If you’ve taken a peek at SanDisk’s homepage today, you’ll have noticed a rather obvious notice on the site stating that something BIG is coming. While we’re not entirely sure what the company has in store for us, but considering that the company specializes in memory, it’s probably worth a bet to say that it’s probably larger capacity of some storage medium. In case you’re wondering, the date indicated is the coming Tuesday, so stay tuned!

Permalink: SanDisk Hints That BIG Is Coming from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

PC Connection Express offers the LaCie 7.5TB 5big Network NAS Hard Drive, model no. 301419U, for $949 with free shipping ($0.13/GB). That's the lowest total price we could find by $51. This Gigabit Ethernet-enabled Network Attached Storage device features ...

If you’re a gadget-lover fed up of filling your home with ice white this and brushed aluminum that, then check out this selection of totally stylin’ items offering a design blast from the past.

Retro, vintage, old school or just classic, whatever your interpretation, we’ve dug out ten gadgets that boast classic good looks as well as bang-up-to-date functionality.

Olympus’ Pen E-P1 is chock full of digital goodness in a design that harks back to the SLR glory days and the original Pen’s release back in 1959, which made a big impact on the camera market with its small dimensions. With a 12-megapixel sensor and capable of capturing movies at 720p, the modern micro four thirds snapper offers digital SLR-standard pics in a more compact format with those vintage looks that are good enough to lick.

Cost: $799.99

Science and Sons’ Phonofone II is a wickedly old-fashioned iPod speaker, or in the words of its creator “audio console.” Using no power, the gramophone-styled device utilizes passive amplification and cunning acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to around 55 decibels. With an entirely ceramic construction, it’s as much sculpture as it is speaker.

Cost:: Currently 240 euros – around $330

So far only released in Korea, LG thrilled fans of retro style when it revealed a classic CRT television, complete with bunny ears aerial and channel-changing knobs. The 14-inch set stands on chrome legs and if you’re doing the back-in-time trip all the way, can display in black and white or sepia. Despite its vintage appearance it offers a digital tuner and does come with a remote control for when you get bored of fiddling with the knobs.

Cost: Sadly N/A

A professional USB mic, the Snowball from Blue Microphones claims to offer plug’n'play ease of use with both Macs and PCs but the power to capture anything from the softest vocals to the loudest garage band. Angled as ideal for podcasting, the vintage appearance of this modern peripheral may serve to remind users of the rich heritage of broadcasting and inspire them to podcast about more than the hilarious antics of their cat. That, and it will look wicked-cool on your desk.

Cost: $99.95

Available in black, white, red and an outrageously retro avocado green, say goodbye to fiddly modern earbuds with these totally cool cans from Panasonic. The Panasonic Old School Monitor Stereo Headphones, to give them their full title, offer leather-cushioned listening comfort you can only dream of if you’re used to in-ear audio efforts and look so darn cool you’ll be tempted to wear them out — even when you’re not listening to music.

Cost:: $59.99

Sure, headsets are all well and good but there’s no romance in looking like a call center phone operator. The P*PHONE from Hulger will give you the satisfying feel of a proper chunky handset in your hot little paw and turn a VoIP call into a conversation. Available in white, black, red and green, the P*PHONE is offered on its own for $50 and with a cool desktop base for $99. As well as working with certain mobiles (and certain others with adaptors) the P*PHONE offers easy USB hook-up to a PC.

Cost:: From $50

Back in the olden days folks would create real-life music “tapes” with playlists recorded on to them to either share with a friend or loved one or enjoy themselves (“Best Driving Songs Ever”, “My Breaking Up With Dave Tape”, etc). Help make sure the art of the mixtape is not lost with this USB effort that takes on the form of an old analog blank audio cassette tape (complete with sleeve that you can scrawl the track list on) but with a brand spanking new USB flash drive nestled in the middle.

Cost:: $15.99

Mathletes with a penchant for the past will enjoy this retro calculator’s baby blue looks and oversize dimensions. Whether you’re totting up the cost of your new flared jeans, or calculating how much cheese you’ll need to melt to make the perfect fondue, your numerical queries will be solved in Seventies style.

Cost:: Approx $23

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a vintage deck, but in fact it offers more modern tech than many music systems. Sure, there’s the option to take your vinyl for a spin, but there’s also playback from SD memory cards and USB storage devices as well as from iPods and other MP3 players. In addition to normal playback this turntable can record your records to your computer, which means you won’t have to re-purchase all your vinyl to get it digitized, and it has an FM radio.

