E-mail has invaded every aspect of our lives. We don’t need a survey to tell us as much, but new research from Xobni and Harris Interactive confirms that we’re not alone in dealing with e-mail overload.

2,200 adults 18 and older in the U.S. and U.K were surveyed on their e-mail habits and attitudes. Most respondents — 72% in the U.S, 68% in the U.K. — indicated that they check e-mail during their time off. A large percentage of Americans also check e-mail in bed (19%), and while on vacation or during days off (50%).

When queried about their outside-the-workplace e-mail activities, nearly half (46%) of the American respondents indicated that they do so to ease their workload. Thirty-seven percent are afraid they’ll miss something important (guilty as charged), and 27% check work e-mail when off the job because it is expected of them. Another 26% keep up with e-mail while on vacation because they simply can’t handle the volume otherwise.

When comparing e-mail behaviors by gender, there are some subtle differences in habits. Men, for instance, are more likely to check e-mail in bed — 21% of men claim do so, while 16% of women admit to the practice. Of course, this bed-checking trend also skews toward 18- to 34-year-olds, who are twice as likely (31%) than 35- to 54-year-olds (15%) to do so.

The real-time nature of the web and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are likely contributing to our always-on attention spans, and hence, contributing to the e-mail overload problem. We can only hope tools such as Rapportive, Gmail Priority Inbox and Xobni’s add-ons will help our cause.

Image courtesy of revrev, Flickr

More About: email, stats, xobni

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Plenty of criticism has already been directed towards the new social network that’s baked into iTunes 10 — Ping — with an emphasis on the user (not to mention rumblings about a fleeting Facebook integration). But there’s one contingent of users no one has really mentioned yet: the bands, many of which are still unable to get in on the action as of this afternoon.

Immediately after hearing about Ping yesterday, I sent out a flurry of e-mails to band friends, urging them to, “Get on this now!” Everyone was stoked, ready to replace their MySpace pages with revenue-making destinations on the brand new iTunes social network. However, when they logged in and tried to figure out how to create said page, they were met with confusion.

I spoke with Eric Victorino, of the band The Limousines, and he said he spent 30 minutes trying to figure out how to set up a page to no avail. And this is a band with music already available on iTunes. I also spoke with PR people who represent some other popular bands, and they were unclear as to how to get their bands on the service as well.

Bands usually don’t have direct contact with iTunes — musicians distribute their jams through services like TuneCore which then deal directly with iTunes — so perhaps this degree of separation is the issue. We’ve reached out to Apple to ask how a band goes about getting a page on Ping.

In the meantime, I remain unimpressed with Ping — unable to follow bands that I actually like. Currently, iTunes recommends I follow 14 bands, all heavy hitters like U2, Diddy and Lady Gaga. Yup, no Phoenix, The National or Arcade Fire (all indie bands of the less-than-indie persuasion — I wasn’t expecting Jeffrey Lewis to be up in there yet, anyway). No wonder iTunes was so off with its recommendations — none of the bands I like are currently on the service. I can follow Katy Perry, though:

Still, you can “Like” and “Post” a band’s album via the “Album” page, and check out some concert listings as a result of Live Nation’s recent partnership with Apple. In the example below, Mashable’s Christina Warren can show how much she digs Guster, despite being unable to follow them:

Now that doesn’t mean bands can’t get in on the action by creating a run-of-the-mill user profile. It seems that Ben Folds joined up this a.m. I followed him. As did more than 200 others. Too bad it’s not really Ben Folds. I know because I asked him this morning whether the profile was real and he replied, “Probably not legit.” We’ll probably see more faux artist pages popping up in the future, unless some kind of verification process is introduced. (That’s not really an uncommon issue. Facebook is crawling with fakes. Still, doppelgangers are doubly confusing when dealing with a new service.)

Yesterday, scads of publications — including Mashable — heralded “Ping as a potential “MySpace killer.” That doesn’t seem likely, however, until the service manages to make itself more accessible to the bread and butter of any music discovery service: the musicians.

MySpace is easy to join and is an admittedly simple way to get your music out there. It even recently introduced new profiles for artists, as well as the capacity to feature up to 25 songs on one’s profile. That’s a ton of music, and, come to think of it, something that Ping lacks: the ability to listen to full, streaming songs. Thirty-second clips aren’t going to do much for music discovery when it comes to bands in the “lesser-known” realm. (A musician friend even joked last night that he would have to compress all of his songs into 30-second dance jams if he wanted to get his tunes heard on Ping.)

Yes, Ping emphasizes the music fan’s experience — the experience of sharing music with friends and benefiting from their tastes — but how is one to expand one’s taste when access to less mainstream fare is so limited? Yes, we imagine iTunes will expand the service to more musicians as the days wear on, but we feel that in order to grab the populace at the onset, the experience of following and interacting bands should have been richer at launch.

More About: apple, itunes, music, Ping

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We were enamored of your childlike delight. We reveled in the remixes. But now, Double Rainbow Guy, we are less than amused. What’s the sure-fire way to kill a viral video? Festoon it with dollar signs.

