Netflix is a fantastic service, but it doesn’t do much of that “social” jazz everyone’s talking about these days. That’s about to change, though, with Netflix now introducing the appropriately christened Netflix Social, which will let you see what’s popular amongst your friends.
We say this often here at Cult of Mac: “This new whatsagizbob will change your life!” Perhaps we say it too often. But I can think of very, very few things I’ve seen where the phrase would ring as true as it does with Rabbit.
Rabbit is a videochat app and platform for Mac unlike anything you’ve seen, designed for immersive video socializing in groups, created by four ex-videogame developers, with mind-boggling attention to detail. You can even screencast movies, and share images and webpages over Rabbit.
And today, it’s been released as a closed beta (but read on to find out how to get your hands on a copy).
Photopoll is a sort of mashup between Instagram and Polldaddy, the super-useful poll tool we often use here at Cult of Mac. Just plug in some photos from Instagram, Amazon.com or your iPhone’s Camera Roll, and ask friends to vote for photos based on an accompanying question. Wild-yet-informative wackiness ensues.
Ever since 2008, when its first smash-hit, Ocarina — an app that turns your iPhone into a playable flute — debuted, Smule has proved itself over and over again as a magical outfit guaranteed to drop jaws with every release. Their newest app, Strum, is out today, and it’s no less wondrous an app than any of their previous efforts. But there is one very big difference: Instead of sticking to their musical background (one of Smule’s founder is, after all, an assistant professor of computer music at Stanford), they’ve taken their music fairy dust and sprinkled it on the world of video.
Building an extremely useful and cool app is a start but just because it’s built doesn’t mean the customers will come. In fact, building the app is just the beginning. Now you need to spread the word, and that requires a whole other set of skills – skills you may not have.
We’re here today to help you acquire some of those skills with this free informative video course.
We’re continually seeing examples of how the iPhone has exploded its horizons to become much, much more than just a phone. Case (ha) in point: Why shell out $300 for an action cam when you already own a video cam with stellar optics and image-stabilizing, a big, beautiful screen and the ability to upload your exploits whenever you damn well please? All you need to turn your iPhone from video cam to action cam is a rugged, weatherproof case with a wide-angle lens, and the ability to stick the whole thing onto a helmet or such. And that pretty much describes the $150 Mophie OutRide system.
There are a lot of budding entrepreneurs that are taking their ideas online – but many of them do not have the tools or skills to make a real go of it. Simply surfing the web looking for tips and tricks isn’t enoguh these days, you need to have more at your disposal than that. And Cult of Mac Deals has put together a deal that will really help out anyone who is looking to build their knowledge – and a business – online.
The Online Entrepreneur eBook Bundle contains three eBooks that will help turn your website into a marketing dynamo. And you’ll get them for just $20!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=445DW89GO2c&feature=youtu.be
I’ve never actually played Taboo (which is apparently massively popular; shows you just how much I get out); so when Clucks‘ PR guy referred to this new game as “video Taboo for iPhone,” my reaction was: Huh? So I looked up the game on Wikipedia (and finally realized that I had, indeed, heard of Taboo before), and it turns out that’s a perfect description for Clucks. But he might have called it “the next big social media craze on the iPhone,” because that might turn out to be an even better description.
Evernote has become an indispensible tool for people all over the world. The incredibly versatile “save anything” tool is used at home, school, and work. One nagging issue has been that although Evernote is an amazing productivity tool and has tons of business applications, it has never been good at sharing on a large scale – like the level of sharing that a business of a few dozen people or a few thousand people needs.
All that is about to change. The company announced a new workplace edition of Evernote for business customers.
According to a new study, mobile technologies like the iPhone and iPad aren’t delivering all the applications and features that most small businesses feel they need to succeed. The issue is less with Apple (or Google or RIM) and more with the developers and technology partners that create and market solutions tailored to the somewhat unique needs of the small business market.
The study was performed by Techaisle, a research firm that specializes in the small to mid-size business (SMB) market. It looked at whether small businesses felt that they were getting adequate options and support from cloud and mobile technology vendors. It found that across several areas, mobile technology solutions are failing to provide needed capabilities.
Microsoft confirmed yesterday that it plans to purchase Yammer, a four-year old company that specializes in providing enterprise social networks. The move, which has been rumored for months, offers Microsoft a chance to develop business collaborative systems that go well beyond the company’s Sharepoint service.
The move is an interesting one that could be significant in the enterprise space. The success of public social networks has led a number of organizations to attempt to bring the social concept into the workplace. The rate of success has varied with NASA’s Spacebook project being one of the more notable failures (and one lampooned by Stephen Colbert).
If I had to pick on adjective for Apple’s upcoming iOS 6, it’d be “local” – Apple is integrating an immense range of local features and giving businesses amazing tools for attracting new customers. Regardless of whether you’re talking about a large chain like Starbucks or a family owned local business, Apple is offering virtually any customer-facing company an immense range of tools to attract and retain new customers.
Storyful for iOS says it can help you “separate the news from the noise.” It plucks interesting news stories from social media networks, spotting the stuff that’s trending and turning it into a news feed. That all sounds great, until you start trying to use it – although it’s a great idea with great promise, it’s let down by too many performance problems.
