The two came up with PassTheNotes, a unique collaborative tool for students and teachers to use in or out of the classroom.

The app has only been in beta for a few weeks and has already won the AVCC award by one of its creators, who attended Florida International University, and the startup is on the fast track to the ER Accelerator event in Times Square.

To say this one is getting somewhere would be a big understatement.

The app is a virtual desk on which students or teachers can share notes and files with some or all of their groups and friends.  Made specifically for classroom collaboration, the app allows teachers to accept homework as shared files from students, it allows students to share class notes with one another, and it allows teachers to share classroom notes or information with students easily.

Think of it as a sort of Dropbox with G+ integration for the classroom.  Except more collaborative.

The desktop look is great and the drag-and-drop interface is easy to use and understand.  Students and teachers can visit one another’s desks and grab materials that are available to them there.  You can control who can and can’t see/access what’s there and settings are easy to make with just a push of a button.

The app is extremely useful and continually being upgraded as it works through its beta phase.  Well worth a try!

Of course, all photos can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, since this is the very basis of sites like this.  One look at the Funny category will convince you to spend some time on this site and probably hit “share” more than once..

Like most photo sharing sites, Shuttur is all about community.  The more active users there are, the more photos there are.  Currently, there seems to be a pretty good number of users for this new site, as photos update pretty fast.  Some categories have little or nothing in them, but popular ones like Funny and Landscapes are nicely populated.

The site is very new, but well-made and seems to serve quickly (an important point for photo sharing).  Definitely worth a look, anyway, and a great up-and-comer in this category of social sharing.

Socialinkd plans to change that and has gone through a first round of investing to get the party started.

The app combines QR codes with an on-the-go interface that allows near-instant synchs for Facebook users.

For example, let’s say you’re at a convention and see an old friend working a booth.  She lets you know that her company happens to be hiring.  “Find me on FB,” she says.  You pull out your phone, load up Socialinkd and show her.  She does the same and scans your QR code, instantly friending you so that you’re now connected.  No lost businesses cards, no forgotten married names, no mis-typed email addresses.

The app is available for just about every phone platform (Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows, etc) and is free to use and download.

What’s more, the app’s creators will make you an instant angel investor if you have more than 7,000 Twitter followers and agree to tweet about their app.  How cool is that?  Obviously, the app requires a lot of users to become successful, since the more people are using it, the more it will be “the thing you need.”

It’s a pretty cool idea and if it takes off, it will be a hit.

There is a short and easy to follow video that shows you how you can put an item up for sale on the social marketplace.  You simply click on the link, fill in your information, add a picture and that’s it.  The video runs for just under two minutes so you can see how easy this is.

One good feature of the site is that when you click on any item, it automatically expands it on the page you are on.  You will also see a number of sharing buttons related to the most popular social media sites near the top of the box you have just opened.  These are for Facebook, Twitter and Google+1.  This means it is easy to share what you find on the social media sites.

The site is keen to point out that there are no charges for using it.  While it is still in beta mode and clearly building an audience, the social media side of things should expand the audience very quickly indeed.  It is also a good way to promote your items.

He’s calling it Appsterdam.

Now, when most of us think of Amsterdam, we think of things akin to Harold & Kumar or Half Baked.  Turns out, there’s more to this most famous of Dutch cities than just hints of legalities that aren’t so legal elsewhere.  At a recent meeting of developers that congregated in the city, Lee made his case for the new developer’s Mecca.

“I became disillusioned with the way the United States was going in general. I myself had no health insurance and no way of getting health insurance as a self-employed person.” Lee told them. “So I decided to spend a year traveling around the world and talking to developers and looking for a place to live. I went everywhere. Big cities like Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia but also Argentina, Taiwan, Cambodia. The conclusion I came to was that Amsterdam was the most livable city in the world. Even the stray animals look fat and happy here.”

He sees the idea as a sort of independent label club for non-mainstream, independent application builders.  Sort of a contrast to the Hollywood-like atmosphere of Northern California’s Silicon Valley, Appsterdam would be the underground New York record label hangout for developers.

Beyond just a Meetup or annual conference, Appsterdam would be a whole community wherein people can exchange ideas, bring their families together, and more.  Think of it as a Google Campus for the indie app developer.

Lee’s ideas have legs and a lot of buzz in tech circles is making it fly.

But now it has hit the headlines for a different reason.  According to research done by Hitwise, the social network has started to lose traffic already.  It was originally launched on Tuesday 28^th June, and traffic started to climb steadily over the first couple of days before dipping slightly for the first week of July.  However it then started to pick up again and the week ending on 16^th July saw it grab 1.86 million visits overall.

The big change occurred the following week when the overall traffic dropped to 1.79 million.  The big question is whether this trend will continue, or whether it is just a blip in the general picture.  Whenever a new social network springs up everyone is interested in what it has to offer to begin with.  But then it has a tendency to drop back as the initial excitement wanes, so perhaps this is not so unusual after all.

