Quixey, a Mountain View based startup – which has raised $400,000 in seed funding from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors- got closer to that goal, with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Foursquare integration

Apps developed on the APIs for these social networks are now searchable via Quixey.com. The Quixey engine now boasts an index of apps from about 20 platforms.

A co-founder of Quixey, Tomer Kagan, explains “A lot of apps on Facebook for example, don’t even have a description attached – just a name. From a search perspective, if all you have to work with is like three words, it’s extremely difficult.”

And Kagan is right here: No piece of branded content or App will become a weapon of mass affection, if the Meta data is not smart. All branded content and Apps need proper SEO, influencer identification, outreach, seeding and distribution to reach and engage the masses.

Funny enough, the Meta name description around the Quixey video on YouTube is empty. Just look under the video here. So how about adding the right description here Tomer Kagan?

Soon we’ll probably have Facebook Apps to find the best rated Facebook Apps. And friends in social networks will lead you the way to new Apps that are shared by other like-minded peers.

And of course peer recommendations will create spikes around branded content and Apps. So for the iPad users among you, I would like to recommend you just 2 Apps.

Sorry, forget about Flipboard. I was a fan too. Try Zite Magazine for iPad.

Zite will offer you a personalized magazine and an amazing experience for free. One that will serve you the daily content you would like to see. In a few minutes a day, you will be mastering the topics of your needs. And increase your number of Tweets within one month exponentially. Mark my words.

The second cool iPad App I’ve been using to find cool new iPad Apps is Zwapp. With Zwapp like-minded peers can share and recommend new Apps they find a perfect match.

Most important question that remains, and I hope to see many reactions here or on my Twitter @igorbeuker, where do you get your cool new social, mobile or iPad Apps from?

But nowadays we have so much information available that we for example need infographics to showcase it.

I think the organisation visual.ly has a fun look at it… So what is visual.ly
have a look for yourself;

Click here to view the embedded video.

Will this help us in the fight against filter failure? I do not know; however it will help us in auto generating visuals and information visualisations… anywhere and everywhere.

We’ll keep track of this tool!

“Singing Fingers” is headed up by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum of the MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten group, and it allows you to fingerpaint on your iPad while the mic records whatever sounds are going on at the same time. Then, you can play back the sound by touching the paint, like a sort of voluntary synesthesia. It seems totally mad, ‘til you see the video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Think of all the awesome stuff you could do with this. Obviously, the contemporary art world, which fetishizes anything colorful and loud, would have a field day with it. We picture a gallery full of iPads and a sign that says “Please touch.” DJs could make – and scratch – their own iPad records. It could be the future of kindergarten class. No more messy fingerpainting! Plus, kids love weird noises, especially their own! And inevitably, this will fall into the hands of some entrepreneurial stoner who will finally give the world the 21st-century equivalent of a Dark Side of the Moon laser show. This one is already a hit in the app download world, be quick before your friends try to impress you first.

The app is available here.

Source: http://www.fastcodesign.com

Their products have swept through the blogosphere as they allow low budgets bloggers, vloggers and other content producers to easily and cheaply produce some great content.

And to show the world they are still ahead of the curve and their coolness they have just launched a very interesting Facebook application

The Flip Your Profile app allows Facebook users to switch their profile picture to a profile video. This is great for users who gain another way to express themselves and show off their personality.

But what’s more interesting is to see if this functionality can be included in Fanpages. This could of course present an amazing opportunity for brands to showcase their latest campaigns, increase engagement with their audience and simply provide some amazing content and really put it in the spot light.

Source: Digital Buzz Blog

This checking in is all very well, but what can be done to make it more engaging instead of shouting to the world that you are in your favorite bar down the street (again!)?

Most apps have added a game element, so you can become mayor or king of a certain place you visit a lot. But still this is all very self-centered. Why not do something for others using location based apps? This is what the people at 4Food must have thought when they created their own app for their restaurant. You can create your very own burger and then order it in the restaurant. You can also order someone else’s creation by picking it off the leaderboard. This way, you can share your own burger recipe with the world and find like-minded people. Every time someone orders your burger, you get a small credit that you can use in the 4Food restaurant.

