Open up your mind and say, ahh...

In the good old days, Facebook users “became a fan” of their favorite teams, celebrities, objects, and personalities. A month and a half ago though, that all changed. Facebook Pages switched from “Become a Fan” to “Like” in order to lower the bar for users to engage and connect with brands.

The change hasn’t been the most popular one though, and that’s why it was the subject of this week’s Web Faceof, our continuous series where we ask you, the readers, to choose between two web apps or topics.

After five days and over 5,500 votes, it’s official…

…Mashable readers miss the fan page! With 3,161 votes (57.3%), “Become a Fan” bested “Like,” which was only able to garner 1,634 votes (29.6%). A full 719 of you (13%) were indifferent on the matter.

Thanks for voting this week, and be sure to tune in next week, when we launch another edition of the Web Faceoff!

Which do you prefer: Facebook Like or Facebook Fan?customer surveys

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Faceoff Series: Overall Results

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Week 1:
- Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
- WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
- AT&T vs. Verizon
- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
- Google vs. Bing
- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
- Old versus new Twitter retweets
- WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
- Gmail vs. Outlook
- WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
- Boxee vs. Hulu
- WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee: 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Week 17:
- Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
- WINNER: Nexus One, 6743 votes (iPhone 3GS: 2818 votes, Tie: 592 votes)

Week 18:
- Foursquare vs. Yelp vs. Gowalla
- WINNER: Foursquare, 1182 votes, (Yelp: 661 votes, Gowalla: 509 votes, Tie: 143 votes)

Week 19:
- AIM vs. GTalk vs. FbChat
- WINNER: GTalk, 2189 votes, (AIM: 1257 votes, FbChat: 511 votes, Tie: 203 votes)

Week 20:
- Music Ownership vs. Music Subscription
- WINNER: Ownership, 533 votes (Subscription: 299 votes, Tie: 237)

Week 21:
- Match.com vs. PlentyofFish
- WINNER: Plenty of Fish, 430 votes (Match.com: 334 votes, Tie: 187 votes)

Week 21:
- Google Buzz vs. Facebook Vs. Twitter
- WINNER: Facebook, 3353 votes (Twitter: 1828 votes, Google Buzz: 1298 votes, Tie: 651 votes)

Week 22:
- HTML5 vs. Adobe Flash
- WINNER: HTML5, 3892 votes (Adobe Flash: 1779 votes, Tie: 660 votes)

Week 23:
- Project Natal vs. PlayStation Move
- WINNER: Project Natal, 1268 votes (PlayStation Move: 668 votes, None: I don’t like motion controllers: 170 votes, None: I prefer the Wii: 150 votes)

Week 24:
- Chatroulette vs. Hot or Not
- WINNER: Chatroulette, 742 votes (Hot or Not: 281 votes, Tie: 99 votes)

Week 25:
- iPad vs. Netbooks
- WINNER: iPad, 3098 votes (Netbook: 1969 votes, Tie: 605 votes)

Week 26:
- Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iBooks
- WINNER: Apple iBooks, 1227 votes (Amazon Kindle: 928 votes, Tie: 118 votes, Neither: 276 votes)

Week 27:
- Next-gen iPhone vs. Droid Incredible
- WINNER: iPhone 4G, 9765 votes (Droid Incredible: 8175 votes, Tie: 1318 votes)

Week 28:
- Facebook “Like” vs. “Become a Fan”
- WINNER: “Become a Fan”, 3161 votes (“Like:” 1634 votes, Indifferent: 719 votes)

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This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: The Hotlist

Quick Pitch: The Hotlist is the first geo-social aggregator that shows people what’s happening today, tomorrow and beyond among their personal networks.

Genius Idea: The Hotlist is a Facebook -integrated web app that shows you a visual map of upcoming events in your area and across your social network. It highlights what events your friends are attending and what events have the most buzz.

We like how seamlessly The Hotlist integrates with Facebook. It culls your friends and group data and compares it to all of the publicly listed events happening across the network. You can see what’s going on in your area or add other cities that you want to check out.

We did run into one small bug — The Hotlist had my location listed as New York, even though that’s not what my Facebook profile says. I imagine this happened in part because the app was developed at NYU. Still, it was easy enough to add our city to the list and browse from there.

You can filter listings by groups of friends and event types, which is an easy way to get an overview of what’s going on. By default it lists the events that are either the most popular or that are being attended by your friends.

A nice touch is that once you select an event, you can not only see who is attending from your Friends or Friend of Friends list, but you can read a detailed description of the event and then access Twitter and Yelp reviews about the venue.

It also breaks down attendees by gender, which is cool if you want to avoid a sausage fest (or if you want to seek one out).

Right now the service is only usable if you have a Facebook account — but we actually think building off of the Facebook events calendar is a smart move. I would love it if the iPhone app for the Hotlist (which is in development) could connect to both Foursquare and Facebook — because that would be a killer match for mobile.

How do you find out about what events are happening near you? Let us know!

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

When Google upgraded their Local Business Center to Google Places, it launched the opening salvo in what we expect to be a long war for local advertising dollars.

With local advertising revenues expected to reach $144.9 billion in 2014 according to BIA/Kelsey — and more and more dollars are shifting away from traditional media toward digital media buys — the new war for local ad spend will be a battle between the Internet titans and social networks.

Facebook, Twitter , Google, Microsoft, Foursquare, Yelp and even Apple are all attempting to carve out their own niche offering for local advertising dollars. Who will succeed remains to be seen, but this is a fight you won’t want to miss.

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The War of the Worlds

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The challengers fighting for local advertising budgets can be separated into three categories: Search, consumer review sites and social networks. The mobile component to each sector is also quite significant, especially given that the mobile web is taking over the world, and that mobile search is still a nascent space — one that appears to be more app-driven than search-engine driven.

Each category also has its own distinct advantage and key players, but what Google has managed to do with Google Places is straddle all three sectors with an extremely valuable proposition for local businesses that includes free stuff, cheap advertising rates and the promise of exposure.

Google also has a very strong mobile presence, but their adherence to the standard search model for discovery could make them susceptible to competitors vying for local ad dollars.

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Search

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In the local search space we can include the obvious players: Google and Microsoft, the latter of which will grab more share once the Yahoo search deal is implemented. Both behemoths are fast-adding features to their search services to better facilitate local search queries. Bing even has Foursquare data in maps.

For businesses, the advantages of being highlighted in local search results over competitors is significant. Sure it’s 100% paid media, but it’s also exposure at one of the primary touch points for service and restaurant queries on the web.

Google clearly recognizes the value of a targeted ad. With Google Places they also re-introduced a simpler, faster, cheaper way for their local business customers to advertise (formerly called enhanced listings). Business can pay a $25 per month flat fee to use Tags to make their listings more prominent on Google.com and Google Maps. Included in Tags are Posts, which are like status updates for Place Pages and will appear as part of the search listing.

Tags show up as yellow markers that users can scroll over to view promoted features or coupons. While Tags are ads, they’re essentially Google’s take on Promoted Tweets, and make listings stand out from the crowd. If done right, they could be useful for both businesses and consumers.

When thinking about local search, don’t forget about Twitter. The social network also happens to double as a search engine, and they’re aggressively moving in the local direction with tweet geotagging that can identify points of interest. This extra layer of data will enable Twitter users to search locally, and see a real-time stream of nearby tweets.

Couple these new Twitter features with Promoted Tweets — Twitter’s definition of search advertising — and you have a situation ripe for local businesses. The key here is whether or not Twitter can prove why users should share their location and why local businesses should care.

In thinking about search, remember that mobile will factor into the future in a big way. Steve Jobs believes that most mobile search happens via applications, which means that Apple — which now owns alternative mobile search application Siri — could play an important role in the mobile local advertising battle.

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Consumer Review Sites

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For the purpose of this post, consumer review sites like Yelp and City Search are being distinguished from other social networks because their primary focus is on user-generated place reviews.

The advertising opportunities on these sites are certainly geared towards the businesses that consumers are reviewing. That could create a conflict of interest for some networks, and in the case of Yelp, many small businesses felt that they were being bullied to pay to advertise in order to remove negative reviews. Yelp has maintained that this was absolutely not the case, and was a misunderstanding of their review filtering process.

As such, they’ve made changes in recent weeks to lessen the confusion, but now that Google Places offers a handful of business-friendly features, we could easily see local businesses jump ship with their advertising budgets.

On this feature front, the addition of service areas is quite significant. So too are the QR code window decals and free business photo shoots. Plus, if Google opts to take Google Maps inside businesses, there will be even more incentive for companies to own their Google Place Page.

In a previous post, I made a case for how the new consumer review is all about you, and that location, premium content and relationships are critical to the relevancy of the consumer review.

In this sense, Foursquare certainly factors into the consumer review equation. Their tips and content partnerships mean that their location-aware mobile social network is perfectly poised to deliver up tightly packaged consumer reviews that are place- and time-relevant. This means that smart local businesses will allocate more of their budgets to checkin rewards and mayor specials.

