Twitter is — in my view — the finest communications medium under the sun. And the most fun you can have in 140 characters. It’s also proof that everyone benefits from being edited, even if it’s only self-editing taking place.

If you’re looking for evidence that brevity really is the soul of wit, Twitter is the place to go to find it. Indeed, there is so much wit fluttering around the site that it’s now possible to enjoy Twitter in comic form — thanks to cartoonist @VectorBelly (aka Mike Rosenthal) – who has created a Tumblr called Twitter: The Comic.

As the name suggests, Twitter: The Comic turns tweets into micro-comics. Drawn by Rosenthal (and others), each comic is based on a single tweet (such as this one), and typically adopts a four-panel form – like so:

Obviously, not every tweet has comic potential so Rosenthal cherry-picks what he draws – choosing, in his words, “the greatest tweets of our generation”.  It’s not entirely clear how he determines ‘true tweet greatness’ but the number of times a tweet has been marked as a favourite appears to figure in his formula.

He does also take submissions (and advises that tweets not only need to be funny, but must have “plot, characters, dialogue, and action… If it reads like a film script rather than a biography, then it’ll make a good comic”).

So what’s Twitter: The Comic like? In a word: surreal. At least, at its best it is.

Humour does not always travel well so as a Brit I must admit to being slightly baffled by some of the comics — doubtless I’m missing some crucial cultural reference points (natch) — and can almost feel the joke passing me by like a flock of migrating birds. But other comics have an absurdist majesty I can definitely appreciate. Sometimes they bring to mind the excellent Far Side series, by Gary Larson.

Like this one, illustrating this tweet:

Or this one, drawn from this tweet:

Setting aside the nuances of humour and cross-cultural currents, it’s always great to see digital content being reimagined, reworked and reborn in new forms. Earlier this week Wired reported on a project in which two photographers documented the locations where public geotagged tweets were sent from. And late last year we wrote about the artist who has turned Angry Birds gestures into an installation composed of thousands of fingerprints. Other examples that spring to mind include the novelist who wrote a story composed of a series of tweets. Or the algorithm that creates iambic rhyming poetry from selective retweets.

Twitter undoubtedly offers huge amounts of source material and inspiration for creative types — and now that it’s rolling out an archive feature so users can download their past tweets it’s getting easier to sift through your back catalogue for hidden gems. The best tweets create powerful mental images and are thus already inherently visual. But now, thanks to Rosenthal’s pen, it’s even easier to pull pictures from the words to make the tweets fly. Enjoy.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Lyft, the local on-demand ride-sharing service operated by the startup Zimride, is apparently not letting recent regulatory hurdles cramp its style.

Lyft, which launched its service allowing individual car-owners to provide local transportation services to their peers in exchange for a suggested donation in San Francisco this past summer, is now actively recruiting staff in new cities including Seattle and Los Angeles as part of a planned geographic expansion in the new year.

We’ve been hearing buzz about the planned growth for a little while now, but it was more solidified in a year-end email the company sent to users this morning that included job listings for positions in the new cities, which read:

“It has been an incredible year. Riding together, you’ve found new friends, music, and creative collaborators while exploring every corner of this great city. Thank you for building a passionate community with us in San Francisco!

In 2013, we’re expanding our horizons, bringing the social transportation revolution to cities across the country. That’s where you (or any of your friends) come in – join our team and help us take Lyft to new heights!”

The email goes on to list the following job opening: “City General Manager (Seattle, LA and multiple other cities)”.

I reached out to Lyft co-founder and Zimride COO John Zimmer this morning, and he said that while the hiring push is beginning now, the actual product expansion will be at a slower pace. “We’re getting ready for expansion in 2013. Hiring great people takes the longest, so we’re excited to find people in all major cities, but won’t be rolling out [Lyft itself to] more than one [new city] in January.” He confirmed that Los Angeles and Seattle were both in “the top ten” cities into which Lyft is planning a near-term expansion, but declined to provide more details on the locations or schedule.

San Francisco is a famously small city in terms of square mileage, and it also has a relatively large proportion of open-minded early adopter types that often welcome things such as a new pink mustachioed mode of transportation with open arms. So it will be very interesting to see how services such as Lyft can grow beyond their hometowns and become national businesses. It now seems that we won’t have to wait too much longer to find out.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon might enjoy only very thin to nonexistent margins on its Kindle hardware, according to most industry watchers, but it looks to be cooking up a plan to extend device sales revenue thanks to extended warranties. That’s according to trademark filings uncovered by GigaOM in a new report today. The wording of the application suggests Amazon is following Apple’s lead, hoping to replicate the Mac maker’s success with its AppleCare extended hardware protection plans.

GigaOM notes that Amazon’s patent is almost identical to Apple’s but it would apply to “Kindle” products, and goods and services associated with that name. The trademark would cover “maintenance, repair, updating and installation services,” as well as troubleshooting services, and a second trademark filing associated with the first extends to “insurance and warranty services.”

