Google’s everchanging logos, or doodles, as they call them, are stuff of legend. Recently, however, Google has started changing logos more often, pointing out to various events, people, and causes about once per week.

After the recent mysterious series of logos and tweets, which turned out to be a tribute to H.G. Wells, the current Google logo is an obvious tribute to Chinese philosopher Confucius, who was born on 28th of September, 551 BC. Besides being a philosopher, reformer, and a generally smart dude, Confucius was especially well known for his sayings; you can find a nice list of them here.

But this is not the only new Google doodle in the past 24 hours; a couple of hours ago, Google was spelled with two l’s (Googlle) in the logo in celebration of the company’s eleventh birthday, which falls on 27th of September.

Apple today announced that a total of 2 billion apps have now been downloaded from the App Store. There are now over 85,000 apps in the store, up from 65,000 on July 14, and the number of developers has grown from 100,000 in July to around 125,000 today. Every day, iPhone and iPod touch users now download close to 6.6 million apps every day and this number continues to grow.

The App Store is obviously one of Apple’s most important assets in the mobile market. While Microsoft’s Zune HD, for example, is getting a lot of favorable reviews, the absence of an application ecosystem makes it a far less compelling product than Apple’s more expensive iPod touch product line. On the iPhone side of things, competitors like Windows Mobile, Android, and Nokia also have nothing to offer that comes close to matching Apple’s App Store – even if we assume that a lot of these 85,000 programs are fart apps and single-book eBook apps.

It would be nice if Apple gave us a better breakdown of the kinds of apps it actually delivers (free vs. paid, games vs. utilities, etc.). This kind of transparency is obviously not in Apple’s DNA, so we depend on data from third-party services like AdMob for this information. According to AdMob, iPod touch and iPhone users are more likely to buy apps than users of any other mobile platform and are also more likely to interact with mobile ads.

For developers, no matter the grumblings about the App Store approval process, the App Store is simply the largest and most lucrative marketplace for their work right now.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. The one time king of social networks, MySpace, now has the honor of being the site where the less affluent members of the online population stake their claims by way of bedazzled profiles overrun with auto-playing videos and songs. Meanwhile, the upscale, financially solvent users have moved on – and by moved on, we mean to Facebook, of course. At least those are the findings of the latest social networking study done by American consumer behavior analysis firm Nielsen Claritas.

By no means is this the first time that the demographics of today’s social networks have been scrutinized and analyzed by researchers, nor is it the first time that they’ve come to this same conclusion. Earlier this summer, for example, Anderson Analytics looked into this same topic, studying trends among social networking users on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They found that Facebook users tend to be better off financially, while MySpace users’ income was the lowest out of the four networks studied.

Those claims are now being further backed up by the Nielsen study, which, in addition to noting the financial discrepancies, also discovered that many social networking users tend to be urbanites, especially those engaged in blogging and tweeting.

The study examined seven of the most popular social networking and blogging sites including Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Twitter, WordPress, ClassmatesOnline, and LinkedIn. Through the Claritas product, Nielsen segments their online panel of 200,000+ participants into demographically and behaviorally distinct groups which include everything from “Young Digerati” to “Heartlanders.” After doing so, they found a notable difference between the two top social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace.

According to the research, the top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence (aka the “richest” users) are 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the lower third. The bottom third segments related to affluence (aka the “poorest”) are 37% more likely to use MySpace. Also of note, Facebook users are more likely to use LinkedIn, a site for professional business networking, and again, another factor which points towards the differences in demographics between the two social networks.

Besides confirming the income discrepancies between MySpace and Facebook, Nielsen also discovered that those involved in blogging and tweeting tend to live in more urban areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. The 12 “Urban” lifestyle groups tracked by the company are more likely to use Blogger, WordPress, and Twitter than the 22 “Town and Rural” segments. However, there was no mention of these groups being more affluent, just more urban.

I’m sure many of you have heard the news that, after a few meeting with Apple’s top guys, China is expected to get the iPhone. According to Engadget, China Unicom will be announcing today that they will be launching the iPhone on October 1st. Below are the package details. Looks like Apple’s 50 Million device count is about to go way up!

