We’re crazy about Basecamp over at Visiture, so we couldn’t be more excited to hear that they’ve got a new message and comments editor.  Basecamp announced the upgrade today.

Basecamp is starting out simple by only adding bold, italics, and bullets options to the tool, but we think it’s a great start.  If you’ve got a Basecamp account, head over and check out the improvements.

We are all anticipating the arrival of the Google Buzz icon in our gmail inboxes.  Google has announced that it will be rolling out its new product within the next few days and if you already have a Gmail account, you will automatically have a Google Buzz account.  Buzz will also start following the people you chat and e-mail with the most.  Search Engine Land has a thorough article about everything the new product will offer, but here are some key features that are exciting us for Google Buzz:

No sign-up or setup.

Sharing pictures, websites, status updates, messages, etc. can be completely public or limited to just your friends.

Buzz can display updates from other sites like Flickr, Picasa and Twitter.

Buzz will recommend other people’s updates and put them in your feed according to your interests (and it has a ‘not interested’ feature).

Buzz Mobile will have all of these features, but additionally, will focus on more location-specific updates.

Check out this demo on YouTube:

What do you think about the addition of Buzz to your social media arsenal?  Is it going to be a Twitter or Facebook killer?  For location-specific posts, it will be very interesting to see how it interacts with the blogging world.

Steve Jobs is currently presenting the new iPad, which he says is not a netbook.  He says that the net books have “slow, low-quality displays and run PC software.  They’re not better than a laptop at anything, just cheaper.  We don’t think they’re the third device.”  In other words, the iPad is.  It is described as a much bigger iPhone with a keypad that appears much like it does on the iPhone, which Jobs demonstrates by typing on while it sits on his lap.  Jobs says that surfing the web on the iPad is the “best browsing experience you’ve ever had.”

What about the hardware, you ask?  “A half inch thin. Weighs just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7 inch IPS display. Super high quality using IPS technology so you get great angle of view. Full capacitive multi-touch. 1GHz Apple A4 chip (Gruber laughs). Most advanced chip they’ve ever done; processor, graphics, I/O, and everything in one chip. 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of flash solid state storage.”

Things You’ll Love:

- 10 hours of battery life, one month on standby

- arsenic-free, PVC-free, mercury-free and highly recyclable

- you can run apps at iPhone size or tap them twice and they “blow up” to full screen

- grab metadata from your Mac or PC desktop

- websites like the NY Times can be manipulated by changing the number of columns, resizing text and watching embedded videos

- seamless transition for apps like MLB At Bat (below) – “like holding an HDTV inches from your face that’s fully touch enabled”

Favorite quote so far: “People don’t like the iPad name but I think the connotations you’re thinking of will drift away,” Jobs says, “iPod didn’t mean anything either, but here we are.”

Here’s my question: There is no doubt that this is an awesome product, but are you going to carry it around with your iPhone and MacBook?  In what circumstances do you need all three?

Source: Mac World live updates

Photo courtesy of Gizmodo

Apple announced today that it will be holding a press conference to introduce their newest “creation” on January 27th.  Could it be, the mythical Apple Tablet, is finally going to be seen by the public?  For more baseless assertions, you can check out the full Gizmodo article by Kat Hannaford and follow the event live on January 27th.

Photo courtesy of Google

What’s the scoop with the Nexus One Google phone?  We read Bobbie Johnson’s minute-by-minute updates on Guardian UK from Google’s Android Launch to find out just that.  Google announced the arrival of the Nexus One and, although it is another Android device (running on Android 2.1), Google has been more involved with getting it off the ground (ie: it was still designed by HTC).  You can go to Google’s Phone site to see demos of the phone’s standard applications and purchase one with or without a plan.  Unlocked phones are $529 and $179 with a plan.  The phone works with T-Mobile currently and Vodaphone in Europe, but Googlers say it will be expanding in America in partnership with Verizon.

The most exciting feature to be expanded on this phone is the voice technology.  You will be able to speak a destination (Target, for instance) and the phone will link with your GPS navigation to send you (turn-by-turn) to the nearest Target.  The voice feature has also been expanded to work with text messages and e-mail.  Bobbie Johnson says that it is “accurate, at least in these (the conference) conditions.”  For more information about the phone and it’s plans, check out Google’s Phone website.

Source: Bobbie Johnson, Guardian UK

We wish you a happy and successful Holiday season!

You can watch our entire elf dance at JibJab.

iPhone has introduced the first accurate bar code scanner in an app called Red Laser.  It works with UPC and EAN bar codes.  Red Laser allows you to scan the bar code of any product and find the places online that offer the best prices.  You can keep a list of all your scanned items or place them on a grocery list.  You can even read reviews for books and movies that you scan to see if you want to buy them.  This is the direction that comparative shopping is moving in: making everything simpler.

Demonstration video for Red Laser: RedLaser Demo

Google Labs adds another feature to its collection.

This one is known as Google Image Swirl:

Search: Statue of Liberty

Click on the link and type in a familiar image.  The results will look like the regular thumbnails in Image Search but will appear to be stacked.  When clicking on the front image, it will then expand into circles with similar images.

Google says that Image Swirl works with about 200,000 images currently.  It will auto-complete the image name in the Search box if it is available in Swirl.  They plan to expand the number of images with which you can use Swirl.

-source: Chris Sherman, SearchEngineLand.com