Cost:: $150

While the wider world gets hyped up about Sony’s Move and Microsoft’s Project Natal, sit back, relax and enjoy some 8-bit gaming with the Retro NES USB Controller from ThinkGeek, described as perfect for creating old school gaming nostalgia on your laptop. With a USB connection, it’s perfect for MAME and other emulators and is sooo much cooler than trying to save the princess using your keyboard.

Cost:: $29.99

Tags: gadgets, hulger, LG, Panasonic, retro

Vodafone Spain replacing microSD cards on 3,000 virus-infected handsets originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere, any time, from any Internet connection.

At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even adding the free versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can keep your employees coordinated.

For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business.

The many advanced features of Gmail really make it a leap forward in the web-based e-mail space, and a lot of these are ideal for business.

If you’re not ready to take the full plunge into the paid Google Apps suite, you can still configure Gmail to function as your business e-mail client through your existing domain name by following the steps outlined in my post, “How to Set Up Gmail as Your Business E-mail Client.”

The first big advantage of Gmail, like all the apps discussed here, is that it functions in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about downloading messages to multiple locations or syncing various devices. Your inbox will look the same from any web or mobile connection. And with 25 gigs of e-mail storage per user (with a paid apps account), it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to clean your inbox or delete old messages.

Gmail works a bit differently than traditional desktop clients and webmail services in that conversations are “threaded.” This means that e-mails with the same or related subject lines are grouped together in a thread so you can see all the messages sent and received on a topic in one place. When a new message is received, the entire thread is bumped to the top of your inbox, making tracking complex and multi-party conversations easy.

Gmail also has a chat feature built right into the interface that lets you send a quick update or discuss a project with an employee if you’re not in the same office. Chats are also stored in Gmail so that you can search and refer to them later.

Google search, the asset that started it all for the company, is of course built right into Gmail, which makes finding information from e-mail conversations (even very old ones) extremely efficient.

Additionally, Gmail Labs offers some extra settings for your inbox that can be extremely valuable for business use:

• Signature Tweaks puts your e-mail signature before the quoted text in a reply the way that Outlook would.
• Default ‘Reply to All’ allows you to reply to group e-mails with one click, instead of from a drop-down menu.
• Forgotten Attachment Detector will notify you if you’ve mentioned an attachment in an e-mail, but forgotten to add one.
• Undo Send gives you a few seconds after sending a message to click “undo” in case you forgot something, or sent it to the wrong party by mistake.
• Title Tweaks is a great feature that puts your unread message count first in the title of the inbox web page. If you have many windows open while you’re working, you’ll still be able to see when new messages arrive.

Google Docs is a web-based suite for word processing, presentation building (similar to PowerPoint), spreadsheets, and web forms. All the work is done in a web browser, and all the data is saved in the cloud.

The software can be a bit quirky at times, which may frustrate users of more stable products like Microsoft Office, but the payoff in online storage, shareability, and collaboration options may be worth the adjustment for many small businesses.

Because the data is online, streamlined document sharing and collaboration are big perks with Google Docs. Any file you’re working on can be shared with individual team members, or the entire group within the apps system. You can also set permissions for specific users to view and edit documents. And, multiple users can simultaneously view and edit documents, which can be useful for real-time collaborative projects or presentations during conference calls. You can also grant permission for those outside your office network to view and edit documents, which can be especially useful for sharing information and presentations with clients or colleagues.

As you create and share documents, your Google Docs dashboard may start to get a little messy. Be sure to create folders to keep your work organized just as you would on your desktop. You can also share entire folders if you need to collaborate on multiple documents related to the same project.

Google Calendar provides an efficient and intuitive way to keep appointments and events synced across your entire business. With calendar sharing and permissions (similar to those in Docs), you can add other employees’ calendars to your own, and vice versa, in order to see and manage the big picture of your team’s time.

For example, if an executive has an assistant, their calendars may be shared so that the assistant could manage his boss’s appointments remotely from his own account. It’s also a smart tool for coordinating meetings, calls, and shift staffing for multiple employees to avoid scheduling conflicts. Sharing multiple calendars with one “master calendar” creates a color-coded scheduling table for the coordinator that updates automatically when users make changes or additions.

The Calendar app can also be used to create events through Gmail. By adding your employees’ e-mail addresses to an event, they will receive an invitation to respond. Responding ‘yes’ automatically adds a shared event to your calendar that each invitee can view and add notes to. It’s a smart way to coordinate meetings and keep everyone in the loop.

