Favrd , the now-retired (creator-destroyed) aggregation site for Twitter "favorites," began as the irreverent offshoot of a community of influential designers and developers -- people like Merlin Mann ( @hotdogsladies ), John Gruber ( @gruber ), Jeffrey Zeldman ( @zeldman ), and Dean Cameron Allen ( @textism ), the site's creator. You don't need to know the lofty origins of Favrd, though; if anything, they're antithetical to the point. Favrd ran on a "no-webcock algorithm." ("Webcock" was Dean's term for shamelessly self-promoting "new media gurus.") Sponsor This guest post was written by Kim Gaskins, a writer for Latitude Research . In an interview earlier this year, web developer Rafael Torres ( @rafitorres ) remarked: "A common concern for all of [the creators] was the idea that the social web had been invaded by a certain class of individuals who were apparently only concerned with marketing themselves and their brands through fake social interactions." How Many Stars in the Sky? Infinite: and That's Too Many. Simply put, I think what happened to Favrd was that a new crop of users appeared who didn't know how to value the currency , and thus they inadvertently devalued it. They were arbitrarily plastering their stars around town to promote themselves, like "take-out menus hung on the doors of other restaurants." Dan Wineman ( @dwineman ), "The Favrd Situation" In this way, currency (devalued) only serves to commodify valuable content. Remiel ( @remiel ) makes some generative suggestions here to "inject scarcity back into the equation." What if Favstar instituted a new metric... ? "The result, ideally, is... a truly useful list of vetted Twitter content, reliably worth reading. In short: a great, alternative Twitter filter." "I hate when clever, elegant things leave the web." Jeffrey Zeldman to Dean Cameron Allen, commenting on "The Stars Look Down" Favrd: The Black Sheep of Bottom-Up PosterCommunities Cohesive communities like Favrd, grown organically without a pointed goal -- especially the communities grown around liberality of mind and well-placed puns -- have some people asking, " yes, but what's the point? " Therein lies the point. "I've met lots of people, collaborated creatively with a few and even had one stay on my couch during his trip across the country. All wonderful experiences." Jon Dascola , commenting on Zeldman's "The Stars Look Down" So What's Beside the Point? Professionally speaking, Avery Edison ( @aedison ) is an upcoming UK-based comedy writer who has her roots in the feedback and support of the Favrd community. You Look Nice Today ( @hotdogsladies , @lonelysandwich , and @scottsimpson ) is a free podcast "prepared by and for 'adults'" that now performs in 3space as well, for money . Interview with Nick Douglas ( @nick ), author of Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less : For Goodness' Sake... SmallCanBeBig is a charitable non-profit that harnesses the power of small, direct donations for families in need. Mark Nikolewski ( @mnik ) is lead designer and art director for the organization; from his personal experience in the community, he can trace back thousands of dollars in direct donations to SmallCanBeBig from Favrd members. He estimates that the community supplies about 20% of the organization's ( @smallcanbebig 's) retweets, without accounting for any secondary networking effects. Mike Monteiro ( @mike_FTW ) has been one of SmallCanBeBig's most outspoken supporters, incenting donations via Twitter in Favrd fashion: "SmallCanBeBig: Tell you what: you donate $50 and I will tweet a PERSONAL INSULT which you can RT to show your friends how cool you are." (Visit SmallCanBeBig.org directly to donate sans personal insult.) Josh Hopkins ( @thedayhascome ) began tweeting about the medical condition of his daughter (born January 2009) as a part of the Favrd community, which rose up with overwhelming support while Lucy underwent serious operations and prolonged hospital stays. ( Josh and his family will be participating in the March for Babies in 2010 to raise money on behalf of Lucy's name. If individuals would like to donate money to The March of Dimes, on behalf of Team Lucy Kate who is walking in the Indianapolis event, more information is available here .) "Keep starring the heavens, kids. #thankyoutextism" (via @pagecrusher ) A more comprehensive directory of projects from the Favrd community is available here . Discuss

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On Favrd, Twitter & Community: Why You Should Be Able to Count the Stars

"We live in public" isn't just the name of a film; it's an Internet truism. For the past ten years, more and more of us have been using blogging platforms to share the details of our personal and professional lives. With the advent of microblogging, the sharing has escalated to include the most intimate, immediate, and even mundane details of one's daily grind. When pressures abound, venting online is second nature; but oversharing can bear disastrous consequences. The cure? Penzu 's private-by-design, sharable-by-choice blogging software. Sponsor Unlike most modern CMSs (and actually somewhat reminiscent of dotcom-era systems such as Livejournal), Penzu focuses on personal journaling and privacy. The company, a small Canadian outfit which launched last summer, says its posts are private by default. An in spite of its focus on privacy, the system is hardly antisocial. Flickr photos can be imported, and each entry comes with an optional URL for sharing on other networks. The new Penzu Pro features, available for the relatively low price of $19 a year,are pretty useful, as well. With the free version, users can create, save, search and share journal entries. The paid version of the software allows users to also import entires from just about any kind of blog (in case oversharing has been a problem in your past) and export Penzu entries, as well as giving users a slew of customization options, offsite backups and military-grade 256-bit AES encryption for maximum data protection. And just in time for the holidays, Penzu Pro is giftable for the oversharer in your network. We gave Penzu a spin and were impressed by the interface and the entire concept of private blogging. The company has taken something old, given it a beautifully modern UI, added beneficial features and made a useful product that addresses a common problem. Certainly, WordPress, Blogger, and other CMSs allow for locked posts. But the idea of having a separate destination for one's innermost thoughts gives the end user a little more comfort to express himself freely. Give it a spin, and let us know in the comments how the experience feels to you. Discuss

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Is Oversharing a Problem? Try Penzu

Dyyno, which allows its users to stream and record live video from any application on their desktops, is launching a major upgrade of its service today. The company's service will now allow users to stream live and recorded video streams in full 1080p HD resolution. Dyyno has also dropped the price for personal accounts - which can stream HD video - to zero. These personal account support up to 100,000 concurrent viewers. Previously, these accounts started at $10 per month. Sponsor For the time being, Dyyno can only stream videos from Windows PCs. The company does offer a browser plugin for watching these videos on the Mac and Windows. The company's CEO Raj Jaswa told us that a Mac client is on the company's roadmap. We took a closer look at the service's features when the company launched in August. While the desktop client has evolved since then, the basic features remain the same. In our tests, the service worked just as advertised and the image quality of the 1080p streams was very high. It takes a decent broadband connection to work well, however - the HD video streams take up about Broadcast at 3Mbps. Dyyno supports up to 30 frames per second and encodes its videos in H.264. The company does not automatically scale the video streams down for users with slower connections, though for on-demand video, content owners can choose different bitrates for their videos. Running Dyyno's desktop client is very easy. After installing the application, you just have to drag the Dyyno logo from the client to any window on your computer and it will automatically start to stream this video on your personal Dyyno page. In addition to live streaming, users can also create a "WebTV" channels that plays videos at a set time. Requires a Plugin The fact that it takes a browser plugin to run the service could be a roadblock for some potential users, however. On the other hand, no other service that we are aware of offers free 1080p live streaming. Pricing As Dyyno's platform is based on a P2P architecture, it only makes sense for the company to offer the live streams for free. After all, the more users watch the stream, the easier it will be for Dyyno to deliver the video. The company does charge users who want to store more than 1GB of video for on-demand streaming on Dyyno's servers $10 per month. Dyyno does not charge for bandwidth. The P2P architecture doesn't lend itself for on-demand streaming, so Dyyno chose to charge for this aspect of its service. The company also offers business channels for $100 month, which include a total of 10 video channels and up to 100GB of storage. The company's high-end account, the Dyyno Broadcast station costs $1000 per month and allows users to store an archive of up to 1000GB of video and broadcast more than 100 concurrent video streams. Both the business and the broadcast accounts are stripped all Dyyno's branding. Dyyno plans to offer an ad revenue share model to companies that subscribe to these higher end accounts and who want to make use of the Dyyno's on-demand streaming solutions. Discuss

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Dyyno Launches Free 1080p Live Streaming Solution

