Mufin, the music recommendation engine that suggests songs based on their sound characteristics, is now open to everyone in public beta. With the launch, Mufin is also introducing two new applications: Mufin for iTunes and Mufin for Facebook.

As you might expect, Mufin?s iTunes add-on analyzes the songs in your iTunes library to suggest new music. While you?re playing a song, or an entire playlist, Mufin recommends new tracks simultaneously in the sidebar. You can then play 30-second previews of the new recommendations, and purchase them in iTunes if you enjoy them.

Since Mufin?s recommendations are based on properties like tempo and rhythm, the suggestions are a bit different than what you?d get with iTunes? own Genius Sidebar, which performs a similar function.

Meanwhile, Mufin for Facebook is essentially the same application that the company launched on MySpace during their private beta. You can search Mufin for specific artists and tracks, and then have the service recommend new music, all within the Facebook interface. When you ?discover? a new piece of music, that action is broadcast to your mini-feed. You can also send a song to your Facebook friends.

So is Mufin worth the download? I?m not blown away by the recommendations so far, but they are distinctly different than what you?d expect to see with a ?people who liked this also liked? type list, or what you might see in browsing social discovery engines such as iLike or Imeem.

From a business perspective, Mufin now has all of the pieces in place for success ? a destination site, applications on the social networks, and an iTunes add-on. But, if it?s going to stand out from the pack, it will need to continue to tweak its recommendation engine to offer something significantly better than the alternatives.

---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Discover New Music through Sound Analysis With Mufin (20 Invites)My iTunes: Apple Launches iTunes WidgetsiTunes’ DRM-free Music Now AvailableWidgetbox Showcase Offers iTunes Widget and PlaylistiTunes Wi-Fi Music Store Now LiveScobblePod Lists iTunes and iPod to Last.fm SimultaneouslySoundcrank: iTunes, Meet MySpace

Google was once invincible and unable to make a mistake. Well, although its share price is not what it used to be, one can argue they’re still invincible in most areas they’ve dabbled in, but the mistakes and flops are now piling up.

Google Lively, a virtual world in which users can create their own environment and avatar and communicate with each other, is about to be shut down. True, this was one of Google’s 20% projects, meaning that it was created by one of Google’s engineers in their “spare” time, but still, time and money were invested in it and it flopped badly, with hardly anyone ever using it. Competing with Second Life is obviously not something that can be done casually.

The most clear example of a Google failure, however, is Google Answers. A high profile project and a direct competitor to Yahoo Answers - which, by the way, is still operational - Google Answers was shut down back in 2006. Its model of experts answering questions (instead of just having an open model with everyone answering, like on Yahoo Answers) didn’t hold up too well, and although the service is still a valuable resource, it wasn’t meant to be.

Jaiku has not officially flopped yet. But, the fact remains that after acquiring the service back in 2007 Google has done absolutely nothing with it, while Twitter - Jaiku’s direct competitor - has grown immensely. Hell, even other competitors in the space, such as Pownce, have experienced better growth than Jaiku, which can be seen from the Compete traffic comparison below.

No innovation, no new features; in fact, after the service was acquired by Google, its official blog has had only two updates: one to say that the service is back up, and another to warn about maintenance downtime. Perhaps Google has something huge in stock for Jaiku, but from what can be seen on the surface, it’s going nowhere.

Directly related to the Jaiku-Twitter story is Dodgeball, another short messaging service that Google had acquired in 2005. Unlike other Google flops, this one wasn’t entirely wrapped in nice, apologetic words. Dennis Crowley, the founder of Dodgeball, was frustrated with his experience working with Google, and he claimed that Google simply didn’t think Dodgeball was worth investing any resources in. It’s no secret that every startup’s wet dream is getting acquired by Google, and the Dodgeball incident has so far been the only stain on Google’s near perfect resume.

Is there a lesson that can be learned from these mistakes? Perhaps it’s still too early to tell, but if you add Orkut - Google’s social network which is arguably doing well, but also hasn’t done anything revolutionary lately - to the mix, it becomes fairly obvious that Google is not good at building communities. One more reason to bet on Facebook one day being bigger than Google, if you’re the betting type.

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There are three kinds of items users of Microsoft?s Office application suite share with one another more than anything else: Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.

Yet precisely how such files are being transferred between co-workers as well as companies and their clients isn?t so straightforward. Email attachments are popular, though also quite cumbersome. Alternatively, you could employ Microsoft?s Office Live Workspace channel. But that might not be an ideal route for everyone involved.

Now, to complement the service?s Outlook addition, there is YouSendIt for Office.

Quick and Easy

Launched for use with Windows Office versions 2003 and 2007, YouSendIt?s direct implementation allows for fast 2GB-large transfers with just a few clicks. You can drag-and-drop or right-click your way to the finish line, or do things via the more traditional Send menu within the Office taskbar.

All essential safety features from the YouSendIt service are included in the plugin, whether it be password protection, file expiration, and certified delivery notices.

No Mac Option to be Found

The only unfortunate aspect to the software release we found is Mac Office users have not been given an equivalent package to play with. We’ve gotten word that YouSendIt will determine whether or not to put a Mac-compatible version on the roadmap once they see the PC adoption rates. For now, either Windows XP or Vista (32-bit only) will have to do.

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Without much fanfare, the 20% time project Lively is now facing the end of its brief lifespan, as Google announced today that the virtual chat and meeting tool is set to be shut down by the end of the year.

??despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.?

Given the already vast amount of resources being devoted to their core company interests like search, ads, and apps, there is likely other reasons behind the shutdown, like the inability to police the service in the manner they planned, or the fact that hardly anyone uses it.

There?s No Sex in the Champagne Room in Lively

Frankly, I didn?t imagine that the service would be that unpopular, but perhaps I should have.  Linden Lab?s Second Life has had issues creating a legitimate and sizable userbase outside its red light district.

The other popular service that was anything akin to what Lively had to offer was the immensely popular (and profitable) IMVU, which thrives off their always flirtatious, frequently risqué, and occasionally obscene userbase.

Meanwhile, Lively promised to be all the fun of a virtual chat room with none of the ?benefits? offered by its competitors, promising to root out what I?ve always called the building blocks of the Internet:

I?ve said it before and I?ll say it again - the Internet has been built on two cornerstones: sex and hate. You?ll have griefers anywhere there?s a group of people, and if there?s anywhere that creativity?s encouraged, folks will use that creativity to come up with new ways to talk about, view, or engage in virtual sex.

As Eric Rice noted on FriendFeed last night, though, ?the top rooms on Lively right now: Sex, Gay, Sex, Goons, Brasil, Developer City, Caroline, Sex, Sex, Sex.?

It?s unfortunate that this technology wasn?t pushed a little bit further, as I think Google had a real opportunity to advance the future of what we see as ?the Internet experience? to new heights. Unfortunately, their goals simply didn?t align with their blue-sky methods, and it was doomed to fail from the beginning.

