[APP] Kevin Rose & Milk Inc. launch their first app, Oink

Kevin Rose, formerly of Digg has been hard at work building up his new mobile app development company Milk Inc.  Their first project, Oink was launched a few weeks back at the Web 2.0 Summit.

The premise, take location-based check-ins the next level by allowing people to rate things in that particular location.  Want to find the best rated burgers in your vicinity?  This app is for you.  Visiting a tourist site, find the must-see spots.  Users can gain “Cred Points” by uploading photos, performing mini-reviews or rating spots in a “thumbs up, down or half-way” fashion.

The app is now live in the app store and available to play around with but a special invite is required to participate in the rating fun.  Stay posted for an update once I get my confirmation.

Related articles

• Kevin Rose’s Milk Inc. releases Oink, an app to rate, well…everything (thenextweb.com)
• Kevin Rose’s Oink Hits The App Store (techcrunch.com)
• Oink, an iOS app that extends the Facebook “like” metaphor to the real world (intomobile.com)

[VIDEO] Facebook’s Recent Updates

Likely more to come on Thursday during the F8 conference but here’s a short video from Facebook on their recent enhancements.

video via Mashable.com

 

[APPS] Cloo Offers Loos From Friends

An increasing number of geo-location/social apps are emerging to meet basic human needs, in this case bathroom lines.

Next time you are caught short or want to avoid never-ending lines in public bathrooms you simply have to fire up Cloo, a new mobile app that  will search through your friends to see who has available bathroom in the area!

They’ve also added  micro payments as an incentive into the service!

Download the app here

Contributor  Natalia Alonso

Boost Mobile announces new WNBA partnership on Facebook

Prepaid brand Boost Mobile announced a new partnership with the WNBA today on their Facebook page which includes a YouTube video of Candace and Cappie playing H-O-R-S-E.

@CondeElevator has the twittersphere a buzz

You have to be careful what you say in media centric office elevator banks these days.  This roughly 24-hour old twitter handle has a mere 26 tweets but has already garnered  9,000 followers and counting.

Spotify to launch in US

Award winning social music service, Spotify is finally heading state side.  The announcement has been highly expected  after the company completed a $100MM round of funding and secured music rights deals with EMI and SONY in recent months.

The service provides streaming music on consumers’ PC’s and mobile devices in a radio-like fashion while at the same time integrating social elements.  Spotify already has 10MM users in Europe (1MM of which are paid subscriptions).  In addition, the company is rumored to be working on a streaming music deal with Facebook.

“We have updated our landing page in advance of launch. Still no specifics on the launch I’m afraid, just We’re working hard to launch the service in the US as soon as possible. All we can say right now is watch this space!” said a Spotify representative according to Mashable.com

Intel’s “Museum of Me” Social Campaign

What an amazing social media execution on the part of Intel.  The application creates a virtual museum of your social media activity by connecting to Facebook.  Check out the link below.

http://www.intel.com/museumofme/r/index.htm

Scoville site provides customized Foursquare recommendations

If you  participate in Foursquare, you may have received a few invites,  seen some facebook status updates and twitter posts  surrounding the launch of a site called Scoville.  While the site has been in beta for a couple months available to foursquare ‘superusers,’ it just hit the relative mainstream yesterday.

I’ve taken the leap, joined and done a little research so here’s what I’ve found.  From what I can tell, the site aggregates all your check-ins (via Foursquare) gives you one week to select your favorites and then allows you to schedule to post them once a week on what they’re calling  #TopTuesday.    As you build up your preferences, Scoville then begins to provide you with customized recommendation on new places to explore.  I’ll let you know how it goes on my first #TopTuesday.

Pepsi introduces new social vending platform

Next-gen vending is all the rage these days.  Coca-Cola introduced the ‘Freestyle’, a personalized soda fountain dispenser in 2009 that  allows customers to create their own personalized  drink…20% Cherry, 10% Vanilla 70% Coke Zero for example.  Of course all these combinations are then sent back to the Coca-Cola mother ship to aid in new product development.

In a move to one up the experience, PepsiCo has taken the vending experience to the next level by adding social components.  The company announced last Wednesday what they’re calling  “social vending” which allows people to send sodas to their friends directly from the vending machine via a text message that embeds a code with a message and a video that can be redeemed and  viewed at another machine.    In addition, the technology allows peoole to connect with the Pepsi Refresh program, record videos and view content.  Take a look at the video above.

Read the full article on Mashable

Another great link on vending from TrendHunter

INFOGRAPHIC: Social Media “Class of 2011”

What a great way to segment the social media space.  Thanks Therese-Ann!