Yup, the above video is a commercial for Windows Live Photo Gallery, and yup, the actor in said commercial is YouTube user Hungrybear9562 (a.k.a Paul Vasquez and the man behind the rainbow). Vasquez burst onto the scene back in July with a tripped-out vid featuring the man himself crying over a lovely pair of rainbows (the video has since amassed more than 13 million views on YouTube). Now, we’re crying over the end of innocence.

Yes, ad companies, it’s smart to hitch your wagon to what’s hot right now (i.e. the memetastic realm), but why not come up with something, well, new? The Double Rainbow guy was sooooo two months ago, guys.

[via Buzzfeed]

More About: double-rainbow, MARKETING, microsoft, money, viral video, Windows, youtube

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Skype — apparently pleased with its five-way beta group video-calling functionality — has just released a new version of Skype 5.0 for Windows that doubles group support. It now allows for up to 10 video callers.

Skype 5.0 beta two is already available for download; it includes 10-way video calls, automatic call recovery and a cleaner user interface. The update is also said to improve call quality and includes a number of bug fixes to make the overall experience much smoother.

Of course, the standout feature is 10-way video calling, something that certainly one-ups their own previous offering and makes it suitable for even larger virtual team meetings and mini family reunions. Of course, it also makes Gmail’s video-calling functionality look like the ugly step sister — a proactive move on the part of Skype to combat recent buzz surrounding Gmail Voice Calling.

Still, Skype does caution that 5.0 is beta, and hence, very buggy. It’s also limited to Windows users, and 10-way video calls require all group chatters to be using the same second beta version of the app.

Have you tested out five-way video calls? Are you ready to upgrade to the 10-person variety? Share your thoughts in the comments.

More About: group video calling, Skype, software, trending, video calling, voip

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This post originally appeared on Dyn.com, a world leader in managed DNS, powering the best brands on the web including Gowalla, Mashable, Twitter, Wikia and more. Follow @DynInc on Twitter.

Taking a business from idea to reality involves a good deal of attrition, ingenuity, and compromise. But no matter how much these three factors align in your favor, chances are you won’t get far unless you have some sort of funding.

Traditionally, you could get your hands on some capital by wooing the wealthy to support you, getting rich yourself, or persuading a venture capitalist that your idea has potential. But an increasingly available option is to enter a competition.

The following eight contests can supply some cash for your startup or, even if you don’t win, help you better prepare to seek funding from other sources.

Since 1989, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has hosted independent contests throughout the year that are collectively known as the “MIT$100K” (originally the MIT$10K). In the elevator pitch contest, competitors have 60 seconds to persuade judges of their business’ potential. The top prize is $10,000, which isn’t a bad pay rate for a minute-long performance.

The Executive Summary contest compares teams’ two-page summaries of their projects for a prize of “MIT$100K glory” and judge feedback that is helpful for the third contest: the flagship Business Plan Competition.

In the Business Plan Competition, semi-finalists are selected based on their executive summaries. They’re given mentors and expense accounts with which to prepare a 20-page business report and presentation. Only MIT students or teams that include an MIT student are eligible. The winner takes $100,000 in cash and prizes.

Other colleges like the New York University Stern Business School, Rice University, Duke University, and The University of California at Berkeley run similarly prestigious venture capital contests.

TWITCH (Twitter Pitch) is technically an add-on to the MIT$100K, but it’s cool enough to warrant its own place on our list. The contest asks contestants to convey their business ideas in 140 characters or less for a $500 cash prize. Entries are made by tweeting submissions that include the hash tag #100kTwitch, and votes are accumulated by getting others to retweet it.

The first contest took place this year, and the posted standings showed the first place tweet to be:

GE teamed up with four venture capital firms to offer a total of $200 million to startups working on innovation in renewable energy, grid efficiency, or energy-efficient homes. Five $50,000 cash prizes will be awarded to winners of the two-round competition. Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired Magazine is the sole member of the judging panel who isn’t a GE executive.

A great opportunity designed specifically for clean technology startups, the Clean Tech Open provides training and the chance to win up to $250,000 in investment money and services. Entrants work one-on-one with assigned mentors to write an executive summary, which is then used to select semi-finalists. Semi-finalists pay a fee for a training program that includes business clinics and mock judging. The teams submit full business plans and give a live presentation to determine five regional winners and one national champ.

This contest literally asks teams to mail their pitch on a 7X7 napkin. Each team must have at least one woman and one technologist (defined as an “engineer, scientist, mathematician, biologist, etc.”), and their napkin must be accompanied by a two-minute video pitch. A handful of entrants are selected to present their pitch at the annual PITCH Night in San Francisco. Prizes include meetings with venture capitalists and other startup services.

In 1993, BusinessWeek called the Venture Labs Investment Competition (originally the Moot Corp Competition) “the Super Bowl of World Business Plan Competition.” In 2004, Inc. Magazine called it “the Rose Bowl of business-plan competitions.” Whether that indicates a drop in professionalism or an increase in fun and enthusiasm depends on how well you know sports, but it’s hard to argue that the competition is anything but prestigious. Started in 1984 by two University of Texas MBA students, the Austin-based competition was attended by 40 teams from 12 countries in 2010.

