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BrightEdge Debuts Powerful SEO Platform For Businesses, Signs MySpace And Others
Originally founded in 2007 by former Salesforce.com exec Jim Yu and Lemuel Park, BrightEdge provides online marketers with cloud-based SEO software designed to help them increase revenue from organic search in a measurable way. Dubbed the BrightEdge SEO Platform, the startup’s solution lets marketers prioritize SEO campaigns based on forecasted revenue, execute coordinated SEO strategies across their entire company and tie everything to clearly defined business metrics. The product also comes with reporting tools that lets large enterprise analyze how their organic search performance stacks up against that of their competitors, and how it can be improved over time. In other words, the platform is designed to give companies some much-needed insight into the business value of search engine optimization across the board. Branders is another key BrightEdge customer. The company’s CEO, Jerry McLaughlin, says that BrightEdge not only delivers visibility into the value of SEO projects, but also provides actionable intelligence that has allowed Branders to grow the organic marketing contribution to its business by more than 60 percent. In fact, BrightEdge claims it already helps manage over $1 billion in organic search revenue for the likes of Branders, MySpace, Trulia and others today. With the announcement of the platform’s general availability, starting today, the company expects that number to grow significantly in the next few months and years. BrightEdge is privately held with financing from Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures (who most recently jointly injected $6.5 million in venture capital into the startup; the previous round was undisclosed). Aside from Yu and Park, the company’s management team includes some former high-fliers from Salesforce.com, Digg, Google and AOL. Also worth noting: former Google exec Satya Patel (a partner at lead investor Battery Ventures), who helped build the Mountain View company’s AdSense business, sits on its board of directors.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jun 2010 | 4:09 am We’re Awarding Goatse Security A Crunchie Award For Public Service
Here’s what happened: Goatse Security discovered a rather stupid vulnerability on the AT&T site that returned a customer email if a valid serial number for the iPAD SIm card was entered. An invalid number returned nothing, a valid number returned a customer email address. Goatse created a script and quickly downloaded 114,000 customer emails. They then turned all that over to Gawker, after, they say, AT&T was notified and the vulnerability was closed. Gawker published some of the data with the emails removed. Says Goatse: “All data was gathered from a public webserver with no password, accessible by anyone on the Internet. There was no breach, intrusion, or penetration, by any means of the word.” AT&T is characterizing the incident as “unauthorized computer “hackers” maliciously exploited a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authentication page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.” We don’t see much hacking here, and we don’t see anything really malicious. AT&T was effectively publishing the information on the open Internet, and if there’s an FBI investigation, it should be focused on them, not Goatse. The fact is that Goatse was performing a public service by discovering and publishing the vulnerability – they made the Internet slightly safer by doing so. I agree completely with their blog post responding to the AT&T letter. Unless additional facts come out suggesting that Goatse has used the information inappropriately, such as selling it, or has otherwise done some bad act hasn’t yet been alleged, they are completely in the right here. In fact, companies like AT&T should offer people a reward for discovering vulnerabilities like this, although they’d probably ask that the information be given to them privately after discovered. But by shaming AT&T publicly other companies may take security marginally more seriously, which is good for users. And AT&T customers need to know that AT&T is so careless about security. Se we’re doing something we’ve never done before – awarding Goatse a Crunchie award for public service – a beautiful 14 inch tall custom designed gorilla statue celebrating technology. Until now we’ve only given these awards at our annual Crunchies award ceremony. Here’s the AT&T email:
     
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:30 am Post-apocalyptic steampunk mask Ukrainian steampunk mask-maker Bob Basset brings the post-apocalyptic with the DRTM-6.  Source: Boing Boing | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:30 am Post-apocalyptic steampunk maskUkrainian steampunk mask-maker Bob Basset brings the post-apocalyptic with the DRTM-6. DRTM 6 Bob Basset's latest steampunk mask Cthulhu mask on eBay Steampunk "Raptor Pilot" mask...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:30 am You’re Damn Right I’m A Fanboy.