---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Lively, and Three Other Google FlopsNo Sex in Lively? Yeah, Right!Google Launches Lively to Create a Virtual World Across Social NetworksIs Google Building a Media Empire Based on Your Searches? Of Course.Underage Sex in Google’s LivelyOddcast’s Talking Avatars Have a New Virtual Home with AvatarSpaceMark Cuban To Appear on Dancing With the Stars?

Back in May, Yahoo launched a new variant of search entitled ?Glue,? something which  combines news, images, videos, and other content from around the Web (and other Yahoo properties) along with traditional search results that link to web pages.

We just received word that Yahoo found the service so successful in their India test launch that they?re extending the product for inclusion in US search results off main Yahoo.com search queries.

They?re starting out with a limited set of search terms, pulling content from Wikipedia entries, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and news. It?s an interesting way to get at-a-glance update on who a particular new player in the news might be or for a quick briefing on what might be going on about a certain current event, very similar to the modus operandi over at Mahalo.

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Mashable reader Patrick de Laive over at Fleck, at the suggestion of our fearless leader Pete, put together a simple bookmarklet that posts URLs to Twitter (in a shortened form, of course) and then saves that tweet as an easy to find bookmark in your browser.

The tool, Fleck Lite, looks pretty slick and it doesn?t require an email address to use, and really simplifies the process of sharing cool stuff with your Twitter friends.

It?s pretty cool ? and a single page signup process. Give it a shot!

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Is it time to put your portfolio online? Portfolio Monkey thinks it is, offering a set of tools for managing your portfolio on the web. This post is part of Mashable’s Startup Review series, which highlights great unsung startups. The series is made possible by Sun Startup Essentials.

Company Name

Portfolio Monkey

20-Word Description

Simple and intelligent investment tools for self-guided investors.

CEO’s Pitch

At our core, we believe in taking a portfolio approach to investing. Unlike the myriad investment sites that play on people’s ability (or lack thereof) to pick winners and losers, our focus is on providing analytical tools to better manage portfolio risk and expected return.  We help investors understand the quantitative impact of buying and selling different stocks on their portfolios and identify stocks from the universe of publicly-traded securities that offer the best portfolio fit.  We believe in building optimal portfolios that are customer-tailored for each individual - not in one-size-fits-all.

Mashable’s Take

As most any sensibly-minded individual would say, the current economic climate is not one of financial stability and confidence. The very evident mixture of fear and impulsiveness doesn?t do much to help matters. So if you?re in the position to call yourself an investor today, either by trades made in the past several months or years or by bear market and recessionary opportunism, you need more than ever to establish a firm understanding on risk. Where Portfolio Monkey comes in is in analysis of stated holdings.

The inputs you make are weighed collectively and against one another. Expected returns and risk measurements will be calculated, and you?ll ultimately be given recommendations on how to manipulate those possessions to make better use of the money you have floating. The service will also suggest stocks if you wish to shift gears or complement your established investments with different sets of ticker tape.

Again, it?s all about being better informed about your present situation and what?s believed to occur sometime down the line. Of course, that second bit about forecasting is never a perfect science, but because emotion plays so heavy a role, it?s the lesser of two evils to press forward with some intimation about what?s on the horizon rather than move blindly through time. And insofar as investing by the independent, home-office demographic is concerned, analysis tools that operate beyond the changing pages of The Wall Street Journal, et al., can be helpful to have in one?s arsenal.

The outstanding feature of Portfolio Monkey is its match of simple design and data delivery and subtle way that each aspect of the engine becomes noticed. It is interactive without being overtly so. All told, you can go from a standard view of your portfolio to an optimized setting to a ?rebalanced? take, with helpful tips and explanations guiding the way. It?s an interesting take on an intensely glamorized (and now damaged) practice. We think it?ll take just a moment see why this alpha may offer extra wisdom to your handling of matters in weeks and months ahead.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

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Writing a novel is a much different beast than writing magazine articles or maintaining a blog. That?s why a new tool called FortyChapters makes a lot of sense. The site is essentially a web-based app for organizing your work, saving it so it can be accessed from anywhere, and providing some ideas and prompts for how to structure your novel.

The key features of the app are being able to create characters, acts, and chapters. You can see all of these from one screen, which should help writers keep track of where they are in the book and the attributes of the characters they?ve created. Novel writing, according to FortyChapters, can essentially be broken down into three acts: (1) Before (2) Impetus (3) Outcome. Within those three acts, you can create chapters. The service then offers a simple text editor for writing your story, which allows you to save all of your work online. This is convenient since it means you can work on your novel from anywhere there is Web access.

Beyond helping you write and organize your novel, FortyChapters provides some simple options for exporting and printing. The service offers a free 30-day trial, after which subscriptions are $10/mo. This is incredibly fair ? many users will likely realize writing a novel isn?t for them after 30 days, while those that have invested a lot of time in developing their work will gladly start paying to continue using the service.

One thing I?d like to see on FortyChapters is more of the writing prompts and structural ideas that accompany some of the different features; as a blogger that occasionally gets writer’s block, I can’t imagine the stress that novelists must feel from time to time. The UI can also be a bit clunky, though the organization ? being able to move back and forth between characters, acts, and chapters all from one screen ? is quite good.

While personally I don?t aspire to write more than 300-500 word blog posts anytime soon, FortyChapters might be worth a look if you?re setting out to write the next great novel ? or at least want to try to for a few weeks.

Simon Salt is CEO of marketing communications company the IncSlingers. He writes for www.simonsalt.com and Dad-O-Matic

You use Twitter, email, IM and even your phone to stay in touch with your world. Maybe your office uses services like Yammer for internal communication. But once you are done tweeting, emailing and instant messaging, you have to do actual work.

Wouldn?t it be great if you could at least use those tools to help you get some of that work done? Xpenser, developed by Trastr Inc, allows for a number of different tools to be utilized to keep track of expenses. Here is how to use Twitter with Xpenser to track them:

Get Started!

Getting started is simple. Go to Xpenser, create a free account, and add your Twitter account (no password required). Then add Xpenser to your list of following, which will let you send direct messages to that account, e.g. D Xpn Taxi $15.00 #clienttrip. This automatically updates the expenses for the category clienttrip. The same can be achieved through the use of IM, email or SMS.

Track Multiple Clients and Expenses

If you are on a multi-leg, multi-client trip, you might want to ensure that the right client is billed the right expense. To do this you go to the ?Reports? tab, enter the name for the new report ? ClientABC, ClientXYZ, VegasConference, whatever you decide to name them. You can decide to make one of the reports the ?default? report, which means that all new expenses that are untagged will go into this report.

Keep Track of Mileage

Xpenser has a conversion feature which enables you to keep track of your mileage. It can be accessed from the ?Keywords? tab, where you can set a pre-determined rate of conversion. Imagine a realtor driving from appointment to appointment throughout the day. Now, instead of having to write their mileage down for each appointment and then get back to the office and calculate their mileage expense, they can simply use their smart phone and Direct Message Xpenser on Twitter with the number of miles for each appointment as they arrive: D Xpn 23 miles Jones house.

