The link to ebook was sent to the fans of the FacebookPages and basically talks about the differences in Facebook Profiles and Pages as well as how to effectively use Facebook Pages to spread your presence on the network.

Download Insider’s Guide To Viral Marketing by Facebook from Box.net before it becomes unavailable.

Thanks Mike.

The application is both useful and entertaining as the users can view traffic conditions before travelling as well as enjoy watching interesting live camera views from various places in the world.  Using the application, Facebook users can attach live traffic images to their profile pages, in the messages sent to friends and while posting on a friend’s Wall.

Users can view the cameras selected by their friends as well as the top 10 city-wise and worldwide cameras on the TrafficLand network.

Xobni – Organize Your Inbox

Xobni, which is in invite-only beta at the moment, is a great plug-in to organize your inbox and discover the social network hidden in your emails.  It saves you time finding email conversations, contacts and attachments.

By clicking on any mail you can see the sender’s full communication history including past conversations, attachments, contact details and find out who do you know in common based on your email conversations.  Xobni also has a fast email search feature and provides various ways of navigating your mailbox.

I have 5 invites for Xobni left with me.  If you want the invite, please leave a comment along with a message "I want Xobni invite."  The first five to comment along with the message will be sent the invite.

OutSync – Assign Facebook Friends’ Photos To Outlook Contacts

OutSync let you organize your contacts using photos so that you don’t have to think whom that email address belongs to.  OutSync lets you sync up photos between Facebook and Outlook.

If you are using ActiveSync to sync your mobile and Outlook, the photo assigned to a contact using OutSync will appear on your mobile phone screen when you receive a call from your Outlook contact.

OutTwit – Use Twitter from Outlook

If you are a Twitter fan and does not want toggle between Outlook and Twitter windows, you can use OutTwit.  OutTwit connects Outlook with Twitter so that you can update your Twitter status from Outlook and receive your friends’ Twitters status updates as incoming email messages.

The messages show up in a sub-folder called "Twitter Messages" and you can assign custom categories to new messages.  OutTwit also lets you configure the time interval for checking new updates, shorten URLs with tinyurl and manage and search the Twitter updates just like email.

Microsoft Outlook SMS Add-in – Send SMS Using Outlook

The SMS add-in for Outlook works with Outlook 2003 and 2007 and lets you send SMS text messages through most of the GMS mobile phones connected to your PC or laptop.  Once you have installed the add-in and connected your mobile phone to your computer via Infrared, Bluetooth or a USB cable, you can start using it without any other kind of download or any special type of subscription from your mobile service provider.

Using this add-in, you can draft an SMS, save the draft, send it to individuals or groups, print the SMS and forward the message as SMS or email.  The add-in also looks up your Outlook contacts for phone numbers and enables you to use spellcheck for the SMS.

If you are using Outlook 2007, there is another service which lets you send SMS using Outlook named SMS officer.  Amit from Digital Inspiration has written a detailed post on using SMS Officer.  This service has a free trial of 10 SMS after which you will have to buy SMS plans.

intraVnews – Feed Reader inside Outlook

The intraVnews plug-in turn your Outlook into a feed reader using which you can read RSS and Atom feeds in Microsoft Outlook XP or 2003.  You can choose to display the content in Description mode, HTML mode or both.  The plug-in works in the background for fetching new feed items and alerts you for the new items through a pop-up balloon.

The plug-in allows you to manage the feed items like email and allows for searching, grouping, viewing and filtering feed items. 

Skype Toolbar

The Skype Toolbar for Outlook lets you see when your Skype contacts are online, call Skype Names as well as the phone numbers listed in your emails, add a Skype call button in your outgoing mail’s signature enabling people to call you with just a click, switch to instant messaging in follow up to emails and send money using PayPal to your Skype contacts.

The toolbar and Skype calls are free; however, the calls to mobile and fixed phones are charged as per normal Skype rates.

Linkedin Toolbar

The free toolbar from Linkedin lets you view the email sender’s Linkedin mini-profile, search your Linkedin network from Outlook, send Linkedin invitations to contacts from Outlook, upload Outlook contacts to Linkedin and create new Outlook contact records just by highlighting the contact information in emails.

It also provides updates about any changes in the profiles of your Linkedin connections and even recommends contacts to be invited to Linkedin based on your email history.

Google Desktop Outlook Toolbar

Bring the goodness of Google search to your inbox with the Google Desktop Search’s Outlook toolbar.  It is faster than the in-built Outlook search and has the accuracy and relevance of Google search results.

The search results are displayed in native Outlook list view with all your selected columns which you can then sort by clicking on the column headers.

Plaxo Toolbar

The Plaxo toolbar for Outlook lets you sync your existing Plaxo Address Book to your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express Address Book.  It keeps your Plaxo address book updated with any changes in your contacts automatically.

Apart from Outlook sync, it has other features which include looking up the contact’s Pulse profile and the ability to sync your Linkedin contacts.

WaxMail – Talk into email with WaxMail

With WaxMail plugin for Outlook, you can record voice messages and embed them in the body of an email.  You just need to have a microphone and of course Outlook to record your message.

The recorded messages are attached to the email as MP3 files which can be played by the recipient to listen to the messages.

CircleUp Toolbar

Create and send new CircleUps from directly from Outlook using your Outlook contacts, see the status of CircleUps sent and received, search for your own past CircleUps as well as the public ones, and monitor responses in real-time through an integrated RSS feed in Outlook 2007.

For the benefit of those who are not aware of the CircleUp functionality, CircleUp is a great service which lets you collect information from a group and see and share consolidated results instead of looking at individual responses.  Learn more about CircleUp.

Live Search Maps Add-In

The Live Search Map add-in for Outlook lets you add maps and directions to the meeting requests while sending it to the attendees, calculate travel distance and estimate travel time between locations, add meeting reminders with estimated travel time blocked in the calendar.

You can see the maps in various types of views like 3D, aerial, raod, bird’s eye etc., print map and directions and even save the details for viewing offline.

If you found this list useful, don’t forget to share the goodness with everyone.

With this application along with a downloadable software called WiPeer, you can detect Facebook friends and their friends in the vicinity if they have also installed the application.  WiPeer and Peersonalizer makes it possible to locate, network, chat, share files and directories and play collaborative games with your Facebook Friends without Internet connectivity.  WiPeer can make direct wireless (WiFi) connection between computers within a range of roughly 300 meters without using any intermediary device like a router.  The limitation is that WiPeer currently works with Windows XP only.

Peersonalizer is a patent pending application developed by two Technion Faculty of Computer Science students, Lior Biran and Tomer Einav.  They are now planning to extend this technology to other social networking sites and even with WiFi-enabled mobile phones,including the iPhone.

To connect with your friends, add the Peersonalizer Facebook application to your account and download the WiPeer software.

The Mini-Feed import option lets you import your activities from other sites into the Mini-Feed which is then shared with your friends as News Feeds.

Currently, Mini-Feed allows you to import activity stream from Flickr, Yelp, Picasa, and del.icio.us only.  They will be adding support for other sites in the future which will include Digg as well.  FriendFeed already supports all these services plus a lot of others including Facebook activities.

Alfred Huger, vice president of engineering at Symantec, says:

The malicious attacks – including recent exploits of users of Google, Facebook, search engines, Mozilla and others – are designed to steal user credentials or launch bigger attacks through the victim’s social network of contacts.

The hackers are switching for their earlier favorite method, email, and now they are using reliable websites to drive traffic to sites loaded with viruses and malacious codes.  Previously, I had covered how the combination of Google Trends and Blogspot is being used to spread viruses.

So how do the hackers use these sites:

Social Networks: Hackers use the open architecture of social networks and their platform to create and deploy applications loaded with malicious codes and implant links to malicious websites.  Some of the examples are the Facebook application for users to find out who have a crush on them and the recent worm which spread on Orkut through the scraps posted on user profiles.

Search Engines: The hackers are using Google to redirect the users to sites loaded with malicious codes.  The search result links which look very relevant to the search and legitimate often redirect users to infected websites.  I have myself experienced this and even posted about how the combination of Google Trends and Google Blogger is used for spreading viruses.

Another method which is being used by the cyber criminals for phishing scams is the Google Calendar.  Jamz Yaneza, research project manager at Trend Micro, says,

Scammers are sending personalized e-mail as meeting invitations in Google Calendar. Since each e-mail has a different link for each recipient, it is harder for spam filters to detect anything wrong.

So, even if you use an anti-virus tool on your computer, you may not be safe from these attacks.  There are other solutions from the security companies like using certified e-mail, web page scanners and browser security tools which can be used to prevent yourself from hacking and phishing attacks.  The ultimate tool, however, is being cautious and not to click on any link which looks suspicious or install any application from an unreliable source.

In the month of March, Sandi Maurer, a Sebastopol resident, gathered 500 signatures from people concerned about the negative health effects of Wi-Fi who felt that the electromagnetic radiation produced by Wi-Fi signals can cause symptoms like headaches, nausea, stomach upsets and foggy memory.  The citizens then petitioned their city council to turn down the offer by Sonic.net to put free Wi-Fi in the city.

Not happy with the council’s decision, a Facebook user named Ariel DeAguiar formed a group on Facebook to protest in favor of free Wi-Fi in the city.  The group has gained popularity and lots of people have joined it including the CEO of Sonic.Net.  Check out the Sebastopol Wi-Fi Group on Facebook.

Huh…Now social networks are not just about poking.

CareerBuilder has partnered with Facebook to serve job advertisements on user profiles.  I remember Cheezhead reporting a potential deal between Facebook and CareerBuilder.

This will provide employers and recruiters the facility to run recruiting campaigns on Facebook.  The specially targeted ads will appear on the side of Facebook’s website, in the friend’s activity updates and the employers’ section of Facebook.

CareerBuilder, which already has an existing ad relationship with Facebook, will leverage this to give its clients a better mechanism for attracting potential hires.

This deal basically gives CareerBuilder rights to resell recruiting advertisements on Facebook.

There is another group of people who are working in stealth mode like Gokul RajaRam, Nathan Stoll etc and people who are supporting new companies as Angel investors or VCs.

I haven’t put names of people with their photos; guess it and let us know who they are.

John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said,

“A revolutionary new platform is a rare and prized opportunity for entrepreneurs, and that’s exactly what Apple has created with iPhone and iPod touch. We think several significant new companies will emerge as this new platform evolves, and the iFund will empower them to realize their full potential.”

The focus areas for this fund are social networking, m-commerce, communication, entertainment and location based services. I think they should also add business related applications since iPhone is directly competing with Blackberry. What about having a CRM or sales intelligence application specifically for iPhone. I feel that it will be the next obvious move for iPhone for targeting business customers.

On the other side, product focused funds is a relatively new concept and yet to be proven. Even in the case of Facebook focused funds, I have not seen many applications getting funded. I think the problem lies in the core concept of these funds. If these funds remain individual application oriented, they will face problems of scale and competition. We all know of many applications on Facebook with exactly similar functionalities. However, if these funds focus on companies building various applications or an extension of their existing services, then there is virtually no difference between them and any other fund; for example Wallop which builds social applications for Facebook but they have the same application for Bebo as well. Perhaps, this is the reason why not many applications have been funded.

Do you think this trend of product focused funds will keep up? Are we going to see funds for Salesforce or Amazon Web Services applications which, in my view, will have better business models than advertising.