Many of you may remember that I was straight-up infatuated with Samsung’s MV800 point-and-shoot. And why wouldn’t I be? It’s absolutely the best point-and-shoot if your favorite subject to shoot happens to be yourself. While Samsung’s latest camera isn’t quite as narcissistic, the new DV300F announced today still has a pretty awesome trick up its sleeve.

This is one of Samsung’s Dual-View offerings, meaning it sports a 1.5-inch screen up front to accompany the usual 3-inch LCD display (which doubles as a viewfinder.) What sets the DV300F apart, however, is its WiFi capabilities. You’ll be able to share pics and clips directly to Facebook, Picasa, YouTube, etc.

If you’re not in the mood to go public right away, you’ll also be able to upload the entirety of your SD card to your PC with the Auto PC Backup tool. The 16-megapixel camera is capable of 5x optical zoom and comes equipped with a 25mm wide-angle lens. You’ll also find the expected microSD slot present.

Color flavors include black, silver, navy and red and each can be had for $199. Shipping is expected to begin in March.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

For people who want to syndicate published work to Facebook, the company has for years offered a Notes application that included a feature to automatically import RSS feeds from other sites. But now the company is telling users that it is removing the auto-posting feature on November 22nd, and directing them to instead to “post links on your Wall.”

Third-party syndication app providers, like NetworkedBlogs, Hootsuite and Tweetdeck remain as options for syndicating content automatically to Facebook. However, the evidence suggests that auto-posting results in significantly lower engagement. This change is likely an effort by Facebook to get users and Page owners customizing the text and images around links to best fit the Facebook audience.

Previously, Facebook had offered a simple way to sync blogs through the Notes settings. Users clicked the “Applications” menu, chose “Notes,” and under “Notes Settings,” clicked on “Import a blog,” and typed in the URL. Then feeds of blog posts or Tweets or other information contained in the RSS feed was automatically republished to Facebook.

There aren’t any other known changes to the Notes app, and users can still write individual notes.

[Thanks to Eti Suruzon for the tip.]

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Back in late 2009, then-free music identifying service Shazam made a rather drastic change to their business model: they went freemium. Everybody got 5 free song identifications per month… but after that, they’d have to cough up for premium app, “Shazam Encore”.

That worked well enough for a while — then the competition rolled in, and gave away what Shazam was trying to charge for. Shazam responded with an experiment: they’d remove the tagging limits in their app, with a single “sponsor” covering their costs in exchange for ad placement — but only for Android, and only until the end of the year. Seems that worked well enough, as Shazam has just removed the tagging limits in their iOS and Android apps indefinitely.

Shazam’s launch partner in all of this is Capital One, so don’t be surprised if a B-list celebrity pops up to ask “What’s in your wallet?” every time you stumble out of the bar bathroom and try to ID the tail-end of that song that has been stuck in your head for four days. (Oddly, eBay was supposed to be sponsoring the Android side of things until 2012. What happened there?)

Both the iOS and Android apps should have their monthly limitations removed as of this morning.

As for the folks who already purchased the premium app: you’ll continue to get unlimited tagging, won’t be subjected to ads, have access to some fancy features like the auto-synced LyricPlay feature, and you get the warm, fuzzy (but nowadays rare) feeling that comes from actually, you know, paying for something.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Launching in beta today in California is the YC-funded Leaky. Like a Hipmunk for car insurance, Leaky’s premise is simple enough; visit the site and you’ll be prompted to fill out an online questionnaire covering all sorts of vehicle-related questions like make, model and mileage of your car as well as demographic information like education level and employer. When you complete the quiz, Leaky immediately serves up a selection of car insurance quotes from five of the top insurance carriers as well as others, including Geico, Esurance and Allstate.

While individual car insurance providers already have the “fill out questionnaire” -> “get quote” functionality on their individual sites, no one in the US is aggregating realtime quotes from multiple providers like Leaky is. And unlike UK counterparts Moneysupermarket.com and Confused.com, where regulations are relatively uniform, Leaky has the added challenge of insurance restrictions being different for each individual insurance companies across all 50 states.

“Insurance companies each have a different perspective how much money you’re going to cost the company,” co-founder Darren Nix tells me “Depending on a customer’s claims history different companies have different philosophies on how to underwrite risk for different customers and each database has different pricing models.”

