The term “social network” is of course synonymous with online networks like Facebook. But think about what you’re actual social life is like for a second. Are you really closest to the people whose items you “like” the most on Facebook? What about the people you @reply or retweet on Twitter? The people you reblog the most on Tumblr? If you’re anything like me, probably not. Instead, the best indicator of who I actually interact with socially the most in real life are the calls I make and the texts I send — it’s all mobile interaction.

I’ve written before that I think location is the bridge between social networks and actual social life. But why do we even need that bridge? Why are so many startups content to build on top of the Facebook or Twitter social graph, when a lot of them can access your actual social graph in your mobile contact book? We’re seeing more and more apps go “mobile first, web second” these days, and that’s likely to increase going forward. This means that they start as services on mobile devices. So again I ask, why not just get to your actual social graph through your contacts there?

Sure, many do that to some extent already. APIs for Android and the iPhone give you access to contact list information to varying degrees. But most startups are still approaching that idea as a secondary tactic after they’ve hooked in your social graph through Facebook or Twitter. But I think we may start to see some that go right to the heart of your contacts on your mobile device. In fact, I met with one in the making last week, Addappt.

While they’re still building out the product, the core idea of Addappt is to connect people through their contact lists (in this case, on the iPhone). Specifically, their app scours your contact list to see which of your friends are signed up to go to various upcoming conferences. But you can easily see this concept transferred to any number of social utilities. “When was the last time the address book saw any innovation?,” is the way co-founder Mrinal Desai puts it. And he’s right.

It seems that companies like Apple and Google are sitting on a treasure trove of actual social data with these contact lists. Calls, texts, emails, it’s all right there. Google obviously has tried (and failed) to build a social graph through your email contacts before — but they went about it wrong, and they did so on the desktop. Mobile is the key to this.

Currently, we’re also seeing Apple also struggle in its first real attempt at social networking, with iTunes Ping. Their network is way too closed to be of much use — but at least they get that mobile should be a component of it.

But imagine if Apple built social tools right into your Contacts app? Maybe it would start with short status updates (maybe this would even pull in tweets), and then it would move to something like instant messaging. Then imagine if they did something with location? All of this would be opt-in, of course, but it could be very powerful.

And think about FaceTime. It’s an amazing product, but it’s far too hard to use because you never know when someone else is available to chat. Apple won’t accept the FacePlant app which solves this, so I have to believe they’re working on their own solution. The Contact app would be perfect for this. You load it up and see who is available to FaceTime.

Obviously, using your mobile contact book isn’t ideal for all types of social applications. But for the ones you want to use with just your closest friends: location, photos, short messages, events — it could be a killer set of data.

A couple weeks ago, Facebook officially opened their new office in Seattle, WA. At the time, Facebook’s Ari Steinberg (the main engineer in charge up there) wrote a post and shared a few pictures of what it looks like. But those pictures sort of made it look like a dismal, dreary version of Office Space (I know Seattle is cloudy all the time, but come on). So we’ve got a few better ones that show actual signs of life.

Just as when Facebook opened their new Bay Area office, and when Twitter opened their office, I think it’s sort of neat to see pictures inside these offices — to see where the sausage is made. We’ve been thinking about doing something like this for TechCrunch TV as well — think: Cribs for tech startups. We’ll expose ridiculous murals and raid startups’ fridges. Would that interest you?

Behold Facebook Seattle below. I’m not even sure Mike has been inside yet even though Steinberg moved 800 miles to be near him.

According to new research from Pew Internet, 82% of American adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other similar devices. And 65% of adults who own them say they have slept with their cell phones on or right next to their beds.

Yet consumers don’t know what these devices are made of exactly, and what their environmental and health impact may be. Phone manufacturers aren’t required to share all the details. Some do anyway.

Not Apple, though. The company is keeping secrets as usual, this time from O2 EcoRatings the UK-based initiative to rank the most and least environmentally sustainable mobile phones.

Nokia, HTC, Samsung, LG, Palm and Sony Ericsson participated in the O2 EcoRatings. And RIM committed to participate in the next year of the study. The ratings, released last week, found the Sony Ericsson Elm the most environmentally friendly phone.

Was Apple justified in blowing off the outside, environmental inquiry about the iPhone? After all, new environmental reports, labels and certifications come out every couple of weeks.

Recently, the EPA proposed a new vehicle efficiency rating, and a new partnership called the ULE-880 kicked off ratings of manufacturers.

The sheer volume makes it hard for companies and consumers to know which reports are credible and scientific, or just public relations fluff.

Jennifer Woofter, founder and president of Strategic Sustainability Consulting near Washington D.C. believes the O2 EcoRatings are credible, though. Woofter’s company helps manufacturers get their products, operations and environmental reporting up to the specifications of retailers like Wal-Mart.

By declining to participate in environmental ratings by trustworthy outside agencies, Woofter says “[Apple] isn’t taking a leadership position when it comes to sustainability. And it risks looking like a company that doesn’t take feedback well.” She believes that Apple’s own environmental audits are not yet done in a consistent manner, or with clear enough criteria to appease legitimate concerns.

Environmental researchers still want Apple to answer some questions publicly like: are the materials in its devices obtained from conflict-free mines? What toxins, if any, are still in those iPhones and chargers? With what standards and regularity does Apple review its original equipment manufacturing partners to make sure they are operating in an environmentally and socially responsible way? How will the company curb e-waste?

Continued secrecy should not surprise those familiar with Apple’s corporate ways. Earlier this year, the company shot down two shareholder proposals asking it to do more rigorous reporting.

Apple rarely acquires other companies, preferring to innovate from within, which also happens to minimize its exposure to outsiders like a target company’s attorneys, accountants or advisers.

One of the firms that developed O2 EcoRatings Telefónica O2 UK is not a total stranger to Apple, but a major mobile carrier and retailer that sells the Apple iPhone in Europe. The other, Forum For the Future, is an independent non-profit that promotes “sustainable development” and studies the impact of various industries on people and the planet.

Woofter (who is not affiliated with either) lauded them for: making their ratings criteria clear and non-proprietary; examining metrics like energy use and materials in the phones; and looking at the sources of these materials, and conditions for workers all along the supply chain. “Sustainability is not just about carbon,” she says.

In the past, Apple has allowed a number of its personal computers and laptops to be rated by a US-based environmental reporting non-profit, the Green Electronics Council, which created the highly influential Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT standards. Its products received stellar EPEAT ratings, “Gold” level across the board.

Opening up about its computers helped Apple win some respect from (and quiet down) Greenpeace; the environmental activists launched a massive campaign criticizing Apple in 2007. Allowing the iPhone to be independently rated and compared to peers’ devices could make the company look good and green anew. So why would Apple still decline?

Chris Pinney, the director of research and policy at Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship suggests it’s because they just don’t have to talk. “Apple has a comprehensive supplier code and auditing program. They may feel their [own reporting] is sufficient to deal with ‘green’ issues. They may also feel they have nothing to gain by joining a new, ‘eco-rating’ initiative in a market where they are a dominant player,” he says.

Pinney believes real change and less secrecy will be driven by government standards and by large carriers and retailers like Wal-Mart as they demand more labeling on the products they handle due to consumer pressure.

For now, an Apple spokesperson declined to comment on O2 EcoRatings. She pointed to the “environment” pages of Apple’s website, and emphasized that the company restricts more toxins than the European RoHS Directive, which limits the use of hazardous substances in electronics and is considered progressive today.

Customers can bring most iPhones and iPods (not including the shuffle) to Apple retail stores for recycling, she said. For returned iPods, they get a 10% discount on a new iPod. The company hasn’t created a similarly motivating program for its iPads, iPhones, batteries, chargers or laptops, though.

Apple’s retail employees aren’t required to inform customers about responsible e-waste disposal, or available take-back and recycling programs.

Environmental responsibility is a theme largely absent from Apple’s hype events, too. Nobody from Apple’s top ranks talked about green features or e-waste recycling as they rolled out a new lineup of media devices last week.

Contrarily, Apple has been lauded for being accidentally and overtly green: their iPods and iTunes store have displaced tons of waste from compact discs. They’ve also been designing more energy-efficient products using less toxic material, and minimizing packaging over time. They’ve applied for patents to include solar cells in their portable devices. And a host of iPhone apps are meant to help consumers lead “greener” lives.

Still, if you found out your new iPhone was full of conflict minerals would you keep it? Or if it contained cancer-causing toxins, would you still sleep with it?

Top Secret photo via: Malakh Kelevra
E-waste recycling photo via: U.S. Army Environmental Command

Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the CEO of WatchMojo, a producer and distributor of premium video content. Read his other posts here, or follow him on Twitter @ashkan

My cohort at Revision 3, CEO Jim Louderback, recently wrote an article called “Screw Viral Videos.” Why? Because according to Louderback, “viral videos deliver little or no value to anyone.” Which led me to wonder: what about content farms?

The Definition of Content Farms

While no official description exists yet, a content farm is the term given to a website or media organization that

• seeks to maximize content production output
• while minimizing production costs
• to acquire as much organic search traffic as possible
• with the main intent of converting that traffic into revenue, generally from advertising.

Over the past few years, anticipation of “content farm” poster boy Demand Media’s IPO has fueled both a lot of media cynicism and investor curiosity. No doubt, the fact that most of the content farms are seeking to disrupt traditional media organizations, in general, and journalists, in particular, explains some of the cynicism, but it does little to ask the question of whether the strategy itself is wise.

