Rev2.org » Trends & Analysis

Droid 2.1 Upgrade Announced

Craig Agranoff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:08:47 +0000

A much-anticipated upgrade to the Verizon/Motorola Droid OS will be coming tomorrow, beginning at noon. Android Central broke the story with a release of the memo of release notes. Further details are on the Verizon Wireless Droid Support page as well.

These include anticipated updates to the OS which appear to be giving the Droid feature parity with the Google Nexus One (also an Android-powered phone). Pinch-to-zoom, Gallery, Google Maps, new weather and news widgets, voice-to-text entry, 3D gallery layout, and several small pattern-lock and audio enhancements ...

Facebook, Twitter Get Into the Geo-Location Game

Craig Agranoff — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:28:34 +0000

Beginning next month, Facebook will include location-based status updates into its makeup, allowing all 400 million-plus users to update not just with short text blurbs, but with current location as well. Twitter activated geo-location on their status as well, just in time for South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas – one of the biggest tech gatherings in the nation.

Twitter activated their geo-location through the API in November, but did not incorporate it into status updates until yesterday. Facebook, meanwhile, updated their privacy settings (to much controversy) in November, ...

The unSocial Social Media and South Florida Bloggers

Craig Agranoff — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:12:15 +0000

Social media is taking the business of the Internet by storm and is the marketing wave of the now as well as the future. Yet social media is not nearly as social as people might like you to think. Recent events right here in South Florida proved that many of the so-called social media experts are, in fact, just self-serving marketing whiners. The social media bubble is about to burst.

Recently, the Sun Sentinel announced this year’s Best of Blogs Awards for South Florida in which fans of various ...

Microsoft Buyout Rumors: Twitter – Yahoo

Craig Agranoff — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:02:48 +0000

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, did a live interview at Search Marketing Expo West in California (transcript here). He said several things that have a lot of people asking a lot of questions and making more than a few conjectures too. The recent deal with Yahoo! that has received the OK from the European Union and will begin rolling out over the next year plus the question of who’s talking to who at Twitter are hot topics right now.

Ballmer’s remarks on the deal with Yahoo! made it clear that ...

EchoSign – Electronic Signatures Made Easy

Craig Agranoff — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:40:03 +0000

Up until a few years ago, finalizing contracts or other legal documents online required a lot of overnight FedEx and back-and-forth faxing. Now, most are sending electronic documents, finalizing terms, then printing and mailing or faxing signed versions. The next step is obvious and EchoSign.com is working to provide that step.

The site has been around quite a while, debuting back in 2006. The setup then was simple: finalize your documents together online, upload it to EchoSign, and tell the site who you want it emailed to. Each person ...

Grails.org – Two Options for Learning Grails and Groovy, One on Each Coast

Craig Agranoff — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:15:37 +0000

Today, we’re doing something a little different from our usual here at Rev2. We usually review websites, talk about new applications, and such, today we’re going to look at a whole development framework and some of the training opportunities available.

If you aren’t familiar with the Grails framework for Web development or the Groovy background, then it’s likely that you aren’t a developer or in a business related to that. If you do know what it is and are interested in how it’s progressing as a platform for development, you’ll ...

YouTube’s New Stream of Consciousness

Craig Agranoff — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:24:31 +0000

Google’s YouTube has finally entered the social media stream with the addition of a new feature that allows users to share their videos on Facebook, Google Reader, and Twitter. This is for those who upload videos to YouTube and goes along with the already ubiquitous share button.

Most users are just saying “gee, it’s about time, YouTube.” The release of this new feature was added with little fanfare, but it immediately got some attention around the Web. I learned about it through a tweet from my own stream.

It’s obvious that ...

The Best Photo Sharing App on Twitter

Craig Agranoff — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:19:54 +0000

Since we’ve been doing so much about Twitter lately, it was time for Rev2 to have a good look at the most popular of Twitter apps: online photo services. Two things Twitter doesn’t supply are photo embedding and hosting.

With the ever-growing field of Twitter apps attempting to fill in the gaps that Twitter leaves open, it’s sometimes hard to figure out what to use and why. Especially with photo hosting apps targeted at the tweet stream. We’ve narrowed the field down to five great apps you’ll want to look at.

Our ...

Domain.confusion: Who Should Police Web Domain Names?

Craig Agranoff — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:50:32 +0000

Here is a new post-modern twist on a popular idiom:

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the scholarly path that earnest researchers take while stumbling upon “2 girls 1 cup” is paved with domain name liberalization.

We think that makes sense.

OK, ok, maybe we’re crying wolf. But when the green light flashes on the new domain feeding frenzy, the old whitehouse.com vs. whitehouse.gov debacle may look like a footnote in the domain name confusion manifesto.

Here is what we’re talking about: Beginning shortly, companies and municipalities will be able ...

Best Twitter Clients: Linux

Craig Agranoff — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:29:19 +0000

In our final installment in this series looking at Twitter clients, we’re going to look at tweeting from the Linux desktop. Since there is more than one desktop for Linux, we’ll have four instead of the three each we’ve looked at for Windows and Mac up to this point.

While the Linux platform for personal computing isn’t as common as Windows or Mac, it has a strong corps of users and a relatively large showing on Twitter. Most of these Twitter apps, like the majority of Linux apps, are open-source and free. The four clients we’ll be looking ...