iPhone fart app pulls in nearly $10,000 a day
Apple's App Store is currently experiencing a plague of fart applications. Last week, I detailed one day in which at least 14 new fart apps were accepted into the store. And now, just in a quick sea...
Merb gets merged into Rails 3!
It's christmas, baby, and do we have a present for you. We're ending the bickering between Merb and Rails with a this bombshell: Merb is being merged into Rails 3! — We all realized that working to...
Adult FriendFinder Files To Go Public
Florida-based FriendFinder Networks (formerly Penthouse Media Group), a group of sites that includes Penthouse and Adult FriendFinder, has filed a registration statement with the SEC to go public. — ...
More than 1 Million Ways to Infect Your Computer
An unknown hacker has been on a Search Engine Optimization rampage to flood search engines with more than a million ways to infect yourself with his virus. This is the first major “Scareware” infecti...
Notebook PC Shipments Exceed Desktops for First Time in Q3
Global notebook PC shipments exceeded those of desktops on a quarterly basis for the first time ever in the third quarter, marking a watershed event in the history of the industry, according to iSuppl...
After Slow Start, E-Books Turn Page and Find Fans
Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from paper to pixels? — For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to r...
Dell's MacBook Air Rival Confirmed by . . . Dell
CLARIFICATION 5:55 p.m. - The story below references a Dell ad placed in UptownLife magazine. The online version of that ad, which has since been removed, appeared to include both an image from Dell ...
Facebook Bails on Project Playlist, Too
Four days after MySpace cut the legs out from under Project Playlist by disabling the music streaming service's app, Facebook is following suit. Here's the official statement from Facebook PR: … The ...
Reboot the FCC
We'll stifle the Skypes and YouTubes of the future if we don't demolish the regulators that oversee our digital pipelines. — Economic growth requires innovation. Trouble is, Washington is practical...
Tweet A Last-Minute Gift To Charity
It's micro-messaging meets micro-funding. Marketing consultant Laura Fitton is trying to raise money $2 at a time through Twitter. She is using Tipjoy, which allows people to turn Tweets into paymen...
Venture Capitalist: Big 3 Should Turn To Silicon Valley
Ray Lane's got a bone to pick with Detroit and Washington: quit your whining, partner up with innovators here in Silicon Valley, and consumers, investors, auto industry workers, politicians, executive...
Will Microsoft throw in the towels?
Google, Microsoft and other big tech companies spent the past few years ramping up employee perks as they battled each other for top talent. Now, as the tech industry tries to weather the economic st...
Looking for a Few Good Answers Online
Why is the sky blue? How do you bleach a stained shirt? Why does cheese smell? — The answers to these questions used to be sought in encyclopedias and other reference books. Now, we increasingly ...
Our 210th variation on the theme, “Thank you for using FeedBurner.”
Interesting Fact: this is the 210th time we've posted to this blog. Bittersweet Reality: it will be the last. — Our team has used Burning Questions to provide FeedBurner product announcements and s...
Analyst says Steve Jobs' spirit has been institutionalized
Investment bank Kaufman Bros. on Tuesday downplayed renewed concerns over the health of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, arguing that although the co-founder has been critical to the company's resurg...
Twitter relaunches name search, still no tweet search on site
The micro-messaging service Twitter has taken the slow time during the holiday to bring back a feature that, like so many others, went away when the site was having performance issues during the earli...
iPhone claims high-ranking spot on Flickr
The iPhone has risen to prominence on Flickr, rivaling most SLRs in popularity. These statistics from Yahoo cover the last 12 months. — (Credit: Yahoo) — The iPhone is the mobile device of choice...
Teardown of Sony's PlayStation 3
According to iSuppli, the device costs significantly less to build than when it was first released in 2006, and is nearing break-even — One of the great articles of faith in the consumer electronics...
Quantcast Bulks Up, ComScore Speaks Up
The race for video audience metrics appears to be heating up, as upstart Quantcast has added ABC Inc. , Hulu LLC , and BBE (formerly Broadband Enterprises) to its growing list of media groups using th...
