Author: Rahsheen on Black Web 2.0

Lala is shutting down as of May 31st. Very disappointing news for many users of the service who actually preferred it over iTunes. The service is now closed to new users. Apple acquired Lala back in December of 2009 when it seemed that the cloud-based service was in financial trouble. This is after Lala seemed to be making big moves in partnerships with Google and Facebook that should have helped turn business around.

If you recall, Lala is behind Google’s Onebox feature, which lets you play and purchase music directly from your search results. It allowed you to play any song once for free and songs that you do purchase are available for play from your online dashboard. When I first covered Lala, I used the phrase “iTunes in the cloud.”

To understand the ramifications of this purchase, it’s important to understand what Lala really is: iTunes in the cloud. Instead of purchasing music from a website and downloading it to your computer, you simply buy what you want and play it instantly from your library in the cloud. Lala will also match the songs on your computer to the ones in their library and adds them to your online collection. You can even play any song for free, but only once. It’s only 10 cents to add a song to your online library and play it unlimited. 79 cents to download the actual mp3.

I also mentioned that users might benefit from Apple’s purchase of Lala in the long run. It was already pretty obvious that Apple would shut it down and this was simply a grab for talent and a way to remove a competitor. Why buy from iTunes for 69 cents to $1.29 per song when I can just pay 10 cents to Lala and play any song unlimited via the web?

For those who have invested their time and their money into Lala, the credits for your Lala web songs will be moved over to iTunes. If you have an outstanding wallet balance on Lala, it will also be migrated to iTunes. Gift cards will be moved to your wallet balance or otherwise refunded. In other words, you are now an iTunes customer so get used to it. We can only hope to see some of the features we loved about Lala being integrated into the new iTunes service when it does finally launch.

It seems that Facebook’s new Community Pages (how-to here) are part of a grander scheme to get Facebook users to connect with stuff. Remember all those random keywords you used to fill out your profile? Stuff like your favorite movies and books? Well, Facebook has basically turned them all into actual Community Pages. Instead of just listing Blade or The Science of Getting Rich as stuff you like and leaving it at that, Facebook has taken it upon itself to turn each of these words or phrases into a link. These links connect you to the Community page for those items.

You may have noticed a popup telling you to connect your profile with a bunch of stuff when you recently logged into Facebook. This is where the conversion part happens, where they turn your simple keywords into actual social connections and links. You can choose to connect to all the pages displayed or pick from them individually. I would suggest you do the latter because I noticed a few surprises while looking through my own choices.

Keep in mind, this is the opt-in part. When you accept these connections, people will see these links on your Facebook profile. They will probably believe these are things that you have chosen to be connected to. The links will lead to communities based around those things. What if you decide you don’t actually want all of that excitement on your profile? You just want to keep things simple and define yourself without all these 3rd party connections. The problem is that you can’t.

According to the Facebook FAQ “What if I don’t want to connect to all these pages?”

“If you don’t want to connect to any Pages, the corresponding sections on your Profile will be empty. Connecting to Pages will now be the main way to express yourself on your profile, and you can always edit your profile to remove specific suggested Pages that you don’t want to connect to.”

While you’re not really being forced to opt-in, the alternative is unacceptable. Either you connect to the pages or your profile will be blank. The affected sections include: Work and Education, Current City, Hometown, and Likes and Interest. You will have to make a tough decision between a blank Facebook profile and a profile that may not describe you exactly as you would like. It’s one thing to simply list something on your profile as an interest and totally another to actually connect yourself to an entire community on the subject.

Which will you choose?

more details at RWW

Google Follow Finder

Follow Finder is a nifty little app that will help you find people to follow. You plugin your Twitter username and it will scan your public social graph to show you people you might want to follow. It’s hosted on App Engine and makes extensive use of Twitter’s new @anywhere platform.

