TechLifeWeb

Tech news – May 12th 2012 to May 14th 2012:

• Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived – The Oatmeal –
  theoatmeal.com
  - Matthew Inman
  

  An ode to the father of the electric age.
  View
• Facebook giveth, Facebook taketh: A curious case of video apps — Tech News and Analysis –
  gigaom.com
  

  More than nine million apps and services use Facebook Connect, the Open Graph developer platform, which gives company powers to predict the future. It can turn on the traffic spigot for some apps such as Socialcam. But it can turn off the spigot, equally fast.
• A preacher, 500 startups, and a dream to change it all — Tech News and Analysis –
  gigaom.com
  - Katie Fehrenbacher
  

  Dave McClure speaking at the US Embassy in Mexico City. Photo by George Kellerman
  It’s around 8:30 on a warm Friday night in Mexico City, and we’re all milling around a podium set up in the lobby of the private residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Earl Anthony Wayne. Dozens of Mexico’s tech entrepreneurs and investing elite are mingling with more than 40 members of Geeks on a Plane, a traveling tech-revue of sorts organized by the Silicon Valley investment group, 500 Startups. Just outsi…  show all text
• A TV Schedule in the Hands of Whoever Holds the Remote –
  nytimes.com
  - By DAVID CARR
  

  When it comes to the traditional screen that families gather around, live television is competing against a growing array of self-selected content, and audiences are bolting.
• The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon « blog maverick –
  blogmaverick.com
  - markcuban
  

  This is what I see when i think about higher education in this country today:
  Remember the housing meltdown ? Tough to forget isn’t it. The formula for the housing boom and bust was simple. A lot of easy money being lent to buyers who couldn’t afford the money they were borrowing. That money was then spent on homes with the expectation that the price of the home would go up and it could easily be flipped or refinanced at a profit.  Who cares if you couldn’t afford the loan. As long as prices ke…  show all text
• Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb – Kara Swisher – News – AllThingsD –
  allthingsd.com
  - Kara Swisher
  

  Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be a dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.
  The company will apparently say he is leaving for “personal reasons.”
  But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume, and how he handled the thorny issue is clearly the key  show all text
• Dresscode: Blue tie and male | –
  elektronista.dk
  

  At a Dell summit in Copenhagen we learn to say shup up bitch and that women should be keept out of IT as long as possible.
• What Eduardo Saverin owes America. (Hint: Nearly everything.) | PandoDaily –
  pandodaily.com
  - Farhad Manjoo
  

  When Eduardo Saverin was 13, his family discovered that his name had turned up on a list of victims to be kidnapped by Brazilian gangs. Saverin’s father was a wealthy businessman in São Paulo, and it was inevitable that he’d attract this kind of unwanted attention. Now the family had to make a permanent decision. They hastily arranged a move out of the country. And of all the places in the world they could move to, the Saverin family saw only one option. They took their talents to Miami.
  Would …  show all text
• Fans Gather at Qualcomm to Celebrate Junior Seau | NBC San Diego –
  nbcsandiego.com
  

  Current and former NFL athletes addressed fans at a ceremony to honor former San Diego Charger Junior Seau Friday at Qualcomm Stadium.
• This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  - Kim-Mai Cutler
  

  You know how many Android developers complain about fragmentation? Yeah, this is what fragmentation looks like.
  Animoca, a Hong Kong mobile app developer that has seen more than 70 million downloads, says it does quality assurance testing with about 400 Android devices. Again, that’s testing with four hundred different phones and tablets for every app they ship!
  The photo above is just a sampling of Animoca’s fleet of Android test units. Yat Siu, who is CEO of Animoca’s parent company Outblaze,…  show all text

Tech news – May 7th 2012 to May 12th 2012:

• Pay To “Highlight” Your Facebook Status Updates To More Friends – A Reckless New Ads Test | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  

  Only 12% of your friends see your average status update, but Facebook is testing an option called "Highlight" that lets you pay a few dollars to have one of your posts appear to more friends. Highlight lets users, not Pages or businesses, select an "important post" and "make sure friends see this", but not color it yellow as Stuff wrote when it first spotted the feature. A tiny percentage of the user base is now seeing tests of a paid version of Highlight, but there's also a free one designed t…
• In war for talent, ‘brogrammers’ will be losers – CNN.com –
  cnn.com
  