Lest we forget, there’s a Foursquare-esque component of Google’s Place Pages. All Place Pages include consumer reviews with both text and star ratings. These reviews are also easily accessible via Google Buzz for Mobile and Google Maps.

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Social Networks

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The primary social networks embroiled in the local advertising war include Twitter, Foursquare, Google and soon Facebook.

Google’s social networking endeavors have left plenty to be desired. Google Buzz launched to an excited tech audience but enthusiasm has since faded away. There’s also Google Latitude — an always-on location-sharing service that started as a Loopt clone — which now has 3 million active users. It’s the intersection of Buzz and Latitude on mobile devices that will help Google nail down local advertising dollars.

Between Buzz for Mobile’s checkin model and Latitude, Google has a lot of information that they can both display for consumer/business use as well as use behind the scenes. Since Buzz checkins are associated with Place Pages and Place Pages have dashboards, Google has the opportunity to compete with Foursquare’s business dashboards. They also have the data to create accurate behavioral analysis around location, based on the implicit location-sharing of Latitude users. Take that and the Google name, and you have something quite compelling.

Unfortunately for Google, Facebook is most certainly moving into the same space. Given their size and trendiness, we can assume that Facebook will be a strong competitor and a viable contender for local advertising dollars. The leaked McDonalds-Facebook location partnership tells us that diners will be able to check-in at restaurants with activity and food items being posted back to Facebook. How exactly this will work or function we don’t know, but what is certain is that once Facebook knows where their 400 million members are, they can target advertising by location.

Twitter is really trying to ramp up relevancy of geo-located tweets, but they’ve never quite been able to do what Foursquare has done — demonstrate the significance of location-sharing. As discussed above, there could be a perfect storm brewing for the day when geo-aware tweets are tied to places and Promoted Tweets are available to all potential advertisers.

Once that happens, we predict that advertisers will be able to target their Promoted Tweets by location and not just keywords (as it stands now). Should they go down this path, this could be their real secret sauce, especially given what we’ve already seen from Virgin America in the Promoted Tweets department.

In the social networking space, don’t count out David — a.k.a. Foursquare — amongst these internet Goliaths. Foursquare has pioneered the location-sharing movement by making checkins valuable, if not cool. The company is hotter than ever, and its partnerships — especially with the likes of Starbucks — continually ensure that it has something the competition doesn’t. Its user base is growing astronomically, and now that the users are there, businesses are clamoring to catch up.

Foursquare has also been nimble in finding ways to cater to local businesses. Early on, it allowed business owners to offer specials to mayors and those that check in. More recently, it introduced a simple way for businesses to sign-up and gain access to the business dashboard with checkin analysis. Its offering not only parallels what Google is doing with Place Pages, but bests it.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, bubaone

[Img credits: jef safi, Thomas Hawk and courtesy of iStockphoto, yuri4u80.]

The fascination with Twitter has less to do with the number of users and everything to do with the ability to observe and study a notable online community of passionate short-form content creators and consumers. This is of course, not just any online community. Twitter is quickly becoming the lens into all that moves us as individuals and also as a global society.

Twitter’s simplicity is part of its brilliance. The ability to interpret, analyze and in turn, predict behavior, currently sets it apart from most other social networks. Twitter has become a human seismograph,  measuring and broadcasting the pulse of not just the Web, but also world and local events. News no longer breaks, it Tweets. And if you’re plugged-in to the human seismograph, you are part of a movement, one that defines trends and distributes information before the rest of the reverberations are felt across the rest of the world. You become part of the new information system.

In many ways, Twitter’s openness creates a new genre of digital anthropologists, sociologists and ethnographers.  Twitter users reveal the state of all things captivating attention and inspiring action, all in real-time. As new found social scientists, we learn everything. Most notably, we can pinpoint how Twitter, as well as Facebook, is transforming popular culture and the behavior that defines it.

In every stone that shapes the Twitter monolith is a bit of each one of us. We, as individuals, bring to it the very essence and sustenance that brings Twitter to life. We are its denizens. We are its ambassadors. We are the keepers of the Twitter commonwealth.

There is empowerment to Twitter that is unlike that of any other social network. Perhaps, that’s why it lends to a unique social egosystem, but similarly, there are stages of personal growth that unfold with every Tweet we publish, each response or RT we engender, and every follower we earn.

I Tweet, therefore I am.

