solarstats.com

So it’s understandable that something as new as a social aggregator has a long way to go, Sultan continued. “They still need to enhance functionality to allow you to dial it down or filter only what’s relevant,” he said. “When either AI (artificial intelligence) technology, ’smart’ filters, or other user-based filters are implemented, the model has a high chance of taking off.”

But taking overkill and putting it all in one place doesn’t mean that it’s not overkill anymore. Consider it social-networking’s first identity crisis.

That’s really the final word on lifestreaming services: they help out, but simply don’t do enough to clean up the social-media experience. Beyond simple aggregation, it’s a whole new can of worms–I can handle multiple e-mail and IM accounts through Digsby, update Twitter and Pownce and Jaiku through Twhirl, and take care of all my photo- and video-uploading needs through the Flock browser. That’s enough to make any geek want an aggregator for the aggregators.

With all the talk about social network aggregators over the past few weeks, you’d think they were going to reverse global warming.

To an extent, the lifestreaming services have an excuse. “A lot of (lifestreaming) is early to market,” Sultan said. This is, after all, the fast-paced world of Web applications, where it’s common to announce or roll out a product eons before it’s truly ready (hello, OpenSocial). With small start-ups, it’s less likely that someone else will replicate the idea first, although the fact that there’s already a glut of lifestreaming services does sort of render that point moot.

Technology blogs have been chirping enthusiastically about “lifestreaming” services like FriendFeed and Socialthing, which claim to provide an answer to growing complaints about “social-networking fatigue.” They sort updates across networking and community sites into a single destination–which, in a sense, actually might be the social-media world’s equivalent of reversing global warming.

To anyone with more than three or four social-networking profiles, lifestreaming services should be a godsend. That is, until you consider the flip side: too much information, and for the most part, not much flexibility on the picking-and-choosing front. A single, giant feed of dozens of Flickr photo albums (”Grand Canyon Vacation Album #3!”) alongside Facebook status updates (”Brad is at the office”) and Twitter minutiae (”I really need a shower!!!”) turns us on to the realization that even our friends broadcast a whole lot of dumb stuff that we don’t really care to read about.

“Social-media aggregators provide a high-level view of activity taking place on social networks, but do not replace the experience of being immersed within them,” commented Eric Litman, chairman of social-media agency Aux Interactive. “So much of the tone of the dialogue in social networks is set by the user experience of the networks themselves.”

Let me get this straight: The last time I checked, I had accounts on Facebook, MySpace.com, Twitter, Flickr, Plaxo, Digg, Tumblr, Pownce, and probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting–that’s not even counting whatever I do with my Google and Yahoo accounts. Now I’m supposed to choose between Pulse, FriendFeed, Digsby, Socialthing, Spokeo, Profilactic, and goodness knows what other start-ups that offer me the ability to aggregate my contacts’ activity from all the aforementioned social networks, and more. Oh, great.

Don’t get me wrong. I think we need some way to tidy up the messy social Web. What OpenID is trying to do for log-in and password management, lifestreaming services are hoping to accomplish for the voyeuristic itch to know exactly what all our online contacts are doing. That’s a good thing.

“Right now, we just simply feed all this stuff in, and it can be a bit overwhelming,” said Matt Galligan, founder of Socialthing. One of the company’s goals, he explained, is to be able to showcase “interesting” updates without requiring the user to do a whole lot of manual prioritizing. “Getting the most important stuff to you is what I really want to do,” he said.

Unfortunately, they still don’t get rid of the hot air.

Whoever manages to mesh all this into a single “social dashboard” just might be the next hero of the Web.

“The big sell for these sorts of products is the tipping point at which users will see these as a viable alternative to manage their many profiles,” social media strategist Oz Sultan told me in an interview. He compared it to the rise of universal instant-messaging clients like Adium and Trillian several years ago, which took off amid the disconnect between chat software from AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and more. “It becomes either overkill or a system resource hog,” Sultan said.

Then there’s the fact that, despite the information overload that a social feed aggregator provides, it’s still feature-light. Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed, perhaps the most “social” of the bunch, let users comment on items and add favorites; many of the others, like Socialthing, are meant to be more along the lines of a personal reference. In either case, none of them replace the need to still log in and visit all the Flickrs and Twitters and Diggs from which they collect data.

Continental is testing a new system that allows people checking in via their cell phone to get their boarding pass sent directly to their phones. The electronic boarding pass, which has an encrypted two-dimensional bar code, can be used instead of a paper boarding pass to get through airport security and to board planes, according to a story published Tuesday in The New York Times.

The Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency that oversees security for airports, likes the electronic boarding passes too, because the two-dimensional bar codes are harder to forge than the one-dimensional bar codes that are used today on many tickets printed online.

Harteveldt told the Times that a mobile check-in system also has other benefits. For example, airlines can communicate directly with passengers about on-board services, provide information about baggage pickup, allow passengers to upgrade or change seating, check standby status, and help rebook canceled or delayed flights directly from their cell phones.

Cell phone check-in and electronic boarding passes sound like a great idea to me. Whenever I travel, I try to check in online and print my boarding pass from home to avoid lines at the airport. But getting to a computer with a printer isn’t always convenient. And more often than not, I find myself running late. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve broken into a cold sweat sitting in the back seat of a taxi trying to get through the Midtown tunnel at rush hour to make my flight out of JFK. Checking in via cell phone and not worrying about printing my boarding pass would ease a lot of my last-minute travel anxieties.

The TSA has been working with Continental since December to test the new electronic boarding pass, the Times said. Continental is only using the new boarding pass technology on nonstop domestic flights out of its hub in Houston. But the airline will likely expand the service to other airports later this spring.

All this sounds terrific for a busy traveler such as myself. But for all these services to work as advertised, indoor cell phone coverage will have to be beefed up in many airports. It also wouldn’t hurt if airports added more power outlets. The worst thing that could happen is for my boarding pass to disappear before I can get on my flight because the battery on my cell phone died.

In the future, air travelers across the country will be able to get their boarding passes sent to their cell phones.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks mobile check-in and digital boarding passes are a good idea. According to Henry H. Harteveldt, a vice president with Forrester Research, about 47 percent of frequent travelers are interested in using their phones for flight check-in, he told The New York Times. And about 42 percent said they’d be interested in using their mobile phone as a boarding pass.

Several U.S. airlines, including American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, and Alaska, have already been allowing people to check-in for flights via their cell phones. But they still have to print out the tickets at a kiosk at the airport or a computer printer before they arrive at the airport. Continental is the first airline in the U.S. to test the new electronic passes.

While it’s unclear at this time what a strategic partnership would look like, this isn’t the first time that Gannett has involved itself with a student newspaper. In August of 2006, a Gannett newspaper purchased FSView & Florida Flambeau, an independent publication that serves the student body at Florida State University. A year later, the University of Central Florida’s newspaper was also sold to a Gannett publication. Unlike those instances, the Collegian is run by the university and, as The Student Newspaper Survival Blog points out, “if a deal goes through with Colorado State University, it would be the first time Gannett gets involved in a student paper that had been run by a public university.”

The column also questions the college president’s willingness to contemplate such a venture. “Amid the secrecy, mistruths and rumors, one thing is certain: To our president, a businessman by trade, the CSU student voice has a price. And it’s a dish best served mum, in the final hour and while students are still trying to find their classes. … We’re students, representing students, working for students. Who do you work for?”

I won’t speculate what changes the paper might undergo in the process, but it seems safe to say that both the paper’s independence and integrity may be compromised in the process, perhaps even the integrity of the school itself. The Rocky Mountain Collegian has operated as a part of the school for more than 100 years. Why change things now?