  Gina Trapani says the technology companies that promote a culture of frat house fun will lose out in attracting the smartest people.
• From Twitter – http://t.co/NQmTb6V1 The Ins and Outs of Windows 8 for IT Pros
• President Obama Affirms His Support for Same Sex Marriage | ABC News Blogs – Yahoo! –
  gma.yahoo.com
  

  From the blog ABC News Blogs: President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.
• Sources Say AOL Seeking Buyers for Engadget and TechCrunch, Arrington “Not In The Least Bit Interested” | PandoDaily –
  pandodaily.com
  - Sarah Lacy
  

  We weren’t sure about this one at first, but now we have two independent sources confirming that AOL is exploring the sale of its cornerstone technology sites Engadget and TechCrunch.
  The two would likely be sold together as AOL Tech, possibly including smaller assets like TUAW and Joystiq.
  The asking price? A hefty $70 million to $100 million.
  AOL is hoping to make something off the drama of the past couple of years: $70 million would net the struggling Internet company about $10 million profit  show all text
• Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83 –
  nytimes.com
  - By MARGALIT FOX
  

  Mr. Sendak, known in particular for “Where the Wild Things Are,” was widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century.
• Decline Of Reader Apps Likely Due To News Feed Changes, Shows Facebook Controls The Traffic Faucet | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  

  No, Facebook news reader apps aren't declining because users suddenly got fed up with auto-sharing. The user loss is likely due to the transition to "trending articles", a new way of surfacing recently read articles in the news feed that Facebook is testing. Update: The Washington Post confirms my hypothesis: "Social reader "collapse" is b/c of evolving FB modules. Before: "double-double," 4-5 stories down in a list, w/ friend icon – drove growth."Previously, Facebook had been driving huge numb…
• Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom –
  arstechnica.com
  - Joe Mullin
  

  In what could be a major blow to Android, Google's mobile operating system, a San Francisco jury issued a verdict today that the company broke copyright laws when it used Java APIs to design the system. The ruling is a partial victory for Oracle, which accused Google of violating copyright law.
  But the jury couldn't reach agreement on a second issue—whether Google had a valid "fair use" defense when it used the APIs. Google has asked for a mistrial based on the incomplete verdict, and that issue  show all text
• Facebook Social Readers Are All Collapsing –
  buzzfeed.com
  

  Are you annoyed by all those automatic Facebook news apps? Apparently you're not alone. They're falling off a cliff right now.

  The Washington Post was the first publication to experiment with a "frictionless" social reader app, which launched last year. If you use Facebook you've probably come across it: it manifests as a clustered list of stories that are almost completely unrelated except for the fact that they all come from the same publication.
  If you decide to click on a link it doesn't …  show all text
• Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps – Technology Review –
  technologyreview.com
  

Tech news – May 5th 2012 to May 7th 2012:

• Could These Start-Ups Become the Next Big Thing? –
  nytimes.com
  

  The start-up scene is on fire, but a few stand out from the crowd.
• The Cozy Compliance of the News Corp. Board –
  nytimes.com
  - By DAVID CARR
  

  A board remains in lock step with Rupert Murdoch, despite a growing storm of investigations.
• Quote and Comment –
  jayrosen.tumblr.com
  

  Tom Brokaw blasts the White House Correspondents Association dinner. 
  On Meet the Press Sunday, Tom Brokaw of NBC News, an iconic figure in broadcast journalism, ripped into the annual ritual that media people in DC call “the prom,” hoping that their gentle ridicule of it will defuse some of the rage that they know the event inspires outside the Beltway club.
  Brokaw essentially told them that the game is up. The people he meets on his book tours are saying: “What’s happened with political cover…  show all text
• Real-time Facebook ‘likes’ displayed on Brazilian fashion retailer’s clothes racks | The Verge –
  theverge.com
  

  Fashion retailer C&A may be a fading brand in much of Europe, but its Brazilian arm is doing what it can to stay on the pulse of social media. A new initiative called Fashion Like allows people…
• Cloud is a corporate strategy, not a tactical solution — Cloud Computing News –
  gigaom.com
  - Mark Thiele, Switch
  

  As an IT community we are still stuck in the past relative to the strategic nature of cloud. Many of us are looking at the adoption of cloud as just another technology, and are leaving the decisions on how to adopt, own, and manage the cloud up to engineers. But acquiring a cloud management platform is not an engineering decision — it’s a strategic one. Do engineers need to be involved? Yes, but your cloud adoption strategy has already failed if you don’t treat cloud as the operational construct  show all text
• Draw Something Loses 5M Users a Month After Zynga Purchase – Forbes –
  forbes.com
  

