NASA’s Tweetup Has Liftoff

Last month, we told you about NASA’s Tweet-up contest, where 100 lucky Twitter’s would be invited to watch Space Shuttle Atlantis take off.  The shuttle took off successfully at Monday at 2:28 EST, for an 11 day space mission and deliver necessary spare parts to the International Space Station 200 miles above the Earth, while those 100 lucky Twitter users stood by and shared their experience with the rest of the world through the social media site.

NASA had developed a special NASA Tweet-Up Twitter account, where they had created a List of attendees of which anyone on Twitter could follow and watch tweets come in live from the event.  The Tweet-up was a 2 day event, which gave Twitterer’s a VIP look a the inside works of NASA, and a front row view of the launch from the media circle at the Kennedy Space Center. (more…)

This Week In Social Media – November 13, 2009

This Week In Social Media: Nov. 13, 2009 iePlexus from iePlexus on Vimeo.

From Facebook groups being invaded, to Rupert Mudoch taking his New Corps Sites off Google, this is what happened this week in the World of Social Media & on the World Wide Web. (more…)

Give It a Shot: Google’s Vaccination Tracker

Many of us consult Google Maps when planning a road trip, and the application is always useful for locating a nearby pizza delivery place. Apparently, its utility doesn’t end there. With flu season hitting its seasonal stride and concerns about the H1N1 virus still running rampant, the folks at Google have updated their mapping app accordingly.

The new feature, accessible at google.com/flushot, can locate sources for regular flu shots and the H1N1 vaccine as well. In place of the traditional push pin graphics that mark potential destinations on Google Maps, the flu shot tracker substitutes little red and blue syringes. Blue indicates a source for H1N1 shots and red designates seasonal shots. (more…)

YouTube About To Get More High Def

Starting Monday, you may notice YouTube videos get a bit clearer.  That’s because YouTube announced that you will now be able to upload and watch videos in 1080p.  For those of you not technology friendly, or literate, 1080p is the picture type usually associated with Blu-ray players.  Not only will videos be clearer, but they will also be larger, which will appeal to people who have larger computer monitors. 

To be able to post videos in the new 1080p format, you will need a camera which shoots in 1080p.  However, it is becoming more common feature in video cameras, so if you have recently purchased a new camera, there is a good chance you’ll be able to test the new feature.  YouTube had said that if users have already posted videos in 1080p’s, there is no need to re-upload them, because  the company is in the process of reformatting them and will feature a number of them on the site on Monday.

Late last year, YouTube introduced High Definition videos to the site.  Under the current format, YouTube supports videos in 720p for High Definition videos.

Your Facebook Security At Risk

A group known as Control Your Info, invaded nearly 300 Facebook groups this week, demonstrating how users need to pay more attention to their accounts.  Facebook groups are becoming an increasingly large target for hackers, primarily because if a group admin leaves, an option to take over the group is open to anyone.  If someone was to take over a group, they could change everything, from the name, pictures, objectives, and just about anything you can think of, along with sending messages to the group as a whole. 

Control Your Info, made Facebook users wary as they joined and took over 289 groups.  “Once we were administrators we owned the groups and could have changed any setting,” the groups website stated.  “We chose to change the picture, the name and the description of every group. Our intention was and is to restore these groups to their original form and find a suitable admin among the members. To be able to do this, we first backed up all the data we wanted to replace.” (more…)

Internet About To Get SPeeDY

Are you constantly complaining at how slow your Internet speed is?  You may soon be in luck, because Google announced today, that they are in the early stages of a project in efforts to make the Internet nearly two times faster than it is now.  SPDY (Speedy), is an Internet protocol, which would take over the Internets current HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

Google’s Chromium Blog explains, “We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP.  HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web’s tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.” (more…)

The Twitter Plateau

Last month, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams announced that Twitter’s US growth had been slowing recently.  Today several new reports released some confirming and challenging information.

Compete.com, which monitors website traffic, had reported Twitter’s unique views, have been relatively close and haven’t changed much since June.  Of course last year at this time, the site had roughly 3.4 million unique views, and just last month saw close to 20 million more unique views.  The plateau has been a bit confusing for experts though because Twitter has been embraced by everyone from celebrities, every day people, businesses and organizations.  (more…)

Social Media Coming To A Game Console Near You

It seems like only yesterday, that everyone in the neighborhood had a brand new gaming console called Nintendo.  Playing a 2-D version of Mario was the most high tech game at the time, and a few years later, the release of the Super Nintendo blew America away.  It was the Nintendo 64, where everyone first began to grasp the idea of 3D graphics in games and since then, the PlayStation, Xbox & Wii have become some of our favorite gaming systems.  From being able to only play games, to being able to actually work out daily, video game systems have come a long way.  So what will come next?

Luckily we won’t have to wait long.  Next Tuseday, November 12, 2009, Microsoft plans to release the latest version of the Xbox360.  The new software will be a step up from the current version, heading to the internet integrating the world of social media.  In June, the company announced they’d release the console which would include Facebook, Twitter, last.fm, and Zune video.  (more…)

The Biggest Loser: Twitter Edition?

Considering the brisk sales of supermarket tabloids and the ever increasing popularity of gossip sites like TMZ.com, it’s evident that Americans are obsessed with body image. To some extent, this could be viewed as a good thing. After all, raising a nation of overweight slobs does little for our self-esteem, let alone our reputation overseas.

But it seems almost too obvious to mention the harmful implications of this nationwide craze. Children and teens in particular face pressure to live up to an unrealistic physical ideal. To speculate that skinny cover models on magazine covers bear some correlation to anorexia and bulimia rates in America wouldn’t be fair, but it wouldn’t be outrageous either. (more…)

Consumers Ready for Social Media Holiday Deals

Everyone is gearing up for the holiday season.  While many businesses have said that they will be using social media sites this year to attract online shoppers and offering exclusive discounts to users, consumers are already scoping out discounts through social media networks. 

The advertising agency Razorfish released the results of survey on Tuesday, suggesting that online businesses should start to see profits for the holiday season very soon, if not immediately.  Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, falls on November 30 this year and has been the No. 1 online shopping day since its start in 2004, but online shoppers are looking to start their holiday shopping early this year.  (more…)