Noah’s first impressions and review of one the hottest new phone to actually be released in the US so far in 2009: The T-Mobile blackberry Curve 8900. This next gen Curve lacks 3G but packs a beautiful hi-res display, faster processor, and a nice thin profile. MORE @ www.phonedog.com
Lucky, lucky, Stuart gets his hands on the shiny new Blackberry Storm 9500 on the day of it’s launch in the UK. What are his first impressions?
It’s on. Blizzard has started the closed beta for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty in advance of the game’s launch sometime around the middle of the year. If you signed up to participate in the beta, check your Battle.net account, as the developer says that invitations have already started to go out.
Beyond testing StarCraft II gameplay, testers will get an early look at the revamped Battle.net service that will allow gamers to talk to one another across World of Warcraft realms and Blizzard’s other titles. Players will also be able to purchase add-on content and other Blizzard releases via the new Battle.net.
StarCraft II will bring a completely rethought single-player experience to go with the online multiplayer. Single-player missions are organized differently and the way items and units are unlocked makes solo play much more exciting. Unfortunately, there won’t be support for LAN play.
Once we get some quality time with the StarCraft II beta, we’ll report back with our first impressions.
Samsung has a new smartphone out: it’s fast, it’s good looking, but most importantly, it sports an entirely new mobile OS developed by Samsung, called bada (yes, in lowercase).
The device itself, called Samsung Wave or S8500, is well equipped. Besides a 1GHz CPU, it has a 3.3 inch, 800×480 pixel AMOLED screen, a 5 megapixel camera, 2 or 8 GB of storage space (expandable via microSD memory cards), and aGPS. When it comes to connectivity, it supports WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0 and 3G. Finally, it’s great at chewing multimedia content, with support for MP3, WMV, DivX and XviD.
However, judging from first impressions, the OS itself (while sporting some important features such as multi-tasking and multi-touch) is still buggy and prone to crashes. The jury is still out for this one, hopefully Samsung will be able to iron out the bugs before the device hits the market.
Tags: Mobile 2.0, samsung, wave
The long-promised Meebo IM app for the iPhone and iPod touch [iTunes link] is now available in the App Store, and it’s both free and awesome.
Meebo is a primarily web-based IM client — a place you can go in your browser to access almost every IM network you might want to use: Google Talk/Jabber, Yahoo!, AOL Instant Messenger, MySpace IM, Facebook — you name it.
Meebo demonstrated its app in the main presentation of the Apple event last March when iPhone OS 3.0 was announced, which finally added push notification support to iPhone apps. Meebo’s app looked fantastic, and folks got really excited about it, but after a couple of weeks of hype it faded away from the public eye. Apart from a web-based version of Meebo for iPhone, nothing happened. But now the promised native app is finally here.
Meebo is arguably the best IM app for the iPhone because it’s lightweight and easy to use, and because it supports almost every network under the sun. Scroll to the bottom of this post for a complete list of supported networks; we’ll bet you didn’t even know that many of them existed.
Push notifications are unsurprisingly part of the feature set. But other cool things include syncing chat logs (and everything else, really) with the web app and the ability to move between active conversations by swiping from side to side with your fingers.
Mostly, though, we were impressed with the simplicity and speed of the app. Other solutions like BeejiveIM and IM+ seem bulky by comparison and their prices are comparatively bulky, too: $6.99 for the former and $4.99 for the latter for all the features. Meebo is totally free, and though it does lack a couple of the more advanced features that its competitors offer, most users won’t notice their absence.
Here are some pics of the app in action:
- AIM
– Are You Interested
– aujourdhui.com
– BasilMarket
– Batanga
– CafeMom
– Chess.com
– DailyStrength
– DanceTrippin
– Decayenne
– Dhingana
– EliteCastingNetwork
– eBaum’s World
– Fabulously40
– Facebook
– Fanpop
– Flirtbox
– Flixster
– FooPets
– Footytube
– Fupa
– GGL
– GamerNook
– Gamevance
– GirlsAskGuys
– Google Talk
– ICQ
– imageChef
– Indianelement
– ibeatyou
– Jabber
– JacketFlap
– JamLegend
– Justin.tv
– Klikot
– MSN
– MingleVille
– MixPod
– MuchGames
– MySpace
– MyWorkster
– myYearbook
– Operation Sports
– OrangeShark
– Outspark
– Packed
– PlayedOnline
– Playfire
– Playlist
– Quepasa
– SocialSplash
– Sonico
– SparkPeople
– Sparkteens
– Starpulse
– Tehkseven
– Threadsy
– Ultimate Guitar
– Wadja
– Wixi
– Yahoo!
– Yonja
– Zinch
– Zorpia
Tags: apple, apple app store, im, iphone, iPod Touch, meebo
On Wednesday we asked you to share your first impressions with Google Buzz, and despite all the privacy issues and a whole lot of new inbox clutter, Lifehacker readers are willing to give Buzz a chance. 16% of respondents loved it off the bat, 10% hates it, 16% really didn’t care one way or the other, while another 16% were lukewarm about the service. The largest group, consisting of 39% of those who replied, really aren’t sure how they’re going to use it. Not exactly an instant hit, but people seem at least interested.
Dan Schawbel is the bestselling author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, an award winning blogger at Personal Branding Blog, a national speaker and consultant on branding and a BusinessWeek columnist.