Basically this means that Leaky has to crawl the APIs for five or more insurance carriers, for the fields corresponding to the answers to 40 questions, across 50 states. “When we first started writing code in January we thought it would take a couple of months, then we realized it was a beast,” co-founder Jason Traff says.

Indeed, many in the insurance sector purport themselves to do exactly what Leaky actually does (which is hard) but instead incorporate some cop-out lead gen or spammy element. Traff explains that Progressive just estimates what your car insurance quote would be based on publicly available data. And services like Netquote.com, Carinsurance.com and Insurance.com have you fill out a questionnaire but do not result in online quotes, rather in a series of sales phone calls over the next couple of days. Sounds horrific.

Free for users, Leaky plans on monetizing by charging affiliate fees for every customer it brings to insurance companies. Nix and Traff tell me that they estimate they’ve saved the 700 people who’ve signed up an average of $313 a year. They estimate the size of the auto-insurance premium market to be $200 billion annually, $20 billion of which results from carrier switching.

So if it’s actually saving people money and has the potential for profit, why the name Leaky? Nix says, “Well most people find insurance really boring and we wanted a domain name to make people think ‘What the hell? how’s that related to insurance?’ And as it turns out, it’s working because we are having outstanding recall of our domain name!” The founders expect to have expand to all insurance companies across all states in the next 60 days.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook today released the results of a study it conducted on what types of posts by the Facebook Pages of journalists performed the best. Among the highlights: Incorporating personal analysis in posts increased referral clicks by 20%, and including a thumbnail image when posting a link boosted Likes by 65% and comments by 50%.

While these findings are for Pages of journalists, the best practices they illuminate can be useful for the admins of any type of Page.

There is potential for bias in these findings results as Facebook did not describe the study’s methodology.

Turn Off Your Auto-Publisher

The most important finding is that posts saw 20% more referral clicks when personal analysis was added to a post’s description, opposed to just publishing a headline, blurb, and thumbnail.

The ability to include a longe description of what’s behind a link is one of the fundamental differences between Facebook and Twitter. While journalists and other content publishers may not prefer spending the extra time crafting Facebook posts, the benefits in traffic driven that this study shows should convince them the effort is worth it.

Pages that automatically cross-post Twitter updates or that auto-post when an article is published to their website should consider switching to manual publishing. Having a human writing copy specifically to accompany a Facebook post makes the news feed story seem more organic and personal, and therefore more compelling and clickable.

Photos Draw Feedback

When a link is pasted into Facebook’s publisher, it’s formatted into a rich feed story that includes a thumbnail image when possible. Facebook’s study shows that posts that display a thumbnail image receive 65% more Likes and 50% more.

It’s believed that by getting more feedback on its posts, Pages improve their EdgeRank — the algorithm that determines how prominent a post is in a user’s news feed. By courting feedback, Pages can increase the number of users that see their posts past the somewhat disheartening average of 7.49 news feed post impressions per day per 100 fans.

Therefore, Page admins shouldn’t manually strip out the thumbnail unless absolutely necessary. If the publisher can’t find an image behind the link to thumbnail, admins should consider adding an image to the web page, or marking up their site with Facebook’s Open Graph tags such that a site logo is pulled in as the thumbnail.

Post Length and Timing

For post by journalists, Facebook found that 4-line posts received 30% more feedback than average and 5-line posts received 60% more. This means that Pages looking to court feedback should generally publish long posts, though these may have lower click through rates because some users will skim past a dense block of text.

Engagement with one-line posts, on the other hand, fluctuated greatly but displayed the highest maximum feedback of any length, with some receiving 15 times the average. Therefore, when appropriate for the content, one-line posts can be the most engaging, likely because they take so little work on the reader’s part to consume.

In terms of timing, Facebook’s study showed that posts on Thursday through Sunday had higher engagement rates. Posts on Saturday received 85% more clicks than average, and those published on Wednesday had 37% more.

However, these figures may be less generalizable because of the cultural norm of reading news on weekends. Buddy Media’s report on engagement by day showed significant fluctuation by industry, so Pages outside of journalism will need to track their analytics to determine the best days to post. Facebook’s reports of engagement spikes at 7am and 5pm match Buddy Media’s data.

Every Page’s audience is different, so the best way for any Page to determine how to post more effectively is to follow their Page Insights. Pages can thereby modify their strategy based on trends in performance for different content, tone, length, and timing. Still, the findings of Facebook’s study should help point admins in the right direction.

