pitched noise for me while on a call, but it didn’t detract from the conversation at all. The address book is logically put together and allows for easy classification of my contacts. This phone had awesome battery life, even when using the advanced features such as GPS, data, and the camera. I was able to go 2-3 days between charges with moderate to heavy use. Minimalist battery life was a major complaint of the original N95.

Features

It might be take less time to describe what the phone can’t do as opposed to what it can do. Lets start with hardware. The N95 features full fledged Bluetooth 2.0 including support for A2DP; meaning it supports full stereo headphones and Bluetooth headset for making calls.

Wi-Fi (802.11G) is built in, allowing for you to easily switch between cellular data and uber-fast wifi for all connectivity. Downloading VoIP clients such as Gizmo Project or fring will allow you to make cheap or free calls when in range of a wi-fi hotspot or on a 3G data connection. I wish the N95 was a little more transparent with it’s ability to use wi-fi or the cellular data connection. The iPhone excels at this, making the hop between the two types of connections.

GPS - this one is huge. The N95 comes with Nokia Maps installed which utilizes the on-board GPS. It downloads the maps as needed and is available for many geographic locations including North America, Europe, and more. It is so great in a pinch to be able to use the GPS to find your way, a nearby restaurant, or other type of business based on where the phone is located. I can’t say how many times I used the GPS to find my way when lost, even in areas where I knew the roads. At times it takes a while for the GPS to lock on to satellites, but once connected it does a great job of staying locked on and tracking my position.

The N95 also features a high quality 5-megapixel digital camera that also shoots VGA quality video at 30 frames per second. As a person who has long had a digital camera built into my mobile phone, I thought I wouldn’t use the camera feature on the N95 very much. However the picture quality is so good; I was constantly reaching for the N95 to take some great quality digital photos and videos. With the capability to add Micro-SD cards, your storage is almost limitless. My main complaint about the camera is that when you zoom in, the picture quality suffers greatly. I’m assuming this is because the zoom is merely a digital one, meaning it only enlarges the existing pixels. Also as expected, video capture when zoomed in to any degree is almost illegible. The N95 can take video at 30 frames per second which is fantastic.

The Nokia N95 shines as a media playback device and supports virtually all audio and video media types. The screen can be viewed either in landscape or portrait mode. In landscape mode, the 2.5 inch widescreen display shows tv and movie media in wide-aspect mode. The screen is a little small, but perfect for one person to view a quick tv show or video podcast. I downloaded some beta software from Nokia to be able to push media from my Mac onto the N95. It wasn’t as seamless as using an iPod with iTunes, but wasn’t too difficult at all. I had podcasts and music from iTunes on the N95 in a snap and was off to the races rocking with my tunes and media.

The N95 can also be used to output video and audio to a TV. An amusing part of my review was when I plugged headphone into the 3.5 mm jack, the N95 asked me if the new device being plugged in was 1) headphones, 2) TV-Out Cable, or 3) a Music Stand. Pretty cool. The speakers that are onboard the N95 sound awesome (for mobile phone speakers) and in a quiet room you can definitely use them to play your podcast or music.

Messaging

The Nokia N95, because it boasts the Symbian S60 operating system, is stellar at messaging. You can open Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents and the N95 does a great job of formatting these types of documents for the N95’s screen. Also the N95 supports IMAP4, POP2, and SMTP e-mail accounts. Microsoft Exchange users will be happy to know the N95 will support Microsoft Exchange Server synchronization, giving you access to your company’s email system.

Performance

As stated above, call quality was impressive on the Nokia N95 MultiMedia computer. However it should be noted that the device feels a bit sluggish at times. I’m not sure if it is because the N95 lacks in hardware or if Symbian is a sluggish application stack, but there is a noticable lag when you hit a key or especially when trying to launch the camera to take a photo. Also, when loading media there is an annoying lag that can’t be missed.

Conclusion

There are a few caveats (as there are with ANY electronic device), but overall the Nokia N95 is the best mobile phone on the market and the best phone I have ever used. I have tried many different types of phones including Treos, Motorola Windows Smartphones, BlackBerrys and more. I have to say the Nokia N95 packs so many features and ties them all together that it makes my head spin. There are so many uses for this phone that it pains me to have to send the review unit back.

No matter if you are a business user, Internet content creator, or high school student; the N95 is a great platform to stay connected with your friends, co-workers, and family. The openness of the Nokia/Symbian platform means you can do virtually anything with your phone that you want. There are many 3rd party applications for Symbian and the list grows every day.

Apple has drawn criticism because the iPhone is a great piece of hardware and with the right software it is capabale of so much. Imagine being able to use an application like Skype to make VoIP calls or being able to use an IM client on your iPhone. With the N95 you can do this already. Gizmo Project is built into Symbian and there are many IM clients available for free download (not to mention countless other tools). You can take great looking video with the N95 or shoot awesome photos and directly upload them to the web without having to hook up and sync with your PC. This upload can happen either by wi-fi or the cellular network.

I would whole-heartily suggest the N95 to my friends. The steep cost is made up for in features and openness.

What are your thoughts?

My blog buddy Jonathan posted a blog post of how to get your GSM phone to forward voicemail traffic over to GrandCentral.  I’ve been longing for this feature for quite some time so the topic grabbed my interest.

My trouble is, I can’t get the GSM code which is *61*yournumber# , to work on my N95 with T-mobile.  Has anyone been able to get GSM forwarding codes to work on t-mobile?

UPDATE: on the other blog post, some guy was able to do it with t-mobile.  So now I think I’m being blacklisted.  I have a FlexPay tmobile account, not sure if that has anything to do with it.