As long as the message includes either the word mileage or miles, Xpenser will convert the number of miles into a cost based on the preset conversion rate. It then enters it into the account that you specified, and if you don’t specify an account it will go into the default account.

Everywhere Else

If you’re not interested in using Twitter to create expense reports, Xpenser also supports instant messaging, email, text/sms, and voice. There is also an export to Freshbooks feature, and through partnerships with Jott and Dial2Do, voice recording is available in the US, Canada, and 17 other countries, allowing users to simply ?call in? their expenses. In addition, the web interface allows you to edit previous entries or make new ones, export to excel, Quicken, MS Money, and Freshbooks.

So, would you manage your expense reports on Twitter?

Simon Salt is CEO of marketing communications company the IncSlingers. He writes daily at www.simonsalt.com and weekly at Chris Brogan’s parenting blog Dad-O-Matic, and is also an avid Twitter user. He is focused on dragging traditional marketers into Web 2.0 before the arrival of Web 3.0. He loves to help out and volunteers his time and knowledge whenever asked. He is Director of Technology for the Austin Chapter of the AMA and is currently working on a Twitter guide for all users.

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Maybe you?re a fan of Google?s Grand Central phone controller. Maybe you also happen to be a Mac addict. So how do you match those two loves into one? Vocito, that?s how.

Savvy to your Mac OS X desktop and things like Address Book, Automator, and the third-party engineered QuickSilver, Vocito manages your management of the multiple phone numbers in your life within slick fashion. In a manner of speaking, it makes easier a process that?s already been quite easy. Way easier, you might say, even if its job is technically more complex.

You could of course use Vocito much the same way you would the browser-based application - albeit doing so within a more Mac-like enclosure. Nothing stops you from heading straight down the usual road.

Open Source Power to the Nth Degree

But power users in the Mac realm might consider that a sheepish use of code. Address Book integration is convenient enough, yes. Yet Vocito?s support for Automator and AppleScript actions, as well as Quicksilver commands, takes things to another level. Really, if you wish, you can manipulate the application without drawing your hands away from your keyboard.

For the most part, Vocito lives a pretty non-ostentatious life on your computer. So long as you can tolerate the presence of a favicon-sized menu bar button sitting astride your clock, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and audio control features, it?ll be at the ready while keeping largely out of the way.

And that?s presumably how many Grand Central users choose to operate the service, making Vocito an ideal candidate for extending your virtual phone switchboard to your Mac desktop. Wonderfully enough, the download is Tiger- and Leopard-compatible with both Intel and PowerPC support. It?s also entirely open source.

Limited GC Beta Access Puts a Cap on Vocito’s Debut

The only immediate downside is that Google is holding Grand Central under a limited beta restriction, disallowing any immediate sign-ups, which I imagine a good number of folks interested in Vocito will be looking for. A forum has been established for people to voice their thoughts and concerns.

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Mobispine, the mobile services developer already responsible for introducing a $1.99 self-titled iPhone application for RSS news junkies, has debuted a white-label option for wireless carriers to deliver to subscribers seeking classic MMS utility from their devices. Just short of an extension of the iPhone?s standard SMS software, Mobispine?s offering is something that just might fly.

Media Sharing Apps Aplenty, But Still No Real MMS

As iPhone users have known since the App Store?s launch, there are already many ways to send MMS (multimedia messaging service) data from the device to Web users. The Mail and optional Facebook applications are just two avenues. And a pseudo MMS service for iPhone, called Flutter, gets iPhone users into mobile-to-mobile.

But white-label - and ultimately carrier-branded - MMS software is something Mobispine seems to be breaking new ground with. True MMS software just does not inhabit the iPhone world. And if any operators are to convince Apple of the efficacy of bringing such an option to the platform, it is the selection of wireless carriers around the world who are partnered with Apple that will make it happen.

Is the White-Label Angle the Golden Ticket?

Nothing?s certain, mind you. Though Mobispine says it is ?confident that operators will find the service easy to use and profitable with an opportunity to expand messaging usage, improve subscriber retention and increase revenue,? adoption is something that has no guarantee. But things in the world of SMS and MMS are very much about uniformity. Mobispine appears to offer the latter option.

We?re eager to see who bites first.

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Many people decorate their workspace with pictures of their families. Often, these photos serve as a good conversation piece. But, what if you could have a life-sized cutout of your kids, playing sports? That?s where StickyFan comes in.

The service lets you upload a photo of your kid (or really, anyone, but the focus is on child athletes) and then order either a huge cutout or a poster. Cutouts can be up to 6 feet tall, while posters are 24? x 36?. Stickyfan offers its own photo editing tools, and sends you a proof of what your cutout will look like within 24 hours of submission so you can approve it or request changes.

Of course, some might look at placing a life-sized cutout of your kid in your office as a bit gratuitous, but I?m sure plenty of child athletes would love to have one for their room. After all, life-size cutouts and posters of professional athletes have always been a staple of kid?s room decorations. StickyFan is also doing some smart marketing, offering youth sports leagues an opportunity to utilize the service for fundraising.

Meanwhile, since my youth sports career peeked around age 12 and I have no kids of my own yet, I?ve taken the humble measure of ordering a life-sized cutout of myself on top of a mountain:

Andrew Warner is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder of Mixergy.com.

Tim Ferriss’ relationships with bloggers helped him reach the New York Times bestseller list with his book, The Four Hour Work Week. I recently called Tim to ask him how to market to bloggers. Here?s what he taught me:

Start before you need something

?I reached out to certain bloggers as far as a year in advance of the book being published,? Tim told me. By building his connections ahead of time, he never had to start a relationship with a blogger by asking for a favor.

Meet bloggers in person

Tim started building his relationships face to face. ?The least crowded channel for meeting high profile bloggers is in person,? Tim said. ?Email is the most difficult, the most crowded? I?m a top 1,000 blogger, not a top 100 blogger, and I get hundreds of pitches by email every week. Most of them I don?t even see because my assistant declines them.?

Don?t be a promoter

Nobody wants to get to know a guy who does nothing but promote himself. ?Your job is to convince them of the messenger, not the message,? he told me. ?Don?t try to push your message until you establish yourself as someone they?re willing to listen to.?

Don?t join the crowd

Top bloggers can be mobbed at events. Instead of joining the crowds, Tim got to know the people behind the top bloggers. The first time he met Robert Scoble, Tim said, ?You know what man, everyone wants to talk to you. I don?t have a really good question for you, so I?m not going to hassle you.? And he got to know Robert?s wife and coworkers instead.

Be part of something bigger

Instead of pitching his book, Tim talked to bloggers about a trend that his book related to: outsourcing as a way to save time. When he called them, he?d say, ?Here?s a concept or phenomenon that I think would be fun to talk about with your readers.? He told me that bloggers would often give him credit for the idea, and when they mentioned the name Tim Ferriss, they ?inevitably linked to my page or my Amazon book page.?

Do you know any other tips for promoting to bloggers? Add them to the comments.

Andrew Warner’s last internet company was a big stinking failure and he had to shut it down. To keep from having a company collapse again, he’s interviewing as many Internet successes as he can. You can hear his interviews on Mixergy.

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Online music and its controversies are unavoidable, and with no end of hunger for access to tunes, the market has been an evolving battleground. With mavericks (in the non-Palin sense) like the aptly-named Grooveshark seeking to take a bite out of things, it’s refreshing to know that some services are using a lateral method ? a “blue ocean” approach, you might say.

SoundCloud is one such service. Previously in invite-only beta, SoundCloud launched publicly in October. The service lets you “move music fast & easy. The platform takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.”

Anyone can sign up for a free SoundCloud account that includes five track uploads a month. They’re already distinguishing themselves by simplifying the process of sending demos to record labels, something which has historically been done by sub-optimal “attach an MP3″ email or form submission. I’ve done a lot of multimedia compilation, and all those extra steps to sort files gets tiring and dampens the joy of listening.

Beyond the usual?

Here’s where it gets really exciting: SoundCloud is exceptionally blissful to use. Not just pretty, but practical. Beyond the usual AJAX and Flash touches that reduce page reloads and imbue a sense of sheen, there are helpful features that are often found on desktop music apps but seldom on web ones.

For example, after a song’s uploaded, you can tap BPM (Beats Per Minute). Part of the reasoning behind this is because SoundCloud has started holding remix contests, where knowing the tempo is essential to syncing parts, also known as “stems”, with others. Even better, you get a true waveform with your beautifully embeddable widget ? a pleasure to navigate, especially if you’ve ever been disappointed by all the pseudo-volume meters and fake waveforms out there (which is a Flash dev’s inside joke in some circles).

Even the upload process is a pleasure. While there’s no batch uploader yet ? which would be highly time-saving for musicians with large catalogs who’ve upgraded to the somewhat confusingly-named “PRO Max” account @ ?60/month ? the uploader is as close to a practical flow as I’ve seen: you use a standard browser to select a file, a progress bar with countdown appears, and there are a few required fields.

Not just MP3s are uploadable: WAV, AIF, AAC, FLAC and OGG are supported. This is great news for professionals concerned about lossless fidelity. If desired, you can add genre details, and being forward-thinking, they’ve included Creative Commons as a licensing choice. The only unfriendliness I came across was getting a weird “(-280)” error after uploading that I wasn’t able to reproduce.

Feature request: as your music collection builds, it’d be great to mass-set permissions. And keywords should be clickable to find other stuff tagged similarly, as the similarly orange-and-purple Jamendo allows.

If you run a site and want to accept music, you can embed a SoundCloud DropBox in your sidebar, as Synthtopia has done. The first time I saw it, my first reaction was to drag an MP3 from my desktop to it ? unfortunately that didn’t work, as it’s really just a button you click to get to the standard upload form. Nonetheless, I’ve noticed more of these popping up, suggesting they’re catching on.

What about the social aspects of SoundCloud?

You can add timed comments to a track, which is handy for calling out highlights like “OMG THIS BREAKDOWN ROX!” A few video-sharing sites like Viddler have a similar feature, and it’s not unlike adding markers or hit points in a full-fledged DAW.

You can choose whether your uploaded tracks are public or private. Interestingly, even if you’re on a free account, I discovered you can go above the five tracks/month limit by uploading to your own or other people’s DropBoxes, and I’ve asked SoundCloud about how this is intended to work. There’s a public gallery of Hot Music and Latest Tracks, and mandatory social networking features like adding friends are present. In this Rickroll Era, even MC Hammer is getting in on the fun:

And suitably, when they can’t build their own solutions, SoundCloud piggybacks on complementary companies, using Seesmic for video blog comments and Get Satisfaction for support. I’ve also noticed they have a running Flickr stream of photos tagged “soundcloud.” Observing what other companies SoundCloud is aligned with gives glimmers into their philosophy on creating community. I haven’t extensively tested their help yet, but have seen numerous positive experiences.

Kudos to SoundCloud for their excellent screencasts. They communicate well and compel you to try it out firsthand ? with so many sites competing for your attention, a good video tutorial can really “sell” you what it’s all about in a couple minutes and drive your decision to get started.

3 things to look out for:

1. SoundCloud touts their API for plugging in custom apps to their tech. Well-documented, open APIs helped spread Flickr and Twitter’s popularity, so it’ll be intriguing to see what it does for this burgeoning audio service.

2. Copycats of their design by other sites. SoundCloud’s taken the usual “Web 2.0″ staples (starburst graphics, share-this buttons) and done an exemplary amount of going further and leading by unique example. But even if you can bite their style, you can’t steal their community.

3. Will SoundCloud’s freemium business model succeed in the long run? They currently don’t accept PayPal, but say it’s “coming soon.”

Give SoundCloud a go and share your experiences in the comments. Have a fave site that combines the best of substance + style? Let us know!

Torley amplifies your awesome with the useful and fun. He loves life, wife, and watermelons. You can check out his music at Torley.com

---Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:Web 2.0 Invites for July 1st, 2008Web 2.0 Invites for July 4th, 2008HOW TO: Save Time With Website Registration and Profiles

Mashable is proud to announce that voting has begun in the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards, a unique opportunity for the most accomplished websites and services to receive international recognition for their achievements.

During the nominations round, we received over 43,000 verified nominations. We narrowed down this huge pool to the 10 most-nominated sites and services in each category (where 10th place was a draw, we allowed more than 10 nominees in that category).

VOTE NOW: One Vote Per Category Per Day

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YouTube was built in no small part by users uploading copyright clips of British comedy group Monty Python. Ok, it was built by users uploading copyright clips of lots of different media outfits, but nonetheless, the group?s influence on the video sharing site has been huge.

This week, they?ve decided to get a piece of the action for themselves, creating an official channel on YouTube so there are ?No more of those crap quality videos you’ve been posting. We’re giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.?

The channel features dozens of skits from the original show, which include advertising that Monty Python hopes you?ll click on to ?soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.? The group further explains the new YouTube channel in the clip below:

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Alisa Leonard-Hansen is a Senior Social Media Analyst within the strategy group at iCrossing. She can also be found blogging at both the iCrossing Great Finds blog and her own blog, The Web is Social.com.

With speculation around how you should monetize mostly a topic of conversation within the tech community, it always surprises me that a marketing perspective isn’t thrown into the mix. After all, it?s marketing dollars that you (and just about every other online entity) are relying on. So, taking a digital marketing perspective, I thought I’d throw a few thoughts into the discussion.

Note: this is not intended to be a “how to use Facebook to develop a social marketing strategy” discussion, but rather the intent is to explore how you could build a business model around your rich user data given what marketers desire in terms of effective marketing and what they’ll pay for (effective marketing= happy marketers who spend more $ on what works).

