Chris Brogan just wrote an article the other day entitled “Social Networks are Your Local Pub,” but iCloseBy has released a little something called the iFob that does exactly the opposite: turns your local pub into a social network. A clever little utility that’s just been waiting to be made ever since 802.11 came to handheld devices, it’s a program you download to your iPhone or iPod Touch that you turn on whenever you’re going to some sort of public place (like a coffeehouse, neighborhood bar, the park). The program will alert you when someone else comes near with the program installed.

The iFob program acts as a beacon, saying “I am here!” while listening for other iFob pings saying the same. Whenever one iFob finds another, the program lights up and automatically exchanges “micro profiles” with one another. Or, if you prefer to maintain your privacy and just lurk at the local bar, you can just set iFob to listen mode, and reach out to the other iFob users you may find as you choose.

iFob is now listed as a trusted app repository under the “Network” category for folks with the jailbroken iPhones or iPod Touches, and it can also be downloaded from the company website.

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Moby is giving away some free music. He’s not pulling a Radiohead, at least not directly.  Instead of releasing an album online, he’s releasing 76 different tracks online, all of them freely available from his website in MP3 format (after passing through an email registration screen).

The purpose of the give-a-way isn’t to propagate his music throughout the iPods of the world, but to allow independent filmmakers and media producers to use the music under a Creative Commons-ish license:

    this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password.

you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.

the music is free as long as it’s being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.

if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.

It’s an interesting move, and if you don’t run advertisements on your podcast, qualifies as “pod-safe” music.

There isn’t a readily available verification process that for-profit outfits can use to show donations made to the Humane Society, but those who plan to make use of the music under a commercial banner can contact Moby at the site for more details by way of email.

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Pinger launched a little while ago as a tool for creating voicemail “blast” options that can be sent out to your friends: think of it as a microblogging update that’s delivered by voice instead of text. I mentioned Pinger’s marketing potential here when the company announced that John Edwards would be using Pinger to let his followers know about campaign updates, and Mark had an in depth conversation with the company’s CEO Greg Woock not too long ago, outlining some of the concepts that Pinger is operating around, as an integrated tool for making our own lives easier (see embed below).

Today, Pinger is moving beyond its initial voicemail “blast” option to a more inclusive suite of solutions that effectively replaces your mobile’s voicemail box. Similar to YouMail, the new Pinger tools let you record personalized greetings that can be assigned to friends, family and for business purposes. You’ll also be able to get a visual voicemail with envelope information about the sender, message duration, and the time and date stamp for each message. Additionally, there are reply options that don’t require you to hang up and make a separate call.

This all means that Pinger is moving to backwards integrate with voice messaging tools, adopting several of the newer features being offered by other standalone services like Simulscribe, and even being incorporated into larger, VoIP services such as Jajah. Will Pinger be able to keep up, or will these peripheral equivalents being extended as perks by larger entities eventually overshadow Pinger?

Seeing as there are a lot of other services that are getting involved in the mobile integration of multi-formatted messaging platforms, including Ribbit and LiquidTalk, I imagine there may be an opportunity for Pinger to license or merge with another company somewhere down the line. And as many of these other services, including YouMail, are beginning to move into the marketing sector with ad-supported features, Pinger may be additionally attractive as it already is highly useful for marketing purposes.

The embed of last week’s conversation with Pinger’s Greg Woock is available below, or you can download the MP3 file directly here.

Subscribe to the podcast here.

You can check out Pinger here.

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We’ve taken note in recent months of the growth and innovative use of Web 2.0 in Kenya and how it has really taken root in light of severe adversity that still continues in the aftermath of the most recent Presidential election there. Apparently, we’re not the only ones taking note of the growth in tech usage in Kenya, as Google announced a search in Nairobi today for at least five senior executives for its African operations, according to All Africa.

The Nairobi office serves as the search company’s headquarters for all African operations, and the new senior managers to be brought into the Google-fold will join nine other senior level employees working presently in Africa. Google is also expanding into Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria and Senegal.

While the vast majority of Africa remains unconnected (estimates place it at around 95%), this means that Google is serious about cementing its position as the number one search engine choice on the continent.

A Hedge Against Microhoo?
Within Kenya, there haven’t been many headline grabbing initiatives for Google. They’ve partnered with a number of educational institutions. They’ve agreed to be the primary email provider for Safaricom, as well as an upstream data provider for the ISP, bringing a greater level of access to a large number of Kenyans.

These moves are seen by analysts as an attempt to re-align their operation in response to the looming threat of a Microhoo alliance.

“Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises more troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction,” said Google Senior Vice President David Drummond. “It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.”

That might be a bit high-minded talk regarding the merger talks, but the fact remains that Google is in a far more globally diversified position than most of the other Internet giants in what is a recession-resistant market; measurable advertising. Placing an emphasis in Africa won’t provide immediate shelter from what possible economic downturns may be coming in the near-term, but it creates a long term success path to ownership of a market that only has room to grow.

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PicAnswers has just launched with the mantra: “A picture is worth a thousand answers.” OK, I get it. This is a search engine of sorts, that has arisen from a post and response “discussion board” where users can include images. In so many words, PicAnswers is a lot like Yahoo Answers. Upload a picture, give it a title, ask your question, and wait for the world to give you an answer.

PicAnswers is for all those times you’ve come across something like a weird rash on the bottom of your foot, or a scratch on the side of your car. Instead of making a doctor’s appointment or merely getting mad, you can take a snapshot, upload it to PicAnswers, and ask everyone else if they recognize what type of rash that is, or if they’re responsible for the newfound scratch on the side of your car.

Yes, I jest, but it’s difficult for me to see how PicAnswers is useful as a standalone product, without the integration of some basic options, like the ability to easily post a photo answer (as the name of the site would lead you to believe) to a photo question. Or the ability to import pictures from other places on the web, and not just your desktop. Some other features, like mobile photo submission or image recognition tools (such as those used on iLike), aren’t necessarily expected for such a new site, but would certainly aid in upping the value of PicAnswers for a larger user base.

Aside from the added features this site could use, I do think that extending licensed options to niche sites such as curbly would be useful to both PicAnswers and those that could utilize its software in an integrated manner within an existing community. Having some export options in order to submit a question on PicAnswers and then send it out to friends on other existing networks would be handy as well.

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