Kutano Blog

Monday, February 8, 2010

Win Tickets to Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics!

Today we’re excited to announce the start of the "Kutano Olympic Game" which will give anyone in and around the greater Vancouver area a chance to play and potentially win one of two pairs of Vancouver 2010 Olympic tickets!

Entering the draw is easy: just retweet the game announcement tweet which can be found on the @Kutano feed. Or just click here to get to it :).

However, this isn’t just a random draw. In the spirit of healthy Olympic competition, we have decided to launch a game that will give participants the opportunity to increase their chances of winning just by... tweeting. The catch is that to win entries for tweeting, you need to tweet from the (invitation-only) "Olympic version" of Kutano. To request an invite you can use the following hashtag: #KutanoOlympicInvite.

The game is also speckled with different ways to get "big-n-easy" entries or boost your entries

earned per tweet. Here’s the scoop:

How to double the number of entries you get per tweet:

Using the Olympic version you will get 10 entries per tweet. HOWEVER, @Kutano will periodically tweet out a new #KutanoOlympicHashtag that you can include in a tweet to receive twenty (20) entries. You need to be using the newest hashtag for it to count!

How to get entries from other people tweeting:

You can invite a friend to the Kutano Olympic Game and their tweets will help earn entries for you! For every friend who accepts your invite:
- You get half (½) an entry for every entry a that a person you invite earns
- You get quarter (¼) an entry for every entry a second level invite earns (people that your invites invite)

The Big-N-Easy entries:

As a reward for Vancouver pride, simply changing the location in your Twitter profile to "Vancouver 2010" will earn you an instant one hundred (100) entries!

Use the "Tweet my Score!" button in the Kutano client to publish your current score in the game and you will receive one hundred (100) entries. You can do this every six (6) hours. This is also the only way to see your updated score.

Here's a short video summary of the different ways you can earn entries into the prize draw:

Please don’t hesitate to contact the team with questions. Have fun and good luck!

Friday, January 29, 2010

What's Happening Between the Tweets: Dictionary Ban

First there was "the word" and then there was the "tweet". Of course, "the word" I'm talking about is not the famous "good" one, but rather the very, very "bad", "sexually explicit" one found in a book read by children as young as nine!

The word: "Oral sex"

The definition: probably too sexually graphic to mention here.. but click to view the banned source and find out!

The book: Merriam Webster's 10th edition

This dictionary (yes, dictionary) was recently banned from a number of schools in the Menifee Union school district (Southern California) when one of the students' parents complained after learning of their child's newly broadended lexicon.

This has been a controversial ban and one that has received both praise (or so the article claims), disbelief, outrage and laughter. What do you think of this ban? Applaudable or laudable?

Here's what people are saying about it... 'between the tweets':

Tweets about the page collected using Kutano.

A Summary:

In Hashtags-
Some hashtags you'll see in relation to this story: #wtf, #Americagetsdumber, #humanstupidity, #FAIL, #nocleanfeed, #idiocy, #openinternet, #facepalm, #nottheonion, #moralityfail

The overwhelming consensus: Read any tweet shown above.

The silver-lining: We still have Twitter. And the internet in general. Hopefully the kids won't find anything too graphic there ;P.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Extensions, Twitter Add-ons and more for Google Chrome

Today Google announced "a new stable release of Google Chrome for Windows, which includes two of the browser's most frequently requested features: extensions and bookmark sync". In fact, for those of you who have Chrome but the normal (non Beta version) you will need to upgrade to Chrome's newest version in order to try out extensions like Kutano.

So for those interested:

Where to go to update to the "extensions" version of Google Chrome if you already using the older version -

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95414

Where to go if you want to download and try out Google Chrome for the first time-

http://www.google.com/chrome?brand=CHMP

And, where to go if you have the newest version of Chrome and want to try out the Kutano Twitter add-on ;)-

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pfhifmnkpieijjfdlmijncagohajdfmp

In related news, Kutano on Chrome is now available for Macs! Try it out and enjoy!

