The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time
This Tuesday is an important day in the fight to save the Internet. As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a ...
Free calling in Gmail extended through 2011
When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to hel...
SEC Probes Hurd Exit From H-P
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the circumstances surrounding Mark Hurd's departure from Hewlett-Packard Co., in a broad inquiry that includes claims that the former chief exec...
AOL Acquires Personal Profile Startup About.Me
Personal profile startup About.me launched publicly, oh, all of four days ago. And, boom. Today AOL (our parent company), will announce that they've acquired the company. It will become part of the...
It's not “rooting”, it's openness
“Nexus S has been rooted, let the madness commence!” proclaims Engadget. “This is only possible because Android's security is crap and it's exploited easily to gain root priviledges [sic]” adds a com...
Buyer Beware: Zynga Blocks SecondMarket From Selling Its Stock!
The scuttlebutt around the secondary market indicates that Zynga is now blocking all sales of their private company stock through SecondMarket, and others. — As for Facebook, while they don't encour...
Cricket tries to Muve music collections to cellphones
Mobile phone carrier Cricket is set to unveil a beguiling new approach to music subscription services: unlimited music downloads to a phone for a flat monthly fee. — Set to be announced Monday, Cric...
Title Junk
The recent hubbub about Delicious got me thinking about bookmarking in general, and brought to mind a long-standing irritation: poorly designed web page titles. — Here's an example that I bookmarked...
Apple's Cleverest — And Most Annoying — Marketing Gimmick
And Most Annoying — Marketing Gimmick — It's universally acknowledged that Apple is one of the best companies in history when it comes to marketing, and that Steve Jobs is a very detail-oriented man....
iTunes slowdowns with Google DNS
Last night we tried to rent an iTunes movie on our newish Apple TV. Instead of starting right away, the Apple TV said it would be 2+ hours before we could start watching. I've got a healthy 15-20Mb/...
After Critiquing Facebook, Google Researcher Paul Adams Joins It
Paul Adams, the Google user experience researcher who critiqued Facebook in a lengthy report over the summer, is leaving the search giant to join them. His report is said to have accelerated the Grou...
Is Google In A Dream World? If So, Just How Close To Limbo Are They?
“Well dreams, they feel real while we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” — Cobb's quote from Inception reminds me of something. Something...
Facebook Ramps Up Big E-Commerce Drive
The social network is teaming up with startups, vendors, and even giant Internet rivals to turn Facebook pages into online shopping outlets fueled by recommendations from friends who “like” to buy — ...
Apple Launches iAd Producer - HTML & CSS Layout App for iAds
A few minutes ago Apple launched a new app for the Mac called iAd Producer which is aimed at developers and designers willing to create visually rich, interactive iAds. iAd Producer “automatically man...
Forget Journalism School and Enroll in Groupon Academy
It's a Friday afternoon and Jane Flotte is getting a little tired of spa treatments. “Today I've written a lot of salon deals,” the Groupon employee said. “And I'm getting kind of sick of talking ab...
Apple will close Mac OS X downloads site on January 6
Apple has informed developers of applications and widgets on Apple's downloads website that the site will be closing down come January 6th when the Mac App Store opens for business. Apple believes th...
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Responds to Whitney Tilson: Cover Your Short Position. Now.
A great investor and a wonderful human being, Whitney Tilson recently posted an article about why he is short Netflix (NFLX). Whitney, who is a major co-donor with me to charter public schools like K...
1 Billion Peoples' Interests Now Tracked by AddThis
AddThis, one of the leading link sharing services used by sites all around the web (including this one), announced today that it now offers publishers information about the types of interests their re...
Holy crap! Nokia is in talks with Microsoft about Windows Phone devices?!
Holy crap! — I don't believe I'm writing this, especially after publicly ridiculing even idea of such a thing for a year now. But given the source of the info... Here it goes- in his weekly op-e...
Mark Zuckerberg's Beijing Adventure
Now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has overthrown the internet and been named Time's “Person of the Year” is there anything left for him to do? Yes: Conquer China, beginning with this weekend's vi...
Tech Revival Lifts Silicon Valley
Firms Hire, Expand as Northern California Region Shows Best Signs of Life in State's Ailing Economy — The revival of Silicon Valley is on display at the juncture of San Jose's North First Street and...
Breaking: eBay acquires brands4friends private sales site for $200 million
Germany's largest fashion club has just been acquired by eBay for a whopping $200 million (€150 million). Although eBay's acquisitions have almost stalled since the failed take-over of Skype, this st...
iPhone 4 hits new low of $147 on contract at Sam's Club this week
Radio Shack's $149 price for the 16GB iPhone 4 just got undercut by a whole two bucks. We've been tipped off to Sam's Club now offering the AT&T-locked device for a $147 fee, subject to the usual two...
Drop out and innovate
The man who financed Facebook is offering 20 two-year $100,000 fellowships to teenagers with big ideas - as long as they leave university. Jon Marcus reports — Before he was 21, Peter Thiel was a r...
Qualcomm To Sell Spectrum Licenses To AT&T For $2B, Kill FLO TV In March 2011
Qualcomm has just announced that it has agreed to sell its Lower 700 MHz D and E Block U.S. spectrum licenses to AT&T for a whopping $1.925 billion, following its previously announced plan to restruct...
Foursquare adds photos and comments to its new iPhone app
Last Thursday, a little tweet tipped us off to a new Foursquare release coming early this week. This morning, Foursquare founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai unveiled their latest: a more us...