1. Tweeps you might like: We start with the list of people you follow, find others with similar lists, and then identify accounts you might also want to follow. If people with similar lists tend to follow accounts that aren’t in your list, we’ll recommend those additional accounts to you. For example, if you follow CNN and the New York Times on Twitter, and most people who follow CNN and the New York Times also tend to follow TIME, we’ll suggest TIME as a user to follow.
2. Tweeps with similar followers: We find people with similar public lists of followers to yours. For example, if ten people are following you, and the same ten people are following a second user, we’ll include the second user in this list. You may already be following some of these people.

Twitter @anywhere

Twitter’s @anywhere platform literally lets you put Twitter anywhere. You can add advanced integration features to your blog or website that will integrate it tightly into Twitter. Visitors can follow you with a click. You can automatically linkify @usernames and add hovercard functionality. It’s no harder to implement than any other Javascript widget. For full details, check out the tutorial at SocialTimes.

How Much Do Artists Earn Online?

The music industry is in a constant state of change due to the Internet and social media. Customers have become accustomed to immediate access to music and many music consumers don’t even know what’s it’s like to have a physical music collection. But the question is, how is this new marketplace affecting artists? This image by David McCandless gives us a rough estimation.

Cuil Launches Cpedia and Lashes Out at Users

Cuil was supposed to be the “Google killer.” A search engine above all other search engines. It was supposed to cure cancer and solve wo

rld hunger. Ok..maybe not that last part, but the hype around Cuil was at such a ridiculous level that when we all found out how uncool Cuil really was, there was a huge backlash against it. That was 2008.

Almost two years later, the makers of Cuil have launched Cpedia. This is some kind of Wikipedia competitor where the data is automatically pulled together from mentions about some topic or person. It’s actually a cool idea, but some of the results are either extremely useless or extremely hilarious. This resulted in some not-so-nice press about Cpedia.

That would be the end of it, except that Cuil CEO Tom Costello went in on all the Cpedia “haters” (his word, not mine) in a blog post…and you thought the tech world didn’t have any drama.

Xobni (that’s Inbox backwards) is the plugin for Outlook that provides super search abilities and social networking integration. Outlook 2010 is still in beta and it’s weeks before it will actually be ready for prime time, but Xobni has already released a version for you to play with. You can download Xobni 1.9.2, which is compatible with Outlook 2010. Of course, you’ll need Outlook 2010 beta also, download it here.

If you already use Xobni, simply upgrading to the Outlook 2010 beta should automagically download and install the new Xobni for you.

In addition to helping you search and find emails and contacts, Xobni also helps you find important bits located in your inbox. These include things like attachments, meetings, and links. This new version of Xobni is pretty much focused on being Office 2010 compatible, so there are only a few feature additions:

• Outlook 2010 Compatibility: All features available in previous versions now working and optimized for Outlook 2010. 32bit and 64bit versions supported. New Quick-Access in the Ribbon.
• Search when Xobni collapsed.
• Show/Hide Xobni instantly.
• Xobni Options always available: If multiple Outlook windows are open, Xobni can move from one to the other.
• Users who are not “administrators” on their computers can now install Xobni. This is especially important in corporate environments.
• Twitter profile images now show in business card area.
• AutoSuggestions can be deleted from the compose screen.

Keep in mind that Xobni does have a premium level of service called Xobni Plus and some of the most interesting features are not available in the free version. These include stuff like advanced search, accessing your xobni contacts from the compose window, finding links you’ve exchanged with contacts, and locating calendar appointments. For more information on Xobni plus, check out the comparison on their website.

Xobni might seem anxious in releasing this new 2010 beta-compatible version, but it could be they’re feeling some pressure from competitors. Gist, a service that makes it simple to keep track of potential business collaborators, offers some very similar functionality to Xobni but with more social integration. Gist also has an Outlook plugin that seems to duplicate for free much of what Xobni is charging for. Or maybe Xobni is just trying to stay on top of their game.

MySpace has recently made an update to their events system that may have musicians scrambling to update their profiles. The new events page is a complete overhaul of the simple and pretty much useless events system of old. It also adds a bunch of features which make it much more useful to artists, profitable for MySpace, and helpful to users and fans.

Many have lamented the alleged demise of MySpace as the top social network, which is odd because you would be hard pressed to find someone who was a MySpace fan in the first place. Although Facebook has since taken the crown of #1 social networking site, MySpace has not simple accepted defeat and laid down to die quietly. Despite their setbacks, they have made some pretty smart decisions and done a good job of playing to their strengths.

Primary among these are it’s use for musicians and artists. Facebook might be the top social network, with Twitter running close behind, but it’s a major pain to try and promote your music on either. MySpace has already been doing this for years. MySpace has also rolled things out slowly, bit by bit. This keep people paying attention and avoids them doing some major redesign that everyone soon forgets.

With the new events page, people can easily promote their upcoming events in a visually pleasing interface (especially when compared to what was available before). You can see the Who, What, When, and Where about the event as well as a detailed description. You can RSVP, share the event on your other social networks, and see who else is going. There is also an integrated map that shows the event’s location.

When a user RSVP’s, they have the option to promote the event to their friends. You can buy tickets directly through MySpace for the event, which earns them a little revenue. Advertisers looking to promote their own events can purchase add space in the social calendar.

MySpace might be down, but is definitely not out. They are playing to their strength in media events and slowly rolling out features so people know they are still alive. They have even integrated directly with Facebook using Facebook Connect. They plan to roll out additional features around mobile access, concert notifications, movies, and DVD releases in the near future.

When is the last time you logged into MySpace?

more at TechCrunch and hypebot

With Earth Day approaching, going green is at the forefront for many businesses and individuals. Some people don’t know where to start. It seems as if you may need to completely change the way you do business to even make a significant change. This is not the case, though. Every little change that you can make will be a benefit to the environment in the grand scheme of things. You don’t have to make some huge long-term investment in solar panels or wind power to make a difference. This post will go over four ways that you can go green now without putting your business out of business.

Go Paperless

This is a pretty obvious one and also a pretty easy one to implement. Most of the time, we are printing things out just because it’s what we’ve been trained to do. You can just as easily read something on your screen as you can read it on a piece of paper. This is especially true of the types of content we come across in doing business. Emails, invoices, newsletters, marketing messages, NDAs, proposals, and even contracts can all be done electronically. Microsoft Office is one option that will make sharing and collaborating on documents simple.

Work From Home

According to Energy Star, working from home or running a home business can reduce energy costs by about 30 percent. Of course, this depends on the specifics of how you run your business and exactly what type of investment you’re able to put into going green. Bottom line is that you won’t be adding to commute pollution.

Involve Your Clients and Customers

Part of going green as a business is helping communicate and spread the same types of ideals to your customers, clients, and employees. Work with your clients to see if getting rid of paper is acceptable for them while working with you. Instead of always meeting face-to-face, see if some or all of your meetings could be done by phone or maybe via Skype. Outlook with Social Connector can help in keeping in touch.

Turn Stuff Off

Something so simple can make a lot of difference. Many people and companies as a whole don’t even bother to shut down their computers and other office equipment at the end of the day. This wastes loads of energy. Back in the day, many businesses and a few individuals ran their own servers at home. While some still do, it’s just not a necessity anymore. The cloud makes all of your data available 24/7 to you and your clients without the need for your personal computer to be on. When you shut it down for the day or turn in for the night, give your electronics a rest as well.

What have you done to make your business greener?

Bing has started rolling out a new feature called Social Search. This allows you to see real-time results from Twitter right alongside your Bing search results. If that sounds familiar, it should. Google has been doing it for a little while now. This feature has been rolled out to a subset of Bing users, so you may not have access to it just yet. The goal here seems to be to give you real-time trending results alongside the sites you might expect to find. You’re basically getting the best of both worlds in one shot.

Microsoft has actually had a deal with Twitter for a while now and initially offered Twitter results via an entirely separate beta site. Now, these results will be integrated into your actual search results.

Bing pulls in social content generated on Twitter to surface the most relevant updates within seconds of a breaking news event. From people on the ground tweeting about what’s happening around them to users sharing interesting news links while browsing at home, the Twitterati can be significantly faster than traditional media outlets in picking up information on breaking events. Further, the Twitterati also picks up information that the traditional media outlets often ignore – such as the latest viral video being shared online.