The good news is that Google+ has managed to sign up more than 20 million people in just three weeks.  This is a huge achievement so perhaps it is right that Google should not be worried about whether it has managed to sustain the early surge of traffic.  The drop in traffic is fairly small too, so we shall see whether it matters much in the long run.

While there is no firm news surrounding this idea as yet, verified accounts have worked well for Twitter.  Before it started using them users did not know whether a particular account was run by the real celebrity or a fake.  Now it is easy to see whether you are following the real deal, whoever it might be.  It would make perfect sense for Google to go the same way and ensure all their celebrity users are verified.

Some celebrities have already been making headlines due to their decision to use Google+. William Shatner is one of the most notable, as his Google+ account was suspended for a few hours the other day.  He has no idea why, other than finding out that his account violated the Google+ standards.  Up to the point where he was suspended, he had done nothing more than say hello.

Google+ is still in beta mode at the moment, so perhaps we can expect lots of changes as things are ironed out.  But the addition of new celebrity verified accounts would certainly be a good thing if the social network does decide to copy Twitter in this respect.  It would benefit from some publicity in this respect, if only to detract attention away from the buggy start it has had so far.

Unsubscribe has plugins for Firefox, Chrome and Safari that interact with the user’s social networking on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  Just signing up for the service is worth the couple of minutes because of what it will help you do to scrub those three networks of undesirables you probably didn’t know where there.

Every one of those three networks has developer APIs that allow you to give permission to do all kinds of things.  Some need access to all of your data on that network while others are a little less needy.  If you’re like me, you’ve probably given permissions to apps you’ve totally forgotten about.  But they’re still there.

The hyper-vigilant will have gone through and scrubbed their accounts.  I’m not hyper, but I’m vigilant and many have already been removed.  A friend of mine tried Unsubscribe as well and he (who will remain anonymous, since he’s not nearly as vigilant) literally had over 40 Facebook apps alone that he hadn’t used in over a year.

The way Unsubscribe works is simple: you sign up for a free account, plug in your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter account names, and it presents you with a list of apps that have permissions from those accounts.  You can look at each social network individually or all at once.

Unsubscribe lists the apps in alphabetical order and gives information in visual form on their access level (to your info), reputation, the last time you accessed it, and their recommendation to you for the app.  Each of these info graphics can be hovered over for more information.

You can unsbuscribe from apps through the site (hence the name) either one at a time or by checking them off and doing it in bulk.  Getting rid of five apps (for me) took about three minutes individually.  My friend with the 40?  He reports they were all done in about six minutes using the bulk unsub option.

Just that service alone is worth the time and effort for Unsubscribe.  However, now comes the plug-in bit.

The plugin pops up an “Are you sure?” screen whenever you opt to give an app permissions through one of those three networks.  This quick reminder includes Unsubscribe’s assessment of the app, what kind of access it’s asking for, etc.  You can use that popup screen to safely move away from the app’s signup (giving no permissions) or you can OK it anyway.

This is a very cool service and one that’s very much needed today.

Regardless, the business networking site is a real threat to Facebook’s virtual ownership of the social networking sphere.  So FB is fighting back.

A new Facebook app called BranchOut came alive last week,  in that time exploding from about 33,000 users to well over 800,000 and growing fast.  Could it kill LinkedIn?

It could give it a run for its money, at least.  BranchOut’s main advantage is that it’s riding on the Facebook platform, which has an estimated 700 million users worldwide.  It allows users of FB to have access to a business and professional networking service through their already-established Facebook account.

The little app startup has tried several schemes to get noticed over the past year or so, but only recently has it seen its userbase finally begin to go viral.  Mainly because it’s dropped the cheesy marketing attempts (things like “would so-and-so in your company be captain of your softball team?”) and redesigned itself to be more professional and (hence) useful.

In other words, the app changed its focus from lame “battle app with a professional twist” to “professional network plugin” and is now suddenly getting noticed.  All without any change in their marketing spending, according to the startup.

So how far will this app get?  It could go far, but only time will tell if it replaces LinkedIn as a professional networking option.  A few more functionality upgrades will be needed to do that completely, but for core networking, it’s definitely on the right track.

However a new company has come to the fore that aims to provide every kind of service you could want.  SimplyCast has a complete suite of services that will prove useful to many businesses.  It provides you with email marketing, SMS marketing, list management, Twitter marketing and many more features as well.  You can also become an affiliate for the service, enabling you to make more money by referring others to use these same services.

You can sign up to receive a ten day free trial for the service if you wish.  There are comprehensive pricing options for all the services, including Pay As You Go options and various other plans.  They also provide lots of information on each type of service and how it can help you before you decide to go ahead.

There is no doubt that most modern businesses will benefit from using one or more marketing opportunities as offered by SimplyCast.  No other business has the same range of helpful tools.  You can take advantage of Twitter marketing and link tracking, or use all the tools to gain an advantage over your competition.  SimplyCast has an easy to read and well thought out website too, so you should find it easy to see just how much they have to offer.