Once a small business registers or is nominated for the Love a Local Business site, customers and supporters can vote for them between July 1 and September 30. Votes function as raffle tickets: the more votes a company gets, the better its chance of winning a random drawing held at the end of each month (July, August, and September).

The winners of the monthly drawing each win $5,000 and advance to the final round in which a panel of judges selects the business most “loved by its customers, vendors, employees, or local community” to receive a $25,000 grant.

Startups that use Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure to run their business can compete to win a global prize of $50,000 in cash or in AWS credits and mentoring support, including a year of AWS Premium Gold Support. Fifteen regional semi-finalists and six overall finalists will also receive prizes.

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Image courtesy of Flickr, wwarby

More About: amazon, amazon web services, Business Lists, Clean Tech Open, Competitions, Contests, Ecomagination, entrepreneur, Entrepreneur contests, funding, GE, intuit, List, Lists, Love a Local Business, MIT$100K, Moot Corp, startup, TWITCH, venture capital, Venture Labs Investment Competition

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Alexander B. Howard is the Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics. He’ll be reporting live from the upcoming Gov2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C., on September 7-8.

Every year, poison control centers get more than one million calls for pill identification. Each one of those calls costs nearly $50. Social software is helping biomedical researchers collaborate on better ways of identifying drugs. “Pillbox is a digital platform for communities to solve challenges related to pharmaceutical identification and reference,” says David Hale, the program manager. The National Library of Medicine’s mission is to gather, curate and distribute the world’s biomedical information, said Hale.

Pillbox is an open government initiative from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration that could transform how pharmaceuticals are labeled in the future. The interactive web application currently allows visitors to rapidly identify unknown solid medications, like tablets or capsules, based upon their shape, color and other markings. Pillbox remains a research and development project, so users should not be making clinical decisions just yet. Right now there are over 1,000 images of prescription drugs in the system, with many more to come in the next few months.

Beyond its usefulness, Pillbox is a public health platform that was created in a unique way — by utilizing open source data. Here are four ways the NIH approached this endeavor using the open and social web.

Pillbox is a “collection of projects focused on a single goal: improving the health of citizens,” said Hale. That goal could be realized through social gaming mechanics, an area that’s familiar to Foursquare users and FarmVille players. “There’s a Facebook game in development based on the Pillbox API,” he said. After Hale attended Sunlight Labs’ Great American Hackathon last December, a developer took him to a D.C. Ruby users meeting. There, the civic hacking community got excited about using Pilllbox data in a game.

To move the game forward, the developers had to build a search interface in Facebook Markup Language (FBML) for Pillbox. “When they’re done, they’ll give the code for the pill ID interface to NLM,” said Hale. The game isn’t live yet, but Hale hopes to see an iteration online by the end of the year. As of the last build of the game, messages are scrambled between players “to protect privacy.” These messages come with a pill image. Players then have to use the Pillbox ID system to identify pills and unscramble message.

“When these developers were building [Pillbox], they found it didn’t have any wrappers for the API,” said Hale. “So they wrote them in Ruby, open sourced them and shared them in a Pillbox space on Github, an online open source code sharing community. Now the wrappers are there for anyone to use.”

Subsequently, a Python developer who was at the meeting working on another project at the Hackathon, took it as a challenge to do it in fewer lines of code, said Hale. He also created Python wrappers for Pillbox and posted them.

“That’s the power of open data, ‘coopetition’ and social media,” said Hale. “Consider the development of hundreds of lines of code, Ruby and Python wrappers, and that interface. How much would it have taken to do this otherwise?”

Hale has used social media extensively to collaborate with clinical staff, patients, and developers, empowering and enabling communities to solve health challenges. In particular, Hale is active on Twitter as @LostOnRoute66, where he tweets about patient safety, biomedical informatics, social media strategy, user experience, music, and food. “Social media was the key channel. It was through Twitter that we maintained these relationships and built new ones.”

One of the challenges for the government research community in Washington can be its distance from the technology communities in Silicon Valley, Boston, Texas and Seattle. “Pillbox was built outside with the community,” says Hale. That’s an important shift from the way traditional projects have been approached. “Due to [conferences like] HealthCamp and to connecting in the Valley, we saw a different way of approaching the issue,” said Hale.

Initially, there were just giant institutions called Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacies taking pictures of the pills, said Hale. “We realized it wasn’t just the images — it was the data behind them, and access to that data. When I talked with the community in the Valley, I realized there was more that was possible. We’re not just putting up pictures of pills, we’re putting up a platform, and thereby changing the ways that people work with government. It’s the information that’s important, not the website. It’s about understanding the power of adding an open API to your data.”

Pillbox – Restructuring Structured Product Data

Additionally, an increasing number of government agencies and civil service workers are using SlideShare to disseminate presentations. Hale is no exception. His presentation on Pillbox from January 2010 is embedded above.

This summer, a team of developers and designers relaunched the FederalRegister.gov, the online presence for the legal newspaper of United States. The Federal Register 2.0 is one of the better recent examples of open government, as it makes the often arcane business of government more transparent and understandable to citizens. Hale says that the NIH will be posting a “Call for Participation” where they ask pharmaceutical companies to send them samples of their tablets and capsules.

