Uncover the Internet » Social Networking

BusinessCard2 Releases More Great Features

Jason Bean — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:05:00 +0000

When I was doing some writing over at another tech blog I wrote about a service and website called BusinessCard2. The service gives you more than just a little digital business card. It really helps you get the entire message out about who you are and what you and your business are capable of doing.

Lief and the rest of the great folks over at BusinessCard2 are continuing to develop extend the functionality of their service above and beyond all the the great features that were already available when I wrote about them initially.

Now they’ve added some more helpful features to get more impact from your exposure to your existing clients and potential new clients.

Billboard: now you can upload a full picture and details to your card to share. It can be an eye-catching image of yourself or your business, or perhaps an example of your work.
Slideshow: if just one large image isn’t enough to get your message across, you can share a slideshow of multiple images to help spotlight all that you can do for your clients.
Video: if pictures are worth a thousand words, then speak a mouthful with online video. Now BusinessCard2 allows you to embed a YouTube video into your card as well.

Get your marketing game on and tell more people about you and your services. Get your face, your product and your efforts out there for the world to see with BusinessCard2.

Post from: Uncover the Internet

Blogged – Helping You Rediscover Your News

Jason Bean — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:20:26 +0000

My brother introduced me to a new site recently called Blogged. My first thought was I didn’t need another new site where I needed to have a blog format to keep updated. Blogged isn’t really like that though.

The Blogged website provides a place for people to talk about and discuss the news, not just read about it. How often do you really become educated about a topic and take that knowledge to have a discussion with others about what’s happening around all of us? The Blogged website helps that happen.

At Blogged, our vision is to provide a destination where people can talk about news with their friends and family. Not only do we provide the breaking news from various media sources, but we also try to create conversation by integrating social discussions from your trusted network.

Traditionally, the way people interact with news is very static and one-dimensional — you get the facts of what happened in the world with very little commentary or color. But in this new Web 2.0 age, we believe that news should be interactive and discussed between yourself and the people you choose to engage. We hope to make "reading the news" an engaging, social activity.

Use Blogged to learn about the news and discuss it with others, not just keep writing your own opinions without discussion with others.

Post from: Uncover the Internet

CardFunk Delivers More Christmas Cheer

Jason Bean — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:12:42 +0000

Not too long ago I wrote about the CardFunk website and all the cool and animated cards you can create and customize to send to friends. They’ve just updated their content and now have more Christmas cards to get your CardFunk groove on.

If you’re not familiar with what happens, you upload a picture of yourself and some friends and embed their images on some dancing, animated characters on the card. They usually dance and sing and it’s all around a good time to be had by all.

When you watch these cards, you can’t help but bring a little smile to yourself because let’s face it. Anything dancing, dressed up in Christmas cheer and a face that looks like you or your friends has got to be funny! If you disagree, well Bah-Humbug to YOU Mr. Scrooge!

One of its latest cards is Christmas With The Stars. Appropriately imitating and spoofing Hollywood icons and legends, this animated card allows you to transform you and your friends into dancing celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Bob Marley.

Another is the techno-inspired Dancing Christmas Toys. This card is set up in a Santa’s workshop where familiar entertainment figures are showcased and spoofed. The user will get the chance to be Captain Jack Sparrow, Betty Boop, Wonder Woman, Spiderman or Anakin Skywalker after uploading his/her photo.

Last one is the Wild West Christmas. Having the Great Plains as a backdrop, the user can have a lot fun having his/her headshot placed on dancing cowboy or cowgirl to the tune of a very funky music.

How can you go wrong with a line-up like that? So go on! Get moving and start bringing some holiday cheer to your friends! It’s all waiting to be uncovered and delivered at CardFunk.com

Post from: Uncover the Internet

Neighborino – Real Communities on the Web

Jason Bean — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:48:00 +0000

One of my early website clients was a neighborhood association. There hasn’t been a lot of activity on the site, and now with the power of the social web sites like Neighborino are delivering real-world communities with a place to share community online.

Neighborino puts all the tools and resources you need to both communicate with, engage and build an online community for the homeowners in your real-life neighborhood. Neighborino gives you the ability to quickly send updates to all homeowners and update your website, provide users with a community directory, classified ads listings and so much more.

Affordability for all the features is also a plus, you get everything mentioned for just $30/mnth. Figure in your basic cost for hosting any other kind of site and you’re getting a great deal for a great set of features with Neighborino.

If you’re a homeowner, an HOA Board Member or even an existing management company, you should check out Neighborino.

Uncover the potential for online community from your real community with Neighborino.

Post from: Uncover the Internet

Dopplr – Putting Your Travel Plans on the Map

Jason Bean — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:35:58 +0000

Prior to getting into consulting and technology development, I spent about a decade in the travel industry. I quickly moved into a technology role within travel so I became quickly interested in any new travel related technologies. To this day I still enjoy keeping tabs on some of the travel tools that are now available online.

The Dopplr website is a very interesting travel tool that doesn’t serve as a reservations assisting application, but is used more for sharing and interacting with your reservation after they’re booked. In addition, it also lets you share your travel plans easily with your friends, family and other people you trust and want to see your travel itinerary.

If part of your professional career puts you in the category of a "road warrior" for always hopping all over the globe, the Dopplr site could show you when you’ll be in the same city as other friends and coworkers if they’re also using the site.

You can get the scoop on the destination cities your travels take you to, as well as sharing your own tips for travelling along the way.

The end of every year Dopplr will send you a report of your travels for that year. If you have lots of travel scheduled for an entire year they can also show you a nice timeline of what your travel itinerary is going to look like over an extended time.

Uncover information about your travel with Dopplr.

