invite

Cross-platform social-gaming network OpenFeint is bringing out on Wednesday a new version of its service with a new invite system and time-based leaderboards.

Gamers running titles with version 2.6 of OpenFeint will be able to share a title they're playing from within the app, just as Apple does via e-mail from within the App Store and as competitor Plus+ does via its internetwork messaging system. New to OpenFeint is a way to send recommended games out as an SMS to a friend. These are sent not from your phone or game device, but from OpenFeint itself, meaning that … Read more

Google has confirmed the acquisition of Invite Media, a display advertising company that helps connect buyers and sellers of display advertising.

Search advertising pays the bills at Google, but it has targeted display advertising as a growth opportunity for several years, starting with its acquisition of DoubleClick. Google announced the Invite Media buy on its DoubleClick blog Thursday, after MediaMemo reported news of the pending acquisition Wednesday for around $70 million.

Invite Media allows ad buyers to bid in "real-time" on available ad inventory through ad exchanges, like the one Google has set up through its DoubleClick subsidiary. … Read more

Google on Friday began giving students priority access to its Google Voice service, which has remained in a closed beta since its transition from GrandCentral in March of last year.

Typically, invites for the service can take anywhere from a few hours to several months to arrive after a user signs up. But the company is now promising those who have an e-mail address that ends with .edu access to the service within 24 hours. Google had done something similar for active members of the U.S. military back in August.

In a blog post on the new initiative, Google … Read more

While iCal is an exceptionally convenient and robust calendaring program, there are some quirks to how it handles certain functions that can be rather frustrating at times. One of these is how it seems to handle invitations and automatic announcements for invitations.… Read more

Today's episode of The 404 Podcast starts with a big change in the show title format. That's right, we're now announcing the date with the episode number and name. Can you feel the excitement! Well, if that didn't do the trick, check out this funny headline from the first story of the day: "Woman fired for eating boss' meatball." I don't even think that requires any further explanation, but you can read the whole story here

Now that you can invite friends to Google Voice, maybe Wilson will be generous and spread the love. Google Voice is great for users that want to consolidate several phone numbers into one. The service also transcribes voice mails, assign personalized greetings by caller, forward voice mails, and many more convenient features that help you screen your communication with the outside world. Do you have a Google Voice number already? Let us know what you think of the service, and share the wealth, will you!?

Models, high schoolers, and crime scene investigators will love this next story: Polaroids are making their triumphant comeback in 2010! A group called The Impossible Project is taking the reigns and collaborating with Polaroid to reproduce a limited edition of the Instant Film in mid 2010. If you can't wait that long, they've also partnered with Urban Outfitters and have the classic film and a special edition Polaroid camera kit available in stores now.

Finally, we definitely want to show our support to Drew Olanoff and Drew Carey for actually making philanthropic use of Twitter! Drew Carey will give away $1,000,000 to the LiveStrong foundation if his Twitter account receives a million followers by midnight on December 31, 2009. In the small chance that he doesn't get the million followers by that time, the amount will be prorated according to how many he ends up with. In other words, if he finishes with 600,000 followers, the LiveStrong foundation will receive $600,000. Right now he's at 92,017 followers--with The 404's help, we can get him closer to that million!

Oh yeah, do yourself a favor and go check out Loaded today to see Natali talking about the Love Vibes iPhone app that rates your lovemaking skill...or lack thereof.

Google will now allow Google Voice users to invite friends to the service, the company wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

According to Google, Voice users have been requesting to "share Google Voice with friends and family." To satisfy that desire, Google will now allow users to invite up to three friends to the service. The invite-a-friend feature is being added to accounts over the next few weeks, so not all users will have the option of inviting others immediately. According to the company, the "Invite a friend" link will appear on the left side … Read more

I recently used Evite to send invitations for a party at my house. Overall, I was pleased with the experience. The selection of invitation styles was huge. The invitee tracking tool was informative. But the site's user interface made it too complicated to send an invitation. Worse, Evite hasn't really embraced the social networking space--there's no Evite app on Facebook nor Twitter integration. And the closest it comes to going mobile is sending SMS invites and offering a mobile site.

So I set out to find some alternatives to Evite to see if they could provide a better service.

CircleUp Though it's not specifically designed to provide invitations and tracking, CircleUp does let you invite others to an event and track their attendance. The page detailing whether or not invitees will be attending the event is especially good. But CircleUp simply isn't as useful as Evite, nor as convenient.

Crusher I like Crusher. It's simple and clean. Creating invitations can take less than a minute. But if you're the type who wants to tweak an invitation to fit your needs, the site also has a CSS editor. You can add video, chat, photos, and much more. It's great for the Web geek and the Web novice alike. And it's better than Evite.

Enclude Unlike Evite, Enclude lets you send e-cards. But its invitation creation tool doesn't provide as many planning options as Evite's. And if you really care about the design of the invite, you'll find fewer cards on Enclude. I also wasn't impressed with its invitee tracking tool. Simply put, it's no Evite.

Facebook Most of the people who I would invite to a party are my friends on Facebook anyway, so creating an event and sending out an invitation through the social network is quite convenient. Creating an invitation in Facebook takes less than a minute. Everyone can see who will be attending the party. Attendance tallies are updated as soon as the invitee responds. If you don't need to invite too many people outside of your Facebook friends list, Facebook is a fine invitation tool. It's much simpler than Evite.

Invitastic Invitastic is ugly, too simple, and unable to compete on any level with Evite. That said, it might come in handy when you want to quickly send out an invite to a couple friends and you don't want all the extras Evite provides. But even in those circumstances, I'm hard-pressed to find a reason to use Invitastic instead of other simple services, like Zoji.… Read more

Play With Pictures takes one of the most essential image editing features and expands it into an entire program. It is not a photo editor, at least not in the mold of Photoshop. Play With Pictures takes the cut-and-paste feature and simplifies the process while building out supplementary features for creating online avatars, greetings cards, and other projects that require image mash-ups.

The interface presents a re-imagining of the image editing toolset, gearing users towards projects instead of stand-alone edits. The left nav toolbar even notes the steps needed to take a user from start to finish. Tools are categorized … Read more

InterActiveCorp's Evite might still be the biggest name in online invitations, but Martha Stewart has made her endorsement elsewhere.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has partnered with and made an undisclosed investment in Pingg, a much smaller competitor.

The chief executive of New York-based Pingg, Lorien Gabel, spoke to CNET News a few months ago to make the case for his company as a more refined alternative to the clip art-friendly Evite, saying he hoped Pingg would be appropriate for "a whole segment of event types that people just (do) not want to use electronic invitations for," like … Read more