socialmedia

As our thoughts to turn the holiday dash round the country, to over-eat, over-drink and play with kids' new toys instead of making small talk with the in-law, Christmas is almost upon us.

But wait...there's still a few, well a lot, of work-related festive action to cram in before the last vestiges of real-world contact are swapped with chance meetings in Farmville in post-indulgence downtime.

We're rounded up just a few of the Christmas get-togethers listed on Chinwag's Digital Events Calendar for the next couple of weeks, which we're hoping to get along to:

Back in March this year AudioBoo proudly claimed their mission to be the YouTube of the spoken word.

And it looks like they're just about there. Previously available in iPhone and Android flavours, the Audioboo team have announced a browser-based version launching today. Get in there people.

Following in the intrepid techno-savvy footsteps of users like Stephen Fry, he's been known to say "night night" to his Twitter followers with it, AudioBoo users will now be able to upload their recordings easily from their computers.

The service is PC and Mac compatible, runs on Safari and Firefox and the pre-launch jitters on IE are being smoothed out as I type. Unfortunately, there's no word about Chrome just yet.

The US picture may be bleak but are British women really as worse off as women in the States when it comes to social media salaries?

We got in touch with a UK-based social media recruitment company to find out if we really have anything to worry about.

According to Emma McNamara, Managing Director of recruitment firm Propel London, there are just more men applying for the roles at the outset:

"We have experienced more male applicants for the roles, however have not seen any gender preference from clients or differences in salaries offered. I think it really depends on the community involved and the candidates overall experience."

SXSW Interactive festival is the digital conference to attend. Yes, it helps that it's based in sunny Austin, Texas and that the BBQ food is *awesome*, but it's also packed full to bursting with top notch panels from the brightest minds in tech

There are hundreds of networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer - all happening over 5 days!

More great news from companies who've taken part in the Digital Mission series, with an announcement from live phonecasting service ipadio, who recently returned from the Digital Mission to New York.

ipadio have joined forces with Sport England and Facebook  to encourage more young people to get involved with sport with the announcement of the Community Sports Hub.

The initiative will produce a beefed-up fan page on the social network which will integrate with ipadio's phone-to-web technology to encourage participation. Facebook are putting up in-kind advertising valued at £5m/year until 2013.

Congratulations to Dom, Seb and Juliet and the crew at Plug-in Media on their win at last night's Children's BAFTA awards held at London's Park Lane Hilton.

Juliet joined the Digital Mission to LA & San Francisco earlier this year as part of the group of 14 companies showcasing the best of the UK's digital talent. Applications for the South by South West interactive trip are still open.

Hosted by favoured kids presenters, Dick'n'Dom the team picked up the Interactive BAFTA, a hefty golden visage, for Big and Small Online produced with Kindle Entertainment for CBeebies. Check out the post-award interview with the winners.