Forget summer and swimsuit season; any time is a good time to get in shape. And for Android users, these apps will make that process a little faster, easier and more fun.

Last year, we told you about a few good Android apps to get your lazy butt in gear. But given the rapid evolution of the Android Market, the Android OS and the capabilities and variety of Android hardware, we thought that list needed a little update.

Here are some of the best Android apps for improving your health and fitness, both in terms of diet and exercise. Better still, some of them incorporate games and music to make your workout that much more fun.

In the comments, let us know what Android apps you’re currently using to keep tabs on your health and physical fitness.

Backpacker GPS Trails

Time to get outside, O nerdy one! Backpacker GPS Trails can help you find and explore awesome trails that will improve your health, broaden your horizons, and give you something cool to do with that 8MP camera of yours.

Nike BOOM

If music is your ideal motivator, try Nike BOOM. This app syncs your music to your workouts and throws in some audio-visual motivation from pro coaches and athletes along the way. You got this!

Instant Heart Rate Pro

For tracking just how much fat your body is burning, we suggest an app like Instant Heart Rate. It shows your heart rate measurements, a real-time PPG graph and your heart-rate history.

BMI Calculator

This free BMI Calculator will give you key information for setting or optimizing your fitness goals. And it should work for all but the most muscular of bodies.

Pocket Yoga

If your day could use some deep breathing and flexibility, try Pocket Yoga, which packs 145 poses in the palm of your hand. You can choose from three different practices, difficulty levels and durations for a total of 27 sessions. Namaste!

CrossFit Travel

If you’re anything like us, you spend some time on the road for work and/or pleasure. Time on the road, however, means time for you to forget about your workout. CrossFit Travel comes to the rescue with an impressive list of exercises that can be done in a hotel room or other small space.

Squats

This one’s for the ladies, and the name says it all. If toning your backside is tantamount to holiness, you’ll want to check out Squats. The app will help you reach your goals of a hundred or more squats in a row, and the enviable posterior that comes with such an accomplishment.

Calorie Counter

MyFitnessPal offers this Calorie Counter for keeping track of your nutrition — an important part of any health regime. This groovy app also comes with a barcode scanner, so you can easily find out exactly what nutrients and no-nos are hiding in pre-packaged foods.

JEFIT Pro

Here’s a bodybuilding app for the muscle-bound. JEFIT Pro is a highly-rated app to help you track your progress, time your workouts, and beat your own records, all without the hassle of pen or paper.

SpecTrek

Fitness should be fun, and SpecTrek is the app that proves it. This AR game gets you out and moving around in the real world, hunting “ghosts” using your camera, GPS, and your own quickly-moving feet.

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Interested in more Android resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.

The Dev-Team has added another update to their blog post about the ultrasn0w unlock for iOS 4.2.1. The update talks about an issue with retaining GPS when unlocking iPhones with 06.15.00 baseband. It seems that some people on 06.15.00 are losing their GPS functionality when they unlock their device. The Dev-Team does not currently have a fix for this problem and says that, even though the problem does not occur for everyone, you should just assume you will lose GPS capabilities when ulocking 06.15.00. However, they are working on a fix for the problem. Check out the full details below.

Update #5: Unlockers have been reporting mixed results about GPS functionality at 06.15.00. Until we can track down what differentiates those who retain GPS vs. those who lose it, be conservative and assume you’ll lose GPS at 06.15.00. As we work on finding the cause (and possibly a fix), please report your personal findings in our comments section. (Update: early indications are that while 06.15.00 is capable of GPS, it will require some further hacks. But please still be conservative and assume you will lose GPS at 06.15, in case the hacks don’t work).

For much of the world, the beginning of fall means that warm, comfortable hiking weather is coming to an end. In other words, it’s time to start saving up fresh air for a winter of avoiding the outdoors.

There are people who consider their outdoor excursions a refreshing escape from technology. And then there are iPhone users, who consider the outdoors yet another perfect venue to show off their mobile tech.

