Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Is Facebook the Most Popular Social Bookmarking Service on the Web?

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/362092101/is_facebook_the_most_popular_social_bookmarking.php

ShareThis reports that it is now.

How do website readers prefer to share stories they find with friends? According to the company behind the widely used sharing widget ShareThis, after emailing a link, the most popular method of sharing is now Facebook. The numbers are interesting - but there are also some big caveats to keep in mind.

The Numbers

In our enthusiasm for Web 2.0 style tools, many blog publishers may forget just how popular sharing by email is. It's clearly the favorite method. Email sharing does tend to be one to one however, having items shared on Digg or Facebook has the potential to reach many, many more people.

The big surprise here, though, is that Facebook and MySpace have emerged as hugely popular ways to share items from off-site. Have they found greater mainstream success in the relatively short time these sites have supported item sharing than dedicated social bookmarking sites that have in the years they have been online? It appears that may be the case.

We found these numbers via Amit Agarwal's blog, which is always a great place to discover new things about the web.

Why This is Important

When publishers add the ShareThis system to their websites, they can choose which services to include buttons for. It's an important detail to take into consideration and knowing which services are most popular can help make this decision. Here at RWW we don't use ShareThis, we use another service called AddThis. Looking at the numbers from ShareThis, though, would lead us to believe that sharing by email needs to be added and sharing by Facebook needs to be given higher billing in our widget. Other sites might make other decisions based on this data. GigaOm, for example, doesn't offer sharing by Facebook at all - something our friend Om might want to change.

Caveats

A few things to take into consideration, however, include the following:

Your site's audience may vary. Different communities around different content topics probably have different trends in the sharing tools they use. We assume, for example, that there aren't a lot of people sharing ReadWriteWeb stories on MySpace - but maybe we're wrong!
Some of these services use bookmarklets. These numbers aren't for all sharing, just sharing that goes on through the ShareThis widget. Delicious users, for example, don't necessarily think of what they are doing as sharing (it's often bookmarking for personal use) and that service has its own bookmarklet.

None the less, the take away here for us is this: email, Facebook and MySpace are very popular ways for people to share things online. Publishers neglect them at our own risk.

High-End Retailers Forced Into Heavy Pre-Christmas Sales

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AdvertisingAge/LatestNews/~3/OPm_OEKt2xw/article.php

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Wracked by recession, high-end brand retail chains have been forced to offer some of the steepest pre-Christmas discounts they've ever had to suffer. Ad Age retail reporter Natalie Zmuda and Brand Experience Lab chief David Polinchock take a tour of New York's swankiest Fifth Avenue stores. And what they find portends badly for the future of high-end retailing.

Google Docs Gadget Offers Drag-and-Drop Uploading [Google Docs]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/qV4LLBdR8jM/google-docs-gadget-offers-drag+and+drop-uploading

Google releases a desktop gadget for Google Docs that lets you drag and drop spreadsheets, presentation, and word processing files onto it to upload it to your account.

You'll need to be running Google Desktop to get the gadget (available for Windows and Linux only), which lists all your account's documents for quick access to your files. Along with the recently-launched Gmail gadget, this one's making Google Desktop gadgets worth another look.

Access Google Docs from your Desktop [Official Google Docs Blog via Mashable]

GMDesk Puts Multiple Google Apps in One Window [Featured Download]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/zi5-s_1XlF0/gmdesk-puts-multiple-google-apps-in-one-window

Windows/Mac/Linux (Adobe AIR): GMDesk is a single-window frame that can hot-switch between Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other G-apps, but it could use a few tweaks to make it truly convenient.

The whole idea of apps like GMDesk is to get your web-based productivity tools onto your desktop, without the need for a browser, as with Mozilla's Prism, which we've explained in terms of distraction-free webapps. GMDesk does put all of the majorly helpful Google apps into a single window shell, lets you switch between them hotkeys (Ctrl+1 for Gmail, Ctrl+2 for Calendar, etc.), and switch to domain-hosted Google Apps versions of those webapps instead, which alone might make GMDesk worth it for anyone working both a personal and work-related Gmail account.

But GMDesk, last updated in June, lacks for customization options. You can't, as far as I can tell, change the hotkey switches. More frustrating, though, is the inability to change the font and text sizes on your apps. Google Calendar and Reader start off in decent sizes, but most serious users are going to get frustrated with Gmail and Docs pretty quickly, unless they're using their system's built-in magnification tools, and then that's kind of a pain. Maps has its own zooming capabilities, so that's pretty much a wash, and Picasa Web Albums kinds of sticks out for not being an everyday-use tool.

Still, if you're a Google app fiend and would like to keep them separated from your main browser window, GMDesk might be a step up. It's a free download, requires the Adobe AIR platform to run.

GMDesk [Robert Nyman via Online Tech Tips]

Bypass Network Blocks with Remote Desktop [Tip Testers]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/VPAp6sTanxg/bypass-network-blocks-with-remote-desktop

Reader Bryan uses remote desktop to bypass network blocks at his work sites to get to Gmail and write his blog. Bryan writes:

In a world of virtual communication, having personal email, Twitter, and access to blogs, etc is critical and necessary for many of us. Therefore, it becomes a nuisance when our employers block us from the sites that we love and hold so close to our virtual-loving-hearts. Many of my client's networks do not allow me to access my non-work related email (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.), Twitter, and Blogger. Google Reader is also blocked at several.

For this reason, I have set up a Remote Desktop connection on my home computer which I use as a proxy-ish means to access my Gmail and other sites from these clients. I use my Vista sidebar Remote Desktop connection gadget to click and log in to my home computer from my work laptop and have access to all that I need in a little minimize-able window on my desktop. I recommend this for anyone who has that tight network administrator who has blocked all your favorite sites.

Check out a screenshot of Bryan's setup above. He gives us a few links on how to set this up on your own: