Nokia buys social networking site Plazes

clipped from www.reuters.com Nokia buys social networking site Plazes HELSINKI (Reuters) – The world’s top cellphone maker Nokia said on Monday it has agreed to buy social networking start-up Plazes as part of its major push into offering Internet services. Plazes (http://www.plazes.com/) provides location-aware services that people can use to plan, record, and share their social activities. To achieve new growth as the cellphone business is set to mature in coming years Nokia started to invest heavily in building up its presence in Internet service. It has offered $8.1 billion for U.S. digital maps firm Navteq — a cornerstone of its services push — and has said it would invest millions more this year and next.

Japan Snack Company Creates Mobile MMOG

clipped from www.smartmobs.com Japan snack giant – Tohato – used mobile phones, two flavor of snacks and 2D barcodes to create a MMOG allowing users to pit themselves against one another depending on which flavor (Habanero or Satan Jorquia) chosen. This marketing ploy is both attractive and addicting, which created a community around Tohato’s product. Perfect example of what the future holds in advertising and how mobile devices will play a role.

Social Networks’ Sway May Be Underestimated

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com When researchers analyzed the patterns of those who managed to quit smoking over the 32-year period, they found that the decision appeared to be highly influenced by whether someone close to them stopped. a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave Christakis and Fowler took advantage of detailed records kept between 1971 and 2003 about 5,124 people who participated in the landmark Framingham Heart Study. Because many of the subjects had ties to the Boston suburb of Framingham, Mass., many of the participants were connected somehow — through spouses, neighbors, friends, co-workers — enabling the researchers to study a network that totaled 12,067 people In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person’s decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit

Explosion of indie games kills “best of” Column

clipped from www.wired.com But in the last two years, things have blown up spectacularly. There are now hundreds and hundreds of superb indie games coming out every year, from creators in the United States, Japan, India, China and all points on the globe. I’m not counting the crap games, by the way. Throw them into the mix and you’re well into the thousands. Two years ago, I wrote my first column celebrating the best indie games: small, offbeat titles, programmed usually by a single auteur and given away for free I think it’s because the videogame industry has hit precisely the same maturation point that movies and music once hit. What’s more, there are now formal distribution avenues to encourage indie games — ranging from the many blogs devoted to them (TIGSource, Indie Games, Jay is Games and many more) to awards events like the Independent Games Festival and Slamdance Games.

YouTomb keeps an eye on Youtube’s graveyard

clipped from blog.wired.com Where do videos go when they “die” or are booted off YouTube for copyright infringement? YouTube –  which has run into controversy for pulling guitar parodies and satirical music videos due to copyright claims –  recently launched a filtering service that identifies possible copyright violations and lets rights-holders decide if they want to flag videos for removal. Alongside a screenshot of each clip deemed in violation, YouTomb lets users see who posted the offending video, how many views it got before being pulled, when it was removed and by whom (for instance at the request of the user, a media company or third-party). YouTomb, which launched about two months ago, is currently monitoring close to a quarter-million videos, and Jansen says the team is eager to expand its scope. Currently, the site only monitors popular YouTube videos, but Jansen hopes to span as many YouTube data sets as possible.