If you’re with us, here are 12 great hiking apps to download before you hit the trail.

---

1. AccuTerra

---

This map comes with GPS coordinates and doesn’t need to be folded. Download your neck of the woods for $1.99 or get unlimited access to all maps for $4.99. The app tracks your trail as you hike, allowing you to place markers at significant points along the way and review your hike duration, distance, pace, and elevation gain at any point. All maps are stored in your phone’s memory, so no reception is no problem.

---

2. Star Walk

---

Scroll through a virtual copy of the sky so that you can better appreciate the real one. Star Walk maps the sky from your viewpoint. If you’re facing south, for instance, you can find the map for the constellations and planets in front of you by scrolling to the south arrow on the Star Walk map. Clicking on stars provides coordinates and more information. It’s an easy way to start learning about astronomy for $2.99.

A night mode tints the screen red and makes it easier to read on an otherwise jarringly bright screen in the dark.

---

3. Scats and Tracks

---

Some people yell, “Hey, I found a footprint!” You can be the person who yells, “Hey, I found an eastern chipmunk footprint … or maybe it’s an eastern gray squirrel!” Scats and Tracks provides everything you need to decode what animals leave behind on the trail. It includes illustrations of all footprints, animals, and yes … scat types. The backyard version is free. Guides to specific regions cost $3.99.

---

4. Elevation Pro

---

This $0.99 app is pretty simple. It tells you what your current elevation is. Of course it’s an essential component of any decent bragging tales you plan to tell after your hike. Elevation includes two different calculations. One is the ground elevation using USGS data at your current location. The other is a calculation using the GPS on your phone.

There’s also a tweet button, so you don’t need to waste any time with that bragging.

---

5. Park Maps

---

Imagine that you drove to every notable U.S. State Park and picked up a map at the entrance. And then you carried all of those maps around with you wherever you went. This app would be the paperless version of that. No bells or whistles, just every hiking map you need for $.99.

---

6. Army Survival

---

There is always a chance that you will become hopelessly and desperately lost for days. If you have the Army Survival Guide on your phone (and a bit of battery life left), you could potentially avoid the embarrassment of perishing in the wilderness alone.

More likely, you’ll find the $1.99 guide to be appropriate entertainment and conversation kindling.

---

7. Coleman Lantern

---

This free lantern is shameless advertising, but it’s also pretty cool. Choose from a selection of classic and modern-style lanterns and adjust the light for your needs. At full blast, the lantern throws out a decent amount of light. Like other flashlight-type apps, it does use a lot of battery and is probably best used as an entertaining addition to your primary light source.

---

8. iBird

---

Bird guidebooks are probably most useful when taken into the woods, but its hard to justify carrying around a huge tome when you plan to walk all day. The iBird guides are just as good as hardcovers, but much lighter.

iBird apps include detailed bird portraits, range maps, taxonomies, key factors for identification, and song and call recordings from the Macaulay Library at the Lab of Ornithology. Fifteen common birds of North America are free, but more extensive guides by region cost $9.99. The true bird fanatic can opt for the $29.99 pro version, which has info on more than 900 birds.

---

9. Audubon Trees

---

Conservation organization The National Audubon Society knows its trees. And you can too, with its tree reference app. Browse trees by family (like Maple or Beech) or by name. If you’re not sure what kind of tree you’re looking at, there’s also a quick guide that helps you identify the tree based on its shape or leaves. GPS allows you to plot your sightings, and you can use the app to file your tree photos (or enjoy the 2,000 color photographs included in the app). At $9.99, this is probably an app reserved for avid tree enthusiasts.

---

10. Butterfly Collection

---

This $1.99 app is as beautiful as it is useful. An elegant index of butterflies fills the home screen. Scroll for more index pages or tap the butterfly that you want to identify. You’ll get an animated close up of the illustrated butterfly and learn its name.

---

11. Wild Mushrooms of North America and Europe

---

When you spot something on the trail that looks like the tasty (but expensive!) Morel from last weekend’s farmer’s market, it can be tempting to snag it for your dinner. But amateur mushroom hunting can be a dangerous sport.

So dangerous, in fact, that the user agreement for this app guide to mushrooms includes an “important poisoning disclaimer.” In other words, it can’t hurt to double-check.

Roger Phillip’s guide includes a searchable database of mushrooms with photos and important details like each fungus’s location, normal size, and edibility. You can also locate the unknown mushrooms you encounter with a visual key or filtered search. The lite version is free, but considering the possible consequences of eating an unknown mushroom, it might be worth springing for the $1.99 full version, which includes more listings.

---

12. Chirp! USA Lite

---

Tune in to bird songs by training yourself with this free app. Select your region to see the birds that are commonly heard there. You can sort the birds by name, how commonly they are seen, or their song style and listen to each bird’s unique tweets. The app also provides a picture of each bird to make spotting nearby tweeters easier.

Once you’re learned the calls in your area, you can test your knowledge in a challenge that asks you to match each song with the appropriate bird.

---

More Mobile Resources from Mashable:

---

– 8 Free BlackBerry Games Worth Downloading
– Why Smartphone Adoption May Not Be as Big as You Think
– 10 iPhone Apps to Get You Back to School
– Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch
– How Mobile is Affecting the Way We E-Mail

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Saturated

For much of the world, the beginning of fall means that warm, comfortable hiking weather is coming to an end. In other words, it’s time to start saving up fresh air for a winter of avoiding the outdoors.

There are people who consider their outdoor excursions a refreshing escape from technology. And then there are iPhone users, who consider the outdoors yet another perfect venue to show off their mobile tech.

If you’re with us, here are 12 great hiking apps to download before you hit the trail.

---

1. AccuTerra

---

This map comes with GPS coordinates and doesn’t need to be folded. Download your neck of the woods for $1.99 or get unlimited access to all maps for $4.99. The app tracks your trail as you hike, allowing you to place markers at significant points along the way and review your hike duration, distance, pace, and elevation gain at any point. All maps are stored in your phone’s memory, so no reception is no problem.

---

2. Star Walk

---

Scroll through a virtual copy of the sky so that you can better appreciate the real one. Star Walk maps the sky from your viewpoint. If you’re facing south, for instance, you can find the map for the constellations and planets in front of you by scrolling to the south arrow on the Star Walk map. Clicking on stars provides coordinates and more information. It’s an easy way to start learning about astronomy for $2.99.

A night mode tints the screen red and makes it easier to read on an otherwise jarringly bright screen in the dark.

---

3. Scats and Tracks

---

Some people yell, “Hey, I found a footprint!” You can be the person who yells, “Hey, I found an eastern chipmunk footprint … or maybe it’s an eastern gray squirrel!” Scats and Tracks provides everything you need to decode what animals leave behind on the trail. It includes illustrations of all footprints, animals, and yes … scat types. The backyard version is free. Guides to specific regions cost $3.99.

---

4. Elevation Pro

---

This $0.99 app is pretty simple. It tells you what your current elevation is. Of course it’s an essential component of any decent bragging tales you plan to tell after your hike. Elevation includes two different calculations. One is the ground elevation using USGS data at your current location. The other is a calculation using the GPS on your phone.

There’s also a tweet button, so you don’t need to waste any time with that bragging.

---

5. Park Maps

---

Imagine that you drove to every notable U.S. State Park and picked up a map at the entrance. And then you carried all of those maps around with you wherever you went. This app would be the paperless version of that. No bells or whistles, just every hiking map you need for $.99.

---

6. Army Survival

---

There is always a chance that you will become hopelessly and desperately lost for days. If you have the Army Survival Guide on your phone (and a bit of battery life left), you could potentially avoid the embarrassment of perishing in the wilderness alone.

