Technology

All good celebrity news writers follow Britney Spears on Twitter… so I saw a tweet on her account earlier today with a link to a photo on Twitpic. After clicking through, glancing at the Britney Spears pic and balking at some of the more mind-numbing ass-kissing comments below, I noticed a big list of tags […]

This past weekend saw a collective gasp across the web as Amazon seemingly removed all books to do with gays from their book rankings – effectively removing the books from their index. In the PR mess that followed the company tried more than one excuse to explain away the mishap with ‘glitch’ being one of […]

So what’s the big news these days? The recession starting to see an upswing in China? North Korea reactivating its nuclear program? The Obama clan get a new hypo-allergenic puppy? No. It’s all about some actor named Ashton Kutcher, whose only real claim to fame at this point is being married to Demi Moore, looking […]

Forget the strings and woodwinds: A futuristic orchestra is making music using only mobile phones as instruments. The Stanford University group calls itself MoPho, or the Mobile Phone Orchestra. Led by Ge Wang (who previously created a “Laptop Orchestra”), the ensemble uses iPhones attached to special wrist-held speakers to make musical sounds of sorts. The […]

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm yesterday received a lot of attention for a post she wrote arguing that that metered broadband suffers a “Twilight Problem” based on a series of calculations based around downloading the movie Twilight. Our own Steven Hodson said that it highlights that “metered broadband will kill online video.” As I’m lying here […]

The rules relating to copyright in the United States are fairly clear, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them. At the core of US hosted content is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a system the details the use of copyright materials online, and puts in a place a notification system in regards to […]

I have said this before and I will say it again without a second of hesitation – metered broadband is bad for the Internet. It is bad for innovation on the web and it is especially bad for any video business online. This will be especially true as the quality of downloadable, or streaming, video […]

Intel (INTC) earnings take a nosedive as Q1 net income dropped by 55% as a result of lower sales margins. Analysts are are informally saying that this is the bottoming out period due to stabilization in the tech industry. Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires on Tuesday: […]

Viral marketing is the nirvana that just about every company is looking to achieve these days. There are some good attempts and then there are some that drop with a dull thud. Usually they involve websites related in some fashion to the product trying to gain market share or some cutesy video that generally just […]

Video metrics firm Visible Measures has scored a new deal with MySpace. The company will provide all online video measurement services for the social networking site, it announced this morning. As MySpace’s “official provider of digital video measurement and metrics,” Visible Measures will keep tabs on “audience behavior data” for all of MySpace’s hosted videos. […]

Coupon site RetailMeNot has expanded its offerings to include printable coupons for free (or discounted) stuff in the real world. The site launched the changes this morning. Previously, RetailMeNot focused only on coupons for online purchases. Now, you can additionally browse or search through about 90,000 printable certificates that’ll save you cash at brick-and-mortar establishments […]

When ever we think of the deadly shot coming out of nowhere with an accuracy that can be absolutely amazing our admiration for that lone sniper goes up a notch. In light of the recent Somali pirates being taken out by Navy SEAL sharpshooters the abilities of snipers are once more in the news. As […]

StumbleUpon has gone independent, parting company with eBay who acquired the social surfing startup two years ago for $75 million. The acquisition was lead by founders Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, as well as Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital. The price of the acquisition (or is that buy-back?) was not […]

Was it a policy decision? Was it a glitch? No, it was a cataloging error, at least that’s what Amazon is now attributing to the stripping of GLBT titles from its sales charts. In case you missed the story, over the weekend it was discovered that Amazon had started stripping primarily GLBT books from its […]

A lot of talk is being made about a Microsoft sponsored study into the Apple Tax that Mac lovers seem to gladly pay in order to be cool. The interesting thing about the furor that ran rampant across the the tech blogosphere is that much of the talking points were about the numbers being bandied […]

A study quoted in the Times Online this week suggests Facebook use is “damaging students’ academic performance.” The study, from the education department at Ohio State University, finds that students who report using Facebook on a daily basis tend to have “significantly” lower grade point averages than people who don’t regularly use the service. Here’s […]

Skype’s founders are looking to buy back their creation from eBay, according to a recent report by The New York Times. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are trying to raise enough money to repurchase the service they sold four years ago, the paper suggests. Possible Skype Sale The duo sold Skype for an end-total of […]