For many who have yet to grasp Twitter’s promise, you’re not alone. Twitter, as a company, doesn’t necessarily make it easy to embrace nor fathom.  Yes, Twitter recognizes that the incentives for new users to join Twitter as well as the initial experiences or lack thereof are now indicative of its position in the technology bell curve of adoption. As it moves toward mainstream awareness and adoption, the motivators for willfully adapting one’s lifestyle is unique to this stage of change evaluation and is not at all similar to those early adopters who initially propelled Twitter into the statusphere.

As detailed studies emerge that dissect Twitter’s migration from relevance to omnipresence, we gain the insight necessary to comprehend its effects on humanity.

One such study recently captured and articulated that State of Twitter in the U.S.  Edison Research and Arbitron Internet recently surveyed 1,753 Americans age 12 and over to peel back the layers of fervor and hype to reveal the very people using Twitter and defining a new era of communication.

Awareness

According to Edison, Twitter’s awareness exploded from 5% in 2008 to 26% in 2009 to near ubiquity at 87% in 2010. Of course this is due in large part to our near rabid obsession with the service in mainstream media, businesses, even local shops and services, incessant advertising of Twitter through front-facing pleas, “follow us on Twitter!”

If metrics provide a baseline for appreciating Twitter’s rapid journey to recognition, the study compared Twitter’s stature to one of the largest social networks in the world.

Twitter is becoming a household brand, it just now has to work towards earning a position as a household service, something Facebook is currently reveling. At almost equal recognition levels, Twitter trails Facebook in actual usage by a staggering 34%.

Twitter Usage

Twitter recently hosted Chirp, its first conference where it revealed that it hosted over 105 million registered users. According to Arbitron and Edison, Twitter usage currently stands at an estimated 17 million Americans.

Twitter Activity Secrets Revealed

Twitter recently announced users were Tweeting upwards of 50 million times per day at an average rate of 600 Tweets per second.

Previous studies have shown that a small percentage of the overall user base is responsible for the greater volume of total Tweets. In the new Arbitron and Edison report, we’re introduced to five specific segments of “Tweeters” (I’ll name them to make it easier for future reference):

- Broadcasters (Several times per day)

- Commentators (At least 1x per day)

- Contributor (at least 1x per week)

- Neutral (At least 1x per month)

- Inactives (Less than 1x per month)

Twitter Demographics

While the following demographics reveal the segments of people using Twitter, as marketers, business professionals, and brand managers, pay closer attention to the “interest graphs” interwoven within the network. It’s how Twitter is basing its advertising architecture and its focus on psychographics over demographics is aligned with the dynamics of social media in general.

In the “Age of Social Networks,” the average age of a Twitter user was revealed as 39. Now we learn that 38% of Twitter users are age 35 and older with the greatest concentration of users falling between 25 to 34. And, as we already know, in Twitter, Social Media, and now mobile social networking, women rule.

Examining the composition of ethnicity in Twitter brings to life the richness of diversity, but also its assemblage of core groups, mainly White, African American and Hispanic.

Twitter Users are $chooled

Education and income levels naturally factor into the focus and segmentation of how businesses connect with distinct markets. For some, the desire to reach educated individuals with greater levels of discretionary income is paramount. It seems that Twitter is a network that caters to the well-educated as well as those with higher household incomes.

Twitter is a Mobile Experience

One in four users actively access Facebook from mobile devices. That equates to roughly 100 million users, which is for the time being, far greater than the total number of all Twitter inhabitants. Perhaps it’s part of the engineered simplicity. Whereas 25% of Facebook users are mobile, almost two-thirds of Twitter users are comfortable accessing the service via their mobile phone – thanks in large part to the brilliant array of third-party applications available by popular developers.

Twitter is an Exchange for Products and Services

For companies seeking to engage prospects, customers, and influencers in Social Media, Twitter is a goldmine. 42% stated they wish to learn about products and services and 41% already provide opinions about them.  Many updates in Twitter related to products/services are indeed questions about experiences. 31% of those polled admit to asking for user opinions. Here’s where businesses also need to pay attention. 28% of users polled are seeking discounts and offers. 21% claim to purchase products and at the moment, 19% are taking to Twitter to seek support.

If You Tweet Away, I Will Follow…

For businesses looking to engage in the conversation, Twitter is proving to be a means to connect the dots. For those brands that can effectively listen, respond, and also spark clicks to action, they will weave a rich network of invaluable touchpoints for customer acquisition and retention. According to the survey, Twitters users are more than likely to follow brands in companies at profound levels when compared to other social networks. In Twitter, 51% responded yes whereas 84% responded no when compared to all social network users.

And So It Continues…

To leave you with one last point intended to convey the preponderance of social networks. The adoption of social networks is soaring across every demographic at a minimum of 10% with some as high as over 20% between 2009 and 2010 alone. Don’t expect that steep incline to taper any time soon.