Google Sites is a drag-and-drop web development tool that you can use within your business’s apps to create online information hubs for employees. The websites you create exist within your Google Apps domain, can be public or private, and permissions for employees to add, change, and contribute information can be set from the main account.

Beyond simply being a WYSIWYG web editor, Sites makes it easy to integrate data from other Google Apps into dynamic pages that team members can use to collaborate on projects. Integrating spreadsheets or data charts from Docs, a deadline schedule from Calendar, and team-specific messages from Gmail could essentially create a one-stop project dashboard full of dynamically updating information.

Sites here can be purely functional or informational, or with the aid of some built-in templates or a good designer, a full-fledged dynamic public website for your business that team members have easy access to.

Google Groups have long been public forums where users across the web gather to discuss specific interests or get technical support. Groups for business brings that same functionality into your private internal network.

E-mail can sometimes be cumbersome when coordinating a team. When you need a central space to collect ideas and share documents (but you’re not interested in building a web page in Sites), Groups offers a solution.

Employees can create discussion groups on their own and subscribe, either by e-mail or via a Groups dashboard, which lists new posts like a news reader.

Rather than e-mails going out to individual inboxes, a group thread remains visible to all of your subscribed team members, and users can go back to it for reference, to add more information, and even share docs and calendars.

Using Groups for business discussions and project management creates a communal and searchable database of information that employees can go back to whenever needed.

Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace allows developers of other business web apps to integrate their offerings with Google and sell software directly to Google Apps users. The marketplace currently has over 50 partners, including Intuit, Zoho, and Aviary. This additional space for third-party software means that Apps users will have even more options to tailor their suite for specific business purposes.

While each app has worthwhile features, perhaps one of the best advantages is the way that they all integrate with one another. Documents and appointments can be easily shared via e-mail, and your inbox can be used as a portal for productivity via embeddable widgets, chat, and other notifications.

If your small business is ready for a web-based, collaboration-minded IT solution, Google Apps is certainly a cost-effective way to go, and you can investigate the free versions simply by signing up for a Gmail account to determine if the suite is right for your workflow.

- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, CostinT

Tags: business, gmail, Google, google apps, Google Calendar, google docs, google labs, List, Lists, productivity, small business

Joystiq got its hands on leaked documentation that suggests the Xbox 360 will support USB mass storage devices in the near future. Screenshots lifted from the documents reveal support for externally connected devices well over the 512MB capacity of Microsoft’s current Xbox 360 memory units which are presumably now on the road to obsolescence. A note within the document from a Microsoft software engineer also acknowledges the proliferation of high capacity, high speed USB storage devices and confirms that Microsoft will release an Xbox 360 system update in 2010 to provide support for this inexpensive class of external storage. This added feature is good news for those XBOX 360 owners whose core system has limited or no on-board storage as they will be able to add up to two 16GB USB flash drives and use them in lieu of the pricey Microsoft add-on hard drive. With the ability to cheaply add on 32GB of storage, that Xbox 360 Arcade and its sub $200 price tag looks a bit more attractive, no?

Read

Where Is It? is designed to be the best media cataloging tool available on the shareware market today. It is a successor of successful DOS program Floppy Master, extending its capabilities to new and larger media storage devices and providing even more comprehensive access to stored data.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

As automakers ramp up their plans to put greener vehicles on the road, hydrogen storage has become a pivotal issue. Whereas it's been suggested that graphene could play an important role in retaining hydrogen for use in fuel cells and other technologies, a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia say they've found a way to configure graphene that enables it to hold 100 times more hydrogen molecules than a single layer of the carbon-based substance. [More]

First off, let's be crystal clear: this is a work of pure imagination, not some sort of leaked image of the next HTC HD device. What's so impressive so me is the quality of the mock-ups...you'd never know that this was a mock-up of a phone that doesn't exist...until you look at the specs, because that's where things start to look a little too creative. The creator wants a 1.5 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, but as far as I know, that speed of processor doesn't exist yet. The 1 GB of RAM seems like overkill, but the 16 GB of internal storage sounds about right. The 4.5 inch screen running at 800 x 1280 sounds cool, but that's not supported resolution of Windows phone 7. 4G? Nah, we won't see that yet. USB host? Nope, not compatible with Windows phone 7. 8 megapixel camera that can record 720p video? Maybe...just maybe. I've heard rumblings about phones this year being able to do HD capture.

So that's the mythical HD3. What would your dream Windows phone 7 device have on it in terms of hardware? Yeah, I know you want copy and paste, but what about the hardware?

Rumours suggest that Microsoft may be planning a new firmware update that would allow external USB hard drives to be used with the Xbox 360.

The rumours began with website Joystiq, which claims to have received Microsoft documentation describing the new feature, having subsequently confirmed the details with other unnamed sources.

The document purports to have been authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft and states that due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow users to use USB devices for storage via an update due in spring 2010.

Read more...

Les derniers PC “Paladin” orientés gamers d’iBUYPOWER, les F890, F950, F970 et XLC V3 sont tous propulsés par le nouveau processeur d’Intel, le Core i7-980X Extreme Edition.

Les Paladin F950, F970 et XLC V3 proposent 12Go de mémoire DDR3, avec au moins 1To de disque dur, un lecteur Blu-Ray, tandis que le F890 est lui équipé de 6Go de DDR3, ainsi que de 1To d’espace de stockage. Les F970 et XLC V3 embarquent également 80 de SSD (Solid State Drive) et Windows 7 Ultimate. Pour le reste, iBUYPOWER laisse le choix entre une carte graphique ATI Radeon ou une Nvidia GeForce HD avec la prise en charge DirectX 11, et propose un système de refroidissement liquide.

Les prix commencent à 2159$.

El Monte, CA – March 18, 2010 – iBUYPOWER, a leading innovator of gaming PCs, is excited to announce four new Paladin gaming systems all powered by the new Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition Processor. The new 6 core processors are extremely overclockable, deliver benchmark shattering performance and allow unmatched multitasking capability. Gamers need not be concerned with having multiple browsers open, team speak, or MP3s files playing while gaming due to the new processor’s revolutionary hyper-threading technology.

The four new configurations all feature the finest components available, including the newest ATI Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce high-definition video cards, which all support DirectX 11 graphics. The Paladin F950, F970 and XLC V3 all pack 12GB of DDR3 Memory, provide at least a 1 TB of storage space and a Blu-ray drive. The fully loaded F970 and XLC V3 also come standard with an 80GB solid state drive and have been upgraded to Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate. Additionally, like all iBUYPOWER desktop systems, the newest Paladin model all feature free liquid CPU cooling.

Gamers looking to get the most out of their new six core systems can take advantage of the iBUYPOWER Labs’ Power Drive Overclocking Service, which overclocks the CPU by as much as 30% and comes standard on the Paladin XLC V3. Other innovative iBUYPOWER exclusive products and services include the Harmony Sound Reduction System, the Internal USB Expansion System, and iBUYPOWER’s Specialized Advanced Packaging System with expanding foam inserts to prevent damage during shipping.

The new Paladin systems start at $2,159 and are available now at www.iBUYPOWER.com.

Customers with more specific gaming needs can configure a fully customizable system at www.iBUYPOWER.com. All iBUYPOWER systems also come standard with 1 year limited warranty and lifetime technical support.

From the customer’s perspective, it’s all the same. If it’s provided over the Internet on a pay-for-usage basis, it’s a cloud service. Within the industry, we argue about definitions more than is good for us. Customers look in from the outside and see a much simpler array of choices.

Why is this important? It matters to how we market and support cloud services (of whatever ilk). Yesterday EuroCloud UK (disclosure: of which I’m chair) had a member meeting, hosted at SAP UK headquarters, that covered various aspects of the transition to SaaS for ISVs. From the title, you’d imagine it would have little content of relevance to raw cloud providers at the infrastructure-as-a-service layer. (One of our challenges in the early days of EuroCloud, whose founders are more from the SaaS side of things, is to make sure we bring the infrastructure players on board with us). But in fact, much of the discussion covered topics of equal interest at any level of the as-a-service stack: How to work with partners? How to compensate sales teams? What sort of contract to offer customers? How to reconcile paying for resources on a pay-per-use basis with a per-seat licence fee? What instrumentation and reporting of service levels should the provider’s infrastructure include?

And then came the customer presentation, by Symbian Foundation’s head of IT, Ian McDonald. He was there as a customer of SAP’s Business ByDesign SaaS offering, whose team were hosting the meeting. But it soon became clear that his organization’s voracious consumption of cloud services runs the gamut from high-level applications like ByDesign and Google Apps through to Amazon Web Services, Jungle Disk storage and file sharing (stored on either Amazon or Rackspace), even Skype. Symbian’s developers still build their own website infrastructure using open-source platforms but that too is hosted in the cloud. The imperative for Symbian, as a not-for-profit consortium, is to stay flexible and minimize costs. An important part of that is having the capacity to scale rapidly if needed but without having to pay up-front for that capacity.