There have been countless incidents in which professionals have lost their jobs, been evicted, or even been arrested for things they’ve done on social networks. There has never been a more important time to discuss the many ways you can sabotage your personal brand, and how you can prevent these mistakes before it’s too late.
A new report by Microsoft states that 64% of HR managers think it is appropriate to look at online profiles of candidates and 41% have rejected people as a result. Your online presence — which may consist of both content that you provide (on your LinkedIn profile for instance), as well as what’s written about you by people you may or may not know — is slowly becoming part of the formal recruitment process. It’s also where first impressions occur before in-person handshakes are made, so you have to make sure you are managing your brand online, before someone else does it for you. The following are five ways to avoid sabotaging your personal brand.
58% of Americans don’t even Google themselves, but employers and potential customers certainly will. It’s safe to say that people are already talking about you, either online or offline.
As you create your personal brand on a variety of platforms, your name will start popping up in search engines and on social networks. This can be both beneficial to your brand or harmful depending on the context. The viral nature of social networks, as well as their new ubiquity, should encourage you to start listening in on what people are saying about you.
Negative mentions will spread fast unless you keep your ear close to the web, so I recommend you setup a Google alert for your name, your company’s name, key competitors, partners, and industry buzz terms. There are many other free tools that can help you monitor your brand. You can also try Social Mention for a more complete solution to brand mentions on social networks.
A future problem, which some might say is a current problem, is the volume of social networks and the amount of status updates and messages you receive each day. If you’re active on each and every social network that launches, you will start to spread yourself too thin, which can really hurt your brand. You won’t possibly be able to update all of your social profiles, as well as keep track of pictures, profile information, groups, etc. In general, you should only join the largest social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), as well as those networks in your industry.
As I noted in a previous Mashable post, you should reserve your full name on as many of the popular social networks as possible by using a service such as namechk.com, before someone who shares your name claims them and you’re locked out for life. But just because you have claimed your name everywhere doesn’t mean you should expend valuable time and energy maintaining a presence on every social network.
There are some websites that allow you to scale your social feeds so that one status update can automatically spread to other networks, without manually publishing content. You can use hellotxt.com or ping.fm to spread your status message to many social networks at once, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. You can also go to your LinkedIn profile and syndicate your tweets for your LinkedIn status update automatically or by using “#in” for each tweet (if you want to be selective). There is also a Facebook application for Twitter so you can syndicate your tweets through your Facebook profile.
It’s really easy to forgot who you’re connected with on social networks as they grow. You might start out with high school, college, and summer camp friends, and then add some co-workers when you start a new job. There will be a point where you’re going to have to make a strategic decision, who you accept and who you don’t. The second you add your manager or colleagues is the time when you have to rethink what you publish or what you syndicate from other social networks. One mistake could cause you trouble.
On Facebook, you may want to have a profile page for your inner circle of friends and family members and then a Facebook Fan Page for your professional image. This way, you can make your profile private and hide it from search, while having a fan page that you can point your coworkers to. They will know that you are hiding your profile but should respect your privacy, especially since you’re giving them the option to follow your fan page.
Certainly, self-promotion is an extremely important part of building your brand because if no one knows of your achievements or the company you work for, then how are they going to do business with you? Yet, I’ve noticed that people often over-promote themselves in various ways across the web.
Successful self-promotion only works in moderation, because if you’re constantly only promoting yourself, many people will unfollow, unfriend, or block you from their network. The best way to build a strong personal brand is to promote other people, which creates goodwill and a connection, as well as distributing value based on what you have to offer: Your expertise. If you’re helping people 80 or 90% of the time, then people will be much more accepting of your self-promotional messages the other 10%. You will also start to notice that other people will promote you — and their endorsement is even stronger than your own proclamations.
Consistency is extremely important when it comes to any kind of branding, from personal to corporate.
Selecting a unified “picture” and spreading it across all your social media — your website, your blog, your presentations, your press kits, your business cards, etc. — will build image recognition in the mind of your audience. Consistency is significant for pictures, your name, as well as the fonts, the colors and the overall message that you communicate through your online properties.
There is no question that you already have a personal brand — whether you built it yourself or not. The way to differentiate it from everyone else is through management. By paying attention to mentions of your name online, not spreading yourself too thin, knowing your audience, offering more value than self-promotion, and being consistent, you can be very successful.
- Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right
– How Social Media Helps One Small Business Connect with Fans
– 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Avoid Social Media Panic
– HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
– The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
– HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, drflet, titaniumdoughnut
Tags: brand, branding, brands, business, facebook, linkedin, List, Lists, personal brand, personal branding, small business, twitter
Do we even need to summarize what this week’s top Apple news was all about? Aside from iPad mania, Apple also announced a record fiscal quarter and the Ars staff opined on what we want out of iPhone OS 4.0 and more. Read on for the good stuff.
Apple announces the iPad: Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage today in San Francisco to announce the iPad, a cross between an iPhone and a Macbook that aims to change the way we use the Web and consume digital media. Details inside.
Hands-on, first impressions, and Photo gallery of Apple iPad: We blogged the live event and we’ve put our hands all over the new iPad. Photos of the event and the device within.
Apple revealed its new iPad Tablet today, and we’ve got photos from the live event and from our hands-on with the new device. For pictures of the event, check out page two.
Continue reading Exclusive: Google Nexus One hands-on, video, and first impressions
Exclusive: Google Nexus One hands-on, video, and first impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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