Would you give a complete stranger your email address and date of birth? How about personal information about your friends? If results of a new study on Facebook user behavior is any indication, around half of us would answer "yes" to those questions, depending on how old we are. The study also shows that Facebook users are becoming more lax with protecting their personal data than they were three years ago. What do these results signify in light of recent concerns about user privacy on the world's largest social network? And now that some user data will be indexed by Google, will users have to adjust what information they share? Sponsor In the summer of 2007, Internet security company Sophos conducted a study showing how much (or little) users understood and protected the data the made available on Facebook. In this study, 200 friend requests were sent from a bogus account featuring a green plastic frog named Freddi Staur . The results were distressing. More than 40 percent of the Facebook users contacted responded to the fake account, and almost all of these users gave "Freddi" access to personal information. 72% of respondents divulged at least one email address 84% of respondents listed their full date of birth 87% of respondents provided details about their education or workplace 78% of respondents listed their current address or location 23% of respondents listed their current phone number 26% of respondents provided their IM screen name Moreover, the folks at Sophos were able to get access to users' photos of family and friends, information about likes/dislikes, hobbies, employer details and other personal facts. A company rep write at the time of the survey, "In addition, many users also disclosed the names of their spouses or partners, several included their complete résumés, while one user even divulged his mother's maiden name - information often requested by websites in order to retrieve account details." So, are users at the end of 2009 any less gullible than their 2007 counterparts? Have we learned to be less vulnerable to phishing schemes? This year, Sophos created two fake accounts - one for a cat and one for a plastic duck - and went after another 200 Facebook users, this time distinguishing between 20-somethings and middle-ages users. Here's a snapshot of the information each group revealed: Eight users friended the cat-themed fake account of their own accord, without having been contacted as part of the study; in so many words, these users pretty much volunteered to have their data phished. As Sophos noted, "Ten years ago, getting access to this sort of detail would probably have taken a con-artist or an identify thief several weeks, and have required the on-the-spot services of a private investigator." Apparently, in the 2.0 era, all you have to do is click to send a friend request, and the desire for online popularity and more "friends" makes a phisher's job easier than giving free candy to kids. Discuss

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User Data Easier Than Ever to Phish on Facebook, New Study Shows

Being one of the first social networking sites in existence certainly doesn't establish you as the best or most popular. For this reason, Friendster leaked a video outlining its look and product features. According to TechCrunch , the company is set to release the new product features tomorrow morning. If the below video was meant to get prospective users excited for a revitalized service, they could have approached it from a different angle. Below are the top four reasons Friendster's new messaging needs to change. Sponsor 4. It's You! Up Close and Personal : When you're trying to brand yourself as an alternative to "generic sites" you might want to come up with messaging that differs from that of a recent $100 million dollar campaign already launched by Yahoo. 3. Your Own Look, Your Own Style : In August, Microsoft was widely criticized for Photoshopping a man's head and subsequently changing his skin color. In this case, all of the models involved appear to be both racially homogenous and between the ages of 18-30-years-old. Ironically, I would be able to express myself with "[my] own look and [my] own style"; however, the visual message here is that those who do not fit this image would be misfits. 2. [You Can] Send Gifs : If you're going to show how your network is different from Facebook and MySpace, you should focus on product features that people care about - like mobile uploads, geo-locational applications, news feeds and anything from this decade. 1. Connecting Smiles : This tagline doesn't conjure images of a fun social network. It does however relate to the tragic fact that up to 1 in 50,000 babies are born as conjoined twins. The phenomenon happens when identical twins' bodies are fused in utero and the surgery to separate these poor children is often complex and life threatening. Discuss

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Friendster Relaunching: A Lesson in How Not to Brand

