If you’ve got a piece of 8-1/2″ x 11″ paper, a printer and a pair of scissors, prepare to load luggage-sized efficiency into your pocket. Slip your week’s schedule, travel games and puzzles, notes, conversion tables and much more into your wallet.
LinkBlip is a new URL-shortening service perfectly suited for micro-blogging sites like 140-character max per message Twitter. As an added plus, when someone clicks on a LinkBlip-shortened URL, the link creator is automatically notified via email with the user’s general location (city and state).
Future Growth Opportunities
Matthew Inman, the developer of LinkBlip, is looking to add functionality, saying, “I want to add multiple URL tracking and the ability to be notified every time someone clicks a URL, not just once.”
Pros and Cons
Unlike TinyUrl where a click creates a shortened URL in your clipboard, LinkBlip does not, yet. And use of a third-party geoIP database sometimes serves up the user’s ISP location instead of the user’s.
LinkBlip does provide a browser button, and the minor inconvenience of adding your email and copying the new URL is offset by the potential benefits LinkBlip’s feedback provides.
Think of it as a TinyUrl with residuals—worth the paste. We think they’re on to something.
Is Google’s OpenSocial the new Microsoft Windows of Social Networking?
Campy but Good
Google announced the launch of OpenSocial—their set of standardized application programming interfaces (APIs)—at “Campfire One” last Thursday.
Thrilled Social Network developers attending the event laud the benefits in the highlight video above (4:15). See the full event here (57:23).
S’More of a Good Thing
And why not be happy? Those developers are now aligned with Google and Google’s next big thing, and they also join a growing list of prominent OpenSocial online networks and supporters with whom to collaborate, including:
Their combined reach equates to over 200 million subscribers.
Roasting Distribution
Most importantly, OpenSocial promises developers a way to optimize development costs through the creation of a common platform available (thus far) only to OpenSocial affiliates.
A single source development platform means more rapid distribution and greater reach since developers can now build one app for multiple social networks, eliminating the need to create multiple network-specific applications.
Passing on the Hot Dogs
Conspicuously missing from the list of Google OpenSocial faithful was social media darling, Facebook. Facebook passed up a $1 billion offer from Yahoo last year, then a week ago sold a 1.6% stake to Microsoft for $240 million, inflating Facebook’s value to an estimated $15 billion.
Google’s OpenSocial countermeasure is expected to significantly reduce that estimate.
If OpenSocial delivers as promised and becomes the global de facto standard for social network development, Facebook may one day need to face compliance just to remain relative and viable. Probably not what Microsoft or Facebook had in mind when they inked the deal late last month.
Branded Just Right
All of which bodes well for for brand marketers, advertisers, developers and users. OpenSocial’s standards and conventions should drive streamlined creation, processing, access and distribution of messaging, bringing deeper reach and measurably greater returns for marketers.
Of course, sometimes standardization translates to stifling and stale—we’ll see. But the commercial benefits of ubiquitous and proprietary standardization are hard to deny.
A Firefox integrated tool, Firebug is really a suite of web development productivity tools allowing you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML and JavaScript live in any web page.
A sort of web developer’s Swiss Army knife—on-hand and ready for anything. For more, visit the Firebug site.
Color blind? Struggling with triads? Color your world at Kuler from Adobe Labs.
If you’re in need of a working color scheme, you just found it. Kuler allows you to exchange and explore color across a spectrum of interactive formats. Peruse the most popular schemes or create your own palettes and share them with other color enthusiasts via the Kuler community.
From forums to feeds Kuler promises the most socially infused color site on the planet. And we thought The Color Schemer was a colorful inspiration.
Brainstorm Named Best of Show in International W3 Web Awards
Iconic Site Launch
Developed by Brainstorm for Anderson University and Warner Press WarnerSallman.com features, among other iconic images, “The Head of Christ,” from The Warner Sallman Collection - an image so famous it's been reproduced more than 500 million times worldwide. More from the Herald Bulletin article about the site.
under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.
Our 2008 Multiple Sclerosis holiday project. Every run of Brainstorm's holiday, "Memory Machine," generated ¢.25 for the Multiple Sclerosis Society - up to $5000. It went viral fast - the $5k was just a memory by the time our holiday dinner started.
Brainstorm's 2007 holiday blog parody. A new post everyday featured the ongoing drama of an entirely fictitious corporation replete with fictitious products. Items like the "iPlanet,"NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.” Our content was tongue-in-cheek, but the chocolate and gifts we sent to commenters were quite real.
