TechLifeWeb

What I’m reading and finding for February 16th 2012 through February 21st 2012:

• From Twitter – Why I’ve Switched from Browser-Based Apps Back to Native Software on the Desktop – Tested http://t.co/ekRHYz6L
• From Twitter – Canonical Unveils Deeply Integrated Ubuntu For Android, Mixes Phones With Desktops http://t.co/nIC7SVuo
• How Forbes Stole A New York Times Article And Got All The Traffic-
  nickoneill.com
  

  All it took was a compelling title: ‘How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did’
• From Twitter – Settlement reached in iPhone 4 ‘antennagate’ case, every US customer gets $15 or a bumper http://t.co/V5pfyo5A
• Retailers Shut Facebook Storefonts Amid Apathy – Bloomberg-
  bloomberg.com
  

  Last April, Gamestop Corp. opened a store on Facebook to generate sales among the 3.5 million-plus customers who’d declared themselves “fans” of the video game retailer. Six months later, the store was quietly shuttered.
• How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did – Forbes-
  forbes.com
  

  Target has perfected the technique of analyzing consumers’ shopping habits to figure out who’s pregnant. How can they send customers congratulatory coupons without freaking them out?
• From Twitter – Microsoft launches msnNOW, tracking trends using data from Facebook, Twitter, Bing http://t.co/Kf14CVvL
• Twitter stores full iPhone contact list for 18 months, after scan – latimes.com-
  latimes.com
  

What I’m reading and finding for January 31st 2012 through February 3rd 2012:

• From Founders to Decorators, Facebook Riches-
  nytimes.com
  - By NICK BILTON and EVELYN M. RUSLI
  

  Facebook’s public offering will make a lot of billionaires and millionaires, some of them prominent people and others not.
• Registration Statement on Form S-1-
  sec.gov
• Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Dropbox Is The Best Overall Startup | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - Josh Constine
  

  This year’s fifth annual Crunchies Awards has just finished up at the classy Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, and it was a smashing success. We poked fun #humblebraggers, got cussed at by Siri, honored former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, and gave wild monkey trophies to tech’s greatest innovators. If you missed the event or our livestream, check out the full list of nominees and winners below.
  The world owes a thank you to Jack Dorsey, the “Founder Of The Year” and leader of Twitter, win…  show all text
• Bowing to anti-abortion politics, breast cancer charity cuts funds for screenings at Planned Parenthood – Boing Boing-
  boingboing.net
  - Xeni Jardin
  

  Collateral damage in the abortion wars, and bad news for working class and low-income women who rely on Planned Parenthood clinics for breast cancer and cervical cancer screening services. The Susan G. Komen Foundation, America’s largest and best-funded cancer charity, is reportedly cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, in response to pressure from anti-women’s health political groups.
  Planned Parenthood provides a wide array of women’s health services, including mammograms and cancer screenin…  show all text
• From Twitter – (RePress, An Internet Censorship Defeating Plugin For WordPress) http://t.co/xPHGnRx8
• Letters of Note: To My Old Master-
  lettersofnote.com
  - Shaun Usher
  In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated). Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I’ll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do…  show all text
• From Twitter – A working group is pitching a system that will allow providers to authenticate emails better. http://t.co/jqnsSizH

What I’m reading and finding for January 23rd 2012 through January 28th 2012:

• At Twitter, The Future is You!-
  youtube.com
• Dear Google: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You Care About Search-
  searchengineland.com
  - Danny Sullivan
  

  The debate about what should — and shouldn’t — show in a Google search result for “santorum” has been well-documented, at this point. But I’d like to use this now famous search to illustrate something else: how it appears Google is taking its eye off the ball of… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
• State of the Union 2012 | The White House-
  whitehouse.gov
  WhiteHouse.gov presents your portal to the 2012 State of the Union Address. Watch, Discuss, and Engage all week long
• Facebook Timeline Now Pushed To Everyone, Users Get A Week To Clean Up Profiles | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  

  You can run, but you can’t hide. Facebook’s biggest user interface overhaul since the Wall, the Facebook Timeline, is now becoming mandatory for all users. According to the company, over the next few weeks, everyone will get the new Timeline. And here’s the important part: when you do, you’ll have just seven days to preview what’s there now, and hide anything you don’t want others to see.
• Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops | Privacy Inc. – CNET News-
  news.cnet.com
  - Declan McCullagh
  

  Colorado federal judge gives Ramona Fricosu until February 21 to decrypt her PGP Desktop-encrypted Toshiba laptop–or face the consequences.
• From Twitter – http://t.co/M6LVsDBR Google+ Relaxes Real Name Policy, Still Prefers ‘Frank Ricard’ Over ‘Frank the Tank’
• From Twitter – RT @bjschoneCheck out this site before you build anything with HTML5. Very helpful. http://t.co/Y0maLcvZ

What I’m reading and finding for January 2nd 2012 through January 5th 2012:

• From Twitter – Give your Android device instant access to all your Wi-Fi spots | TechRepublic http://t.co/HjZbEHcA
• From Twitter – http://t.co/lNDYy0nh Microsoft Secures Patent for Game Console DVRs
• IFTTT, A Glue Gun For Sticking The Web Together, Raises $1.5M Seed Round From Top Investors | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - Eric Eldon
  

  Want to instantly save all your Instagram photos to Dropbox when you take them? What about automatically updating your Twitter profile when you update your Facebook profile? Or, what about sharing any article you read in Read It Later to Twitter and Facebook, staggered by time via Buffer? A small bootstrapped startup called If This Then That has abstracted a simple set of tools to help you do each of these things, and many more.
  And now it’s raised a big seed round of more than $1.5 million from  show all text
• Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore. It’s Too Crowded. « Uncrunched-
  uncrunched.com
  - Michael Arrington
  

  A year ago Steven Levy suggested that Facebook should give us each a single “friend-list do-over.”
  A lot of commenters challenged him. “Grow some balls and just unfriend people,” said one of the more even tempered readers. Another – “These comments are too constructive. Someone should just call this guy an idiot.”
  Steven probably didn’t see that criticism coming, because he probably assumed people understand how difficult it is to unfriend people on Facebook at any sort of scale. You have to fi…  show all text
• Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome-
  searchengineland.com
  - Danny Sullivan
  

  Google, the company that has been fighting against paid links and “thin” content, seems to be behind a campaign that’s generating both on behalf of its Chrome browser. File this under “what were they thinking.” “This Post Sponsored By Google” Aaron Wall… Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
• Code Year-
  codeyear.com
  

What I’m reading and finding for December 29th 2011 through December 31st 2011:

• From Twitter – Josh Sullivan Css3 progress bars http://t.co/SwY79m7G
• From Twitter – Dropbox Automator Is Like IFTTT For Dropbox | TechCrunch http://t.co/tV4rbQh7
• From Twitter – http://t.co/6EqRQcqO Facebook Releases Messenger for Windows
• BBC News – Hackers plan space satellites to combat censorship-
  bbc.co.uk
  

  Hackers unveil plans to build space satellites and a ground network of tracking stations to combat censorship of the internet.
• Presidential Candidate Ron Paul Slams SOPA | TorrentFreak-
  torrentfreak.com
  A few days before the election circus in the US will start with the Iowa’s caucus, presidential candidate Ron Paul made a comment on the pending SOPA bill “They want to take over the Internet,” he said. “Can you imagine how much we’re going to be curtailed in the spreading of out information if we [...]
• From Twitter – http://t.co/XsSd9D81 Massive solar storm ‘could knock out radio signals’ over next three days
• From Twitter – Cool RT @scienceNew island forms in the Red Sea http://t.co/kZYziCu6

What I’m reading and finding for December 3rd 2011 through December 6th 2011:

• CATS 1, KIDS 0 | Regretsy-
  regretsy.com
  - Helen Killer
  

  As you know, we have been trying to buy Christmas presents for kids in the Regretsy community.
  We took many applications, vetted them carefully and set about creating a giant gift exchange program, where you could buy a gift for the over 200 children we’re helping.
  We raised so much money that we found ourselves in a position of not just being able to send toys, but to send a monetary gift to the families as well. We hoped it might help them make their holiday dinners more special, or maybe pay…  show all text
• From Twitter – Amazing set of macro-photographs of insects. http://t.co/PmPgwV08
• Klout, My Story & Why Opting Out Was My Only Choice | Liz Strauss at Successful Blog-
  successful-blog.com
  - ME Liz Strauss
  

  It’s My StoryWhen I was growing up, what we knew about each other wasn’t called data. It was called interaction, stories, and information. It came in the form of experience and shared events, gossip and oral history, and reports and report cards. Not every story told about us was unbiased, accurate, or even true.
  In my youngest years, my dad taught me three guiding principles about such stories:
  Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.
  Consider the reliability of the so…  show all text

• From Twitter – Facebook Utterly Dominates Web Referrals. Article by Larry Seltzer. http://t.co/2PdrOIan
• The New Digital Divide-
  nytimes.com
  - By SUSAN P. CRAWFORD
  

  Most Americans can get online. But too many can’t afford high-speed access.
• Firefox faces uncertain future as Google deal apparently ends | ZDNet-
  zdnet.com
  - Ed Bott
  

  It hasn’t been a good year for Firefox. Mozilla has lost share to Google, it’s lost the loyalty of enterprise customers, and it’s lost key talent. And a deal with Google that supplied 84% of its revenue last year was scheduled to end in November. Can Firefox avoid a slide into irrelevance?
• From Twitter – 3d printer helps grow new bones http://t.co/HY4GF1Jf

What I’m reading and finding for December 1st 2011 through December 3rd 2011:

• Facebook acquires Gowalla to boost Timeline team – Dec. 2, 2011-
  money.cnn.com
  
• From Twitter – I never used Gowalla but here is how to delete your account if you don’t want Facebook to have it. http://t.co/1tM4bhX5
• You’re Not As Busy As You Think-
  chrisbrogan.com
  - ceb
  

  In many ways, I’m writing this post to myself. I had a very interesting conversation with my shrink the other day, wherein which he was calling me out on some of my less-attractive behaviors. He said to me, “Maybe you don’t do those things because you think you’re too busy and too needed elsewhere to do them.” (In this instance, the “things” were all the tasks I can’t seem to master in life, like paying bills on time.)
  What’s interesting is that the conversation resonated with a few others I’d …  show all text
• From Twitter – Cleaning Carrier IQ off your iPhone or Android. http://t.co/IlXEAGM2
• YouTube’s New Homepage Goes Social With Algorithmic Feed, Emphasis On Google+ And Facebook | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - Eric Eldon
  

  YouTube is launching what the company calls the biggest redesign in its history today, including sweeping changes to its homepage and channel pages. The goal is better personalized video discovery and viewing, with a notable emphasis on social features. Think of the changes as the latest example of Google’s campaign to create a unified social layer for all of its products.
  The new homepage looks a lot like Facebook, or Google+ for that matter. An activity feed view dominates the middle of the p…  show all text
• From Twitter – How to turn off Carrier IQ on your iPhone – Computerworld http://t.co/6U6DwvKR
• From Twitter – Nat. Geographic picks the best space pictures of 2011. http://t.co/Kt3Wzknw

What I’m reading and finding for November 28th 2011 through November 30th 2011:

• Facebook’s Settlement With FTC Confirmed: Privacy Changes Must Be Opt In – UPDATED | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  

  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg just issued a statement on the Facebook Blog confirming that his company has settled with the FTC over charges that it has violated user privacy over the years. Facebook is now “required to obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences”, effectively making opt in all future privacy control changes to the audience of previously shared data or content. Facebook must also submit to privacy audits every 2 y…
• Watch a VC use my name to sell a con. | jwz-
  jwz.org
  - jwz
  

  Normally I just ignore navel-gazing tech-industry articles like this, but people keep sending it to me, so I guess this guy is famous or something. Michael Arrington posted this article, “Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining” which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary.
  He’s trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don’t do that, y…  show all text
• From Twitter – Windows phone demo on your current phone RT @ChrisPirilloTry this on your Android or iPhone http://t.co/CYXviGiu
• Facebook Targeting IPO For Between April and June 2012 – WSJ.com-
  online.wsj.com
  

  Facebook is targeting dates between April and June 2012 for an initial public offering of its stock. The company is exploring raising $10 billion in an IPO that could value Facebook at more than $100 billion.
• From Twitter – http://t.co/5TpJJcNC Microsoft Buys VideoSurf to Improve Video Search on Xbox Live
• From Twitter – http://t.co/GAPvOHJL Introducing the World’s First USB 3.0 to HDMI Device

What I’m reading and finding for November 20th 2011 through November 22nd 2011:

• The Facebook Phone is Real, and Its Name is Buffy – Liz Gannes and Ina Fried – Mobile – AllThingsD-
  allthingsd.com
  - Liz Gannes and Ina Fried
  

  This is the first in a series of posts this week about the Facebook phone.
  After years of considering how to best get into the phone business, Facebook has tapped Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC to build a smartphone that has the social network integrated at the core of its being.
  Code-named “Buffy,” after the television vampire slayer, the phone is planned to run on a modified version of Android that Facebook has tweaked heavily to deeply integrate its services, as well as to support HTML5 as a …  show all text
• Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it. – Anil Dash-
  dashes.com
  - Anil
  

  Facebook has moved from merely being a walled garden into openly attacking its users’ ability and willingness to navigate the rest of the web. The evidence that this is true even for sites which embrace Facebook technologies is overwhelming, and the net result is that Facebook is gaslighting users into believing that visiting the web is dangerous or threatening.
  In this post I intend to not only document the practices which enable this attack, but to also propose a remedy.
  1. You Cannot Bring Y…  show all text
• From Twitter – http://t.co/7RdssR0W Kindle Fire app sideloading in 3 easy steps
• Mashable Fires Editor-at-Large Ben Parr – John Murrell – News – AllThingsD-
  allthingsd.com
  - John Murrell
  

  Tech news site Mashable and its editor-at-large, Ben Parr, have parted ways under circumstances that apparently were less than amicable. The writer and entrepreneur, who had worked for the site since 2008, was fired, according to a brief Mashable statement.
  Word of Parr’s departure began to bubble out late Sunday, when mail to his Mashable address started kicking back an automated “no longer here” response, and his bio page was edited to identify him as “the former editor-at-large.”
  Parr then c…  show all text
• The Facebook Freaky Line — Scobleizer-
  scobleizer.com
  - Robert Scoble
  

  It seems everyone is getting freaked out by Facebook once again. Molly Wood at CNET says that Facebook’s automatic sharing features are ruining sharing. That got everyone to pile on over on Techmeme.
  First, what does this automatic sharing feature (otherwise known as “frictionless sharing”) do? Well, every time I play a song on Spotify, for instance, it tells everyone something like “Robert Scoble is listening to Skrillex on Spotify.” On Facebook’s web interface that shows up over on the right …  show all text
• From Twitter – Walkable Roller-Coaster Sculpture Opens in Germany | Gadget Lab | http://t.co/bV2UnqPJ http://t.co/7mlFTP6h
• From Twitter – Missed Tech.Days Online Last Thursday? Get the Recordings Here – UK TechNet – Site Home – TechNet Blogs http://t.co/kWYYjGzF

What I’m reading and finding for November 16th 2011 through November 18th 2011:

• Google+ continues battle with fading user interest, data say – latimes.com-
  latimesblogs.latimes.com
  - David Sarno
  

  One of technology’s big unresolved dramas is whether Google can still cut into the giant social networking lead now held by rival Facebook — or if its Google+ service is already sunk.
  Data on the subject have been sparse, with much of the more recent information coming from traffic measurement firm Experian Hitwise. Hitwise has tended to release its numbers after Google+ has had a good week or two. Last week, for instance, was the site’s third-biggest since launch, drawing nearly 7 million vis…  show all text
• From Twitter – RT @northlightUSB Stick Contains Dual-Core Computer, Turns Any Screen Into an Android Station http://t.co/hkV6bCku / Interesting.
• From Twitter – http://t.co/9hH3fxb0 Jane Austen ‘died from arsenic poisoning’
• Protect The Internet-
  tumblr.com
• American Censorship Day November 16 – Join the fight to stop SOPA-
  americancensorship.org
  

  A bill that is very likely to pass will let government and corporations censor the internet, take down sites at the behest of corporations. My favorite sites and friends have to step up now to help stop it, or it passes: http://americancensorship.org
• From Twitter – Stanford’s Free Developing Apps for iPhone and iPad http://t.co/rFRiV32L
• Europe Bans X-Ray Body Scanners Used at U.S. Airports – ProPublica-
  propublica.org
  

  by Michael Grabell
  The European Union on Monday prohibited the use of X-ray body scanners in European airports, parting ways with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which has deployed hundreds of the scanners as a way to screen millions of airline passengers for explosives hidden under clothing.
  The European Commission, which enforces common policies of the EU’s 27 member countries, adopted the rule “in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens’ health and safety.”
  As a ProPublica/…  show all text