For Symbian, relying on the cloud for the entirety of its IT infrastructure gives the cost flexibility and agility of execution that it requires. It doesn’t differentiate between infrastructure and applications as a service — what matters is that they are delivered from the cloud in a usage-based billing model.

The takeaway for industry players is that we all have to work together. Earlier in the afternoon, the meeting heard a presentation by Chrysoula Christopoulou, a long-term member of the SAP Business ByDesign team and a key architect of its go-to-market and channel strategy. SAP will be bringing live its partner strategy for ByDesign this year (it already has some beta partners working with it) and it will encourage partners to offer mashups, add-ons, integration services and other extensions to ByDesign. Indeed, SAP is planning to introduce an application marketplace (they’re all the rage these days) and will be positioning ByDesign to its partners not just as an application but also as a platform.

SAP needs partners to sell ByDesign because (for the average case) the product alone doesn’t produce enough margin to cover the cost of making a sale. By adding their own extensions and services, the theory is that partners can spread that cost of sale across a larger total value. I think the Symbian story demonstrates that ByDesign partners should consider casting their net wider and as well as building on ByDesign they should also offer services that bring together a complete portfolio of cloud services. Most ByDesign customers won’t have the same in-house resource of smart developers that Symbian, because of the nature of its business, has on tap. Therefore there’s probably a big opportunity for partners to provide that expertise as part of their service offering. Of course they still have the challenge of providing it at cost-effective prices that are more in line with the price points of cloud services — the old SI models of long-term projects and sky-high bills don’t work in the cloud. The opportunity is around understanding the cloud environment and helping customers make the most of it — becoming the customer’s trusted advisor as they embrace the cloud, from top to bottom.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iBUYPOWER’s latest 4 “Paladin” Gaming PCs, the F890, F950, F970 and XLC V3 are all powered by Intel’s i 7 980x Extreme Edition processor (6×3.33GHz).

Paladin F950, F970 and XLC V3 have 12 GB of DDR3 memory, at least 1TB of storage, have Blu-Ray Disc players whereas F890 has 6GB DDR3 memory and 1 TB of storage. The F970 and XLC V3 also come standard with an 80GB SSD drive and Windows 7 Ultimate. They all feature either ATI Radeon or Nvidia GeForce HD video card with DirectX 11 support and have iBUYPOWER’s free liquid CPU cooling.

Their price start at $2, 159.

El Monte, CA – March 18, 2010 – iBUYPOWER, a leading innovator of gaming PCs, is excited to announce four new Paladin gaming systems all powered by the new Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition Processor. The new 6 core processors are extremely overclockable, deliver benchmark shattering performance and allow unmatched multitasking capability. Gamers need not be concerned with having multiple browsers open, team speak, or MP3s files playing while gaming due to the new processor’s revolutionary hyper-threading technology.

The four new configurations all feature the finest components available, including the newest ATI Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce high-definition video cards, which all support DirectX 11 graphics. The Paladin F950, F970 and XLC V3 all pack 12GB of DDR3 Memory, provide at least a 1 TB of storage space and a Blu-ray drive. The fully loaded F970 and XLC V3 also come standard with an 80GB solid state drive and have been upgraded to Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate. Additionally, like all iBUYPOWER desktop systems, the newest Paladin model all feature free liquid CPU cooling.

Gamers looking to get the most out of their new six core systems can take advantage of the iBUYPOWER Labs’ Power Drive Overclocking Service, which overclocks the CPU by as much as 30% and comes standard on the Paladin XLC V3. Other innovative iBUYPOWER exclusive products and services include the Harmony Sound Reduction System, the Internal USB Expansion System, and iBUYPOWER’s Specialized Advanced Packaging System with expanding foam inserts to prevent damage during shipping.

The new Paladin systems start at $2,159 and are available now at www.iBUYPOWER.com.

Customers with more specific gaming needs can configure a fully customizable system at www.iBUYPOWER.com. All iBUYPOWER systems also come standard with 1 year limited warranty and lifetime technical support.

ProTune App to Feature Three Different Viewing Panes from which Users Can Choose Along with Unprecedented Pitch Detection Performance; ProTempo App to Feature High-Quality Drum Sounds Along with Tempo Presets, Customizable Presets, and Unlimited Storage Settings (PRWeb Mar 19, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3742634.htm

"Are we gazing onto the cusp of a new horizon, one where our Xbox 360 storage needs aren't shackled to overpriced proprietary hard drives? Probably not quite. Our best friends at Joystiq have managed to obtain documents (corroborated with multiple sources) showing that the folks in Redmond are mulling over an option to enable USB mass storage support for its game machine."