More likely, you’ll find the $1.99 guide to be appropriate entertainment and conversation kindling.

---

7. Coleman Lantern

---

This free lantern is shameless advertising, but it’s also pretty cool. Choose from a selection of classic and modern-style lanterns and adjust the light for your needs. At full blast, the lantern throws out a decent amount of light. Like other flashlight-type apps, it does use a lot of battery and is probably best used as an entertaining addition to your primary light source.

---

8. iBird

---

Bird guidebooks are probably most useful when taken into the woods, but its hard to justify carrying around a huge tome when you plan to walk all day. The iBird guides are just as good as hardcovers, but much lighter.

iBird apps include detailed bird portraits, range maps, taxonomies, key factors for identification, and song and call recordings from the Macaulay Library at the Lab of Ornithology. Fifteen common birds of North America are free, but more extensive guides by region cost $9.99. The true bird fanatic can opt for the $29.99 pro version, which has info on more than 900 birds.

---

9. Audubon Trees

---

Conservation organization The National Audubon Society knows its trees. And you can too, with its tree reference app. Browse trees by family (like Maple or Beech) or by name. If you’re not sure what kind of tree you’re looking at, there’s also a quick guide that helps you identify the tree based on its shape or leaves. GPS allows you to plot your sightings, and you can use the app to file your tree photos (or enjoy the 2,000 color photographs included in the app). At $9.99, this is probably an app reserved for avid tree enthusiasts.

---

10. Butterfly Collection

---

This $1.99 app is as beautiful as it is useful. An elegant index of butterflies fills the home screen. Scroll for more index pages or tap the butterfly that you want to identify. You’ll get an animated close up of the illustrated butterfly and learn its name.

---

11. Wild Mushrooms of North America and Europe

---

When you spot something on the trail that looks like the tasty (but expensive!) Morel from last weekend’s farmer’s market, it can be tempting to snag it for your dinner. But amateur mushroom hunting can be a dangerous sport.

So dangerous, in fact, that the user agreement for this app guide to mushrooms includes an “important poisoning disclaimer.” In other words, it can’t hurt to double-check.

Roger Phillip’s guide includes a searchable database of mushrooms with photos and important details like each fungus’s location, normal size, and edibility. You can also locate the unknown mushrooms you encounter with a visual key or filtered search. The lite version is free, but considering the possible consequences of eating an unknown mushroom, it might be worth springing for the $1.99 full version, which includes more listings.

---

12. Chirp! USA Lite

---

Tune in to bird songs by training yourself with this free app. Select your region to see the birds that are commonly heard there. You can sort the birds by name, how commonly they are seen, or their song style and listen to each bird’s unique tweets. The app also provides a picture of each bird to make spotting nearby tweeters easier.

Once you’re learned the calls in your area, you can test your knowledge in a challenge that asks you to match each song with the appropriate bird.

---

More Mobile Resources from Mashable:

---

– 8 Free BlackBerry Games Worth Downloading
– Why Smartphone Adoption May Not Be as Big as You Think
– 10 iPhone Apps to Get You Back to School
– Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch
– How Mobile is Affecting the Way We E-Mail

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Saturated

This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.

WordPress 3.0 was released a little over a month ago, ushering in a bevy of new features for designers and developers. Just last week, WordPress 3.0.1 was released, fixing a few minor bugs and making some other less visible tweaks.

Lots of the biggest changes to WordPress 3.0 took place under the hood – the merging of the WordPress MU codebase with WordPress proper, custom post and taxonomy types, and support for easy custom menus in themes that support that feature. It’s really easy to add support for some of these features to your existing WordPress theme, but if you’re looking for a theme that works great with WordPress 3.0 out of the box, including support for custom menus, post types and taxonomies, check out our round-up of free themes with superb WordPress 3.0 support.

1. The Morning After

1.

The Morning After” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/The-Morning-After.jpg”>

One of the original “magazine style” themes in the WordPress world, The Morning After was recently sold to WooThemes. The Woo team has taken the theme, updated it to use their existing WooFramework and added in support for custom headers and backgrounds and custom post types.

The result? One of the all-time-greatest WordPress themes has a fresh coat of paint and is ready to be customized and installed. The theme is available for free, although if you want support, you’ll need to be a WooThemes member.

2. Boldly

2.

Boldly ” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/Boldy.jpg”>

Boldly from Site5 is a free premium theme that includes support for WordPress 3.0 menus, an Ajax-based contact form, a built-in widget for Twitter and a great slider for the front page.

Site5′s other free themes are also updated to work with WordPress 3.0

3. Calotropis

3.

Calotropis” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/calotropis.jpg”>

Calotropis is a free theme available from the WordPress Themes Directory that supports different color schemes, a choice of layouts, and WordPress 3.0′s navigation menus. The sidebar widgets are also tabbed and items like the header and background can be customized.

4. Mystique

4.

Mystique” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/Mystique.jpg”>

Digital Nature’s Mystique theme has long been a favorite at the official WordPress Themes Directory, and the latest updates include support for custom menus, a custom header and its preexisting flexible options and design.

5. TwentyTen

5.

TwentyTen ” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/twenty-ten-theme.jpg”>

TwentyTen is the new default WordPress theme and it has a lot of options and functionality. Designers can even create their own child themes to customize the look and feel even further. TwentyTen is a great theme to use on your site and also a great theme to dissect if you want to learn more about developing your own WordPress themes.

6. Voidy

6.

Voidy” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/Diovo.jpg”>

We love the minimalistic nature and clean lines of Voidy. In addition to supporting WordPress 3.0 custom menus, the theme also supports gravatars, threaded comments, and a custom favicon and logo. It also makes it easy to add in your Twitter account.

7. Hybrid

7.

Hybrid” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/hybrid.jpg”>

Hybrid is considered a theme framework, meaning that it is designed to be used as a building block when creating your own theme or customized site design. Still, even without any stylings, Hybrid is a good-looking theme. As a framework, it supports everything new in WordPress 3.0, plus lots of other optimizations and extra features.

Like TwentyTen, Hybrid is a great way to learn to develop and design for WordPress.

8. Shaken Grid 2.0

8.

Shaken Grid 2.0” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/Shaken-and-Stirred-Themes.jpg”>

Shaken Grid 2.0 is a really good-looking portfolio theme for WordPress 3.0 sites. It uses the excellent jQuery Masonry to make the layout really tight and top-notch and supports custom post types so you can create a Tumblr-esque experience on your WordPress site.

9. Magazine Basic

9.

Magazine Basic” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/magazine-basic.jpg”>

Magazine Basic was built specifically for WordPress 3.0 and it offers support for the latest features, plus a fully customizable layout, widgetized sidebar and multiple front-page layouts.

10. The Erudite

10.

The Erudite” src=”http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/wordpress-3-0-ready-themes/The-Erudite.jpg”>

The author of The Erudite says that it was a theme created for writers who want readers, not visitors. To that end, the theme makes it incredibly easy to focus on content and has some excellent typography choices. You can also choose whether or not to use a dark or light style, and the theme includes support for WordPress 3.0 menus.

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Series supported by Rackspace

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Rackspace is the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why.

“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,” pop legend Prince told the Daily Mirror in an exclusive interview today.

Puzzling, then, that the musical icon also said he deplores online and other digital means of music distribution.

“The Internet’s completely over,” he said. “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

Prince’s famous and longstanding battle against the web gained steam in 2007, when Prince declared his intention to file lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay for users’ appropriation of his music. He’s banned such sites from using it, and he’s also refused to work with legal, legitimate outlets such as eMusic and iTunes.

And don’t try to find his official site; it’s been shut down, as well.

“The Internet’s like MTV,” the star said to The Mirror’s correspondent. “At one time, MTV was hip, and suddenly it became outdated.”