Wait, what? Inventing a burger everyone orders is going to make you money? So this location based game is still all about you? Well, one could argue that you help others by creating a burger that they love, but only you get the credit (literally!). So, are there any location based apps around that are all about the community, helping each other and such?

Source infograpic: Gigaom

 By clicking ‘Hollrr this!’ and publishing your shouts to your other social networks, you can create popularity for a product or service that you feel deserves it.

Hollrr is still in the startup phase according to Mashable. It works a bit like Foursquare, the check-in game: you receive points and badges when you Hollrr a certain amount of times or about a certain amount of things. It feels like a game because you’re earning points but it also helps give the community a kick start.

I think it really catches onto the thought that people are more likely to look into something new when it’s been recommended by their friends or peers. Also, it gives lesser known brands a chance of making it into the buzz that is dominated by their better known competitors. Suddenly everyone’s chances to gain popularity seem to be equal again.
People who spend a lot of time on social networks like to give their opinion and ‘educate’ their peers about new services online. This tool makes that a lot easier because people can see what you’re Hollrr-ing about. Especially people who really identify themselves with certain products are going to like this tool. For brands, this tool could also be very useful. By checking in and seeing how many users have shouted out about a product, brands get their Hollrr-buzz measure served on a silver platter.

The downside is that you have to use yet another social tool to profile yourself online. Even though you can connect to your other social networks you still have to keep up and log in another service. Another thing is that even though all brands do get equal chances for popularity on Hollr, certain brands start off with a big fanbase already and new or less popular brands might have to make as much an effort to keep up as in the rest of the online buzz.

So, what do you think? Is this a useful new tool or will it soon be forgotten again?

In February 2010 you’ll be able to buy a pair of Adidas sneakers that can be used to control a digital world on your screen. All you have to do is show your shoe to your webcam and the virtual world will open.

‘Controlling’ pictures by holding your shoes in front of your webcam sounds cool, but Adidas want to take this one step further and teamed up with Dutch Xform who will develop no less than three games. Games you will control with your sneaker.

We’d like to see how game control and other interactive uses by means of augmented reality develop in the coming year when maybe the gimmick factor will make place for a wider spread functional use of AR. For example used in widgets that can be spread through social networks (for which spread and ROI can be fully measured with metrics technologies like ViralTracker).

Adidas sneakers tagged with the AR codes will be for sale from February and cost you no more than your average pair.

Source: Wired

Sorry, that shark bite was not real. It’s a simple, clever but smart promo for Shark Week by Discovery Channel. The campaign was created by agency Jack Watts Currie, in Sydney.

Some more interesting information about the campaign?

The Austrailan Coastal Watch website was set up to be as legitimate looking as possible, without looking ‘too over produced’ or suspicious. The link to the site was seeded entirely through email and unpaid social networking sites like twitter, Facebook, Digg and StumbleUpon.

The agency created a Twitter account and timed our ‘shark warning’ tweets to coincide with a 3 KM Bondi Beach ocean swim event, which everyone was tweeting about.

The agency also used it’s personal accounts to retweet the link using various different search words like: shar, google, bondi, oceanswim, warning, etc.

The viral element was part of a larger ‘ambush’ campaign, which included online ads, a little bit of print and some radio.

Tell us how you rate this campaign.

So what’s new this year? There are two new elf dances! In addition to “Disco Elves”, “Country Elves”, and “Elf Classic”, you can choose to model your creation off the “Hip-Hop Elves” or “Singing Elves” dances. The “Charleston Elves” won’t be coming back this year.

Further more JibJab has removed its required account registration, due to a significant dropoff between 2007 and 2008 – 193 million sites visits vs 55 million. On TechCrunch JibJab CEO Gregg Spiridellis explains that the required registration in 2008 led to an anticipated dropoff, but resulted in a huge jump in its userbase, which is more valuable to the company in the end.