Wrapping up a six month-long challenge to mobile developers, Google has announced a string of winners of their second Android Developers Challenge (ADC). From games and social networking apps to productivity and privacy tools, the cream of the ADC 2 crop includes an app for just about every kind of mobile user - and just in time, as the Droid has recently become " the fastest-selling Android phone to date ." Take a peek at the innovative apps waiting in the wings for the lucky owners of Android-powered devices. Sponsor As Android adoption swells and trends suggest the OS might be the second most widely used mobile OS by 2010 , it's important that the app universe keeps pace with users. Google announced this challenge in May at their Google I/O developer conference and offered well over $1.5 million in cash prizes to the winning developers in 10 categories. The applications - some of which might remind you of already popular iPhone apps - should be available shortly to Android users. The overall ADC 2 winners are: SweetDreams , a revolutionary tool that will finally allow you to go to sleep without worrying about changing your phone settings in order to avoid unwelcome late night calls. You can even use those inactivity periods to save battery power as well. What the Doodle!? , a real-time online multiplayer game where one player tries to draw out a given phrase and others try to guess it. Features FFA and Team games, Global Highscores, Personal Face Doodles, integrated Voice Recognition and more. WaveSecure , a complete mobile security solution that protects your device, data and privacy. Track your phone's location and who is using it , lock down your phone remotely, back up all your data, wipe out your data remotely, and finally, restore your data. Winners in the education and reference category are: Plink Art , an app for identifying, discovering and sharing art. The Word Puzzle , a fun way to learn basic English words for preschool children. Celeste , an educational augmented reality app that displays the Sun, Moon, planets and their paths through the sky onto your camera view. The entertainment category winners are: A World of Photo ,a casual, globally multiplayer game inspired by Spin the Bottle. SongDNA , a widget that allows you to quickly look up detailed information about a song. Solo , an easy-to-play and feature-rich pocket guitar for your phone. Winners for the arcade/action game subcategory include: Speed Forge , in which heavy duty hover vehicles normally used for mining are now seen in illegal races organized in abondoned factories and dark Marsian alleys. Graviturn , a game that makes you tilt your phone to move the red circles out of the screen while keeping the green circles. Moto X Mayhem , an app that includes seven levels of motorbike action in a side scrolling bike game. Winners for the casual gaming category are: What the Doodle!? Totemo , a unique puzzle game with over 60 mind-soothing logic tasks. Mazeness , a rather simple game involving moving balls to their goals with help of barriers, teleports and holders. These are Google's lifestyle category winners: SweetDreams SpecTrek, an augmented reality ghost hunting game that doubles as a fitness app. FoxyRing , an app that analyzes the ambient noise and adjusts the ringer volume on your phone. Media category winners are: Buzz Deck , an app that gets all the web content you care about most, along with Twitter & Facebook updates. SPB TV , a highly usable IP-TV application optimized to run on mobile devices. FxCamera , which lets you take pictures with various effects. Here are the winning productivity tools: WaveSecure Hoccer , an application for gesture-based ad-hoc data exchange. Tasker , an app that lets users link any Task (action set) to the Contexts (application, time, day, location, event, widget press) where it should run. In social networking, the winners are: Ce:real , an app that displays geographically based, real-world trends, including photo stories paired with Twitter keywords. SocialMuse , which lets users find people with similar musical taste or just explore the world through music. SpotMessage , a communication tool using GPS. Send a message designating a spot with Google Maps then the message will be notified when the recipient arrives at the spot. For the travel category, Google name these top apps: Trip Journal , a trip tracking and sharing solution sending real-time updates from the places you are visiting. iNap: Arrival Alert , an application that allows traveling users to sleep (or work, or just zone out) then relies on GPS to alert them with an alarm when the destination is nearby. Car Locator , which navigates you back to your car should you ever have trouble finding it. Finally, here are three miscellaneous winners: Rhythm Guitar , which plays like a real 6-string, 5-fret guitar. Andrometer , and app that measures the approximate distance from you to an object that you can see using GPS, accelerometer and geomagnetic sensors. Calton Hill GPSCaddy , an app that allows golfers to quickly and easily map any golf course either out on the course using GPS or in the comfort of home using satellite imagery. Bonus Round: See our picks from last year's ADC !) Let us know in the comments what you think of this year's winners (too many iPhone app clones? too little augmented reality?) in the comments - and definitely tell us what you'd like to see Android developers tackle next! Discuss

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Google Names 30 Best Mobile Apps for Android

A new website aims to publicize the details surrounding the much-maligned iPhone application review process - Apple's secretive procedures that have been under heavy scrutiny this year, especially since the FCC's involvement regarding Apple's rejection of the Google Voice application. Notable iPhone developers have publically called out the company for this "broken" process and some have even announced their retirement from creating iPhone apps, including Facebook app developer, Joe Hewitt , based on philosophical differences with the perceived tyranny of the Apple gatekeepers. Sponsor On the recently launched site, App Rejections , iPhone developer turned blogger Adam Martin, has begun to document individual app rejections in an effort to help the development community understand what they can and cannot expect from the company's stringent, and sometimes seemingly arbitrary, vetting process for new apps. According to the site's About page , Martin writes that "it's now gone from 'easy' to 'tricky' to avoid getting your app rejected by Apple." And since Apple has refused to document or discuss the matter of application rejections, he was inspired to create this website as a place to collect all the known application rejections. The App Rejections site itself is in the format of a basic blog. There aren't catchy headlines, images, or accompanying snarky commentary in the individual posts as you would find elsewhere in the tech blogosphere - especially on TechCrunch where documenting high-profile app rejections has become somewhat of a pet project of blogger MJ Siegler. At the most, Adam may inject a few opinions of his own as to how certain things could be improved, but he clearly isn't on any sort of vendetta against the company. Instead, each post details point-blank exactly why a particular application was rejected, examining information about the APIs used or rules broken in each case. The site also documents when formerly rejected apps finally make it through to the App Store in posts titled "approved" or "overturned," the latter referring to apps whose developers started some sort of appeal process. Although the site is brand-new, with only two pages of posts so far, it could easily become an invaluable resource for iPhone developers confused by Apple's murky review process which can sometimes lead to apps sitting in limbo for months on end before any word from Apple is had. Developers looking to have their personal experience documented on the site are advised to contact Martin via his company's Twitter account, @redglassesapps . Discuss

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New Website Publicizes iPhone App Rejections