Yahoo had spent most of 2008. trying to fend off Microsoft’s acquisition offer, and then it spent most of 2009. trying to prove to shareholders it can still be profitable. The company cut 2,000 jobs since September 2008; Carl Icahn left the board of directorsin October 2009., and despite a search partnership with Microsoftand their new strategy that focuses on the user, Yahoo’s revenue has declined in 2009. At the very end of this tough year, Yahoo will take another step that should save them a couple of bucks: it’ll close its officesduring the holidays, leaving only the absolutely necessary staff on duty – something they’ve never done before. With the economy finally showing shy signs of recovery, 2010. promises to be a better year than 2009. Maybe Yahoo, too, will manage to restore its former glory in the years to come. Tags: Yahoo
This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.Name: GiddiQuick Pitch: Product rating engine built on data collected from eCommerce and media sources designed to help consumers make better purchasing decisions. Genius Idea: There are lots of product comparison sites out there, but most focus largely or exclusively on electronics. Giddi is a product rating engine for lots of different categories — including housewares and apparel accessories — that sorts and ranks items by price, overall rating, popularity and age.Giddi grabs product information from tons of different ecommerce sites and sorts them on different factors like, price, brand, and user reviews. You can also check prices against a number of different shopping sites — although the price comparison tool is not exhaustive and you might still want to do a separate search using Bing or another price comparison tool for some items.We like that Giddi isn’t strictly focused on electronics. That’s what almost every product comparison site revolves around which means the results are largely the same. Instead, by having different categories including home appliances and health and beauty, Giddi has the potential to stand out.We like that Giddi is easy to navigate and that sorting for more specific options is easy and manageable, but we do wish that there were a way to prevent older or discontinued items from being indexed. For instance, when browsing through Apple products, we saw a lot of discontinued iPod nano units (and even an iPod mini — talk about your blast from the past) listed on the first page of results. It would be much more helpful if discontinued items were prevented from at least appearing on the front page (or if a discontinued notation could be added to the product listing).Indexing over 600,000 products and 1.6 million reviews, Giddi has a fairly solid product database that pairs the semantic web with comparative shopping.How do you get product recommendations online?Spark of Genius Series Sponsored by Microsoft BizSparkBizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platformfor their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest– use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”Reviews: Bing, PHPTags: giddi, online shopping, product comparison
We thought we’d try something a little bit different for this week’s edition of our Web Faceoffseries. Last week we saw Digg beat out Reddit and StumbleUponfor social news champion, and this week we’re throwing out a timely but more provincial battle: Twitter’s new official retweet featureversus the “old school” method of text-based “RT-ing.”Since it was first announced back in August, reactions were mixedover the plan to alter how retweets were officially treated by Twitter.com as well as clients. Now that the feature is live to everyone, we wanted to get a sense of where the Mashable audience stands on the New versus the Old method of re-broadcasting another user’s tweet.Check out the poll below and make sure to cast your vote by noon PST this Friday, December 25. Do you prefer the Old Way or the New? Even if you actually use both styles depending on the situation, we’d like to know which you’d take with you to that proverbial desert island. As always, be sure to let us know in the comments why your vote went down the way it did. We’ll be interested to see the final results later this week; be sure to check back for the recap.Who would win in a fight: New or old style Twitter retweets?(poll)Web Faceoff: Overall ResultsWeek 1:- Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome- WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)Week 2:- Tumblr vs. Posterous- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)Week 3:- Pandora vs. Last.fm- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)Week 4:- Twitter vs. Facebook- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)Week 5:- WordPress vs. Typepad- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)Week 6:- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)Week 7:- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)Week 8:- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)Week 9:- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)Week 10:- AT&T vs. Verizon- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)Week 11:- Google vs. Bing- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)Week 12:- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)Week 13:- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)Reviews: Bing, Chrome, Digg, Facebook, Firefox, Google, Google Docs, Mashable, Pandora, Poll, Posterous, Seesmic Desktop, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, TweetDeck, Twitter, TypePad, WordPressTags: poll, retweets, twitter, web faceoff
If anything dominated the social media world last week, it was URL shorteners. Both Facebook and Google launchedURL shorteners, Fb.meand Goo.glrespectively.Now Google subsidiary YouTubehas joined the URL shortening bandwagon. It has just announcedyoutu.be, the official short link of the world’s largest video site.The shortener is exclusive to YouTube links (no surprise). Its primary function is to share YouTube videos and channels with friends, mostly through YouTube’s AutoShare feature, which syndicates your activity on YouTube to Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere. and just like Fb.me, you can manually add the video code to the end of youtu.be and get the appropriate video. Youtu.be/c6K9P58Yf7E, for example, leads to the video I recorded of how the SF Zoo uses Twitter.This is an expected but smart move on the company’s part. I know that my AutoShared YouTube links have sometimes been long and ugly beasts. This should fix that problem and open AutoShare to even more users.Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, YouTubeTags: Facebook Youtu.be, Fb.me, Goo.gl, Google, url shortener, video, youtube
Last month when popular Twitter client Seesmic launched an Android version, one of the few omissions we noted was support for Twitter search and trending topics. In a new 1.1 version update for Android users, Seesmic now includes Twitter search and trending capabilities as well as support for TwitterLists.In the search department, you can view or delete your saved searches as well as create and save new ones, plus perform regular text searches for tweets or users and see what search terms are trending right now. With List support, you can view and manage your Twitter Lists from within Seesmic mobile, view other users’ Lists and follow or unfollow Lists from within the app.A couple of other nice features included in the update are contextual menu support for sharing items via Seesmic and font size customization. Now when you make use of the Share function from within the web browser, if Seesmic is installed, it will appear as one of the available options for sharing a link.To get the latest update, just head over to the Android App Market to download or update an existing application. What do you think of the new updates for Seesmic Android? If you’re an Android user, do you use it as your Twitter client of choice on your phone? Let us know in the comments.Reviews: Android, Seesmic, TwitterTags: android, Mobile 2.0, Search, seesmic, twitter, Twitter Lists
By hook or by crook, the publishing industry is aiming to tap into the burgeoning mobile market any way that it can. This morning, Random House Publishing Group announced that it has collaborated with Mobile Roadie to launch a trio of free iPhone apps that will serve to hook up fans with three of their fave RH authors: Steve Barry[iTunes Link], Sophie Kinsella[iTunes Link] and Karen Marie Moning[iTunes Link].According to Random House representatives, the apps will allow authors to promote and sell their books, notify fans about tours and store appearances and “engage fans on a personal level” — meaning readers will have access to book previews, bonus content, interactions with other book lovers, audiobook clips, videos and book trailers. Coming on the heels of magazine apps (like Esquire’s) and the great eReader battle of 2009, the move by Random House to engage its readers on a digital plane once more points to the print industry’s desire to remain relevant in a world that is becoming more and more pixelated. It also asks something of authors that was previously not part of the job description: It asks them to become technologically savvy and to take promotion into their own hands. In fact, Mobile Roadie offers its own DIY app maker, which seems pretty easy to use (I didn’t get too far in the process, seeing as how there was a fee). And in an industry where a lot of book promotion is about the hustle, we could easily see authors benefiting from such technology — even writers who may not be as Internet-savvy as others.So what do you think, readers? Do author iPhone apps spell the end of the printed page? Or are they just another method of spreading the word?Tags: gadgets, iphone, random house
From the same folks at Whirled Interactivewho brought us the excellently funny “Pulp Wave Fiction”comes another intelligent use of GoogleWave as a video production medium — this time it’s used to encapsulate the year in news and social media. In “Waving Goodbye to 2009,” embedded after the break, we see a Google Wave rendition of the year’s most memorable moments. From the Obama inaugurationto the Iran elections, from Susan Boyleto Kanye West, the video highlights the best — and worst — moments of 2009.Check it out below and let us know what you think. Were any huge stories omitted you would have liked to see included (were we blind or did we miss an appearance from Balloon Boy, e.g.)? You can also check out some other novel use cases for Google Wave, too.Reviews: Google WaveTags: 2009, best of 2009, Google, Google Wave, video, youtube
Macala Wright Lee is the CEO of FashionablyMarketing.Mea digital marketing and merchandising firm that specializes in fashion, luxury and beauty brands in Southern California. You can follower her on Twitter at @FashMarketing. It’s safe to say that the fashion industry has adopted social media as a marketing platform to reach their customers online and reignite brand passion and customer loyalty.While fashion brands and retailers are still grappling with social media in terms ofcontrolling brand perceptionand establishing metricsto measure its marketing value, they have used Twitter, Facebook, YouTubeand other social communities to develop digital marketing strategies to drive online sales and retail store traffic. Here’s how they’re doing it.1. Getting Cozy in CommunitiesUntil recently, the fashion industry has been fashionably late to the social media party, refusing to adopt it at all, or merely adopting one-way communication via social networks and RSS feeds for sales and promotions.Fashion has traditionally been aspirational. From a brand’s perspective, fashion is an experience with very specific feelings and emotions they hope to create for the wearer. The thought of going social scares many brands because they’re not sure how to translate these feelings into online traction. Along came communities — social networks, forums, wikis and blogs telling brands that they need to participate and create dialogues with people online. The majority of the industry thought this would tarnish brand image, but American Apparel, TopShop and emerging independent designers were early adopters of social marketing. Once they started reporting positive results, other brands followed. Now almost every brand or retailer, from Sears and JCPenney, to Oscar De La Renta and Louis Vuitton, have created a presence in several social communities, the most notable being Facebook. It’s been a tough learning curve, but we’re beginning to see less one-way discount promotions, and more genuine interaction between brand and client. Facebook and Twitter are now among the most valuable tools for brands to monitor consumer sentiment and provide real-time customer service in the fashion industry.2. Creating Niche CommunitiesNow that fashion brands have learned to navigate social media, many are experimenting with development of their own social networks or even invitation-only communities. Brands have also started to partner with fashion-oriented sites like Polyvorefor sponsoring branded contestswithin the web site’s community. These contests create opportunities to develop brand affinity and establish relationships with the next, younger generation of shoppers. Luxury brands Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel and Burberry have launched their own social networks or added social components to their existing web sites. While Facebook and Twitter are great for mass marketing, more exclusive social destinations allow brands to extend their story and promise to their customers, maximizing the user’s online brand experience. Thus far, niche communities such as Weardrobe(recently purchased by Like.com), Modepass, and Lookbook.Nuhave yielded impressive ROI, as their audiences are more likely to become loyal customers. 3. Embracing Mobile AppsWhen it comes to developing apps, fashion brands and web sites have taken “there’s an app for that!” to heart.Chanel shows its runway collections via iPhone app, and the Gilt Groupe app allows users to shop sample sales and receive alerts as to when sales are starting.StyleCaster’sapp lets users access style tips, individually customize news feeds and fashion trends, and houses a large online retail catalog of brand-name clothing.JustLuxeis a digital global concierge company whose extremely interactive app comes with over 1,000 member benefits. Utilizing GPS, the app will recommend participating restaurants and hotels in the user’s area. It’s the first style-oriented app that leverages location-based mobile marketing. Luxury product and service companies should be watching this. Most brands are focused on the iPhone. We haven’t seen a lot of development for BlackBerry or Android devices. There are currently only 41 fashion-related appsavailable for BlackBerry users, and most of them simply deliver articles and blog posts via RSS. 4. The Rise of Style BloggersIn 2009, bloggers had an enormous impact on fashion, affecting everything from print publishing to how brands market themselves online. There are thousands of style-related blogs on the web these days, and those dedicated to their craft have earned industry recognition. Gala Darling, Bryan Boy, 13-year-old Tavi, Scott Schuman of the Satorialistand Garance Dorehave earned recognition from Dolce & Gabanna, Burberry, Alexander McQueen and leading publications such as Vogue. They’ve participated in fashion design collection collaborations and received front-row, international Fashion Week seats next to some of the most notable figures in the couture world.A recent Financial Times articlenotes that being a style blogger is a perfectly respectable career for someone in the fashion industry. The social web has removed the gatekeepers of an industry that was notoriously hard to penetrate and build a name in. These sites have succeeded because of the quality of their content. While each is unique, they’ve built a cult following around their areas of expertise and passion.5. The Impact of User-Generated ContentUser-generated content is key to social media and fashion. From blogs to Facebook photo contributions to product reviews –- user-generated content is where it’s at.Crosby Noricks, founder of a top fashion PR blog, has noticed more brands realizing the collective power of their customers’ networks by encouraging fan contributions. She points to G-Star, the Dutch clothing company who just launched a social media campaign to find “reporters” to attend their fashion show at upcoming New York Fashion Week, as well as Coach’s Holiday Blog-A-Dayprogram, which enlisted 30 bloggers and vloggers to ensure holiday sales were in the bag. One of the most notable and consistent campaigns built around user-generated content and social engagement has been from the brand Charlotte Russe, which Noricks manages in her capacity as Senior Social Media Strategist of San Diego-based Red Door Interactive. The brand’s weekly trivia contest on Twitter drives followers to the web site or YouTube channel with the hope of snagging some excellent prizes (the brand recently gave away a jacket worn on Gossip Girl).The “CR Fan of The Week” contest also hinges on user content by giving fans a “style assignment” and asking them to post a photo to the brand’s Facebook wall.Currently, Charlotte Russe is running “Be The Next Charlotte Russe Design Star,” a t-shirt design contest where the winner will have his or her shirt produced and sold online. A fashion-filled trip to NYC is also included, naturally.Another great example of user-generated content used in conjunction with a niche network is Burberry’s Art of the Trenchsite. Users are encouraged to upload images of themselves wearing Burberry’s signature item – their trench coat. Burberry is highlighting consumer-created content from preferred customer segments.What’s Next?Moving into 2010, brands and retailers will be delving deeper into social media to reach online audiences. We’ve already seen the rise of streaming and mobile broadcastsof runway shows, and expect to see more brands utilizing that medium for major events.Digital and e-commerce launches of new products have also been a popular way for brands to keep costs low in a tough economy for luxury products.And expect to see a variety of mobile platforms take off as brands, magazines, and web sites develop apps with the goal of extending their online presence and widening distribution channels. Location-based networks like Gowalla and Foursquare have massive potential for promotions, and will likely be a focus for mobile fashion marketers.What social media trends have you spotted in the fashion world, and what sort of brand engagement do you hope to see in 2010? Share your thoughts in the comments below.Image courtesy of iStockphoto, webphotographeerReviews: Android, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, STAR, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphotoTags: fashion, List, Lists, social media, social media marketing
There’s no doubt that for many of us, Facebook consumes a goodly proportion of our time; on average, we spend 5 percent of our time online. For some teenagers, time spent on the 350 million-strong social network has gone beyond time spent and into time sunk. It’s prompted a spate of young users to devise ways of cutting down, taking breaks or simply deactivating their accounts altogether, according to The New York Times. Some are even banding together to provide social support for curtailing the Facebookobsession. Two teens at San Francisco University High School, Hally Lamberson and Monica Reed, made a pact to only log in on the first Saturday of every month. Ann Arbor, Michigan, sophomore Neeka Salmasi enlisted her sister to change her Facebook password for her every Sunday evening and not give the new credentials back to her until the following Friday.Other strategies include giving up Facebook for Lent, “punishing” Facebook usage breaches with embarrassing Wall messages, deactivating an account temporarily or going cold turkey for the entire senior year after Facebook proved too distracting during college applications. Psychology professionals and school administrators alike acknowledge that usage of the social network can all too easily reach problematic levels of distraction. Dr. Kimberly Young, director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, said she’s worked with dozens of teens trying to break the habit: “It’s like any other addiction… it’s hard to wean yourself.”Author and teacher Rachel Simmons credits the new Facebook Live Feedformat with exacerbating an already addictive online medium: “You’re getting a feed of everything everyone is doing and saying. You’re literally watching the social landscape on the screen, and if you’re obsessed with your position in that landscape, it’s very hard to look away.”Do you or someone you know have a preferred strategy for limiting the time you spend on Facebook? Do the parents out there have any guidelines they use to help teens maintain a healthy relationship with their online networks? [via eSchoolNews]Reviews: FacebookTags: addiction, facebook, internet, Internet addiction, social networking, teens
Since running the Summer of Social Good, I’ve been approached numerous times by individuals looking for jobs in the non-profit space. In the spirit of the holidays, Mashable is giving away free 30 day job postings on our Mashable Job Boardto any non-profit looking to hire. All you need to do is fill out the application formand I’ll get back to you shortly. More non-profit and social media for social good resources from Mashable:If you’re looking for additional resources to build your non-profit’s social media strategy, we’re here to help as well. Mashable has written a number of essential articles about promoting your organization using social tools. Here are a few we hope you find helpful:- 5 Essential Tips for Promoting Your Charity Using Social Media- Videos of Presentations from our Social Good Conference- Inspiring Tales of Social Media for Social Good #Stories4Good- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing the Non-Profit World- How LIVESTRONG Uses Social Media for Good #FindingTheGood- 26 Charities and Non-Profits on TwitterReviews: MashableTags: job board, jobs, social good
We know that some of you have been eyeing the special Meebo featureswe launched earlier this year on Mashable with envy. Who doesn’t want to add Meebo Chat, drag and drop content sharing, and extra analytics to their site?Today, Meebo is handing out an early Christmas present — Meebo Bar— and gifting all those extra special features to anyone that wants them on their own sites.The beta version of Meebo Bar comes jam-packed with goodies you can customize to spruce up your site, encourage sharing and enable visitor-to-visitor instant messaging. The Meebo Bar even comes with access to a site dashboard that includes tracking share data by clicks, type and intention.As you can tell from our site, the Meebo Bar sits at the bottom of the page. You can select which buttons and widgets you want to appear to enable extra items like Twitter Search, Digg and Stumbleupon buttons or buttons that show a quick view of your Facebook(Fan Page), Flickr, YouTubeand Lala accounts. Of course, full Meebo Chat functionality is also baked right into the bar as well.Drag-and-drop content sharing is also pretty nifty, so just as on Mashable, your readers can grab images and videos and drag them to share with their friends on Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo or via e-mail and IM.Perhaps the best part is the ease of installation. Meebo will walk you through the process, and for self-hosted WordPress blogs, it’s as simple as installing a plug-in, picking your buttons from the Meebo Bar dashboard and customizing them in WordPress if you so choose. For unsupported blog platforms, you can add pre-generated snippets of HTML to your site’s code.This is a welcome development for publishers everywhere, as the Meebo Bar offers a free and simple way to keep your site visitors more engaged.Reviews: Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Mashable, Meebo, StumbleUpon, Twitter, WordPress, YouTubeTags: meebo, meebo bar, social media
Last week, Twitter revealed its list of the most-discussed topics of 2009, based on Twitter’s trending topics. Now Facebook has come out with their own list, based on data from the millions of daily status updatesof its users.While the world’s largest social network took a different approach than its upstart competitor (explanation below), it did match some of Twitter’s “most discussed” topics of 2009. However, it seems as if Facebook’s data analysis has revealed that people care a great deal about family (#5), Facebook apps (#1), Lady Gaga (#12), and, yes, even Twitter (#10).First, How Facebook Performed the AnalysisDubbed Facebook Memology, the company analyzed one- to four-word phrases within the Facebook status updates of 2009. They went even further, though, taking “bursts of activity” and other factors into account.Facebook’s explanation:“To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.”The result is rather different than Twitter’s list of top topics: It groups together key topics and doesn’t discount frequently used words such as “I” (the #15 Facebook memology trend of 2009). If you want more details on the technical side of the analysis, the Facebook Data team has posted a thorough explanationof its methodology. The Top Facebook Topics of 2009Facebook grouped specific keywords and phrases together to build their list of the most discussed topics on Facebook. Here’s the full list:Facebook provides a very detailed analysisof their top 15 Facebook status trends, but most are self-explanatory.The number one trend was Facebook apps, specifically the discussion of FarmVillein status updates. The game, which has taken Facebook by storm, has made not only FarmVille a popular phrase on the social network, but “Farm Town” and “Farm” as well.One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though.Facebook also acknowledged Twitter’s growth, as it is number 10 on this list. Specifically, Twitter and “RT” became popular trends on Facebook. Still, the company couldn’t help but make a minor dig at its rival by declaring that “mentions of the word Twitter decreased over the past few months.” What do you think of these top topics? Does any of the data surprise you? Let us know in the comments.Reviews: Facebook, TwitterTags: facebook, memes, trending topics
Mashable is proud to be offering one lucky reader and a friend the chance to attend the third annual NHL Bridgestone Winter Classic in Boston, MA, between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Boston Bruins!The NHL has been one of the most active sports leagues in the social media realm. They’ve been organizing fan tweetups, creating social networks through Twitter Lists, and, of course, holding Twitter contests.Now the NHL is reaching out through social media channels in order to get two of our readers to Boston, MA, for the NHL Winter Classic Game on January 1, 2010. On top of that, they’re providing round-trip airfare and hotel for the night of December 31.Here’s how to enter: 1. Post in the comments below, providing a link to either an image or a video that uniquely demonstrates your NHL fandom. This could be a cheer, an outfit or anything you can come up with, but it must focus around you and the NHL or a specific NHL team. 2. Make sure that the title of your picture or video includes the hashtag #MashableNHLContest. Post your media, with the hashtag in the title, on a site such as Flickr, 12Seconds.TV, or YouTube. 3. After the end of the contest on Sunday, December 27th at 11:59 PM PT, we will pick our favorite photo or video and contact that person to get him or her two tickets, plus airfare and hotel accommodations, to the NHL Winter Classic. We’re looking primarily for entertainment value, creativity, and NHL fan spirit. 4. Only one comment per person, please (duplicates will be disqualified). Please use a Disqus account to comment, or sign in as a guest. We’ll need to pull your email address from your comment to notify you if you’ve won, so Twitter and Facebook Connect do not work!Contest Rules and Restrictions:You must be 18+ years of age and currently reside in one of the 50 US States. If you would like to participate but are not of valid age/residence, please note “not eligible” in your comment below. By submitting, you are agreeing to the full rules and restrictions. Final entries are due on this post by Sunday, December 27th at 11:59 PM PT.Reviews: 12seconds.tv, Disqus, Flickr, Twitter, YouTubeTags: contest, NHL, sports
HP’s webcam software boasts a face-tracking feature that claims to keep facial images centered and proportioned on the screen. It’s a bit curious then that a YouTubevideo purports, with video evidence, that the software can’t recognize African American faces.In the video, Wanda (Caucasian) and Desi (African American) — two employees at what appears to be a computer electronics store — expose a flaw in the webcam software.As depicted, the software has no problem recognizing Wanda’s face, with the webcam following her face around as she moves up, down, in, out and around. No such luck for Desi, however, as the camera remains completely static regardless of any movement.The side-by-side portrayal is quite jarring and paints a strong case in favor of Desi’s conjecture: “I think my blackness is interfering with the computer’s ability to follow me,” and assertion that, “Hewlett-Packard computers are racist.”Both Desi and Wanda have a sense of humor about the matter, but the somewhat hilarious and sad punchline is that Desi has already purchased an HP computer for Christmas. Thanks to the viral video, HP is now aware of the glitch. They’ve posted a public forum updatesaying that they’re investigating the matter. Part of HP’s response reads, “We believe that the camera might have difficulty ’seeing’ contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”Watch the video for yourself below.Tags: humor, viral video