Your focus is flawed

So, you have one thing right: marketers pay to reach consumers, and the more targeting a platform can offer, the more marketers are willing to spend because of the promise of greater ROI. There is one flaw in your approach, however: you have been entirely focused on monetizing Facebook.com itself.

Now, while it may seem counter-intuitive, you ought to focus on monetizing your rich user data, and not necessarily the site itself. Wait–isn’t that the same thing? What is she saying? Just hear me out: You are not a content platform. You’re a communications utility, and while you’re a platform for UGC, you don’t provide a rich content experience. Users aren’t on your network to experience any kind of particular content–they are there to connect with friends and to essentially store personal data (whether they consciously know this or not).

Although some could argue that explicit and implicit user outputs (all that stuff you see in your newsfeed) IS the new “content,” we still have yet to see that this kind of UGC can be successfully monetized through advertising (translation, ROI for ad spend around UGC tends to be low).

Now, marketers have deployed lots of successful marketing initiatives within Facebook, but a majority of these involve leveraging your free Business Pages to drive conversation and engagement (read: free marketing). You’ve had it in your heads that if you let marketers set up free Business Pages, and draw in communities of brand enthusiasts who “Fan” these Pages, you can then upsell these brands into media buys. But the problem is that while great for engagement initiatives and fostering conversation around a brand (great for marketers!), Facebook is still not an optimal place for ad-spend, no matter how much attention is aggregated there. ROI from your ad spends tend to be relatively low for marketers. Again, it goes back to user intent and behavior.

So what should you do?

Essentially, Facebook is this giant data storage silo. It contains consumer data nearly as valuable as the credit card companies have (the kind of data marketers would pay nearly through the nose to have). It’s user data, not the dot com itself that you should consider your golden ticket.

Now, before anyone starts jumping up and down about the notion of “monetizing user data”– I’m not advocating that private user data be mass-harvested and sold ad hoc to marketers. Rather, what I am suggesting is that with the dawn of Facebook Connect, there may be a viable, ethical way to leverage this user data.

With Facebook Connect, you can essentially create a content network (and note the launch partners, major media companies) that could also support an ad-network. So now, with a Facebook Connect-enabled content/ad network, you have the holy grail of targeted advertising: contextually relevant content experience AND the kind of granular targetability based on user graph data that made the initial promise of social networks so huge for marketers. Basically, participating FBC sites could not only sell targeted ad inventory based on their content, but based on Facebook’s (opt-in) user data as well. This would not only give marketers what they want in terms of targeting, but you would get a cut of the ad revenue for being the arbiters of that valuable graph data.

Of course, even without a potential FBC ad-network, Facebook Connect helps brands and publishers provide a socially enhanced experience for their customers with a lower barrier to adoption than current one-off branded social networks. Not to mention, FBC enables the potential to drive a lot of new traffic to their site as a result of opt-in user actions (including purchases) being broadcast through the Facebook network.

There is also the opportunity for e-tailers to capitalize on social graph data as part of their merchandising model. The benefit of graph data to the e-tailer includes the implicit endorsement of products by your users whose purchases are broadcast to their Facebook friends (again, only if the user opts-in to have their actions published), driving significant traffic, tapping into the power of consumer advocacy, and providing a more socially enhanced and user-friendly experience. Given the significant value this kind of data offers, you could leverage some kind of rev-share program for supplying this graph data to e-tailers (but again, users would have to opt-in!).

Create a value exchange!

Now, this brings me to one last point that my dear friend and brilliant colleague Ben Bose has suggested be baked into all of this– a value exchange for the end user. If it’s consumers’ graph data that is benefiting both supplier/marketer and Facebook, then it should also work for the benefit of the consumer. Perhaps users may be assigned “influence” scores based on their network, and the degree of influence they have over that network. These influence scores could earn them rewards– not unlike our credit card rewards. Of course, some services already have types of user rewards, including ThisNext and imeem, but this is something that could be propagated to a much larger degree with initiatives like Facebook Connect.

Yes, there are many counterpoints to these ideas, including the argument that open Web enthusiasts (myself included) would pose around the idea of Facebook (or MySpace) being proprietors of graph data versus users themselves. But rather than examining the differences between FBC and true data portability, this was a look at possibilities for Facebook Connect as a means to increase Facebook revenue.

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, danleap

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StoryTlr, a project that enables you to create a simple event-based timeline of your photos, videos and tweets, has received several significant updates in the past few days, and suddenly - although the authors themselves insist that it’s a hobby project and not a “real” startup - it feels like a full featured service with some very interesting usage possibilities.

StoryTlr is a slightly different take on the lifestream concept. Let’s say, for example, that you went on a vacation this past weekend. While you were there, you took some photos and videos, tweeted some tweets, sent some mails, changed your Facebook status a couple of times, and so forth. StoryTlr lets you take all this stuff and create a story in the form of a slideshow, which is a wonderfully nice way to see what happened in chronological order. Even better, after this past update, you can embed your story anywhere, for example your blog. You can see an example of one such story here.

I think that this concept will appeal to many users who are sick of being able to update dozens of services telling everyone what they’re up to at any given time, but when they try to revisit their memories a couple weeks later, they simply can’t find them. StoryTlr is event-based; when something important happens to you, you can create an event and it’s listed on your StoryTlr page under the “stories” tab, which makes it easy to find (presuming, of course, that you’ll go easy on the stories and not create thousands of them).

StoryTlr also functions as a standard lifestreaming application. Under the “lifestream” tab on your StoryTlr page you can find a diary of your daily activities; if this is what you’re looking for, you can find it on many similar services like FriendFeed or Profilactic. StoryTlr’s strength, however, is in its event-oriented approach and the lifestreaming part is just sugar on top.

Other new features at StoryTlr are theme customization, which includes changing a theme’s colors or even the entire CSS; Facebook, StumbleUpon, Vimeo and Tumblr support, as well as full data import, which means that StoryTlr will try to fetch all the data from a particular service, like Twitter, if possible. Put it all together, and you’ve got a serious competitor to Tumblr and other lifestreaming applications; the simplicity of the idea behind it will probably win over many users who just want a quick, smart and easy way to share their stuff online.

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Personal finance service Mint has added a new feature for those who simply have to know what their entire net worth is in every imaginable situation. Users can send a text message containing the words “Balance” or “Bal” to shortcode ?MyMint? (696468) and they’ll receive info for savings, credit, and loans they’re tracking on Mint.

The folks at Mint have been busy, adding several new features after leaving beta in October. Finance, economy, money; these words are on everyone’s lips these days, and though it may not be in a positive context, Mint is definitely riding the wave of heightened interest in personal finance.

Other features recently added to Mint include a 401(k) management center, portfolio asset allocation info, and the ability to compare your investments against major indexes such as S&P and Dow Jones.