The university has appealed to The Coloradoan to outline the advantages such a relationship would provide to its students and the school itself, but I think it’s far more important to assess what’s in it for the Gannett corporation and The Coloradoan. If The Collegian is already profitable, why share the profits with a major corporation when they can be spent on the university’s students? If the paper is relying on money from the school, what would be lost in the transformation toward a profitable enterprise?

Not surprisingly, students at Colorado University have expressed concern and outrage over the news that their paper may become affiliated with Gannett. Jeremy Trujillo, the paper’s newsroom manager, expressed concern that students were not invited to participate in Tuesday’s meeting, he told the Student Press Law Center, “I think the way it went down was somewhat shady. They should’ve had a representative from student media or the Collegian to at least provide insight about how this place operates on a daily basis.”

In Wednesday’s edition of the school paper, an editorial titled “Collegian is not for sale,” explains in no uncertain terms that the staff of the newspaper is opposed to any potential partnership with the corporate media outlet. “The Collegian is not for sale, not interested in a “strategic partnership,” a one-night stand or any other form of fraternization with corporate media. We prefer independence, and we’ll fight for it.”

It’s comforts me knowing that the students at the Rocky Mountain Collegian will not take this advance by Gannett lying down, but their determination may not be enough to stave off the corporate interests.

For students at Colorado State University, it appears the keys to their student-run paper, The Rocky Mountain Collegian, may soon be wrestled away and handed over to newspaper giant Gannett. According to a recent AP story, “Officials with The Coloradoan in Fort Collins met Tuesday with Colorado State University leaders to discuss a ’strategic partnership’ to run the campus paper.”

The Rocky Mountain Collegian last made headlines in September of last year when the editorial board published a four word column that read, “Taser this - FUCK BUSH.” While the editorial may not have been particularly insightful, and certainly wasn’t nuanced, it is absolutely essential that the students be able to publish what they see fit. Despite any forthcoming promises not to interfere with the students’ editorial control, it seems doubtful that they’d allow such an incendiary column to run without any form of response.

While some may contend that the primary role of college newspapers is to prepare students for work in the establishment press, school newspapers also serve a vital role in keeping the community informed. In fact, college newspapers have broken stories on many occasions that resonated in the mainstream press. Some of these stories may have never seen the light of day if it weren’t for the bold actions of determined college students and the newspapers these students control.

And when you click the “Sign up now” button? You’re invited to “join the conversation.” Yeah, that’s right. Now think about whether “the conversation” really wants to hear about that pint of Ben & Jerry’s you’re about to dig into.

Deep.

“Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved,” co-founder Biz Stone wrote on the company blog. “Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be.”

Indeed, the microblogging service unveiled Tuesday its revamped home page, which doesn’t change anything for people who are already using Twitter–it’s just a different look and feel for twitter.com if you haven’t logged in.

Twitter’s mantra has changed from “What are you doing?” to “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” Chances are, new visitors to Twitter.com are checking it out because they’ve heard about it in the news–or even integrated into news coverage, as the likes of CNN and MSNBC have started doing. The new language reflects that.

Twitter is not all about you anymore. Now go drown your sorrows in a bottle of delicious maple syrup that you’re about to pour on that giant stack of blueberry pancakes.

So what’s new? Well, the interface is cleaned up and is a little more aesthetically pleasing, with Twitter’s bird mascot now fluttering around a Twitter logo vaguely set up to be a sunburst emerging from some fluffy clouds. (They sure do think highly of themselves over there!) There’s a big Twitter Search button to “see what people are saying about” a given topic, putting the service’s utility front and center. Then there is a roster of trending topics by the hour, day, and week.

Dear Person Who Constantly Tweets About What He Or She Is Eating For Breakfast,

“We’re eager to see if encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery leads to a better first impression of Twitter,” Stone concluded in his blog post. So let me get this straight: Twitter has evolved into a 140-character magical mystery tour with a pretty cartoon bird to lead the way. Insert your favorite Harold and Kumar joke here!

Plenty of would-be buyers have been named for social news site Digg, but one we haven’t heard much about: Current Media, the cable and Web news channel that was launched by former vice president Al Gore.

It’s one of the juicy tidbits detailed in BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy’s book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, which hits bookstores on Thursday. In an excerpt posted to TechCrunch, Lacy writes about how executives Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose turned down a $100 million offer from Current in 2006 because they had, as TechCrunch paraphrased, “issues with control going forward.”

The thinking is consistent with what founder Rose told CNET News.com in February when asked about selling his company. “I’ve had several friends that have been acquired by the Yahoos and Googles of the world, and while there is some upside in certain things, for the most part, it slows things down,” Rose said at the time. “You can’t get a product out the door fast enough.”

Current, which filed for an initial public offering in January, now operates Current News, where users can vote on the news Digg-style and then see the top stories incorporated into an hourly news show on the cable network. Digg, meanwhile, remains the subject of acquisition rumors on the part of just about every major tech and media company around.

It would appear that the Enterprise 2.0 world is still recycling the same froth in an attempt to stand out. Here’s what Whatcott had to say:

I spent some time checking out the competition to benchmark our messaging and functionality. I was struck by how thoroughly undifferentiated the pitches were. Everyone was giving essentially the same demo, talking about the same functionality and use cases.

Walking around the exhibition floor, it looked like everybody was offering
very similar stuff–big focus on “communities”–creating them, managing
them, etc.

Not that there isn’t promise in all this 2.0 hoopla. There is. We just haven’t figured out what, precisely, it is. This is why it’s particularly useful to have open-source social applications like those from Ringside Networks, Drupal, and increasingly Alfresco (where I work). Few can afford to fork over millions of dollars on a promise that “social” will turn into cash. Open source allows experimentation with minimal capital investment. This is as it should be.

At present, all this “Build your own community!” and “Make your own companywide Facebook!” sound interesting but also a bit odd: Facebook remains a noisy, hustle-bustle of frantic friend-making followed by…tedious time-wasting. If that’s your aim, bravo! But if you have a job…it’s still not very effective at enabling you to do it better.

For those early few, look to open source. It’s the best way to try for free, tweak to individual needs, and pay for actual value delivered.

Internally, I heard from Jean Barmash on the Alfresco consulting team who echoed Jeff’s comments:

Over the next year we’re going to see the hype around Enterprise 2.0 reach a fever pitch, and many are going to be lost in disillusionment when it fails to turn to gold. However, in the mishmash there will be a few who finally figure it out, and the rest of the enterprise world will follow in due course.

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Until the money steps in, I think we’re going to remain in a curious limbo where “shiny baubles” (a colleague’s favorite term) get rolled out widely but for which few pay because no one on the enterprise side has really connected the dots between community, user-generated content, and enterprise productivity/business value.

I didn’t attend the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this year, but judging by Jeff Whatcott’s commentary, I’m not sure I missed much.

It feels like we’re in the early stages of Enterprise 2.0. Let’s call it Enterprise 1.8 where everyone is showing the right slideware and demos, but few, if any, really know how to put it all to productive business use.

The judge was apparently referring to the anti-drug campaign launched by the Reagan administration that was often ridiculed by skeptics who called it halfhearted and ineffective.

Update 9 p.m.: To include more on Glaser’s comments about efforts to prevent RealDVD from being used to pirate movies.

‘Just say no’

Under questioning by Real’s lawyers, Glaser tried to dispel MPAA assertions that RealDVD was created to help people pirate films. The studios have often cited an Associated Press report in which Glaser allegedly was “winking” to those who illegally download movies.

Glaser’s testimony promises to be the dramatic highpoint in the dispute between Real and the Motion Pictures Association of America over RealDVD. The two parties presented their cases before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel.