  We may be seeing the beginnings of a lesson as to why it's not always the best idea to buy your competition outright. Mobile giant Zynga's game development philosophy has always been, "If you can' beat 'em, buy 'em," followed by the less welcome "If you can't buy 'em, clone [...]
• Two brilliant moves that helped create the Apple iOS powerhouse by Dalton Caldwell –
  daltoncaldwell.com
  Most new announcements by Apple are digested and understood by the tech press instantaneously. Great products are great products, and it doesn't take much time to realize how exciting things like the iPad or Retina displays are. But some moves can take years to completely understand.
  So, I now bring you, my two favorite tactical moves by Apple, which I have only recently come to fully appreciate.
  Move #1: Windows Compatible iPods
  I remember it like it was yesterday. The summer of 2002.
  I had a …  show all text
• If VLC can ship a free DVD player, why can’t Microsoft? | ZDNet –
  zdnet.com
  - Ed Bott
  

  Microsoft’s decision to remove support for playing DVD movies in Windows 8 has caused some confusion. If the VLC media player can provide DVD support for free, why can’t Microsoft? For starters, Microsoft isn’t French.
• 20 Mouthwatering Instagram Pics [FOOD PORN] –
  mashable.com
  - Christine Erickson
  

  The Best of Instagram Series is presented by T-Mobile. Its 4G Tweet Race, a week-long campaign launching May 3, pits Twitter users against one another in a daily, frantic race for retweets. There are 7 races, and the winners of each heat win a new HTC One™ S phone with a year of T-Mobile’s Unlimited Value service, and the final winner takes home $4,000.
  Instagram users often get a bit of flack for oversharing their food photos. Now that the photo-sharing app is available for iOS, Android and po…  show all text
• Is This Censorship? Facebook Stops Users From Posting ‘Irrelevant Or Inappropriate’ Comments | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  - Colleen Taylor
  

  Updated. Today was just another Saturday morning in blog land when Robert Scoble, the well-known tech startup enthusiast, went to post a comment on a Facebook post written by Carnegie Mellon student (and TechCrunch commenter extraordinaire) Max Woolf about the nature of today’s tech blogging scene. Scoble’s comment itself was pretty par-for-the-course — generally agreeing with Woolf’s sentiments and adding in his own two cents.
  But when Scoble went to click post, he received an odd error messag…  show all text

Tech news – May 4th 2012 to May 5th 2012:

• RIP MCA –
  youtube.com
• From Twitter – RT @bjdraw Been dealing with WiFi issues since I updated to Lion and finally found a simple fix! http://t.co/sliYfRmM
• The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers –
  androidpolice.com
  - Ron Amadeo
  

  The Galaxy S III is… well… it's ugly. There's really no other way to put it. But why? Why is it ugly? I don't mean aesthetically, why is it ugly, I mean, "How did something like this ever make it out of Samsung's design studio?" I'll tell you how, it was never in the design studio. This phone design was born down the hall, in a room where the door sign reads "Samsung Legal."
  It was designed by lawyers.
  I can tell just from the press shots, this thing is a Samsung lawyer's dream. I'm sure you  show all text
• Postscript: Adam Yauch : The New Yorker –
  newyorker.com
  - Sasha Frere-Jones
  

  I first met Adam Yauch in 1982, in Brooklyn, when I was fifteen. I was sitting on the red steps in the lobby of St. Ann’s, where I was a sophomore in high school. His bandmate, Michael Diamond, was a grade ahead of me. Occasionally Mike and I would talk about records and argue. We talked about doing a newsletter, but that was also just talk. His hardcore band, the Beastie Boys, was getting bigger in the very small pond of downtown Manhattan. (In the nineteen-eighties, folks didn’t play rock mus…  show all text
• Sequoia Confirms Existence of “Stealth” Scout Program. Who’s Next? | PandoDaily –
  pandodaily.com
  - Sarah Lacy
  

