The panel discussion lasted an hour and I’ve split the video into 20-minute segments – you can view the videos below. Some notes from the panelists:

• Chantelle loads Tweetdeck the moment she hits the office to check Twitter and spends 30 minutes to 1 hour each day going through what her friends sent her
• Kristen discussed using the bit.ly URL shortener as a way to track ROI
• At about the 18 minutes mark in the first video, Chantelle explains how they went to market for their iPhone app using an exclusive with Robert Scoble. She notes that they saw great results by using Robert to get the word out about the app and were even able to get an exciting trending topic on Twitter. They didn’t give the news to the NYT or Newsweek. They met with Robert several times beforehand to build a relationship with Robert. Later on Chantelle noted that depending on the type of story they are trying to push, they will use different sources to work with.

There was a discussion about analytics in the second video although I found the analysis weak. There was no mention about real-value stats – just simple discussion about how many followers or fans a brand has. My guess is that in late 2010 ”followers and fans” will be the hits of 1995.

In the third video there is a discussion about whether to hire a PR firm or if you should look at bringing a person on-board internally.

• Basecamp project reporting on the iPhone – 37signals
• Glue suggestions launch – AdaptiveBlue
• Echo commenting goes live on first site – JS-Kit
• Freshbooks wins Pick20 Canada aware – Freshbooks
• Using OpenX to manage ads on Facebook apps – OpenX
• Digsby hits 1 million users – Digsby
• Sobees adds group management and auto-complete – Sobees
• Looking at agile development – Huddle

The company describes the API release as, “tapping into Glue’s databases and semantic recognition engine enabling fun & useful applications about people and things.” You can use the API to get popular lists, lookup user lists, create data streams, send info into Glue and access user profiles.

The goal of the API is to drive usage of Glue and the underlying data. The applications built using Glue should also provide new visibility for the Glue service.

The company is running a contest to find great ideas for the API. You could win an all expenses paid trip to NYC to meet the Glue team and have a hot dog and a knish. When you are in NYC, I recommend a visit to the transit museum.

Magnify.net

NY-based Magnify.net has announced a new set of packages aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses. Called the "Pro Packages" and priced starting at $249/month, the packages will include Magnify’s Quickstart, Business Builder Pro and Business Builder Premium offerings.

The new Pro Packages include training from Magnify and their hope is to help small businesses integrate a custom-branded video experience into their websites and ecommerce offerings.

Check out our extensive Magnify coverage.

AdaptiveBlue

NY-based AdaptiveBlue has announced the next version of their Glue toolbar today. I spoke with founder and CEO Alex Iskold who tells me that they have 35,000 active users and over 110,000 downloads of the Glue toolbar to-date.

The new functionality includes "connected conversations" which Alex’s calls an intelligent livestream and "popular lists" which should help the top content for the day to rise to the top.

Adam Ostrow has a good overview of the new features. AdaptiveBlue has also hooked in social sites Twitter and Facebook into this latest Glue release. The basic idea with the update is that all of your friends are on a big bus as you travel around the Web – each time you make a stop, your friends yell out from the back of the bus if this is a worthwhile stop or not.

Check out our extensive AdaptiveBlue coverage.

What makes this app actually useful is the ability to be standing in a bookstore or movie rental shop, call up the Glue app and bingo, you get recommendations on a book or movie from your friends. No longer will you stand wondering if you should rent Office Space for the 100th time. There are wine helpers as well so you won’t look like a dud on your next date. 

Sarah Perez has more details on the Glue iPhone launch. Check out the Glue demo video from last week at the tech meetup. Here’s the company demo video on the iPhone launch:

Glue for iPhone from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

The AdaptiveBlue BlueOrganizer is no more. In its place is Glue, what the company calls a "contextual network." Here’s the basic concept behind Glue. You install the browser plugin and then as you browse the Web normally, a menu shows up on any pages where Glue has information to share. These are typically pages dealing with movies, music, books, music artists, restaurants and wine. You can also browse the full list of sites available in the Glue network.

The Glue bar shows up on the top of sites that Glue has a match for and is actually a HTML injection – this means it becomes part of the page and not a plugin that sits active at all times. The bar is a simple way to shows friends information related to the current item being viewed. You can see which of your friends like the item, which have commented on the item, along with where the person viewed the item. You also see a sample of others outside your network who liked the item – this helps with discovery.