Now, I didn’t say specifically what I’m a fanboy of, because there have been too many titles bestowed upon me over the years. At various points over just the past few months, I’ve been an Apple fanboy, a Google fanboy, a Twitter fanboy, a Facebook fanboy, a Foursquare fanboy, a Gowalla fanboy, and yes, even a Microsoft fanboy. Never mind that most of companies compete with one another, so it would be hard to be a true fanboy of multiple ones without misrepresenting your fanboydom of a few of the others. We’ll just say I’m a fanboy and leave it at that. And that leaves me wondering: why wouldn’t you want to be a fanboy? To me, the diluted version of the term means that you’re passionate about a certain technology. And isn’t that why any of us do what we do? Sure, you’ll throw the term “objective journalism” at me, but what does that really mean? Is any journalism truly objective? Every human being has an opinion one way or another about everything. Objective journalism is simply the practice of suppressing that opinion. For certain news fields, like politics, I see the value in that (at times). For technology, I’m not sure that I do. If I’m reading about a new technology, I want to know what the author actually thinks. Take a new tech product for example, I want to know if an author thinks it’s any good or not. Or a new startup — same thing. Or some move a big technology company is making. It’s all the same. If I wanted a completely objective take on the story, I’d read the press release or the spec sheet. Actually, no I wouldn’t. Those are usually more full of bullshit than even the most biased reporting (wait, my laptop is supposed to have 12 hours of battery life on a single charge — it says so right there). Others will say that the term fanboy doesn’t just mean you love something — it’s that you love something and are unfair against its competitors because of that love. That’s the only way I can explain the angry comments when I write posts with the headlines “An iPhone lover’s take on…” “Your bias is obvious!” the commenters will shout. Well yes, I put it in the title. How observant. But that’s the funny thing about being a fanboy — you can be a fanboy of anything. You can switch your alliances at a moments notice. There is nothing tying you to the love of a certain product. As I’ve written numerous times before, in the 1990s I would have been called a Microsoft fanboy — I loved Microsoft products and hated Apple ones. Today, I’m called an Apple fanboy. Times change. And they’ll change again. As always, my only requirement for being a fanboy of a product is that it has to (in my mind) be the best. Right now, in some cases those are Apple products. In some other cases, those are Google products. In some other cases, it’s Twitter. Etc… Angry commenters seem to want to believe that you can’t actually just like a product. There has to be some ulterior motive. Either you’re paid off, or you’re just blind. Or both. It’s simply an easier (non) argument to make than having an actual discourse. Make no mistake, those people are fanboys too — but worse. They feel the subject of their adulation is under attack, so they become rabid. But I’ll repeat that I think overall this is a good thing. Balance and all that. In closing, let me state again for the record that I’m fine with the fanboy label. Apple fanboy, Google fanboy, Twitter fanboy, etc — those are all appropriate and welcomed. But it may be easier (and less contradictory) to just say that I’m a fanboy of good products. And I always will be. [photo: flickr/terryjohnston]      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:14 am UK Twitter, ca. 1935Here's a 1935 Modern Mechanix article describing a kind of proto-Twitter in London: the Notificator took messages written on strips of paper and displayed them around town on boards for at least two...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:12 am $1 Trillion In Minerals Found In Afghanistanclustro writes "American geologists working with the Pentagon have discovered deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and lithium of incredible bounty, amounting to nearly $1 trillion. In fact, the lithium deposits are so vast, an internal Pentagon memo has stated that Afghanistan could become the 'Saudi Arabia of lithium.' The wealth of the deposits completely flattens the current GDP of Afghanistan, estimated at about $12 billion. Mining would completely transform the economy of Afghanistan, which presently is propped up by the opium trade and foreign aid. However, it could take decades for extraction to reach its full potential due to the war, the lack of heavy industry in the country, and a corrupt national government."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:11 am China Strategic: may seek AIG Taiwan deal extensionHONG KONG/TAIPEI, June 14 (Reuters) - China Strategic , one of the buyers of AIG's Taiwan unit, could talk about extending the stalled $2.2 billion deal if needed, but hopes for a conclusion soon, its...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:07 am Greenpeace breaks into Swedish nuclear plantAs many as 30 Greenpeace activists broke into a Swedish nuclear plant Monday, demanding that parliament this week vote against allowing new nuclear facilities to be built, the group and...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:02 am Microsoft unveils Xbox 'Kinect' - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:01 am TripAdvisor, the World's Largest Travel Site, Launches Game-Changing 'TripAdvisor Trip Friends' Enabling Travelers to Tap Into the Wisdom of FriendsSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 3:00 am That Just Happened: A Survivor Of The Natal/Kinect Announcement Tells His Tale
Those of you who weren’t present for this indecipherable boondoggle are probably wondering what the fuss is all about. The fact is there’s no fuss at all; the Project Natal Experience was a complete non-event — and I’d have said that even if the device, name, and launch titles didn’t all leak a couple hours before the show. But the fact also is that this was just too weird not to share. In detail. Do you like to read? Good.      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:58 am Emoticon iPhone Cases - The iLuv iPhone 4 Cases are Colorful and Fun (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The iLuv iPhone 4 Cases make decorating your brand new gadget a breeze. Featuring both plain as well as graphically appealing designs, these protective cases keep you in style while...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:58 am Music industry lobbyist calls for death penalty for piracyHere's Fran Nevrkla, Chairman and CEO of Phonographic Performance Ltd, a UK music industry association, addressing the group's AGM. Some choice morsels: Thank you, David, and thank you for putting some of those pirates behind bars. I know that regrettably capital punishment was abolished in this country some 50 years ago, sad it is, but a few years in jail is probably pretty OK... PPL AGM 2010: Fran Nevrkla's Address
Source: Boing Boing | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:56 am Music industry lobbyist calls for death penalty for piracyHere's Fran Nevrkla, Chairman and CEO of Phonographic Performance Ltd, a UK music industry association, addressing the group's AGM. Some choice morsels: Thank you, David, and thank you for putting...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:56 am That just happened: a survivor of the Natal/Kinect event tells his tale
Those of you who weren’t present for this indecipherable boondoggle are probably wondering what the fuss is all about. The fact is there’s no fuss at all; the Project Natal Experience was a complete non-event — and I’d have said that even if the device, name, and launch titles didn’t all leak a couple hours before the show. But the fact also is that this was just too weird not to share. In detail. Do you like to read? Good. We were shuttled to the venue a little before 6; Matt, Nicholas and I were unsure of the nature of the event and thought it best to arrive a little early in case there was a line to demo the machines. I laugh now at our innocence. How little we knew then! So young, so full of life. I envy the me of earlier today. So we arrived at 6:00, I say. A third of the street was blocked off to form the line, though puzzlingly, the entire sidewalk and parking strip was blocked off as well and inaccessible to us. A second line ran parallel to the main one, and seemed to be the dominion of anybody willing to look like they belonged there. European E3 attendees flouted traffic laws and took pictures of downtown from in front of frustrated buses. Like cattle we stood for a bit over an hour, staring at a huge sign featuring Felix the Cat and watching a seemingly endless number of media people zoom by, getting line shots. There must be some streamlining to be done there: Microsoft should have pre-released video of a mockup line to obviate such redundant and pointless efforts. The weather was clear and warm, luckily for us; Los Angeles has that going for it at least. A drum being slowly beaten at what we presumed to be the entrance to the Experience became like the tick of a clock — yet time, nor the line, never moved forward. I struck up a conversation with one of the founders of Gamasutra, a site you should read. We determined that free to play is an interesting business model. Finally, a bit after 7 if memory serves, they asked us all to crush forward, ruining our finely knit socio-physical networks and creating a rush toward the entrance. Fancifully made-up women and men were moving sinuously beneath decorations that resembled ferns and scorpions’ tails equally, and their unexplained undulating had made us more curious than ever. The drum beat on.
At the entrance, those of us wearing green wristbands (Nicholas and I) were separated from those wearing orange ones (Matt) and many brief, but emotional, farewells were heard. Nicholas and I were stopped in order to be a backdrop for some sort of hip young broadcaster, and a hovering producer gave several one-minute warnings (cry wolf much?). Several minutes passed and although the front line was asked to show enthusiasm, we ended up simply swarming past, as the pressure of hundreds of attendees was at our backs and after an hour standing, enthusiasm was in short supply. Before going inside, we were told “pace yourselves.” As to where this advice was meant to be applied, I have no idea to this hour. But what I do know is that upon entering, we were issued dazzling white polyester ponchos with puffy, rigid shoulder pads. Thus, attired as if attending a wedding in 17th-century Tokyo, we entered a dark hallway lined with velvet curtains. It was short. Not ten steps brought us to a rectangular hole in the wall, through which was visible a happy family sitting on a couch in a brightly lit room. Through was the only way forward. “Welcome!” they said, grinning, as we stepped into the breach in the wall. “We’ve been waiting for you.” Puzzled, scared, and embarrassed, we passed on through to the next phase of the nightmare as the happy family warmly greeted the next clot of gamers. Now we entered into the Experience proper. Emerging into the center area of a large exhibition hall, we began to understand just what Microsoft had in store for us. Which is to say, we began to understand that we would never understand what the hell Microsoft was thinking when it designed this absurd event. Above stadium seating crowded with like-poncho’ed, seated attendees (separated from the center, and us, by enormous veils), there were screens a hundred feet long and fifteen feet tall depicting a jungle scene inhabited by Xbox Live avatars. They laughed, climbed trees, and walked jankily across the screen, eventually teleporting out to be replaced by a new set. At the far end of the room, a sort of series of boulders led upwards from a painted man in a spotlight, who was meditating as hard as he could. A family of three smiled and pointed from a couch suspended 70 feet in the air. Throughout our little arena, faunlike dancers flitted about, not speaking, but inviting you to tap your foot in a virtual pool of water or have your photo taken on top of a rock. Occasionally, one would do a backflip. I describe it at a stroke, but there was much more to it than the setup. For one thing, the awkwardness was palpable. A few thousand people somehow related to the gaming industry, unceremoniously shunted into a weird jungle concept-environment which they are all trying to unravel, with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and fatally, nothing to drink. I will say this: if every time I was surprised by a faun, they surprised me with a vodka tonic, I would have borne the rest of the evening much better. As it was, we stood looking at each other, murmuring, and watching the glitchy three-minute loop of avatars in the jungle. This is where it gets difficult to explain. You see, we stood like this, as we had stood outside, for even longer than we had outside, and without anything happening except an occasional faun backflip or a slight change in the music (imagine a theme song to climbing that big tree in Avatar stomping on a human face, forever). There was nowhere for us to sit, and I learned later that there was nowhere for the sitters in the “audience” to stand. Nicholas had asked earlier: “Are we being waterboarded?” In a way, Nicholas: waterboarded by Enya. The event was scheduled to start at 7, and it was past 8. I posited two options: either this was it, and Microsoft had completely lost it, or there was some kind of insurmountable delay and they hadn’t planned for an hour of downtime. Matt heard it blamed on “VIPs.” I think they were having trouble with the elephant. During this time, we of course wanted to record the nonsense going on around us. But everyone who produced a phone or camera was instantly shut down by a sort of gadget police, who informed us that any and all technology was being suppressed. They gave up after a while, because really, what are you going to do? Unfortunately the light was terrible and the only shot I got is at the top, there. The others came from Microsoft (from last night’s private showing, I gather). After we had been standing for (I think) at least an hour, the fauns made a move. They split the floor right down the middle, grabbed some poncho people, and made a sort of soul train line, down which several people did backflips. I can’t say more because my attention was riveted on the fabulously pneumatic faun-girl in front of me. The faun-men were wearing all manner of thick and stylish things, by the way, and the faun-girls were made to wear the tightest leotards I’ve ever seen (no exaggeration). Make of that what you will. The soul train gave way to a sort of micro-show, in which some fauns mimed and showed signs to their side of the audience, and a pair of huge novelty cans on a rope was stretched from one side of the auditorium to the other. The two sides were meant, I think, to yell a sort of conversation, but games journalists have no coordination, nor volume, and the message was lost among the tom-toms and jungle flutes. Props to the fauns for disentangling the rope-ball and unhooking that poor guy’s head. All part of the show, folks! We all expected this, I think, to segue directly to the show itself. Not really: we stood about for another 15 minutes or so, until finally, finally, the music changed and we saw some scorpion-fern-lamps being brought out. My memory of the event here is a bit fuzzy, but I believe this is about the time when the elephant arrived. The couch had descended, I think, and the kid got off, and then… an elephant.
Not a real elephant, of course, although it was quite well engineered. I can forgive the girls behind Matt, who he tells me were convinced it was real until displays on its sides indicated internal projectors. You ever see a hollow elephant? Me neither. On top of the elephant rode some kid, carrying a glowing koosh ball the size of a head. He dismounted, and was carried on the shoulders of some fauns, who (someone help me out here) I do believe dropped him about halfway to the stage and hurriedly scooped him up again. It was inelegantly done, I’m afraid, if a part of the act. Anyway, the koosh was brought to the stage, then thrown into the crowd, rather hard I thought at the time, where it nailed someone. SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME, announced a voice, SOMETHING ABOUT CONTROLLERS. CONTROLLERING YOU. MACHINES AND MANKIND. BUT WHAT IF SOMETHING ABOUT YOU ARE THE CONTROLLER?! (paraphrased) The kid then played his way through a few games on plain ol’ controllers, climbing up successive boulders, before climbing the biggest one… which suddenly was revealed to be — a huge Xbox X. Suddenly, all our shoulders lit up like fireflies. I had to clap at this. Well done, Microsoft. And now the kid played something without a controller, and we were treated to the name we all knew by now from checking our emails, texts, feeds, and so on. Kinect. Some of us also already knew the games they were to announce. You probably did by then. But we got the full monty — as if we had a choice.
The “final screen” was actually a small room in which (after it spun around a bit) was to be found a family of smiling, perfect actors. I won’t give you a play-by-play of the games they pretended to play (and if you ask me, a few they actually did), but we saw quite a number — a dozen or so. Mine carts, river rafting, standing on the wings of a plane doing nothing (?), doing yoga, dancing, a whole track and field thing, a pet tiger, and a Star Wars game assaulted us on all sides. One view showed the player, the others showed the game. As for how the hardware performed, who can say? Not everyone was convinced the players were even playing. I’m skeptical of the actual control possibilities, but I’ll wait until we get our hands-on. Anyhow. There was a complete WTF moment at one point around now when, after seeing several gameplay demos obviously compressed to make them more rapid-fire, we were treated to an extremely long Disney castle logo and Tinkerbell. Yes, Tinkerbell took her sweet time flying all the way around the screens ringing the room, and her presence was never explained. They simply moved on to the next demo. If my mind could have been re-boggled, this would have been the time for it. Keep in mind that this whole time, the entire cast of fauns (plus their yellow, meditative leader) were perched on the boulders beneath this constantly rotating room, swaying and pouting and pointing at objects of interest. While showing off the Kinect interface for Xbox Live video and stuff (which actually looked quite cool), the daughter of the family treated us to a curiously stiff video conversation with a friend, and showed a slideshow of slightly Lynchian photos of the family. I had to turn my eyes away. The great climax was near. I forget how they justified this, but all of a sudden the huge screens moved and revealed behind them a number of small cubicles, each one of which featured a family in full dance mode. Our shoulder pads blinked and changed color; I noticed some audience members had already taken theirs to pieces and were waving the LEDs. The fauns broke out the flashlights and began shining them around, and the perfect family in the rotating box urged us to join in the dance party. Needless to say, few joined in (footsore as we were, having stood for about three hours straight now) and as the house lights did not come on, we were informed that we had just taken part in the Project Natal Experience. We were asked to return the ponchos on our way out, and in return were provided with toy cats and USB drives containing the assets you see adorning this post.