  On Wednesday we uncovered a potentially worrying trend of VCs investing in very early stage companies by giving money to network rich, cash poor entrepreneurs — or “scouts.”
  Ostensibly, the trend has a lot of advantages for the investors involved. Scouts get to become angel investors quicker than their liquidity schedules might allow, more startups get funding, and venture firms get a pulse on deal flow they might not have seen otherwise. The only problem? Entrepreneurs at the receiving end have  show all text
• AT&T Chief Regrets Offering Unlimited Data for iPhone – NYTimes.com –
  bits.blogs.nytimes.com
  - By BRIAN X. CHEN
  

  Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief executive, spoke about the state of the wireless industry at a conference this week, and he shared some surprisingly frank comments about the iPhone. He said he loses sleep over services like iMessage.
• Running a startup –
  runningastartup.tumblr.com
  
• Facebook’s numbers by Dustin Curtis –
  dcurt.is
  I like to look at raw numbers every once in a while, without external influence, to recalibrate my ability to judge the magnitude of things. Here are some of the numbers from Facebook's most recent S-1 filing (published on May 3rd) which I think are important as metrics to compare against when thinking about relative success and opportunity. (Sources are at the bottom.)
  Total users and engagement
  125,000 M Friendships 2,000 M Likes per day 1,000 M Comments posted per day 901 M Monthly active us…  show all text
• The Disgrace Of Yahoo « Uncrunched –
  uncrunched.com
  - Michael Arrington
  “The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
  Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson has lied about receiving a computer science degree. Or at any rate he’s never corrected his biographical information that includes that information, and it’s nearly impossible to believe that he simply never noticed it.
  The allegation was first raised by Third Point LLC, a Yahoo shareholder, in a letter to the board of directors earlier today (embedded here).
  Yahoo confirmed the accuracy of …  show all text
• LinkedIn Acquires Professional Content Sharing Platform SlideShare For $119M | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  - Leena Rao
  

  LinkedIn has just acquired professional content sharing platform SlideShare for $119 million in cash and stock. We’ve pasted the release below.
  SlideShare is a sharing platform for business documents, videos and presentations. SlideShare lets anyone share presentations and video and also serves as a social discovery platform for users to find relevant content and connect with other members who share similar interests. The company also has a huge enterprise following, and companies like IBM and …  show all text

Tech news – May 1st 2012 to May 3rd 2012:

• Evernote Raises $70M At A $1B Valuation To Prep For An IPO, And The Next 100 Years | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  

  It's official. To transition from a startup into a late-stage company that aims to be around for 100 years, Evernote today confirms it's raised a $70 million Series D round of funding at a $1 billion valuation.  Meritech Capital and CBC Capital were chosen to lead the round because they're the firms that can help Evernote prepare for an eventual IPO.Evernote doesn't need the money. It still has much of the $96 million that it's raised to date in the bank plus over one million paying customers o…
• How To Fix Popchips’ Racist Ad Campaign – Anil Dash –
  dashes.com
  - Anil
  Update: I just got off the phone with Popchips founder Keith Belling, who was sincere and contrite as he offered a thoughtful, apologetic response that indicates he understood much of what I was trying to say here. I'm cautiously optimistic to see the company's response, and willing to give them time to do it properly. Maybe we can get a good result.

  I like Popchips; I probably eat them once a week. Well, I used to. But they stopped that habit, and revealed a much larger, more complex problem…  show all text
• Google is making a huge and annoying mistake. – WWdN: In Exile –
  wilwheaton.typepad.com
  - Wil Wheaton
  

  I like Google Plus. Some of the smartest people I've ever read are on Google Plus, and the Hangout is amazing.
  But Google is doing everything it can to force Google Plus on everyone, and it's pissing me off.
  Yesterday, I tried to like a video on YouTube. I wasn't signed in to my Google Plus account, and this is what I saw:
  Where the thumbs up and thumbs down used to be, there is now a big G+ Like button. When you go anywhere near it, you get a little popup that tells you to "upgrade to Google…  show all text
• just tristan. – what’s next. –
  justtristan.com
  Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you nail your dream job. It happened to me a little over two and a half years ago when I walked onto the 5th floor at 36 Cooper Square. From day one, the opportunity at foursquare enabled me to think big, take risks, re-imagine what’s possible … and following an incredible journey, I have decided to resign from foursquare to pursue my next big dream. The past two and a half years spent with the foursquare team have been nothing less than life-changing and it  show all text
• Bing Strips Down Results Page To Make Google Look Like “Search Overload” | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  - Josh Constine
  

