This week’s announcement of Skype’s acquisition of GroupMe, and the recent introduction of Facebook’s Beluga-based Messenger, are part of something much bigger than group text messaging: The landscape of personal online communication is changing. The very communication paradigms we’re accustomed to — email, text messaging, chat and wall posts — are starting to be blurred and redesigned. In the next generation of social media interaction, users will communicate online in ways that better mirror their organic interactions in real life. Welcome to the age of fluid personal communication.

In a thoughtful recent post Om said:

“…instead of getting bogged down by the old-fashioned notion of communication – phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages – [Google] needs to think about interactions…..To me, interactions are synchronous, are highly personal, are location-aware and allow the sharing of experiences, whether it’s photographs, video streams or simply smiley faces. Interactions are supposed to mimic the feeling of actually being there. Interactions are about enmeshing the virtual with the physical.”

I agree, but the concept of fluid communication goes deeper. Until now, personal electronic communication could be crudely divided into two types – active and passive. Email, chat and text messaging are the prototypical active forms. Facebook wall posts, tweets, and Google+ posts, are the prototypical passive ones. Until recently, these two types lived separate lives, but that’s changing, and with it are some of our basic assumptions about online communication. Here are some thoughts about the new challenges and how to deal with them.

Three issues combine to make the story interesting: groups, informational side effects, and the social contract inherent to social networks. They are all important, but the interaction among them is particularly interesting – and confusing.

Groups. If you think of the continuum between emailing a small group of people and posting to a newsgroup or mailing list, Facebook wall posts resemble the latter. But the recent introduction of Google+ Circles, and the renewed interest this has brought to the long-standing (if somewhat dormant) Facebook Lists, blurs the boundaries.  Is sharing a photo with my eight-member “Immediate Family” List on Facebook (or the corresponding Circle on Google+) much different than sending the group an email with that photo attached?  Experience suggests it’s not.

Informational side effects. Email has long recognized informational side effects — the distinction between To and Bcc is the best example of it.  When I address a message to Sally and Bill we’ve achieved common knowledge of the content:  we are all aware of the message.  When I send a message to Sally but Bcc Bill, something more complex happens: Sally and I achieve common knowledge of the content, and Bill and I achieve common knowledge of both the message content and the fact that Sally and I have common knowledge of it. There are other, more subtle informational side effects of To.  For starters, if Sally and Bill don’t know each other, then by emailing them both together I’ve made their existence common knowledge, and disclosed that I have a relationship with both. And obviously they now can communicate directly. I once had a banker who sent email to several of his clients using To, a gross privacy violation. The banker could have used Bcc in that instance, but in other cases that’s throwing away the baby with the bath water. For example, a company may need to send a message to its investors. It’s important that everyone know who all the investors are, but at the same time it may be inappropriate to reveal their email addresses.

Social contract. Careful control of who sees what is perhaps something of a corner case in email, and one can imagine various ways to deal with it; for example, in the company investor’s case, one could Bcc everyone, and includes just their names in the body of the message. But what is possibly a corner case in email becomes central in social media.

A social network is not merely a communication medium. It is first and foremost a place in which social contracts are established and maintained; and when you overlay a communication framework over such a social graph new things happen. The most noticeable complication arises when the social network requires permission to establish a social connection. For example, when I post on my wall, since Facebook adopts a version of email’s “reply-all,” my friends see each other’s posts. Is it appropriate for two of my friends who are not mutually connected to comment on each other’s comment?

So what does this all mean?

The lesson from this is that in the era of social networks we need to revisit communication conventions that previously served us well. In particular, we can’t take for granted the distinction between active and passive communication. Every developer of a new communication service should ask him/herself the following questions:

• When a group is created, are the group members aware of it in any way? If yes, what exact information do they get and who decides it?
• Is the communication style active, passive, or does it span the spectrum?
• What are possible responses to a group message? Reply? Reply-all?  Reply-only-to-other-people-who-have-also-replied? Reply-only-to-people-the-sender-is-connected-to?
• When a user communicates with a group, what information does each recipient have about the other recipients?
• Who can initiate communication with whom? In particular, when a group receives a message, can any group member now communicate freely with any other member?
• If I create a group and communicate with it, and the system permits the recipients to freely initiate new communications with the group, does it remain “my” group or have I now put it in the public domain?

Overlaying multicast communication on top of a social graph is tricky; you need to think about the informational side effects and to respect social contracts. This can get complicated, but the issues are real. To borrow from Einstein: Communication in social networks should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Yoav Shoham is a professor of computer science at Stanford University and co-founder of Katango. These issues have been the subject of much discussion at Katango, but this should not be viewed as describing Katango’s strategy or product offering; the goal is to have a conversation among all of us attempting to improve users’ digital social experience.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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From left: innobell CTO Daniel Shir, founder and CEO Shai Magzimof and developer Noam Modai

At precisely 20-years-and-four-months old,
Shai Magzimof is one of the hottest young entrepreneurs to emerge from Tel Aviv’s  Silicon Wadi this year.

