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 February 12th 2012 through February 15th 2012:

• From Twitter – Time Warner Cable Launches Live TV Streaming for the Desktop http://t.co/Y50l7yRa
• From Twitter – Update Rollup 2 for Windows Home Server 2011 is available http://t.co/e46Kyiqd
• Your address book is mine: Many iPhone apps take your data | VentureBeat-
  venturebeat.com
  Path got caught red-handed uploading users’ address books to its servers and had to apologize. But the relatively obscure journaling app is not alone. In fact, Path was crucified for a practice that has become an unspoken industry standard.
• Real Dan Lyons Web Site » Blog Archive » Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool » Real Dan Lyons Web Site-
  realdanlyons.com
  - Dan Lyons
  

  It’s tough being a journalist, especially if you’re covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you’re stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What’s worse is that all these people who are getting rich don’t seem to be any brighter than you are and in fact many of them don’t seem very bright at all. So of course you get jealous. And then you start thinking maybe you could find a way to cash in…  show all text
• From Twitter – VLC 2.0 arriving this week http://t.co/RzIYnxKc
• parislemon • Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink-
  parislemon.com
  

  This morning, I woke up and read Nick Bilton’s weekly New York Times’ column. Nick is a friend and one of the best bloggers/writers/journalists out there. But with today’s column, he was way off base.
  Having already said what I wanted to say about the Path situation, I debated if I should weigh in again. Then I read Nick’s column again. There’s a way to say what he wants to say, but he goes about it the complete wrong way. I felt like I had to respond.
  But before I could, my CrunchFund partner  show all text
• Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery-
  nytimes.com
  - By NICOLE PERLROTH
  

  Information has become easier to steal over the Internet because employees can carry proprietary data around.

What I’m reading and finding for January 29th 2012 through January 31st 2012:

• Uncensored – Leanpub-
  leanpub.com
• A Glimpse of Murdoch Unbound-
  nytimes.com
  - By DAVID CARR
  

  While many modern executives live behind a wall of communications operatives, Rupert Murdoch, the chief of News Corporation, is openly expressing his opinions on Twitter.
• From Twitter – How to Stop YouTube From Crashing Google Chrome http://t.co/6vPAdn73
• The Bookstore’s Last Stand-
  nytimes.com
  - By JULIE BOSMAN
• From Twitter – DNSCrypt Could be interesting. Mac only preview at the moment. http://t.co/8uNOY3ay
• Twitter’s censorship is a gray box of shame, but not for Twitter | Paul Smalera-
  blogs.reuters.com
  - Paul Smalera
  

  Twitter’s announcement this week that it was going to enable country-specific censorship of posts is arousing fury around the Internet. Commentators, activists, protesters and netizens have said it’s “very bad news” and claim to be “#outraged”. Bianca Jagger, for one, asked how to go about boycotting Twitter, on Twitter, according to the New York Times. (Step one might be… well, never mind.) The critics have settled on #TwitterBlackout: all day on Saturday the 28th, they promised to not tweet, …  show all text
• From Twitter – NASA telescope discovers 26 alien planets around 11 different stars http://t.co/5vdorUIx

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 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 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 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 22nd 2011 through December 25th 2011:

• Go Daddy Lost 21,054 Domains Yesterday-
  thenextweb.com
  - Drew Olanoff
  

  It’s going to get worse before it gets better for domain registration company Go Daddy. Yesterday, we reported that Go Daddy had reversed its decision to support SOPA. Its customer service reps are even taking to the phones to beg you to keep your domains with the company.
  It looks like these PR moves to save face, and business, are completely futile. According to TheDomains, 21,054 domains were transferred away from Go Daddy on Friday alone. At $6.99 a pop, that would make for a loss of $147,1…  show all text
• http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_item_id…-
  godaddy.com
• BBC News – Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours-
  bbc.co.uk
  

  Volkswagen is stopping emails being sent to some of its workers when they go off-shift after complaints of work and home life becoming blurred.
• Paul Graham: SOPA Supporting Companies No Longer Allowed At YC Demo Day | TechCrunch-
  techcrunch.com
  - Alexia Tsotsis
  

  At this point quite a few internet companies have protested H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in creative ways. Held by many to be the worst thing to ever happen to the Internet if it passes, SOPA would makes it really easy for copyright holders to force sites offline that they think are offending, among other things.
  While the judiciary vote has been delayed until next year, the list revealing the companies who support the act was released yesterday, and many startups, such as Reddi…  show all text
• From Twitter – How Facebook is planning to sell your timeline. https //t.co/EKJvoEgp
• All the Companies Supporting SOPA, the Awful Internet Censorship Law—and How to Contact Them-
  gizmodo.com
  - Sam Biddle
  

  Who’s officially on the record backing what could be the worst thing to ever happen to the internet? All of these companies listed below. Don’t take our word for it—this list comes straight from Congress. Just FYI. More »
• From Twitter – Sandy Bridge CPU Prices coming down. Good news for system builders. https //t.co/KxJXY9L8

What I’m reading and finding for December 18th 2011 through December 21st 2011:

• MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It – Popular Mechanics-
  popularmechanics.com
  

  The U.S. Congress is considering the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). MythBuster Adam Savage says that if these sweeping pieces of legislation pass, the U.S. will join the likes of China and Iran in censoring the Internet.
• Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox | The Mozilla Blog-
  blog.mozilla.com
  - Mozilla
  We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.
  “Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.
  “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward…  show all text
• From Twitter – RT @newsycombinatorSamsung sold its Hard Drive Business to Seagate for $1.4 Billion http://t.co/AyrDOdBK
• An internet of people – Chris Dixon-
  cdixon.org
  - chris
  Over the past few years, a bunch of web-based marketplaces have gotten popular – Etsy, Kickstarter, AirBnb, to name a few. Many of these business ideas had been tried before but are succeeding only now.
  When a trend like this emerges, it’s always interesting to ask “why now?” For example, for almost a decade, entrepreneurs tried to create video sharing services like YouTube, but only succeeded when certain key dependencies – broadband, digital video cameras, a version of Flash that “just worked”  show all text
• VETO the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information | The White House-
  wwws.whitehouse.gov
  “the more freely information flows; the stronger that society becomes” President Obama http://tiny.cc/rh5b1 By allowing free conversation it is so easy to drop a link http://i.imgur.com/TD4Kq.jpg It would be ridiculous for an ISP to block the
• The Other 99, Ustream.TV: -Twitter-@Timcast@TheOther99Thischannel is being maintained by The Other 99. We continue to be a primary source from the …-
  ustream.tv
• From Twitter – http://t.co/KlnU9osV SOPA Vote Delayed Without Explanation