Groupon, the “big daddy” of group buying sites, currently claims they have over 40 million subscribers, and have saved their customers more than $800 million, clearly making them the largest market shareholder among similar sites in the US.

Resting under the big boys, the market is saturated with other, smaller, more niche coupon and group buying sites like AppSumo, GroupGolfer, and even Jewpon.

So where does Facebook Deals fit in? And how will it compete?

Here are a few ways beyond a user base of 500 million:

Social Reach: In comparison to other group buying platforms that utilize email, with Facebook Deals you will be able to “like” a deal, which will share it through your newsfeed, broadcasting the message to your friends. Group buying will be done among pre-established peer groups already online, where a deal or message can spread quickly, and organically. This is the reason so many marketers are already turning toward Facebook’s platform and establishing their brand’s presence through Fan pages.

Virtual Currency: Facebook plans to introduce a new payment system using virtual currency, which means users will be able to pay for Facebook Deals using “credits”. So whether buying a restaurant coupon, vacation package, or series of massage lessons, these credits will reduce the friction involved with online purchases, so users avoid pulling out their wallets every time they see a deal.

User Data: This is a big one, and the reason I’ll probably be signing up.

Facebook already knows its user base. They know your likes and interests. They know your age, sex, and occupation. They may even know your marital status and religion. With the recent addition of Facebook Places, not only could they know what city you live in, but also what neighbourhoods you frequent.

This personal data makes it extremely easy to connect users with advertisers. And Facebook has already proven this method by providing relevant advertising through their hyper-targeted display ad platform, which is expected to take the biggest US display ad market share in 2011.

Drawing from this example, it’s almost a sure thing this data will become a fundamental part to serving relevant, hyper-targeted Deals.

Of course, who knows what will happen in the end, but it could be just a short time before Facebook towers over platforms like Groupon, sliding into the driver’s seat of the group buying bandwagon. And if carrying deals so targeted that a mid-twenties ski bum in Vancouver can grab cheap ski tickets for the local mountains, I’ll be ready to hop on.

• layers
• layer effects
• filters
• layers with blending modes
• shape tools
• brushes
• symetry tool
• gravity
• clone stamp

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAEoeWnYYvI

I’ve seen many websites with picture or video editors before, but this is something new. SUMO Paint offers us a glimpse of the future as far as I’m concerned (and it’s only in v 1.0). Why should we need to have heavy applications installed on our computers when you can build all of the necessary functionality into a fast and efficient web application? It seems like bandwidth and technology is finally getting to that point where the Internet can actually serve as a delivery tool for your daily needs.

Imagine a workstation where all of your desktop publishing is done on a remote server. Back-ups are automated and routine. Redundancy is the responsibility of professionals running a data center, and you won’t need to cry if you experience an unfortunate hard drive failure. If you’re worried about the security of your file, I’d like to remind you that the majority of tech savvy individuals do banking online these days, so the encryption on your illustration is probably safe.

SUMO Paint is one dimension of this. Google docs is another. In our office we frequently collaborate online with spreadsheets and word documents that are shared amongst staff. Versioning is controlled on the server, and version history is always available for reference. We can see who’s using a doc in realtime, and users can actually chat as they collaborate.

Not only do application like SUMO Paint and Google docs get the applications off your computer, but they also allow you to collaborate in ways never before imaginable. SUMO paint’s website even features the SUMO Paint Community which invites artists to share their work, not only for public viewing, but also for public editing. This is unreal. As a designer I can not only see all the amazing art that my peers create, but I can also see how they built their file. As a Photoshop user the only way I ever got advice like that was to hang around the studio and look over the shoulders of some of our veterans. With communities like this users can advance their skills faster and learn the tricks they want, when they want.

Now I haven’t put the SUMO Paint program through any professional tests yet (I only just discovered it today) but from the experimenting I did I was most impressed with how fast it loaded, and the fact that once it was loaded it was literally as smooth as running a local application.

Many of these applications are created using Adobe Flex RIA (Rich Internet Applications). The web developer in me is very excited to experiment with this technology and see how ordinary websites can be transformed into intelligent, and highly functional applications that offer users more than just information and entertainment, they can now offer utility.

As a business owner I also salivate at the idea of being able to save the thousands of dollars per employee we spend annually to keep our agency on the cutting edge of the latest technologies. I guess that leads to my next question: what the hell is funding these applications? Is it purely a traffic play? Build the followers and then sell your database to the highest bidder? Or is there a hidden ad model that’s lurking under the surface?

Only time will tell how (or should I say when) web applications are truly embraced by the masses. When it does happen, I just hope I don’t have to “skip this ad” to read my PSD files.

Google is set to launch Chrome, it’s open source web browser, for beta on Windows on Tuesday September 2, 2008. Mac and Linux versions are to follow shortly after.

The browser is designed to be lightweight and fast, and to cope with the next generation of web applications that rely on graphics and multimedia.

“What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build,” Mr Pichai, VP Product Management, wrote.

Source BBC News

Read more on the Google Blog

PROOF is an innovative training, testing and quality assurance lab that offers Physicians secure, remote access to regional clinical management systems, decision support tools and identity management technologies in a real doctor’s office setting. Best of all, you can demo in-house technology EMR software. The team at Hot Tomali was invited to PROOF’s open house Wednesday, October 24 and we had the opportunity to witness firsthand some of the up-and-coming innovations in Canadian health care.

With Basecamp, everything is centralized, for us and the clients as well. Make to-do lists, share files (with co-workers, or with clients), track time, schedule milestones. Their dashboard lets us see and organize easily our projects, messages, what’s due, etc. To see in more detail the capabilities of the software, go to www.basecamphq.com/

This software is developed by a company in Chicago called 37signals. They developed other software as well, one of which is the Ruby on Rails, an open-source web app framework. The Ruby on Rails framework was extracted from the Basecamp project.

A Spry widget is a page element that combines HTML, CSS and JavaScript data to enable user interaction. The Spry framework for Ajax supports a set of reusable widgets written in standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.

• About Spry widgets
• Before you begin
• Working with the Accordion widget
• Working with the Collapsible Panel widget
• Working with the Tabbed Panels widget
• Working with the Menu Bar widget
• Working with the Validation Text Field widget
• Working with the Validation Text Area widget
• Working with the Validation Select widget
• Working with the Validation Checkbox widget

1. Go to the part of the movie you’d like to capture. Hit the Stop button in the DVD controller.
2. Press the Play button in the controller, and then immediately press down Command-Shift-4.
3. Hit the space bar to take a screenshot of the DVD Player window, then click the mouse to take the shot.

You can do all this without ever quitting DVD Player first.