Google Launches It’s Own Systems Programming Language: Go

Google is once again pushing the boundaries of everything we take for granted. Webmail was pretty much garbage until Gmail came along. When existing browser technologies weren’t advanced enough for what they wanted to do, Google created Chrome. When they realized that email and other standard communications protocols were inefficient and slow, they created Wave. Now, realizing that we have gone a decade without re-evaluating our systems programming languages to match up with today’s hardware and software technologies, Google has released the Go language to the public:

No major systems language has emerged in over a decade, but over that time the computing landscape has changed tremendously. There are several trends:

• Computers are enormously quicker but software development is not faster.
• Dependency management is a big part of software development today but the “header files” of languages in the C tradition are antithetical to clean dependency analysis—and fast compilation.
• There is a growing rebellion against cumbersome type systems like those of Java and C++, pushing people towards dynamically typed languages such as Python and JavaScript.
• Some fundamental concepts such as garbage collection and parallel computation are not well supported by popular systems languages.
• The emergence of multicore computers has generated worry and confusion.

Go is open source and ready for the hacking. If you’re a developer and you gotta get Go, go visit the tutorial to get started. If you’re interested in the gory details, you can watch a 1-hour Tech Talk video.

@ShitMyDadSays Gets a TV Deal with CBS

Don’t get me wrong, this is one of the funniest Twitter accounts I’ve ever read, but this deal has me scratching my head. I really don’t see how a sitcom about a dude tweeting all crazy stuff his 73-yr old dad says is going to last. At any rate, the creators of Will & Grace, David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, are slotted to executive produce the show. Seems to me that these quotes could have come from a sitcom (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Married with Children, etc.), so creating a show based on them seems kinda backwards. The most pressing question is: What are they going to call it? (via Mashable)

Survey Shows How People Interact with Brands in Social Media

A recent survey conducted by Razorfish gives us some interesting results regarding how potential customers interact with brands online. If you’re a brand, you should definitely take a look at the details. Primary take-aways for me:

• 25% of respondents followed brands on Twitter
• 40% of respondents followed brands on Facebook
• The primary reason that respondents followed a brand on Twitter or friended them on Facebook was to get Exclusive deals and offers

So, if you’re a brand and looking to step into the social media space, get your self accounts on Twitter and Facebook and start giving your friends and followers the hook-up.

Photo Tagger Alerts You When People Put Your Face on the Web

Israeli service Photo Tagger works as a Facebook app to help you automatically tag your photos. It can recognize faces regardless of lighting conditions and angles. It will automatically tag and organize your photos. One of the most interesting features,though, is the ability to alert you when someone uploads your face to Facebook, regardless of whether the photo has been tagged or not:

This turns Photo Tagger into quite an impressive social search engine for faces on Facebook, where millions of images are uploaded to albums every week. It also doubles as a handy notification tool, because it has a system in place dubbed Face Alerts that lets users know when pictures of them appear on Facebook, with or without tags. (via TC)

You missed that recent episode of V or the first episode of CSI’s crossover week. You know they aren’t showing re-runs and you can’t believe you forgot to set the DVR. Maybe you can catch them online, but where? Clicker is a service that will help you answer that exact question: Where are the shows I want to see playing online?

As massive amounts of programming move online, consumers are entering a world of infinite choices, all on-demand. Great! Finding the show you want to watch? Painful. Thousands of episodes from thousands of shows are housed on thousands of different sites, mixed among billions of random clips and videos.

Clicker boasts more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 networks. They also contain 40,000 movies and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists. They refer to themselves as “one part directory, one part search engine, one part wiki, one part entertainment guide, and one part DVR.”

Clicker basically indexes video from various sources across the web. Rather than trying to sift through YouTube, Hulu, or other video sites, Clicker serves as your one-stop shop for locating exactly what you need. When possible, you can even watch your shows right from the Clicker website. Otherwise, it links you to the relevant source.

Even if the content you’re looking for is not free, Clicker will show you where you can buy it. The search features auto-complete and thumbnails of the shows you might be searching for. If you’re not even sure what you’re looking for, you can browse through the extensive selection of categories or visit Trends to see what’s hot.

As you browse through the site, you can add items to playlists for later viewing. This works much like Hulu’s queue, including a history of items you’ve already watched. You can also connect Clicker to your Facebook account to let your friends know what you’re watching .

Clicker is currently in private beta, but I’m told they will be opening up to the public very soon. Until then, Clicker has given BlackWeb 2.0 500 invites to share with our readers. Click this link to get yours and tell us what you think.

UPDATE: Looks like Clicker has no intentions of losing momentum. They just went public this morning, so you can sign up without an invite. They’ve also added a few more features, including:

33% more content than beta! We now have over 400,000 full episodes of programming from more than 7,000 shows.

Netflix and Amazon VOD Movies: Clicker now includes Instant Streaming movies and Amazon VOD for-purchase movies. To view Netflix movies, you must have a Netflix account. Amazon VOD movies are available for either purchase, or rent.  (TV coming in the next couple of weeks.  Gotta fit it all into our data format so it’s actually useful before we let it go live!)

Facebook Connect: You can now connect to Clicker using your Facebook account. This allows you to share content with your Facebook friends, maintain a Playlist, and edit our wiki.

Revamped Playlist UI, nomenclature, and functionality: Save episodes, music videos, or movies into your playlist. Or subscribe to a show, so when a new episode becomes available it will be added to your Playlist automatically.

Search Within: Want to find the 60 Minutes interview with President Obama? Just search purely within the 60 Minutes catalog.  Want to find episodes of Charlie Rose where he interviews Warren Buffett?  Do the same!

Related Search: During beta, we dramatically improved our algorithms for making suggestions related to the shows you’re watching.  It’s a good thing our Playlist has been improved so much because you’re going to be adding a ton of programs you just discovered.

Editing: We were getting so many people recommending edits to our pages, so we made a number of improvements to make it easier for you to submit changes.

Copyright protection is a huge issue for those who have blogs and/or websites with original content.  Unfortunately, most bloggers and website owners have experienced their content being used without their permission.   The most common reasons content is stolen are:  stealing content from a blog to gain readership; taking graphics or pictures from a site to make their site more attractive; and/or stealing music.

So what is a copyright?  Copyrights protect original works of authorship.  Some examples of copyrights on the internet are: Blog Post Writings, You Tube Videos, Graphic Designs, Short Stories, Movies, etc.

Unfortunately there will always be copyright infringers.  However,  here are several tips you can implement NOW to adequately protect your copyrighted material online:

• Register all copyright material with the U.S. Copyright Office. Send a collection of Copyright material to the Copyright Office every 3 months for up to date protection and statutory damages.  If a copyright is registered within 3 months of publication or before infringement occurs, an owner is awarded automatic statutory damages if infringement is proven. These damages are between $750-$30,000 per cause of action.  In addition, the copyright owner can receive an award of attorney fees.  Filing a copyright online is super affordable.  It is only $35 to file.  An individual can also file a collection of works under one application.  For example, all Blog posts from January 09-March09 can be filed under one application as a collection of works.

• Place copyright notice signs on all websites and web pages.  Use a Creative Common License. A creative common license allows a user to use your work, but under certain conditions.  For example, you can allow a user to use your work as long as they credit the work back to you.

• Use a service such as Copyscape to track infringement of Copyrighted material.  How does this work?  Copyscape uses a search engine to locate duplicated materials on the Internet.

Implementing these tips now can afford a copyright owner rights and protection that the owner would not normally have.  These tips are affordable or free and can be done in a few hours.

I hope you found this information helpful.

Remember when all you needed to protect your computer from hackers, spammers, and viruses was a decent firewall and some anti-virus software? Fast forward to today and the digital delinquents always seem to be two steps ahead of our most advanced security methods. Until now. Wiresoft, maker of high security products specifically for small to medium sized businesses has announced what they’re calling an “unbreakable” firewall.

The Firegate All-in-One Firewall with Disaster Recovery is the ultimate in network protection. According to the press release it’s “a unified threat management (UTM) network security product – a single platform that protects companies against all network security threats.” Meaning if Jack from accounting was using his workstation to visit some hardcore NSFW sites and got burned (Hmm, there’s a life lesson in there somewhere, go figure.) Firegate will handle your infected comp before it has time to spread the carnage through the office. Now the only thing that remains is to fire your dirty bird employee.

But truthfully, John and his websites of ill repute shouldn’t be an issue. Your guys in IT can use Firegate to setup safeguards, including website filtering and creating user groups with specific privileges.  You can also narrow the filtering process down to specific users, so if you wanted to give John a second chance you would just restrict his website access to strictly work-related surfing.

In the off chance that John’s NSFW virus does get into the system and reeks havoc on your network, costing you untold amounts of money in loss data, Firegate’s Disaster Recovery system is there to save the day. It already conserved your precious data on an outside server and then backed that up online on two other data centers in different locations. And with Firegates 24/7 tech support, you should only have to make a phone call and your data should be restored.

So what makes Wiresoft so sure that their latest product is so secure? So far its defenses have never been penetrated in lab or market tests. You read that right NEVER. They’re so sure that Firegate can take whatever you can throw at it they are issuing the “Hack Us If You Can” challenge. Starting November 16, so-called hackers have 24 hours to crack the system. If they’re successful, they’ll win $24,000. Now that’s seriously putting your money where your mouth is. Those interested in attempting to crack the bank, should stay tuned to Wiresoft.com for details. If you’re a small or medium business, you should also give Wiresoft a look, as we’re becoming increasingly reliant on technology, it’s crucial that those important files be protected with more that a flash drive and a prayer.

Like most of you I primarily use Quantcast and Compete to measure the traffic of other websites.  When someone happens to hook me up I use Comscore as well.  BlackVoices.com looks to have had a huge dip in traffic on sites like Quantcast and compete.  this is largely because they are not classified into a network, Comscore’s equivalent to a media type (M).  being classified this way has it’s benefits especially if you are hard at work serving niches as part of your strategy.  September Comscore numbers show that Black Voices is actually at about 4.9M unique visitors (October numbers aren’t out yet) classified as a media type.  I chatted briefly with Tariq Muhammad today about Black Voices’ new strategy.

How many domains does Black Voices currently use?
A total of 13.

If traffic isn’t coming from the main domain as much how are you all getting so much traffic to the other domains?  SEO?  SEM?
It’s absolutely a mix of partners, SEO, and other forms of marketing and partnerships.  Traffic does come from the main domain as well and we send them to blogs from there.  I do want to note that we are eager and open to partnering with all manner of sites.  It took a while to shake off our walled garden heritage of AOL but that thinking has change throughout the company over the past 2 years or so and has evolved.  It makes a lot more sense for us to be open and partner.  If you can’t come to Black Voice’s to find all types of black voices we are not fulfilling our mission.

Do you have a network or will you be building a network of sites?
Yes and No.  We could be classified as a network however form a positioning stand point we aren’t.  If I were to launch other sites that had a different slant it would roll-up into Black Voices still.  All of our sites now are part of the Black Voices constituency and would not exist had Black Voices not existed.  They are more like spin-offs.  They are an organic network of blogs and sites that have spawned from Black Voices.  In comparison to like a Gawker, they all have distinct audiences.  When we use the term ‘Blogs’ it is more a description of what we use for the CMS than descriptive of being a network of blogs.

What will eventually happen to BlackVoices.com, will it just be a landing page of sorts that collects all content, what role does it play in your new strategy?
We want to serve the niche content spaces and build them up as individual brands as well.  These sites will help feed BlackVoices.com which will showcases the best content across our network of blogs.

AOL has been reported to have hired about 7,000 journalist and is moving in the direction of being a content company, what does this mean for BlackVoices?
It means we will be ramping up even more in terms of content and are working to include as many diverse group of voices as we can.  We want to leave no viewpoint unturned.  We rely on original content while other AOL sites might rely on a different content mix, using content from AP and other services.  We are looking for contributors for additional blogs as well as contributors to the current blogs we have.  The contributors we are looking for don’t necessarily have to have a blog either, it may includes someone with a large social media presence.  We are open to the possibilities however they may present themselves.

What can we look out for from Black Voices in the coming weeks and months?
We will be ramping up in video.  We currently have a video podcast (it is distributed on multiple platforms not just iTunes) that we will be revamping.  We also have BV Daily Drama which is popular and shows the best clips from today’s TV shows.  Our message boards will be relaunching with Facebook, twitter, and MySpace intergration.  We were using a 3rd party service but brought that in-house and tested it in both alpha and beta phases.  That will relaunch next week on Wednesday but you can get a preview if you go to Conversations.BlackVoices.com

While Twitter is a pretty cool place for sharing stuff, it’s just about impossible to actually follow a discussion. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen two people carrying on a discussion about something interesting and was left scrambling to follow the thread of conversation. Twitter’s API does provide a way to see what a tweet was in reply to, but this does little to help you follow an ongoing discussion. Here are a few tips you can use to keep up with conversations on Twitter:

Bettween

Bettween is definitely the best solution I’ve seen for tracking conversations on Twitter. Simply provide the names of the two twitter users you want to follow and Bettween gives you a threaded view of their recent conversations. It’s easy to follow the thread from here and see when each tweet occurred. You can also see how many conversations have happened in the past and the total number of messages exchanged between the two. Once you’ve become bored with your original query, you can scroll down to Hot Conversations (currently dominated by aplusk, mrskutcher, arrington, perezhilton, craignewmark, and kirstiealley) to see what others are talking about.

Twitter Search

One of the simplest ways to follow a conversation thread on Twitter is to use Twitter Search. The hardest part here is locating the actual conversation you want. Let’s say you saw me talking to Hootsuite and wanted to see what was going on. You could search for @rahsheen and then locate the relevant tweet. Once you’ve found it, click “Show Conversation” to see the entire thread. You don’t have to find the specific tweet that started the conversation, which would be a huge pain. You just need any tweet that is part of the thread.

TwitterScope

TwitterScope is a simple bookmarklet that shows you all the tweets from a specific user, along with any mentions of that user. This lets you see what a specific Twitter user is saying, along with everything that everyone else is saying to them. TwitterScope does provide all the information you need to follow the conversation thread, but it might be overkill if you’re looking for something specific. To use it:

• Drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar
• Visit the Twitter profile of the user you want to stalk track
• Click the bookmarklet and you’ll get a popup with all the tweets

Hashtags

This method of following conversations relies on all participants in the conversation following the rules, which never really works out. For instance, many of us engaged in discussion around the recent season of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Many users were using the #rhas2 tag, but some used #rhoa or #rhoa2. I often forgot to include the tag myself, even though I was tweeting about the episode. There are ways to make this method work reliably, but it requires the participants of the conversation to use a service like Twubs, Tinker, or Tweetgrid. When it does work, though, following the discussion around a specific topic is as easy as searching for the tag.

Many believe Twitter is a great place for discussion, but I would disagree. It’s a great place to connect with people, but once the conversation starts to go beyond a few tweets, it’s time to move it elsewhere. For the average user, it’s just too hard to keep up. This is especially true if more than 2 people are involved or if you’re not actually a participant in the conversation.

What methods do you use to follow discussions on Twitter?

Ever wonder you could be a fly on the wall and see just how your website’s visitors are interacting with your application or content? Join the club! Many of us do but don’t have big budgets for lengthy usability testing. Here are five ways to test your site’s usability easily, affordably and conveniently:

1. Clixpy

Just install some Javascript on your site and let the capturing begin.  This might be the one of the easier ways to figure out if something may be confusing for your users on your website or in your application.  You’d be surprised simple things like hyperlinks that are over-styled or don’t use underlines can be frustrating for some users.  Upon registration you’ll get 10 free capture credits for use across multiple domains.  If you need more than 10 the service is pretty affordable (100 captures for $5, 200 captures for $10, 600 captures for $20, 1000 captures for $30).  You can also try before you buy with their slick demo.

2.  Loop11

More pricey ($350/user testing project, flat fee) but yet more robust since this option allows you to get  analytics with (visual interpretations) on task completion rates.  A user either completes a task successfully, fails it, or abandons it.  Loop11 also allows you to invite specific users and gives you the ability to randomly select visitors to your site, share a link directly, or assemble a panel.

3.  ClickTale

Another option, and one that can be most useful for websites with forms that need to have some sort of conversion metric tied to it (marketing landing pages, application registrations) and/or e-commerce sites.  ClickTale is pretty through when it comes to tracking abandon rates on forms and which fields give a user the most difficulty.  They also have a free pricing option recommended for Bloggers (or those of us on a budget).  They only drawback with the free option is it only allows 400 pageviews per month.

4.  IntuitionHq

A rare combination, simple AND cheap, IntuitionHQ is only five bucks to make your test live and record an unlimited number of responses.  They even encourage you to share your test via Facebook and Twitter.  See for yourself:

5.  When all else fails you can always ask a kid.

Don’t laugh, I’ve tried it before and 8 to 10 years olds tend to know just enough about the Internet (but not too much) to tell you honestly what is what on a web page.  Now I wouldn’t recommend soliciting random kids.  Ask  relatives or friends.  you may be surprised at the results.  Something you may have thought was so easy to do on your site might actually be not so straight forward.

How are you testing your site’s usability?

Last week’s shooting rampage at a military installation in Fort Hood, Texas quickly became the top news story across the country, and several major news organizations used Twitter Lists to aggregate information coming from local news outlets after the shooting, including the New York Times, CNN, and the Austin-American Statesmen. The Times prominently displayed their Lists on the homepage, just below the latest news stories on the tragedy.  We posted earlier today a few reasons why you should care about Twitter Lists, needless to say this is another one.

We’ve already seen Twitter become the space to get details on breaking news events, often before they hit the major networks or papers, and with the news Lists feature, media organizations were able to quickly pull together a variety of sources. In the old days of Twitter, users would have had to search using the #forthood hashtag, or the name Fort Hood, and risk ending up with a stream of potentially unrelated or irrelevant posts. The Lists feature helped capture real time information from local and national sources providing information specific to the tragedy, its aftermath–a godsend for those searching for reliable information on how to contact family and friends in the area.

The lists contain Twitter accounts that are mostly local to the area around Fort Hood, like the Killeen Daily Herald, a local newspaper, and News 8 Austin, a local 24 hour news network, in addition to CNN and other national networks.

Fort Hood, the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services, has obviously been devastated by the tragedy, as is the rest of the military, and the nation has responded with an outpouring of support. Twitter was flooded with messages of support for those killed or wounded, their family and friends, and overnight several new Facebook groups titled “Prayers for Fort Hood” sprang up–the largest already has almost 30,000 members.

This Lists feature got another breaking news workout today when another mass shooting was reported in Orlando, and again the New York Times pulled together a list to help track the latest news there. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by both of these tragedies.

The journalism world and Black Entertainment Television lost a true professional and friend Sunday afternoon when BET.com news producer Tracy Stokes succumbed to complications from kidney failure. He was 37 years old.

BET.com News Producer Tracy Stokes

According to his mother, Lilly Stokes, a retired teacher living in North Carolina, Tracy died a 4:07 p.m. Sunday at Wake Med Hospital in Raleigh. He had pneumonia in both lungs, she said.

Despite his long bout with kidney problems, which meant steady visits to doctors and other specialists, Tracy enjoyed working, and he never used his illness as an excuse for giving less than his best.

“I don’t think most people know just how giving Tracy was,” said Mrs. Stokes. “He really believed in helping people, and he wanted to see folks loving one another. He couldn’t deal with people disrespecting each other. He liked people to be straightforward.”

For those who never had the pleasure of working with Tracy, you were likely connected to him in ways you didn’t even know. If you visited BET.com over much of the past half-decade and clicked on such popular BET.com segments as the “Bring That Week Back” photo flipbook, the annual “Those We Lost” obituary compilation or the “World Lens” section, which highlighted photos of people of color making the news throughout the world, you were indeed connected to Tracy. He worked meticulously on these projects, among many others, and went about his duties as a news gatherer and producer with passion and pride.  Head over to BET.com to read the full story.