“Suddenly” – a.k.a. around the time the Internet started taking off, perhaps?

Not only is Prince down on the web; he also is decidedly not a fan of consumer electronics. “All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

Prince’s new album, 20TEN, will be released as a CD to Mirror readers and the readers of various other print publications in Europe. It might be distributed via Warner Bros. in the U.S. This will be the artist’s 27th release.

Clearly, we at Mashable take a radically different view, both about the Internet and about the utility and integrity of web-based music distribution models. We’re of the opinion that musicians need more (and better) online tools, not fewer.

Keeping in mind Prince’s amazing contributions to music’s past, we’re not sure he’s in touch with its present or accurately forecasting its future. So-called experts have been predicting the death of the Internet at least since 1995, and we’ve yet to see anything come of these proclamations of doom.

What do you think? Is Prince missing out on something by withdrawing himself from the web? Or could he be correct; is the Internet just a fad, after all?

[img credit: nostri-imago]

Some people, ahem, are predicting a big resurgence in business software. Given how outdated most tools are, that’s probably a safe bet –  whether it happens now or in the next few years. While software as a service and open source have plugged many holes, most large companies still run themselves on one of two companies: Oracle or SAP. That can’t last forever.

But the amazing thing is, when it comes to small business software, the market is still pretty wide open, with most businesses still running themselves on pen-and-paper or Excel spreadsheets. There is a reason that Intuit has managed to keep a stranglehold on small business software—because it is hard to build and even harder to market to such a huge, fragmented market with so many different needs. Especially when the revenues per customer are necessarily puny.

So, it’s a huge market but, let’s face it, it’s not a sexy one. And that’s one reason a company like Yola doesn’t get more press. (Here’s our previous coverage.)

I hung out with Yola’s founder Vinny Lingham while I was in Cape Town last week and came away impressed for a few reasons. For one thing, this guy has forgotten more about acquiring traffic than a lot of people in Silicon Valley know. (I originally published those verbs backwards. Thanks commenters and apologies, Lingham. I blame jetlag.) He spent the bulk of his career building search campaigns for huge multinational companies and made a pretty sweet living at it. (Check out his BMW convertible in the video below–those cost about double in Cape Town.)

That business was lucrative, but Lingham soon saw what many entrepreneurs in emerging markets are realizing: Services companies don’t scale the way product companies do. And Lingham wants to build a big company. A big company helping small businesses build Web sites.

You may be thinking, doesn’t everyone who wants a Web site have one by now? Astonishingly, no. Yola has a few competitors—most notably Y Combinator graduate Weebly and Israel’s hometown darling Wix. (Lingham–who carries his iPad everywhere–is quick to point out Wix is Flash-based, while Yola bet on HTML5.) But ultimately, this is a business that will be won on distribution not necessarily product, and Lingham is pretty relentless when it comes to bringing people to his site and converting them.

Here’s the other thing notable about Lingham: He really wants Cape Town to be a tech hub. He moved to Silicon Valley to get greater access to deals, talent and money, but he returns to Cape Town several times a year and invests in and mentors companies there. I’ve written before that one of the reasons India has gotten so much US venture capital is because of the Indians who made it in the Valley and were determined—either out of nationalism or opportunity—to pay that forward to the home country. I’ve also theorized that the paucity of huge, Brazilian-born startup successes in the Valley is a big reason that Valley VCs largely ignore Brazil and South American generally. Simply put: No one is hounding them to go. The famed Israeli Web investor Yossi Vardi calls it “profitable patriotism.”

To Lingham, success is Yola becoming a billion dollar business. But equally success is Cape Town giving rise to lots of other successes. I don’t mean to suggest he’s alone in this effort. I was in Cape Town last week to speak at an excellent conference on African Web entrepreneurship called Net Prophet where more than 800 people crowded in a hall to share ideas and absorb advice from those like Lingham. Still, how much of a difference can one guy make? In my experience traveling to more than a dozen markets in the last year, one guy (or girl) can make more of a difference than most well-meaning government institutions. Good entrepreneurs need role models, mentorship and angels more than any other raw materials.