The feature should be available to most Bing users “very soon” according to Microsoft. In addition to helping fill out your standard searches, Bing will also keep an eye on trending topics and fold in tweets on those topics from Twitter within your search results. This will help you keep your finger on the pulse of the Internet.

It’s not really surprising that Google and now Bing have decided to make social media a part of their search strategy. f course you want your old standbys when search for things, but times are changing and many people aren’t satisfied with simply knowing about things that have happened. They want to know what’s happening now at this moment or even what might possibly be happening in the very near future. To give the people the information they hunger for, integrating social media sites is the next logical step.

MeeGo is a Linux-based operating system for portable devices. It’s the product of a partnership between Nokia and Intel which brings together Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin environment. This operating system could power your smart phone and your netbook as well as other devices you might not consider like a vehicle or an embedded system.

Since it popped up back in February, MeeGo has gained some steam and has recently picked up quite a few partnerships with both hardware and software companies. MeeGo competes directly with Android and, by default, against the iPhone OS. It remains to be seen if the Open Source OS will be able to gain traction, but this latest news seems to indicate that it does have a chance.

As far as netbooks go, Intel has some specs available for the MeeGo-powered devices. Firefox has been taken out of the picture and replaced with Google Chrome (or, more likely the open source Chromium based on the same code).

For mobile devices, Fennec will be the web browser of choice. This browser is from Mozilla and does actually support Flash. VOIP and Instant Messaging are included. Also, social networking is integrated and GPS should be supported for the location-based app lovers out there. The potential interfaces for mobile are below and quite compelling.

The MeeGo product release schedule shows version 1.0 coming out some time next month. 1.1 should be released during the 4th quarter of this year, and v1.2 should be available during the 1st quarter of next year. Developers can download MeeGo and start developing applications for it now. Some of the basic features of the environment include:

• Performance optimizations and features which enable rich computational and graphically oriented applications and connected services development
• No-compromise Internet standards support delivering the best web experiences
• Easy to use, flexible and powerful UI/app development environment based on Qt
• Open source project organization managed by the Linux Foundation
• State of the Art Linux stack optimized for the size and capabilities of small footprint platforms and mobile devices, but delivering broad Linux software application compatibility

It remains to be seed how and if MeeGo will have any major effect on the mobile device market as it relates to Android and the iPhone , but a little competition can only make sure end users get the best product possible.

more info at CarryPad

MyLikes, founded by two ex-Googlers—former Google Apps product lead Bindu Reddy and former AdSesne tech lead Arvind Sundararajan—took money totaling about $630k from 11 other ex-Googlers to fund the company. Those are the only people they took money from. People who also used to work for Google.

If you recall, MyLikes is a service that helps you make money by telling your friends about stuff you like. At it’s core, it is simply a service that lets you Like anything you want across the Internet (something like Glue). What sets it apart is that some of these items are sponsored. So, when you share your love (er…like?) for something across your social networks and your friends click the link, you get paid.

MyLikes is also a viable service for simple word-of-mouth advertising, which pretty much ensures there will be a steady stream of campaigns for you to choose from. If you’re an upcoming artist or small company, for example, you could spend a relatively small amount of money advertising directly to potential users than you might spend on other advertising methods.

CEO Reddy says she wanted to take money from people she knew and trusts, and those happened to be all Ex-Googlers. Individual investors included FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, angel investor Georges Harik, Digg VP Keval Desai, David Hirsch of Metamorphic Ventures, LinkedIn product VP Dipchand Nishar, Aydin Senkut, and Greg Lee. Robert Scoble and Louis Gray will be joining as advisors.

MyLikes is different from others in the pay-to-tweet space in that the focus is on popular users rather than on the advertisers. Simply sharing an ad in your Twitter stream is not enough to get paid. People have to actually click the link. This means that you must have a good reputation with your network and a good overall reach into the Twitter community. This also means that spammers and bots won’t be able to penetrate the market as they have done with other services.

MyLikes will still have to compete with Twitter’s new ad platform and existing pay-per-tweet services, but I think MyLikes has a leg up on the competition. Especially since you can also post your sponsored likes on your blog and other social media avenues.

As of today, Opera Mini has been approved for distribution through Apple’s App store. This browser is already in use by over 50 million users worldwide, providing lightning fast mobile browsing by compressing data by about 90 percent before it ever sends the content to your device. This means you waste less bandwidth and your pages should pop up on your little screen much faster.

Not only will the Opera Mini browser speed up your mobile browsing in general, but it also helps you save money on your data bill. The change in browsing speed will be especially noticeable if you’re forced to use a slower data network like the 2G Edge.

Even though Opera won out in the end, the process of getting accepted wasn’t as simple as you might think. Apple is pretty strict about what it allows into the App store. Especially apps that potentially replace Apple’s own offerings. In this case, they could have denied Opera Mini based on the fact that Safari is also a mobile web browser (even though they had previously accepted other browsers).

Besides creating an outstanding product that would actually be a huge benefit to iPhone customers, Opera put up a website that provided a live countdown until Mini was either accepted or rejected. We covered this back in March. 20 days, 8 hours, and 31 minutes later, Opera Mini was finally made available in the App store.

Did Opera’s strategy make a difference, or did Apple simply recognize that Opera Mini would be a useful App for their customers? We probably won’t ever find out for sure, but I’d like to think so. While it is at Apple discretion what they allow into the App store, some of their policies have been very upsetting to developers and customers alike and this move by Opera was either going to end in Opera Mini being accepted or possibly in some type of litigation.

Even now, Apple has started informing existing iPad developers that they cannot use the word “Pad” in their applications. Not “iPad” or anything specific like that, just the generic word “Pad.” If you want the new Opera Mini browser, feel free to download it (for free) via iTunes.

With all the Buzz surrounding Buzz, many of us have forgot about all the other services out there vying for the privilege of serving as our lifestream or aggregator. You have the old stand-by, FriendFeed which is still alive and kicking despite being purchased by Facebook. Cliqset is improving all the time. There are still others, including a little known service called Nsyght.

Easy Registration

Nsyght has been around for about 2yrs, but has recently received a round of funding and has since grown from a simple social search site to a full fledged social aggregator. Signing up is simple because you don’t actually have to sign up, simply register using your existing Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Clickpass, or OpenID account.

Adding Accounts

Once inside, head on over to Settings > Services to attach your Nsyght account to all your different social media networks. Currently, these include: StumbleUpon, Vimeo, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, Last.fm, Digg, OpenID, Clickpass, Google, and Yahoo. In addition to pulling in your content, most of these can also be used to login later. Nsyght uses OAuth so you don’t have to tell it your passwords.

General Usage

From here, most things work as expected. You’re looking at a river of all the content from your social networks. You can post items via Nsyght and have them also post to your other sites. A set of filters in the sidebar lets you focus on one specific services, simply click the ones you want to see. This is helpful if one particular service happens to be burying the rest.

What Makes it Different

While Nsyght has most of the features you would expect to find from any other social media aggregator service, it’s approach is very interesting. By definition, an aggregator is supposed to pull things together and help you keep your self organized. Rather than visiting multiple different websites to try and keep track of your friends’ activities, you can monitor everything from one place.

What actually happened with most of these services is that they came with their own social graph and their own comments for each item you import. Instead of being able to manage all your social networks and services from one place, you just end up with yet another social network to keep track of.

Part of why we built nsyght was to help users really take advantage of data portability. Instead of building a service that would encourage you to leave your network behind, we wanted to build something that could give you cool tools and services that helped you get more out of your existing social network, while allowing you to keep all your various profiles up to date. At the end of the day, we all (theoretically) have lives and jobs to do, so doing more with less seems pretty appealing.

When you comment on an item in Nsyght, your comment shows up in Nsyght as well as on the site the item came from. If you Like an item, you get a similar result. All in all, definitely worth a look and I’m sure they would appreciate your feedback.

Google is announcing some pretty major updates to it’s Google Docs service. They have done some under-the-hood updates to improve the overall speed of the document editor and spreadsheet editor. In addition, Docs is starting to look more like Wave as far as collaborative editing and discussion around documents. These updates come as a result of Google realizing they needed to make major changes to the foundation of Docs in order to provide more advanced features.

Multiple participants can now edit a document and see changes made by others in real-time, character by character. Each individual’s changes are color coded. In addition to watching actual changes being made, you can chat in the sidebar with potential participants and leave notes on the document, separate from the actual document content. It’s almost like putting a sticky note on it. Google has improved reliability and accuracy of the import/export functionality, added real margins and tab stops, and improved image layout within documents. You can drag and drop images freely within the document.

Spreadsheet editing is a lot smoother due to the updates on the back end. Your spreadsheets will load much faster, are more responsive, and scroll more seamlessly. They have added a formula bar which allows you to input formulas as well as edit cells. You can now drag and drop columns and save time with auto-complete within columns. Just like with the document editor, you can see changes being made by other people in real-time and color coded.

Google has added an entirely separate drawing editor. This will save you from having to open big and bulky third party drawing/diagram software. You will be able to access your drawings alongside the rest of your documents. You can also copy drawings to the web clipboard and past them into your spreadsheets, presentations, and documents.

This new version of docs is not compatible with Google Gears, which Google was planning to do away with anyway. After these updates roll out, offline mode will no longer be supported. On the positive side, they are working on a replacement for this functionality that takes advantage of similar features in HTML5.

These new features are coming to you within the next few days, but you can get them immediately by clicking New Version at the top of any spreadsheet or look for New Version of Google Documents under ‘Document Settings.’

In a live event today, Microsoft revealed the project referred to as the Microsoft Pink until now. It’s called the Kin and it represents the next generation of devices stemming from Microsoft’s acquisition of Danger. The Kin is a device which focuses on people deep in the social media world. Those of us who live on Facebook and Twitter and who have groups of friends that extend beyond just those we interact with in person.

There are actually 2 devices in play here. The Kin One and the Kin Two. Both devices are sliders with a camera, LED flash, and a full QWERTY keyboard. The Kin One is a small squarish device and the Kin Two is more of a standard sized slider phone with a higher quality camera (8 megapixels) and screen.

The phone has no support for third-party applications, but is well integrated into all the most popular social networking sites. The point is to keep you in tune with what’s going on with your friends online, separating your friends into 3 groups:

• Friends you interact with on a regular basis and in person. The people you hang out with.
• Friends that you probably haven’t seen in years, but still stay in touch with online. Like those people on Facebook you graduated high school with.
• Friends that you met online that you have probably never actually met, but you still share interests with.

The primary home screen of the device is where you stay in The Loop. The Loop refers to both the stream of information available on the Kin as well as the conversations and media that are constantly flowing through your network of friends.

In addition to keeping you in The Loop, the Kin helps you easily share things. A green dot is ever present on your screen and dropping items on this dot allows you to share them across your network. You compose your share by dragging things to the dot from The Loop, the web browser, your search results, and so on. Once you send the item to your friends, the Kin figures out what to send to whom. For instance, your Facebook friends may get a Facebook message with all the details and your standard phone contacts will get an MMS with the relevant attachments.

The Kin One comes with 4GB of internal storage, while the Kin Two offers 8GB. The great part of it is that this internal storage is almost made irrelevant based on the fact that all of your data is stored in the cloud. This is pretty much identical to how the Sidekick (created by Danger) has always worked. In addition to having all of your phone data available outside of the phone (yeah! no lock-in!) you can access your data via any web browser. There is even a timeline available so that you can scroll back in time and reminisce.

I can’t lie, this device looks very interesting. The Sidekick was probably my favorite phone ever and the only reason I got rid of it was it’s lack of 3rd party apps. Even though the Kin series offers Over The Air updates, the lack of apps might turn many off. On the other hand, it might be exactly what their target demographic is looking for. If you want to be the first one to comment on your friends’ updates, this is the device for you.

The device is exclusive to Verizon and you should be able to snag one in May.

first photo via Engadgenet

Lifeyo is a new startup that helps the average person create a website with minimal web development skills. Their mission is to make polished, professional websites accessible to everyone. They provide a simple interface and set of tools that allow you to build the website you’ve always wanted without needing to hire a UK website design company.

The procedure for getting your website set up is a simple one. The first step is to pick a title for your website. This is the general idea or concept behind your website. The next step is to pick one of the many professional themes or layouts to use for you shiny new website. There are currently 13 themes to choose from.

Your next step is to actually create your Lifeyo account. This will allow you to login and manage your website. There are 3 plans to choose from:

• Starter – this free plan gives you the domain YourName.lifeyo.com and gets your website online right away using the website creator.
• Use My Domain – For $30/year, you get to use a domain you already own while also taking advantage of Lifeyo’s advanced editing tools.
• Get a New Domain – For $40/year, Lifeyo will help you register a new domain and automatically connect it to your Lifeyo website.

Once you decide which plan works for you, you can proceed to editing your website. Keep in mind that you can always start at the free level and upgrade later if you just want to check things out.

Designing your website is as simple as dragging things where you want them. To edit an object, just double-click it. Easily add photos and text to your page and create any additional pages that you need. You can add advanced widgets like YouTube videos by adding a code block. Copy the embed code you need for the video or widget and paste it inside the code object.

You have full control over the visual appearance of your site. Change your theme, modify the title, and even change the background image. Quickly add a blog to your site so that you can provide dynamic content to your audience. Your blog posts can also include photos, videos, music, and any other file attachments you need.

Once you’ve got everything looking good, don’t forget to Publish your website for the world to see. Lifeyo is something like Stiqr, but it gives you a base to start from and doesn’t even require you to paste any code anywhere. You need absolutely no web design experience or knowledge to get involved with Lifeyo and create something awesome.

Take a look at Lifeyo and tell us what you think in the comments.

Ping.fm Adds Support For RSS

Ping.fm, the service which lets you broadcast your status messages across all your social networks, has tapped SuperFeedr to add RSS support. This is definitely a powerful new enhancement to the Ping.fm services, which was just recently purchased by Seesmic. I’m a big Ping.fm user and welcome any updates and feature additions, but this one has me worried.

There are a plethora of apps out there that completely automate Twitter with the goal of helping marketers get their message out there. Most of these service are abused and end up creating droves of spammy and useless Twitter drones. With RSS support in Ping.fm, there is potential to easily create the same type of zombies across the entire social media landscape. Maybe I’m just being overly dramatic.

Gowalla Goes Real-time

Gowalla is another service taking advantage of SuperFeedr to enhance their service. They’re providing real-time RSS feeds for checkins and venues. This will allow you to do things like add your checkins into Buzz, track your favorite venues and people right in your RSS reader, and we’ll probably see some fancy Yahoo Pipes magic in the near future. As RWW points out, Foursquare offers RSS feeds for each user, but they’re not the real-time PubSubHubbub feeds now provided by Gowalla.

iBooks Coming To The iPhone

The fancy new iBooks app that was created as part of the iPad launch will be coming to the iPhone with the new OS release later this year. It’s unclear why they’re making iPhone users wait until the release of the new OS to provide access to the iBooks software. When it comes down to it, it’s really just another app. Another issue is that Apple may be leaving a lot of money on the table by not snatching up existing iPhone users before they break down and get a Kindle. Amazon has more books, anyway.

Foursquare Cracks Down on Cheaters

Foursquare, pretty much the leader in location-based services, has one major problem: cheating. Anyone who knocks the service points out this Achilles heel and Foursquare has decided to solve the problem once and for all. If they can’t verify your location, your checkin doesn’t count.

One of the reasons I decided to go with Foursquare was that it was easy to checkin via SMS, so it was working out pretty good. With this new change, users won’t be able to cheat as easily, but I also won’t be bothering because pickings were slim via SMS already.

Dennis Crowley goes into detail about how the changes may affect in this comment.