Apple unveils Mac OS X 10.8 ‘Mountain Lion’ as iOS continues its push to the desktop

16TH FEBRUARY 2012 by MATT BRIAN

Apple has today announced the successor to its popular Mac OS Lion operating system, unveiling Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of its desktop platform which will bring more of its iOS features to the desktop.

Gone are traditional messaging apps like iChat, in comes Messages, Notes, Reminders and even Game Center for Mac, mimicking the iOS features on your iPhone and iPad, also delivering Notification Center, Share Sheets, Twitter integration and AirPlay.

If you wanted iOS on the desktop, you’re about to get it.

Below is an overview of Mountain Lion. We have referenced the great article by Jim Dalrymple & Peter Cohen over at The Loop to do so. Again, a big thanks to Jim once again for his assistance.

iCloud

Given the fact that iCloud now has 100 million users, Mountain Lion is built to maximise the service and has support built into its core.

By registering iCloud in Mountain Lion, the service will then set up a number of apps and services on your system, integrating tightly with Mail, Contacts, Messages, FaceTime and a whole number of other services. So, if you have a lot of information already set up, the service will make it all available for you.

Apple will push Documents in the Cloud with Mountain Lion, perhaps serving as a Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 rival.

Given it’s just a beta build at the moment, new features are set to be introduced until its release in ‘late Summer’.

GateKeeper

Apple wants to protect its customers, so it has released GateKeeper to block malware and malicious downloads.

Social, Everywhere

Apple will allow data and information to be sent from anywhere on the computer with its new Share Sheets feature.

Share Sheets are available wherever you look in Mountain Lion and provides the ability to share files and media with Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, AirDrop, Messages and Mail services. The button is built into apps – Safari, for example, allows you to share via Twitter, Messages and Mail.

Messages

Apple has decided that its instant messaging application iChat needed an overhaul, this has resulted in iMessage for Mac. With Messages, a user simply needs to dial in their Apple ID or phone number and they can start messaging iOS devices and Mountain Lion users from their desktop.

The app still supports AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, and Jabber, so it’s iChat but with a little bit of iMessage built in.

Notes, Reminders and other iOS apps

Apple brings Reminders and Notes to the desktop too, syncing your to-do list between your mobile devices and computers for easy on-the-go access.

Notes supports photos, attachments, bullets and links and all you have to do is drag a link into a note whenever you want to save something on your desktop.

Notification Center

If you were a big Notification Center user on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you will be pleased to see it has been ported to Mountain Lion, allowing you to see messages and other notifications at-a-glance.

You might have loved Growl but Apple is set to do away with the neat little app with Notification Center. It will sit in the top right of your computer screen, by the Spotlight search icon on your menu bar.

Using a two-finger slide-down gesture on the right hand side of the screen will access the Notification Center, showing everything that has occurred since it was last accessed. 

Game Center

By bringing Game Center to the Mac, Apple is going to push ahead with desktop app gaming and help connect users between devices.

The app allows users to find friends, discover new games that their friends play, recommend games, access a leaderboard and see the achievements they have earned.

Perhaps borrowing a page from Microsoft’s playbook, Apple has introduced a feature that allows users to play Game Center on any device, so Mac users will be able to play iPhone, iPad or iPod users.

Read: Mountain Lion isn’t about ‘iOS-ification’, it’s about unification

10 Little Known Social Media Tools 

You Should Be Using: 

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Editor's note: A version of this article previously appeared at KISSmetrics.com.

Social media is everywhere. It's in our homes, places of worship, schools and, of course, ourbusinesses. Everywhere you look, people are using social media and are talking about it. And it seems that every week a new type of social site pops up.

And as the number of social networking sites grows, so does the number of services that are created to measure, track and monitor those services. What's a marketing professional to do?

To help you cut through the clutter, here are the 10 must-use social media tools that can not only help you make sense of your social media efforts but make them more effective.

1. EditFlow
EditFlow is a plugin from open source content management system WordPress that allows you to manage your editorial team seamlessly.

With it, you can get a snapshot of your month-to-month content with the calendar feature. It also offers improvedcontent status beyond WordPress' default draft and pending review. And user groups can help you keep your team of writers organized by department or function.

