Common Paradox Tech Blog

An extended outtake sequence from director Ron Howard’s “Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion” featuring Will Ferrell as George W. Bush and Dana Carvey as George Bush Sr. is making the rounds on the Internet. The original clip has attracted almost three million views.

This new outtake clip is an extended conversation (two minutes and 35 seconds compared to just a few seconds in the original version) with Ferrell and Carvey riffing off of one another in their roles. Some father and son issues start to bubble up (pardon the pun) and things get a little weird.

Funny or Die produced and distributed the Ron Howard-directed “Presidential Reunion” skit, which brought together two decades of Saturday Night Live presidents — Ferrell as George W. Bush, Carvey as Bush Sr., Fred Armisen as Barack Obama, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Dan Akroyd as Jimmy Carter, Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford and surprisingly, Jim Carrey as Ronald Reagan. It also features Maya Rudolph as a weight-lifting Michelle Obama.

The video directed viewers’ attention to financial aid reform organization Main Street Brigade. We’ve embedded the new Carvey and Ferrell outtake below, along with the original video and two other outtake videos.

Bush Sr. vs. Bush Jr.

Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion

Behind the Scenes

Dana Carvey Dream Sequence

Tags: celebrities, comedy, dana carvey, funny or die, george bush sr., george w. bush, Political, politics, saturday night live, sketch, snl, viral videos, web series, will ferrell

With legions of mobile, tech-savvy individuals invading Austin, Texas for SXSW, Foursquare experienced an extraordinary day yesterday, recording a record-breaking 347,000 check-ins.

In response to the boom in usage, the developers added a new badge called Super Swarm. There was already a badge called Swarm; it was awarded when 50 people checked in at the same location at the same time. Super Swarm is achieved when 250 people check in.

Foursquare guru Harry H. said, “Know what you call a 50 person swarm at SXSW? The Hilton Lobby. So we upped the ante to 250 and you still nailed it. Well played!” So yes, the badge has already been won, but it’s not a zero-sum game; head to a huge event like SXSW and you might get it, too.

Foursquare just turned one year old a few days ago, and its usage has shot up over the past three months. Very worthy competitors like Gowalla and Yelp may be putting up a fight against it, but as far as check-ins are concerned, Foursquare is on top right now. Only time will tell if it stays that way.

Tags: android, blackberry, foursquare, iphone, News, sxsw, sxsw-2010

Tomorrow, the United Nations will be announcing a special Social Media Envoy group that will use the power of social media over the next year to raise awareness for malaria control in African countries.

The special envoy is made up of well-known figures from both the social web and broadcast media, including Mashable’s own Pete Cashmore. Those that have joined the group have pledged to take one “social” action — such as a tweet or a Facebook post — every month for the next year starting from World Malaria Day on April 25, which last year saw Malaria No More also use Twitter for the cause.

The hope is that the tweets, posts and other social actions will inspire and motivate social media audiences in support of malaria control. The UN’s goal is to provide all endemic African countries with malaria control interventions by the end of 2010, working towards the aim of near-zero deaths from malaria by 2015.

We’re very happy to see the UN enlist the power of social media in the fight against Malaria. The disease kills one million people each year with over 90% of the world’s malaria deaths occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. Universal bed net coverage is the UN’s chosen prevention tool to fight the diseases; it has delivered over 192 million insecticidal mosquito nets since 2007, covering nearly 400 million people.

However, there is more money to be raised and more work to be done. We hope that the social media envoy will go even farther than their commitment to one social action per month, because Malaria is a battle where every little bit helps.

The 2010 Social Media Envoys

* Derrick Ashong, Musician, Social Activist & Oprah Radio host

* Veronica Belmont, Host of “Tekzilla” and “Qore” and Internet Personality

* Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey

* Sarah Brown, of MillionMums.org and wife of Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister

* Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of Mashable

* Anderson Cooper, CNN Anchor of “Anderson Cooper 360″

* Dennis Crowley, Co-founder of Foursquare

* Anil Dash, Director of Expert Labs and Partner at Activate

* Justine Ezarik, “iJustine”, Internet Personality

* Jack Gray, CNN Producer/Writer for “Anderson Cooper 360″

* Arianna Huffington, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post; www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

* Guy Kawasaki, Co-founder of Alltop.com

* Larry King, CNN Host of “Larry King Live”

* Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic

* Alyssa Milano, Actress

* Dave Morin, Former Facebook executive- responsible for Facebook Connect and Platform

* Jeff Pulver, Founder of 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) and Co-founder of VoIP (Vonage)

* Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg

* Chris Sacca, Founder of Lowercase Capital

* Ryan Seacrest, Founder, Ryan Seacrest Productions

* Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter

* Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco

* Jon Wheatley, Co-founder of DailyBooth.com

* Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing, Facebook

You can show your support for the UN’s cause by following these “Social Media Envoys” and find out more about the United Nations Special Envoy for Malaria at its dedicated site.

Tags: facebook, malaria, social good, social media, social news, twitter, United Nations, world malaria day

Adrian Chan is a Sr Fellow with SNCR.org and is a social interaction design consultant and strategist. You can follow him on Twitter @gravity7 and at his blog: gravity7.com/blog/media.

In designing for social participation, we can consider user goals and needs — even interests, features, functionality, adoption and scaling issues. Best practices and popular ways of using social media guide us in our decisions. But there’s a basic concern we seem to often overlook: “What is the user good at?”

We each differ in what we’re good at socially, so asking this question raises other interesting questions that can be useful in mapping the social design objectives for tools, services, social brand campaigns and more. In the answers lie a rich set of possibilities.

If we really take the user experience to heart, we ought to think about user competencies. Users have different competencies in social media applications, just as they have different social skills in the real world. How users socialize, and what they are good at — these are their competencies. In the case of social media, this is as much social and interpersonal as it is technical.

Using Human Insight

When we think about user competencies we might first recognize that we need to know more about the user’s experience with social media, but we have little research upon which to draw solid distinctions.

Researching this is hard, and methods are imperfect. Qualitative approaches are difficult to scale, and users do not always describe what they do online with the honest insight we want. Quantitative studies can scale better, but they rely on limited interpretations of user behavior.

Let’s instead do a series of thought experiments using assumptions about some basic and essential insights and principles.

What We Can Presume About People and Social Media

If we start with the assumption that people on social media are good at social media, then the following are also true to varying degrees:

People are good at using social media.

People are good at interacting with others on social media.

People are good at making themselves look good on social media.

People are good at making others feel and look good on social media.

People are good at making things happen on social media.

People are good at these things over time, not just once.

Here in Austin, I just finished introducing SparkHelp, the project Mashable has decided to support for the Pepsi Refresh SxSW Challenge. We’re competing against two other teams over the next few days to help get our idea $50,000 in funding, which will help make it a reality.

The Project

After lots of great submissions from our readers, we settled on SparkHelp’s simple and timely concept that we think stands to make a huge social impact with the resources of Pepsi and our support.

Here’s how SparkHelp explains their concept:

“SparkHelp’s idea is to encourage local communities to band together with a Foursquare meets Craigslist application. The idea is simple: anyone can place a call for help and anyone can answer that call. Help can be sought for anything: fence repair, car repair, computer work, dog walking, etc.”

With the increasing popularity of location-based apps on smartphones, think about being able to turn on SparkHelp when you have a couple hours free to find a project in your neighborhood – from the simple helping a neighbor in need to helping build a local playground. This makes getting involved simple, timely, and free of any long-term commitment.

We think this vision can be realized with a $50,000 grant from the Pepsi Refresh Project, allowing the team behind SparkHelp – lead by Brian Milner – to build its website as well as the apps for all of the major mobile platforms.

How to Support It

The winner will be chosen based on which project gets the most tweets that include its own unique hashtag. Our hashtag is #RefreshMashable – if you believe in the SparkHelp concept, be sure to include it on all of your tweets until voting ends on Monday, March 15th, at 11:59 CT. You can follow the voting in real-time on the Refresh SXSW Facebook Page.

Also, if you’re at SXSW, your registration bag includes a “VOTE” button with room to write in the project you’re supporting – you can add the #RefreshMashable tag there as well (find me if you need a sharpie!). The SparkHelp team has also setup a Twitter account where you can track progress and activities. Thanks for your support!

Adam and Brian Do Oprah Radio

Brian and I also got a chance to appear on the Derrick Ashong Experience on Oprah Radio earlier today to talk about the project. Here’s a snapshot:

Tags: pepsi refresh, sxsw, sxswi

If you had to pick the one buzzword that’s dominating social media chatter today, it would have to be location. Just over a year ago, Foursquare burst onto the scene at the SXSW conference in Austin, TX. Since then, it’s only grown dramatically.

The result has been a battle for domination in the geolocation space. While many still think Foursquare could be the next Twitter, rivals such as Gowalla are giving the mobile startup some heat, and big players such as Facebook and Twitter are launching location features or are about to launch them.

Our own Pete Cashmore sat down with Bloomberg’s Cris Valerio to discuss the location trend, the battle brewing between Foursquare and Gowalla at this year’s SXSW, the gold mine that is location-based advertising, the iPad, and even a little bit about the future of Mashable.

It’s quite a fascinating video — if you do watch it, let us know what you think of the location trend (and Pete’s on-air performance) in the comments.

Hunch, a New York City-based startup founded by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and SiteAdvisor founder/angel investor Chris Dixon, has raised $10 million in funding for its questions and recommendations site.

Nearly a year ago, Ms. Fake revealed her new startup to the world. Her goal: to create a service that would help people make decisions via crowdsourced questions and advice from its users. Hunch launched last June and has been growing steadily ever since (it peaked at nearly half a million U.S. visitors last month).

According to MediaMemo, the startup has raised $10-$12 million from Khosla Ventures and previous investors General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and original angel investor Ron Conway (an early investor in Google and PayPal). The lead investor seems to have been Gideon Yu, the former CFO of YouTube and later Facebook.

It’s tough to bet against Hunch and its stellar leadership team. Our tests of the service have always been a positive experience, although it’s tough to say just how much of a market exists for their service. Hunch also has some valuable data that could be an asset into the future.

Tags: business, funding, hunch, venture capital

For years now we have all found solace and joy in Charlie Schmidt’s “Keyboard Cat,” a musically inclined feline with Beethoven-sick skills and a mischievous mien. Now, a new kitty is on the scene: Bento. And believe you me, this Cat’s got synth-drenched magic coming out of his claws.

By now we all know the story of Keyboard Cat — a video born 30 years ago when an unemployed performance artist named Charlie Schmidt turned camera and creative eye to his cat, Fatso.

Years later, Schmidt uploaded the vid to the Internets and, lo and behold, people liked it. Because, well, people enjoy cats — especially when they’re acting like people.

Now, with little fanfare, a new video has been uploaded to Schmidt’s YouTube channel, the description of which reads:

“REJOICE!!! The waiting is over. As predicted by Keyboard Cat Church…He is back!!! Fatso is reincarnated as ‘Bento.’ He comes with Fatso’s approval, support, talent and spirit. It is truly time to celebrate!”

Check it out below. Minds will be blown. (And before you ask, commenters: Yes, it is a slow news day, but that doesn’t make this video any less awesome.)

[via Peggy Wang at Buzzfeed]

Tags: humor, keyboard-cat, music, viral video, youtube

Thanks to this week’s advertisers and partners for enabling us to bring you the latest social media news and resources. Mashable’s sponsors are as social media savvy as our readers!

Advertise with us and get noticed.

Help us to help you. Mashable is seeking out site sponsors for our large, diverse audience — social media users, venture capitalists, early adopters, developers, bloggers, and many more. You’ll receive hundreds of thousands of views a day in addition to weekly recognition to thank you as our premium sponsors. Are you interested? Contact us for more information and to receive our media kit and rate card.

This week, our valued sponsors are Gist, phpFox, Yield Software, Clickatell, Influxis, Microsoft BizSpark, MailChimp, Sun Startup Essentials, MaxCDN, and Eventbrite.

Gist helps you build stronger professional relationships by bringing together information from across the web for all your contacts and their companies giving you the right information at the right moment to get a first meeting, deliver an amazing pitch, or just find a better way to make a connection. Gist does all the work for you, assembling a dynamic collection of all your contacts and their companies from your email inbox, your social networks, or even your CRM system automatically building and updating their profiles as new content is published – by them or about them.

phpFox is a feature packed social networking script. Our goal is to provide your community with features found on major social networking sites. The platform gives you full control with your websites layout giving you the ability to easily create a unique look direct from the comfort of your Admin Control Panel. Try the new phpFox2 with a brand new engine; our fastest, coolest and most feature packed version ever. Start tomorrow’s next big thing today with phpFox!

Yield Software’s Yield Web Marketing Suite optimizes paid search (PPC) natural search (SEO) and landing pages, all in one easy-to-use Web-based system. A simple, intuitive interface together with sophisticated algorithms work seamlessly to optimize SEM campaigns every minute of every day, enabling growing businesses and their agencies to lower costs, improve performance, and increase profitability. Yield also offers a free SEO Analyzer, which delivers a report covering how well a site is optimized and suggestions for improvement. Yield Software—Web Marketing Made Easy.

Clickatell offers mobile social networks the opportunity to measure their return on investment: Not only does Clickatell offer an Interactive Campaign Manager tool that allows you to monitor and intervene in your customer campaigns in real time, it also generates and manages database integration and comes with additional marketing tools. Track the delivery status of your text messages and the responses; take the guesswork out of campaigning. Your valuable messages will always be delivered as our products allow for message escalation to alternative delivery gateways. Social networks are also, through the account management package, given control over network channels and connectivity options. All necessary tasks have been automated and our central interface allows you to manage multiple connections and projects at the same time.

Which leading social networking companies have chosen Clickatell as a mobile messaging partner? Read our success stories here.

Influxis is an official Adobe hosting partner and resource for the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server. Influxis provides Flash hosting plans for all levels of use – beginner to enterprise. With a reputation for exceptional customer service, Influxis provides an extremely reliable international network of FMS servers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

BizSpark is a program which offers new software businesses and entrepreneurs access to Microsoft design, development, and production tools with no upfront costs for up to three years. Members can also connect with a nationwide community of Network Partners – investors, incubators, service providers, and entrepreneurial organizations – who are keen to help.

For more information, or to connect with a Microsoft BizSpark advisor, please visit MicrosoftStartupZone.com/BizSpark.

MailChimp is a powerful, easy-to-use email marketing service. You design, me deliver.

If you’re working for a startup, Sun can help you get it off the ground fast. We created the fee-free Sun Startup Essentials program offering deep discounts on industry leading, power efficient systems and storage products, optimized open-source software, massively scalable Web hosting services, plus free visibility via Sun’s co-marketing engine. It’s time to build your business on the kind of infrastructure that can scale right along with the skyrocketing demands of success. Find out about Sun Startup Essentials today!

MaxCDN – Content Delivery Network. MaxCDN makes it easy and affordable to get maximum global performance from your site and enable your visitors to get the most out of their visit! MaxCDN offers: resistance to the Digg effect, SSL Integration, No Setup Fee, US-based customer service, No Commitments. Get 1 TeraByte for just $10 today!

Eventbrite is an online events marketplace where tens of thousands of individuals, businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and sell tickets to their events. Make your event a success on Eventbrite.

Additionally, thanks to the following partners for making Mashable happen:

Thanks to ConVerdge for implementing our My Mashable social network and W3 EDGE for the development and maintenance of Mashable.com

Mashable would also like to thank AttentionPR for their PR support. AttentionPR proves that PR today is measurable, transparent, and yes, social. Learn more about AttentionPR.

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.

iStockphoto offers easy, affordable inspiration with millions of safe, royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash® files. Using the most accurate search in the business, customers download a file at least every second from a collection of more than five million files for business, marketing and personal projects. iStockphoto started in 2000, pioneering the micropayment photography business model, and has become one of the most successful and profitable user-generated content sites in the world. iStockphoto pays out approximately $1.2 million weekly in artist royalties. iStockphoto is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Getty Images. Mashable readers save 10%.

Founded in 1998 as a free service, Dynamic Network Services Incorporated (Dyn Inc.) now operates two extremely reliable, “rock solid”, global DNS platforms; DynDNS.com for home/SMB users and the Dynect Platform for corporations and enterprises. As a leading provider of managed DNS services, Dyn Inc. plays a key role in keeping the Internet’s DNS infrastructure running smoothly, handling trillions of queries per day and servicing nearly four million active users. With a range of innovative solutions, from domain name and e-mail services on DynDNS.com, to failover, load balancing, traffic management and CDN balancing services with the Dynect Platform, Dyn Inc. remains committed to world class customer service and engineering excellence. Uptime is the Bottom Line. For more information about Dyn Inc., visit www.dyn.com, e-mail hello@dyn.com or call +1-603-668-4998.

ConcentricSky offers web development and strategic consulting services with a focus on emerging technologies such as Social Media and iPhone Apps. From simple websites to integrated web applications, we deliver innovative solutions that exceed your expectations – not your budget.

We can get your name out there.

Contact us for more information about supporting Mashable’s growth and development. Alternatively, visit our advertise section for more details about:

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CPM-based advertising is available through our partner, Federated Media, but if you contact us directly, you’ll be entitled to exclusive unpublished discounts.

Reviews: Digg, Mashable, iStockphoto

The iPad is now officially available for pre-order, which means that news is going to be flowing in all day about its various specs and features. We’ll keep you updated on said news with this handy-dandy, ever-changing post. Keep your eyes here for the latest.

If you’re still trying to figure out if you want to pre-order an iPad or not, check out the below to help you decide.

iPad Features

- Screen rotation lock: Apple has added a button to the side of the iPad that locks the screen in either a vertical or horizontal position, no matter which way you turn it. This is sure to make using the iPad in bed or on the couch easier.

- ePub support through iTunes: Apple’s website now has a dedicated i-books page that offers more information about the built-in e-reader and what formats it will support. If you already have DRM-free ePub titles, you can sync those books with the iPad using iTunes.

- VoiceOver Works with i-Books: Apple is integrating its VoiceOver technology into the entire device, including the i-books app. This means that blind or vision-impaired users can have the text read aloud. Sweet!

- Better video support: Apple didn’t highlight this feature, but on the Tech Specs page, we learn that the iPad will support more than just the standard Apple-approved video formats (*.mov, *.mp4, *.m4v) and will also support AVI and Motion JPEG. Apple has never supported AVI on its iPod/iPhone devices, so this is a great step.

- Share YouTube Videos on Facebook: The YouTube page has an interesting note at the bottom — you can easily e-mail a YouTube video to friends or share it on Facebook.

Reviews: Facebook, YouTube

Tags: apple, iBooks, ipad, ipad guide, youtube