Apple’s iPhone and Touch app, Brushes, is coming to the iPad.  The video above demonstrates how this tiny app can turn out true art work.

The buzz around the app on the iPad is the social networking built in. Images can be saved to Photos as before but can now be emailed, posted to Flickr, sent to Twitter, and sent to Facebook. The iPhone Users Guide has screenshots.

The Apple Event provided a Brushes iPad demo, please check out this video:

Based on these demos, I’ll be purchasing the Brushes app for the iPhone.

Is this an app you’ll be using? Would it be a killer app for the iPad for you?

3 Key Reasons Facebook Bought FriendFeed

Facebook buys Friendfeed, and Mashable takes a stab at three reasons it’s a great deal.

Facebook, one of the leaders in online social networking, today purchased Friendfeed.  The sum was undisclosed as well as the future of the Friendfeed staff. Why buy now?  It turns out that the desire has been there for some time.

Is it good for you? That remains to be seen.  Facebook is likely to become even more of an integration and central sharing tool.  Browser integrated sharing, already part of Facebook’s schema would seem an easy upgrade point and one the everyday user will use.

Another good possibility will be borrowing some of Frienfeed’s built in display of items instead of taking the user out of the Facebook interface.

In any case…

The full release from Facebook is below:

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed

Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

So you’ve joined up on some social networking sites and nothing seems to be happening for you. The contacts aren’t flowing in, the customers aren’t finding you, spammers fill your stream.

Ready for some friendly guidance? Want to learn some tips and tricks to be successful using Twitter and Facebook? My ebook is now available:

Sunday Guide to Social Networking

It’s the first in a series of guides I’m writing, bringing you strategies, tips, and tools to make your online networking time fun and profitable.

In this one, I’ve collected articles from the Sunday Social Networking series, along with two additional articles on specific services, Utterli and Twitter.

Some of the topics:

• Search for social networks
• Cultivating relationships
• Sharing what you love

The ebook only costs $6 US because I want many people to have the opportunity to enjoy the it as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Please see the payment button below to buy it. Thanks!

It has been almost a month since this blog launched, with much help, guidance, and contribution from Todd Jordan. Todd and I both share a vision of St. Louis as a thriving social networking community, one of benefit to many, and this blog was seen as a means to facilitate and encourage the realization of that vision by promoting and reporting on local social media news, events and groups.

So shares Greg Bussmann, aka @execbp, about the launch of St. Louis Social Media Report. It’s been a great first month from my point of view as well.

Greg goes on to share this:
We picked a great month to get started, as the last month has seen lots of big events around town such as the Girls Guide To the Galaxy relaunch party, the Social Media Club St. Louis Small Business event, some Bring a Tweep to Lunch tweet-ups, and many others. We have lots more in store for you and the future looks bright for St. Louis.

He’s not kidding about a great month. Tweetups every week. Relaunch parties. Networking events. Heck, even Shock City Studios got in on the act.

Updating and informing are critical to the site’s continued success.  Help out by contributing event news, commentary on events already behind us, and other social networking and media news you happen upon.

It’s an exciting time for St. Louis and social media. Can’t wait to see you out there.

Atomic Cowboy Events

Welcome to the series Sunday Social Networking Tips. The plan is to bring in folks to share their best ideas about social networking. The next person to write up a tip could be you!

Tip:

Get Involved

Okay, so you’ve gathered a few thousand followers on Twitter, hundreds of connections on Facebook, and you’ve added dozens of LinkedIn contacts. You’re feeling about as involved as you could be. Heck, in your area, you’re the most connected person around right? I bet not.

One of the most fundamental mistakes folks make is that having added someone to their address book is the same as making a real connection. Heck, you’ve probably added a dozen people’s birthdays to your calendar. How many of them have you actually purchased a present for or attended their birthday.

Now that you realize you have a problem, let’s talk about some ways to get involved.

1) Attend some local events – art openings, launch parties, even sporting events. Take along your business card, your camera, and a smile. These will go a long way at getting you noticed but they give you an in for conversations.

2) Build a real address book – this may seem old fashioned but many of us have become content to have a social networking ID and an email address for each of our contacts. Pfft. That’s not a real address book, that’s a contact list. If you have so many contacts you can’t put them all in a pen/paper book, consider fleshing out your PC’s addresses. Start by collecting mailing addresses and phone numbers of those you spend your 90% time with. The rest will come over time.

3) Write to them and about them – now that you’ve been to a few events, added some contacts, and really gotten their detailed contact information, it’s time to do something with all of that. Start small, send cards, letters, and invitations. Move beyond on that for the most open folks; set up and interview them for your blog or someone else’s.

4) Make yourself accessible – give our your own information. Don’t just settle for giving your Twitter ID and email. Give folks a phone number, an address, and a reason to contact you. A reason? Yep. Share something about yourself that will drive future conversations. Best done by giving people just enough to hook them without answering every question they might have.

If you’ve made it this far, and taken the steps outlined above, chance are you are quickly rising to the top of the social heap in your area. Remember, social networking existed long before web 2.0. The same principles still apply though.

Coming soon will be an article on business cards. if you’d like to share your insights on where to purchase, what to put on them, and how many to get, I’d be much obliged.

Todd

Social Media Club St. Louis
St. Louis Bloggers Guild

One of my favorite social networking services, Utterli, has changed their USA or US dial in number.

“OUR US DIAL-IN NUMBER HAS CHANGED

As of today, May 22, 2009, the United States dial-in number has changed to:
650-644-1331.

We apologize for any inconvenience, but this was necessary as we change telephone carriers.

Your data is secure during this transition, and you should be able to access your Utterli account throughout the change. We have worked hard to design a transition plan which does not require any down time, and we are hopeful this will be a quick and smooth transition.

Please bear with us in the event there are any problems as we make this change!”

No big deal for me; the old one wasn’t local anyway. Update your phone book today.
Utterli – 650-644-1331

In case you’d rather call me, my Google Voice number is (636) 486-4723.