You can click on a friend to see more information about them and the current item. From there you can select other services related to the current item including item purchase. There’s a "2 cents" option which lets you add comments about the item directly into Glue. I assume if they get enough traction on this 2 cents concept, it could lead to a very rich reviews destination site.

Their business model continues to be based on affiliate comissions through the use of the Glue bar. I hope they will look to diversify their revenue potential as I am a bit concerned that there won’t be enough sales to drive enough total volume. But affiliate revenue is good as a piece of the overall business model pie.

I think today’s launch is a great step forward towards the mainstream for AdaptiveBlue. Now the really tough work begins on getting mainstream user adoption – they need a strong number of users and friend relationships for the service to be effective.

Here’s a demo the company put together about Glue:

I’ve always been a nut about customer service starting from my very early days delivering newspapers. I would take Alex’s statement one step further. During my time leading product teams and large-scale marketing programs, everyone had some time on the customer service hotline. Designers, developers, marketing, it didn’t matter to me. While some of the team needed a coach from customer service to help them with the replies, it taught the team lessons about what customers look for in a product. The projects always seemed to finish stronger and we’d consistently receive more positive feedback.

It’s one thing to see the feedback on a chart or graph, it’s another thing to be immersed in it yourself. Products like GetSatisfaction are a good start. Check out what happened when we put 10 of the top Web apps to the customer service challenge. It’s worth a read – Technorati ranked worst, Dogster ranked at the woofpack.

Below I’ve emebdded a video from VW. It’s their latest commercial for the Golf. It made me wonder how many times we just hear, but don’t listen. Goes along with the customer service theme above.

Iskold loves to talk about "semantic Web" — I think he has used the term more than any other single person online today. In simple terms, BlueOrganizer is a "smarter" way to browse. It takes normal links and enhances them. It senses what a page is about and can switch how it handles the page based on content type. For example, if you are on a book page on Amazon, BlueOrganizer knows and adjusts the links it presents to you. If it’s a movie site, you might see Fandango but you wouldn’t see that as an option on a music page. The little icons on the toolbar change to reflect what type of page it is.

There is a tie-into many of the major social services including: Twitter, Tumblr and Lijit which lets you export your saved items directly. It’s a good way to get your favorites out to your friends quickly.

When you install BlueOrganizer, it filters through your Internet history to determine what initially shows up on your BlueOrganizer profile. Iskold says that none of this data is transmitted to AdaptiveBlue.

One of the interesting bits I noticed when watching the video is that if you install the Smartlinks widget (another AdaptiveBlue product), it automatically adds BlueLinks to the site. This is a very smart distribution move. Once you install the BlueOrganizer add-on, it scans Web pages and injects the SmartLinks into the page as it finds them. It’s a good idea but at the same time, could it take away my chance to earn affiliate revenue? If I have a link to a book on Amazon using my affiliate code, and then the person goes to Amazon thru the SmartLink, I lose that sale. Perhaps there is a way to engineer it so I still receive credit.

The add-on also makes the most out of microformats so if you click on an address (that has microformats in use), it presents the address with links including Google Maps and other location-based information. The system also recognizes 500 common names and by clicking on a name, it provides a menu of options including Wikipedia and Google Search.

Some stats that Iskold shared include: 1.3 million downloads of the add-on, 5000 blogs have installed SmartLinks and hundreds of thousands of active users of BlueOrganizer.

The company continues with the same revenue model we have written about previously — affiliate sales. When you click to purchase a book or movie through BlueOrganizer and don’t have the affiliate field set, the commission goes to AdaptiveBlue. Amazon came out last week with a strong notice about people using their own affiliate code for sales. Not sure how that impacts how the affiliate codes work with BlueOrganizer.

Here is a simple animation showing how BlueOrganizer/Smartlinks work on Amazon, with an address and on a Web page:

They have continued to make their products (BlueOrganizer and SmartLinks) easier to understand for the common person (aka me) and Karen noted that they are looking to enter the social space this year so I expect to see the terminology continue to shift. While some geeks might care about "semantic web", most Internet users just want something that helps them without big words.

Karen also noted that they are seeking a series B round of funding and are currently in discussions with investors. Lastly, she noted that AdaptiveBlue is considering adding advertisements to their panels which would be highly contextual.

