"WassUp" is the news in a nutshell. New technologies, emerging trends, inspiring cases ... everything a marketer needs to be "in the know".

1. WassUp - April 5 2011

2. New Facebook comments plugin March 1 The new comments plugin has more social relevance, improved moderation tools, provides better distribution and enables other login providers

4. improved moderation tools: Admins can moderate on the Comments Box directly or on the moderation dashboard.

5. better distribution: there now is a full synchronization between the comments on the website and the comments in Facebook. You now can also comment as a brand page, which will (optionally) post your comment on your Facebook brand page wall. Reactions on comments you made on a website will trigger a notification taking you back to that website.

7. You don’t own the comments

8. There is no easy way to back-up your comments

10. March 2 click next for video The most commonly heard points of critique on the iPad 2 are the absence of Flash support, USB and SD slots and a retina display.

12. Dual cameras — Front and rear facing cameras, for video: 720p HD at 30 FPS and front VGA

13. Gyroscope to better detect the orientation of the device

14. Thinner — Apple says that the iPad 2 is 33% thinner than the previous version at 8.8mm thick.

15. Lighter — 1.5 pounds gets reduced to 1.3 pounds

16. Two Colors — White and Black, shipping from day 1.

17. Battery — Same 10 hour life as before.

18. Same Price — Apple remains at the $499 price for the 16 gig WiFiversion

19. Storage –16, 32 and 64-GB models.

20. HDMI mirrored output at 1080p, via cable

21. Smart covers

23. Convert Flash to HTML 5 with Adobe Wallaby March 7 The Wallaby AIR app can be downloaded at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/

25. Convertingfrom Flash to HTML can mean a loss of some functionality, including the lack of effects like filters and blend modes. If a Flash feature is not supported in HTML, then it's just not available.

26. ActionScript, Sound, Video and other assets are discarded

27. At this time, Wallaby uses Webkit CSS3 tags and therefore is only compatible with Webkit based browsers. The only supported Webkit browsers at this time are Chrome and Safari on OSX, Windows, and iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod).

28. The generated HTML5 / CSS3 code can be changed/extended by anyone./comments/ This launch is a clear move towards the iPhone/iPad. Since Flash is not supported by these devices, Adobe tries to find new ways to convince the developer community Flash is still a valuable platform, even though HTML5 and Apple are breathing down its neck. /bookmarks/ http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/

29. Facebook Places in Belgium March Until now, only Blackberry users were given access to Facebook Places in Belgium. Now, also Android and iOS users can use the service.

30. Deals, deals, deals March While Facebook eyes to dethrone Groupon, the latter prepares a Facebook ad blitz.

31. Deals, deals, deals /slide notes/ March /what/ It’s becoming one of the big business trends for 2011: offering deals. Currently, Groupon is leading the pack, while Facebook, Google and Microsoft are trying to get a piece of the pie. With Facebook places available now in Belgium, the next phase is allowing merchants to offer local deals based upon check-ins. But Facebook is also testing offering deals apart from its mobile ‘Places’ platform, which would make it pretty much like… Groupon. Google at the other hand, announced at the SXSW conference that check-ins on Google Latitude will soon also bring offers from local businesses. Meanwhile, Bing launched a ‘deal aggregator’ search for mobile, giving access to more than 200,000 unique offers in over 14,000 cities and towns across the U.S. /comments/ For local businesses, offering deals is a great way of promoting their brand and acquire new customers. The emerging platforms such as Groupon and Facebook deals make it very easy to experiment with offers as a marketing tool. From the provider point of view, it’s not clear who will in the end win the battle. After a rejected take-over offer from Google, Groupon is still going very strong. But Facebook will be able to leverage upon its huge user base, and Google still has the biggest database of local businesses…

32. Deals, deals, deals /slide notes/ March /bookmarks/ http://www.groupon.be – http://www.groupon.com http://www.facebook.com/places http://www.facebook.com/deals http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/03/check-in-gain-status-and-unlock-offers.html http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2011/03/03/bing-launches-deals.aspx

33. Foursquare 3.0 March 8 Foursquare currently counts nearly 7.5 million users and 250.000 verified businesses.

35. new types of deals: There will soon be seven special types available to merchants: Check-in Specials, Friend Specials, Flash Specials (e.g. the first 10 people to show up after 5 p.m. get a free drink), Swarm Specials, Newbie Specials, Mayor Specials and Loyalty Specials.