Here’s a short video I shot with Lingham on the way to the airport my last day in town. (Yeah it gets dark, get over it. I’m on the road.) We talk about the Silicon Cape initiative, why you should care about small business software and how his wife feels about him spending all his money on startups.

Mollie Vandor is the Product Manager for Ranker.com and Media Director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter and on her blog, where she writes about the web, the world and what it’s like to be a geek chic chick.

If you work on the web, chances are a good chunk of your day is devoted to developing relationships online. You talk to people on Twitter, follow them on Foursquare, share photos with them on Facebook, swap music on MySpace and let them know what you’re working on via LinkedIn. Of course, contrary to the stereotype, that doesn’t mean we techies spend every day in keyboard-covered caves.

In fact, from conferences to networking events, there are plenty of opportunities to turn those online connections into real world relationships. The web can actually make maintaining all those real world relationships even easier, especially if you know how to optimize your networking – both online and offline. Luckily for the would-be social media social butterfly, there are a few simple tips that can help you do just that.

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Make The Most Of Meet & Greets

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First of all, you have to find the right events. Join Meetup groups around your interests, do a targeted ticket search on Eventbrite, use the Mashable events calendar to find conferences and panels in your part of the world, or join a niche networking group like Social Media Club, Girls in Tech, Women in Technology International or 140 Character Conference.

Once you’re actually at an event, focus on putting a face to your name – your username, that is. Since a lot of people will probably know you solely by your avatar and handle, they may not immediately put two and two together when they meet you in real life. The simple solution to this is to make sure you keep your business cards up to date with your most recent usernames. Make sure you also include those usernames on the nametags you wear at networking events.

It’s also good to make plans with the people you want to meet before the event actually arrives. Doing so will avoid you standing in line while the person you want to talk to is mobbed by other would-be networkers. If you approach them in advance, and make plans to meet, you’ll feel much better about cutting through the crowds to find them. Plus, you’ll save yourself precious minutes of intro-time and be able to jump straight into conversation.

If you want people to come to you, then don’t be shy. Tell your followers, friends and fans where you’re going to be and what you’re going to be wearing. When you get to an event, scope out a particular corner or table and send your location out as a status update. Don’t just check-in on your favorite location-based sharing service, use it to find other people that are at a particular event, and to contact them while you’re there. That way, the people that follow you on the web will be able to find you out in the world, which can be valuable when you want to be found.

---

Follow Up

---

Whether you leave every event buried under buckets of business cards, or you have one great conversation and make a single, solid connection, there’s no reason not to follow up afterwards. How do you follow up without coming across as a social media stalker?

I like to start on Twitter – it’s a completely open forum, so people tend to be more welcoming when it comes to making connections with folks they might not know so well. Use services like Twiangulate to find connections you have in common, or to see if your new contact might have other connections you’d like to communicate with. Similarly, you can use a person’s Twitter lists to see what their interests are, and who else is in their network. By the same token, try making some Twitter lists yourself. It could come in handy when someone new is researching you.

LinkedIn, and other professional networking sites like Xing and Jigsaw, are also a natural fit for following up with a new friend you met while networking. Unlike social networks like MySpace and Facebook, where everyone has different policies about the balance of personal and professional contacts they want to maintain, these sites are purely professional. Use services like LinkedIn’s Shared Connections to see who you may have in common with the new person you’ve just met networking, or who that person might know that you’d also like to connect with.

Of course, there is nothing better than a good, old-fashioned thank you email. Just make sure you keep it short and sweet, and remember to include where you met and a quick tidbit of what you talked about.

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Stay Organized

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Speaking of entering your contacts, if you’re out and about in the offline world, you’re bound to collect boatloads of contact information.

