A Stream is Visual Blog all about you and your interests. Your stream is located at blastgroups.com/stream/yourname. Think of a Stream as a visual blog that writes itself; they are created on the fly as you bookmark and share websites, embed videos, add photos, and more. Learn more by checking out a Sample Stream …

Continue reading over at the BlastGroups Blog ??

Lots of people, especially young people, are all intent on voting but unfortunately forget the one key part - the registration.

The video is promoting a Google Maps voter registration info site at??maps.google.com/vote??where you can enter your address to find out how to get a registration card and when to send it in by.

[Link: 5 Friends.]

After hearing Matt Damon???s brilliant comparison of a Sarah Palin presidency to a bad Disney movie, CollegeHumor made the above trailer for ???Head of Skate???, where ???An Alaskan hockey mom becomes Vice President in the wackiest family comedy of the year???.

- via CollegeHumor founder Ricky Van Veen.

Used for any type or size of group
The main idea was to put more of a focus on all the different types of groups you can create a group website for. These links take you to our sample group pages where you can learn more about all the different group websites as well as get some ideas for your own??? Continue reading over at the BlastGroups Blog ??

Triumph covers Comic-Con 2008.

Triumph on scene at the Attack of the Clones premiere in 2002.

We want to take a moment to share some of the great coverage we received from some blogs involved with the Tech Industry from all over the world including… Continue reading over at the BlastGroups Blog ??

Today, we???re proud to announce the launch of the Public Beta Version of BlastGroups.

What does this mean for you??? For the past few months, BlastGroups has been available to a small test audience, and in that time it has been used to create public and private communities throughout the World.?? Starting today, BlastGroups is now available for anyone to use and enjoy… Continue Reading over at the BlastGroups Blog ??

20 Free eBooks on Social Media

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing - David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple - MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing - Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook - Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets - SEOBook
6. Get Viral Get Visitors - Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies - Dynamic Copywriting
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan - Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs - Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics - Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter - Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging - Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media - iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media - SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence - Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability - Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program - CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? - Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media - PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed - Edison Media Research

His list is getting even more comprehensive from people contributing in the comments so again, check it out over here.

Know of any other great ones? I’d love to find some more so please share any if you have them.

The types of information collected include what websites you visit, what types of things you are searching for, and what ads you click. They use that information to then serve customized ads that are more closely based on your assumed interests. For example, someone who goes to many consumer reviews sites on BMWs, visits car shopping sites for BMWs, and searches for “2008 BMW X5″ would then be considered an in-market car / BMW shopper in terms of data, and thus receive more ads about cars and BMWs instead of ads about other interests such as food and restaurants. This targeting technology is called behavioral targeting.

The Web companies that are under the most scrutiny are the big Web publishers such as Yahoo! and Google, the big Ad Serving solutions such as Doubleclick and Atlas (owned by Google and Microsoft respectively) and other big Ad Networks such as Platform A (mainly includes Ad.com and owned by AOL) and ValueClick.

Well this week Yahoo and Google both made it easier for you to opt out of their ad targeting on both their internal sites and their ad networks across the Web. Yesterday Yahoo announced a new one-click opt-out policy, and two days ago Google announced it was possible to opt out of both Google and Doubleclick ad targeting in one click as well.

Many think that both of these announcements are preemptive measures by Yahoo and Google to protect themselves as Congressional scrutiny over these issues is heating up. The fact is that these new policies will not amount to much.?? The majority of people will never hear about the ability to opt out and those that do will probably not bother with it anyways.

I, for one, am in the minority and will not be opting out, not because I am too lazy but because I actually like the idea of customized targeting, showing me ads more along the lines of what I actually want to see. I also know firsthand of some cool new changes going on in the online advertising space and am interested to see how these targeting technologies develop in the near future.

Again, I know I’m in the minority there though, so if you want to opt of ad targeting for either of these, i.e. don’t want their cookies, you can do so for Yahoo’s here and Google’s here.