By Brian Solis: www.briansolis.com
Image Credit: Shutterstock

This week, social media news was dominated by three things: Facebook privacy concerns, Twitter troubles and one seriously golden girl, Betty White.

If you missed anything over the course of the last seven days — we know, the thought of losing all your Twitter followers was so tragic as to be totally debilitating — we’ve got all the top stories right here. Read up, get educated and wow all your Twitter followers (who have been thankfully restored) with your ample knowledge of all things social media and tech.

1). Betty White on “Saturday Night Live”: Every Single Sketch: Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live, realizing the dreams of more than 500,000 Facebook users. Reception from fans and critics alike was mostly positive, and a day later White’s gig led Google searches and Twitter conversations.

2). Twitter Bug Lets You Control Who Follows You: Twitter had an embarrassing bug on its hands –- one that allowed users to make anyone follow them.

3). Another Next Generation iPhone Found, Dissected: A company generally well-known for its secrecy, Apple has been losing the next generation iPhone left and right; this time, a slew of images and a video of another iPhone 4G prototype appeared on a Vietnamese site.

4). AT&T Has iPhone Exclusivity Until 2012: It was speculative before given the lack of independent confirmation, but now apparently Apple has gone on record to confirm that the original deal signed with AT&T for iPhone exclusivity back in 2007 was a five-year deal.

5). Google and Verizon to Launch Tablet Computer: Add a big new twist to the tablet computing wars. The Wall Street Journal is confirming that Google plans to bring a tablet computer to market with Verizon Wireless.

6). NYU Students Raise More than $100,000 to Build Facebook Alternative: Four New York University students have a vision to build Diaspora, “an open source personal web service that will put individuals in control of their data,” or essentially the anti-Facebook.

7). Adobe Responds to Apple’s Attacks on Flash with New Ad Campaign: Two weeks ago, Steve Jobs published his now infamous “Thoughts on Flash” memo on Apple.com. Adobe has now responded with its own message, a message of “love,” “choice” and “open markets.”

8). Obama: iPads Make Information a Distraction: Although before his inauguration U.S. President Barack Obama was rarely seen without his BlackBerry, he has criticized the current crop of popular consumer gadgets for helping make information a “distraction.”

9). BlackBerry Tablet to Launch This Year: Research in Motion is set to enter the tablet computing market with plans to unveil a 8.9-inch BlackBerry device later this year.

10. Android Now Outselling iPhone: Smartphones carrying Google’s Android operating system outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010, according to new research from NPD.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto

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Tammy Camp is a serial entrepreneur, company advisor, blogger and adventure traveler. Find her via @TammyCamp on Twitter.

Blackberry Rocks!, the enterprise device, can do more for your business than just receive e-mails and make phone calls. The increasingly robust list of BlackBerry apps can significantly improve how small businesses operate, simultaneously boosting productivity and the bottom-line.

The trick isn’t so much finding BlackBerry apps for small businesses, but rather finding the best ones. Here are 10 of the best.

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1. BlackBerry Messenger

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My favorite BlackBerry app, bar none, allows unlimited free worldwide text/image chatting with other BBM users. In a small business landscape that’s increasingly decentralized, BlackBerry Messenger allows you to keep up with your partners, connect with clients, organize tasks, and get work done.

Cost: Free

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2. Evernote

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Ever have that perfect product idea, or new marketing insight, but got stuck without a way to write it down or share it? Evernote helps bring some sense to your world, allowing you to make lists, take notes, share memos, tag pictures, and organize streams of information, all on the move with your BlackBerry. Go innovate with freedom.

Cost: Free

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3. Google Sync

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Google Calendar and Google Contacts are great ways to keep track of your business network and appointments. However, each application is only truly valuable when it is mobile and up-to-date. The Google Sync BlackBerry app syncs your calendar and contacts between your phone and computer, allowing you to add, modify, or delete items on either device, and access them on-the-go.

Cost: Free

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4. WordPress

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I’m of the opinion that every small business should have a blog that exhibits who its employees are, what they do, and shares their expertise for free. The BlackBerry WordPress app offers most of what you’d expect in the web version, allowing you to add posts, manage content, and moderate comments.

Cost: Free

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5. Skype

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Many small businesses, especially those that work internationally, use Skype for video and text communication. Skype is a free, effective, and enjoyable way to interact with partners and clients alike. The Skype BlackBerry app gives users much of the functionality of the desktop version, allowing them to make Skype-to-Skype calls, chat through a wireless connection, and access to their contact list.