Eight service packages ranging in price from 126 yuan (about $18) to 886 yuan (about $130) per month will be available to Unicom’s 141 million subscribers from a pool of 700 million cellphone toting Chinese. How much will it cost? 5,000 yuan or a steep $733 green retail. Subsidies of about 893 yuan (about $131) to 4,253 yuan (about $623) will be offered for those signing to long-term plans on Unicom’s fledgling 3G network.

Original post HERE.

Google Wave arrives on September 30th. On that day, Google will start sending out 100,000 invites to non-developers to its much-anticipated real-time communication platform.

It’s not even released and it’s generating more hype than almost any other web product in recent memory. The reason stems from its game-changing features and their potential applications on business, education, customer service, email, social networking, and more.

So with Wave on the way, we wanted to explore some of the potential of Google’s upcoming product. We have a few of our own ideas and included some from Google Wave developers, but more than anything, we want your ideas, so be sure to leave your great Google Wave invention in the comments! Who knows, maybe we’ll feature them in the future!

1. Wave-Powered Forums

This idea’s actually been in my head before, but it’s articulated with some depth by Andrew Camel in the Google Wave API Google Group:

“So I thought that it would be an awesome feature of google wave to have it power a forum. Each thread, instead of being multiple different posts, it would just be a google wave. So, instead of having to try a discussion by posting and going back to the page and checking for new replies and while you were posting, you missed a new part of the discussion, you can post like you are having an instant-message session and you can also save the posts like forum threads. I really think that this would be a great use of the google wave api.”

Real-time threads? Saving waves like forum threads? Google Wave?! Sign us up!

2. Wave-powered Commenting System

We actually alluded to this possibility in our Google Wave Guide when we discussed Wave Embeds:

“One possibility: Google Wave Embeds may be a real-time replacement to static comments. If Google perfects wave embeds, you could even see YouTube.com comments replaced with waves, although it is way too early to make any calls on the potential of this.”

Now that we’ve had some time to play with Wave, we think more than ever that Wave as a commenting system is a real possibility. Each blog post or YouTube video could have a new wave, where users could converse about practically anything in real-time. Anybody who comes in late can just play back the wave and get up to speed. It could be a whole new era for commenting.

3. Wave-Based Content Management System

A thread in the API group discusses the possibility of using Wave as a project management system. I’ll be honest – even I’ve been toying with this idea. Here’s what Jason Salas said in the thread:

I think that maybe many of the major CMS vendors will create extensions (if we don’t do it ourselves) to integrate their products with Wave. That’s what I’m working on now. But that is a neat idea to actually use Wave as its own CMS platform, with assumed features
like document creation/management, scheduling, RSS feeds, (micro) blogging, archival/search, etc.”

Can’t you see it?

4. Wave for Customer Support

This idea actually comes from a thread in the Google Wave development preview titled “What Will You Use it For?” It’s a remarkable discussion and brainstorming session over the potential of wave. One of the most fleshed-out ideas in the thread, though, is Wave for customer support. Here are some of the bullet-points for how Wave could be used in customer support:

– Sending trouble tickets
– Incident tracking can be a wave
– Call center analytics gadget
– Distribution list gadget
– Customer meta-data gadget
– Surveys can be a wave

Real-time customer support? Yeah, someone please build that.

5. Wave for Education

We reported a few days ago that Google is giving some schools and businesses an early look at Google Wave. But why? What could Wave possibly accomplish in the realm of education and business? A lot, we firmly believe.

I refer once again to the “What Will You Use it For?” Wave in the dev preview for some ideas for how Wave can be used in education.

– Building a more interactive / creative learning environment
– Proofreading / writing papers
-Brainstorming potential project ideas
– Interactive tutoring from home
– Collaborative Environment for Cyber Schooling

With more widgets, you could embed streams and communicate with professors in real-time. We’re excited about Wave’s potential to transform education.

What Are Your Ideas?

We’ve highlighted some of our ideas and many ideas from enthusiasts across the web. So now it’s your turn. What is your idea for Google Wave? We want to hear your thoughts and your opinions in the comments.

Oh, and if you need a little inspiration for your idea, be sure to check out our comprehensive Google Wave coverage:

- Google Wave: A Complete Guide

- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

- Twave: Google Wave + Twitter

Tags: Google, Google Wave, Google Wave extension, ef="http://mashable.com/tag/google-wave-gadget/">Google Wave Gadget, Google Wave Robot, Lists

According to a research report released by Denmark’s Strand Consult, the iPhone is not the profit-generating machine that people have made it out to be…that is, unless you’re Apple. For carriers, however, gaining the exclusive rights to sell the iPhone isn’t exactly a winning situation. The report says that the hidden costs of the phone, which include things like the subsidies and the revenue share Apple demands, have actually hurt rather than helped mobile operators’ earnings.

iPhone: Bad-for-Business?

According to a Sunday article in The Guardian, the report states that the iPhone isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, at least from the carriers’ perspective. Because Apple requires carriers to pay subsidies and, in some markets they demand revenue share, the carriers don’t make as much on phone sales as you may think.

“We have not found one operator which has created shareholder value with iPhone,” notes the report.

Not only does the report state that the phone isn’t as profitable for carriers as you may think, it argues that it might actually be a hindrance. “A lot of competitors are actually doing better,” it says when referring to the carriers who don’t offer the Apple device in their lineup. An earlier press release from the company even went so far as to claim that “operators that choose not to carry iPhone products have an increased probability of serving their shareholders interests.”

Also mentioned is something called the “iPhone effect,” a coin termed by a chairman of a multinational operator. “The iPhone effect is the effect that comes from moving our management’s focus away from the 99% of our customers that generate the cash flow that pays our bills,” claims the unnamed chairman.

In addition to these issues, Strand Consult also notes that the iPhone only attracts a limited market segment and one in which customers already were heavy data users…so they’re not actually bringing in that much new revenue via their iPhone data plans. Meanwhile, flat rate data plans mean that the “high data consumption results in high production costs without the corresponding increased revenue.”

Although not mentioned in the Guardian piece, we’re currently seeing the problems AT&T; has encountered here in the U.S. thanks being the only network that provides the phone in this market. The company has struggled to provide coverage in heavily populated urban areas, like New York and San Francisco, where iPhone users are plenty. The issue went beyond just being hearsay to warranting a public shaming in a recent New York Times article. According to the article, the company has been working on expensive upgrades to those data-heavy networks to help ease the traffic burden which has led to dropped calls, slow speeds, and often a lack of signal. Problems like these have angered consumers and have given AT&T; a bad name in many circles. The company has also had to delay the launch of new iPhone features like MMS and tethering since their network again had to be prepared to handle the additional data traffic.

Some Carriers Disagree

While AT&T; never directly commented on the report, they’ve been consistent in touting the positive benefits of the phone with every release of their quarterly earnings. For example, in their latest earnings announcement, AT&T; revealed that the iPhone 3GS launch was the “best sales day” the company ever had. They also gained more than 2.4 million customers this past quarter, 35% who were new to AT&T.; They noted that more than 80% of the upgrades were from a non-iPhone device or a 2G iPhone, increasing ARPU [average revenue per unit]. And as for the iPhone owners themselves, the company says their ARPUs are significantly above the company’s post-paid average, churn is much lower, and recurring margins continue to be high.

Another carrier, U.K.-based O2, did comment on the report. They told the Guardian they disagree with the findings, saying that they’ve benefitted from the so-called “iPhone effect.” Although the article didn’t go into specifics as to what those benefits are, it’s likely they’re seeing much of the same as AT&T.; Finally, according to Reuters, Japan’s exclusive iPhone carrier, the #3-ranked in the country, passed the number one carrier in August in terms of new subscriber sign-ups.

Perhaps the truth here is in the middle. Maybe Strand is right in saying that carriers don’t benefit from iPhone sales. However, they could benefit simply from having iPhone customers who stick with the company for long periods of time, paying for hefty data plans along the way.

We’re hearing of numerous reports that older versions of WordPress are exposed to security threats. WordPress is one of the largest blogging engines with over 5,317,360 – and counting – downloads for their latest version, 2.8. Many large blogs, including TechCrunch, rely on WordPress to get the news out and post content online.

Writes Lorelle on her WordPress-centric blog:

There are two clues that your WordPress site has been attacked:

First, there are strange additions to permalinks, such as example.com/category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/. The keywords are “eval” and “base64_decode.”

The second clue is that a “back door” was created by a “hidden” Administrator. Check your site users for “Administrator (2)” or a name you do not recognize.

To prevent this attack, if you have not done so already, update your WordPress install immediately to the latest version. Change all your passwords to a strong password (cough), including WordPress blog access for all users, database, FTP, control panels, etc. These are all highly recommended procedures.

Automattic, WordPress’ parent company, hasn’t commented on this issue, but we’ll keep everyone updated. In the meantime, we urge you to update your WordPress blog immediately.

Update: We’ve reached out to Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, and he mentioned the following. Automattic is not the parent company of WordPress. Automattic contributes to WordPress.org like many other companies do. Mullenweg published a blog post mentioning what steps people should take to ensure their WordPress blog is safe.

(Image via Developer Tutorials)

SocialToo just announced a number of new features that will allow Twitter users to fight the increasing amount of direct messaging (DM) spam, which is becoming a major hassle on Twitter. SocialToo can now replace the default email messages that Twitter normally sends out when a user receives a DM with a customized email from SocialToo itself. These emails will allow users to immediately flag another user as a spammer and block any further messages from their account. In addition, SocialToo is also launching its own spam filter, with which users can block DMs based on a user-defined list of keywords and phrases like “get 500 new followers a day” or “make money.”

All of these services will be available for free.

Both the DM email service and the keyword-based spam-blocking feature look like excellent ideas. In addition to blocking spammers to your account, SocialToo will also alert Twitter’s @spam account whenever you block somebody and flag them as a spammer (TweetDeck, we should note, offers a similar feature).

Fighting Twitter Spam

SocialToo, of course, was responsible for quite a few of these spam messages in the early days of Twitter; though this February, SocialToo’s CEO Jesse Stay announced that the service would end support for auto DMs, and SocialToo had been already offering some basic tools to fight auto-following spammers. Others have now jumped into this market, and the problem is getting more pronounced by the day. Of course, the problem of Twitter spam in general is getting worse, too, and we are still waiting for a good third-party solution to filter spam messages in our regular Twitter stream or for Twitter to put its foot down and implement better spam filters itself.

Fluid is a simple application for creating site-specific browsers (SSBs) on your OSX desktop. Fluid definitely wasn’t the first SSB project and was inspired primarily by the Mozilla Prism project.

The advantage with an SSB is that you can take almost any Web application you use heavily and get it out of your browser, reducing tab usage, avoiding crashes, and generally improving workflow. Fluid is really for anyone, but the low barrier to entry and the effect it has on productivity make it an attractive tool for getting things done. Though it’s been around for a while, few businesses have really taken advantage of its full potential.

Fluid supports advanced features such as user scripting, but you don’t need to be a programmer to get some decent apps up and running quickly. All you need to do is give Fluid a URL, a name for your app, a location on your machine, and an icon. That’s it.

Email

Especially for Gmail and Yahoo Mail users, a Fluid app can be the answer to your woes. Programs like Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird are great, but they fail to replicate the true experience that Web-based email programs deliver.

It’s super-easy to build and extend an email app in Fluid, and far superior to any of the AIR apps for Gmail or Yahoo. If you don’t have the time to really trick it out, there’s the shareware software Mailplane, which is also built on Fluid but has a few more bells and whistles. Correction: turns out Mailplane isn’t built on Fluid, though it is an SSB.

Wiki

Giving you and your coworkers desktop access to whatever wiki you happen to be using is a definite win. You get the easy access (minus mobile) of something like Evernote, plus the infectious power of wiki linking and collaborative creation.

One of the real beauties of using a Fluid app for your wiki experience is that it works with almost any provider, from installations of free software MediaWiki to closed-source hosts like PBworks, Wetpaint, and Wikispaces.

Docs

Google Docs and Zoho Writer are perfectly suited to becoming Fluid apps. Bringing either of them (or whatever online word processor you prefer) to the desktop makes it much more competitive with the experience of Microsoft Office or Open Office.

Tasks & To-do Lists

A Fluid app works great for any of the software-as-a-service task tracking and to-do list tools, such as Remember The Milk or Ta-da List from 37Signals.

File Sharing

If you’re a fan of file sharing and syncing software like Dropbox, Box, or Mediafire, then a Fluid app is right up your alley, giving you a much faster way to get to your files. The only top-notch file sharing service that Fluid might not be compatible with is drop.io, since each new drop has its unique URL, though can return to them.

RSS Reader

There are a lot of really great free RSS readers for Mac available. But if you’re an addict of Web-based readers like Google Reader, then Fluid is the perfect way to stick with it but still get desktop access. The optional Cover Flow thumbnail viewer in Fluid can really spice up the feed-reading experience as well.

Calendar

This is especially good if you’re seeking to develop a shared calendar for your company. The various solutions for creating a shared calendar with desktop software like iCal are embarrassingly difficult compared to the five minutes it’ll take you to create a Fluid app to access your Google Calendar.

Customer Service

Customer service mavens, rejoice. Instead of hunting through your many tabs to respond quickly and comprehensively to customers, you can just build a simple Fluid app for Get Satisfaction, Zendesk, or even an OTRS system.

Blogging

Yes, there are definitely some impressive desktop blogging apps, but they’re almost all geared to power bloggers and rip out the familiar interface of WordPress, TypePad, or Tumblr. Taking five minutes to make a Fluid app is a good way to get a fast, free, functioning desktop blogging experience. I should know, since I published this post from a Fluid application.

Business Intelligence

Depending on how you’re tracking business intelligence information now, it might be a good idea to create a Fluid app. To create a custom business intelligence dashboard with Fluid might take a little more hacking, but it’s well worth it to get a quick hands-on resource.

Project Management

There are so many Web-based project management apps out there, it’s impossible to really catalog them all (at least via blog). But what most of them don’t have is a robust desktop version. We use Basecamp here at ReadWriteWeb, and Fluid works great for that or whatever service you might be using.

Enterprise Microblogging

Twitter for the enterprise is a rapidly-evolving category of software. Several of the top options — such as Socialtext Signals, Yammer, and Socialcast — already have good desktop apps. But if you’re seeking one not based on Adobe AIR or something slightly more customizable (without having to work with an API), then Fluid is a good approach to take.

Bug Tracking

Fluid jives with most of the bug and issue tracking software out there, including JIRA, Trac, Bugzilla, and Redmine. Features like Growl notifications and the optional menu bar icon might be especially nice additions to a bug tracker app.

Code Repository & Review

Fluid works just fine for accessing heavily used coder resources such as Github. It’s also great for code review and code repository tools like Crucible and FishEye from Atlassian.

Social Networks

Of course, Fluid also works really well for anyone doing marketing and customer service work through social networks such as Facebook. Despite the multitude of Twitter apps, it might also be appropriate if you’re using one of the Web-based solutions like CoTweet’s business-focused platform.

Further Resources

There you have it! As you can probably tell, Fluid works best for the kind of rich Internet applications that you access repeatedly in your workflow, ones that sit in your browser all day and that you come back to again and again.

If you’re looking for more ideas or resources, be sure to take a peek at the unofficial Fluid wiki, the site itself, or the Flickr group for free Fluid icons.

Lots of big brands are embracing social media, but which platform is most popular? At least as far as Fortune 100 companies go, Twitter easily takes the top spot, according to a recent study from PR firm Burson-Marsteller.

According to their findings, 54 percent of the Fortune 100 have a Twitter presence, 32 percent have a blog, and 29 percent have an active Facebook Page. Moreover, at companies using only one of these tools, at 76 percent of them, the tool of choice is Twitter.

More interesting than these raw numbers, however, are some further insight into how Fortune 100 companies are using social media. Other key findings:

Only 17 percent use all three mediums: Twitter, Facebook, and a blog.

Of the Fortune 100 companies on Twitter, 94 percent use it for news/announcements, 67 percent for customers service, and 57 percent for deals and promotions.

The average Fortune 100 Twitter account has 5,234 followers. The median is 674 followers.

Twitter, it should be noted, had a fairly big head start on Facebook Pages, which only became a part of user’s news feed (i.e. – Twitter-like) earlier this year. Since then, many brands have experienced explosive growth on the social network – Starbucks, for example, now has better than 3.7 million fans. However, as far as blogs are concerned, Burson-Marsteller concludes that many companies are simply avoiding them and going directly to Twitter instead.

The complete results of the study can be found in the presentation embedded below:

http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=b-msocialmediafortune100-090731090947-phpapp01&stripped_title=b-m-social-media-fortune-100

See Also: 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them

Tags: BLOGS, facebook, fortune 100, social media, twitter