Five Ways Big Brands Are Using Foursquare

Unlike other more mainstream social networks, the business potential of Foursquare may not be immediately apparent. At present, the location-based network is less about conversations and resource sharing, and more about tying your social activities to physical places.

For brick-and-mortar businesses, a Foursquare strategy makes a lot of sense. But what about brand promotion in general, say in the entertainment or publishing worlds? With Foursquare, it’s not about linking users back to your site or products, but creating a new location-based product that has value for fans and followers. Here’s how five big brands are attempting to connect location to their online social presences.

1. Recommendations with Personality: Bravo

In the television industry, Bravo was one of the first networks to get on board with Foursquare, and 50,000 of its fans have followed so far. The network’s programming is a mix of food, fashion, and reality drama, and the TV personalities and hosts that viewers love are the ones making recommendations on Foursquare. Restaurant, shopping, and hotel suggestions reinforce Bravo’s image as a network of culture experts, and the personalities who leave tips through the brand add that bit of personal flavor or sass that draws viewers to the shows in the first place. Fans don’t follow for Bravo per se; they’re following to see where Top Chefs andMillionaire Matchmakers spend their time in New York and LA.

2. Restaurant Reviews: Zagat

If there was ever a brand made for Foursquare, Zagat is it. The 30+ year-old publication is the go-to guide for restaurant and hotel reviews, and their embrace of numerous social media channels is noteworthy. Zagat uses Foursquare the way many individual users do — by leaving food-related tips about locations. And Zagat is not city-specific. You’ll find foodie tips from Los Angeles, to New York, to Cambridge, MA. Zagat’s Foursquare account is an obvious way to reinforce everything the brand is known for, and perhaps tap into a new demographic of diners who may be reluctant to carry around a paperback guide in addition to their smartphones.

3. Celebrity Sway: MTV

While we may not yet live in a world where celebrities want fans to know their locations in real-time, filtering their favorite places through an over-arching brand is a good start. Fans can keep tabs on the favorite haunts of stars from Jersey Shore and The Hills, driving the social connection to these personalities beyond the TV and into The Real World (pun intended). Not only can users see where the stars have been, but what they did, enjoyed, and recommend. And there’s always the possibility that visiting a bar frequented by a celeb increases your chances of meeting him or her. That aspect is certainly part of MTV’s Foursquare appeal.

4. Urban Exploration: New York Magazine

New York Magazine uses Foursquare to drive home its coverage of city-specific culture. This account is about much more than just food. It targets the social New Yorker with tips on retail stores, bars, and public spaces. The tips not only offer details on pricing and goings-on, but provide links back to the magazine’s website for deeper coverage. In this regard, New York Magazines’ approach to Foursquare is akin to the Twitter strategy of many publishers, with the added value of location.

5. Edutainment: The History Channel

Staff at The History Channel know what their viewers are into — it’s fairly obvious, given the namesake. So while Foursquare doesn’t offer much in terms of driving traffic to a program or website, locations are fostering an interesting kind of brand engagement here.

The account leaves tips at various sites, including interesting historical background on the locations. It’s trivia, but with a real-world and educational context. For instance, did you know that the Wabasha Street Caves in St. Paul, MN are man-made sandstone mines that date back to the 1840s, and were opened as a restaurant and night club in the 1920s?

This is a clever use of indirect marketing. The History Channel doesn’t have to promote its shows or link back to content to remind fans why they enjoy the programming. More than 47,000 followers are already enjoying the historical tips left by the account, since its launch in April.

Conclusion

The trouble with emerging networks like Foursquare is that users and big brands alike are having difficulty sticking with it. In all of the examples above, you can see that brand representatives jumped into the checkin game with vigor early on, but eventually updated the accounts less and less — some have not added tips for months. For now, location services are still an ancillary part of many social media strategies, but they won’t be forever. Many predict that when cultural acceptance, mainstream social integration, and business value finally coincide, location sharing will be as common and natural as updating your Facebook status. When it happens, will your brand be ready?

Source - Mashable

The Internet & Inanimate Objects

The relationship between the possessions we value and the narratives behind them is unmistakable – the snow globe from Niagara Falls, our faded Gap T-Shirt from two summers ago. Current technologies of connection, and enterprises that take advantage of them, surface this idea in new ways — but they also suggest the many different kinds of stories, information and data that objects can, or will, tell us. The research shows that goods that have an attached story sell faster than those without. Can we say, “once upon a time….”

Ask anybody about the most meaningful object he owns, and you’re sure to get a story — this old trunk belonged to Grandpa, we bought that tacky coffee mug on our honeymoon, and so on. The relationship between the possessions we value and the narratives behind them is unmistakable. Current technologies of connection, and enterprises that take advantage of them, surface this idea in new ways — but they also suggest the many different kinds of stories, information and data that objects can, or will, tell us.

A project called Totem, financed by a grant from the Research Councils U.K., concentrates on the narratives of thing-owners. The basic concept is that users can write up (or record) the story of, say, a chess trophy or a silver bracelet and upload it to TalesofThings.com. Slap on a sticker with a newfangled bar code, and anybody with a properly equipped smartphone can scan the object and learn that the trophy was won in a 2007 tournament in Paris and that the bracelet was a gift purchased in Lisbon. In May, Totem researchers worked with an Oxfam thrift store in Manchester, recording stories by stuff-donors, for a spinoff project called RememberMe. Shoppers could hear short back stories for about 60 pieces of secondhand merchandise. The used goods with stories were swiftly snapped up, says Chris Speed, who teaches at the Edinburgh College of Art and is the principal researcher at Totem: “You pick up these banal objects, and if it has a story, as soon as you hear it, it becomes something far richer.”

A second outfit, called Itizen, based in Minneapolis, also uses a tell-and-tag approach. Dori Graff, whose background is in marketing, and her co-founders became interested in how brands were using new forms of bar codes and the like in various creative ways and also noticed that, in their personal lives, they were doing more sharing and swapping of clothes and other items. So why not match that up with the tracking technology? “Our big superlofty goal would be to influence a shift in how people view their possessions,” Graff says, because a thing’s story makes it more valuable and less disposable.

Most Itizen stories are still, like Totem’s tales, more like anecdotes than real narratives. But some Itizen users have been employing the service to tell stories of object creation — a clothing designer, a bike messenger-bag maker and others are attaching to things the story of how they were made or by whom. The ArtCrank Poster Show in Portland, Ore., next month, for instance, will have Itizen tags on the various bicycle-themed artworks sold there. The next narrative twist would be, more or less, a customer buying the thing.

A third entrant in the object-story field, StickyBits, distributed 300,000 of its custom tags at a technology conference earlier this year, assuming that people would put them on particularly meaningful or interesting possessions. But its app can also be used to link content to an existing bar code. “People were scanning Coke cans and jars of peanut butter or A.1. steak sauce,” says Seth Goldstein, a StickyBits founder. Goldstein theorizes that the motive was the same “microboredom” that inclines users of mobile check-in apps to announce that they’ve arrived at Chili’s — except that users could broadcast not just where they were but also what objects were around them. Some do use StickyBits to communicate something specific to people they know, but many essentially use it as a media platform. Not surprisingly, StickyBits has begun to work with the likes of PepsiCo Inc. and Campbell’s to devise promotional campaigns that take place via bar code.

Under that scenario, things are being linked to a story not so much in the form of narrative as of cumulative data. The continuum moves even further in the direction of raw information when you consider what tech experts call the “Internet of things” — more and more stuff produced with sensors and tags and emitting readable data. ReadWriteWeb pointed out that the number of objects (digital picture frames, GPS devices) added to the networks of AT&T and Verizon in the previous quarter was greater than the number of new human subscribers. Imagine, the site suggested, future bulletins on your Facebook feed like “Your toaster is using more electricity than it should be.” We appear to be inching toward a concept advanced in 2004 by the writer Bruce Sterling, who hypothesized objects he called “spimes” — embedded with technologies that carry, collect and communicate data — becoming “the protagonist of a documented process.”

As more objects have more to say, the question becomes what we want to hear, and from what. Which brings me back to this old trunk I have that belonged to my grandfather. He died before I could know him, so there is much about the thing I will never learn. Still, I have carted it around the country for more than 20 years and consider it one of my most (personally) valuable possessions. That’s not despite its muteness, but because of it. Sometimes the best narratives about objects are the ones we can only imagine.

Source - NYT

Cheeks Not Geeks

What images come to mind when you picture a blogger or internet junkie? Probably not thoughts of braces and giggling girls. Surprisingly, today's primary creators of web content aren't your stereotypical geek but are in fact teenage girls. OMG! You gotta check it out!!

The prototypical computer whiz of popular imagination — pasty, geeky, male — has failed to live up to his reputation.

Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and MySpace pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet Sodevious.net, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.

Explanations for the gender imbalance are nearly as wide-ranging as cybergirls themselves. The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts — entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.

“I was the first teenage podcaster to receive a major sponsorship,” said Martina Butler, 17, of San Francisco, who for three years has been recording an indie music show, Emo Girl Talk, from her basement. Her first corporate sponsorship, from Nature’s Cure, an acne medication, was reported in 2005 in Brandweek, the marketing trade magazine.

Since then, more than half a dozen companies, including Go Daddy, the Internet domain and hosting provider, have paid to be mentioned in her podcasts, which are posted every Sunday on Emogirltalk.com.

“It’s really only getting bigger for me,” said Martina, an aspiring television and radio host who was tickled to learn about the Pew study.

“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys ... ” Her voice trailed off to laughter.

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years — a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens.”

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models. It is possible that the girls who produce glitters today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

“We can hope that this translates, but so far the gap has remained,” said Jane Margolis, an author of “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (MIT Press, 2002). While pleased that girls are mastering programs like Paint Shop Pro, Ms. Margolis emphasized the profound distinction between using existing software and a desire to invent new technology.

Teasing out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective yen to blog or sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations.

“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

“This would be called the feminization of the Internet,” she said.

Boys, she added, are generally taught “to engage in ways that aren’t confessional, that aren’t emotional.”

Research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the result of focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality.

“With young women it’s much more about expressing yourself to others in the way that wearing certain clothes to school does,” said John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center. “It ties into identity expression in the real world.”

That desire is never so evident as when girls criticize online copycats who essentially steal their Web page backgrounds and graphics by hotlinking (linking to someone else’s image so it appears on one’s own Web page). Aside from depleting bandwidth, it is the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl, Professor Palfrey said.

No wonder that girls post aggressive warnings on their sites such as “Do not jock, copy, steal, or redistribute any of my stuff!” or, more to the point: “hotlink and die.”

While creating content enables girls to experiment with how they want to present themselves to the world, they are obviously interested in maintaining and forging relationships.

When Lauren Renner, 16, was in fifth grade, she and a friend, Sarada Cleary, now 14, both of Oceanside, Calif., began writing about their lives on Agirlsworld.com, an interactive e-zine with articles written for and by girls.

“Girls from everywhere would read it and would ask questions about what they should do with a problem,” Lauren said. “I think girls like to help with other people’s problems or questions, kind of, like, motherly, to everybody.”

Today Lauren and Sarada are among more than 1,000 girls who regularly submit content to Agirlsworld. They make a few extra dollars writing online articles and dreaming up holiday-related activities, like Mother’s Day breakfast recipes, which are posted on the site.

“At school there’s just a certain type of people,” Sarada said. “They’re just local. Online you get to experience their culture through them.”

THE one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members of a subculture — skateboarders, snowboarders — to demonstrate their athleticism, he said.

Zach Saltzman, 17, of Memphis, said content creation among his circle of male friends includes having a Facebook profile and posting videos of lacrosse games and original short films on YouTube.

“I actually really never thought about doing my own Web site,” said Zach after returning from an SAT class.

He hasn’t posted a video himself and doesn’t have a blog because, as he put it, “it really never interested me and I don’t have time to keep up with it.”

Zach does, however, have a Facebook profile where he uploads digital photographs.

“It’s really the only way I keep my pictures organized because I don’t make photo albums and stuff like that,” he said.

Asked whether the findings of the Pew study seemed accurate to him, he said: “That’s what I see happening. The girls are much more into putting something up and getting responses.”

Source - New York Times

Online Video - A Snapshot

Online video is continuing to steal eyeball share from television. Such was the case in last month's article about lunch being the new primetime. This link will provide you with data regarding online video behaviour.

The term “convergence” may sound retro, a notion tossed around in the 1990s that never really came to pass. But don’t be fooled.

Today, the bulk of video consumed online is snackable video—bite-sized entertainment—rather than a complete meal of full TV episodes or full-length movies.

The most popular online video content, watched by 40% or more of the US online video audience, consists of short pieces of five minutes or less: news clips, jokes, movie trailers, music videos, clips from TV shows and entertainment news.

”As technology problems are solved, however, making the computer-television connection more viable and pleasurable for the average consumer,” says David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Online Video Content: The New TV Audience, “online video content will expand in both length and breadth, and professionally-produced material will account for a large part of the menu.”

It hasn’t happened yet, but full-blown convergence between television and the Internet is on the way.

”The trend toward greater video convergence is being driven by factors such as broadband, digital TV and, ironically, the fragmentation of the audience,” says Mr. Hallerman. “Fragmentation is forcing traditional television players, the networks and studios, to reach out where the audience lives.”

And, increasingly, the audience’s entertainment life is found on the Internet.

A survey of viewers by TNS uncovered a number of reasons for watching less television.

According to the most recent “The State of the Media Democracy” report, from Deloitte, most US consumers would like to be able to easily connect their home TVs to the Internet to view video, with younger users the most keen to connect.

”Unfortunately, ‘easily’ is not readily achieved at this point,” says Mr. Hallerman.

Among the households watching video on their computers, the vast number still watch on the Web, using their browsers, while less than 10% use some kind of TV connection, according to the “Digital Content Unleashed” report from ABI Research.

”People lean toward the Internet over TV when it comes to elements such as convenience, control and the ability to easily find enjoyable content,” says Mr. Hallerman. “TV video content wins out for relaxation, sharing the experience with friends and family and less annoying advertising than online.”

The technical and viewer preference obstacles to convergence are many, and they won’t be overcome easily or quickly.

”Surveys have found that already roughly half of all US consumers who watch video watch at least some of it online,” says Mr. Hallerman. “That percentage isn’t going down, and the desire for convergence isn’t going away.”

See how the entertainment picture is expected to change in the future—and what those changes will mean for producers, distributors and advertisers. Download the new eMarketer report, Online Video Content: The New TV Audience, today.

Source - eMarketer

What Is This Twitter You Speak Of?

You've heard of MySpace, you're probably on Facebook but you haven't got the time to keep up with all of the social networking tools. Another tool which has grown in popularity over the last year is called Twitter. Some consider it a blessing; others don't see what all the fuss is about. Whether you find it useful or not, it's understanding the environment that counts.

In case you can't quite figure out how to explain the use of Twitter, the CommonCraft folks have come up with a two minute explanation. Would love to see one of these from a corporate and/or marketing point of view ;)

Source - Servant of Chaos

How To Do Viral

Gorrillas playing drums, subservient chickens, exploding Mentos - what the hell is going on with viral marketing and what leads to their success? As it turns out, it has something to do with Black Swan. Confused? The following article will clarify characteristics common to successful viral.

All virals are Black Swan. In fact, using past references and case studies might make you less likely to come up with the next big viral phenomenon.

I'm talking here, of course, about the uber-virals. The ones that have been seen by millions of people, that everyone talked about, that have changed pop culture and have redefined the way we do advertising.

I'm not restricting my thoughts to online virals as now, any piece of communication can become viral - the internet is just the facilitator.

I'm also not just talking about ‘advertising’ virals, but phenomenons that have ended up being virals (Chocolate Rain, Mentos and Diet Coke, Blairwitch…)

There are only very few real virals every year. The subservient chicken, Kylie’s Agent Provocateur video, John West Salmon, the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment are a few examples.

We’ve all analysed their success and come up with pretty solid arguments as to why they were so successful. Yet no one seems to have found the right formula to reproduce this kind of phenomenon.

But let’s go back to the Black Swan theory from Taleb’s new book:

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

And here’s his argument summarised (whole article on Moneyweek here):

Taleb argues that humans are ‘hard wired’ to see the world through the lens of the ‘Platonic fallacy.’ We look for structure where there is none and comprehension where none is possible. Such people are condemed to live in the realm of ‘Mediocristan’. There, their understanding will be conditioned by “Platonified economists with their phoney bell-curve-based equations”. More, they will constantly fool themselves with the “narrative fallacy” – the human drive to impose a post hoc explanation on even the most shocking events.

Let’s come back to the last point. The “narrative fallacy”. Which is, how humans beings like to find patterns where none exist, trying to make sense of the unexpectable.

If you were to ask 10 advertising gurus why the subservient chicken was so successful, you’d probably get 10 different points of view. The surprise, the innovative use of the technology, the awkwardness, the comic factor… All making for a pretty sound explanation of why this one piece of work, out of hundreds of thousands, achieved such a grand scale success.

Yet, for all these explanations, no one seems to be able to use this knowledge to recreate similar effects.

Being able to understand and analyse great virals is in no way a factor in predicting whether a piece of communication will go viral, let alone trying to manufacture another one.

I will go further than that. I actually think it’s counter-intuitive. As soon as you have some big principles as to why communication have turned out to be great virals, you are even less likely to come up with the next one.

As I said, all the virals listed above had one point in common. Their success was totally unexpected. You could not predict that, overnight, kids around the world would start popping Mentos into Diet Coke bottles following an online video. It’s easy to post-rationalise why they did. But it in no way guarantees that you will be able to come back with the next one (especially if you are one of the two brands involved).

Some agencies or really talented people have a better feel for what will is likely to become viral. But they are just doing better work than the rest. No one has found a formula to consistently turn communication into virals. Crispin Porter and Bogusky have never been able to reproduce another viral of the scale of the Subservient Chicken. The Viral Factory has not done something as successful as the Trojan Olympics. (And I’m happy to be proved wrong), Fallon will find it hard to come up with something as hugely popular as the bouncing balls or the drumming gorilla.

There is a big difference between great work, getting numbers and people talking, and highly successful virals. Yes, having some principles help us get to better work, but not to amazing work. It is only 0.01% of communication that has a major impact on our industry and on our audience’s lives.

So when trying to turn a communication into the next big viral, don’t just look at what has been successful in the past: it will give no indicators of what will be in the future and will make you less likely to achieve it. You need to be brave and look into other areas, new directions, outside of advertising. Don’t try to predict success by comparing it with the 10 most successful virals, it just won’t work.

By looking at past examples, you are going to make contrived work that is never going to be any better than the originals you were looking at. You’ve put yourself into the wrong frame of mind. Therefore it won’t be surprising. Or unexpected. This behaviour could not have led to the drumming gorilla or balls, because they broke every single rule of what people thought a good viral was made of.

Which explains why it’s so easy to post-rationalise why something went viral (by retrospectively applying a pattern to it) yet so completely impossible to recreate one.

Source - Scamp Blog

Coolest Web Applications of 2007

The start of a new year is a great excuse for a vest of the best list. The following link will take you to then web applications voted the best of 2007 by Lifehacker - a site about computer tech tricks and tips. For newbies, applications (or widgets) are bits of software that provide additional online capabilities. Are there ways you could make your online brand experience more user-friendly in 2008?

When it comes to new technology, 2007's destined to be remembered as "The Year of the iPhone"—but a whole lot more went on in the past 12 months besides Apple's much-hyped gadget launch. From significant upgrades to apps we already know and love, to major operating system releases, to a few new tools that help us get things done (or at least point toward the future), '07 was a good year in software and productivity. Over the last 12 months we've literally reviewed thousands of new releases, features, and upgrades here at Lifehacker. Today we've boiled them all down to a bird's eye view: our top 10 best new and improved desktop and web applications of 2007. Get the list after the jump and vote on your pick of the year.

10. Zoho Suite (Online office suite, most improved)

Google Docs is good, but another online office suite has been rolling out upgrade after upgrade this year, slowly, steadily, and consistently trouncing GDocs in the features department. Zoho Suite makes collaborating and editing documents, spreadsheets, presentations (and way more) better and easier straight from your browser. Most of you said you hadn't tried Zoho because you already had a Google Account, but if collaborating and editing office documents from your browser is in your future in '08, bite the bullet for a Zoho account and you won't be sorry. Here's more on how Zoho stacks up against Google Docs.

9. Joost (Internet television streamer, new)

When you don't want to install a TV capture card on your 'puter but you still want your shows streamed fresh off the internet at high quality on your schedule, you want Joost. Lifehacker readers were clamoring for a coveted Joost beta invite earlier this year (622 comments asking for one!) but now the download's available to the public. Check out Adam's screenshot tour and full review of Joost from back in April.

8. Mint (Online money manager, new)

Even in 2007, organizing your finances with the usual suspects (like Quicken and Microsoft Money) is a hair-pulling, teeth-clenching, mind-melting crash course in accounting that invariably leaves you with a 42 cent balance inconsistency after hours of data entry. Newly launched webapp Mint aims to change all that. Instead of spending your money on an expensive, complicated desktop app to manage your money (ironic, no?), Mint is free and easy to use. Log in, enter your bank's details and Mint automatically downloads your transactions, generates charts and graphs, automatically alerts you to events like low balances or high charges, and offers ways for you to save money based on your spending. If organizing your dollars and cents is on the agenda in '08 but you're worried about privacy and features, do check out our full-on, screenshot-laden Mint review.

7. VMWare Fusion (Mac virtualization, new)

Last year 'round this time we were gaga for Parallels Desktop, virtualization software that put Windows on the Mac (without having to reboot with Boot Camp.) This year after a few too many Parallels-induced spinning beach balls of death, we're moving over to VMWare's Fusion product. The virtualization company's answer to Parallels is more stable, can import Parallels disk images, and works with crazy configurations like a Vista Boot Camp partition. Lifehacker readers are still on the fence in the tight Mac virtualization race between Parallels and Fusion; they're neck and neck in our recent faceoff.

6. Microsoft Office 2007 (Desktop office suite, most improved)

It was a bumpy launch for Microsoft Office 2007, a major upgrade to the dominant desktop office suite that replaced familiar menus with a totally new "ribbon" interface. At first glance, most people hated it, because change is bad, especially when it makes you hunt for buttons you used to get to without looking. But when venerable WSJ reviewer Walt Mossberg gave it his thumbs-up, we gave it a chance, and the changes grew on us. If you're still using Office 2003 and want to see what all the fuss is about, check out our screenshot tour of Word and Excel 2007. We also love the fabulous keyboard interface to the new Office. (Finally, be sure to grab Office '07's recently released Service Pack 1.)

Honorable Mention: Apple also released iWork '08 this year, innovating in spreadsheets with Numbers.

5. Gmail (Web-based email, most improved)

Just when we accused Gmail of stagnating in the features department, the Gmail team answered with a steady barrage of updates that secured Gmail's place in our hearts as our favorite web-based mail (this year, anyway.) Now with IMAP access, AIM support, colored labels, improved contacts and keyboard shortcuts, speedier performance, and a Greasemonkey-friendly interface, Gmail's earned its most improved place on this list. For a peek behind the scenes, see our exclusive interview with Googler Keith Coleman, Gmail's Product Manager.

Honorable Mention: The other Google product that improved at a steady clip this year was Google Maps, which added features like Street View, Mapplets, My Maps, traffic info, and drag and drop route changes.

4. Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" (Operating system, most improved)

Vistwho? There's no better time than now to switch to a free operating system with the latest release of "Linux for humans," Ubuntu 7.10 (code-named "Gutsy Gibbon"). The best Ubuntu yet for average users, Gutsy includes built-in WPA detection, the ability to read/write Windows drives (hello dual boot), quick multimedia setup and built-in Compiz Fusion for customizing your desktop to the hilt. Check out Kevin's detailed screenshot tour of Gutsy, and our exclusive interview with Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth.

3. GrandCentral (Virtual telephone line PBX, most improved)

If you've got a home phone, office phone, personal cell phone, and work cell phone, keeping track of who calls where and what number to give out is a pain. With GrandCentral, you can ring all your phones with a call to a single GC-issued number, filter, screen, forward to voicemail, and otherwise customize how you handle incoming calls on a per-contact basis, too. Get all your voicemail online at GrandCentral and email/SMS alerts to new messages as well. Here's how to consolidate your phones with GrandCentral. (Ok, so GrandCentral didn't launch this year—in fact, we first wrote it up late last year—but switching over to a GC number in '07 confirmed our love for the app.)

Honorable Mention: Also telephony-related, reminder and messaging system Jott ("use the web with your voice") launched this year, with lots of interfaces to various webapps you already know and love (like Remember the Milk, I Want Sandy, Google Calendar, Twitter, Blogger) and subsequent cheers.

2. Google Gears (Firefox extension for offline web access, new)

"But what about when I'm on an airplane?" is the resounding question when you consider moving your email, documents, and other critical work onto a hosted webapp. When you're offline, it's not available—unless it's Gears-enabled. Google's beta extension syncs your online data to your local desktop so you can modify it even when you're offline. Then, when you connect to the 'net again, your offline changes sync up to the cloud. Gears hasn't made as big a splash this year as some of the other items on this list, and it's still pretty half-baked, but it is a glimpse at the future of working in your web browser (whether it's Gears or offline access built into an upcoming Firefox release). Not a whole lot of webapps are Gears enabled, but currently the roster does include Google Reader, Remember the Milk, and Zoho Writer.

Honorable Mention: Also in the "didn't change the world but still really damn cool" category, Yahoo Pipes is like a virtual lego set for geeks who want to mash, filter, and otherwise manipulate web feeds. Here's how to create a personal, master feed with Yahoo Pipes.

1. Mac OS X Leopard (Operating system, most improved)

We were nervous when Apple delayed the release of Mac OS 10.5 because of the iPhone this year. But when it finally did drop in October, Leopard didn't disappoint. Over 300 new features include lots of polish and functionality you knew you wanted (and sometimes didn't). We're fans especially of Time Machine, the improved Finder, Stacks, Spaces, Quick Look, and Boot Camp. If you haven't already, when you do upgrade to Leopard, have a helping of 20 apps to rebuild your Mac.

Honorable Mention: We do software 'round these parts, not gadgets, but—ok fine, you can't have a 2007 best-of technology list without mentioning the iPhone. So here it is: iPhone! iPhone! iPhone! Oh yeah, and iPhone book. There, we said it.

Source: LifeHacker

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Source: http://www.alteregobook.com/