Instead of the required registration OfficeMax integrated Elf Yourself with Facebook Connect, which will give users an one-click signin to the site and access to photo albums and your profile pictures, and will also help ElfYourself go even more viral as videos get distributed through Facebook News Feeds. Share options include posting to Facebook and tweeting to Twitter.

Other networks to share to are: MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Tagged, Blogger, Hi5, Live Spaces, Piczo, Freewebs, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, MyYearbook, WordPress, Vox, Typepad, Xanga, Multiply, iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, MiGente, Yahoo, Ameba, Eons, Overblog and Livedoor.

To save a copy of your video, before the holiday season and the Elf Yourself campaign ends costs $4.99. Other personalized gifts you can buy are mugs, ornaments, mousepads, greeting cards, blankets and playing cards, ranging between $4.99 and $59.99.

Time will tell, if this year’s Elf Yourself with help of the registration removal, the increased JibJab userbase and a possible Facebook and Twitter effect can beat Elf Yourself’s 2007 astronomical numbers.

Last year, 122 million elves were created, a total of 35 million “Elf Yourself” cards were sent (source: CNET) and ElfYourself.com scored 55.5 million site visits. Since it launched in 2006, the seasonal site has chalked up 284 million visits.

Singing

Classic

Country

Hip Hop

Disco

Read more of Paul’s articles on Viralblog. You can connect with Paul via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Del.icio.us or send him an email at paul@viralblog.com.

Joe Sabia of Whirled Interactive from LA had been toying with Wave for just 24 hours and thought “we gotta do something with this…”. Together with his good friend Scott Chan he created the following highly entertaining video:

Joe came up with the idea 3 days ago, because he wasn’t satisfied with the current Google Wave videos. Joe Sabia sums up the reasons: “a) some don’t show the actual product, b) they sometimes fail to connect the product to people who don’t really understand the purpose and c) they could garner more excitement”.

Joe continues “And Wave really is an exciting product. The fact there are millions of people out there, willing to sell their children for an invitation, is proof that Google’s about to do something very game-changing.”

“So for these reasons – and the major reason of a great opportunity to showcase something so secretive, and so early-adoptive – I wanted to create a compelling look at Wave.”

“Wave is about human to human interaction. Streamlined. Littered with organized media and thoughts. Efficiency and beauty. Because of the communicative elements, I thought laying down audio from a film would be a great complement to text-based visuals between Googlers in each of the wave’s blips.”

Joe Sabia of Whirled Interactive

To showcase Google Wave’s functionality the two guys from LA, embedded photos, image search photos, videos, maps, polling widgets and even gaming widgets into the 2:48 minute video.

Joe Sabia: “The more to show, the better it is for the user in understanding what this product does. In general, sometimes the best marketing attempts aren’t ones that scream “This product is great”, rather, the more effective ones yell, “Look what this product can do!”. It’s all in the hook – people will see how rad it is, and can be entertained at the same time.”

Joe and Scott started out with Good Will Hunting and then decided to take on a more ambitious movie classic: Pulp Fiction. It took about 5 hours to edit the movie, 2 hours to rehearse the actual action, and 15 minutes of recording.

Joe and Scott borrowed the phrase “Google Wave Cinema” from someone tweeting about the video. If you like to see more videos, you can request them in the replies.

The Google Wave team in Australia have shown the “Google Wave Cinema” videos already at their meetings tells Joe. Lars and Stephanie, the product managers there, enjoyed it.

If you like to more about Joe Sabia and his work (like the YouTube hits: “Rick Roll: The Literal Version“, “7 Seven Minute Sopranos” or “2009 Oscars Interactive Photo Hunt!“), check out his personal portfolio at Whirled Citizen.

Many thanks to Joe Sabia for reaching out 3 o’clock in the morning!

Read more of Paul’s articles on Viralblog. You can connect with Paul via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Del.icio.us or send him an email at paul@viralblog.com.