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Real estate site Trulia and interactive media company 1020 Placecast have partnered up to deliver better targeted ads on Trulia, using location information and a number of other factors.

When a user searches for real estate in a certain location on Trulia, Placecast adds its magic, using algorithms that add demographic, psychographic and geographic data points to the equation. The result, ideally, is a very precisely targeted advertisement. Or, as Alistair Goodman, CEO of Placecast, says: “Once we know the place a user is interested in, we can derive a lot of useful insights about what kind of consumer they are, and then serve them a very targeted ad.”

Car rental company Avis-Budget is already participating in the program, and according to Trulia, their ads on the site perform “strongly relative to other publishers.”

This summer, Trulia raised $15 million to expand their advertising network. It’s nice to see them putting the money to good use after only three months, but the real estate business is not the best to be in right now, and their diminishing traffic (according to Compete) proves this. Still, if Trulia’s hyper-localized approach to delivering ads works, and if their ads perform significantly better than the industry average, it’ll be money well spent.

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Two bits of interesting news on the Facebook front this evening. Nick O’Neill at All Facebook noticed that the social network has created additional ad inventory for sale on their sidebar, and we received details on the Application Verification Program that was announced earlier this week. 

Both signal a move by Facebook to get serious about utilizing as much of their highly used social network to bring the company closer to profitability.

Platform Reloaded: What Does That Mean?

Facebook gave us some information on what they meant when they issued their statement of guiding principles for developers to get their apps verified, which they later copied out to the developer blog. Adam Ostrow more or less pegged the gist of it when he wrote up the news Monday:

“So what does it take to get your application verified? Facebook has published 10 ?Guiding Principles,? with the central themes being that apps should be ?Meaningful,? ?Trustworthy,? and ?Well-Designed.? It also takes $375…”

“Essentially, coupled with the current fbFund finalists, Facebook is resurrecting the platform, which has been largely hidden to passive users (folks who ignore the apps completely) since the social network rolled out its redesign. It?s all been very methodical ? first, bury the applications under a special tab on user profiles, then, dole out funding to the best app developers, and finally, offer everyone else a way to get their apps back in the game.”

In their missive today, they clarified that you don’t need to be verified to exist on the platform (you know, the one that almost no one goes to since it’s been hidden by the re-design), but it will “encourage users who might have been hesitant before to now try these applications.”

This very closely mirrors the somewhat controversial setup that MySpace has in place with its application platform - just about anyone can design and implement an app on MySpace/OpenSocial.  The ones that pony up to be featured developers, though, are the ones with the monster pageviews.

Facebook Wants to Sell to You

In another move that some might describe as MySpace-ish, they’re increasing the amount of advertisements seen on every page. As of Tuesday afternoon, spotted in the wild were displays of a three-ad setup (seen to the right), instead of the normal two ad setup.

They’ve been steadily increasing number, presumably to keep pace with the ever increasing average page-length, and the number might be variable (since some reports still say that certain users only see one ad on most pages).

Nick O’Neill puts it in context with some other recent Facebook monetization moves:

The company has been doing an increasing number of ad tests over the past couple months including the addition of video ads which have shown up on the homepage with increasing regularity. It?s a small change but it has the potential to boost their revenue. 

While it might sound slightly critical to continually compare some of these moves to “sounding like something MySpace would do,” in reality, it might be the smartest move for Facebook.  Between the two, Facebook might be growing quicker and have a much more impressive valuation.

On the other hand, though, MySpace is the social network that’s in the black (and has been there for quite a while).

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Citysearch, the popular local events and review site owned by IAC, is getting a big makeover tonight. The site is expanding to become ?hyperlocal? ? creating listings for more than 75,000 different cities, adding social features through Facebook Connect, and launching an enhanced mobile experience. Initially, the new features will be available on a separate beta site, where they?ll be refined before going live early next year.

In integrating Facebook Connect, Citysearch is perhaps the most interesting example so far of what?s possible with data portability. The beta site allows you to login using your Facebook credentials to write reviews, and also track what other Facebook friends are doing on the site.

In other words, without registering for a Citysearch account, you?ll both be able to leave reviews of different places on Citysearch, as well as see what your friends are recommending. Those reviews are also broadcast back into Facebook, in turn allowing you to read your friend?s Citysearch reviews from your Facebook News Feed. Meanwhile, Citysearch is also expanding their mobile offering, allowing users to submit mobile reviews based on the new hyperlocal listings.

Ultimately, Citysearch is getting a much needed makeover in order to compete with up-and-coming competition from the likes of Yelp, who has long offered user reviews of very local locations. The Facebook Connect integration is also interesting, and offers Citysearch an opportunity to get lots of viral traction on the social network. In a sense, with how huge Facebook has become, it?s also a bit like OpenID ? the barriers to entry on Citysearch have been vastly reduced by eliminating required registration, and the site can expect to see a big uptick in user review volume once the Facebook Connect integration is pushed live.

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What is social media, and is social media actually media in the traditional sense of the word?  This is the question Jeffrey and Brian Eisenberg take on and try to decisively answer at their marketing firm’s company blog.

They say it is disingenuous to call any of the various things we in the punditry business refer to as types of New Media as any type of media, since the fundamental nature of what we call New Media is communicative, and older forms of media are simply places for content to be surrounded by advertisements.

From Brian’s post:

?The biggest problem I have with the term ?social media? is that it isn?t media in the traditional sense. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the others I don?t have the word count to mention aren?t media; they are platforms for interaction and networking. All the traditional media ? print, broadcast, search, and so on ? provide platforms for delivery of ads near and around relevant content. Social media are platforms for interaction and relationships, not content and ads.?

Jeffrey cites something by AdAge that quotes Ted McConnell from Procter & Gamble Co marketing:

?I think when we call it ?consumer-generated media,? we?re being predatory,? he said. ?Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren?t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ? We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.?

?You can do really amazing things. But I?m not so sure I want to be targeted like that. ? I don?t think everything every consumer says to someone else and writes down is somehow monetizable by the media industry.?

It makes sense in terms of the viewpoint he’s trying to get across here to think of it as a different type of media.  Certainly, a recurring sentiment I hear from commenters and pundits around the blogosphere is the distaste for the term “social media” as something overly broad.

That doesn’t mean, though, that the term doesn’t make sense.  As I commonly say, when the blogosphere loses its way in its quest for proper semantics, it helps to have a sense of history, both of the term and in this case, the media business as well.

What is Media?

A quick look at the definitions of media probably won’t clear things up, as there are more definitions to the term than I expected. When you look at it in context of the terms “new media,” “old media,” and “social media,” there’s some implied context. The media part of that doesn’t refer to the message, but the methods by which that message is conveyed.

This means the newspaper, the television, and the radio when you’re talking about Old Media.  Moving forward into New Media, it starts with blogs and podcasts and authorship-centric tools like Twitter, YouTube and the other variants of online video and microblogging distribution.  

Social Media is a term that encompasses the platforms of New Media, but also implies the inclusion of systems like FriendFeed, Facebook, and other things typically thought of as social networking.  The idea is that they are media platforms with social components and public communication channels.

These are how I use the terms, and how I see others use these terms. I’m not claiming that these are the only proper usages of these terms, but if you use these for your guidelines, you probably won’t make any embarrassing faux pas at the next MashMeet.

In Media, Is the Product the Message or the Audience?

The Eisenbergs were right on one thing: the term social media means something different to the participants and the producers than it does to the marketing people. 

It’s the job of those in marketing to see dollar signs everywhere. That Old Media top to bottom thinks of their industry as nothing but giant dollar signs should be obvious to savvy media observers.  Liberals love to criticize Fox News Channel as being a mouthpiece for Republicans (as conservatives love to criticize the rest of the media for being mouthpieces for Democrats), but it’s clear that a lot of that media bias which exists only exists for their financial incentive.

When it comes to Old Media, the news itself isn’t the product for sale.  The product for sale is the audience. The news process is just something that exists to consolidate that audience into a package. That’s why, despite the integrity that journalists of all stripes often have, the editorial direction of an organization can seem guided by their purse-strings (or at least something other than their veracity).

In New Media’s humble beginnings, money wasn’t really involved in the equation.  Bloggers and podcasters imagined that at some point in the future, there would be a time when their art form would be widely considered to older forms of media, and that there would probably be great financial incentive somewhere for them to make it a full time profession.  As someone who was a participant in that culture I can attest that the bulk of blogging was done for, as Kevin Rose puts it, the love of it.

Does That Mean It’s Immoral to Monetize Social Media?

Perhaps, if you ask Dave Winer. Obviously, I disagree.

Obviously, the top tier of blogging and podcasting has moved up a notch and is edging back towards the business underpinnings we see in traditional media structures, but tools and platforms that fall into the category we define here as “social media” have taken up the slack.  Users at Digg and FriendFeed and YouTube all routinely create mountains of content with little to no financial incentive at all for most users.

If you’re a marketer or entrepreneur, it’s important (I think) to approach aggregating and monetizing social media with at least a little bit of appreciation for its roots and culture.  Whether it’s the incidental tweet or a masterpiece uploaded to Flickr, a little bit of the user’s soul and identity goes into creating that content.

I’ve exposed a wide variety of innovative advertising methods here during my tenure at Mashable, and each one has had at least one or two commenters that object to their creations being held up as purely instruments to make money with. I don’t think that the majority of ‘Net users are pinko, anti-capitalistic, commie bastards, but when they put a bit of themselves out there only to see others take the lion’s share of what money, they feel a bit abused.

It isn’t that the user and content creator (no matter the scale) doesn’t want to be targeted and marketed to - it’s that they don’t want to feel like a mule for someone else’s message. They don’t want to have their work be a trojan horse for someone else’s ideas, be they marketing or ideological in nature.

When designing systems and advertising schemes: that, I believe, is the most important factor to keep in mind.

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Celebrants of the Thanksgiving holiday congregate around dinner tables all across the US next Thursday evening, but as any self-respecting feast and party planner would attest, preparations carry well into the preceding week.

And in customary fashion, Mashable comes to the service of all those getting themselves and their families and friends ready for the annual arrival of ?Turkey Day? and the clattering dishes, champagne glasses, and pumpkin pie that completes every menu.

If you?ve got extra tips or tricks or great website picks (bonus points for rhyme), let ?em fly!

History.com

Maybe you?re not on American soil, or maybe you?ve lived in sweet, blissful ignorance about the Thanksgiving holiday all your years. In any case, some education might be best. History.com, appropriately enough, hosts a minisite dubbed ?The History of Thanksgiving.? Read, listen, and watch your way through a crash course of pilgrimage and consumables.

Scholastic

When you?re a kid, you go to school. No ifs, ands or buts. If you?re a kid in 2008, however, you might be learning a good amount via the Web. Scholastic?s ?The First Thanksgiving? resource is interactive without being as sleep-inducing as that turkey supper laced with Tryptophan.

Food Network

So you know what Thanksgiving is about, and you?re ready to start getting your recipes all in order. Food Network helps make things easier by sorting out the crazy-long-cooking dishes from the super quick. Because when you?re pressed for time, you need instant magic eats.

All Recipes

An alternative to the Food Network, AllRecipes is renowned for its easy browsing, and the Thanksgiving page specially reserved this year is well apportioned to serve most any chef?s agenda.

100-Mile Diet

The 100-mile Diet is an objective to renew locavore, or a ?local eating? method for sustainment. Naturally, the advocates include the Thanksgiving holiday on their calendar.

123 Greetings

You may be fortunate to see everyone you wish to this year come next Thursday, but compromises will be made and absences will be noted. Want to send warm greetings to those you care for? 123 Greetings has what you need.

Hellish Holidays

The phrase ?blood, sweat, and tears? is applied to many things in life. The national Thanksgiving bonanza is no exception. In honor - and in humor - of this reality, Hellish Holidays can be enjoyed by all. It?s a blog written by Laura, who also serves love, sex, and dating tips.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

New Yorkers know it, and so do plenty of people beyond the five boroughs. Macy?s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a staple for millions of Americans, because no Thanksgiving is complete without slow-moving floats and giant cartoon balloons traveling down Manhattan?s canyons for all to see.

Turkeynizer

There are several Thanksgiving-themed iPhone applications. Strange it is, though, that virtually every one must be paid for. In which case we?ll do a hasty best-of: Thanksgiving Turkeynizer [iTunes URL] takes it! Why? Because you can make you or anyone you know a turkey. Enough said.

Mahalo’s Travel Tips

We could do a whole segment on thanksgiving travel, but perhaps none will top Mahalo?s guide. Everything from news and smart tips to travel site links and forums and blog posts. They even finish their selection of items with a cranberry sauce how-to. (Think you can brew better? Let us know!)

USA.Gov

Indeed, the US Government has plenty of things to say about Thanksgiving. Most of its highlights are educational and informational. Recipes, air travel, facts and statistics, plus USDA-approved cooking tips - in case you don?t want to get a visit from the nutrition police. Volunteerism is promoted on the page as well.

How about some YouTube videos to finish off the list? In succession, here is a one-minute stop-motion demonstration, Thanksgiving with (a fake) Napoleon Dynamite, and a totally untimely MadTV number. Happy eating, everybody!

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, DNY59

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Yahoo BrowserPlus, the technology platform from Yahoo that lets desktop and web applications interact, is going open source. The company announced the plans today on its blog, indicating they hope the move ?will allow developers to rapidly extend the platform in a distributed fashion? and ?ensure BrowserPlus stays a secure, robust platform running on all popular operating systems and browsers.?

The offering is a bit of a competitor to Google Gears, which allows users to access popular applications from Google and others like Zoho in an offline environment. Yahoo BrowserPlus offers a number of other features for desktop and web apps to interact, like allowing users to drag and drop files directly into the Web browser.

