Two nascent trends as fast converging -- the rise of the iPhone app, and crowdsourcing, which is defined by Jeff Howe, who wrote the book on the subject, as, "the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call." Popular examples of the convergence are everywhere: Google Maps; Twitter search; public tagging of Library of Congress archival photos; the cover of September's Media magazine; even Wikipedia. As CNet explains, much of the concept …

CUNY's New Business Models for News Project has released a study that goes through two pay models for a metro news organization, which has decided to charge for content online. In one scenario, the Web site charges for all of its content; in the other, the site only charges for a fraction of it. What does the study find? Sites that charge for all of their content consistently lose "millions" during the first three years if they institute the pay wall. A hybrid site, meanwhile, can become profitable before then, since additional advertising revenue more than makes up …

Amid insane user growth forecasts and cash-flow positivity at Facebook, VentureBeat has a long piece on the genius that is its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The kid who would be king is maturing, and emerging as a talented business manager, according to various executives and investors. A strategic mind, relentlessly competitive, a long-term vision, natural optimism -- Zuck's got it all. Also according to VentureBeat, he's hiring seasoned executives and entrusting key roles to them, becoming more comfortable communicating and leading, and bringing more order to the chaos that so far has characterized the company. Whether every …

It's Apple's world, and we're just living in it, according TechCrunch. The company's new-found distaste for buttons, therefore, means that the little tactile nodes are destined for the dustbin. While obviously, MacBook trackpads have used some level of touch for a long time, this trend really started with the iPhone, which presented the first excellent use of multi-touch in a consumer device. Sure, Apple seems to be increasingly moving its products away from buttons and keys, and towards manipulation through a touchscreen interface, but it's near impossible to imagine home and office computing without buttons.

Time Inc. has taken it upon itself to save the magazine industry with a Hulu for glossies. First, it has to convince other publishers to join a the joint venture, which is aimed at a market that doesn't quite exist yet -- magazine-like publications to be delivered via e-readers like Amazon's Kindle and Apple's rumored tablet. Like Hulu -- originally a joint venture between News. Corp and NBC Universal -- the new company would operate independently from the publishers that invest in it, and create a digital storefront where consumers could purchase and manage their subscriptions, which would …

This week, thousands of lucky people got the chance to begin testing Google Wave -- what the search giant has billed as "the email of the future." Early reaction? Not so good. "This service is way overhyped and as people start to use it they will realize it brings the worst of email and IM together: unproductivity," writes blogger Robert Scoble. "The first thing you notice is that you can see people chatting live in Google Wave ... it's a productivity sink if you are trying to just communicate with other people. It also ignores the …

Microsoft Bing's U.S. September search share fell to 8.5% from 9.6 percent in August, according to StatCounter. Meanwhile, Google's September share rose to 80% from 77.8% in July. EWeek speculates that the new stats may simply be a sign that the honeymoon is over, and that users are returning to Google. Yet, the findings clash with estimates from Nielsen, comScore and HitWise, all of whom found that Bing continued to post gains at the expense of Google, Yahoo or AOL in August. For the record, Yahoo, with whom Microsoft is hoping to partner with in search to close the gap …

Google has added some new features to its mobile search that include synchronicity with a desktop version of Google Maps, along with categories that you can browse and thus search without typing. Users can now search Google Maps from home for the places they'd like to visit, save them by clicking a little star next to a place's name, and have the full list of remembered locations appear on their phone under the "local" tab of a Web site. Clicking on the "starred places" names then takes them to Google's mobile-optimized place pages. Users can also enable location detection so …

Twitter is planning to launch a new service to help users find interesting users to follow. There are several third-party tools that presently offer such a service, including Lunch and TweepML. Twitter's own Lists service is presently in testing, and will soon allow all users of the micro-blogging service to create their own custom lists of Twitter users that others can then follow with one click. Lists will be public by default, which means they'll be available for the world to see. What's more, developers will be able to tap into the functionality to add the official Twitter Lists.

The Facebook movie, Columbia Pictures' "The Social Network," is reportedly set to start filming in less than a month. The screen adaptation of Ben Mezrich's Facebook tell-all "The Accidental Billionaires," has "Fight Club" director David Fincher attached to the project and a screenplay written by "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin. Lead actor Jesse Eisenberg, who's playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, told MTV News that the movie will be filming on location at Harvard's campus, where Facebook was founded early in 2004. The rest of the movie will reportedly be shot in Los Angeles.