Ongoing concerns over the practice of employers requiring prospective and current employees to hand over their social media passwords has led to the introduction of new legislation prohibiting the practice. According to Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) government page, the Password Protection Act of 2012 will enhance current law to prohibit employers from compelling or coercing employees into providing access to their private accounts:
The consumerization of IT is about more than just a handful of users bringing their own devices into the office. That’s the big take away from the first morning here the CITE Conference in San Francisco. The real story is that movement may have started out with people taking their iPads to work and and checking Twitter throughout the workday, but it has become something much much greater.
At heart, this movement isn’t so much about devices, social networks, or cloud services – it’s about how these technologies have changed the relationship that people have with technology. Apple and other companies have made most people comfortable with technology and shown them an experience of solutions that just work.
We’ve had a great time this week seeing everyone be so enthusiastic about the Twitter Celebration Giveaway. Five excited winners took home some excellent printers and monitors from HP. We want to give a big thanks to all our readers who participated in the giveaway and who have supported us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and even Pinterest. Also, a huge thank you to HP for being such a great company to team up with and providing all the prizes.
This Week’s Winners:
Thanks for playing this week everyone.
Holy guacamole, we won! To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how this happened. Wired is bigger than Cult of Mac in almost every measurable aspect (except sex appeal, obviously), and their magazine is cool as hell. But somehow, we went off like Tom Brady and managed to melt their faces off with our awesomeness during our “Insta-gram Challenge.”
Even though we were slightly somewhat heavily inebriated at the Wired Party in Las Vegas when we challenged them, you guys managed to pull it off for us. First off we owe a big thank you to our readers for making this momentous feat possible. Secondly, Wired deserves some credit for playing along with us and being good sports even if they obviously aren’t the better Instagramers. Thirdly, I guess we’re obligated to thank ourselves in that prototypical KanYe West fashion. I heard whispering around the office today that CoM’s John Brownlee credits the “Kobe System” for helping him come up with hilarious tweets and pictures during CES.
What’s next? Don’t worry, our Instgram feed isn’t going dormant until the next CES. We’ll be pumping out more Cult of Mac pictures for your entertainment because we realize that taking down Wired is cool and all, but who we really want to beat is The Biebs. We’re coming after you’re next Justin!
From the “maybe I can get these on Cydia” department: musician and artist David Byrne has created a number of authentic looking app store listings for fake iPhone apps, as contributions to a social media-related art exhibition being held in New York City next month. One handy offering is called Invisible Me, an auto-reply app for texts and emails allowing you to avoid work while pretending to be engaged. Sweet!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS1iXdqOVC8&feature=player_embedded
With the Flock browser going the way of the dodo, there’s really only one social-media-enhanced browser left: RockMelt. And yesterday, they released an iPhone version of the browser.
RockMelt is pretty handy for those of us who like to post news and blog posts straight to our Facebook and Twitter feeds from the web on our iPhones. It also functions as a basic newsreader, and It’ll sync with the browser’s Mac version so you can access bookmarks and posts that have been tagged with its “View Later” feature. Best of all, it’s free.
UPDATE: Well, turns out we were wrong about this one; it’s been around for awhile. Crow, anyone?
That rumor we mentioned yesterday — the one where we thought Apple would announce a new social network based around Apple Genii? Turns out Apple quietly added something very close to what we predicted yesterday during the virtual Apple Store’s refresh for the new MacBook Air and iLife ’11.
Apple’s new social network for music fans, Ping, has had a rough start. People didn’t expect it to be a Facebook for music right away but they did expect more from Apple. After years of social media hype many people thought Apple would have learned from the mistakes others have made. While Ping might not be the best idea Apple has ever had, I think when will look back years from now we will wonder what took them so long! For those of you who have turned on Ping, here are some things Ping should have and a few tips to make your Ping experience a little better. Read more after the break.
The iPhone, the iPod and Apple all made the top ten of a list of 100 brands commanding attention and participation from social communities online.
The iPhone reigns as the number one most social brand of 2008, outscoring parent company Apple, which ranks number three in the list complied by social media marketing company Vitrue. Overall, Apple dominates by also securing iPod at number seven and the Mac legacy brand at number 16.
That gives Apple or Apple products three spots in the top ten and four in the top 20.
The top 20 is ruled by media and entertainment brands including CNN, Disney, Xbox, MTV, Sony, Nintendo, PlayStation, Turner and Fox News. Full line-up here.
The list was compiled by analyzing online conversations on a variety of social networking, blogging, micro-blogging, photo and video sharing sites. Vitrue then gave them a composite score and ranked brands by it.
Interestingly, the rankings don’t take into consideration social networking bastions like LinkedIn, Myspace and Facebook. The reason? “The Vitrue 100 is measuring companies that are using social technology, not those who are the technology.”
Hmmm. This is the second year Vitrue has done the study, I suspect the line between using technology and being technology will blur. Wonder if the rankings would be super different if they were included…
Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to jm3 on Flickr.
Via Macnn