36. compare campaign stats

37. personalized recommendations for venues

38. assign points based upon different types of actions /comments/ Foursquare 3.0 is a very powerful platform that uses gamification for acquisition and increasing loyalty. /bookmarks/ https://foursquare.com/business/venues

39. Swipe to pay March Technology: NFC via MicroSD cards or iPhone case Supports: Blackberry Bold 9650 iPhone 4/3GS/3G Samsung Vibrant Galaxy 5 Technology: NFC via built-in NFC capabilities Supports: Android devices Technology: NFC via built-in NFC capabilities Supports: Windows Phone 7 devices In2Pay The number of phones with NFC will double in 2012, from 35 million shipped in 2011. In 2014, 340 million global wireless users will use mobile payments (src: Gartner)

41. Google partnered with American Express and Citigroup to sketch out a mobile payment platform for devices running Google’s mobile operating system ‘Android’.

42. Google this month also ditched support for QR codes inside Google Places in favor of NFC./comments/ Both Microsoft and Google are ‘gambling’ on the fact that mobile devices in the near future will have NFC technology on board. Of course, via its partnership with Nokia, Microsoft has a solid hardware partner, and also Google has a lot of impact through its Android platform. For Google, the win will be in the fact that knowing who paid for what in which store could drive much more targeted advertising … and offers (see before). Apart from rumored NFC support for iPhone 5, Apple seems to be nowhere in the equation (yet).

43. Swipe to pay /slide notes/ March /bookmarks/ Google: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703576204576226722412152678.html http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/03/31/google-discontinues-qr-code-support-in-places/ Microsoft: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-30/microsoft-is-said-to-plan-mobile-payments-in-phone-software.html

44. Google March 28 20 +1 Join the +1 experiment by visiting http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html

45. Google March 28 21 +1 click next for video Join the +1 experiment by visiting http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html

47. the button is now available next to search results and ads. A button for web pages should be launched in the course of the following weeks or months.

48. your social circle for +1’s will consist of people in your Gmail & Google Talk chat list, people in your “My Contacts” group in Google Contacts and people you follow in Google Reader or Google Buzz./comments/ ‘Social search’ – in which your search results are influenced by your social circle- is a hot topic. And Google has never been really strong with ‘social’. They already ‘socialized’ search results based mainly upon what your Twitter friends are posting, but they never had access to the real gold: the Facebook ‘like’ button (something Bing does have). So they did the only thing they could do: launch their own like button. You could of course ask yourself who will ‘+1’ a link in a search result page before he clicked through. An issue that will be solved with the launch of the web page version of the button.

49. Google /slide notes/ March 8 /bookmarks/ http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/03/introducing-1-button.html http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-facebook-like-button-70569 http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html

50. In Short March 24 08/03: Facebook Insights update 11/03: FBML no more 19% M: 23% F: 15% 18 – 34 yr 18/03: New Google Analytics 10/03: Smartphones in Belgium

51. In short /slide notes/ March 08/03: Facebook Insights update Facebook updated its statistics module. Administrators will now be able to see real-time data about the performance of their Like button and Comments Box social plugins; the age, gender, language, and country demographics of their visitors, and which pages of their website are most popular. http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/476 11/03: FBML no more FBML (Facebook Meta Language) was an easy way to create custom tab pages on a brand page in Facebook. But as from 11/03, this will not be possible anymore via FBML, only via iFrame applications. Although new FBML tabs can not be created anymore, existing FBML tabs will –for now- continue to work. http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/02/11/iframe-page-tab-apps/ 10/03: Smartphones in Belgium A study by Ant Research and Havas Media revealed that only 19% of Belgians use a smartphone. For tablets, this is only 3%. http://www.marketingjournaal.com/2011/03/19-van-de-belgen-gebruikt-een-smartphone-en-wat-nu/

52. In short /slide notes/ March 18/03: New Google Analytics Google is rolling out a new version of Google Analytics (version 5). The new version includes multiple, custom dashboards, improved use of advanced segments, improved report layouts etc. http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-google-analytics-dashboards.html http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/web-analytics/google-analytics-web-analytics/new-google-analytics-beta-a-detailed-review/

53. Made in Belgium: Flair fashion tag March 22 click next for video Since the launch of the application, the number of fan page ‘likes’ increased from 17.574 (March 22) to 23.616 (April 4), meaning a 34.3% increase in two weeks!

54. Geert De Laet Digital strategist & Technology evangelist gdelaet@luon.com Twitter: @geertdelaet http://www.luon.com