From One Dumb Idea to Another

Just five years ago, the conventional wisdom suggested that ad-supported media organizations should embrace user-generated content as a way to “scale” content offerings on their site, arguing that marketers will chase eyeballs no matter what. Today, that ranks up there as one of the dumber strategies in the history of publishing and advertising as marketers totally rejected UGC and even the biggest proponents of UGC shifted their business models to address that reality.

Back in April, I asked “Will AOL and Demand Media’s Content Farm Strategy Prevail?” and basically concluded that a “machine-gun, carpet-bombing” editorial strategy relying on a freelance model might work with articles but runs the risk of producing wildly inconsistent videos which would scare off advertisers. The important word to consider in all of this is not in fact content, but advertising, since—paywalls and iPad subscription fantasies notwithstanding—content remains largely an ad-supported game.

With Advertising, Value Trumps Cost

As Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt once stated: “advertising remains the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America.”  Profiting from that disequilibrium are the ad agencies who care less about costs than they do about value—getting the most bang for their advertising buck

In economic terms, what matters most to them is balancing quality with cost to provide value; not minimizing cost and maximizing output. The effort to maximize output is based on the objective of maximizing organic traffic, but as we saw with UGC, more traffic does not mean more revenue, it just means a greater supply of inventory which pummels ad rates.

Who Are Your Clients: Financiers or Marketers?

In other words, if you don’t come from a publishing or advertising background—and you’re business is supported by venture capitalists or private equity bankers while you try to woo investment bankers—then, indeed, you need to stress that you can produce more content more cheaply than anyone else.  But that kind of downward spiral rhetoric will ring hollow to marketers who underwrite most of the media world.

Marketers Don’t Like Cheap Dates

Conversely, if your business aims to serve marketers and other media companies, that is not the right tone to strike: after all, should content producers really be conveying the fact that we’re cheap dates?

Being in the content business requires an understanding that you will be perpetually trying to master the art and science of production, distribution and monetization; that is an ongoing process. It is not at all akin to writing code for software that—once built—can create an infinite amount of copies and licenses to sell.

The jury’s out on whether the content farm approach will prove successful, but I am betting that in 2011, you will start to see a regression to the mean, with the very same companies who are rushing to emulate the leading content farm companies revert back towards a more balanced approach to publishing and focus on quality.  Meanwhile, the firms who bet the farm on quality and focus on offering value  in the form of quality content, instead of focusing on costs and output alone, will reap the most come harvest time.

Photo credit: Flickr/ h.koppdelaney

You’ll forgive me for sneaking in some pop culture in the mix because it’s Saturday and all, right? Rapper Kanye West is having a bit of a moment on Twitter the past few hours, apologizing for the Taylor Swift incident from last year when he stormed the stage during the artist’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain that Beyonce should have won the Best Female Video award instead.

But not just that. He’s also making it crystal clear, as others have before him admittedly, that Twitter has changed the way celebrities interact with their fans and anyone who’s interested in what they have to say really. And slamming mainstream media in the process.

So reading about four pages of tweets by West, there are some interesting gems to be found in there besides his apologies to Swift and his complaints about the massive backlash he’s received since then, receiving death threats and getting booed off stage and so on.

This blog reposted the long rant (easier to read).

Here’s part of his rant against mainstream media, and his love for Twitter:

Man I love Twitter… I’ve always been at the mercy of the press but no more… The media tried to demonize me

She deserves the apology more than anyone. Thank you Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly

and

These aren’t regular tweets… this is stream of consciousness … I want you guys to know and feel where my head is at…

These tweets have no manager, no publicist , no grammar checking… this is raw

True enough, the rapper could have written a thoughtful blog post (or a letter) on the matter and it would have been picked up by followers and celeb watchers just the same, but the beauty of Twitter is that it enables, encourages even, people to be more concise and direct.

You can consider his tweets insane rambling by a celebrity who is up late and possibly drunk, or as some lame way of getting attention (if it is, I’ll take this over most publicity stunts I’ve seen over the past three decades).

Or you can look at it this way: 5 years ago, how were fans able to get this much insight into their idols’ thoughts and feelings? Answer is they didn’t.

When I was ready to transition from computer programmer to project manager, my employer, Xerox Corporation, sent me to its huge training center in Leesburg, Virginia. Over two weeks, the people there taught me some of the skills I needed in order to succeed in my new role: managing projects, motivating people, complying with employment regulations, and preparing status reports and presentations. The company also encouraged me to complete an MBA, on a part-time basis, at New York University. It gave me lots of time off and paid for the tuition.

Tech companies in the internet era offer their employees some great perks. But do you think that Facebook, Groupon, or Zynga provide budding professionals with any serious management training? Not at all. Given the way tech companies grow and the HR challenges they face, management training and career development are more important than ever. But few have the time—they are too busy surviving.

Professors Robert Fulmer and Byron Hanson of Duke University’s Corporate Education group researched the management practices of 23 leading high-tech firms. Corporate executives in an overwhelming majority, 89 percent, believed that leadership development was becoming increasingly important for their companies; 58 percent ranked this as a high corporate priority. Yet less than one-fourth of the managers interviewed had a clear roadmap for how they could develop themselves, and more than half didn’t even know who in their organization was responsible for the development of leaders. The conclusion of the researchers wasn’t surprising: many high-tech companies are young, so their systems and procedures for grooming leaders aren’t well developed or firmly established.

Maybe this is why so many tech companies suffer from morale problems, missed deadlines, customer-support disasters, and high turnover. And this may be one of the reasons why so many tech startups who succeed in selling their vision and raising millions in financing are just a flash in the pan.

One of the interesting findings in the Fulmer and Hanson research was that more than 70 percent of the tech executives interviewed said that leadership development in technology-driven firms is different than in other industries. The researchers believed, just as I do, that these tech executives were dead wrong. The lessons that leading companies like Proctor and Gamble and General Electric have learned about management development and training apply as much, if not more, to tech companies.

This means that if you’re a fresh grad joining a hot new tech startup, you shouldn’t expect your managers to train and groom you, or the company to provide you with time off to complete an MBA. You’re on your own. If you are working at some of the more established companies, such as IBM and HP—which do have excellent management-development practices—take full advantage of them. You need to learn all you can.

Many people are born with an innate sense of vision; they readily learn new technologies and master them. Some are very good at communicating and inspiring others. But you can’t be born with the skills needed to plan projects, adhere to EEOC guidelines, and prepare budgets and manage finances, or to know the intricacies of business and intellectual property law. All this has to be learned. Some skills can be developed on the job, but this is usually through trial and error.

I usually recommend that engineering students who want to become managers and CEOs complete a fifth year of education. There are one-year long engineering management programs which cover such subjects as marketing, finance, intellectual property, business law, and management—similar to the key courses in an MBA program; plus tech-oriented subjects like innovation management, operations management, and entrepreneurship.  One such program (and there are many) is the Duke Masters of Engineering Management program, at which I teach.

For experienced tech workers in Silicon Valley, Berkeley and Stanford both have excellent executive MBA programs. Berkeley Haas School dean, Rich Lyons told me over dinner, last month, of his plans to make his school the premier training ground for Silicon Valley executives. Boston’s Babson College is also launching a program in San Francisco.

But not everyone needs to spend two years doing an MBA. Berkeley’s college of engineering is creating a much shorter program targeted at Silicon Valley techies with leadership potential. Under the aegis of Fung Institute Chief Scientist and Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Ikhlaq Sidhu, the school is developing a professional program in Engineering Leadership. This will meet one evening a week for six months and teach subjects like product management, entrepreneurial thinking, leadership and finance. It will also teach team building, business management, and motivation.

The new Berkeley program is highly selective however.  It will only accept 25 candidates in 2011, based on recommendations from senior executives in the valley. Sidhu says that he hopes to address the “symptoms of engineering without leadership”—which include organizational indecision about new products and services; unresolved conflict between product management and engineering; and superficial technology strategies.  Berkeley will likely expand this program significantly over time and add many others. After all there is a great need.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa  is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwaand find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

If you are an Indian Blogger or webmaster then you must have been using Google Adsense on your website/blog. And if you are generating good amount of traffic then sometimes you might even crossed the 100$ threshold for payment and you might have got the check from Google released. While from the last 2 years I have getting checks in due time ,and never had any problem with them . This time however there was a delay and I thought that the courier company might have delivered it to somebody else in my college.So, I check with bluedart courier service and found that I was scheduled to get the check on 6th of this month . However got the check today morning.

So, how to check your Google Adsense cheque’s  arrival time?

Here are the simple steps to follow to know to Google Adsense arrival time:

• Log into your Google Adsense account.
• Then go to the payment history section by clicking on My Account -> Payment History .
• Now click on this month’s payment payment issued link .

• Now you will get the details of the Google Adsense cheque you are being issued .

• Now copy the Payment number without the initial zero, for example if you have payment number as 051112478 copy only the 51112478 part .
• Now go to the Bluedart .
• Enter your payment number in the Tracking service checker and select Ref. No from the radio button.

• So, you got your details now enjoy. I got the delivery way before the Expected date of delivery .

If you have any other queries, you can shoot me a question here or through our Computer Forum

How to track your Google Adsense Cheque in India is a post from: Computer Help . Find solutions to your problems in Computer Forum

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