Who should use it and why: Any business owner who manages a multi-author website should give EditFlow a look. This tool can keep all of the things that are important to a multi-author blog in one spot so management is easy, clean and documented.

2. TweetReach
This tool allows you to see how far your tweets travel. For example, with TweetReach I can search my blog and come up with these results. It breaks down how many people your messages reach and how many tweets it took to reach them. For instance, TweetReach can tell you how many times your tweets have been shared by retweets, replies and other standard tweets.

Who should use it and why: From a social media manager to a small-business owner, basically anybody who is interested in finding out how effective his or her tweets are based upon the number of people they touch should consider using TweetReach. It can also useful from a metric standpoint in terms of justifying the results of your social media campaigns with senior management or partners.

3. ArgyleSocial
This Durham, N.C.-based startup is a social media platform that aims to help marketers connect the business dots with the social media dots. ArgyleSocial offers a single dashboard to monitor Facebook and Twitter that allows you to delegate tasks to your team. It also offers easy reporting on the ROI of your social media efforts.

If you'd like to be an affiliate, you can use ArgyleSocial's white label brand and resell the social media platform to your clients. All of your accounts can be wrapped up into one bill and sent to you to distribute or absorb as an included service.

Who should use it and why: From the social media manager to the one-person business that needs to prove to management, clients or themselves that their social media campaign is paying off.

4. HootSuite for iPad
HootSuite users should be happy with this iPad application. It includes a stationary column in the sidebar that keeps track of all streams being tracked.

Among the other things HootSuite says you can do with this iPad app include checking in using a Foursquareaccount, scheduling messages to send at a later time, examine click-through statistics, add geo-location coordinates to messages and shorten URLs with a built-in Ow.ly tool.

Who should use it and why: HootSuite for iPad is for heavy iPad users who want to manage their social media content and engagement.

5. TweetLevel
You might be thinking you don't need another Tweet metric tool, but TweetLevel, allows you to specifically search for hashtags, which can lead you to insights on who to follow based upon conversation versus person.

Once you've found someone you'd like to follow, you can use TweetLevel to help measure his or her social influence. You can also evaluate the buzz around a certain topic to determine if it's a trend worth paying attention to. Then take a peek at related phrases around your topic to gauge the true scope of the trending idea.

Who should use it and why: Public relations managers and social media marketing professionals who want to analyze a campaign should give TweetLevel a try. This tool can help you identify the Twitter conversation, where it's going wrong and how to correct that mistake.

6. ReFollow
When it comes to Twitter, numbers might not be as important as the people you follow and who follows you.ReFollow is an application that allows you to lock in those followers that you've connected with and make sure they continue to follow you.

Other features include filtering a search on Twitter to uncover insights, such as what you have in common with certain followers. This can lead you to connecting with someone who maybe you're Twitter conversation has been close to zero, but with a simple direct message to that person you can make a connection and build a business relationship.

Who should use it and why: This can be the perfect tool for the person who wants to grow a list of highly-qualified, like-minded people. Consider using ReFollow if your concern is quality over quantity, which it should be.

7. TwitterSearch
You've probably heard of TwitterSearch but, more than likely, you aren't using it correctly.

New media expert Thomas Baekdal offers a number of little-known tips for using TwitterSearch. For instance, to see what people are saying about your competitors, search with to:competitor or from:competitor. Replace "Competitor" with that company's Twitter handle.

To uncover top trending topics search that topic plus –rt filter:links. For example, "digitalmarketing-rt filter:links". That code will remove all of the retweets from the search.

Who should use it and why: Anyone who wants to use and search Twitter more effectively should brush up on his or her TwitterSearch skills. And knowing what's trending on Twitter can be a useful way to generate ideas for your business blog. When you see trending topics, you can create a blog post with content relevant to that discussion.

8. Traackr
One simple way to find and follow people who are influential in your space is to use Traackr. It allows you to identify the "authorities" in your industry who can mean the most to your business or your client's.

What's also useful about Traackr is that you can watch how social media leaders are responding and contributing to content you are sharing. An ad agency, for example, can see who it should target to help social media campaigns get off the ground, build its engagement strategies based upon Traackr's unique intelligence and then see results of those campaigns.