Well earlier this morning I came across some more interesting Dark Knight news (again found on Digg, surprise surprise). This picture shows one of the early, pre-Heath Ledger concepts for the Joker. While I prefer the version of the Joker we got and can’t imagine it any other way, this picture reveals that we almost got a more sinister, even creepier version of The Joker.

Some more concept art pictures for the Joker can be found here. These pictures as well as the entire shooting script are featured in the book The Art of the Dark Knight.

What do you think? Do you prefer the Joker as pictured here or the one we got?

The link on Reddit along with all the comments (330 and counting!) can be found here: Paris Hilton Responds to the McCain Ad = McCain gets served. There are some interesting and hilarious conversations going on over there so I encourage you to check them out.

But I just wanted to give a Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users who have checked out the post and my site! I definitely didn’t expect this much attention when I made this post but sure welcome it. :)

If you liked this video and want to see other viral and funny ones, check out this Online Community - Viral Videos . Or if you just like making fun of McCain and Republicans you can check out this site all about Funny pictures of President Bush.

Also, if you’re interested in reading about other social news and media, please check out my other two posts on the subject:

• So wait, what exactly is Social Media?
• The Social Media Landscape

I’ll be posting more about social media and other social news sites like Reddit soon too, so stay tuned! To make sure you catch those posts and others, you can Subscribe to the RSS Feed here.

Update: Wow, so this post has gotten a lot more attention than I ever thought it would! Largely due to a posting on Reddit (link with comments here.) , so I just wanted to say a Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users!

Update #2: Also, if you liked this video and want to see other viral and funny ones, check out this Online Community - Viral Videos .

I???ll also be posting more soon about other social media sites like Reddit too, so stay tuned! To make sure you catch those posts and others, you can Subscribe to my RSS Feed here.

For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, his inspiring speech is well worth watching:





[Link: Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture.]

You can support the Randy Pausch Honorary Fund here.

[Link: CHTV - Font Conference.]

[View this image in full size on Flickr]

A few missing tools worth noting
There are a few changes that I would make to this hierarchy and graphic though. First of all, I would change the Social Aggregation tools to just be “Lifestreaming tools”. I would also add an entirely new category titled “Social News Aggregators.” When I think of aggregators, I think of social news sites like Digg. These sites are on the rise, becoming ever more important in social media and deserving of it’s own category. Other sites that could be included in this category as well as are Yahoo! Buzz, Reddit, Mixx, and others. (I’ve previously written about the importance of these sites, specifically about Yahoo! Buzz and Mixx, here and here, respectively.)

Another subset of social media deserving of it’s own category would be “Social Bookmarking” to include many of the popular bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, furl, and others.

There are also a couple of notable sites and tools that are missing worth mentioning. Disqus, which offers a great way to enhance your blog’s comments (notice mine) and create a companion forum for them should probably be under the Discussion Tools section. There’s also Weebly, a very easy to use website creation tool, and in my opinion the best available, which should be added to the Publish section.

Here is Fred’s original list of sites and tools organized by category:

• Publication tools with blogs (Typepad, Blogger???), wikis (Wikipedia, Wikia, Wetpaint???) and citizen journalism portals (Digg, Newsvine???)
• Sharing tools for videos (YouTube???), pictures (FlickR???), links (del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia???), music (Last.fm, iLike???), slideshows (Slideshare), products reviews (Crowdstorm, Stylehive???) or products feedbacks (Feedback 2.0, GetSatisfaction???)
• Discussions tools like forums (PHPbb, vBulletin, Phorum???), video forums (Seesmic), instant messaging (Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Meebo???) and VoIP (Skype, Google Talk???)
• Social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut???), niche social networks (LinkedIn, Boompa???) and tools for creating social networks (Ning)
• Micropublication tools (Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Plurk, Adocu???) and alike (twitxr, tweetpeek)
• Social aggregation tools like lifestream (FriendFeed, Socializr, Socialthing!, lifestrea.ms, Profilactic???)
• Platforms for livecast hosting (Justin.tv, BlogTV, Yahoo! Live, UStream???) and there mobile equivalent (Qik, Flixwagon, Kyte, LiveCastr???)
• Virtual worlds (Second Life, Entropia Universe, There???), 3D chats (Habbo, IMVU???) and teens dedicated virtual universes (Stardoll, Club Penguin???)
• Social gaming platforms (ImInLikeWithYou, Doof???), casual gaming portals (Pogo, Cafe, Kongregate???) and social networks enabeled games (Three Rings, SGN)
• MMO (Neopets, Gaia Online, Kart Rider, Drift City, Maple Story) and MMORPG (World of Warcraft, Age of Conan???)