Google still wants something for nothing
Tech Daily: The Internet giant responds to criticism that it has reversed course on a key issue facing the Web: Should some users be required to pay more for faster service? — SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune...
iPhone Nano Concept Photo?
It seems the “iPhone Nano” is the rumor that is going take the spotlight ahead of this year's Macworld, and while MacRumors is publishing these photos and rumors, we have some serious doubts about the...
GateHouseGate
I got a call a few weeks ago from a usually smart print editor who was outraged about aggregation sites linking to his paper's content. In his view, the aggregators were “stealing” his content and se...
Animoto On The iPhone: Trust Me, You Want It
Yeah, I gush about Animoto (and so do others). And I'll keep on gushing because they are an example of a startup that just focuses like a laser on doing one thing well. In their case, it's creating ...
State of the Twittersphere - Q4 2008 Report
Taking a page from Technorati and their state of the blogosphere report that reviews survey data from a few hundred bloggers, we're publishing the “State of the Twittersphere” report. This is our fir...
Ubuntu Distributor Wants to Overhaul Linux Desktop Notifications
Canonical, the parent company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux system, wants to implement a new (and vaguely Mac-ish) method of user notification in Ubuntu's next release. — You can check out a demon...
I'm Sorry Robert, But It's Time For A Friendfeed Intervention
I'm a big champion of services like Twitter and the newer Friendfeed (can you believe Friendfeed is less than a year old?). But there's a difference between liking a service and having an addiction.
Lengthening Out URLs
In our age of information and technology, there isn't as much mystery as there used to be. In that sense, short URLs (e.g., tinyurl.com/123) can be fun! Who knows where you'll wind up. — Some folk...
HP Latest to Hop on iPhone Bandwagon
A week after Microsoft signed on, HP becomes the next Apple competitor to support the iPhone. — HP may have plans to compete with Apple in the smartphone market, but that doesn't mean it can ignore ...
Intel Counters Apple Stake in Graphics Chip Company (PC World)
One day after Apple took a 3.6 percent stake in Imagination Technologies, the company that developed the technology used in the 3G iPhone's graphics chips, Intel responded by increasing its own stake ...
Ditch the CD by Christmas 2009, Gartner tells music industry
Could this Christmas really be the swansong of the CD? Analyst Gartner certainly hopes so, having issued a challenge to the music industry to move to a ‘digital first’ strategy by the end of next yea...
The virtual battle of the sexes
Online games' emphasis on combat has led many to paint them as male pursuits — Picture a typical player of a massively multiplayer game such as World of Warcraft and most people will imagine an over...
Project Gutenberg release Mobile Edition eBooks
PG Mobile is going to be a new addition to gutenberg.org, which will allow mobile/cell phone users to download and read eBooks. The files will be available on the normal download page of any PG eBook...
Intel 160GB X25-M SSD begins shipping
Intel have begun shipping the 160GB version of their X25-M solid-state drive. The new SSD doubles the capacity of the previous model, the 80GB, and is initially only available in the 2.5-inch form-fa...
BBC Rolls Out AIR iPlayer, Ditches Kontiki P2P, Proposes Tiered Broadband Services
The BBC has just rolled out a new desktop version of its popular iPlayer service based on Adobe's AIR platform. The new client is available for UK residents as part of the BBC iPlayer Labs beta test ...
ISP tells RIAA piracy protection doesn't come free
The RIAA's announcement last week of an end to its P2P lawsuitsin favor of working with ISPs to warn or cut off offenders was almostunanimously praised as a move in the right direction. Thereare a lo...
Sony Ericsson to swtich smartphone production partner from HTC to Mobinnova, says paper
Sony Ericsson plans to outsource its second Windows Mobile-based smartphone to Taiwan-based Mobinnova, a handset maker under Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), instead of cooperating …
LG announces laptop display designed for outdoor use
Laptops are notoriously hard to use outdoors. Backlit displays are difficult to read in bright sunlight under the best conditions. And if you have a notebook with a glossy screen, you might as well ...
Analysis: RIAA Strategy Shift Mired in Murky Legal Waters
The Recording Industry Association of America's new enforcement strategy is based on a questionable interpretation of what constitutes copyright infringement. And its copyright-detection services rem...