There is very little in this world that is more pleasing than buying and playing with a toy that is enjoyable for the geek in all of us, regardless of...

Read More: Tankbot: The perfect $25 smart robot stocking stuffer for geeks of all ages

There's still an hour to go until Facebook's f8 keynote kicks off, but the last two weeks have already been filled with Facebook news, including the launch of a revamped News Feed and Facebook's real-time Ticker.

Another, slightly less prominent launch, was the introduction of Facebook's Smart Lists. These group your friends automatically based on criteria like location and employer — and they also make it very easy to build your own custom lists, providing uncannily accurate suggestions that m [...]

Read More: Facebook Founding President Sean Parker: Smart Lists Represent A Change In Philosophy

This guest post was written by Joe Green, the Founder and President of Causes. Causes is the largest online platform for activism and one of the original Facebook Applications. Green's approach to building online tools is rooted in his offline experience as a grassroots political organizer for federal, state, and local campaigns. Disclosure: Green was an early advisor to Facebook and has a small amount of stock.

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Facebook's recently-launched friend lists are the most important change to [...]

Read More: Facebook’s Smart Lists: Real Friends Again

Earlier this week, we reported that Facebook had quietly activated a nifty new feature: smart friend lists that use algorithms to generate a handful of lists of your friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and people who live near you. Now Facebook is publicly announcing smart friend lists, and it has some additional details.

Friend Lists, of course, have been available on Facebook for years now. But most people never bother with them because they're a total pain — scrolling through hundreds upon hu [...]

Read More: Facebook Officially Unveils Smart Friend Lists

First KDDI's iida INFOBAR, then Sharp's clamshell Android phone HYBRID oo7SH, and now the so-called Smart Bar [JP]: Japan is getting more and more specially designed Android handsets. As you can see on the pictures, the Smart Bar adopts the "traditional" candy bar form factor but is actually powered by Android Gingerbread.

The device is manufactured by Huawei and will be distributed in Japan by mobile carrier eMobile. Targeted mainly at female users, the phones comes with a 3-inch WVGA touch di [...]

Read More: Smart Bar: Japan Gets Another Special Android Handset

You've got 500-something friends, all of about 50 you really interact with. You went to school with Lucy and Henry, you've worked with Mike for years, and Joe lives just down the block. Facebook knows all of this — it just doesn't really go out of its way to show that it knows all of this. Until now.

Sometime recently, Facebook began rolling out "Smart Lists" to select users — which, as the name implies, intelligently groups certain obvious groups of friends into pre-packaged lists. Take that, [...]

Read More: Facebook Begins Auto-Grouping Colleagues, School Mates, And Local Friends Into Smart Lists

Adapting Businesses to Meet the Needs of the Connected Customer The social media movement is far more important than we realize. Several years ago I compared the democratization of information to the economic impact realized during the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, social media is much more than Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Social media is a lens [...]

Read More: Smart Business, Social Business

A big thank you to Brandon Prebynski and Mitch Neff from WebTrends.tv who reviewed my book as well as "No Bullshit Social Media” by Jason Falls and Erik Deckers. Truly humbled by this … and when I see them next, I am going to give them a big hug! By the way, my review starts at 5:50. : )

Read More: Web Trends Video Review: Smart Business, Social Business

People who are pros at shopping and know how to get their friends to save on daily deals can now use their social networks to generate new revenue streams with a new platform called Bettervite.


Read More: Bettervite Turns Social Networks Into Profit Centers for Smart Shoppers

Here are 20 slides that really capture the essence of my book.  If you like any of the graphics, feel free to use (you can find them here). Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization View more presentations from Michael Brito

Read More: SlideShare: Smart Business, Social Business

I have mixed feelings about check-in apps like Foursquare and Facebook Places. I some time like the idea of checking in at a location and sharing it with my social network as a way of sharing what I am doing. On the other hand, I don't always remember to check-in and the process can be cumbersome. Smart Places is an Android app that significantly improves the check-in process of Facebook Places.


Read More: Smart Places Simplifies Facebook Check-ins