Rob Diana took a detailed look at some of the different services offered earlier this year; meanwhile, here?s a video from Yahoo?s Lloyd Hilaiel explaining BrowserPlus and the decision to go Open Source:

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Jon Wheatley, developer of the iPhone-ization site Interquash, doesn’t appear to sleep. His latest new app, Twollow, was developed in a mere 24 hours for $150. It’s a simple tool for auto-following people on Twitter.

Simply enter some terms that interest you, and everyone mentioning those terms will be auto-followed. A few terms are banned, Jon tells us, for obvious reasons - someone following short terms like “the” would quickly overload the system.

Mashable’s commenters ripped apart Intersquash: will Wheatley’s latest launch fair any better?

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This post is part of Mashable’s Startup Review series, which highlights great unsung startups. The series is made possible by Sun Startup Essentials.

Company Name

Lymabean

20-Word Description

Lymabean injects actual real-life usefulness into college social networking, by bringing students and local businesses into the same interactive environment.

CEO’s Pitch

College students are always looking for events, sales, and job openings around campus ? while local businesses exhaust themselves getting that information in front of those same students. Lymabean brings these groups together in a social network that encourages an ongoing dialogue.

Built in Flex, the Bean’s interactive environment allows more than just the standard profiles and voyeurism. Students can easily share local events with their friends, bridging the gap between online and real-life socializing ? and businesses benefit from the active shareability because it adds stumble-upon exposure they wouldn’t get elsewhere. It’s old-school word of mouth meets new-school technology.

Mashable’s Take

I don?t know if Lymabean is a name that evokes fun social happenings in the collegiate sphere. Furthermore, networking on the Web among university students isn?t known for its visual elegance, as evidenced by the photo frenzy that?s been going on for years on services like MySpace and Facebook. But if you want a seriously great looking setup to complement your great looking friend list and profile image, there are few facilitators that will please the user as much as Lymabean is able.

Putting aside for a moment the idea that a label change to something that isn?t so healthy for you might make this site grow considerably larger (snap proposal: how about a play on the classic ?pizza and beer? ritual that happens days, nights, and mornings on campuses all over?), Lymabean proves itself to be simple, intuitive, and so conveniently segmented that you?ll rarely be confused by what you see. Which says a lot in a time when networks are annexing more and more stuff on the stuff they’ve already got - and doing so to some users’ very outspoken opposition.

No jumbled firehose of info to speak of here. With Lymabean you can categorize the list of people you know with drag-and-drop motions, and you can quickly see what events you?ll be going to and whether your friends are going to be there as well or someplace else. Of course, for folks with no daily agenda, there’s an option to search for stuff to do, or even create an event if you?re so inclined.

Remember this is all restricted to college users, so it kind of brings things back to the 2004-6 era when networks weren?t so all-inclusive as they are today. Is that a good thing? That’s your call. I imagine some of you might say Lymabean is ?keeping it real,? to beat a long-expired phrase further into oblivion.

Naturally, it shouldn?t be expected that die-hard Facebookers will flock to Lymabean upon learning of its existence now or some moment down the road. (It?s been around for a good part of the year.) But there are those who understandably want to keep things as purely college-centric as possible - yet at the same time don?t want to settle for boring design. Granted, Facebook isn?t very boring, but it’s no Lymabean.

Again, I’ll say that the tag chosen isn?t so great. Really, ask your dorm buddies if they?re on Lymabean. Then note the response. But It only takes a moment or two of exploring to recognize there?s something pretty remarkable about this network?s digs. You might just thank us for showing you the way!

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

History tends to remember only pivotal moments in time, discarding the day to day struggles. Even when the occasional diary survives, it only archives what one person does - it doesn’t track his or her interactions with others. But with social media, that information is readily available and, furthermore, that information archives how we interact with others over time.

For the first time in human history, the day-to-day interactions between people are being permanently recorded and formatted in easily organizable segments of information. This has a plethora of consequences on how we record history, but here are the five big ways I see social media altering how we utilize and record history:

1) Everyone will have the ability to know what you did and who you were with on a daily basis.

What were you doing on July 14th, 2008? Unless it was your birthday, you probably don’t know.

It may seem like an insignificant question, but 20 years from now, knowing what you did or who you were with during a certain day could be great for reminiscing about the good old times. Or maybe you’re a researcher that needs to pinpoint the exact movement of a new virus. Or you’ll want to prevent the election of a presidential candidate with embarrassing information.

When you tweet you’re hanging out with @mashable or @ben_parr, you are not only making a statement to friends and followers, but you’re writing down in history that on this date you were with these people. 20 years from now, you’ll know who you hung out with from the day-after, because of hung over Facebook wall posts and tweets. This phenomenon will only get stronger as more people rely on social media services.

2) Historical trend analysis will leap to a new level of precision.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re a researcher who wants to figure out the evolution of political ideology over an election cycle. What data could you work with from 1856 to 1860, when Lincoln was elected? Newspaper clippings, a few historical documents, speeches, but not enough information to really trend the triggers that altered political thought. Even if all of that data did exist, it would be hell to find it.

How about 2004 to 2008? There’s a stark difference. We have Twitter, Facebook, blogs, websites, forums, and search habits. We can start to trend how search terms increased, what events triggered visceral reactions, and how people of both sides reacted to the political opinions of the day. The information is archived, easily organized, and a large stock of it is readily available to the public.

3) We will not use history to learn from our mistakes, but to prevent them before they happen.

Google’s recent partnership with the government is an example of the prevention phenomenon in action. Google has been giving the Federal Government information on flu-related searches in order to track and contain epidemics before they begin (you can find the public version of the tool here). We can track the history and progression of the flu with stunning accuracy. In turn, we can use that data to prevent the outbreak of the next drug-resistant virus.

Yes, it raises certain ethical questions, but the point is still the same - it changes how we analyze and utilize history.

4) There is little room for hiding details about our lives.

Less than flattering pictures on Facebook have already disqualified tens of thousands of people from jobs. But when someone of the current teenage generation runs for President, what do you think will happen to every tweet or blog post they ever wrote? It will be analyzed and checked. Embellishing about your life story will be difficult, because we can go back and see if you were an angry person in your childhood or who your friends really were.

5) An ethical war over the use of this information will arise.

If the government can use search data to track disease, what else can they use it to track? Is it right to charge a political candidate with guilt by association just because they were Facebook friends with an eventual criminal? I can’t even begin to imagine the ethical debates such detailed history may cause.

It’s often said that history is recorded by the victors. Now history is recorded by computers and anybody can pick up that data and come to their own conclusion. The study of history will dramatically change as more and more people use and rely upon social media for daily interaction. No diary, history book, or recording can compare to the data available through social media. My belief is that social media may prove to be as pivotal as the printing press in the study of history.

So I’ll ask one more time. What were you doing on July 14th?

Imagery courtesy of iStockPhoto, lcsdesign; flickr, quiplash

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