The diamond water paradox ought to be revised.  These days a couple hundred shares of stock in Google or perhaps Facebook next year, can be worth more than a good sized diamond and may in certain ways be as essential as the water we need to continue living.

Of course, we haven’t reached the point where you’d actually have to log-in to your Twitter or Facebook account to buy a bottle of water at a convenience store.

image from http://www.posmarket.com.au

Then again, there may actually be companies that are planning to integrate or have actually integrated Point of Sale systems (a.k.a cash registers) with either social networking websites.  The idea behind this is that when you purchase something from these companies, your purchase shows up as an update on your social network and that will perhaps, for a time, have an impact on the “conversations” you think you may be having with the world.  It’s kind of like Foursquare in a way but more directly tied up with actual purchases.

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Evernote has become the pre-imminent note taking tool for many mobile phone and desktop and internet browser users. The program not only allows users to take notes, but also share those notes on Twitter and Facebook, allowing for instant collaboration from a myriad of devices and now we have learned that the company has passed the 10 million registered users mark.

That 10 million user milestone is a 67% increase over the company’s 6 million users in January of this year, while 424,736 users are said to be premium users at the low cost of just $5 per month.

In celebration of their numbers the company has also released information on the type of devices used by their customers. For example, 46% of Evernote users have two devices they use the software with, while 18% use three devices routinely with Evernote, 7% have four devices for Evernote use and a high 4% use the program on five or more devices. read more

One of the greatest aspects of blogging is the fact you can do it wherever you like. With this type of freedom however, blogging may interrupt other activities we enjoy.

By learning how to blog faster we can plan our schedule accordingly. The process for becoming an efficient blogger takes time.

Here are some really simple blogging tips that you might find useful when you get inspired to blog. By sticking to a process that works best for you, you’ll find that blogging is easier to manage, especially when you can get it done consistently and within a set time period.

1. Find a Quiet Place for Creative Thought

When blogging at home you may find much more success by finding a place where you can hideout and write. A desk by a window is always a nice choice, but at a minimum just seek a room where the noise level is minimal. read more

Social analytics data collector PostRank has been acquired by Google, terms of the deal have not been disclosed to the public.

PostRank launched in 2007 and is currently located in Ontario, Canada, although the company will soon move to Google’s San Francisco offices.

If you’re unfamiliar with PostRank, the company collects social sharing information for websites, specifically focusing on “social interaction analytics” such at Twitter and Facebook shares, commenting and user traffic. The company also tracks Digg and Delicious use.

Announcing the deal on the official Postrank blog today CEO/Founder Ilya Grigorik wrote: read more

On June 1st, the blog and community site Canon Filmmakers announced that their site was coming to an end. However, it wasn’t because the owner of the site was retiring or a server catastrophe ate all of the posts and guides, instead, it was a legal threat from Canon itself forcing them to close and turn over their domain (Note: Link to likely to stop working shortly).

This wasn’t the first time Canon used or attempted to use Trademark to shut down a site about them. In 2009, for example, they sent a takedown notice to WordPress.com, which was hosting a site entitled “Fake Chuck Westfall”, which is a parody of the real-life Canon technical adviser Chuck Westfall and commonly lampoons the company. However, in that case, WordPress.com refused to remove the site and it remains online today.

Other sites have reported problems with Canon, especially when they’ve used the trademark in the domain itself, but Canon is far from the only company to have legal spats with their fans. Fan communities, it seems, are plagued by legal problems, both trademark and copyright related, and are among the most legally-risky sites to create.

However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create a fan site, be it a blog or a community, just that you have to be aware of the risks and work to mitigate them.

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One Billion Facebook Users in 2012 could mean a $100 Billion IPO Valuation

Of course, for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, it would mean the world and then some.

Perhaps the most important thing for Zuckerberg would be that he was right about his prediction.  When Facebook reached 500 million users last July, Zuckerberg said that it would be impossible for Facebook not to reach 1 billion users.

That’s roughly equivalent to 16 to 20 percent of the world’s population.  But that is not to say that there really are 1 billion Facebook users with one Facebook account each or that all of the 1 billion accounts are actually actively being used in a meaningful way.

Still, what if each Facebook user was actually worth $10 each?

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Despite reporting a hefty drop in sales because of stiff competition in the smartphone market, Nokia is still the world’s largest cellphone maker by volume.

With more than a third of cell phones in the world being Nokia and a sizable chunk of those units being enabled for mobile internet, it would stand to reason that there could still be a huge audience for blogs that remains untapped.

But downloading blogs on what is essentially still a cellphone could lead to a number of frustrating consequences.  With either the phone’s browser failing to download the site correctly or not being able to download the site in a readable form.

The solution to tapping this roaming audience of mobile internet users is to create a mobile app.

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Twitter on Wednesday took some time at the D9 Conference to officially announce their new photo sharing and hosting service and to talk about a new search architecture for their social network.

Twitter has announced that their images will be hosted by photo hosting website Photobucket and that users can upload their photos using both the Twitter.com online option or through the use of Twitter mobile.

As you’ll notice in the screen capture below the photo option is as simple as clicking on the blue camera button and then choosing the photo you would like to add to your Tweet, that photo is then displayed as a link on your Tweet, much like we’ve seen in the past from TwitPic and other Twitter photo sharing systems. read more

Hosting often is one of the more difficult decisions to make when starting a website and our own Jonathan Bailey has written several entries on the topic already, over at BloggingPro, as part of his Blogging Pitfalls column. The main problem with hosting though is that often YMMV applies and what one thinks is a great host, could be horrible experience for the next user. I recently switched several sites to Hostgator and here’s my experience with them.

One of the main reasons why it often is difficult to decide on a host, is that the user never knows whether the server they receive space on is oversold or not. Most hosting companies, especially larger ones do oversell, in order to keep the price down. Often this results in the dilemma: “Do I go with a larger, and cheaper, host company or do I decide for a smaller company which is more expensive?”. read more