For more strategies on how to get the most clicks, Likes, and comments out of your Page’s posts, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

It seems like just yesterday that I was writing about Chrome 11′s awesome new ability to let you speak to the browser by way of HTML5. In fact, it was just yesterday. But that hasn’t stopped a team from coming up with a Chrome extension to get it to work in search boxes across the web.

Speechify is an extension that Dugley Labs churned out in record speed yesterday. With it, many of the search boxes you visit on the web gain the little microphone icon that when clicked, allows you to speak your search. It works on Google, Bing, YouTube, Hulu — a ton of sites. And it works well.

Saying “TechCrunch” on Google returns results for TechCrunch. Saying “MG Siegler” on Bing returns results for me. Saying “Friday video” on YouTube returns that damn song.

It’s great — but also a little buggy. For example, the microphone shows up on Quora, but it doesn’t actually work (I think their auto drop-down may be to blame). And the microphone sometimes appears in odd places, like the title box in WordPress — but it still works!

The best implementation has to be Google with Instant turned on, because it allows you to search without hitting the keyboard at all.

Of course, this type of technology is old hat in the mobile space — meaning it’s a couple years old. But it’s still nifty to see on the web without any plug-in needed. I suspect we’ll see a lot more web apps and extensions that take advantage of this. In fact, AreYouWatchingThis has already implemented it on their site, icantfindthegame.com.

Currently, the plugin requires Chrome 11 beta (or dev), but the feature should be moving to the stable builds soon as well.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today is the day. Today is the day where we can put the nonsense of yesterday’s press events behind us and actually get on the floor of CES 2011 with our Ustream equipment. Hallelujah.

The show

Opera released a new version of its desktop browser yesterday, Opera 11. The new browser shipped with a number of new features, including support for browser extensions and a new tabbing functionality.

It looks like the release was a success; Opera just announced that it saw 6.7 million downloads of the new browser in the first day alone. So how does that compare to downloads of Opera 10? Well, the company says that in its first week open to the public, Opera 10 was only downloaded 1.7 million times per day.

One factor that helped increase downloads, says Opera, is the auto-update feature which sends existing users a message to download the new version of the browser. But the company admits that not every user received the auto-update message. And Opera advertised Opera 11′s release, including a mouth-watering ad on Reddit using bacon as a lure. A survey of people downloading Opera for the first time had 53% of its respondents coming from Firefox, and 43% coming from IE. And none from Chrome?

Opera’s iPhone app saw 1 million downloads in its first day in the app store earlier this year. And Opera just announced that it hit 150 million users worldwide across its desktop and mobile browsers.

For comparison, Microsoft’s beta version of IE9 was downloaded 2 million times in the first two days the browser was open to the public.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Lawsuit: Facebook for Debt Collection – A woman in Florida is suing after a debt collector used Facebook to try to collect. This could be a significant case because, currently, Facebook as a debt collecting method is a gray area of the law. Facebook doesn’t like this type of activity and said it appears to violate their policies against, “any kind of threatening, intimidating, or hateful contact from one user to another.”

Reports: Accel Sells Part of its Stake in Facebook — TechCrunch and VentureBeat are reporting that early investor Accel has sold some minority portion of its stake in Facebook, with a possible valuation of around $34 million. Details, like the size of the stake, and where this positions Accel versus other investors, is still not clear. Technology Crossover Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz may be among the stock purchasers.

Mark Zuckerberg Gets Animated – Mark Zuckerberg and the saga of Facebook’s founding will be retold in an animated film form, adapted from a comic book called ”Mark Zuckerberg and the Found.” The books will be in stores in December at a cost of $6.99.

Facebook Writes UK Govt for Free Speech – Facebook and other tech companies have written an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron and the justice minister asking them to change libel laws to reflect the Internet age. One problem is that, “there is a one-year limit for bringing a defamation claim after an offending remark is published, but every time an online comment is viewed it counts as a new publication and a potential new cause for a defamation lawsuit.”

Facebook Accounts Disabled, Being Restored – A bug hit Facebook this week that disabled an untold number of accounts; Facebook says it is in the process of restoring access to those affected, and most seem to have been by this point.

U.S. Military Warned About Facebook’s Places – The U.S. Air Force sent an internal memo out recently advising troops to be careful when using Facebook’s location service, Places. Checking into certain places could compromise U.S. forces in war zones.