With all the hoopla over the Conficker worm these days — the virus is now said to be installing fake antivirus software, most recently infecting hundreds of computers at the University of Utah — it’s hard not to be concerned. A new “Conficker Eye Chart,” however, is making it simple to see whether your PC […]

Even as most of the United States heads to bed (at the time this post goes up), the #AmazonFail movement continues to push forward, with a constant and heavy stream on Twitter and across the web. From a marketing/ PR/ social media viewpoint, the speed of #AmazonFail has been staggering, and if you’re in one […]

As we reported earlier today, Amazon has been removing GLBT related books from its sales pages on the grounds that they are “adult content” even when they aren’t. Amazon is now denying that they are banning gay books from their sales lists, saying instead that the removal of GLBT material is a “glitch.” As I […]

Amazon celebrated the week leading up to Easter by purging its sales lists of gay content. The purge includes gay romance books that are sold in bookstores such as Borders next to Mills and Boon novels (including some books written for “young adults”), and non fiction works including serious titles about combating homophobia, travel guides, […]

Twitter was attacked by at least two worms over the weekend, causing an enormous amount of noise across the tech blogosphere and on Twitter itself (see our coverage of the first worm here.) The stupid kiddie behind the attacks has come forward, and from all accounts the worm(s) are now in check. And yet the […]

A discussion draft of a secret ACTA International copyright treaty has been leaked to Wikileaks. The treaty, between the European Union, United States, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Australia and Japan was agreed upon in 2008, but despite requests across member nations, no Government so far has released any of the details. The copy at Wikileaks is […]

Twitter is buzzing right now with news of links to a phishing site called stalkdaily spreading like wildfire as people are inadvertently clicking on the links. Apparently, when you click on one of those links and you’re still logged into the twitter service, your username and password is stolen and your twitter account hijacked. Do […]

One of the big terms used in Social Media is that of personal and corporate brands and how important they are. The idea being that as individuals we can create a recognizable brand around who we are, what be profess to believe and how we act. With corporations the idea isn’t much different that what […]

The idea if melding human flesh and bone with robotic parts is something that more than a few people are looking forward while the rest of us have visions of Terminator dancing in our heads. For those eagerly awaiting for the future to become the present that day may just be getting a lot closer. […]

The App Store is nearing a significant milestone. As I’m writing this post they are 36, 097,834 downloads from reaching 1 billion downloaded applications via App Store. To celebrate, Apple is hosting a contest worth over $10,000 (yes, that’s not a typo, Apple is giving away prizes worth $13,746!!!) The prizes are: 17-inch MacBook Pro, […]

A little over a week since launching, the DiggBar feature from Digg continues to be the focus of widespread condemnation. In case you’ve missed the noise, the DiggBar places a Digg specific frame around sites, and is bundled with Digg now linking to short URL’s as opposed to sites directly. The arguments against it range […]

Texting has become something of our next social disease but in most cases doesn’t much more damage that give you sore thumbs especially if you are in the habit of sending out 10,000 text messages. The real problem is when you suddenly find yourself with a hefty bill at the end of the month as […]

With CircuitCity.com shut down (at least for now), it appears Best Buy and Radio Shack are gaining a big boost to their online traffic — and it looks like it’s coming directly from their old competitor. Metrics firm Hitwise looked to see where surfers searching for Circuit City-related terms were ending up now. Not surprisingly, […]

Low-character names may be all snatched up when it comes to domains, but nearly 18,000 three-character names are still unclaimed on Twitter, one monitoring service says. Domain Pigeon says it’s detected 17,855 available three-character names on Twitter as of this morning. Unfortunately, you have to pay to sign up and see what the names are, […]

Some users of Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail were greeted with a strange message last night. A system error caused a message claiming there was no inbox to appear. You Don’t Have an Inbox…Yet The message mysteriously stated: “You don’t have an inbox…yet.” It started popping up for users late last night — just before midnight […]

Gmail is finally getting more intuitive support for images within e-mails. The Google gang announced the addition of “Insert Image” functionality within Gmail Labs this morning. The feature, quite simply, lets you click on an icon to upload an image either from your computer or from another Web site and have it be embedded within […]

Yesterday I wrote a post here about a social media experiment being run by Ford to publicize their new Fiesta car launching in 2010. In the post I suggested that this was a rather bold experiment on Ford’s part as they will have no control over the content being publish to the web by the […]