In the consumer electronics space, extended warranties are big business. As a former employee of Best Buy myself, I can tell you that margins on big-ticket items like PCs were razor-thin, and that the Product Service Plans (PSP) we were encouraged to shill were the real moneymakers, along with accessories. Best Buy has never been very open about how much of its bottom line comes from the PSPs it pushes, but they’re clearly of key value to the retailer’s bottom line, given how hard they push them, And of questionable value to consumers  given that nowadays, merely telling a Best Buy employee that I used to be one when they launch into their PSP pitch is almost always enough to get them to stop.

Apple has done a better job of making its own AppleCare service appeal to consumers, and many disinterested third-parties will actually recommend picking them up. The company has faced legal challenges in Europe around AppleCare and how it works with EU regulations guaranteeing consumers two years of basic protection on consumer electronics purchases, but Apple is resolving those issues and continuing to offer its extended warranties in affected countries, albeit differently than they’re sold in the U.S. and other locations.

Amazon partners with a third-party provider, Service Net, to provide Kindle extended warranties, but in doing so, it’s leaving money on the table long-term. An AmazonCare (they won’t be so brazen as to actually call it that) offering would help it add revenue to device sales with relatively little cost. That’s something which would provide a lot of upside for a gadget-maker that now needs to compete with Google on pricing, a company which is arguably more willing and able to ignore profit margins on hardware in pursuit of getting its devices into more hands.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

With the Starbucks deal in place, there’s no doubt that Square will continue to eye partnerships with large brick and mortar stores and brands to power mobile payments and loyalty. But there’s a point to be made that the major opportunity may not be with the large brands like Starbucks but with the multitude of small to medium sized chains across the U.S. and beyond. These are regional stores that have two or more locations, but aren’t as big as the larger national chains. If Square were to capture marketshare for these regional stores, the company would be able to complete the entire tail of merchants, from the local taco truck to the small chain of wine stores to the Starbucks. Interestingly, we’re told that updates to the the company’s iPad powered register, Square Register, earlier this year has brought more and more small chains to the payments platform.

As we reported in March, Square Register was reconfigured to support merchants of all types. Some of the more high-powered features included the ability to customize permissions for employees on the register, access to sales reports, and the ability to wirelessly print receipts or open a cash drawer to make change. Analytics allow merchants to segment consumer payments data and transactions, and users can access data around number of payments, subtotals, tax, tips, refunds, account deposits, etc.

Noah Dan, the founder and CEO of a number of Italian ice cream stores called Pitango Gelato in the Washington D.C. area says Square Register works “better than any other solution on the market.” He explains that the simplicity in which Square has combined both the register functions as well as the financial transactional data is “nothing short of a genius approach.”

Dan says that because he has multiple locations (five stores); he needed a simple way for all of his employees to access and use a single point of sale system. He said that Square’s register was much more simple to use than the other systems he looked at and he didn’t feel that he was sacrificing any features by going with Square. With multiple stores, he can access all of his sales data in a single interface, and the systems were easy to implement across his shops. He was able to onboard all five of his stores within a week. He adds that the price point (the 2.75 percent per swipe fee) was attractive as well.

Jeremy Veatch, the founder of Cartel Coffee Lab, a local coffee house in Phoenix and Tucson with five locations, initially started using Square when he had one store. Veatch highlights the ease of onboarding when he did expand as one of the reasons why he stuck with Square instead of moving to a different point of sale system. Similar to Dan’s perspective, the simplicity of the register and the ability to export sales data into Excel files is a key function that he uses across his locations.

He explains that he likes the ability to be able to see how each store is performing from a single app, and he doesn’t actually have to go into each coffee store to see how each are performing. He can also update menus on the fly, and add or remove items from certain locations from his iPad app.

Item management for chains is actually a very important feature. Many chains have slightly varied menus, or run out of items at different paces. If you have multiple locations running Square, with each of them listed in the Square directory, each can list different items on their menu. For now, when you search on Square’s online Directory for these stores, you’ll see each location listed separately.

Veatch and Dan aren’t the only smaller chains using Square. Cafe Grumpy in New York City now uses Square Register across its four locations. Amy’s Ice Cream in Austin has 13 locations using the point of sale offering. Three Twins in Napa has two locations running Square.

And there are still features that Square could roll out to make things even more simple for these smaller to medium size chains. For example, Veatch says that in order for him to access his five stores’ data he has to log in separately in the Register app separate access points with five different passwords. The ability to access all the locations with one password/username would be ideal he says.

While the Starbucks deal is no doubt a huge win for Square from a branding and exposure perspective, these smaller chains could represent a huge opportunity for Square to command a meaningful part of payments for the regional merchant. This is why we’re seeing PayPal develop custom payments integrations for mid-size, regional retailers as well.

With credit cards similar with all many of these point of sale offerings, the register of choice will come down to function and feature. Whoever is able to pick up the most of these retailers is going to be the payments company that provides the most easy to use, yet powerful, offering that is tailored to the needs of chains. It’s unclear yet who that will be but it looks like Square is off to a good start.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

RIM posted a mostly toothless smartphone teaser to its BlackBerry 10 landing page earlier this week, but really, what BlackBerry fan could be appeased by that? Thankfully, the folks at Tinhte.vn (the Vietnamese gadget site that came to prominence when it posted early video and benchmarks of the 3rd gen iPad) got their hands on the all-touch L-Series BB10 smartphone and gave it the full photo and video treatment.

Assuming its design is final (if not, it’s very recent — the device sports the recently-renamed BlackBerry World app), the L-Series carries over many of the same aesthetic choices seen in the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B device. The front speaker and microphone placement appears to be the same as on the tester device, as do the locations of the BlackBerry logo and the front-facing camera. Meanwhile, a quick meander through the gallery reveals that the L-Series comes equipped with a removable 1,800 mAh battery, and well as the usual collection of microUSB, micro-HDMI, and microSD slots.

Overall, the device doesn’t look too bad — it seems to have remained very understated in its design language (which is probably to be expected considering RIM’s enterprise leanings), and the rounded corners make the L-Series awfully reminiscent of that early BlackBerry London image that begun making the rounds over a year ago. Personally, the looks by themselves aren’t enough to make me want to buy one of things, but BlackBerry 10 certainly has potential and that could make all the difference.

Anyway, that’s enough out of me. I’ve included some of the juicier images below, and you can check out the rest of the photos here and here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Online tech support company, 24/7 Techies, has raised a $600,000 seed round led by Dave McClure’s 500 Startups to accelerate its offerings for small and medium sized businesses. Other notable investors in the round include Rajan Anandan (VP Google India) and Shailesh Rao (VP Twitter, International Operations). Since launching a dedicated micro SMB offering in April this year, the company says it has more than 100 customers for the new service and is seeing month-over-month growth of 20 percent.

CEO Dilendra Wimalasekere says the funding is largely ear-marked for sales and marketing to ramp up customer acquisition: “It’s going to be predominantly used to ramp up our sales and marketing activity — and also grow some of our information systems, reorganisation and grow the support team.”

24/7 Techies uses an online service model to deliver fully managed, remote tech support for its customers around the clock and around the globe from its location in Sri Lanka — and says it distinguishes itself from other tech service providers (such as Geek Squad, and other locally managed service providers) through cheaper prices but also by offering a more extensive range of services — including “CIO style” consultancy and advisory services for SMBs.

Wimalasekere claims 24/7 Techies’ SMB offering — pricing starts at $99 per month for a micro SMB with one to three employees — can undercut rivals by as much as 50 percent. The company promises customers access to a trained tech support professional within 60 seconds, 24/7, “no exceptions”. Its support services cover more than 100 cloud apps and “any device” — from PCs, to smartphones, tablets and “mission critical servers”. It also claims it has strong customer loyalty — noting it has a Net Promotor Score ”in the 90s”.

24/7 Techies, which currently has 65 staff, was spun out of IT outsourcer Eureka Technology Partners, and initially focused on selling consumer IT support services (still a part of its business). But Wimalasekere tells TechCrunch it noticed that approaching to a fifth of its customers were actually micro SMBs — and realised there was a gap in the market.

Its current focus is on the U.S., Canada, Australia and U.K. markets — around 70 percent of its 8,500+ customers are in the U.S. — but Wimalasekere says it’s looking to expand globally. “We have a few other locations in mind,” he notes.

Further plans to grow the business include broadening its portfolio of SMB services — to offer additional consultancy services, support more cloud apps and bring in additional expertise in areas such as Oracle and Salesforce, he adds.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Zetrip, new startup offering to help users find “travel inspiration” based on the activity of their Facebook friends, just raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Inspiration Ventures.

Co-founder and CEO Edouard Tabet said he came up with the idea last year, when he was planning a trip to the Galapagos and wanted to see which of his Facebook friends had been there too.

“This information was really hard to dig from Facebook so I decided to extract it and mine it via their API,” he told me via email. “To my surprise, I discovered I have a couple friends who went to the Galapagos and posted amazing photos of their trips. I realized there was a gold mine of travel artifacts buried in Facebook and thought it would be super useful and fun to discover new places for my next vacation.”

This approach can encourage people travel to new places, Tabet said, because they often look to their friends for travel advice.