If the public-private relationship bears fruit, they’ll take high quality pictures based upon Pillbox’s process, send the images back to the pharmaceutical companies and, if approved, put them into Pillbox. Those images could then be sent to the FDA, where they coud get included on a label.

“That would enable images of drugs based upon a single body of standards, which could then enable identification through smartphones,” said Hale. “The secret sauce isn’t the images when this is done but the background processing. We’re creating tools and services which make open data available to everyone, accessible, and in the public domain.”

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Anykeen

More About: david hale, federal register, github, hackathon, national institutes of health, national library of medicine, nih, NLM, open data, pillbox, Python, Ruby on Rails, slideshare, sunlight labs

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It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since the Chrome browser first hit the web. In that time, Chrome has come to control more than 7.5% of the worldwide browser market, according to Net Marketshare. Sure, Internet Explorer and Firefox hold 60.4% and 22.9% respectively, but if one considers that after 10 years, Opera holds less than 2.4%, then it’s fairly impressive.

Now, on its second birthday, Google has released a stable build of Chrome version 6. Heralding itself as “The Modern Browser,” Chrome 6 does indeed boast a number of improvements, but as with previous updates, the focus remains on speed and simplicity.

Like its previous release this summer, the new version has Adobe Flash built in. The important thing here, however, is its handling of HTML5, which remains topnotch.

With the increasing prevalence of HTML5, it’s hard to imagine a world where Chrome’s browser share does not continue to grow.

More About: adobe, adobe flash, chrome, chrome 6, Firefox, Google, HTML5, internet explorer, opera, webkit

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Banksimple has just raised $2.9 million in a Series A round to fund their ambitious alternative online banking startup for full-service, fee-free banking. The round includes investments from First Round Capital, IA Ventures and Village Ventures, a collection of industry veterans with extensive startup portfolios.

Banksimple’s mission is to reinvent the way consumers bank, both online and off. In 2011, the startup will offer bankers an online-only banking solution designed to eliminate traditional service fees, provide stellar customer service, offer predictive money management and integrate social media into the system.

The funds will allow Banksimple to forge ahead with crucial banking partnerships that will form the financial backbone of the platform. The money will also help the company finance its initial test run of the service with friends and family before the end of the year.

“To get customer service right for banking, we need to build a technology company,” said CEO Joshua Reich in an interview with Mashable.

Banksimple had previously raised $190,000 from angel investors in a seed round. To date, the startup has raised nearly $3.1 million — money enough to last them through the end of 2011, according to Reich.

Image courtesy of Daniel Y. Go, Flickr

More About: banksimple, funding, series a

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It may not be the most socially acceptable way to check in, but Vlingo has created a way for Android app users to check in on Foursquare with their voices. It’s a speech-to-checkin feature that will save time, even if it does raise a few eyebrows.

With the new app, Android users can speak a simple “check in to [insert place name]” command after tapping the home screen button. The command will prompt Vlingo to automatically pull up the location in question, and other nearby venues, on Foursquare, providing users with a fast alternative to touch-based Foursquare checkins.

Vlingo’s voice-activated Foursquare integration not only includes support for checkins, but also lets users post voice shouts and ask Vlingo, “Where are my friends?,” or “Who’s nearby?” to pull up a list of Foursquare friends who have checked in recently.

Vlingo for Android also supports voice-activated, speech-to-text status updates for Facebook and Twitter.

Unfortunately for those of us with iPhone and BlackBerry devices, our Android-toting friends have the advantage here, but hopefully not for long. Vlingo promises voice checkins for these devices in future releases.

More About: andriod, checkins, foursquare, vlingo

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Mashable is excited to announce MashBash BlogWorld, the opening party for this year’s BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas on October 15-16. To kick off the Expo, we’ll be hosting the first night’s official party at Haze at Aria Hotel.

We would love for you to join us, so we’re giving away passes to BlogWorld. To enter, answer the following question — “What is the future of blogging?” — in the comments below. Readers with the best answers will win one of five “full access” tickets to BlogWorld, which includes MashBash. Winners are invited to attend this industry celebration where the online world comes together to meet, relax and make important business networking connections.

Date: Friday, October 15
Time: 8:00 p.m.-10 p.m.
Location:Haze at Aria. 3730 Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV.
Tickets: Must have BlogWorld Badge to enter.

• Simply click the “Like” button on our Facebook Page (below).
• Respond to the question: “What is the future of blogging?” by noon ET on Monday, September 6, in the comments section of this post.

Please use your real identity so that we may contact you via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook to let you know that you’ve won and how to redeem your prize.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas on October 15-16: “Join us at the World’s Largest New Media event and learn about Content Creation, Distribution and Monetization strategies, step-by-step techniques and bleeding-edge tools from the most successful Bloggers, Podcasters, Social Media Pro’s, Internet TV and Radio Content Generators and New Media Marketing Pro’s! From the premier educational sessions at the Social Media Business Summit and BlogWorld Conference, to the resource-rich New Media Expo, to Amazing Networking events…it’s One economical trip, One weekend, One Big Show you can’t afford to miss!”