It appears that the next update for the Xbox 360 will enable you use USB Storage with your Xbox 360. Do I hear cries of joy from the gaming community at the thought of being able to plug in a 500Gb USB drive for storing their games and downloads? Well this is where you will be disappointed. Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have set a max limit of 16Gb on the USB device you use. From what I can see, this is intended to replace the memory cards rather than allow you to use your own disk drives. Hopefully Microsoft will get wise and change this at some point, but for now it looks like we still have to pay for the usual overpriced proprietary ones instead.

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Trada

Quick Pitch: Trada’s online marketplace boosts Google and Yahoo search ad results by crowdsourcing search expertise for small and medium businesses.

Genius Idea: Trada takes a lot of the complexity of running SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns by letting advertisers or agencies take advantage of lots of different search experts who can execute campaigns for them quickly and efficiently.

Trada is officially launching today, after being in private beta since January, 2009. The idea is pretty simple: Have advertisers or agencies lay out the parameters for a campaign, like the landing page, a budget, maximum cost per click, etc. and then have search experts work in tandem to generate keywords and ad groups that can be submitted to various ad networks like Yahoo and Google AdWords.

Once a campaign has been submitted, advertisers can monitor the keywords to see how different things are performing and to make sure that the keywords are clear and accurate. Search experts get to keep the difference in what the advertiser is willing to pay per click/conversion and what it actually cost to generate. In other words, they have a very real incentive to get as many conversions or clicks for your campaign as possible.

Trada is essentially acting as the liaison between the two groups — which means that they also offer some stability and checks and balances for both parties. Search experts have to pass an entrance exam before being accepted into the program.

Trada is free for advertisers or agencies to use — their budget and total advertising cost will vary depending on the parameters of the campaign. Search experts get to keep 75% of their profits, with 25% going to Trada.

Trada sounds like a low-cost way to try different SEM strategies and to take advantage of people that are actively working to get you conversions because it benefits them. Likewise, it might be a low-noise opportunity for search experts who don’t want to have to be tied to certain campaigns or companies and can choose what projects they work on and so-forth.

Have you ever run any search engine marketing campaigns? How did you figure out your approach? Let us know!

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: advertising, ppc, SEM, SEO, trada

A big thanks to everyone who came to MashBash SXSWi 2010. An estimated 4,000 attendees enjoyed five hours of networking, games, dancing to the amazing DJ Chicken George, as well as the Sony bloggie experience.

We had a few official photographers on hand, but there were loads of “guest” photographers as well. Below are some great shots from the evening and links to the full albums.

Please feel free to share links to your photos and videos in the comments below. For our full SXSWi coverage, check out the SXSWi News stream on Mashable.

MashBash SXSWi Photo Set from @TechFrog

(the crowd)

(the Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble and Pete Cashmore “Interview”)

The Step and Repeat by Alison Narro

(The Step-and-Repeat)

MashBash SXSWi 2010 Photo Set from thekenyeung

(cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.thelettertwo.com

LA Weekly MashBash Photo Album

“Sony Electronics has created high-quality, innovative and stylish products for over 40 years. Thanks to Mashable, Sony’s new MP4 bloggieâ„¢ camera will make its SXSWi debut. Capturing everyday moments in 1080p HD MP4 video and 5-megapixel photos, the compact device has advanced features like Face Detection and SteadyShotâ„¢, a large LCD screen, a built-in USB for uploading and charging, integrated software for easy Web sharing, and allows for expandable storage with Memory Stick PRO Duoâ„¢ or SD media cards. The bloggie camera is one of many products just launched under Sony’s new global brand message – make.believe. Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real. For more information go to www.sony.com/bloggie.”

“Cliqset makes it easy for people to share, discover, and discuss content from everywhere on the Web. Cliqset helps you filter through the activity, like status updates, reviews, blog posts, videos, articles, music and pretty much everything that’s online, and consume the social stream the way you want to. To connect with Cliqset, visit us at www.cliqset.com.”

- The Mashable SXSWi Team: Pete Cashmore, Adam Ostrow, Barb Dybwad, Josh Catone, Jennifer Van Grove and Brett Petersel
- High Beam Events Team: For production, lights, planning and event coordination
- DJ Chicken George
- The Buffalo Billiards Staff
- Everyone who attended

Tags: MashBash, mashbash sxswi, sxswi