Post from: Uncover the Internet

The Digital Hotlist 2009

Jason Bean — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:29:00 +0000

2009 will go down in history as the year everything at least seemed to change if it didn’t really change completely. It’s become a new world for many people with lots of change in a variety of areas. Perhaps the one thing that still remained the same is that the web is still almost central to much of what we do.

MediaWeek has released their 2009 Digital Hotlist that covers just what has been happening in the world of the web and technology.

Facebook – up from #2 on the list in 2008. This site is larger in population than most of the other countries in the world. I used to think Facebook would be replaced sometime by something cooler, not so sure now.
Hulu – I’ve been using this more to get some free entertainment. I’ve spoken with a number of people who are debating getting rid of cable/satellite and just relying on sites like Hulu and others for their entertainment fix.
Twitter – I think maybe I liked it more when there were less celebrities involved in twitter, but I’m still addicted to this 140-character micro-blogging tool.
Google – it’s Google, what else needs to be said?
iPhone – I still don’t have one, trying to figure out if I’m upset about it. Is there an app for that?
Huffington Post – lots of left-leaning news is getting more popular these days and they’re expanding their topic base to more than just politics.
Bing – it’s not a search engine, it’s a decision engine and lots of people have decided to really give it a try and have liked it.
Wall Street Journal web (www.wsj.com) – do what? a newspaper that’s still making money online and off? What are they doing right? It appears everything.
Federated Media – keeping advertising interactive and relevant, all those eyes watching the other 9 sites are worth a lot of money.
Addicting Games – I’m not playing many games these days other than Bubble Breaker and Farm Town. Maybe I should join the millions of other users having fun here.

Post from: Uncover the Internet

What’s Going on Outside.in

Jason Bean — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:56:24 +0000

I see more and more efforts and opportunities to try and get smaller as the world around us gets overwhelmed with more and more information. For some reason as the world appears to get smaller in front of us, there’s a desire to get more in touch with what’s happening around us locally as well.

Outside.in is working on putting it all together for you. They want to let you know what’s happening, right where you are, right at this moment. It’s being all collected and packaged together in this "hyperlocal" goal.

If you’re a visitor to the site, you can put in your address, neighborhood or zip code and get details and links to the news that’s happening around you.

If you’re a publisher you can grab content from the site for your own website that’s focused on a local market. Tools available allow you to moderate and manage all the information that’s coming into your publishing opportunities from a variety of different sources.

Either way, if you’re interested in what’s happening around you today. Give Outside.in a look and see what news they could be delivering to your door, right when you need it.

Uncover local happenings and events at Outside.in

Post from: Uncover the Internet

U2 Concert Live on YouTube – Is It Now U2be

Jason Bean — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:08:21 +0000

Perhaps we should just shorten it to U2be. What do you think? Not sure why I hadn’t heard of this concert happening before now, but you can watch U2 perform live on YouTube tonight from their Rose Bowl concert.

I went and saw the U2 in 3D concert at my local IMAX theater last year (or was it two years ago?) and it was amazing. My first thought of watching a concert in a theater wasn’t too high of an expectation, but it turned out to be a really great experience.

I’m guessing watching a concert live on YouTube might be similar. Then again, it may be just because of the group involved that makes it such and impressive sensory experience.

It will be impressive and shocking perhaps to see the numbers of viewers that watch the U2 concert live on YouTube. The only sad part is I’m just not going to be able to stay up tonight and watch it. Stupid Pacific Time Zone!

If you stay up and watch it, let me know what you think. The streaming experience right now is pretty impressive and the concert hasn’t even started yet.

Leave your comments and let me know your thoughts.

Watch U2 in concert LIVE on YouTube.

Post from: Uncover the Internet

Oh Crap! My Parents Joined Facebook

Jason Bean — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:14:20 +0000

One of my favorite commercials right now is the Verizon commercial where the kids are trying to get their parents to take it easy on their Facebook updates and twittering. It’s funny because our family can relate, and yes, many people would say I’m that dad on twitter.

My wife and I are both on Facebook (she’s probably more active on it than I am) and I’m on twitter quite a bit. We have two kids and our oldest is always looking over our shoulder to see what we’re saying. Both sets of our parents are also on Facebook as well and sometimes it’s kind of a challenge to remember that and think about what you’re posting. It’s not that there’s anything we’re trying to hide, most of the time it’s just trying to avoid the trouble of explaining something.

Now there’s a website where you can share your own challenges of having your parents and other family members on Facebook reading your updates.

Visit Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook to see how sometimes your updates are read and interpreted the wrong way and then let the discussion and explanation begin.

Many of the stories are funny because they probably hit a little too close to home for most of us. Yet there are others where I read them and I’m very thankful my parents aren’t as bad as that person’s.

Are your parents on Facebook? Have a story to share? Visit Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook and let’s share in each other’s misery and family dysfunctionality.

And if you haven’t seen it, here’s the Verizon commercial.

Post from: Uncover the Internet

Some Fantastic Facebook Farm Designs

Jason Bean — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:48:15 +0000

The folks behind Farm Town on Facebook have released some new functionality and features that are now available to those of us willing to admit we’re addicted. A couple of friends and I have a good time helping each other out on our farms, but we haven’t come close to this magic.

The Farm-Town.com website has put together a great collection of tips and tricks so you can learn how to do a little bit more with your farm than just grow some crops and raise some animals.

Taking advantage of the angled perspective of the farm layout and some forced perspective you can make structures on your farm look like they’re really more than what they are. As you see in the example image above, someone has built the Ohio State Buckeyes stadium on their farm.

There are loads of pictures of some great work on Farm Town farms on the Farm-Town.com website in their Farm Town pictures section.

If you’re not interested in making a work of art from your farm, there are plenty of other tips and tricks on the website to help you make the most of your Farm Town hobby.

Post from: Uncover the Internet