Plastic Jungle Raises $10M – Plastic Jungle raised $10 million this week in a third round of funding led by Jafco Ventures, and bringing the company’s total to $23.4 million, according to VentureBeat. We’ve written previously about Plastic Jungle’s work with Credits more than once.

Facebook Sells Cars – Facebook is becoming an ever important part of the auto industry, as reflected by the fact that almost every new release at the L.A. Auto Show was featured on Facebook. More at the link.

LivingSocial Invests $5M in Jump On It - LivingSocial invested $5 million to gain a majority stake in the Australian social shopping site Jump On It, according to a press release. The site will incorporate LivingSocial’s Daily Deals, opening up its money saving services to 10 million people in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Oodle Acquires Grouply – Social commerce company Oodle has acquired Grouply, an online hub for social groups; the Grouply platform and its hosted groups will continue to operate on that site, according to a press release.

Zuckerberg’s FaceMash Sold for $30K – We previously wrote about Mark Zuckerberg’s original web site, FaceMash, and the fact that it was up for auction. Well, it was sold for $30,000 to an anonymous buyer last month, according to a press release.

OpenSocial 1.1 Published – The OpenSocial Foundation published version 1.1 of its specification.

Facebook Integration for TSA Body Scans - The Transportation Security Administration announced a Facebook integration for its fully body scans, allowing passengers to share their semi-nude scans with all of the world (actually, this is a joke, but almost too real given everything else the TSA is doing).

Vin Diesel, Facebook’s Sexiest Man – People Magazine nominated its sexiest man alive recently, but they took to Facebook to see what the difference would be. Turns out Vin Diesel was named the “Sexiest Man Alive on Facebook,” and according to our PageData service, he has 18.5 million Likes.

Kmart, Sears Sell eGift Cards on Facebook – Sears and Kmart have begun to sell egift cards, from $5 to $25, on Facebook. Once purchased they may be delivered either by being posted on the recipient’s Wall or sent to their email.

Facebook Influences Teen Relationships – Seventeen Magazine released the details of a survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 21 to see how Facebook influences romantic relationships. Turns out:  79% friend a crush within a week; 60% check a crush’s profile once a day and 40% more than once a day; 72% say talking online brings real life relationships closer; 10% have been dumped on Facebook; 10% change their status to single; 27% change their connection after a breakup; 73% keep their exes as friends.

Kids Under 12 Love Facebook – Smarty Pants published a study this week that found Facebook among the favorite brands of first through sixth graders from a list of 270-plus; Facebook was number 126 for children 6 through 12 and 91 among 9 through 12 year-olds.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Location-based services are currently in a race to lock up the biggest brands and retailers they can. Earlier this month Facebook ran a major promotion with the Gap; Chipotle is also using the platform to offer buy-one-get-one-free deals. This morning, Fast Company reported that Foursquare has forged a deal with Pepsico. And today SCVNGR is announcing that it’s scored a partnership with arguably the biggest brand of all: Coca-Cola.

SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch says that the company has been gunning to land Coke for some time (and that its competitors have as well). The campaign will take the form of custom, coke-themed SCVNGR challenges that will appear in 10 major malls across the country through the end of the year. Players who complete these challenge will be eligible for rewards like Coke bottle openers (meh) and $100,000 worth of American Express gift cards (more tempting). Players will be able to redeem these challenges at each malls’ information booth. And on Black Friday, Coke will actually have teams of people in the malls urging customers to try out the challenges.

Obviously this is a big win for SCVNGR, especially if it can maintain a relationship with Coke to run more campaigns in the future. Since its rewards platform launched over the summer, Priebatsch says that SCVNGR players have redeemed some $1.5 million worth of free goods.

The timing of today’s soft-drink related announcements seems like more than a coincidence, but it’s worth noting that Foursquare’s deal is quite different from SCVNGR’s. As reported in Fast Company today, Foursquare has actually partnered with Safeway/Vons to integrate with the grocery chain’s existing rewards program — this helps lower the barrier to get users playing the game, because it happens automatically at check-out. Users are rewarded with different Pepsi products based on their Foursquare history.

In contrast, SCVNGR probably won’t be going the auto-checkin route any time soon, because it’s focused primarily on offering engaging challenges rather than the check-in itself.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch