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Source:Mashable!

MySpace has partnered with Hewlett-Packard (HP) to bring print-on-demand capability to the popular social network. That’s right. Those embarrassing photos of you Xeroxing your rear end at the office Christmas party aren’t just on your receptionist’s MySpace albums anymore. They’ll be printable so that even those who haven’t found the Internet yet can see them.

In all seriousness, this means that MySpace, home to over 4 billion images already, may fast become a hub for people looking for an easy way to share and print photos and information online. MySpace is already working with a user base that remains one of the largest in the social networking space, which means that this partnership puts both MySpace and HP at the forefront of the online print on demand market.

The partnership starts off with a simple “Click to Print” icon on MySpace blogs, comments, photos and mail. This will allow users a one click way to print from MySpace. This is where it might make some users nervous. In order for the technology to work, HP and MySpace will be “unlocking” user profile data to format for printing. What this means for users of MySpace with private profiles is that their friends will be able to print their profile photos once they are allowed to view their profile page. I’m not sure this will cause Facebook and Beacon level angst among users, but I’m thinking MySpace and HP might want to make this opt-in for those with private profiles before launch just in case.

In the meantime, this will be rolling out just in time for the holidays, scheduled for November of this year. A future phase of the roll out will include a way to print your MySpace photos on actual merchandise such as hats, mugs, and calendars. This will make gift giving easy for friends and family, but for now it is strictly print to paper. The MySpace and HP partnership will roll out the “Click to Print” feature in America, as well as parts of Australia, Canada and Western Europe.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Tabblo Inks HP Acquisition DealBebo Minicards LaunchedFlickr Adds Batch PrintingFlickr To Offer Photo Printing!Jalbum Now Offers Blurb Book CreationMySpace Photo Albums, Multi-Photo UploaderPicnik’s Latest Move to Beat Photoshop Express: Global Growth and Mouse Pads

Source:Mashable!

Want your Firefox 3 browser to be location-savvy? Mozilla is making that possible with the release of Geode, an “experimental Firefox add-on” intended as something of a holdover until Firefox 3.1 arrives with support for the W3C Geolocation Specification.

The purpose of Geode is to give current Firefox installations the option to specify location, determined through Skyhook’s Loki Wi-Fi mapping service, with varying levels of exactness, to be manually chosen by the user. If you need or want to share exact location, neighborhood or city-level information quickly, Geode makes it happen in much the same way that your standard Firefox installation would request you to save login data to a website.

If you want Geode to automatically submit broad or precise information, or, alternatively, to refuse input of such data, you can check the corresponding box adjacent to the four primary options available. Mozilla states that Skyhook Loki enables Geode users to pinpoint their locations between 10 and 20 meters.

Users not fond of the Wi-Fi-based system that Geode is built to tap will have to wait for Firefox 3.1 to present itself in order to quickly manage Web-based location services through GPS devices. But those in settings home to Wi-Fi signals aplenty will be off to a solid start with the Geode plugin.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Firefox 2 Security Fixes Released400 Million Firefox DownloadsMozilla: Would You Like a Virus With That Add-on?Firefox Now Officially Hates MeHelp Find Memory Leaks in FirefoxROCK YOUR FIREFOX: Firefox Launches Facebook Application14,000 Changes In New Firefox, But We Only Want One

Source:Mashable!

Facebook has just rolled out its implementation of Microsoft Live Search, which allows members of the social network to search the Web without leaving the site.

The implementation is fairly straightforward: in the search box on the top right of Facebook, which is also used for quick access to your friends’ profiles and intrasite search, there is now an option to “Search the Web,” which in turn triggers a query of Microsoft Live Search. Results then display within a custom interface designed for Facebook.

Microsoft and Facebook announced their search and advertising partnership back in July, so today’s news does not come as a surprise. At the time, I wondered if Facebook might do something outside the box with the deal, writing “What will be interesting to see is if the social networks begin to do innovative things with social search by leveraging your friends list.” That does not appear to be the case so far, as the search results are essentially what you’d expect to see on any search engine.

Of course, Facebook is spinning the news as something slightly more interesting, writing on their company blog, “Imagine your friend has just invited you to an event at a restaurant you don’t know anything about. Without leaving Facebook, you can check out the details of the restaurant on the web. Or, say you see a note in your News Feed about a friend’s new laptop. If you are also in the market for a new computer or you just want to check out what she purchased, you can search the web for more information about it without having to leave Facebook.”

That’s all good and true, but you can also just enter in a search in your Google toolbar after seeing something interesting in your News Feed. Facebook (and to an extent, MySpace through its deal with Google) has an opportunity to do something cool with social search, but so far this looks like a typical search engine-content partner deal, where adding search to a site with tens of millions of eyeballs will certainly increase query volume, but not enough to make a huge dent in the overall search market.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Farecast Live Search: Officially Part of the Microsoft FamilyBreaking: Facebook Signs Search and Advertising Deal with MicrosoftUse Live Search, Get Paid (in Tickets)Is the new Microsoft Live Search Up and Running?Facebook Opening Their App Directory To The WebMicrosoft Live Search Launches New Features for MobilesLive Search Wants to Understand You Better

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under News, social networking, myspace, search, facebook, microsoft, microsoft live search, San Francisco-San Jose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.