Being unemployed can be an hell of a stressful time for anyone except maybe for the CEOs with their millions of dollars cushions to rest their fat asses on. For the rest of us though life in general gets a lot harder. With having to figure out just how you are going to be able […]

Jennifer Lopez has won a cybersquatting case and secured the rights to jenniferlopez.net and jenniferlopez.org, both of which were registered by a third-party and used for commercial gain. Lopez filed a dispute against the owner via the World Intellectual Property Organization. It ruled in her favor this week, Reuters reports. The owner of the domains […]

The last surviving creator of Dungeons & Dragons has died. Dave Arneson passed away after battling cancer, reports indicate. Arneson and his colleague Gary Gynax released the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. The two had met at a Gen Con gaming convention. Gygax died just over one year ago. Arneson reportedly suffered […]

The self-declared “king of all media” has decided to give social media a whirl. Howard Stern announced the launch of a Twitter profile on his show today. The Howard Stern Twitter account will provide behind-the-scenes details of the Sirius broadcast, Stern says. Howard Stern on Twitter The account, at http://twitter.com/sternshow, has about 5200 followers as […]

Big Indian based blog network Instablogs is coping it in every direction like many in the blog industry at the moment, but the test of any network is how they react to it. Instablogs Ankit Maheshwari posts on his own blog the wise steps the company has made in response to the downturn, including details […]

It’s been rather interesting following the ridiculousness following the ‘accidental’ leaking of the newest X-Men movie to the web. Already it has seen one data center get raided by the FBI and one Fox freelance movie reviewer lose his job. As I’ve been following this and other silliness being done by the movie industry and […]

Microsoft has been ordered to pay $388 million in compensation after a court found it had infringed a patent in its anti-piracy measures. Uniloc alleged before the Federal Court in Rhode Island that Microsoft used its patented technology as part of Microsoft’s product activation methods. The court found that Microsoft had infringed the patent in […]

The Associated Press (AP) have issued a cease and desist against an AP affiliate radio station over the station embedding official AP videos offered for embedding on YouTube. AP said in its C&D to WTNQ-FM 104.9 in Lafollete, Tennessee that the videos breached AP’s copyright, and demanded that they be removed from the stations site. […]

The Twitter application market is booming at the moment off the back of Twitter’s phenomenal growth this year. Seesmic launched Seesmic Desktop yesterday (the new Twhirl), delivering multi-account access to a multi-column client. TweetDeck is out with a new version that promises to have fixed its memory issues, and adds some extra features for good […]

The American Big Three automobile companies are in big trouble. while they seem to be relying more on government bailout money rather than really innovating Ford is going to be to be entering the social media world in a big way this year. In advance of their new sub-compact model, the Fiesta, hitting the market […]

TweetDeck has released v0.25 of its desktop Twitter client today. The update, now available here, incorporates the Facebook functionality introduced in the latest beta edition. The update will also formally introduce the 12seconds integration tested in the beta. TweetDeck v0.25 will see a few new fixes and features as well, including improvements to the program’s […]

We’re hearing a lot about the explosion of Twitter into mainstream culture these days. The site’s traffic has grown more than 700 percent worldwide in the past year. Some new data suggests the majority of Twitter’s users, though, aren’t in the demographic you might expect. Users 18 to 24 years old, though typically portrayed as […]

The new version of Twhirl, now known as Seesmic Desktop, was launched in San Francisco this evening and takes the good fight to popular Twitter client TweetDeck. Seesmic Desktop is a complete code rewrite, delivering a fresh user experience and feature set. Included in the new version is multiple column and single app support (with […]

There is no denying that as we move down this road of making everything as ecologically sound as possible that the business of retrofitting existing building is going to be big. After all there are a lot of corporate skyscrapers out there that were build without any concept of what it meant to be green. […]

So you’re feeling the bite of the recession like everyone else, yet you still think that even though you’ve been laid off from your job and the bank is about to foreclose on your house, you can head over to that swanky restaurant for your usual 3 martini lunch. There, there. I understand. Times are […]

For some it would appear so because the idea of digital estate agents seems to be a growing field of web start ups. The latest one to cross my desk is Legacy Locker who just went public this morning at 8 AM PST and much like your real world lawyer and estate agent they handle […]