I personally don’t use all of these sites he mentions here, i.e. many of the gaming sites, but stay tuned because I’ll soon be writing in more detail about the ones I do most frequently use. And the ones I couldn’t live without. :)

First, a look at Traditional Media
The best way to get an idea of what Social Media is, is to first take a look at “Media” as a whole. Media can often be thought of, as Wikipedia puts it, the “tools used to store and deliver information or data.” However, what comes to most peoples’ minds is all the books, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, music, and movies that we encounter on a daily basis. These forms of traditional media are usually presented as a finished, mastered and “professional” product for you to consume.

The Web as a Platform
However, as most all of you are well aware, “Media” as as we know it, is actively being re-invented and has been for quite some time by our current Internet Revolution. Most of the traditional media companies are looking at their core businesses today and finding that they are losing ground fast. This is certainly true for television, radio, music, newspapers, and magazines.

It’s a very interesting time to be alive as we are now seeing a fundamental shift in the way that people consume their media and I think it will be very interesting to watch over the next couple of years as many of these traditional forms of media transition and adapt to the new Internet world order.

Social Media Explained
Social Media, on the other hand, is a new type of media that has fully embraced the Internet Revolution and can be found almost exclusively on the Web. The difference is that while traditional media is usually presented as a professional product for you to consume, social media is developed when people collaborate, using technology in order to connect and engage with other “like minds,” to create something with a meaning that can change every time someone else contributes to it.

Today there are all sorts of rich and powerful applications, tools, and platforms that allow anyone to become a legitimate content contributor, letting them easily share pieces of media and distribute it across a very wide audience all over the world. These websites and tools can be thought of as “Social Media Publishers.”

But the crux - or the secret sauce if you will - behind social media is the people. Some have embraced social media heavily, having started a blog, created personal and group websites, launched a podcast, etc. At it’s most basic level though, everyone (yes, including you) is now contributing to social media and can be considered “Social Media Contributors.”

Now, with all of the new sites and platforms that make the sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas and content (photos, videos, etc) so easy, it’s possible for almost anyone to become a part of the Media.

Every time you’ve uploaded a photo or video to a social networking site, added a comment to a piece of content you have an opinion on, talked with others on a discussion board, or shared a link with friends and family, you’ve contributed to the huge amount of “Social Media” that’s available on the Web.

And the fact of the matter is, whether you like it or not, this new Social Media is occurring with or without you. So I say dive out into it, and embrace the plummet.

With all the talk and hub bub over the new iPhone, the real story here is the launch of the App Store. As I wait to get my iPhone, I can still daydream and browse through the App Store, which by the way, is really awesome. It’s fast, easy to navigate, and already filled with a lot of rich and powerful apps. There’s an overview of some of these apps here.

An interesting statistic is that the iPhone App store had 552 applications at launch, with 135 (or 25%) of them being free. Details and a graph here.

To me, this App Store and all the available apps is the single biggest reason to own an iPhone. The apps will only continue to get better too as developers and businesses clamor to get out their own. Apple has done a really good job to provide enough incentives to the developers of these apps, giving them back as much as 70% of sales. The market is extremely receptive as well, with venture capital and investment firms creating funds specifically for the creation of iPhone apps, most notably Kliener Perkins’ $100 million “iFund”.

A few of my favorites so far are the apps for Yelp, Whrrl, Pandora and Twitterific. Of course, I’m sure this list will change quickly once I start using them on a daily basis.

Can’t wait to what other cool upcoming apps are in store for us in the weeks and months to come!