What is to be made of all this? Nothing positive, unfortunately. To be honest, I had to stop myself from making the preceding 2000 words a diatribe against everything in Microsoft that creates stuff like this. I mean, they must have spent half a million dollars on the setup, and probably have paid some 300 guards, dancers, “families,” and so on all kinds of money. And the message that the thousands of attendees will take away is…? Nothing. Nothing but vague memories of crass artifice and cute faun butt. But it’s E3 and madness is in the air. Will anyone top this? Not to cut speculation short here, but I sincerely doubt it, and I can’t say that’s a good thing. I’m extremely skeptical of this kind of event, however colorful of a blurb it makes for USA Today. To anyone with eyes to see, however, it’s clear that this sort of thing is hugely wasteful — both of their money and our time. Nothing was gained at this event, and really, not much of value was ventured. Aside from the actual demo, it could have been an announcement for almost any product, by any company, and that soullessness undercut any joy it might have produced. This sensationalistic flailing about, clearly just a common attempt to gain coverage regardless of content, is both unnecessary and undignified. It’s painful when you compare this to the huge and genuine response generated by a microscopic (but highly meaningful) PR effort like Valve’s promoting Portal 2. The excitement latent in a company or brand’s fans cannot be accessed with a shabby skeleton key like a re-purposed Cirque du Soleil act. The lesson I took away from today’s event was that Microsoft has no idea how or to whom they should promote this product. Anything would have been better than this — anything but Nintendo’s farcical stiff-backed-businessman-uses-hip-lingo strategy, that is, which would become Microsoft even worse than it does the big N. I’m excited to try out the Kinect (which I say has nothing to do with the Kin, despite what John and Matt think), but this event only drained my enthusiasm. It was the kind of event thrown by a group of people who have no interesting ideas. Sure, this is just the debut, but whatever the follow-up is, this was inarguably a weak start. It’s too early to say whether the technology itself is compelling enough to bear the weight of Microsoft’s tenacious and mystifying marketing incompetence, but it shouldn’t have to in the first place. We’ll have plenty of hands-on video later in the show.
Source: CrunchGear | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:53 am "Breaking Bad" creator talks finale, next season (Reuters)Reuters - Most serialized shows gradually lose viewers as they get deeper and deeper into their story. Not AMC's riveting "Breaking Bad," which just finished its most-watched season yet, averaging 1.5 million viewers per episode (2.2 million once you add in DVR viewership).Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:46 am Hayabusa capsule recovery begins - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:32 am Android 2.2 Upgrade list: Is Your Phone Getting Froyo? - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:32 am Phone-Unlocking Pulses - Heartbeat Sensors to Unlock Phones are in the Works(TrendHunter.com) A computer manufacturer based out of California is developing heartbeat sensors to unlock phones and other gadgets. While at this time the manufacturer's sensors are only being installed...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:28 am Jive Bets on the Twitter Firehose and the Data Intensified Social EnterpriseJive Software is buying into the Twitter Firehouse. It's another example of the data intensified social enterprise where curation is the most valued capability. The news is in timing with Enterprise...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:27 am Nokia vows to defend smartphone territory (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:20 am Toshiba’s Dynabook Qosmio V65 is a high-end laptop, Blu-ray player and DTV in one
Toshiba in Japan announced [JP] a new Qosmio laptop today, the Dynabook Qosmio V65. The main selling point of the device (of all Qosmios, in fact) is the “multi-media” capability: Toshiba promises that the laptop produces high-quality images, thanks to the SpursEngine coprocessor (that Toshiba has been using in its CELL TV and Qosmio laptops since 2008), LED backlight, and the 15.6-inch “Clear SuperView LED” HD TFT screen with 1,366×768 resolution. Here are the other specs:
Toshiba is planning to sell the Dynabook Qosmio V65 in Japan from June 17 (price: $1,960). Expect the device to hit other markets soon, too.
Source: CrunchGear | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:20 am Yelp Co-Founder And CTO Russel Simmons Is Out
(Psssst. I’m leaving …) Yelp co-founder and CTO Russel Simmons, pictured here (left) with fellow co-founder and chief exec Jeremy Stoppelman, is leaving the company. Simmons will be transitioning to an advisor role and take some time off to travel, we’ve confirmed with the company. Stoppelman and Simmons were both early software engineering employees at PayPal and went on to brainstorm new Internet startup ideas at a business incubator not long after the company was acquired by eBay. Out came Yelp, which first started as an email recommendation service, was transformed to become a local business review site for the San Francisco area in October 2004 and has now grown into an international network that receives some 31 million unique visitors per month. Six years later, Simmons is now transitioning to an advisor role at Yelp, we’re told. Stoppelman says Simmons remains a “significant” shareholder in the company and will continue to provide support and advice as needed. No word on replacement yet. As for what’s next for Simmons: first, some “much deserved time off to travel” and then probably yet another startup, likely as a founding member. Yelp has raised $56 million in venture capital to date, from investors like ex-PayPal exec Max Levchin, Bessemer Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital and DAG Ventures. Elevation Partners earlier this year said it would be investing up to $100 million in the Internet company – so far it has injected 1/4 of that. Late last year, we heard from reliable sources that Yelp was in acquisition talks with Google regarding a whispered $550+ million buy-out agreement. Later, we learned that Stoppelman walked away from the all-but-signed deal to move forward with the company on its own. (Picture via Fast Company, photograph by Dan Escobar)      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:14 am Ancient Martian ocean may have supported life - TG Daily
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:13 am Project Uses Texting to Help South African Diabetes PatientsA pilot medical study by the University of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA, uses mobile phones to help diabetes patients in South Africa. Cellular News reports. ... The South African study pairs low-income...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:04 am "Kinect" motion control for Xbox 360 makes magical debut (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Jun 2010 | 2:03 am Lounge-Ready Workwear - The Gaby Basora Tucker Fall 2010 Collection is Classy-Chic (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Gaby Basora Tucker Fall 2010 lookbook presents a gorgeous series of fall-weather outfits. The featured oversized and casual-chic pieces bring out a feminine yet androgynous side...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:58 am Oiled birds everywhere, but little rescue crews can doMichael Seymour peers at the oiled pelican floating near an island of mangrove trees and winces in frustration because -- once again -- there's absolutely nothing he can do to help. An...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:56 am Teva raises stake in diabetes treatment developerTEL AVIV, June 14 (Reuters) - Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has exercised an option to raise its stake in Andromeda Biotech, which is developing a treatment for juvenile Type I diabetes, Clal Biotechnology...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:45 am UPDATE 1-Orion hikes 2010 outlook on steady sales growthHELSINKI, June 14 (Reuters) - Finnish drugs maker Orion raised its 2010 outlook on Monday due to firm sales and flat costs, sending its shares higher.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:35 am 3D Sunglasses - Stacks Captain 3D Glasses Look Cool and Work for Any 3D Movie (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) Stacks Captain 3D Glasses will make you the coolest kid in the theater watching Avatar 2. These 3D glasses are cleverly disguised as sunglasses, making them one pair of 3D glasses that...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:28 am UPDATE 1-Exillon raises reserves estimates, productionLONDON, June 14 (Reuters) - Russian oil producer Exillon Energy Plc raised its reserves estimates for recoverable oil and said production had risen 24 percent.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:17 am Zynga Goes To The Mattresses With Mafia Wars Users
When Zynga realized what was happening they shut down the code. But then they went one step further and rolled back the accounts for every user who entered it at least 24 hours, removing the free currency but also deleting any actions the users took to move their accounts forward during that period. Users complained on the Zynga forum but those complaints were deleted. Zynga also posted the notice below on their forum and then later deleted that too.
When Zynga continued to ignore users they started emailing us instead. Emails thousands of words long came in containing the kind of bitter passion that you usually only see when we say something mildly critical about the iPhone. Some users are saying that they are going to do a credit card charge back on money they’ve previously spent on Zynga games. Others say they’re leaving to try one of the many competitors. Etc. What really seemed to make the users angry is the tone Zynga used in communicating with them:
and
Remember that this is just fake money to buy fake stuff on Mafia Wars that costs Zynga nothing to create. The code was created by Zynga and distributed without any technical restrictions on its use (meaning anyone could use it). In other words, Zynga screwed up. But it didn’t really cost them anything since it’s all virtual goods. It seems like the smart thing to do would be to simply turn the code off and move on with their lives. But instead the Zynga team really seemed to think that they had been wronged by their users, and took proactive steps to punish and frustrate them. Instead of seeing passionate users engaging with the game, Zynga saw people trying to take advantage of them and responded by going on the attack. Terrible move. These are your customers, not your enemies. Another observation: Zynga users are more passionate about this stuff than I thought, and while I don’t understand that it does help me understand that the science and psychology behind these games is very real. They are addictive money extraction machines. Here’s Zynga’s official statement on this: “Last week we uncovered a technical issue with a Mafia Wars redemption code during the migration process of two of our networks. In order to protect the integrity of the game and level the playing field for the rest of the community, we rolled back those involved users to a previous save. Less than half a percent of Mafia Wars players were affected.” Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:13 am Moody's changes Towngas China's outlook to positiveReuters has stopped distributing the full text of Moody's Investors Service press releases on ratings actions, effective April 1, 2009. The text of this Moody's Investor Service rating is available at...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:09 am UPDATE 1-Bayer's Nexavar fails Phase III lung cancer trial* Nexavar fails to improve overall survival goal in trialSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:06 am AVG brings LinkScanner malware detector to the Mac (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - A company that provides antivirus offerings for PC users is bringing a free link checker to the Mac.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:05 am UPDATE 1-Dana to buy Petro Canada unit for 270 mln stg* Deal could raise annualised 2010 output by about 10-12 pctSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:04 am Steven Pinker and the Internet [Voices]By Nick Carr, Blogger, Rough Type As someone who has enjoyed and learned a lot from Steven Pinker’s books about language and cognition, I was disappointed to see the Harvard psychologist write, in Friday’s New York Times, a cursory op-ed column about people’s very real concerns over the Internet’s influence on their minds and their intellectual lives. Pinker seems to dismiss out of hand the evidence indicating that our intensifying use of the Net and related digital media may be reducing the depth and rigor of our thoughts. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:03 am Mind Over Mass Media [Voices]By Steven Pinker, Psychology Professor, Harvard University New forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber. So too with electronic technologies. Read the rest of this blog on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:03 am “for the lolz”: 4chan is Hacking the Attention Economy [Voices]By Danah Boyd, Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society Over the last year, 4chan emerged from complete obscurity to being recognized by mainstream media as something of significance. Perhaps it was moot’s appearance at the top of the TIME 100 list. More likely, it was moot’s TED talk on anonymity that tipped it all over. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:02 am Celeb sex-tape scandal hits taboos in Indonesia (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:01 am Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! [Voices]By Roger Ebert, Film Critic, Chicago Sun Times I vowed I would never become a Twit. Now I have Tweeted nearly 10,000 Tweets. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:01 am Second Startup Syndrome [Voices]By Ben Horowitz, Co-founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz “When your ups lift you down Often when super successful entrepreneurs found their second company, they suffer from a dangerous condition. In fact, the more successful the original startup, the more likely it is that the entrepreneur develops an acute case of Second Startup Syndrome. Second Startup Syndrome occurs when an entrepreneur wants to pick up in her second startup right where her first startup left off. In the beginning, the focus of a startup must be on building a great product and finding product market fit. During this period, there is no glamour and very little breadth—the company must be narrow. Serial entrepreneurs who suffer from Second Startup Syndrome want to skip through the narrow early steps and move quickly to more exciting topics such as long-term strategy, sales and marketing, company positioning, company culture, and more. Unfortunately, when you build a house, it’s usually a very bad idea to start with the roof. Some telling symptoms of Second Startup Syndrome:
Perhaps the greatest sign of Second Startup Syndrome is a lack of anxiety. Building a new technology company is really, really hard. In order to do it successfully, you have to sweat the details, worry about all the things that might go wrong, and suffer more than a few sleepless nights (either from working through the night or just worrying through the night). All of those things that you go through—a boiling stomach, lack of sleep, waves of paranoia, and vivid visions of your own demise—turn out to be good things. Source: All Things Digital | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am CrunchGear Week in Review: Carnegie Science Edition
Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: World-famous industrialist and philanthropist turned into an inflatable doll, stuck into a river
Source: CrunchGear | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am Cablevision Reportedly To Buy Bresnan For $1.3 Billion [Voices]By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily As has been rumored, Cablevision (CVC) will buy Bresnan Communications from a group of private investors led by Providence Equity Partners for about $1.3 billion, Reuters reports, citing “a source familiar with the situation.” The deal reportedly will be announced Monday. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 14 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am Somber Advertorials - The OAKNYC Teng Phour 'Savage' Photos Are Dark and Delicate (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Models Santiago and Nikita maintained stony faces in the latest OAKNYC Teng Phour 'Savage' photographs, which were shot as part of the company's newest campaign advertising some of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Jun 2010 | 12:58 am NASA Ends Plan To Put Man Back On MoonAn anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Times Online: "NASA has begun to wind down construction of the rockets and spacecraft that were to have taken astronauts back to the Moon — effectively dismantling the US human spaceflight programme despite a congressional ban on its doing so. Legislators have accused President Obama's administration of contriving to slip the termination of the Constellation programme through the back door to avoid a battle on Capitol Hill."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 14 Jun 2010 | 12:08 am Warren Ellis tweets the World CupWarren Ellis livetweeted the World Cup US-England game:* Ah. The England team appear to have gotten drunk during half-time.England vs USA on Twitter Source: Boing Boing | 13 Jun 2010 | 11:41 pm Remember, only your doctor can cure the clap No Home Remedy or Quack Doctor Ever Cured Syphilis or Gonorrhea Source: Boing Boing | 13 Jun 2010 | 11:20 pm Other things JFK's moon-launch speech might have justified
Today's XKCD has a funny visual component (click through to see it), but even better is Randall's commentary on JFK's moon-speech: "Also, if you read his speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars."
(Image: Early NASA artist conception of the Apollo command and service modules, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from chrisspurgeon's photostream)
Source: Boing Boing | 13 Jun 2010 | 11:20 pm American Look, 1958: Documentary on the delights of American mid-century designBrad sez, "First it was 'good design.' Then it was 'crap from the 50s.' Then it was 'camp' embraced by smirking hipsters. Now, it's just 'good design' again! The narrator of this 1958 GM buy-design-or-be-a-pinko agitprop conflates patriotism with gnarly tailfins,and the score could scare crows out of a cornfield, but watch it for the flat-out Googie goodness of the rocket car, the see-through boat and the Sandra Dee clone couture. I love this stuff far too much." Presented by Chevrolet. Googie to the limit. The American Look(1958) (Thanks, Brad!) Source: Boing Boing | 13 Jun 2010 | 11:10 pm Tiny cartoon penis disqualifies Ulysses comic from iPad store
Apple declined to carry a comic-book adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses for the iPad because one panel showed a man's penis: "While the first chapter of the book, the one now at iTunes, doesn't contain 'offensive language' our comic does have frank nudity. Something we figured we might have to pixelate or cover with 'fig leaves'. But Apple's policy prohibits even that. So we were forced to either scrap the idea of moving to the tablet with Apple or re-design our pages."