As far as those who don’t have any compunction about obtaining unauthorized content , they wouldn’t be interested in the $30 RealDVD because there’s lots of illegal software available on the Web that offers more features for free.

At this point, the judge got some in the courtroom to snickering when she said: “Do you think this will be more effective than ‘Don’t Say No?’”

“If you want to steal,” Glaser was quoted by the AP, “we remind you what the rules are and we discourage you from doing it, but we’re not your nanny.”

Glaser denied that quote was insincere. He noted that the company’s FAQ on RealDVD has strong language that warns consumers not to copy movies that they don’t own.

Glaser is set to again take the stand when the hearing resumes Wednesday morning.

SAN FRANCISCO–Rob Glaser, founder and CEO of RealNetworks, acknowledged in federal court on Tuesday that his company’s software, RealDVD, could be used to make unauthorized copies of DVD rentals.

RealDVD enables consumers to create copies of DVDs and store them on hard drives. The largest film studios filed a lawsuit last fall accusing Real of copyright violations and breach of contract. Real argues that the studios are using litigation to derail a potential competitor. The MPAA says Real is trying to make money off of the studios content without paying for it.

“We would need cooperation from the studios to mark (DVDs) some way differently so we would then operate on (the discs) in a different way,” Glaser testified.

Rob Glaser poses for a photo following his testimony in the RealDVD case.

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET Networks)

Glaser explained to the judge that the situations weren’t the same. Real wasn’t trying to convince teenagers not to experiment with drugs. The product was designed to appeal to responsible adults.

At stake in the trial is Real’s efforts to replace DVD players with its own player, called Facet, which is equipped with a hard drive. For the studios, a Real victory in the case could mean Hollywood would lose at least some control over who creates copies of films.

But Glaser said that the company does all that it can to “steer people away from that,” including limiting playback of copies to five separate machines. Moreover, he said the problem could be eliminated if the major movie studios helped create a way to identify a movie as a rental.

“The vibe at the stores is conducive to man meeting too: You can check your email among cuties, take a free workshop on anything from Photoshop to podcasting (a great opportunity to strike up a conversation), or just survey the, ahem, good-looking merchandise,” Cosmo concludes.

The article would appear to suggest that geeks could be faring better than ever in the social scene, though the weight room at the gym was also on the list. So perhaps it still takes brains and brawn.

The magazine notes that guys are natural gadget lovers and with Apple’s sales soaring, “more men than ever are stopping by Apple boutiques.”

Not a
Mac lover, not to worry. Another of the magazine’s recommendations is going to work for a tech company. More than a fifth of workers meet their spouse on the job, the magazine notes, adding that Cisco Systems is 78 percent male, while Hewlett-Packard’s workforce is 68 percent men.

I’m not sure this is what Ron Johnson had in mind when he set out to create Apple’s chain of retail stores, but recently the shops unexpectedly topped a list of hot spots.

Cosmo says that if you are looking to meet a man, you can’t do much better than heading to your nearest Apple store.

“These two projects present an extraordinary opportunity for Nebraska. It leaves no doubt that Nebraska can successfully compete for technology jobs,” Gov. Dave Heineman said in a statement.

Nebraska, while far away from Silicon Valley, has attracted some technology players, such as telecom companies and eBay’s PayPal, to the eastern region of the state.

Despite announcing 10 percent layoffs and a weak financial outlook earlier this week, Yahoo plans to build a new data center and open a customer care center in Nebraska, according to an announcement Friday by Nebraska’s governor.

Under the state’s Nebraska Advantage Tier 4 business incentives package, Yahoo will apply for various business incentives and tax breaks. And, in return, Yahoo would need to invest at least $100 million in capital and create 100 new jobs.

Update at 1:36 p.m. PDT: Details added.

The project will entail building a 150,000 square-foot data center in La Vista, a suburb of Omaha. And the Internet search pioneer will open a customer care center in Omaha.