You can get a sense for the kind of information that Zetrip provides in the demo video below. There’s one section called Photos, which shows all of your friends’ travel-related Facebook photos, organized by country. There’s another section called Map, where you can see a map of all the locations visited by people in your network, and then when you click on each location, you’ll see the specific friends who have been there. And there’s also a travel scrapbook, highlighting your own photos.

Perhaps the most original feature in Zetrip is the infographic-creator, which summarizes a lot of the travel details about people in your social network, such as the most popular destinations and the most active globetrotters. You can see Tabet’s profile here. (It takes about 24 hours to build a profile, so mine is still in the works.)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Foursquare has revamped the experience of its app from the perspective of its users on both the consumer and merchant side. And on Wednesday, the company is pulling back the curtains on a long-awaited feature for all Foursquare watchers: Revenue generation.

Foursquare is announcing today the pilot launch of “promoted updates,” which will let companies issue messages about deals or available products to Foursquare users.

These new updates will come in two forms: Promoted updates, such as Gap saying, “We have new yoga pants!” — and promoted specials, such as Walgreens saying, “Foursquare customers get 10 cents off of shampoo.”

According to Foursquare’s chief revenue officer Steven Rosenblatt, Foursquare’s major focus with these updates are that users actually find them to be worthwhile — which is why they use the same technology to make sure they’re targeted to users specifically based on their locations and interests, just like the Local Updates are. “What we’re really excited about is that you have to be near a business to get an update,” he said in an interview today. “No matter how much someone pitches us, it has to be relevant, based on proximity and based on intent. Those are critical.”

For now, promoted updates are available only to the 20 or so companies participating in Foursquare’s pilot program. Those include big companies including Gap, Best Buy, Hilton, and Walgreens, and relatively small businesses such as Butter Lane and ‘wichcraft. All these companies are paying Foursquare on a “cost per action” model, not based on how many views, or impressions, their updates receive.

While it’s big news in some ways for Foursquare to be making money at all, Rosenblatt would not give details on when Promoted Updates will be available to all businesses on the Foursquare platform. “It’s really dependent on the learnings we get and the experiences we have. We want to make sure we really perfect it,” he said. “This will evolve, and as it evolves, when we feel ready we can open it up.”

It’s certainly a start, and it will be interesting to watch how it opens up to paying customers. Here are a couple screenshots of how Foursquare’s promoted updates will appear in consumers’ streams (click to enlarge):

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Network testing is hard work. You need to ensure coverage, regular data rates, and spread. That’s probably why T-Mobile happens to be testing their 1900 MHz HSPA+ signal around the Moscone Center in San Francisco just in time for WWDC.

Quoth T-Mobile to 9to5:

Arguably the time and location could feasibly be coincidental, but I doubt it. Where better to test connectivity with a band of iPhones than what amounts to the San Francisco iPhone Festival? As mentioned above, 1900 MHz HSPA+ service should be popping up in other locations across the country although I suspect T-Mobile will focus on markets where users are underserved, techie, and would love to spend $30 on T-Mobile’s unlimited data plans.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook recently relaunched its “Locations” app that allows users to search directly from a company’s page to find business locations near them.

The feature, which helps organize corporate and local pages, had to be redesigned to fit the new Timeline layout. The Locations app is only available to select brands working directly with Facebook. A spokesperson from the social network could only tell us that pages have to ask Facebook to enable the app, but she could not provide details about what makes a company eligible for the feature.

Facebook’s Locations app first appeared in August 2011 as part of a limited private test of parent-child page management tools. Since then we’ve had a number of readers inquire about when the feature would be available publicly, but it seems Facebook is reserving this for select partners for now.

Corporations like Starbucks, Macy’s and Home Depot are among those with the Locations tab, but it’s unclear whether companies have to make a certain size advertising spend to qualify or simply be well-known. Businesses with access to a Facebook account representative or working with one of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developers certified in Pages should connect with those contacts to request access to the app. Other businesses will have to develop their own store locator applications.

Facebook’s native Locations app overlays store information on a Bing map within a tab on a company’s page. The map defaults to a tight radius around the user’s current location, but refreshes with additional results when users re-orient the map. Users can also search by city, state or zip code. The tab is not available from Facebook’s mobile site or applications.

Partners with access to the feature can manage their corporate and local pages using the Pages API and a basic admin interface. Hearsay Social, which was initially involved with Facebook in developing the management system, provides additional features and regulatory compliance for companies with both corporate and local pages. Hearsay CEO Clara Shih says her company was not involved in the latest update to the Locations app, though customers including 24 Hour Fitness use it. She did not have any information about how companies outside of her customer base could get access to the feature.

Here are links to a number of pages’ Location tabs:

• Starbucks
• Macy’s
• 24 Hour Fitness
• Equinox
• Lowes
• Home Depot
• Red Lobster
• Safeway
• Toys-R-Us
• Subway
• Quiznos
• Baskin-Robbins
• Regal Cinemas
• Ann Taylor

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook