Todd gave me a beta invite to the new bookmarking site Mento this morning.  He really likes it, and thinks that it is del.icio.us on steroids.  I agree.

More or less the sites are very similar in their core functionality — to bookmark sites with the potential to categorize and share them.  However, Mento has added a few bells and whistles.

While del.icio.us is much more spartan in its design (which isn't necessarily bad –compare Google to Yahoo!), Mento has a lot more graphics and more friendly user interface.  I personally don't mind a spartan site, but Mento is refreshing.  For those who are new to the bookmarking game, they probably would find Mento easier to use.

Another cool bell and whistle that Mento has added is the ability to get a customized screen shot (whole or partial) of a web page that one is bookmarking.  I must admit that this is way cool.  A picture is worth a thousand words, and bookmarking sites aren't made for tomes about links.  Further, it is easy to do.  The tool pops up in one's browser, and the instructions are very clear what to do.

Mento is also gracious enough to understand that we weren't born for the sole purpose of using it.  That's why it allows users to export links from it to other bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, and tumblr.  That's pretty generous.  Of course, can or will also export links to sites like Facebook, which makes perfect sense since bookmarking is a complementary activity to social networking.

If that's not good enough, Mento also enables you to filter the links that your connections can send you or that you'll see as you peruse their bookmarks.  For instance, if Todd tags something "battlestargalactica," I can choose not to see these links.  No offence meant, but I'm a Star Trek guy.  Likewise you can make sure that pages from a certain site are included in what you see.  That's pretty nifty.   

The site is still in beta — thus, a work-in-progress.  But it seems cool to me.  If you would like an invite to test the site, either leave a comment below or send us a direct message through The Bivings Group's Twitter page.

I posted a link on our Twitter account a few days back about Jim Brady from the Washington Post’s call for commenters on newspaper websites to post using their real names.  In doing away with anonymous commenting, he is hoping to improve the generally low level of discourse you find on many media sites.  Here is his justification:

I think part of the problem is that people aren’t held accountable on the Web.  People say things online they would never say when disagreeing with someone at the dinner table. I think heated debate is fine, but when there are (flame wars), many people won’t take part for fear they will be attacked and bashed over the head with the (Internet-equivalent) of a steel pipe.

I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I think there is a tradition of respecting anonymity on the Internet that has value, and I am generally opposed to putting up barriers that hinder discussion.  On the other hand, the comment sections on many newspaper website are completely broken and I think Brady’s solution would probably work.

Anyway, the whole issue got me thinking about steps I think media companies should take to improve their comments sections, short of requiring people to post using their real names.  Below are my ideas based on my experience in trying to manage active comments areas for a variety of clients (we don’t have a comment problem on our own site so we haven’t taken a lot of these steps here):

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If you own a computer and have a disposable income, chances are good that you have bought something via Amazon.com, a well-known site dedicated to being the Internet's largest store.  The site boasts many features, including discount prices, lists of recommendations for frequent users, and intuitive search features.  A past blog post on The Bivings Report highlights one of Amazon's recent user-friendly upgrades.

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Once again, the Internet is abuzz with predictions and theories about who is going to win American Idol.  In the early days of the competition (back when Kelly Clarkson was still a nobody singing karaoke and we only hypothesized that we hated the British without actually knowing it through Simon Cowell), there was much less web traffic about the show.  This season and the previous one, however, it's all the Internet can talk about.

This leads people in finding numerous ways to predict who of the now-6 remaining contestants will be voted off each week.  After all, this is a show that purports that the American public gets to decide who is going to stay and who is going to go.  Polls, blogs, and fansites may all play an important role in deciding the overall victor, much like a modern day political campaign. 

TV Squad, a popular television site, uses polls from various sources as well as their own intuition to predict the next bootee.  Most of the polls incorrectly predicted Syesha Mercado's demise, while the real loser was Kristy Lee Cook.  Obviously, this is not an accurate way to predict the contestant with the lowest votes.  The polls are simply too specific in the sense that only those Internet snoopers that come across them will actually get a chance to vote in the poll.  This does not represent an accurate view of the American public.

DialIdol.com has found a more inventive way to predict the successful contestants.  Their software measures the busy signal of each phone line to determine who is getting the most votes.  They started the program during the previous season, but achieved only moderate success in the predictions.  The company also sells software to enable one person to vote many times for a contestant.  Many sites have reported that the software is now known by the American Idol producers and rarely works anymore.

Tivo also found a creative way to measure the votes.  The company claims that they can predict who is going to be voted off by which minutes of the recorded programs are re-watched.  The theory is that Idol favorites will have their performances re-watched by their adoring public, while soon-to-be eliminees will have fewer views.  Unfortunately, the system seems to not be altogether accurate, since Tivo has incorrectly predicted Mercado two weeks in a row.

Another social media company, BuzzLogic, uses their "influencer blog" ratings to follow the entire competition via their blog.  I was impressed by the fledgling company's efforts at first glance, but upon closer inspection realized that few, if any, of their predictions have been true.  In addition, BuzzLogic gives very little explanation when they are incorrect.  This does, however, bolster my recent opinion that Katie Paine's connection between online activity and offline activity is flawed.  Many ‘influential' bloggers may be writing about certain candidates for American Idol, but that does not necessarily mean that they are voting for them, or voting at all.

I decided to tackle the task of predicting American Idol, ImpactWatch style.  Instead of using news articles, I used Tweet Scan to analyze 90 tweets per remaining contestant, using two separate searches for each.  I searched for each contestant's full name as well as their first name and the phrase "American Idol".  I read and ranked each tweet post as positive, negative, or neutral.

There are two reasons why I believe this method to be more valid than the other ways that were described above.  First, tweets represent impulses and first impressions, which I assume mirrors the mindset of actual voters.  Secondly, this is the only method that ascribes a positive or negative take on the information.  Polls just rank the favorite, while the Tivo system lacks any real information about why certain parts of the show are re-watched.  BuzzLogic's system has merit, but suffers from the need of personal input by its bloggers to explain anomalies in the amounts of influencer blogs.

Using my ImpactWatch inspired protocol, I found that David Cook and Jason Castro have the highest amount of positive tweets.  Sure enough, after doing some extended research, I found that the two received much praise for their performances last week.  All three females had an identical number of negative tweets (45), but Mercado has the lowest amount of positive tweets at a scant 30.  This is preliminary, but on Wednesday morning, I will post an updated tweet analysis (since Tuesday is when the contestants will perform their new songs).  Voters will most likely be tweeting away while they are waiting to vote.  Let's see if I can accurately predict which Idol will fall.

My current results are summarized below, using a graph created using ImpactWatch.

[This post is cross posted at our ImpactWatch site] 

Continuing the study (see the preceding part of the analysis here), I analyzed if there had been recent activity by users regarding the addition of new applications.  Facebook applications can be added or deleted from profiles at any time, and there is a specific tab on the left-hand side of user profiles designated to the addition or removal of applications.

I used the mini-feeds (which show recent user input) to analyze if there had been recent application-related activity.  35 users had made recent additions, while not a single user had recently deleted an application.  An overwhelming majority of users had done neither in the last week.  Below is a graph showing this data, made using ImpactWatch features.

The final area of study concerned the ‘Top Ten' applications as elected by Adonomics.com.  These are Super Wall, Top Friends, Hug Me, Super Poke, Bumper Sticker, iLike, Graffiti, Zombies, Scrabulous, and Quizzes.  These were the top ten applications at the time of the research.  With the addition and removal of applications, the top ten applications could change periodically.  More information on these applications can be found in the background post about the study.

Of the 300 users, 146 had at least one of the Top Ten applications, while 154 did not.  Below is the graphical representation of this data, made using ImpactWatch features.

The final part of the study will be posted soon.  It will include an Excel spreadsheet of all the data, as well as some conclusions drawn from the data.

[This post is cross-posted at the ImpactWatch Blog] 

To follow up on a recent post concerning Comcast’s effort to answer consumer complaints via Twitter, I used Tweet Scan to search specifically for Comcast posts and research exactly with what we are dealing. A basic one-word search found well over 1000 tweets about Comcast within just the last couple of hours, so I narrowed my focus down to the most recent 300. I read each of them, and categorized them in three different ways.

The first specification was whether the tweet was positive, negative, or neutral, overall. The results are as follows: 26 of the tweets were positive, 86 were neutral, and a majority of 188 were negative. It is a pretty negative environment for Comcast on Twitter right now.

The second category dealt with what category of complaint or praise under which the tweet fell. There were four distinctions: Not Working, Slow, Prices, and Company. “Not Working” and “Slow” deal with complaints about the Internet and cable service. “Prices” concern any complaints or praise about cost or billing issues. “Company” refers to any mention of the company that does not fall into one of those categories, or short tweets with little information (i.e. “grrr…Comcast”). 178 were about the company itself, 66 were problems with the Internet or cable completely not working, 33 were about slowdown, and 22 were about pricing concerns. It is interesting that on Twitter there is a lot of general venting about Comcast (bad for the brand), and less specific complaints.

The final category is whether or not the tweet contains cursing of any sort. From a quick skim of the 300 tweets, it seems like this is a good indicator of the level of frustration by the writer of the tweet. 35 contained curse words, and 265 did not.

Found below are some examples of Comcast-related tweets, as well as a document containing all the graphs above. This post is similar to the kind of analysis we perform through out service ImpactWatch. Interesting to note is that several of the tweets among the 300 were by the same user, who claims to be a representative from Comcast. Also, many of the tweets contained links to articles referencing the recent customer service use of Twitter by Comcast. Unfortunately, the representative could only handle one consumer problem at a time, so the use of tweets was just as effective as phone consumer services. The links below represent the tweet-by-tweet written data, some examples of Comcast-related tweets, and analytics.

All Data Collected

Example Tweets

Graphs Made in IW

If there is one underrated holiday out there, it's definitely April Fool's Day.  Don't get me wrong; the holiday receives a decent amount of attention.  Every year the public hears about one joke or hoax that really got some people good, but typically the day goes by without much of a nod.  I have always made it my personal duty to prank at least one person on this day.  After all, it's my patriotic duty.  Today, instead of helping myself, I am going to help anyone who reads this prank his or her friend, housemate, coworker, or spouse.

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In mid-November I wrote a post featuring nine technology predictions for late 2007 and early 2008. Some of those were quite forward-looking (up to 6 months). Some were not. Below I go over the predictions I made whose time has already come and gone.

1. The ASUS Eee laptop is going to sell like hotcakes over the holiday season and other manufacturers will soon follow suit in creating light, barebones, home-use laptops. Predicted for mid-January.
This prediction, while it wasn’t particularly hard to make, actually came true. As a result, other manufacturers are tripping over themselves to try to get a piece of the sub-notebook market. Just check out a search for “eee” on Gizmodo…
Right on!

2. RIM will release a 3G Blackberry and the Curve will prove to have been a huge success. Predicted for mid-February.
The Pearl is now 3G on Sprint, likely with others to follow soon and the Curve has been a massive hit for RIM.
Right on!

3. The Wii will outsell all other game consoles, but the number of game sales per owner will be significantly lower than on other platforms. Predicted for mid-February.
Yay! Another prediction come true, kind of …
Just on.

4. Google will embrace OpenID and it will finally take off. Predicted for mid-February.
This hasn’t happened But who’s to say it won’t in the future? I think it might in the next 3 months so I’m going to extend this prediction a little longer…
Wrong.

5. The Blu-Ray and HD-DVD camps will start collaborating and the price of Bu-Ray and HD-DVD media will be sub-$20. Predicted for mid-May.
This prediction looked 6 months forward from the date of the original post, but we may as well write it off as HD-DVD is now officially dead, which I inferred would happen earlier in the year (no crystal ball was that necessary for that one after Warner stopped supporting HD-DVD).
Wrong.

So, discounting Google and OpenID and my generous extension of my own prediction deadline by 3 months, 3 out 4, as Meatloaf might say, ain’t bad. More updates in another 3 months…

The Future of Web Apps Conference will be held on the East coast for this first time ever this year, hitting the beaches of sunny Miami February 28th. It’ll be interesting to follow the developments that emerge from this year’s event. Speakers and participants are slated to discuss everything from startups to social networks.

Also on the agenda is a “Launch a web app in 40 minutes” feature, which will be led by a moderated panel of some of the smartest web developers.  You can vote for what kind of application the panel will attempt to assemble through TechCrunch.

Wordpress and Google will be represented among the 14 speakers confirmed thus far. Various workshops will also be available for those in attendance, including a “Making Money From Your App” session.

The Future of Web Apps Conference comes to a close March first.

With the explosion of MySpace and Facebook the last few years, many of the clients/prospects I talk to are looking to integrate some form of social networking into their website programs. I don’t think I’m alone in getting asked about this.

Many of the Presidential candidates this cycle built full blown social networks on their public sites (Clinton, Obama, McCain, etc.). In addition, a variety of Fortune 500 companies have launched niche social networks. Interestingly, the two highest profile corporate social networks I am aware seem to have been shuttered. Wal-mart shut down its socnet aimed at teens a year and a half ago. Nike’s soccer themed-social network, Joga, appears to have also been shut down as the site is now nothing more than a placeholder page. Although to be fair Nike has a network around running that appears to have been more successful.

When clients ask me about integrating social networking into their public web programs, I usually encourage the integration of light social features, like commenting on articles, message boards and simple user profiles, but caution against trying to build a full on social network (friending, groups, user blogs, etc.). The reason I do this is that in most cases these top down social networks end up barely being used. In most cases they just don’t work for a variety of reasons:

• The people that are interested in social networks are getting all of it they have time for on massive sites like Facebook and MySpace.
• Even if someone has time, there is something counterintuitive about participating in a social network around things like Wal-Mart or a brand of shoes or a political party. It just seems off and most of us don’t want to turn over our social graph to these folks.
• The nature of even the most full featured social networks is that most fade into oblivion no matter how full featured and cool they are. I’ve joined countless social network that I’ve abandoned after quickly realizing that they are ghost towns and/or that no one I know (or want to know) uses it.

When I hear folks talk about launching social networks I’m reminded of what people say about opening a restaurant: proceed with caution because nine out of ten fail in the first year.

For nearly all organizations, the best approach is to (1) add some light social features that encourage interaction around your content to your own site and/or (2) participate in established, external social networks. It is a lot cheaper and easier for you to go to where the people are than to try to bring them to you.

These are probably the hottest electronic gift items for the 2007 holidays. We've got a little bit of everything in here. Personally I'm waiting for the 3G version of the iPhone so that's not on my list. So instead I asked for an ASUS EEE and got it early! I'd review it but there's so much written about it already I won't bother. Suffice to say that it's tiny and light and fine for basic computer usage.

What? The item you lust after most is not in our poll? Feel free to complain in the comments area!

[Poll=16]

Last week I wrote a quick list about 5 ways you can give tech-inspired philanthropic gifts this holiday season. One I mentioned was sending eTrees through Mokugift. Normally, you can buy or send someone else an eTree for $1, and Mokugift plants a tree in the real world.

Hans from Mokugift saw my post, and is giving our readers the opportunities to send a free eTree to someone this holiday season. To send someone an eTree and help the environment, please click here.

Are you sending any gifts like eTree this year? Let us know in the comments.

I know it isn't Friday. But since I wasn't around this past Friday, I decided to catch up today (Monday).

This time of year, so many people are searching for the best gifts for their techie family members and friends.  I got to thinking…why not combine the love for gadgets with a philanthropic spirit?  Here are some great technology-inspired gifts that have the added benefit of helping others.

One Laptop Per Child.  Through December 31, 2007, you can participate in OLPC's "give one, get one" program.  For $399, you get one of OLPC's laptops for yourself, and an additional unit gets donated to a needy child in a developing country.  

Oxfam America Unwrapped. On Oxfam America's website, you can purchase items in the name of your friends or family members that people in any of Oxfam's 26 operation countries need. For example, you can donate the purchase price of a camel. Your friend gets a personalized card with a picture of a camel on it, and an impoverished village will receive the camel or other needed items.

Kiva Gift Certificates. We've mentioned Kiva on TBR before. It's a great website that helps individuals "connect with and loan money to individuals and small businesses in the developing world."  Now, you can buy your friends Kiva gift cards. These allow you to donate money to Kiva, while the recipient of the card determines how it is spent and what project on the site will get the loan. (You can find a similar program at GlobalGiving.com)

Send an eTree. Have a friend who's into virtual reality? Send them an eTree at Mokugift.com.  Here, you send someone an "eTree" (sort of like an e-card) for $1. Your friend gets an email with some info about the tree and access to their eIsland, where all their eTrees grow online.  At the same time, Mokugift plants an actual tree in the real world, helping the environment.

And since this post is about giving, I'll give you a bonus link:

NonProfit Shopping Mall. This isn't actually a gift…but it's a place where you can find gifts for others. This site aggregates products from online stores where you already shop, like Amazon.com, iTunes, and Target.  These stores then donate a percentage of the purchase price to a charity of your choosing.

Good luck with your holiday shopping. Maybe this year you can combine your love for technology with helping others. 

We’ve written about the One Laptop Per Child project before on The Bivings Report. Now they have launched the Give One Get One promotion running through November 26^th. The way it works is for a $399 donation one laptop is donated to a child in a developing nation and one is sent to another child of your choice.

So why is this a big deal? It’s the only way that the public (read you – the "child") is able to get one of these laptops. At first I questioned the motivation for wanting one. Isn’t personal ownership of one of these cool, inexpensive and innovative laptops against the spirit of the OLPC project? These are supposed to be for the kids, right? I especially thought this when I saw this post the other day on Engadget.

But I think when all is said and done this is a good thing. Gadget crazy hackers get a new toy to play with and will probably make it 100 times as awesome as it already is, and a child in a developing nation gets a fantastic learning and communication tool. Plus as part of the promotion you get a free year of T-Mobile HotSpot Access worth $359.98 and a tax write off of $200 for the laptop you gave. It’s a win-win-win-win. Now all they have to do is keep up with production.