Who should use it and why: Traackr can be a useful tool for either advertising agencies or brands that want to build social media campaigns that improve over time and show how they pay off in the end.

9. SocMetrics
The Topical Influencer platform by SocMetrics is a web-based tool that allows you to identify influencers, understand who these people are, interact with them and then monitor your campaign.

The "Competitive Influence" feature allows you to specify brands and drill down for detailed influencers. What's slick about this tool is that you can narrow your search to a long-tail keyword, seeing who is truly influential.

Who should use it and why: Any marketing professional who wants to build an effective social media campaign based upon influencers in a specific industry should give this a look. SocMetrics can help you harness the power of thought leaders, which in turn can help you build your brand and sell more.

10. Social Scope
For BlackBerry users who've longed for an app that combines Twitter and Facebook on one screen, such as TweetDeck for your desktop, consider trying Social Scope.

And on that same screen you'll see a thumbnail image if someone shares something from TwitPic. It also has a built in retweeting feature, hash tag search and will also let you see the entire URL to know where a truncated URL is pointing.

Who should use it and why: Anyone who owns a BlackBerry and has a Facebook and Twitter account is a prime target for this app. It's probably the closest you can get to a desktop-type app on a BlackBerry.

BY NEIL PATEL | February 21, 2012|

80

A market for social-media data

Sipping from the fire hose

Making sense of a torrent of tweets

Oct 1st 2011 | from the print edition

MOST tweets are inane, but a million may contain valuable information. Fed through clever algorithms, a torrent of microblogs can reveal changes in a nation’s mood. Hence the excitement about a new market: the sale and analysis of real-time social-media data. MediaSift, a British start-up, will soon launch a marketplace for such information.

Analysing social media used to be a cottage industry. Firms gathered data slowly and patchily, through mechanisms not built for the purpose. Many online services kept their data locked up, because there was no way to make money from them. All this is changing.

Twitter was the first to move because it generates ever more data: the number of tweets per day now exceeds 230m, up more than 100% from the beginning of the year. Twitter would like to turn its popularity into money, but rather than beefing up its own infrastructure, it plans to outsource the task of distributing and selling its data to MediaSift and Gnip, another start-up.

Both MediaSift and Gnip are striving to be “data platforms”. They collect and standardise information from all kinds of social-media services—not only Twitter, but also Facebook, YouTube and others. Both Gnip and MediaSift have built robust networks which can cope with massive amounts of data in real time. And both are enforcing licensing rules: for instance, that a stream of tweets can be analysed but not republished.

Gnip, based in Boulder, Colorado, is more of a wholesale distributor. It charges $30,000 a month for a feed of half of all tweets. Customers can also subscribe to feeds of tweets containing web links or certain keywords. Buyers are mostly social-media monitoring companies, which analyse the data for a fee. Sysomos, a Canadian firm, for example, allows firms to track in real time what people think about certain products.

MediaSift serves both big corporations and individuals. Customers can define sophisticated filters, for instance to find all tweets by men who are interested in a new product and live in London. Charges for DataSift, as the service is called, depend on the filter’s complexity and the amount of data delivered.

The streams from Gnip and MediaSift can be combined with data from more specialised firms that try to extract meaning from social-media data. Lexalytics, for instance, analyses the sentiment of messages and posts. Klout measures the influence of social-media users (some firms give people with a high Klout score preferential treatment).

Having a marketplace such as DataSift has already encouraged other social-media services to open their data vaults, says Nick Halstead, the founder of MediaSift. Financial firms have become interested in feeding such data into the algorithms they use to make investment decisions, says Chris Moody, Gnip’s president. And corporations are increasingly keen on combining social-media data with customer information.

Yet growth in this market could be held back—by privacy concerns. Most people think that tweets are only up to 140 characters long. But those who sip from Twitter’s fire hose can get much more information, including a sender’s location, the biography on his profile page and how many people have subscribed to his messages. Most of this information is freely available on Twitter’s website. But if users realise how their data are used, they may clam up.

from the print edition | Business