Yahoo began searching for a data center site in the Midwest in January, and Nebraska officials said the state’s Nebraska Advantage program played a key role in wooing the Internet company.

The power user: MacBook Pro

Cons: The MacBook Air is expensive, at least for what it is, but consumers seem to be willing to pay for the portability. There are other sacrifices to be made as well, such as a lonely single USB port and no internal optical drive, which is a turnoff for a lot of people. Most consumers, though, don’t use either on a day-to day-basis, which is how current users make due, and they don’t seem to mind very much.

The new MacBooks: eeny, meeny, miny, mo…

The mobile user: MacBook Air

The frugal user: MacBook

Pros: The Air is by far the lightest and most svelte MacBook ever. If you’re looking for something truly portable–say you go from class to class a few times a day or move job sites several times–the 3-pound notebook is about perfect. It shares the MacBook’s 13.3-inch LED-backlit screen, though in a much thinner frame. It now features the same integrated Nvidia 9400M as the MacBook, but still has the sub-par Intel Core 2 Duo processors (that max out at 1.8GHz). Still, it’s light enough that you might even forget it’s there when you’re on the go, which is the point of this Apple.

Pros: If you’re going for power of speed on the go, like for video editing or encoding, then you’re looking for the MacBook Pro. It boasts a high-resolution display, an ExpressCard slot, and Firewire 800 for high-speed data transfer. The 15.4-inch LED screen is bright enough for editing in daylight while still keeping power consumption low enough that you can stay in the park. And it’s powered by dual graphics processors: an Nvidia 9400M GPU and a dedicated 9600M GT dedicated GPU. It also has the fastest processor option of the new MacBooks with a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.

As you’ve perhaps heard elsewhere on Crave, Apple on Tuesday held a pretty broad-reaching laptop event in which it updated its entire line of portable computers.

Each laptop is geared toward a certain kind of user. These users, in turn, each likely have a primary feature they want out of a laptop: portability, power, or price. While it’d be nice to have all three, that’s unrealistic, though these machines are all fairly close to each other on all three fronts.

Pros: The MacBook is the least expensive of the new laptops, but it packs enough juice to do pretty much anything most users would need. The 13.3-inch LED-backlit screen is made for Web browsing and watching videos. It’s small enough that you could carry it to and from work or school without too much fatigue. The 2.0 or 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processors won’t win any races, but a user would be hard-pressed to find issues with its performance, and it now features Nvidia’s 9400M GPUs, though not dedicated like the MacBook Pro’s.

Since this is the first significant portables upgrade since the original G4 PowerBooks several years ago, it makes it a great time to buy. Chances are you’re one of the types I cited above, and if you can figure out which, your choice may be much more simple.

Sure, there’s new tech and spec bumps to talk about, but the really interesting part is that Apple dramatically simplified its line. While the 17-inch model is still around (with a modest upgrade to the included RAM), the real stars are the new MacBook and the 15-inch MacBook Pro, as well as the lust-worthy MacBook Air. If you’re in the market for a new OS X portable, you’ve got some choices to make.

For complete coverage of the Apple notebook news, see “Apple polishes up its MacBook line.”

Cons: The Pro is the largest of the MacBooks, with the new version weighing 5.5 pounds at just under one inch thick. Because of the 15.4-inch screen, it has the largest footprint. In all, the weight-to-usability trade-off isn’t a bad one, but the size will be a deal-breaker for some.

Cons: At 4.5 pounds, the MacBook might be a little too large to keep with you at all times, but it’s not bad for shuttling around once or twice a day. The integrated Nvidia 9400M is fine for most video functions, but if you’re looking for hardcore game play or any real video editing or effects work, you’ll want to look at the MacBook Pro. There were rumors that Apple was preparing a sub-$1,000 MacBook, but instead it raised the entry price by $100, though you do get a SuperDrive for the price instead of a combo drive. Still, the price point has never been popular among fans.

(Credit:
Matt Hickey, using Apple images)