The Skype BlackBerry app is available exclusively for Verizon phones. For non-Verizon BlackBerry users, check out iSkoot.

Cost: Free (plus Skype call rates, as applicable)

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6. Google Mobile Apps

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Google Mobile Apps for BlackBerry includes versions of Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, and more. The apps allow you to receive, edit, and send e-mails and docs, catch up on your subscribed blogs, and make sure you don’t miss any meetings.

Cost: Free

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7. Bridge for Highrise

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The Bridge BlackBerry app for Highrise by 37 Signals transfers your detailed business contacts, tasks, and e-mail info from desktop to mobile, and vice versa, ensuring you’re never too far from what you need. The app is easy to install for existing Highrise subscribers, and offers full create, edit, and delete capabilities for all standard data.

Cost: Subscription plans, starting at $4.99 per month

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8. Tungle.me

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Tungle.me enhances your existing calender by syncing it with a public version where you can propose meetings to partners or clients and allow them to book the appointments at pre-approved times. Tungle.me’s customized pages make calenders easy to find, and their BlackBerry app allows you to use most of the features from anywhere.

Cost: Free

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9. Do Not Disturb

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Sometimes, phone calls bring good news to a small business. Other times, they’re unwanted distractions that interrupt your actual day-to-day operations. The Do Not Disturb BlackBerry app allows you to automatically filter your calls — screening out some numbers while letting others through — without turning off or silencing your phone.

Cost: $3.99

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10. IM+

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IM+ is an all-in-one instant messaging system that integrates AIM/iChat, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk MySpace, Skype and Facebook chats into one BlackBerry app. With this tool, you can keep up with business partners and stay connected with clients, no matter what system they use.

Cost: $39.99

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Conclusion

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There are many great BlackBerry apps for small business owners, allowing you to stay in touch, get things done, and move forward. These 10 must-haves serve as a great starting point. Do you use any that are not mentioned here? Leave them in the comments section below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto

Society makes heroes out of entrepreneurs and adventurers that tilt at windmills and succeed. Napster slays the music industry! Twitter comes out of nowhere!

The thing about taking on the biggest giants is that most of the time (so often as to be all of the time if you’re willing to do some rounding) you fail. You don’t just fail at the end, you often fail long before the end.

Yet the dreamers persist. These are usually the garage entrepreneurs, people with little market success behind them, those working without a track record or significant resources. People forget that Google was backed with millions of dollars from the biggest VCs in the world when they took on Yahoo.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to be the guy who says, “go for it!” but the fact is, most of the time the choice to take on impossible odds, to challenge the entrenched monopolist is the work of the lizard brain. After all, if you dream the impossible dream and go after the thing that can’t possibly work, you don’t have to worry about being criticized, you don’t have to worry about the responsibility of shipping or serving your customers. After all, it was impossible.

Tangling with the largest possible opponent, when you are severely overmatched is a way of giving in to the resistance, of not actually shipping.

My best advice: win little battles. Get in the habit of winning, of shipping, of having customers that can’t live without you. Once you’ve demonstrated you know how to do the art, then go after the windmills.

By Seth Godin: www.sethgodin.typepad.com

A website called CougarLife, a dating network targeted toward “women in their prime,” has called Google out for sexism because the search engine has classified CougarLife ads as not safe for families. But CougarLife’s CEO says Google doesn’t make the same distinction for “sugar daddy”-type dating sites, whose ads can be seen by anyone.

A Googlee rep told the National Post today that the classification of CougarLife ads as for-adults-only was “not just about the ad, it’s about the ad and the landing page of the site[...] Anything that’s considered non-family safe will not run on the Google content network at this point.”

But defining “family-safe” is a confusing exercise in community standards, it seems.

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The CougarLife Angle

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CougarLife’s landing page states, “Cougars are classy, confident women that already possess many of the finer things in life — but now want the young, hot guy to go with it.” The copy and the images that go along with it are fairly innocuous:

Even a CougarLife YouTube ad, which touts the attractiveness of a late-30s/early-40s woman to a group of construction workers, comes off as cute rather than trashy:

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The Sugar Daddy Angle

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On the other hand, SeekingArrangement is considered family-safe by Google but is totally sleazy by other standards. Copy on its landing page reads, “Sugar Babes are college students, aspiring actresses or someone just starting out. You seek a generous benefactor to pamper, mentor and take care of you — perhaps to help you financially?”

The site goes on to describe a mutually beneficial relationship as “a relationship between an older and wealthy individual who gives a young person expensive gifts or financial assistance in return for friendship or intimacy.” Inviting young people to walk the fine and blurry line between sex-related leeching and bald prostitution is safe for families?

