social

Vuvox is a handy slide show service we've taken a look at before, and yesterday it launched a new tool called Cut-Out Express that lets you cut away at pictures to add embedded photo slide shows. Like the rest of its tools, you can add shots from your hard drive or pull them in from other services like Flickr, Picasa Web albums, or any old RSS feed with photos in it. What makes Cut-Out neat, though, is its lasso tool, which intelligently lets you wrap around a shot like you would using a high-end photo-editing application. It doesn't have a "magnetic" mode, but there's a helpful vertical and horizontal line that tracks the pointer to help you guide around whatever you're lassoing.

The end result is a pleasingly cheesy open area where your photos will fade from one to the next--sure to be a hit with the social-networking crowd, or people who feel like having a little fun with shots of friends, family, or celebrities. Speaking of which, I've embedded a Cut-Out of a Steve Jobs keynote after the break using pictures of historically faked Apple products (via Macrumors Guides). The service also recommends you do the same with your pet's mouth, billboards, and graffiti. Cute.

On a side note, if you're planning on using Vuvox for photo sharing with your family, the service has a neat feature that lets you privatize your content channel. So unlike a service like Flickr, there's no registration or mutual friendships necessary on your recipient's behalf to see your pictures, while they remain unseen by everyone else. All you need to send out is the URL. Unfortunately this can't be done toggled on individual slide shows (yet), but you can add a separate public channel, letting you group together slide shows you'd like to keep separate from your openly shared work.

[via Go2Web2]… Read more

The streaming music site Finetune, a likely competitor to Pandora, is now available as a Facebook application and is working smoothly.

While Finetune launched the Facebook app in September, we found a few kinks in it and, after talking with Finetune's CEO, decided to wait on sending you there until they were ironed out.

Most of the issues with posting and sharing playlists now seem to be resolved.

The application allows you to create music playlists of any artist in its database and post them to your Facebook profile. Friends can then listen to the playlists.

The Finetune Facebook … Read more

Anne Milgram, the attorney general for the state of New Jersey, issued a subpoena on Monday against popular social-networking site Facebook, requesting that the company turn over information as to whether registered sex offenders have profiles on the site. The return date for the subpoena is October 12.

Milgram's office has additionally sent letters to 11 other social networking sites, asking that they release similar data. It's unclear as to which social-networking sites those are; representatives for the attorney general's office were not immediately available for comment.

"This is a matter of public safety, and more … Read more

When thinking of knitting and crocheting, one doesn't often associate it with social networking Web sites. Despite being a solitary activity, knitting is also a social event and a chance for people to get together and share tips, projects, and chatter--also known as the "stitch and bitch." Ravelry is a new site for knitters and crocheters that's taking that online, and adding an interesting Web spin with project management, and the creation of a massive directory of user shared patterns. The end result is a social network that doubles as a place to find new projects and talk to others who have done them.

The service is set up to give everyone their own social profiles, including a blog that can be slurped from your existing site. There are also themed groups, with shared project and yarn pools, and private forums. Interestingly enough, instead of grouping "neighbors" by geographical region, Ravelry instead chooses to group people together by the projects they're working on.

The real draw, however, is the "stash," which is a place to document whatever yarns or fibers you own. Just take pictures of it, upload, and tag them. It then resides in your stash, until you've used it (which then goes into your "used" pile). The hope is that Ravelry users will keep their stashes up to date, letting other users ping them to purchase or swap the yarn, or ask questions.

According to CNET's resident knitting expert, and published author Jennifer Stafford, the stash actually helps to solve a real world problem in the crafts community--dyeing. Each lot of yarn has its own unique color, and if you somehow can't get more of a certain color later on, you're pretty much out of luck. Assuming people have tagged their stashes correctly, you might be able to pick up that oh-so-important missing piece of your project.

Ravelry is still in its private beta testing phase and is whittling down its waiting list of over 17k users by inviting about 500 new ones a day. You can sign up for it here.

Note: This post has been changed since its original publish to correct inaccuracies about the neighbors and patterns features, and to specify terminology about what's in the stash.… Read more

It's sure to be the next Facebook. It'll dwarf MySpace.com.

I bring you: The Ask a Ninja social network.

For anyone who's been using typewriters and watching over-the-air television the last couple of years, Ask a Ninja is the hit video blog in which a ninja answers questions about the lifestyle of sneaking undetected into locked buildings and opening victims up with katanas. And things like that.

Well, the audience has gotten so big that the creators have decided to do something that almost no one else has thought of: launch a site on which the … Read more

Financial advice takes a turn with the introduction of social networking features to Dow Jones' MarketWatch.com and Cake Financial, a new, entirely user-based investing community.

Just this week MarketWatch added MarketWatch Community, a Beta offshoot where users can post comments, rate articles, and try their hand at market forecasting.

Cake Financial, currently in Alpha, passes over an authoritative analyst voice in favor of a "Social Investing Revolution" allowing users to view the real-time performance of community members with similar profiles. During sign-up, users fill in their investment style, growth goals, history, and education level among other questions. They still build their own networks by adding family and friends, and can create account preferences like an automated stock watchlist.… Read more

Sugar Inc., the women's-oriented blog network that grew out of a single celebrity gossip title and now encompasses about a dozen others with the word "Sugar" in the title, has now branched into social news. On Monday, the company launched SugarLoving, which is a way for you to submit links that you "heart." Essentially, the model is similar to that of social news pioneer Digg. But SugarLoving is so cute and huggable, there isn't even a way for you to "bury" links that you don't like! Aww! We're all friends … Read more

As the tail end of the year comes around, many Internet retailers gear up for what will hopefully be the busiest part of their year. Of course, this is also one of the most nerve-racking times of the year as well, especially for those who have a disproportionate amount of their business relying on the success of only a few months of the year.

As you gear up for the holiday season, SEO blends more than ever into all of your other marketing efforts. Here are a few tips to help you on your merry way.

Audit Time

If you … Read more

The office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has stepped up its warnings against social-networking site Facebook, with a representative from the office saying the company may face a consumer fraud charge for misrepresenting how safe the site is for minors. The problem, according to an Associated Press story, is that Facebook claims its closed-site model makes the service safer for minors than other social networks, and that privacy and harassment concerns receive prompt responses.

The attorney general's office says those asserations simply aren't true. "We expect an immediate correction eliminating the dangers exposed by our … Read more