Digg revamps its site

Metanews site Digg revamped its interface on Monday, focusing more around podcasts and video than ever before. Some coverage:

CNET News.com: Digg goes deep and wide.

Journalism.co.uk: Digg added a Top 10 feature to its news and videos, as well as relocating its navigation bar to the top of the site. Digg extends its reach beyond news. 

Wired Blogs:  Digg  revamped its design and added some new features earlier today.   The biggest new feature is the ability to  digg podcasts.

ABCNews.com:  Digg Revamps Site to Feature Video, Podcasts.

Get on the Netscape/Digg home page every day

Jason Calacanis: 5 steps to get on the Netscape/Digg home page every single day!

Social media giving big media a headache

New York Press: Social media, user-generated content, digital egalitarianism … big media has a big problem.

Independent social-media Web sites like Digg and Wikipedia need sites like the New York Times for reference material. But this will not always be the case, writes Adario Strange. "What will happen when they stop linking to old media and start creating their own media?" Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Fox and MySpace dethrone Yahoo

Red Herring: Fox and MySpace dethrone Yahoo in page views.

What's next for MySpace

BusinessWeek Online: What's next for MySpace.

Four rules of organizing on MySpace

Joshua Levy at Personal Democracy Forum: Rules for using MySpace in Politics

'Social network' for newspapers to launch next month

A 'social network' for newspapers, from former SFGate GM Bob Cauthorn, will launch next month. It's called CityTools. Britain's Journalism.co.uk has the story.

Squirl: a social cataloging tool

I don't have time to look deeply into all the social media sites that cross my desk, but this one looks interesting:

Squirl (love the name!) is a social cataloging tool that helps you catalog practically anything. It lets you organize your stuff into collections and meet others with similar interests.

From the website:

The idea for the site sprang from co-founder John McGrath's frustration at the lack of online cataloging options for his collection of 45rpm records. He joined forces with old friend Steve de Brun in January 2006 to build a solution, and Squirl launched that August.

From a Squirl rep:

Squirl is somewhat like LibraryThing and Listal, but whereas these sites only let you catalog books and media, respectively, Squirl can be used to catalog anything. The collections our members have posted so far range from the common (books, music, movies) to the extraordinary (rare autographs, original art, antique bookplates). As one blogger said about us, "It's like following an eBay power buyer home." In addition to its powerful cataloging capabilities, Squirl has many of the social networking components common to Web 2.0 sites -- groups, RSS feeds, messaging, etc. -- which gives our members a chance to meet folks with similar interests.

We launched Squirl about two months ago and it has been growing quickly ever since. We have a strong base of loyal, enthusiastic members and are rolling out new features rapidly.

Tracking friends and family with a cellphone

NY Times: Cellphone as Tracker: X Marks Your Doubts. Excerpt:

Two wireless providers recently made separate announcements about new positioning services, betting that the time has arrived. Two weeks ago, Helio — a wireless service owned jointly by SK Telecom, a South Korean cellphone company, and EarthLink, the American Internet service provider — introduced the Buddy Beacon in its new phone, the Drift, which costs $225. With the press of a button, the Drift shows on a map the location of up to 25 friends — if each is also carrying a $225 Drift.

Last week, Boost Mobile, a unit of Sprint, and its technology partner, Loopt, unveiled Boost Loopt, a similar offering described as a “social mapping service.” ...

Dodgeball.com, which has been operating since 2004, should be credited as a predecessor: a Dodgeball member uses a cellphone to send in a text message about his or her whereabouts, and notifications are then sent automatically to the member’s circle of friends. ( Google acquired the company last year.)

But Dodgeball can’t update a change of location automatically. With G.P.S.-equipped handsets, the Beacon Buddy could remedy this shortcoming, but Helio elected not to enable automatic updates: a user must push a button to refresh the phone’s location. “We didn’t want a situation where someone left their Buddy Beacon on and didn’t know it,” Mr. Dayton said. When the marketplace is more familiar with the service, he added, it may introduce an auto-updating option. ...

A social network for tracking your friends

The San Jose Mercury News has a look at the new social networking start-up loopt and its plans to launch a new service today that will let people track the whereabouts of their friends.

"Historically, that MySpace generation has been connected to the personal computer and the personal computer only,'' said James Brehm, wireless analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "This is the next step and it's a giant leap -- it allows you to do it on the move.''