  While Google keeps cramming its search results pages full of tools and social content, today Bing confirmed with me the full roll out a redesigned search results page that completely clears the left sidebar, and replaces the tabbed header with a cleaner set of links. Bing’s Facebook integration is also more subtle now, instead of plastering names and faces beneath Liked results.
  This more relaxing, dare I say zen, design gives Google a more claustrophobic and exhausting feel by comparison. Micr…  show all text
• Mozilla Slams CISPA, Breaking Silicon Valley’s Silence On Cybersecurity Bill – Forbes –
  forbes.com
  

  While the Internet has been bristling with anger over the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the Internet industry has been either silent or quietly supportive of the controversial bill. With one exception. Late Tuesday, Mozilla's Privacy and Public Policy lead sent me the following statement: While we wholeheartedly support a [...]
• Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox. The horror. « Dropbox Forums –
  forums.dropbox.com
• Android Ported to C# – Xamarin –
  blog.xamarin.com
  - Miguel
  

  Oracle and Google are currently in a $1 billion wrestling match over Google’s use of Java in Android.
  But Java is not the only way to build native apps on Android. In fact, it’s not even the best way: we have been offering C# to Android developers as a high-performance, low-battery consuming alternative to Java. Our platform, Mono, is an open source implementation of the .NET framework that allows developers to write their code using C# while running on top of the Java-powered operating system,…  show all text
• Twitter Blog: Discover better stories –
  blog.twitter.com
  - twitter
  

  The Discover tab makes it easy to discover information that matters to you without having to follow additional accounts. Starting today, the Discover tab will begin to surface content that is even more personalized and meaningful to you. We’ve incorporated additional personalization signals to select Discover stories, including Tweets that are popular among the people you follow and the folks they follow. The Discover tab’s new design shows who tweeted about particular stories. You can click “…  show all text
• Facebook Is Urging Members to Add Organ Donor Status –
  nytimes.com
  - By MATT RICHTEL and KEVIN SACK
  In a rare foray into social engineering, Facebook announced a plan to encourage users to list their donor status on their pages, a move that organ transplant experts are calling historic.

Tech news – April 28th 2012 to May 1st 2012:

• Top Startup Incubators And Accelerators: Y Combinator Tops With $7.8 Billion In Value – Forbes-
  forbes.com
  

  Incubators and accelerators are popular destinations for new entrepreneurs. Forbes ranks the top tech incubators in the U.S.
• The Digg Team Is Going To WaPo, But The Assets Aren’t | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - Anthony Ha
  

  Has The Washington Post acquired Digg, as reported in The Next Web? Sort of.
  We’re hearing that the Post has hired the Digg team, but is not acquiring the site or the technology. In other words, this is a talent acquisition, and in fact Digg properties, patents, and assets are still for sale.
  TheNextWeb’s report provoked some “what the hell?” reactions on Twitter, but a talent acquisition makes a little more sense. The Post isn’t trying to revive a struggling social news site. Instead, it’s rec…  show all text
• I’m leaving the internet for a year | The Verge-
  theverge.com
  

  The Verge is a technology-focused news publication founded in 2011 by Joshua Topolsky and Marty Moe in partnership with Vox Media and its CEO Jim Bankoff. The Verge’s mission is to offer breaking news coverage and in-depth reporting, product information, and community content via a unified, modern platform.
• Start-Ups Look to the Crowd-
  nytimes.com
  - By JENNA WORTHAM
  

  The Pebble, a watch that is being developed to work with the iPhone, has raised more than $7 million in financing on Kickstarter, a case that has signified the site’s coming of age.
• Mark Zuckerberg Joins Viddy: Here Comes the Speculation-
  thenextweb.com
  

  Viddy just got an all-star new member after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg signed up to the mobile video app service.
• How Much Revenue Does It Take To Be A $1B Public Company? | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - Contributor
  

  Editor’s note: Patrick Moran is an executive at New Relic, a SaaS web app performance company with over 21,000 active customers. Follow him on Twitter @patrickmoran.
  With all the chatter about Billion dollar valuations — like Instagram, Evernote, Splunk —  combined with recent S1 filings and IPOs, the topic of tech company valuation is coming to the forefront of people’s minds. Specifically related to the software industry, the growing number of SaaS IPO candidates of late is signaling an impor…  show all text
• Disruptions: Start-Ups Keep Revenue at Zero to Cash In on Acquisition – NYTimes.com-
  bits.blogs.nytimes.com
  - By NICK BILTON
  

  Small start-ups that make money often find it difficult to recruit additional investment. By keeping their revenue at zero, they can pluck a projected valuation out of thin air.
• Is it a tech bubble? – Chris Dixon-
• cdixon.org
  - chris
  Every week a “we are in a tech bubble” article seems to come out in a major newspaper or blog. People who argue we aren’t in a bubble are casually dismissed as promoting their own interests. I’d argue the situation is far more nuanced and that people who engage in this debate should consider the following:
  1) Public tech companies: Anyone with a basic understanding of finance would have trouble arguing many large public tech companies are trading at “bubble valuations” – e.g. Apple (14 P/E), Go…  show all text
• How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Global Taxes-
• nytimes.com
  - By CHARLES DUHIGG and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
  

  Apple serves as a window on how technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy.

Tech news – April 25th 2012 to April 28th 2012:

• The Winklevoss Twins Are Now VCs: “We Think The Cloud Is Going To Be Huge” | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  - Colleen Taylor
  

  It’s a Friday afternoon (in some parts of the world, at least), so go ahead — take a nice long drink of your favorite alcoholic beverage. If you’re like me, you’ll need it to make it through the CNBC interview with the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss that aired today. It is embedded above for your viewing pleasure, complete with CNBC reporters asking for the Winklevii’s autographs and all. Really, drink up.
  Anyway. On air today, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin talked with everyone’s favorite Harvard gra…  show all text
• Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing | Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) –
  andrewchenblog.com
  - Andrew Chen
  

  YouTube didn’t need ads to spread itself – instead it used embeds. Ad via Laughing Squid
  The rise of the Growth Hacker The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor,…  show all text
• All-Star Cast Invests 750K In Ben Huh And Matt Galligan’s Mobile News Startup Circa | TechCrunch –
  techcrunch.com
  - Alexia Tsotsis
  

  SimpleGeo’s Matt Galligan and Icanhascheezburger’s Ben Huh have teamed up to change the way people consume news via mobile. Their startup Circa, which boasts a newsworthy list of advisors like former Digg CEO Jay Adelson, has just raised 750K in seed funding from eonCapital, Quotidian Ventures, Techstars’ David Cohen and David Tisch, Tumblr’s David Karp, Eric Norlin’s SK Ventures, Manesh Arora, Pedro Torres-Picon, Rick Webb, Scott Belsky and Soraya Darabi.
  “40% of our current funding is provided  show all text
• Sneak attack: surprise amendment makes CISPA worse, then it is voted and passed a day ahead of schedule. Congress just deleted the Fourth Amendment – Boing Boing –
  boingboing.net
  - Cory Doctorow
  

  In a sneak attack, the vote on CISPA (America's far-reaching, invasive Internet surveillance bill) was pushed up by a day. The bill was hastily amended, making it much worse, then passed on a rushed vote. Techdirt's Leigh Beadon does a very good job of explaining what just happened to America:
  Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for "cybersecurity" or "national security" purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been a…  show all text
• Insanity: CISPA Just Got Way Worse, And Then Passed On Rushed Vote | Techdirt –
  techdirt.com
  

  Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today—and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part.The vote…
• Twitter Blog: More to discover on our latest iPhone, Android apps –
  blog.twitter.com
  - twitter
  

  Today you can download new versions of Twitter for iPhone in the App Store and Twitter for Android in Google Play. These updates make it easier to find out what’s happening on Twitter with improvements to discover, search and notifications. Discover The Discover tab helps you find interesting and timely content that matters to you. With this update, you can see Activity on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. Activity is a stream of updates that shows which Tweets are favorited or retwe…  show all text
• Why Anonymity Matters –
  gawker.com
  

  Gawker Media is flying in the face of conventional media wisdom. While other outlets are doing away with anonymity, we've built anonymous accounts into our new comment system. We'll accept some disorder if that's the price of freedom in one's personal life, in politics and the press.
• TNW 2012 – Powered by Mobypicture –
  now.thenextweb.com
  
• The LinkedIn Blog » Introducing LinkedIn for iPad –
  blog.linkedin.com
• Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity – The Term Sheet: Fortune’s deals blog Term Sheet –
  finance.fortune.cnn.com
  - Dan Primack
  

  A different type of return on investment
  Venture capital firm makes a bold philanthropic pledge.
  FORTUNE — The general partners of Andreessen Horowitz have pledged to donate at least half of their future venture capital earnings to philanthropic causes. And, to begin, they have sprinkled $1 million on Silicon Valley nonprofits that focus on everything from urban forestry to homeless families.
  Here's how it will work: Each of Andreessen Horowitz's six general partners — Marc Andreessen, Ben Ho…  show all text
• Ousted Chinese Leader Is Said to Have Spied on Other Top Officials –
  nytimes.com
  - By JONATHAN ANSFIELD and IAN JOHNSON
  

  Bo Xilai was toppled amid accusations his wife arranged the killing of a British businessman, but hidden wiretapping may have been another compelling reason party officials turned on him.

Tech news – April 23rd 2012 to April 25th 2012:

• What Your Klout Score Really Means | Epicenter | Wired.com –
  wired.com
  - Seth Stevenson
  Photo: Garry McLeod
  Last spring Sam Fiorella was recruited for a VP position at a large Toronto marketing agency. With 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford, and Kraft, Fiorella felt confident in his qualifications. But midway through the interview, he was caught off guard when his interviewer asked him for his Klout score. Fiorella hesitated awkwardly before confessing that he had no idea what a Klout score was.

  Also in this issue
  The Man Who Makes the Future
  How …  show all text
• WordPress.com — Get a Free Blog Here –
  wordpress.com
  
• Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter? | Gadget Lab | Wired.com –
  wired.com
• Who owns your files on Google Drive? | Internet & Media – CNET News –
  news.cnet.com
  - Zack Whittaker
  

  Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive allow you to retain your copyright and IP rights to the work you upload to the service, but Google Drive takes everything you own. [Read more]
• How far does Google Drive’s terms go in ‘owning’ your files? | ZDNet –
  zdnet.com
  - Zack Whittaker
  

  Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive allows you to retain your copyright and IP rights to the work you upload to the service. Google Drive, however, takes everything you own.
• Exclusive: Bebo founders, shareholders sue owner for ‘destroying’ site — paidContent –
  paidcontent.org
  - Robert Andrews
  

  Bebo, which has hit one rocky patch after another the past few years, now has new troubles. The social network’s founders and some other shareholders are suing its current owner, alleging fraud.
  Original co-founders Michael and Xochi Birch’s MXB Holdings, Ron Conway’s SV Angel investment vehicle, TV executive Michael Jackson and entrepreneur Richard Hecker have filed suit against Criterion Capital Partners (CCP), which took Bebo off AOL’s hands in June 2010, and its CEO Adam Levin.
  The quartet,  show all text
• This is the web right now – The Oatmeal –
  theoatmeal.com
  - Matthew Inman
  

  The State of the Web – Spring 2012
  View
• Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Drive… yes, really –
  googleblog.blogspot.com
  - A Googler
  

  Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist. Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PD…  show all text
• Log In | Facebook –
  facebook.com
  Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
• Modern Web Development –
  jtaby.com
  The blog post is the first in a series of posts that attempts to outline what a modern web development toolchain looks like and how to use the best-of-breed tools for efficient, effective development. Part two will outline how to use to set up your Terminal, zsh, and vim
  The mobile landscape today is all but monopolized by WebKit, as a result, most of the tooling and infrastructure to support mobile web development on the frontend is taking place in the WebKit Inspector, so I’ll focus on it, and  show all text

Tech news – April 20th 2012 to April 23rd 2012:

• The Flight From Conversation –
  nytimes.com
  - By SHERRY TURKLE
  We use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right: the Goldilocks effect.
• Instagram // ben’s blog –
  bhorowitz.com
  - Ben Horowitz
  Now what the hell is you lookin’ for? Can’t a young man get money anymore? Let my pants sag down to the floor Really do it matter as long as I score? —Mase, Lookin’ at me
  Two years ago we invested $250,000 in Instagram. Thanks to the spectacular vision and effort of Kevin Systrom and the Instagram team, the investment will be worth $78,000,000 when the Faceboook acquisition closes. The work that Kevin and team did will go down as legend in the industry and we thank them immensely. We also thank  show all text
• Wal-Mart Hushed Up a Vast Mexican Bribery Case –
  nytimes.com
  - By DAVID BARSTOW
  

  Confronted with evidence of widespread corruption in Mexico, top Wal-Mart executives focused more on damage control than on rooting out wrongdoing, an examination by The New York Times found.
• The day software ate Cisco | ZDNet –
  zdnet.com
  - Phil Wainewright
  