He also happens to be on loan from the Israel Defense Force – free to wander the civilian tech world until further notice.

Magzimof is the creator of Innobell, a mobile application that makes phone calls and instant messages more interactive through a platform of dashboard add ons. The app allows users to easily play games with eachother, watch videos, send money through Paypal, cruise Facebook profiles and share all sorts of other media while chatting over the phone or IM.  Currently available in beta on Android, Innobell is slated for release on the iPhone this summer. It’s already gaining traction.

This week, Magzimof was in town to demo his app for American venture capitalists and industry giants during the California Israel Chamber of Commerce’s three day Israel Mobile tour in the Silicon Valley.  Not old enough to order a beer during the industry cocktail parties he attended, he was still among the most popular founders. In fact, while most of his fellow start up participants boarded a plane home on Friday, Magzimof is here for another week. He’s got a full schedule of get togethers with venture capitalists interested in adding to the 0,000 angel investment Innobell raised. He will also be meetings with a certain brand name tech company looking to discuss a possible talent acquisition.

But Magzimof doesn’t have all the time in the world to ponder a deal.

Last summer, the Israeli military granted him year-long deferment from mandatory service to pursue his start up. Now, he says the country is willing to give him another two years to make it big– if he can show results. He either needs to make a deal in the United States, or trade the techie uniform of jeans and ironic-slogan t-shirts for army fatigues and desert wear.

He knows what he’d prefer at the moment.

“The military knows that if I stay here for two more years and work with amazing companies, it’s all the better for them in the end because I’ll be even more experienced,” Magzimof says. “Of course, they want to see that I’m doing something here, and investors want to see that I have a deferment from the army so they know I will be around” he said.

“Basically, someone is going to get a very good deal off me right now because I don’t have time to sit and wait,” he said, laughing. “But it should all work out, I’m confident.”

This isn’t the first time military service has put him in a bit of a jam. At 19, he was a few months into Y Combinator’s winter 2010 incubator program when the phone rang. It was the Iraeli army, and the message was clear. He needed to get back in town for interviews or he could kiss his place in a coveted central intelligence unit goodbye.

What was a nice Jewish boy to do?”This is the unit want to to be in, it’s where all the computer programmers and web developers and hackers get to go, my peole. I want to do it badly,” he said.

So he flew home early and started a months-long testing process. Meanwhile, his former military prep school roommate and Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross went on to form personal data search engine Greplin.

“And you probably know the rest,” he said.

Still, Magzimof got his coveted place in the unit of his choice. And while he had time to kill, he also got back to work founding Innobell. By the time the ink on his intelligence acceptance letter had dried, he’d raised 0,000 in seed funding for his new startup. He know has a team of six developers working for the company.

Military service holds a vaulted position in Israeli’s entrepreneurial culture. Many start up founders attribute their success to those post-adolescent years spent following orders and memorizing technical manuals in specialized army units. Magzimof is as patriotic as the next Israeli and says he really wants to do his military service. He just wants to get his business under control first. But two years from now, who knows? A 22-year-old Magzimof might just be using his own app to help run a tech empire from his army bunk.

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A few years ago, Jeff Jarvis, a good friend of mine, published a book called What Would Google Do? When he wrote that book, Google had an aura of invincibility. Fast forward to today: Thanks to Facebook, it doesn’t seem so invincible. The new social web has passed it by. So, the question today is: What should Google do?

I’ve always maintained Google has to play to its strengths – that is, tap into its DNA of being an engineering-driven culture that can leverage its immense infrastructure. It also needs to leverage its existing assets even more, instead of chasing rainbows. In other words, it needs to look at Android and see if it can build a layer of services that get to the very essence of social experience: communication.

However, instead of getting bogged down by the old-fashioned notion of communication – phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages – it needs to think about interactions. In other words, Google needs to think of a world beyond Google Talk, Google Chat and Google Voice.

To me, interactions are synchronous, are highly personal, are location-aware and allow the sharing of experiences, whether it’s photographs, video streams or simply smiley faces. Interactions are supposed to mimic the feeling of actually being there. Interactions are about enmeshing the virtual with the physical.

In a post earlier, I outlined that with the introduction of its unified Inbox, the constantly changing Facebook had shifted its core value proposition from being a plain vanilla social network to a communication company. Here’s a relevant bit from that post.

Facebook imagined email only as a subset of what is in reality communication. SMS, Chat, Facebook messages, status updates and email is how Zuckerberg sees the world. With the address book under its control, Facebook is now looking to become the “interaction hub” of our post-broadband, always-on lives. Having trained nearly 350 million people to use its stream-based, simple inbox, Facebook has reinvented the “communication” experience. …. Facebook as a service is amazingly effective when it focuses all its attention on what is the second order of friends – people you would like to stay in touch with, but just don’t have enough bandwidth (time) to stay in touch with. Those who matter to you the most are infinitely intimate, and as a result you communicate with them via SMS, IM Chat and voice. So far, this intimate communication has eluded Facebook. The launch of the new social inbox is a first step by Facebook to get a grip on this real world intimacy.

In 2007, I had argued that the real social network in our lives was the address book on our mobile phone. Google has access to real-world intimacy – the mobile phone address book – thanks to Android OS. All it has to do is use that as a lever to facilitate interactions.

In order to understand Google’s interaction-driven social future, one doesn’t have to look far: no further than Apple’s iTunes app store.  As you know, I have switched from BlackBerry to the iPhone, and as a result, I’ve been looking for a BBM replacement, and have been playing around with a score of apps.

In the process of searching for this app, I came across an app called Beluga, which essentially allows me to connect to my friends. And then I can create Pods (essentially Groups) with one or more of my friends. Sort of like what I did on BBM. Except, there’s more to Beluga.

It taps into my social graph (Facebook); it leverages my location, and it allows me to share photos as part of the messaging process. It’s a beautifully designed application that’s very inviting – and the experience is less communication, more interaction.

What’s beautiful about Beluga is it’s as personal and private as you want it to be. It’s just ironic that Beluga was co-founded by three Google engineers — Ben Davenport, Lucy Zhang and Jonathan Perlow — and if you see their bios, it is hardly a surprise that they ended up with an interaction-centric product like Beluga.

Yesterday, I was introduced to a new app called Yobongo, and it comes from a San Francisco startup co-founded by alumni of Justin.tv. It’s a good-looking application that leverages your location, allowing you to find people around you and to chat with them. It is at the extreme opposite of Beluga: It’s open, and you can chat with anyone. It is very real-time in nature. Of course, there are other apps like Yobongo: MessageParty, for example!

What’s common between these two apps is their ability for synchronous messaging. This messaging can, in turn, become the under-pinning of what I earlier called interactions.

Ability to interact on an ongoing basis anywhere, any time and sharing everything, from moments to emotions – is what social is all about. From my vantage point, this is what Google should focus on. If not — you know it very well — Facebook will.

App of the Day:

Beluga is a well-designed and simple-to-use mobile app that allows you to create group-based conversations. The app, which works on iOS and Android phones, allows you to sign up via Facebook and creates BlackBerry Messenger-style groups for synchronous messaging with friends. Beluga gives you the option to share your location and photos with your groups. You can invite your contacts via text message or emails. It’s worth downloading and using for private group communications.

What to read on the web:

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• Roger Dooley: Choice Fatigue

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GigaOMTech

So, you think, you are ready for creation of your computer. Well I congratulate you. Why are you so long? It is not difficult at all, but there are some things which you should know. Allow me to help you with creation of computers from a naked bone.

There are some questions you should wonder when creating your own computer. The first and most important question which you should wonder:

What do you wish the computer to do finally? You want that the computer which will be allowed your children makes the basic functions of a word-processor for performance of home works and Internet surfing for researches and an exchange of instant messages for message transfer. You can as well, want, the computer for processing of extensive projects of editing of video or, maybe, you are in serious games of the computer. Business is in, answering this question, that you can begin particularly on what part is the most full to satisfy requirements of your project. It will answer also the following question which you should set to yourselves.

Do you need to construct high or low end computer? If the computer is necessary for you to make the basic functions of calculation, I recommend to you to buy a part that is directed on creation of Low-End computer. You can receive the Two-core processor (CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT) instead of Quad-Core. It is not required from you more memory. Good 1GB will be more than enough. Following these two examples you have already kept for yourself more than hundred dollars. On the other hand, in a building of class High-End of the game computer, you want not only the power, but also beauty. Instead of simple case of the computer, you can buy a case from Plexiglas siding to show your interiors.

Great, it is to care. Now I will answer a question that in any moment of your thought process can be entered in a kind of computer creation. Most likely, do not you know where to buy spare parts for the computer on? I offer, if you have computer Super Store in your area, buying your components on the Internet. It is your best choice in search of various variants with big prices. I have collected extensive enough list of computer parts and electronic Internet shops which offer big prices on http://pcbuildersdelight.synthasite.com.

Well, you have found out what you want, what your computer should do, what type for you needs to be constructed and where it is possible to buy components. You are on the right track to creation of your computer. Now you need to know what to buy. This step occupies a few researches if you plan to get each part separately. One of alternatives and excellent I could add for beginning builders to buy a naked bone system. It will occupy at random from compatibility parts: => Http://pcbuildersdelight.synthasite.com

Do you feel like too much is flooded upon you when it about choosing computer hardware? This is normal to feel like this, because the market is really flooded with all sorts of computer hardware offers.