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Alexander Hotz is a freelance multimedia journalist and public radio junkie based in New York City. Currently he teaches digital media at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Follow Alex on Twitter at @hotzington.

With another long hot American summer coming to a close, many students are scrambling to get back into “learning mode” before school starts. One of the simplest ways to ease that transition is with podcasts. Whether your passion is American History or Algebra, there’s probably an educational podcast out there for you.

While these programs probably won’t mirror your lesson plan, they will explore topics covered in class. Below is a sampling of some of the exceptional podcasts that both teach and entertain. Best of all – they’re free. Read on for your “2010 Downloading Curriculum.”

Radiolab investigates some of world’s most intriguing scientific questions in a unique conversational format. Recent episodes have examined the importance of words in human development and time. First time listeners will probably notice that the show also just sounds different.

Before becoming a radio producer, Jab Abumrad, one of Radiolab’s creators, was as an experimental musician. Abumrad’s passion for ProTools is apparent in the show’s textured soundscape, which is layered with a variety of sound effects and quick edits. Perhaps the show’s only downside is its frequency. There are only a handful of episodes every season because one Radiolab episode requires months to produce.

Outlet: WNYC, New York City’s Public Radio Station
Time: An Hour
Frequency: 5-6 every season

Additional Listening: The Naked Scientists Podcast

In Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Carlin, a veteran journalist turned podcaster, dissects the textbook version of events. In shows that often run over an hour, the host passionately retells some of history’s best stories.

Hardcore History has become one of the most downloaded podcasts on iTunes, and Carlin’s widespread appeal can also be attributed to his insight. One podcast asked, “Could widespread child abuse in earlier eras explain some of history’s brutality?” Another show was based off the question, “Does the toughness of peoples play any role in history?” Don’t let the name fool you; all material is appropriate for younger listeners.

Outlet: Dan Carlin
Time: 1 – 1 1/2 hours
Frequency: 5-6 every year

Additional Listening: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Planet Money is NPR’s podcast on global economics and business. Initially created by veteran public radio reporters Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson to explain the recent financial crisis, the show quickly became one of the most popular and praised podcasts available.

Planet Money’s success lies in how it tackles complex subjects with great storytelling. A financial instrument like a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) may sound impossibly boring, but Planet Money routinely makes these types of things the heart of a thrilling narrative. The team continues to explore the financial collapse, but they’ve expanded their scope to include all aspects of the global economy.

Outlet: NPR
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Twice a week

Additional Listening: Freakanomics Radio

Disclosure: The author interned at NPR.

For those of us who couldn’t make it through Wuthering Heights, Cliff Notes Cramcast would have been a lifesaver. This free podcast reviews some of the stuff you need to know for the big test and does it in three to four minutes. Of course, these podcasts can’t cover every detail. To do that, you would — you know — need to read the book.

Outlet: Cliff Notes
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Twice a week

Additional Listening: Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips

The Internet is full of podcasts that cater to students learning foreign languages. For those interested in the major European languages, Radio Lingua is a good bet. Another reliable hub is Open University, which in addition to the European languages also has a set of Mandarin podcasts. These outlets are mainly for beginners or students who need a quick review. Both are rated highly on iTunes by users.

Outlets: Radio Lingua and Open University
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Lesson plan

Additional Listening: Other reliable podcasts include Discover Spanish and Learn French.

For those of us who struggle to calculate a 15% tip, The Math Dude’s podcast is a must-listen. Every week, affable nerd Jason Marshall explains basic concepts like how to calculate the area of an object or how to add faster. When Marshall isn’t podcasting, he researches “infrared light emitted by starburst galaxies and quasars” at Caltech, which just means his left-brain knows what’s up.

Outlet: Quick and Dirty Tips
Time: About 7 minutes
Frequency: Weekly

Additional Listening: Mathgrad.

Every Sunday, comedians Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver recap the week’s events in The Bugle, a satirical podcast that is easily one of the funniest listens on the Internet. Think an audio version of The Daily Show, where Oliver is also a regular. The Bugle’s focus tends to be on the biggest international news, but the duo’s separate locations – Zaltzman in London and Oliver in New York City – ensure a focus on the English-speaking world’s antics. Although the pair has a leftward slant, there are no sacred cows. The Bugle even takes aim at itself in its tagline: “An audio newspaper for a visual world.”

Outlet: The Times (UK)
Time: 30 minutes
Frequency: Weekly

Additional Listening: NPR News, BBC World Service

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock

More About: back to school, cliff notes cramcast, current events, dan carlin, economics, education, english, foreign language, history, itunes, math, planet money, podcast, podcasts, radio lingua, radiolab, Science, the bugle, the math dude

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Google and AOL have signed a deal that extends the search and advertising partnership between the two companies for another five years. The agreement also includes mobile search and adds a content sharing partnership with YouTube.

In a statement, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said, “After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”

The extension of the deal wasn’t a given by any means; the $1 billion investment Google made in AOL back in 2005 proved to be disastrous financially. Further, Microsoft has been aggressively making deals to grow marketshare for Bing, most notably with Yahoo, which now sees Bing powering Yahoo search and its related advertising.