You could always bypass the business card entirely by using a service like Bump on your Android or iPhone, which allows you to literally send your contact info to another mobile device by touching them together. You can also set up a more traditional vCard that you can exchange via email. And, there are plenty of apps you can use to manage these virtual business cards from your mobile device, so you’ll never have to actually exchange paper cards again – which is better for the environment, and probably better for your organizational sanity too.

If you’re set on standard paper cards, you can also invest in a card scanner – either a traditional external machine or a mobile app, depending on which one will better fit into your lifestyle. Or you could use a card scanning service like CloudContacts.

Once you’ve got your contacts scanned and saved, keep them with you at all times with services like Google Sync for iPhone or Always in Sync for Android. Both systems will let you automatically sync your Google contacts with your mobile device, meaning you can manage your contacts in the Google cloud for free and take them with you wherever you go. >

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More business resources from Mashable:

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– 5 Ways For Small Companies To Better Engage Reporters
– How One Small Biz Turned Their Company Retreat Into Social Media Success
– Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Foursquare
– 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
– HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy

Tags: 140 character conference, bump, eventbrite, girls in tech, Google, international, jigsaw, linkedin, meet and greet, meetup, networking, relationships, social media club, twiangulate, twitter, v card, women in technology, Xing

In a letter addressed to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart and the heads of the data protection authorities in France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom have expressed their concern about various privacy issues connected to some of Google’s services.

Two of these services are highlighted in the letter: Google Buzz and Street View. “We were disturbed by your recent rollout of the Google Buzz social networking application, which betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms and laws,” the letter says. It then highlights Google’s biggest error when it comes to Buzz: “In essence, you took Google Mail (Gmail), a private, one-to-one web-based e-mail service, and converted it into a social networking service, raising concern among users that their personal information was being disclosed.”

This is quite an accurate description of the privacy problems with Buzz. Google did promptly react, which is also mentioned in the letter: “To your credit, Google apologized and moved quickly to stem the damage.”

“Unfortunately,” the letter continues, “Google Buzz is not an isolated case.” The letter goes on to describe the issues that arose from Google Street View service, which has caused numerous privacy complaints since it was launched. “In that instance, you addressed privacy concerns related to such matters as the retention of unblurred facial images only after the fact, and there is continued concern about the adequacy of the information you provide before the images are captured,” the letter claims.

Finally, the letter asks for a response from Google, and lists some broad principles that Google should incorporate in its online services:

• collecting and processing only the minimum amount of personal information necessary to achieve the identified purpose of the product or service;
• providing clear and unambiguous information about how personal information will be used to allow users to provide informed consent;
• creating privacy-protective default settings;
• ensuring that privacy control settings are prominent and easy to use;
• ensuring that all personal data is adequately protected, and
• giving people simple procedures for deleting their accounts and honoring their requests in a timely way.

Since Google often highlights its commitment to preserving user privacy, it probably won’t be pleased to see such a stern reaction from the representatives of 10 countries. However, the privacy blunder that was Buzz and the numerous complaints about Street View will probably continue to fuel the sentiment that privacy is not exactly Google’s primary concern.

The full text of the letter is available here.

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Social buying site Groupon is now valued at more than $1 billion. It joins social networks Facebook and Twitter and online gaming company Zynga in a very small club of web 2.0 startups that have crossed the $1 billion threshold.

Speculation about the company’s worth became reality when the site nabbed $135 million in new funding from investment group Digital Sky Technologies and Battery Ventures. The DST powerhouse has previously invested in both Facebook and Zynga.

Groupon bands thousands of users together to get bulk discount deals from local businesses in various cities (26 U.S. cities thus far). It’s not a completely fresh idea, but Groupon – which started as just another group effort on The Point – has managed the most successful execution to date. It has become profitable by taking a cut from each business that offers goods or services on the site.

The company is based in Chicago, where it’s the proverbial elephant in the room in the relatively small tech scene that is also home to 37signals and Where I’ve Been.

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