Having an official fan page on Facebook is great for creating a niche for students, faculty, alumni and other members of the school population. However, these sites are hard to monitor and actively maintain, and they may not have all the features that a school might need. One new app from San Francisco-based firm Inigral, Inc., allows colleges to create student-oriented social networks within Facebook. The application, called “Schools on Facebook,” is currently free for users.

“Schools on Facebook” enables colleges and universities to form private online communities that give students school-specific profiles that are separate from their original Facebook accounts.

Another budding web-based service called Foursquare is also providing an aid for educational institutions. It provides a mobile app that allows students to keep up to date with the latest events going on around campus as well as find other students.

Many schools see the integration of social networking tools into their campus culture as an effective way to increase enrollment and retention. A student that has been accepted into a college can be given access to the app even if he or she is still deciding whether or not to enroll there. This can allow the potential student to interact with other students and build friendships before fully committing to study in that particular institution.

Currently, 16 of the country’s colleges and universities are using the “Schools on Facebook” app, including Arizona State University, Columbia College Chicago, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Harvard University, once home to Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the first to integrate Foursquare as a tool for student updates and campus communication. Schools will undoubtedly save on other communication costs when the trend solidifies.

Before Yahoo! Groups, there was no easy way for a large set of people to remain in frequent communication via email. Fletcher built the first service that would allow them to do so, and sold it to Yahoo! for $400 million. Now Yahoo! Groups and similar products are being used by friends, relatives, advocates of particular causes, enthusiasts of different interests and even by large corporations.

Termed “e-groups,” these are not just shared mailing lists that can be accessed through a single email address. They also keep archives, provide group reminders, and even host files and photos for the group.

Later, Mark Fletcher built Bloglines, the former leading RSS reader, and sold it to Ask.com. Bloglines offered user-driven syndication for the first time. The product currently allows people to subscribe to RSS-feeds of different periodical or frequently updated websites. Bloglines and other RSS readers are now used to push RSS documents to various mobile devices as well.

For Fletcher, the future of communications online is in groups. SnapGroups will focus on real-time group communication. There are plans to integrate with social media giants Twitter and Facebook. SnapGroups can be made public or shared among a select group of users, with the ability to add and remove users from the groups as they go along. Unlike with online forums, users won’t have to deal with unwanted headers, links, graphics, and ads.
With so many and such versatile forms of social communication already out there, it doesn’t really seem like there’s a need for any more of them. But with a track record like that of Mark Fletcher, SnapGroups isn’t one that can be ignored.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Startups.

In one move (given its strong web presence), Google announced a plan to build on its online payment platform, Google Checkout, in a bid to create a universal system that will enable newspapers and other media producers to charge for their content online. Think of it as a gated community for that handles content created across multiple sites.

Google collects the micropayments, either through subscriptions or pay-as-you-go plans and distributes the money based on traffic or some other metric. The benefits for the producers are obvious, assuming they’re still able to pull in readers, but the boon for Google is twofold. They collect a percentage on the transactions and get to learn more about their audience’s habits. Which leads me to ask, will the public being willing pay, and will they have any choice?

The other deal is much farther afield. Google announced that it is working hard to improve the tech behind solar thermal heating systems. Essentially, seeking to improve the reflective surfaces to generate greater heat and more efficiencies. A plan that follows with its philanthropic quest to develop green technology, but also has the potential for big pay-outs given that the clean energy market is still relatively new.

But what’s most curious about this move, is that it appears to compete with Google’s early investments in solar, namely  eSolar and Brightsource. Apparently Google was unhappy with the level of innovations happening within this space and is seeking a more active role. This will have to be another wait and see, but with a working prototype expected in the next few months, it appears we’ll know soon enough.

[image via Yodel Anecdotal]

The NY Times points to the current landscape, where Microsoft and Apple have recently upgraded their entries, Google has introduced Chrome and “browser-lite” offered by Mozilla has captured 23 percent market share. Add to this already crowded field, a new venture by start-up RockMelt – backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen – that while still in the early stages, is rumored to have implications for engaging with social media platforms, and the battle lines are being redrawn.

With the increasing mobility and connectedness offered by new technologies, the web and not the computer is increasingly becoming our access point to work and play, while the internet is simultaneously being seen less as a cohesive whole as it is deconstructed into dynamic pages and applications for performing specific tasks. Which is to say, that the browser is the gateway to controlling and shaping that user experience and there’s plenty of room for  innovation to keep pace with this evolution.

The biggest challenge remains distribution, but as we’ve seen time and again, develop a compelling enough product and your audience will find you, particularly in the fluid world of online technology.

[image via R.P. Piper]

Fast Company examines the acquisition, taking the former perspective, saying “Friendfeed has is universality: it acknowledges that some people are on Facebook, yes, but plenty of other are on Twitter and Gmail, and all those people want to talk to each other using one simple interface.” They note that Facebook’s biggest challenge is maintaining relevance. While it excels at connecting people initially – much like a phonebook in their view – all of its other services – updates and messaging- are merely adequate, giving users little reason to keep going back. Rolling Friendfeed’s model into that of Facebook might eliminate some of its simplicity, but it reestablishes Facebook as a social networking home base.

According to the Silicon Valley Insider, however, the deal was all about the people behind the platform – of Friendfeed’s 12 employees, all but one are engineers. They lay it out simply, pointing to Facebook’s desire for “FriendFeed’s 11 engineers, its ex-Google cofounders, who helped build products like GMail, Google Maps, etc. and their ideas, primarily to be built into Facebook.”

Regardless of your particular point of view (and barring the financial details of the deal) it’s hard not look at this buy as a big win for Facebook, as they make further inroads into transforming their site from a destination to a multi-use platform. Now if only they could figure out a way to monetize their service beyond the advertising model, Facebook’s dominance might really mean something.

[image via jaycameron]

The New York Times reports that the split occurred under relatively friendly terms, and “Apple praised Mr. Schmidt for his work. But the company’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, said in a statement that Mr. Schmidt’s position would have been ’significantly diminished’ because he would have been forced to recuse himself from more of the meetings as Google and Apple began to compete head to head.”

This announcement serves to further complicate the race for top dog on the web, particularly given the power grab made by Microsoft and Yahoo! last week to regain ground in the search market. Google followed Schmidt’s announcement with news it would be starting a massive billboard advertising campaign in the major markets of Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Fransisco in order to combat fears that Microsoft’s new deal with Yahoo! would adversely affect the industry leader’s current dominance.

Even though conventional roadside billboards may seem anathema to the Google ethos given the almost esoteric nature of the format, it’s clear that the move will ultimately support the company’s bid to break into the operating system market long though of as a duopoly. According to Fast Company, the billboards, located next to high trafficked commuter routes, will “update every day for a month, and as the days go by it’ll reveal more and more about the concept of “going Google.”

And although Eric Schmidt downplayed the implications of his departure from the board of Apple, “clearly Google is confident enough in its software that it sees it as a real, working, reliable, solid and cheaper alternative to the business production solutions that MS has been peddling for decades,” it’s hard to ignore the obvious implications, namely, Google pitting its prospects against those of its former partner-in-crime.

Needless to say, with the current reordering at the top of the heap, it appears like the battle for web supremacy will continue to heat up, a fact that should lead to some interesting innovations as these companies drive each other and attempt to take hold of greater market share.

It’s no secret that to survive on the web and maintain audience interest, companies have had to become as much content creators as they are manufacturers or service providers, but how do you step outside the corporate blog and make something truly compelling?

For the Carpenter Co., the world’s largest producer of comfort cushioning products and the name behind SleepBetter.org, that meant hiring journalist and novelist Dan Gearino, housing him in the town of Stephenville, Texas and give him free rein to document the life going on there. The blog, going under the name Stephenville Dreams, is a long-form journalistic marketing campaign that says as much about the small Texas as it does about a bedding company.

Which is to say, that by successfully treading the fine line between the two, it might represent one more way to write about and distribute the news. After all, we’re already subject to advertising in the form of print ads, blinking banners and commercials, so why not sponsored content that assumes no bias and maintains journalistic integrity?

Gearino likens the experience to the “the Federal Writer Project, when the government paid thousands of writers, including the likes of John Cheever, Saul Bellow and Studs Terkel to capture everyday life during the Depression.” And  in his initial blog,suggested that the project is “revolutionizing the underpinnings of journalism.”

Needless to say, it will be interesting to see if this project is merely a flash in the pan or something that will inspire an industrywide trend in the way our stories are reported.

In speaking on “The Importance of Art,” I offer my thoughts from the standpoint of an appreciator, an investor and a philanthropist. The art world represents a rare opportunity to combine many of my passions into a singular endeavor and it’s vital that we continue to support the institutions that make it possible.

Bruce L. Smith, a psychologist and president of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods, argues that the “more test materials are promulgated widely, the more possibility there is to game [the test],” a prospect that threatens to “render the results meaningless.” Smith’s feelings are shared by many within the psychology community who object to the test being analyzed and made public on Wikipedia.

But the other side of the issue sits a group that is just as vocal, Wikipedia users who believe very strongly in Wikipedia’s free content ethos. With this point-counterpoint, one can make the parallel to the much broader issue of how the world of intellectual property that exists on the web is to be fairly distributed. This argument represents an old one in the relatively young history of the internet, conjuring memories of Napster vs. Metallica, dorm room lawsuits issued against college downloaders, and most recently Gladwell vs. Anderson. But where music and other forms of downloadable art can lean on copyright infringement, this particular intellectual property dilemma can’t – the copyright on the Rorschach test has expired, technically making them legal under the terms of “fair use”. Which means, pursuing a lawsuit to remove the images would be difficult and unlikely.

However, Trudi Finger, a spokeswoman for Hogrefe & Huber, the company that initially bought and distributed Rorschach’s book, insists that the company is “assessing legal steps against Wikipedia.” She goes on to say, “It is therefore unbelievably reckless and even cynical of Wikipedia, to on one hand point out the concerns and dangers voiced by recognized scientists and important professional associations and on the other hand — in the same article — publish the test material along with supposedly ‘expected responses.’ ”

She may have a point. But in this collision of historically significant entities, perhaps what is right legally and ethically may be at odds. Should this ever go to trial, it will be interesting (and perhaps historic) to see on which side the precedent falls.

To that end, the BBC reports on some interesting fallout from the 2009 MobileBeat Conference held recently in San Francisco, touting mobile applications to be as big as, if not bigger than the internet. To make sense of this, I try to think of these individual applications as bite-sized pieces of the web-at-large, often more specific than an entire website, that provide users with a personal (sometimes customizable) experience based on the performance of a particular task.

With that specificity in mind, it’s no wonder that the market is becoming flooded with competitors – Apple’s store alone hosts over 65,000 applications and recently saw its 1.5 billionth download. But while there appears to be no end to this growth, a combination of a plateau in users (as web-enabled phones become commonplace), captured niches and overall market saturation, will lead to fewer surefire opportunities.

Ilja Laurs, chief executive of GetJar, a leading independent application store, sees this point coming sooner than many think. ”They will peak at around 100,000 by the end of the year. That will be a tipping point and after that there will be a gradual fall in the rate of development.” With initial costs for time and R&D no longer providing guaranteed return on investment, these businesses become riskier propositions, sending the talent pool elsewhere and contributing to a further tapering off.  A trend that should benefit those that remain for the long haul.

Another facet that needs to be refined is the current “retail” model that buries users in a sea of applications that rely too heavily on “one-hit wonders,” while giving smaller developers less chance of survival. Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said he was not sure the consumer or the industry needed any more application stores. ”The App Store is flawed – right now [it] is just a bucket of apps. You need to get beyond that bucket and give the consumer the opportunity to wander down a really relevant aisle of content and applications that they can get access to.”

The bottom line appears to be that as this market continues to emerge and evolve the smart money will be on the players that best leverage their audience and platform with an idea or service that is transformative, novel or at the very least good for “must-have” fad.