And since “family” is a euphemism for “children,” let’s make the distinction even clearer: Would you rather have your kids know that mature ladies can be desirable to cute young guys, or that college girls can get their bills paid by having sexual relationships with older men? One message seems fairly sex-positive, and the other just creepy.

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A Culture of Stigma

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When it comes to online dating, statistics show that women over a certain age typically have a more difficult time than their younger counterparts. Yet men in the same age range don’t suffer nearly as much when it comes to getting attention from potential partners. This latest revelation — that someone at Google considers something about CougarLife inappropriate — might have less to do with childproofing online ads and more to do with the larger cultural bias against mature women dating younger men.

Have a look at CougarLife, and let us know if you see anything there that you personally would consider unsafe for families — especially when comparing the site to dating networks of the “sugar daddy” variety.

[img credit: dracobotanicus.]

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Facebook just announced a tool that notifies you by e-mail or SMS text message when someone logs into your Facebook profile from an unknown computer.

The idea is to help you recognize when a hacker has broken into your account so you can respond quickly by either changing your password (if that’s still possible) or contacting Facebook.

Once you enable the notifications, you’ll be required to identify each computer you use to log in when you first use it and choose whether or not it’s a private or public machine. You’ll be able to see a history of registrations from machines potentially used by hackers, and of course those hackers will be forced to type something into the identification field to get in, so you should be able to tell whether it was just a login that you forgot or not.

Here’s a quick guide to turning this feature on and using it.

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Step 1: Go to Account Settings and Enable Notifications

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When you’re logged into Facebook, you’ll see the word “Account” in the top right corner of the browser window. Click there to get a drop-down menu of options, then click on “Account Settings,” as pictured below.

You’ll end up looking at a page that lists ways you can customize your account, including “Name,” “Password,” “Linked Accounts” and “more.” As long as you don’t navigate away from the “Settings” tab, you’ll see “Account Security” close to the bottom of the list. Click “change” on the right to show the following option:

Check “Yes” when you see the prompt, “Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?” Then click “Save.” The feature is turned on. Now we’ll show you how to use it.

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Step 2: Log In and Register Your Computer

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The settings won’t be customizable until you register the computer you’re logged in with, so you’ll have to first log out and then log back in. You can do this from the “Accounts” button in the top-right corner, as we mentioned before. When you log in again, you’ll see a screen titled “Register this computer.”

Type the name of the computer in (it can be anything you want as long as it’s something you’ll recognize and remember), and choose whether you want Facebook to remember this computer or not.

Facebook suggests a good rule of thumb: If the computer is a public one (like one you’d use at a library, a shared work computer or a machine in your school’s computer lab), leave the box unchecked so it will have to be registered each time a new login occurs, leading to an email or text notification.

If it’s a machine you use every day, then go ahead and check the box; you probably don’t want to receive an email every time you log into Facebook from a safe place!

Now that your computer is registered, you can see more options when you revisit the “Account Settings” page where you first enabled the notifications. You’ll see a history of registrations; it won’t record every time you log into a computer that’s already registered, but it will record every new registration, which should include at least the first time any hacker logs in.

You can check or uncheck the option to have the immediate notifications sent to your cell phone via text message in addition to the basic email option.

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Two More Things to Know

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Keep in mind that the certificate that identifies your computer when it logs into Facebook is stored by your browser in a library of cookies. These cookies might end up getting cleared for any number of reasons, so don’t worry if you have to re-register your regular machines from time to time.

Facebook also implemented a new feature that asks security questions (like identifying your birthdate or who your first kiss was) when unrecognized and suspicious logins occur. If the would-be hacker can’t answer the question, he or she is out of luck.

[image courtesy of iStockphoto, gremlin]

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In the ongoing Adobe/Apple debate over Flash and its place in the mobile web, a curious term has been invoked by both companies: Open. Apple cited “open” as one reason that Flash isn’t allowed on the iPhone and Adobe has adopted a “we love choice” mantra in its response. One can’t help but laugh that two of the most historically closed companies in technology are now in a proverbial pissing match over which company has embraced openness more.

People that know me know that I’m in favor of calling a spade a spade, so let me be clear: Apple and Adobe’s use of terms like “open market,” “freedom,” and “choice” are completely dishonest and mendacious. Claiming openness as a virtue in this debate is disingenuous on the part of both companies, and arguments about the technologies in question can stand on their own without “open” muddying the waters.

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Both Companies Are Only Open When it Benefits Them

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Apple and Adobe want to talk about the importance of being open, adhering to standards and offering developers grand ideals about things like “freedom” and “choice.” But when it comes down to it, each company is only open when being open benefits the company itself.

