TechLifeWeb

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 6th 2012 through January 8th 2012:

• Microsoft: It’s business as usual with Windows Phone updates | ZDNet-
  zdnet.com
  - Mary Jo Foley
  

  ‘Nothing has changed in regard to how we work with carriers to deliver Windows Phone updates to our customers,’ maintained a Microsoft official following a change in Microsoft’s update disclosure policy.
• From Twitter – http://t.co/VcK99Mko New Power-Saving DevSleep Feature Added To SATA Specification
• From Twitter – Virtualizing storage for scale, resiliency, and efficiency – Building Windows 8 – Site Home – MSDN Blogs http://t.co/QjJB5iWq
• From Twitter – http://t.co/at6cYcsK ‘Lost Antarctic World’ Unknown to Science Discovered
• Crunchies 2011 – Vote now for your favorite companies, products and people-
  crunchies2011.techcrunch.com
  
• You are what you curate: why Pinterest is hawt — Tech News and Analysis-
  gigaom.com
  

  Pinterest is one of the hottest startups around these days and represents the latest buzzword in the Valley: curation. Here are some of my thoughts on why Pinterest and other such companies are getting attention and gaining traction with younger Internet users.

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 26th 2011 through December 29th 2011:

• From Twitter – Amazon price tracker. Looks pretty cool if you like Amazon and can wait for a price drop. https //t.co/mqDilcz2
• Oh No! Blogging is REALLY, REALLY dead this time!!!!!! | gapingvoid-
  gapingvoid.com
  - Hugh MacLeod
  

  [Cartoon first published circa 2005 etc.]
  So uber-famous-corporate-blogger-ninja-rockstar Jerimiah Owyang blogged about The Golden Age of Tech Blogging being over. His colleague, my friend, Brian Solis doesn’t agree. Lots of other people are yakkin’ about it as well, it seems. I guess that’s a good thing. Here are my thoughts:
  1. Time to quote Shirky YET AGAIN: “So for­get about blogs and blog­gers and blog­ging and focus on this — the cost and dif­fi­culty of publishing abso­lu­tely anything, …  show all text
• From Twitter – http://t.co/7il4jjm2 Major Flaw in Wi-Fi Protected Access Discovered
• From Twitter – http://t.co/Y3zQPdjh comScore U.S. Online Holiday Spending Tops $35 Billion
• End of an Era: The Golden Age of Tech Blogging is Over « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing-
  web-strategist.com
  - jeremiah_owyang
  

  That’s right. We’re at the end of an important period. The tech blogosphere as we know it, is over.
  Four Trends Show the End of this Era: Like the film industry, the Golden Era is the emergence period, when fresh innovation in a new medium is born. New techniques, revolutionary content, and different business models emerge as innovators pioneer a new medium. I first had this discussion with Chris Saad, which triggered some thinking on my end. I asked some of the foremost tech blogger of  their …  show all text
• GoDaddy: A glimpse of the Internet under SOPA – David Rusenko-
  david.weebly.com
  

  This story has never been told, and it’s incredibly important to tell it today; it’s a perfect example of what might come to be if SOPA becomes law — a shoot first, question later mentality held by GoDaddy. Want to know what the world would be like under SOPA? Read on. Sometime in 2009, Weebly was starting to gain momentum. We hadn’t yet achieved the scale we have today, but we were hosting a couple million websites — certainly a decent size by any measure. We registered weebly.com with GoDa…  show all text
• From Twitter – RT @steverubelNFL Plans “TV Everywhere” Live Streaming for 2012 Season http://t.co/f258MLdX tip @ techmeme

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 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 11th 2011 through November 13th 2011:

• Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Passes Away At 21 | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - Greg Kumparak
  

  Late last night, word began to spread around the tech community that one of Diaspora‘s four co-founders, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, had passed away. With much sadness, we’ve now confirmed this terrible news with the Diaspora team.
  The news is incredibly jarring, to the point that much else I could say escapes me. Ilya was just 21. To see any member of our community pass is sad, but for one so young to go is absolutely crushing. The cause of death is currently unconfirmed.
  Our sincerest condolences to I…  show all text
• From Twitter – Kindle Fire vs Nook Tablet. Fight!!! – gdgt http://t.co/VFH2rSaL
• The OccupyUSA Blog: Special Weekend Edition! | The Nation-
  thenation.com
  
• Clarifications on Flash Player for Mobile Browsers, the Flash Platform, and the Future of Flash at Mike Chambers-
  mikechambers.com
  - mikechambers
  I have worked with Flash and been part of the Flash community for about 12 or 13 years (over 10 of those with Macromedia and Adobe). Over that time there have been a lot of ups and down, but I think that the past couple of days have been some of the most difficult of my career. I wanted to make a post which will hopefully clarify some of the news from the past couple of days, and provide some more context around what is going on. First, and foremost, a couple of days ago Adobe announced the fo…  show all text
• Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Blog » After Four Years as ReadWriteWeb’s Lead Writer, Here’s My Next Adventure-
  marshallk.com
  - Marshall Kirkpatrick
  

  It’s with both excitement and sadness that today I announce I am stepping back from my full time position at ReadWriteWeb to build a product and a company. I’ll be continuing to post at RWW regularly, but I’ve got some big new things up my sleeve as well.
  After years of writing about startup companies, I’m now building one myself. Specifically, I’m building a company that’s developing a technology based on some of my favorite consulting projects I’ve done for clients over the years: an app and …  show all text
• From Twitter – RT @windleyJeff Jarvis | Public Parts podcast http://t.co/aIjzYFtg @ITConversations/
• Romenesko resigns after 12 years at Poynter | Poynter.-
  poynter.org
  - Julie Moos
  After twelve years of blogging at Poynter, Jim Romenesko has submitted his resignation and I have accepted it. Jim has decided he’s ready for a fresh start now — seven weeks before he was scheduled to become a part-time employee… Read more

What I’m reading and finding for November 9th 2011 through November 10th 2011:

• From Twitter – RT @TechCrunchApple Releases iOS 5.0.1 To Fix iOS 5 Battery Issues http://t.co/lq9n8TF9 by @sarahintampa
• Watch Rick Perry’s Campaign End Before Your Eyes-
  youtube.com
• Eddie Murphy Drops Out of Oscars Telecast-
  nytimes.com
  - By MICHAEL CIEPLY
  

  The hasty departures represented an embarrassing collapse of the Academy’s plans for the Oscar presentation
• From Twitter – http://t.co/CO5sM3t6 London Free WiFi Scheduled to Arrive in London This Week, More to Follow in 2012
• From Twitter – http://t.co/Vgu4BCQi Live TV features coming to the Boxee Box
• The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog)-
  blog.pinboard.in
  - Maciej Ceglowski
  

  I first came across the phrase social graph in 2007, in an essay by Brad Fitzpatrick, though I’d be curious to know if it goes back further.
  The idea of representing relationships between people as networks is old, but this was the first time I had thought about treating the connections between all living people as one big object that you could manipulate with a computer.
  At the time he wrote, Fitzpatrick had two points to make. The first was that it made no sense for every social website to try  show all text
• Penn State Said to Be Planning Paterno Exit Amid Scandal-
  nytimes.com
  - By MARK VIERA and PETE THAMEL
  

  Joe Paterno’s tenure as coach of the Penn State football team will soon be over in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to people briefed on the matter.

What I’m reading and finding for September 27th 2011 through October 1st 2011:

• Eastman Kodak Mulls Bankruptcy – NYTimes.com-
  dealbook.nytimes.com
  - By ANDREW MARTIN and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED
  The troubled camera company has hired law firm Jones Day to assist on a possible restructuring.
• Amazon has Palm in its shopping cart — will it click Buy? (exclusive) | VentureBeat-
  venturebeat.com
  - Devindra Hardawar
  

  Who will save what’s left of Palm from HP’s bumbling? It could be Amazon, as the online retailing giant is in serious negotiations to snap up Palm from HP, VentureBeat has learned.
  A well-placed source tells us that HP is currently looking to rid itself of Palm as soon as possible, and that Amazon is the closest to finalizing the deal, among a handful of contenders.
  Indeed, after yesterday’s announcement of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, no other company seems as fitting a home for Palm and its w…  show all text
• Ragu Pasta Sauce Leaves Bad Taste With Social Media Users-
  thefuturebuzz.com
  We’ve waited a long time for this day. Finally, a sauce brand has made a social media faux pas. It’s not every day we can blog about pasta sauce, but when we can it tastes good. Overly processed, would survive nuclear winter, tomato-like sauce kind of good.
• A VC: Minimum Viable Personality-
  avc.com
  - Fred
  

  Today we have a special guest post. There have been a few guest posts here at AVC. Maybe a half dozen in total. One of my favorites was this one by JLM during the financial crisis of 2008/2009. But this one today may top that gem.
  It’s from our favorite Giant Robot Dinosaur and it’s about Minimal Viable Personality, something I have referred to as “voice” in pior posts. The Grimster is so right that this is critical to building a successful product.
  One final note. If you want to tweet out one …  show all text
• Why Facebook Works for All, Twitter for Some – NYTimes.com-
  bits.blogs.nytimes.com
  - By NICK BILTON
  Facebook is winning in the race for users against Twitter. Until now, I didn’t understand why.
• From Twitter – Media Browser 2.5 (codename Hydra) Released http://t.co/YWcznXp8
• Who’s Winning: Google Plus or Facebook? Who Cares?-
  allenmireles.com
  

  The hottest news in social media is about the competition between Google’s new social network, Google Plus, and its larger and more established rival, Facebook. Every day we are inundated with the latest changes to the Facebook platform and the most recent additions to Google Plus. The social media world is buzzing. Heads are spinning…

What I’m reading and finding for September 2nd 2011 through September 3rd 2011:

• Enrique Gutierrez – Photographic Summary – YouTube – Dig the urban vibe in this.
• Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail -
• Full HD 3D glasses supported by Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and XPAND 3D – Standards? Yes, please!
• 15 tips to get the most out of Google Docs -
• Axis of Awesome – 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles) – YouTube -
• Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It. | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - MG Siegler
  

  It’s called simply the “Amazon Kindle”. But it’s not like any Kindle you’ve seen before. It displays content in full color. It has a 7-inch capacitive touch screen. And it runs Android.
  Rumors of Amazon making a full-fledged tablet device have persisted for a while. I believe we were one of the first to report on the possibility from a credible source — the same person who accurately called Amazon’s Android Appstore. That source was dead-on again, it just took Amazon longer than anticipated to …  show all text
• Toshiba to Ship 8GB SDHC Card with Embedded Wi-Fi – FlashAir supports two way communication. It can deal with peer-to-peer transfers, and supports uploading to and downloading from servers, Toshiba says.