Common Paradox Tech Blog

A new Facebook app launched this week that lets you send small sums of money to friends – the London-based company allows payments to be sent in US dollars or Euros.

Beyond sharing links, photos, videos and status updates, is the exchange of real money a logical next step for Facebook users?

What about Facebook Credits, and the popularity of buying virtual goods within games like FarmVille — do those indicate Facebook’s potential to become a leading online payments provider?

That’s the topic of my CNN column this week.

Check out the column at CNN.com >>

Tags: cashmore, cnn, facebook, payments, pete cashmore

Twitter phishing attacks caught some users off-guard this week, and some expressed surprise that such attacks remain effective.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: Not only do we tend to trust direct messages sent by friends, but the rise of short URLs and a trend towards federated login systems (Facebook Connect et al) may further confuse new users.

That’s the topic of my CNN column this week.

Check out the column at CNN.com >>

Tags: cashmore, cnn, mashable, pete cashmore, tech

GMAIL USERS: We hope you’ll join the discussion over on Mashable’s Google Buzz account.

Google Buzz hasn’t been out of the tech headlines all week: from the excitement around its launch to subsequent fixes to address privacy concerns, the web has been abuzz about Buzz.

But what’s the place for Buzz among existing social networks? Does it compete more directly with Twitter, or Facebook? Is it an entirely new approach to status updates that can co-exist and integrate with these tools?

If Twitter is the town square, what is Google Buzz?

That’s the topic of my CNN column this week.

Check out the column at CNN.com >>

Reviews: Facebook, Google Buzz, Twitter

Tags: cnn, Google, google buzz

Apple and Adobe are battling this week over Flash support on the iPad — or rather the lack of it.

With many video sites and online games likely to be inaccessible to iPad users, the decision could confuse web users and dent Flash’s popularity.

But is Steve Jobs doing us a favor by (reportedly) encouraging developers to drop Flash in favor of HTML5?

That’s the topic of my CNN column this week.

Check out the column at CNN.com >>

Tags: adobe, apple, Apple iPad, cnn, Flash, HTML5, ipad, steve jobs

U.S. President Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union address will be delivered tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. EST.

While you’ll be able to catch it on the TV networks, you might prefer to watch on your computer or your mobile device and take advantage of all the social media integration the White House and media outlets are trying out this time; Facebook discussions will appear on at least four sites.

Here’s a list of places you can go on the web or on your mobile phone to watch — and in some cases discuss — what the president will say to Congress and the nation tomorrow night. Some make better use of social media than others, but they’ll all get you the basic coverage you need to be an informed citizen. If we’ve missed anything, let us know in the comments.

White House Live and Facebook

Your first choice is to go directly to the source. White House Live at whitehouse.gov will stream the event in real time, and it will integrate with discussions on Facebook. The video and discussion will also be hosted at Facebook’s White House page. As we reported recently, the brand new White House iPhone app will give you access to the speech if you’re not at home.

YouTube

YouTube will stream the event, of course, but it will also accept questions that the president will answer next week. That will all happen at youtube.com/citizentube. We’ll add an embed below as soon as it’s available.

Hulu

Ustream

Ustream will air live coverage from CBS News with an accompanying chat widget. The stream will also be available on its mobile apps for the iPhone and other supported mobile platforms.

CNN

CNN will stream its coverage live on the web as it has previously, and it will once again integrate with Facebook for live viewer commentary and discussion. We’ll add an embed below if one becomes available.

C-SPAN

C-SPAN will stream its coverage of the address without too many social media bells and whistles at its website. We weren’t able to find an embed code for this one.

MobiTV

MobiTV does streaming video for mobile devices; it will offer a live stream on supported devices of the president’s address from MSNBC, ABC News, FOX News and NOW.

Tags: C-Span, cnn, facebook, live video, mobitv, obama, state of the union, ustream, whitehouse.gov, youtube

Technology has played an important role not only in getting relief to those affected by the Haiti earthquake, but in getting information out about how the quake affected the island nation.

CNN contributes a new series of immersive information visualizations in these 360 degree panoramic videos, where you can completely control the camera’s view during playback as well as zoom in and out.

Shot over the last week in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, the videos are powered by technology from Immersive Media — the same company that helped power much of Google’s Street View.

Have a look at the interactive videos at full size and let us know what you think.

[via Gizmodo]

Disclosure: Mashable has a syndication partnership with CNN.

Tags: cnn, haiti, haiti 360, interactive video, panorama, social media, video

We’ve covered how technology has shaped relief efforts in Haiti and shown how it has affected our perception of the nation’s continuing tragedy. CNN is now offering new perspectives of the devastated nation with three interactive, immersive videos.

The videos were shot over the last week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital and largest city, the third of which captures the destruction most strikingly. The technology comes courtesy of Immersive Media, a company that specializes in interactive 360 degree video and helped provide much of the data that powers Google Street View. Their website already had demos of their unique videos, in which the viewer has full control to pan and zoom even as the video plays, but it’s good to see the technology being applied to a very current event and displayed on as visible a platform as CNN.com.

The situation in Haiti remains in many ways unfathomable, no matter how many reports or photos or statistics one consumes. But this type of project shows how technology is constantly providing new ways to experience and understand the world. [CNN via Boing Boing]

Hoping to raise money for the Haiti earthquake relief effort, Bono, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys, and Coldplay and somewhere around 100 other stars will entertain viewers on both the web and traditional TV tomorrow night at 8pm ET in a benefit called Help Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief.

The telethon was organized by MTV Networks and George Clooney, and other networks taking part will include the websites of MySpace, YouTube, Hulu, AOL, Fancast, VH1, CBS, MSN, Bing, Yahoo, Rhapsody, TV.com, BET and CNN. The event will be streamed by mobile providers AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, too. There will be over 30 networks involved once all’s said and done. Expect this to dominate both the internet and the television tomorrow night.

A U2/Jay-Z/Rihanna collaboration and a jam including Kid Rock, Keith Urban, and Sheryl Crow will be among the main events. They’ve got a little something for everybody planned, it looks like.

Most of the sites that are hosting this event haven’t created pages to visit yet, but show up at any of the networks before the show starts and you’ll find your way.

Live Chat: More Engagement, More Donations

Live chats managed by Gigya — the same company that did the MTV/Facebook/LG Avatar webcast with James Cameron — will accompany the MTV, VH1 and CBS webcasts.

Gigya told us that MTV Networks is working with them again to recreate the “lean forward” level of participation they achieved with the Avatar webcast. The live chat makes the donating experience public; folks in the chat will probably encourage one another to donate, and people will be more likely to donate if they know they can impress their friends. They’ve found that these webcast chats drive more traffic and more word of mouth promotion, which will in turn lead to a greater volume of donations.

[img credit: iamguilty]

Tags: alicia keys, aol, att, bet, bing, bruce springsteen, cbs, cnn, coldplay, fancast, george clooney, gigya, haiti, hulu, jay-z, justin timberlake, keith urban, kid rock, mtv, myspace, sheryl crow, sprint, taylor swift, television, tv, tv.com, U2, verizon, vh1, webcast, Yahoo, youtube

In the face of disaster, small acts of heroism can add up. Even sending a simple SMS can lead to more than $20 million raised for relief efforts surrounding the Haiti earthquake.

Enter another small act of heroism, this time on the part of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. While filming in Haiti, Cooper was in the vicinity when a store fight reportedly broke out and left a boy wounded after suffering a blow to the head from a concrete block. In the video below (Warning: It’s on the graphic side), Cooper extricates the boy from the confrontation to relative safety.

The footage enters into a larger dialogue surrounding the role of journalists as impartial observers in dire situations like the Haiti disaster. As medical correspondents become field doctors and newscasters rescue children from the crossfire, it’s a timely ethical debate perhaps without a clear-cut solution.

What’s your take: Do journalists have a duty to provide aid in life-threatening situations or does that level of emotional engagement impact the independence required for good journalism?

[img credit: Jonathan Torgovnik/Reportage by Getty Images for CNN]

[via BuzzFeed]

Tags: Anderson Cooper, cnn, haiti, haiti earthquake, journalism, media, video, viral video

Mashable’s Ben Parr showed off his Google Nexus One to CNN at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, talking through the basic features and comparing the device to his iPhone.

Parr explains how the Nexus One launch took the steam out of mobile launches at CES, and also gives a side-by-side comparison of the Nexus One and his iPhone. The video clip is embedded below.

What do you think? Can the Google Phone challenge Apple’s domination?

Tags: Ben Parr, cnn, Google, google phone, iphone, mashable, nexus one