Be wise, build your own point of view. This web site with computer hardware advice will assist you to understand this market better and you can do a smart choice.

Today we live in the world where information makes life easier.

That is why if you are properly armed with the information in your topic you can be sure that you will in any case find the way out from any bad situation. So, please make sure to visit this blog on a regular basis or – the least time consuming way of doing it – sign up to its RSS. In such an easy way you will have a direct shortcut to the freshest informational updates here. Blogs can be helpful, you just need to understand how to use them.

Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Security 2010 9.0.0.463 CF1

There many anti-virus technologies recognized all over the world which protect your computer from such modern information threats, as:
- viruses, Trojan programs, spywares, advertising programs, etc.
- new quickly extending and unknown threats

Recently the first critical edition has been produced for 2010 ruler of production of Kaspersky, number of assemblage is 463. This assemblage includes corrections of a patch “a”, and also other important additions, including correct work of auto-updating, additions with memory leak, rare falling of the program and others. Such innovations as an IM-antivirus which checks messages from exchange programs instant messages on presence of the harmful objects, the new module of check of the references, the new convenient and pleasant interface have appeared in 2010 version of the program. Kaspersky Internet Security, except the functions which have been set above, gives us such innovations, as the control of programs (works together with modules of the network screen and proactive protection), possibility to start suspicious files in safe circle of Kaspersky and many other innovations.

The basic possibilities of the program:
- Protection of file system of the computer
- E-mail protection
- Web traffic protection
- The network screen
- Proactive protection
- Protection against network attacks
- An Anti-spam
- An Anti-banner
- The parental control
- Automatic and manual updating of bases
- Automatic and manual check on viruses
- Work with the appendix from a command line

New possibilities:
- IM-Antivirus for safe work with the majority of programs of an instant exchange of messages
- The module of check of references for check of all references on page about suspicious and fishing sites
- The access control on phishing web sites and protection against fishing-attacks
- The new tool for search threats
- The new component” the Control of programs “is included
- The mechanism of start of foreign programs in the protected virtual environment – the Safe environment is realized
- The new interface of the program.

Innovations in the given version of the program:
- Changes in the memory leak
- Changes in the driver kl1 – BSOD in kimul
- Change App Info for the Chinese localization
- Changes in a file balloon.html for the Spanish localization
- Changes in a file bl.ppl – lag of automatic updating at the included game profile.
- Rare falling of a product
- Auto updating works now correctly
- Other corrections

Kaspersky’s antivirus 2010 is a very universal mean of protection of the information. Complex protection is provided on all channels of receiving and an informative transfer.

Flexible adjustment of any component allows adapt Kaspersky’s Antivirus to any needs of the concrete user. Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 provides not only anti-virus protection, but also protection against any spam and network attacks, such as spyware and other unwanted programs. Also program components allow protect the computer from unknown threats and Internet swindle, to control access of users of the computer to the Internet.

If you need to get a nice remove spyware infection or any helpful information about the topic of spyware blockers, please visit the hyperlinked site.

And it is very important that you follow some general tips – today the Internet technologies give you a really unique chance to choose what you need for the best price on the market. Strange, but most of the people don’t use this chance. In real practice it means that you should use all the tools of today to get any info that you need.

Search Google or other search engines. Visit social networks and have a look on the accounts that are relevant to your topic. Go to the niche forums and participate in the online discussion. All this will help you to create a true vision of this market. Thus, giving you a real chance to make a smart and nicely balanced decision.

P.S. And also sign up to the RSS feed on this blog, because we will do the best to keep updating this blog with new publications about the market of spyware blockers and any changes on it.

The development of the written alphabet is one of humanity’s greatest triumphs. Although it’s difficult to nail down when the first true alphabet was created, experts can agree that by the 15th century B.C.E. many cultures in the Middle East had shifted from primarily logographic forms of written communication to much more open-ended, phonogram-based texts. But that flexibility came at the cost of concision. Where once the word “bird” required only a single symbol, it now takes four graphemes (basic units of written language) to communicate the same idea.

It’s no surprise, then, that in the age of Twitter and text messaging, when brevity is king, that pictographs are making a comeback. Most commonly this can be seen in the form of emoticons in instant messages, and more extensively, as emoji in Japan. Kai Staats, a Colorado business man, apparently sees an opening in the market for another such pictographic language and has created iConji. Available as both a free Web app and a $0.99 iPhone download, iConji has a library of almost 1,200 symbols that represent not individual speech sounds or syllables, but full words similar to the hieroglyphs commonly associated with ancient Egypt.

Continue reading iConji Resurrects Pictographs for the Cell Phone Era

Filed under: Cell Phones, iPhone, Web

iConji Resurrects Pictographs for the Cell Phone Era originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 26 May 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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