Soundscapes is a fun and highly functional sound board app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Unlike other sound board apps, Soundscapes lets you assign your own sounds to the buttons on the sound boards. You can record sounds live or add them from your iTunes library. Don’t have sounds? Soundscapes comes pre-loaded with 48 sounds ranging from funny, to strange, to gross, to spooky. Soundscapes also comes with 8 differently themed sound boards including 80s boombox, jungle, sewer, office, sci-fi, jukebox, zen garden, and even a special Halloween theme!

Soundscapes Features:
- 8 Fantastic Graphically Rich Themed Soundboards
- 48 Included Sound Effects
- Add Your Own Sounds from Live Recording (mic or line-in required for iPod Touch 2nd Gen or older)
- Add Your Own Sounds from Your iTunes Library
- Large Finger Friendly Buttons
- Custom Label for Each Soundboard
- Special Halloween Theme!
- New Themed Soundboards Will Be Added for Upcoming Holidays and Special Events Regularly!

Be sure to check out the link to see some slick screen shots.

http://shinyobjectsdev.com/products/#soundscapes

If you haven't heard of it yet, you need to check out Ping.fm. If you know about Ping.fm, then you need to check out Social Personas!  It is the latest iPhone/iPod Touch app developed by our sister company, Shiny Objects Development.

Ping.fm is a web service that lets you update all your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Etc.) at ONE TIME.  As the social networking masters we are (pat pat) we use Ping.fm all the time, so we thought a good iPhone/iPod Touch app to work with it was about time!

As a bonus, Social Personas let's you update multiple Ping.fm accounts.  So if you are social networking gurus like us (wink wink), you can use it help manage your clients.  Or if you just have a personal and professional social network, then you will love it too!

Click here to check out Social Personas! 

Click here to visit Ping.fm! 

The few people left with access to Twitter and Facebook seem to be complaining about how Twitter and Facebook are not working properly while the rest of us twiddle our thumbs and wait for our social media time killers to come back online.

Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk has written an article explaining the attack and is full of valuable information.  You should definitely read it.  It's not like you have Twitter or Facebook to pass the time.  http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/twitter-apparently-down/

Patrick Hare of Web.com has written a great article about how the recent merger of Microsoft and Yahoo will affect your search engine and PPC efforts.  Follow the link to the article to read more.  http://www.submitawebsite.com/blog/2009/07/how-will-microsoft-yahoo-deal-affect.html

Google has just updated it's search engine to display the "local listings" results with area map on all location-relevant search results.  For example, it used to be that local listings only showed when you typed in a search like "breakfast indianapolis", but now it will show the local listings for just "breakfast".  This really changes the game for two reasons:  1) If your website has a good "local listing" search result it will get a lot more hits than before  and 2) if you are ranked below the top 4 positions on a keyword, you will now be below screen "cut off" for most people, which means being 6th just got a lot worse.

You can read more here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-becomes-more-local.html

Streamy, a social RSS reader, is now open to everyone to login and start using. Streamy stands out from previous "social bookmarking" websites like delicious.com or reddit.com because it is an actual RSS reader than offers the ability to favorite, share, comment, and recommend articles as you scan through them.

I am excited about a social RSS reader, but am not confident in its current potential for success. I almost never use a webpage for RSS reading and have lots of mobile options as well. I would be more confident in Streamy if it was backed up by an iPhone app. Currently we are not adding Streamy to our supported social networking list, but we will be keeping an eye on it. Personally, I hope it does succeed.

Click here to read more about Streamy...

Microsoft has finally launched the next version of it's Internet Explorer browser. Among the many improvements and changes, Microsoft is touting that Internet Explorer 8 is much faster and more secure than the previous versions. If you are using Internet Explorer 7, and especially if you are using 6, we recommend upgrading to the new version. You can click here to download the new Internet Explorer 8.

Of course, if you can avoid using Internet Explorer Fat Atom still recommends that you use Firefox *wink*.

Search Engine Land recently interviewed Google's Matt Cutts about the importance of keywords in URLs. Needless to say... it matters, but it's not the end of the world if you don't have good keywords in your URL.

"The question asked, does the order of the words in the URL make an impact on one’s ranking at Google? Matt Cutts said one should not obsess about the order of the words but he said keywords in the URL 'does help a little bit.'"

Click here to read more, and see the video...

Facebook has once again updated the look and layout of its user homepage. Major changes have included a more streamlined focus on the status updates, the ability to filter what shows up on your homepage, and a new "highlights" section.

Click here to read more...