I’m not criticizing that decision; the choice to support “open” on the basis of business and not idelogy makes perfect sense to me. It’s actually what most companies — even those that invest much more in open source tech than Apple and Adobe combined — choose to do.

However, it is utterly laughable for either company to argue from an ideological position about the power of being open. It’s ludicrous, and it just doesn’t meld with reality.

Let me explain why.

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Open Web vs. Open Development Platforms

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In the mobile application space, we talk a lot about web apps and native applications. Web apps are applications that run entirely inside the web browser. It’s the difference between accessing Gmail on the iPhone and using the built-in mail application.

The Apple/Adobe feud actually crosses over into both of these areas.

• Apple disallows Flash as a browser plugin to run on the iPhone, it says, because of performance and because it wants to focus on open web standards, not on proprietary plugins.
• Adobe is angry that Apple has banned the use of its cross-platform compiler in Flash CS5 in the creation of native apps submitted to the App Store.

These are two separate issues, but both are good indications as to why neither company can claim to really care about being “open” except when it suits them.

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Web Standards

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In the case of supporting open web standards, Apple’s position is one that many web standards advocates agree with: Technologies such as JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5 have open specifications and can be implemented in a number of different ways on different platforms.

The W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) is the international organization that works to create the standards for the web. Apple is a member of the W3C, along with Adobe, Microsoft and Google.

While Adobe can argue that elements of Flash (through its Open Screen Project) are indeed open source, Flash itself is not an open standard. While Adobe cites some open source implementations in its “truth about Flash”, like Gnash — the open source Flash alternative — those same runtimes cannot achieve parity with the closed-source alternatives because parts of Flash associated with DRM and other content controls aren’t available. Just ask XBMC users in the UK who can’t play BBC iPlayer content anymore.

Unlike HTML5 and CSS3 and related technologies, Flash is not an open standard on the web. Adobe might license some of its technology free of charge, and it may have some of its SWF spec available, but the entirety of the Flash ecosystem is not open, nor is it a web standard. It’s hypocritical for Adobe to say that they support freedom of choice when that freedom doesn’t extend to implementations of its own technologies.

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Defining “Native” Code

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However, Apple isn’t fault-free in this discussion either. Whether you agree with Apple’s stance on cross-platform compilers and compatibility layers or not, those very same provisions — rationalized just a few paragraphs after espousing the virtues of open standards — are also doublespeak.

Apple is against the use of tools like Flash CS5 in iPhone application development because those tools are ultimately controlled by one party — Adobe — and could potentially cause compatibility or performance problems for the iPhone.

This is understandable. It’s also understandable that developers who already have to pay $99 a year just to build apps for the iPhone can’t pick what tools they use to create those apps. Adobe’s own employees have made it clear how they feel about the issue, and the company is encouraging Flash developers to move to Android.

Even non-Flash developers are bothered by this move. Just this week, veteran Mac software developer Wolf Rentzsch announced that he would be canceling C4, a conference for indie Mac developers, in part because of Apple’s decision regarding cross-platform compilers.

So in this scenario yes, Apple is preventing developer choice. This in itself wouldn’t be that big of a deal — it might be upsetting and aggravating, but it wouldn’t be as hypocritical — if not for all the warm and fuzzy talk about the importance of being open in regards to web applications.

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Screw Being ‘Open,’ Let’s Just Be Honest

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Neither Apple nor Adobe is a poster child for open software, open standards or open development. That doesn’t mean either company is bad. It does mean that bringing those sorts of emotion-driven phrases into the debate only conflates the issue and makes things more difficult to dissect.

Adobe is in a difficult position in this debate because it’s an easy target. There aren’t any mobile devices that ship with full Flash support (‘coming soon” doesn’t count), and more and more content publishers are either moving to HTML5 for video or exploring native applications (not created in CS5) in lieu of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

The mobile web is not the same as the web on the desktop, and the sooner everyone realizes that, the better. I would much prefer Adobe show off more first-hand demonstrations of what Flash can do on mobile devices, why it is a suitable technology for touch interfaces and how embedded systems can use it rather than get into arguments about what is or is not the future of video and whether or not Flash is a suitable IDE for native mobile applications.

On the flip side, I would much rather Apple continue to show its support of the open web and web standards by furthering development of WebKit and building those features into its mobile and desktop devices instead of micro-managing its vast army of mobile developers.

In a perfect world, both companies could agree to disagree and move forward on their own path without attacking the other. Sadly, I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon.

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