UPDATE - Shares in Facebook hit a new low last night as they ended closing 6.2% down at $19.87 following the end of the share lockout.

The latest drop means that shares in the social network at now worth half of what they were when it floated on the Nasdaq at an IPO price of $38. Read More »

While The Guardian continues to resist the idea of introducing a payall it is continuing to look at ways to make its content pay and in particular its apps.

It already charges £9.99 for its Guardian iPad app, although we were told recently that it has only 17,000 subscribers, and now it has introduced a premium version for its Eyewitness iPad app as part of a relaunch as it approaches one million downloads.

There’s a famous phrase from Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan that gets a regular workout in media columns. “The medium is the message” has been quoted so many times that using it is almost a cliché.  People attempt to explain and interpret this phrase in a number of different ways.

The phrase even has its own Wikipedia article that contains the extraordinary phrase: “McLuhan describes the “content” of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.”

But looking past the florid writing style and larceny metaphors for one moment, McLuhan’s point that while we get distracted by content, we can miss the changes and developments that are instigated by the medium itself. Read More »

The interest in the Mars Curiosity has been huge and has gone a long way to reawakening interest in NASA and space exploration.  You only had to have a look around social media to see the pictures and tweets being shared from the official @MarsCuriosity account and others.

There was bound to be a parody and here it is blending the landing into a music video parody styled after the LMFAO’s music video “Sexy and I Know It”.

The actors appear as various NASA characters we have all seen from mission control including stars and stripes Mohawk Guy – real-life flight director Bobak Ferdowsi who became a Twitter star — played by @dubhud. Read More »

The publishing world is in a constant state of flux, with more publications moving online and developing apps and mobile formats. Interestingly, just as the traditional publishing world is changing, we’ve seen an enormous growth in brands emerging as a new type of publisher – Amex and Procter & Gamble are just two great examples.

Branded content is nothing new — since the 1950s we’ve had soap operas with big brand manufacturers like Colgate-Palmolive as sponsors, enabling them to tie in their products with storylines to get closer to their audience and evolve the brand experience.

Today digital and social media provide brands with new opportunities to become publishers. Many brands are capitalising on this, creating high-quality editorial content and using channels like Facebook, YouTube, branded websites, newsletters and magazines to engage their target audience. Read More »

Fascinating development from researchers working on nanotechnology at a university in Virginia who have created a fabric that could allow you to charge your mobile phone whilst its in your pocket for as little as $1.

The nanotechnology, which has been dubbed ‘Power Felft, is a fabric that feeds off of the heat in your body and turns that into electricity.

It could also charge via the heat of the sun. So simply leaving your phone in the sunlight could recharge your mobile phone. Read More »