Don’t forget to check out all of the previous nextNYers episodes along with our review of online video in NYC.

It’s a great next step to gaining mainstream appeal for the BlueLinks widgets. In the title I noted that they still have work to do. The reason is simple – there is still too much "geek speak" on the site for the mainstream audience. The AdaptiveBlue team is a very bright and intelligent team and their level of education comes across in their content. But the mainstream audience doesn’t care about "semantic Web", they just want widgets that provide value. I am normally against double branding but I would be curious as to how their widgets would do branded under a new name targeting completely the mainstream audience. Perhaps split the BlueOrganizer and the BlueLinks widgets? They need more non-tech bloggers to "accept" their widgets – get a PerezHilton to use it and their take rate would increase over night – perhaps offer a "latest Britney news" or something through the widget. I would also look at creating a sexier-looking widget.

I look forward to seeing how they continue their move to mainstream usage of the AdaptiveBlue suite of tools.

I still stand by what I said earlier in the year. SmartLinks should be promoted as a monetization tool as much as it is a quality of Web tool. The tool has a high level of "reason to believe" difficulty and pitching it as a monetization tool should improve the take rate.

Here is their installation and overview video:

As Alex notes in the official blog post, SmartLink Feeds is a good complement to your existing advertising programs. As opposed to say AuctionAds which provides a widget of eBay items, the SmartLink Feeds widget can provide more content about the book or music item.  Depending on the type of item, ~20 links are provided to the item including links to purchase the item on Amazon, eBay, etc. These purchase vehicles can use your affiliate code so any purchases made credit your account.

Here is a sample widget using the iTunes Top Albums (RSS click through to view!):

Editor's note: AdaptiveBlue is a current CenterNetworks sponsor.

TWERQ – our newest sponsor, TWERQ is a better (and smarter) way to search. There are loads of time-saving features including multi-search at once, collapsing titles, saved searches, search collaboration, etc. I have found it valuable when searching for company information as I use TWERQ as my search hub.

The Go BIG Network – The Go BIG Network is the World's Biggest Community of Startup Companies. Startups use Go BIG to find funding, recruit talent and get expert advice. They also have project listings and information about jobs within startups.

Zoho – one of the leaders in online office suites, Zoho has recently released two major upgrades. iZoho takes your favorite Zoho applications and allows you to access them from your iPhone. Raju has a demo video on the Zoho blog. Also, today they announced a Facebook app and there is an upgrade in the works for managing all of your Zoho documents centrally.

AdaptiveBlue – the team at AdaptiveBlue make the BlueOrganizer which increases your overall Web experience. Most recently they launched SmartLinks which take a regular link and transforms it into something much more powerful. In addition, Web site publishers and bloggers can also generate revenue from their use of SmartLinks.

WingSix – WingSix provides the hosting and server support for CenterNetworks. They have the absolute best support in the hosting business. Lastly, they launched a new customer web site last week.

If you are interested in sponsoring CenterNetworks, send in an email and let's discuss how CenterNetworks can help you maximize your marketing investment.

AdaptiveBlue

The new smartlinks option allows you to setup links that offer the BlueMark panel which offers many options for that product. This works mainly for books, music, dvds, etc. So rather than just linking to Amazon (which still remains), a small bluemark box appears next to the links (only the ones you specify) and when you click the bluemark box, a layer opens (see image below) displaying all of the options available for that product and category.

What's great is that for publishers, you can now monetize most of the links. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. So whereas before, your link went to Amazon and if someone prefers to order from B&N, you see nothing, now you have an opportunity to monetize no matter what the customer wants to use. Your Bluemark box also offers more options as displayed below.

What I like about this new bluemark option is that I determine what links get the special treatment and which don't. This was one of the big beefs with Snap previews… they were on or off, no middle ground.

Also, the BlueBadge widget (as seen on left menu) will now also offer the BlueMark option. And as always you can monetize the widget as well.

One thing that I would suggest is that they look at offering me some custom options within the BlueMark. So I could add Viddler to the list of movie clip options or add Buy.com to the list of booksellers.

In summary, I think these new publisher monetization options should help AdaptiveBlue push their offering to new heights. Check out our previous AdaptiveBlue coverage including my interview with Alex Iskold, founder.

Editor's note: AdaptiveBlue is a current advertiser on CenterNetworks.