With the renewed AOL deal, Google locks up about 2.3% of the search market according to the most recent numbers from comScore. Google currently has 65.8% of the market, while Microsoft has 27.1% between Bing and Yahoo.

Beyond web search, today’s deal also broadens Google’s reach on mobile and gets additional premium content onto YouTube –- both of which are currently high priorities for the company, as CEO Eric Schmidt noted in his statement on the deal. “It’s particularly exciting to see our relationship expand into video and mobile. These areas are now at the heart of users’ online experiences and at the core of both of our businesses,” he said.

More About: aol, Google, Search

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A picture is worth a thousand words. But if you include an entire database, make it interactive, and add filtering options, the word-to-picture exchange rate is even better.

Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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More About: afghanistan, bp, current events, gay rights, graphics, healthcare reform, infographics, iraq, News, oil-spill, stimulus, visualizations, wikileaks

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Think what you will about the ultra-widescreen, 21:9 format Philips is pushing, but you can’t deny that its cinema-proportioned Full HD LCD TV is gorgeous. Now, Philips plans to push it even further, with a 58-inch, 3D version of the device.

The device, called Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum, sports a direct lit LED screen with a 2560×1080 resolution, 400Hz picture processing, and Philips’s Ambilight technology, which illuminates the area behind the TV in order to reduce eye fatigue and produce an immersive viewing experience.

And if you think you’ll never use all that horizontal screen estate due to the lack of titles available in 21:9 format, you can watch regular TV programming on one side while browsing Philips’s Net TV on the other.

The price tag, of course, is too high for most consumers. At around €4000 ($5,100), there are plenty of high-end TV sets to be found on the market, but this TV is truly unique. For those who want to enjoy their movies as they were meant to be seen on the big screen, and in three dimensions, there are currently no better options out there.

The Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum is slated to launch in the UK later this month. No date has been set for a U.S. release.

More About: 21:9, 3D, aspect ratio, full HD, LCD, Philips, tv

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Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.

iTunes 10 and Ping Are Now Live

Apple’s latest version of iTunes and it’s new music-centric social network, Ping, went live late Wednesday evening, some eight hours after the product was announced at the company’s press conference in San Francisco. Mashable’s Christina Warren contends that Ping has a long way to go if it’s going to become a better alternative to MySpace.

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab

Samsung has revealed its long-awaited tablet, the Galaxy Tab, at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

The tablet sports a 7-inch TFT-LCD display with 1024×600-pixel resolution, Android 2.2 support, a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, 512 of RAM and 16/32 GB of internal memory with upgrade options. It also comes with a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED Flash, plus a second 1.3-megapixel camera for video chats, as well as Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. The battery, Samsung claims, can last up to seven hours of movie playback.

Samsung, it appears, has created a real competitor for Apple’s iPad, which lacks the Galaxy Tab’s cameras and support for popular multimedia formats such as Flash.

Samsung has partnered with Vodafone for the launch, which is scheduled for October in Vodaphone’s European markets, and later this year in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Twitter Releases Official iPad App

Twitter has released its official iPad app, available now in Apple’s App Store [iTunes link] for free. The app allows for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other content, enabling users to load videos while they’re browsing their timelines, for instance, as well as view them in-line with other content and expand them to full-screen size.

Further News

• Starbucks is rolling out its Starbucks Card Mobile App for BlackBerry today, enabling users to manage their payment and rewards cards, and even pay for their purchases at 16 stores in Seattle and the Silicon Valley region, as well as 1,000 Target stores nationwide.
• Google will remain AOL’s exclusive search partner through 2015, both companies announced this morning. The deal has been expanded to include mobile search and to bring AOL’s content to YouTube [via PaidContent].
• Competitors Boxee, Rdio and Roku have all issued responses to Apple’s latest TV and music offerings.
• Microsoft announced Wednesday that it has completed the development of its forthcoming Windows Phone 7. The mobile OS has reached the release to manufacturing (RTM) stage.

Disclosure: Samsung, BlackBerry and Microsoft are Mashable sponsors.

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.

More About: apple, first to know series, galaxy tab, ipad, ipad app, itunes 10, Ping, samsung, Tablet, twitter

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While introducing Ping, Apple’s new music-centric social network, CEOSteve Jobs mentioned that it would immediately reach a userbase of 160 million people in 23 countries. Sounds impressive, until you remember that 23 countries actually isn’t that big of a number; and if you’re in a country such as Chile, the Czech Republic, Croatia or India, then Ping — just like the music store component of iTunes — is simply not available.

The users in most countries around the world are used to products and features not being available to them – receiving money through PayPal or buying music through iTunes doesn’t work for me, for example – but Ping is different. It’s supposed to be a social network; its competitors, Last.FM and MySpace, are available in most countries in the world. Users expect it to just work, but in my version of iTunes, Ping simply doesn’t exist.

Here’s a thread from Apple’s support forums, in which users from all around the world complain that they can’t find Ping. After Apple’s big announcement, most of them don’t even consider the possibility that this great new social network is not available in their country: they think they’re doing something wrong. But Apple hasn’t said a word about availability in other countries, so it might be a long wait for all these users.