  It hasn’t happened yet. It’s another of my predictions. But it suddenly struck me this week, as I read about the latest developments in cloud networking. Five or so years from now, the day will come when Cisco will have shrunken almost to nothing, eaten by software.
  Marc Andreessen’s phrase, “software is eating the world,” coined for a Wall Street Journal article last August, succinctly captures the single most important trend in our world today — not only in computing but in the entire field of  show all text
• http://cdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf –
  cdn.flamehaus.com
• The Top of My Todo List –
  paulgraham.com
• How Andreessen Horowitz Bunted on an Instagram Investment – NYTimes.com –
  bits.blogs.nytimes.com
  - By NICOLE PERLROTH
  

  Three years into his new gig as a venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen has already scored big wins on his investments in Skype, LinkedIn and, if all goes well, Twitter. But he does not always win. Here is the tale of how one of Silicon Valley's most prominent investors bunted on Instagram.
• Reuters applies foreign exchange rate to 50 Cent. He is now k… on Twitpic –
  twitpic.com
  
• Apple Marketing SVP Phil Schiller dumps Instagram over expansion to Android | 9to5Mac | Apple Intelligence –
  9to5mac.com
  - 9to5Mac
  

  Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is not the only photo-loving business executive upset by Instagram in recent weeks. While Dorsey stopped posting photos from his Instagram after Facebook reportedly beat his Twitter to an acquisition of Instagram, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller quit his Instagram for another reason: Android.
  A reader noticed that Schiller had deleted his Instagram account – which was “@schiller” – and then reached out to Apple’s most visible public speaker by Twitter for  show all text
• Instagram Has ‘Jumped the Shark,’ Says Top Apple Exec [UPDATED] –
  mashable.com
  - Chris Taylor
  

  The $1 billion photo-sharing app Instagram — once named “app of the year” by Apple — has now “jumped the shark,” according to Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller.
  And not only is Schiller trashing the service (in a brief message to Apple enthusiast Clayton Braasch), he has also deleted his Instagram account (@schiller) entirely (much like some thousands of other users.)
  What got Schiller so upset? Not the billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook, apparently. “It ‘jumped the shark’ when it went …  show all text

Are you using WordPress? Have you ever thought about cross posting a post you make on Google Plus over to your blog? It is an interesting idea. Many bloggers write their content and then link to it but Google Plus could be the source of your post if you want.
I have done this a couple times and it works pretty well. There are some caveats and things you need to do to make things work correctly. In a nutshell the magic involves patching together: proper post formatting, RSS and, the IFTTT (If this then that) service.
Proper formatting and RSS
First, we need to get your Google+ feed into RSS. That's possible but the thing is, there isn’t the notion of a title on your Google+ post. Because of this, the RSS generators just shove some text from the beginning of your post into the title field. That isn't going to work for us because we need a title for our blog post. Fortunatly I figured this out previously. I wrote here: http://www.techlifeweb.com/2012/03/18/google-rss/ about a Yahoo Pipe I created that uses the unique feature of bolding the first few words and turns them into the Title of your RSS feed entry. See that post for more details and a link to the Yahoo Pipe, you are going to need it.
IFTTT
Silly name for a very useful tool for gluing together different services. Go to http://ifttt.com and join if you haven't already. If you are new, IFTTT calls different services (for example, RSS, Twitter, Facebook) Channels. You create a Task to link different Channels together. You'll need to create a Channel for your WordPress blog. Click Get Channels and then click on the WordPress icon. Follow the prompts and enter the details. It is pretty straight forward. Side note: you are giving a service access to post for you. If you and the administrator on your blog and haven't yet, you should set up another user on your blog to make these posts. I don't recommend giving some web service full admin access to you blog!
OK, so assuming you now have your Google+ RSS feed from the Yahoo Pipe and you have enabled your WP Channel on IFTTT , you can use my Recipe (Recipes are tasks you have created and then shared with others) to build the bridge. Here is a link to my Google+ to WordPress Recipe: http://ifttt.com/recipes/31401
You'll see that, for this task, I require a Keyword. This way, not everything gets cross posted to my blog, only those things I choose to post by adding something unique like #tlw. In theory, you could use this method for different blogs and use different keywords to send your posts where ever you want.

Google+ RSS
Getting a nice clean RSS feed from Google Plus aka Google+