Friday, January 15, 2010

Exploring Google China

Since, Tuesday's announcement about rethinking their approach to China, Google and Google.cn (Google China) have received a great deal of attention. Specifically, sifting through tweets related to the issue and on google.cn, there has been a lot of excitement over Google loosening its censorship:

However, as discussed in an article on the wall Street journal yesterday, "many of the [controversial] searches yielding fruitful [seemingly uncensored] results appear to have been conducted in English, a trick that often turns up fuller results on Google.cn than a search for the same term in Chinese. A comparison is made between looking up "Dalai lama" in Chinese vs. in English."

That said, it is worth watching the website over the next few weeks since "Google says that it hasn’t yet started to remove content filters on Google.cn, a process that could take weeks".

In the meantime, there are some fun ways to explore Google.cn. Using Kutano, you can check both tweets on the website and web page to find out about news, results, searches and other information people are tweeting about.

Another fun option, in the tradition of the emerging mini-meme of checking for "Google suggestions" when you type in a term, is comparing suggestions across the different Googles (keeping in mind that writing in English will bias Google China results though :P).

Here are two examples:

Suggested Results to finish "I love my":

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

New Release for the New Year!

Today we are releasing a brand new version of Kutano with some pretty fun, new features that may or may not help with certain New Year’s resolutions ;P-

See more places

Well, the places people are tweeting from anyway :P. Location tags can be extremely useful for letting others know or finding out from others where certain businesses, events or people are located. A geotag is also attached to each person that starts and stops following you in your follow/unfollow timeline and can be used to assist in your decision to follow or unfollow a person back. It also just looks really cool =).

Watch more tweeted videos and pictures

Kutano now shows embedded pictures and videos in your Twitter timelines so that you can easily watch or look at pictures without actually leaving the web page you’re on!

Make good decisions

The debate is on between old and new RTs. New RTs can be useful since they are guaranteed to fit within 140 characters and also give due credit to original tweeter as well as allow anyone to identify immediately how many times it was retweeted. That said many people still like to add a personal touch or thought to an RT before sending it out. The newest release of Kutano is pro RT choice- you can choose between both options... whatever serves your purpose best at the time.

Kutano is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, IE and Linux.

You can download Kutano for Google Chrome on our site or on the Google Chrome Extensions site:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pfhifmnkpieijjfdlmijncagohajdfmp

Happy New Year!

See more places

Watch more tweeted videos and pictures

Kutano now shows embedded pictures and videos in your Twitter timelines so that you can easily watch or look at pictures without actually leaving the web page you’re on!

Make good decisions

Kutano is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, IE and Linux.

Happy New Year!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

A Very Webby Christmas: Santa 2.H0

We hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and will continue to enjoy the holiday and New Year =D. We’d also love to take this festive time of year as an opportunity to point out a number of existing and potential examples of how holidays such as Christmas have been helped and are taking a fun role in web 2.0 and social media =) -

How fast does Santa have to work to make it around the world in one night? Introducing the Norad Santa Tracker!

For active Twitter users, it was no easy feat to miss out on one of the top tweeted pages of the last couple of days: the Santa Norad Tracker! This tracker gave a live, visual update of where Santa was in the world:

What if Santa and Co. had Facebook?

Following in the popular meme of the if ____ had Facebook, there are also a number of Santa or reindeer ones floating around the web:

Santa job and present listings?

So while I didn’t actually stumble across anything like this, I think it would have been fun to see a “North Pole” Location listing on Craigslist where people could write notes, gift requests and perhaps fun job listings:

Naughty and Nice Websites

What if Santa, or his human, web-savvy helpers, instead of going around the world were to go around the web and leave thoughts, feedback and ideas wherever they went?

Happy Holidays everyone!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Video: Kutano Twitter Extension on Chrome

In honour of our recent release of a Chrome-compatible Twitter extension, we have prepared a short video for those interested that outlines all the different features of Kutano.

Take a look and let us know if you have any additional questions or suggestions for future releases of Kutano!