From Apple’s point of view, it’s understandable it chose to tie Ping closely to the music store. One feature Steve Jobs had highlighted is buying a song directly from a status update; something you obviously cannot do if you don’t have access to the store. But the social networking part of Ping will suffer for it.

For an example of how being available only in a small number of countries can hurt Ping, consider one of its most important features: concert listings. This is where Last.FM shines; go to any place in the world, and you’ll be able to see which concerts are available, when, at what clubs and who’s attending. But if residents of a certain country cannot access Ping, then the concert listings for that particular country will be a sad and empty sight.

Facebook, which hasn’t really focused on music so far, is also available in most countries in the world; it’s the de facto standard for social networking, and it has half a billion active users. Yes, Ping is directly tied to music, but users aren’t used to network from iTunes. Should Facebook introduce some features similar to those Ping has, it would automatically have a huge advantage simply because it would work for all users, not just the select few. If Apple has any serious aspirations to grow Ping into a global social networking powerhouse, it should strongly consider making it available everywhere.

We’ve contacted Apple to find out when (and if) Ping might become available in countries other than the initial 23, and are still awaiting their response.

More About: apple, itunes, Ping

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Samsung has finally spilled the details about its long-awaited tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab, during a press conference at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

Samsung calls its tablet a “smart media device,” and Galaxy Tab definitely has the specifications to back it up: Android 2.2 support, a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 16/32 GB of internal memory with the possibility of upgrading through microSD memory cards.

Furthermore, there’s a 7-inch TFT-LCD display with 1024×600 pixel resolution, a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED Flash plus an additional front 1.3-megapixel camera for video chats (that’s got to hurt iPad owners at least a little bit) as well as Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. The dimensions of the device are 190.09 x 120.45 x 11.98mm, with 380 grams of weight, and the battery should last through seven hours of movie playback.

In other words, the iPad got a worthy competitor, not only because of the capable hardware the Tab is sporting, but also because it has the latest and greatest version of Android. Although it’s smaller than the iPad, whose screen measures 9.7 inches, Galaxy Tab does a lot of things the iPad cannot do: It has two cameras, and it supports Flash and a wide variety of multimedia formats, including DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263 and H.264.

Samsung has partnered with Vodafone for the launch, and the Galaxy Tab will start selling in October in the majority of Vodafone’s European markets and later this year in the U.S and other markets.

Disclosure: Samsung is a Mashable sponsor.

More About: android, samsung, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Tablet

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Apple made a lot of announcements today, from the new Apple TV to the Ping social network for music built into iTunes 10.

Because Apple is entering some new market segments (or, in the case of Ping, some new markets, period) Apple is now a direct competitor to a number of other companies already in the social music and streaming content space.

Boxee, Rdio and Roku have all issued statements in response to Apple’s latest moves and what, if anything, it means for the future of those startups.

Apple is describing Ping as a social network for music. It takes a very Facebook and Twitter approach to following friends and artists and is designed to make discovering and sharing new music super simple.

Rdio, a startup created by the founders of Skype, also lists music discovery as one of its core strengths and missions. Of course, unlike iTunes, Rdio is a subscription service that allows users to enjoy on-demand streaming music for $4.99 or $9.99 a month.

This is the statement Rdio sent us in response to Apple’s latest social music plans:

“Today’s announcement from Apple completely validates Rdio’s social approach to discovering music through people,” said Carter Adamson, COO, Rdio. “But in our view, sharing a short clip doesn’t amount to sharing music and people are still restricted by Apple’s pay-per-tune platform.”

Rdio also notes that it has apps for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

When the first Apple TV was introduced back in January 2007, the market for connected video devices essentially started and ended with TiVo (at least on the commercial level). Almost four years later, the landscape is very different.

Steve Jobs highlighted some of the reasons Apple thought the Apple TV didn’t really take off and many of the changes to the new Apple TV are designed to address those issues. Some of the changes, including a lower price, a focus on streaming, rather than storing content, and subscription access to Netflix, are familiar to fans of the connected device space.

Roku, a company that introduced the first Netflix Watch Instantly set-top box back in 2008, shares many of the same features and is also similarly priced to the new Apple TV.

Roku provided us with this statement:

“Roku created the category for streaming players over two years ago with the original Netflix player for $99. Since then the category has continued to grow rapidly with large hardware entrants like Xbox, PS3, Wii, blu-ray players, and now AppleTV adding streaming capabilities. … During this time Roku sales have continued to accelerate as the overall streaming market grows, and customers enjoy our simple interface, low cost and large selection of services. Our customers are using the box more and more. Two years ago the average Roku customer used our product 11 hours a month, but now it’s 43 hours a month.

Beyond Netflix we have introduced over 50 additional content partners on our open platform that offer customers access to over 100,000 movies and TV shows, live sports, music, photo and video sharing, and more — all while continuing to reduce the cost of our products. Today, a customer can get a Roku player for as low as $59.99 and an HD-capable model for as low as $69.99, plus a 1080p model for $99.99. By selling direct to customers (on roku.com) we can offer more while maintaining lower prices.

Roku is completely confident that our strategy of offering more features and lower cost than competitors continues to be the right plan.”

The core difference, as we see it, between what Roku offers and what Apple TV offers is that Roku is a streaming player that connects to bigger content networks. You can browse videos from Vimeo and blip.tv, you can watch UFC Pay-per-view content and you can watch premium titles from Netflix or Amazon VOD.

However, Roku doesn’t have a connection to a user’s networked content on the Mac, PC or mobile device. Roku has more content options for users but offers less content to a user’s personal local library.

For Boxee, the situation is a bit more complex. Boxee started as software that could be run on the Mac or Apple TV. Many original Apple TV owners (myself included) only bought the Apple TV because of Boxee. Boxee added the third-party content options that the original Apple TV lacked.

Meanwhile, the Boxee Box promised to be a streaming media device to both your local network and to sources like Netflix, Crackle.com MUBI.

On the Boxee Blog, founder Avner Ronen had this to say:

“Most of us at Boxee are Apple fanboys. If it is silver and it has the Apple logo on it, we pre-order it. If there’s a line around the block, chances are we’re in it. And everything stops at Boxee HQ while we unbox the latest gadget to come out of Cupertino. We were incredibly excited when a couple of developers in the community made it possible to run Boxee on Apple TV (as hundreds of thousands of users have done) and the Boxee Remote for iPhone remains one of the most popular interfaces people use to interact with Boxee. Plenty has happened since then. …
We all watched the Apple announcement. We walked away feeling strongly confident about the space it left for Boxee to compete. We have a different view of what users want in their living rooms. We are taking different paths to get there. The Boxee Box is going to be $100 more expensive than the Apple TV, but will give you the freedom to watch what you want.”

The new Apple TV features, especially the addition of AirPlay, really go to the heart of what Boxee offers: A simple way to access local and online content directly from the TV.

While lacking a direct link to the iTunes ecosystem, Boxee does have a layer of extensibility that the new Apple TV still doesn’t really seem to embrace.

The position that all three companies are taking is that Apple’s entry into their respective fields reaffirms their business plans. The secondary position is that the value proposition offered by each service is enough to differentiate them from Apple’s offerings.

This is true and false at the same time. While existing music networks and connected devices can surely still compete against Apple, make no mistake, this is a competition.

Apple is gunning not just for Boxee and Roku, but for Google TV, TiVo Premiere and video game consoles that tout the ability to stream content.

Mashable’s Ben Parr has already opined on the potential impact Ping will have on MySpace and other music networks like Last.fm and MOG should also be aware of the new competition.

Apple still has to sell itself to consumers in the living room, and the new Apple TV just makes that sales pitch more attractive. Where Apple doesn’t have to sell itself is with music. iTunes is the largest music store in the world and the go-to place for finding and buying music. Adding in social components to that is going to upset other sharing and discovery services.

This doesn’t mean that competing against Apple is going to be impossible, but music networks and connected device makers do need continue to keep an eye on Cupertino. Apple’s here to play.

What impact do you think Apple TV and Ping will have on its competitors? Let us know!

More About: apple, Apple TV, boxee, connected devices, itunes 10, Ping, rdio, roku

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As CEO Steve Jobs boasted at the company’s San Francisco event yesterday that Apple is activating 230,000 iOS devices per day, he also took the opportunity to accuse competitors of boosting their device activation numbers.

“We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers,” said Jobs, likely referring to the recent figures from Google, whose CEO, Eric Schmidt, claimed that 200,000 Android activations were made daily in August.

Google quickly responded to Jobs’s allegations. A Goole spokesperson told Fortune, “The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.”

So there you have it: According to Google, more than 200,000 Android device activations may be occurring every day. Who do you trust: Apple or Google?

More About: android, apple, Google, iOS, steve jobs

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This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Kembrel

Quick Pitch: A private store for students that can be accessed entirely through Facebook, from browsing to checkout.

Genius Idea: Launched by two students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, Kembrel is a private shopping community for just for college students. The site has partnered with a few well-known lifestyle brands to offer deep discounts on goods during a limited window of time.

To give you an idea of the specifics, most of these discounts range from 40% to 75% off the retail price of the item in question, and sales generally start at 9 p.m. EST and last for just five days.

The company’s goal is to help students discover new brands and obtain highly coveted products while saving a lot of money, possibly avoiding a starving student scenario or two. Of course, such a store also gives brands optimal exposure to an important demographic and helps them build long-term relationships with their customers through a combination of social e-commerce and community management.

Kembrel isn’t the first company to start using Facebook as an e-commerce platform. In fact, we wrote recently about Delta selling tickets via Facebook. Right now, Kembrel can be accessed through the main website or via its Facebook store. It’s also not the first students-only app (we covered one of those a few days ago) or the first limited-window-of-time sales app (Groupon, anyone?). Still, it’s a clever mashup of all these ideas, and it’s offering some killer deals.

We can imagine many a college student getting excited about an exclusive, half-off American Apparel sale or a back-to-school special on iPhone accessories. And we can imagine investors getting excited about a good-looking app built on top of a far-reaching platform that also has out-of-the-box revenue potential.

What do you think of Kembrel so far?

BizSpark 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.

More About: ecommerce, facebook, kembrel, Store

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