Joyce's Ulysses Banned Again--by Apple, Not the Government (Thanks, sixfngers!) Source: Boing Boing | 13 Jun 2010 | 11:06 pm This week in search 6/11/10This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.One of our goals is to deliver the web content you're looking for as fast as possible. From under-the-hood indexing improvements and small feature enhancements that make search more relevant and intuitive, to directly delivering content to your inbox in your native tongue, all these enhancements are focused on getting you the results you're looking for—fast. Back in December, I wrote here about our efforts in speed, or what we call time-to-result. This week, I'm pleased to revisit this topic and share three new releases from our search teams that showcase the fruits of this focus: World Cup scores and schedules This week marked the start of an exciting time for football fans the world over. As many of those fans scour the web for scores and information on the tournament, we want to help organize and present those results as quick and simply as possible. So when you complete a search related to the World Cup, you’ll see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. You’ll also find TV broadcast information and quick links for game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles. The feature works on all Google search domains in 44 languages, including Afrikaans, Amharic, Swahili and Zulu.  Example searches: [world cup], [world cup spain] and [world cup group g] Google Alerts in 40 languages Google Alerts, which we launched in 2003, automatically searches the web to find new information about topics you're interested in and deliver it directly to your inbox. This week, we extended Google Alerts availability to 40 languages, expanding the reach of this helpful product. Google Alerts now supports Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Filipino, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. So, for example, if you want to keep up to date with your favorite World Cup footballer, create an alert for his name and new results will be delivered to your inbox. This feature is helpful to English speakers too—try translating your query into other languages to find out what's being talked about around the world. To get started, visit the alerts page in your country's domain (for example, here's Arabic in Egypt: www.google.com.eg/alerts). Caffeine indexing system This week, we announced the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. This new indexing system provides fresher results for web searches (nearly 50 percent fresher than our previous system) and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. We built Caffeine to help us meet the evolving expectations of our users, especially as content across the web becomes more global and is published in real time. Caffeine is the definition of speed for us, and we were excited to make this announcement and continue to bring you the best possible content—faster than ever before. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more enhancements next week. Posted by Jack Menzel, Product Management Director, Search    
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:45 pm SeaMicro's Cloud Server Sports 512 Atom Processors - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:25 pm No, The Internet Won’t Make You Stupid
Nick Carr is worried the Internet is making us stupid. It’s not so much our preoccupation with LOLCat photos or videos of fat girls flying off of swings that concerns him as it is the way we read and consume information on the Internet itself. He thinks the Internet is rewiring our brains, perhaps for the worse, and he’s written a book to warn us all about it called The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. Carr also finds links to be too distracting. Carr raises some good points worth contemplating, but his arguments also strike me as incredibly self-serving. After all, he is an author who makes money writing books. Of course he is going to argue that they make you smarter than the Web, with all of its neurological distractions. Carr is the master of technological alarmism. It sells his books and provokes debate, and this time is no exception. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote in the New York Times on Friday that “cognitive neuroscientists roll their eyes at such talk,” and NYT Bits blogger Nick Bilton marshaled some other counter-evidence as well. Carr then responded to Pinker’s Op-Ed at length, claiming that Pinker has an “axe to grind here” because Carr’s point that experiences can change the brain on a cellular level “poses a challenge to Pinker’s faith in evolutionary psychology.” Of, course, Carr has his own axe to grind. Remember, he’s the one pushing the new book. At the core of Carr’s alarmism is that the Web is simply at odds with deep, contemplative thought and reflection. It’s really a defense of book learning in its most basic form—again, not surprising coming from an author of books who values above all else the printed word. In an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal last week, Carr summed up his position:
Is the Internet really rewiring our brains? Sure, everything we do rewires our brains. That’s how our brains work (On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins is a good primer). That’s how we learn, through experience and repetition, which gets carved into new neuropathways over time. The Internet is no different. Is this rewiring somehow detrimental? If it is, then all the bookworms like Carr will end up being smarter than the rest of us and evolution will reward them. But something tells me that is not going to happen. The fact of the matter is that the Internet spreads information more broadly than the printed word ever did. It makes it easier to get up to speed on topics that you otherwise would know nothing about, such as the effects of the Internet on the brain. The reason reading online makes me feel smarter than reading a book is the exact same one Carr says makes us dumber: the pesky link. He writes:
Reading on the Internet is not the same experience as reading a book, no doubt about that. And I do agree with Carr that it is easier to lose yourself in a book than when reading on a screen. But to suggest that reading a book is a richer experience, or that we can’t handle the cognitive load of reading words with links is hogwash. Personally, I find it difficult now to read texts without links. When guest authors send me draft opinion pieces without any links, for example, they feel barren to me. Links are more than just footnotes that show an author has done the research to back up his arguments. They are what make the written words on the Web alive. An article with links is a living text, which exists in relation to other texts and thoughts on the Web. They let you go as deep down the rabbit hole as you care to go. There is no reason why books shouldn’t be the same, filled with links to be read in a browser on your iPad. Maybe Carr’s neural pathways are set already and this kind of experience is too jarring for him. But I kind of doubt that—he is quite adept at the ways of the Web. I have another theory. Maybe what he really finds objectionable is a world where readers are no longer content to let the full waterfall of an author’s words wash over them, and then sit and contemplate the genius of those words in isolation from any other words, and how fortunate they are to have gotten a glimpse into the author’s mind for only the $18 price of a hardcover from Amazon.      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:25 pm SeaMicro's Cloud Server Sports 512 Atom Processors (PC World)PC World - SeaMicro has developed a server that packs in 512 low-power Intel Atom processors on miniature motherboards the size of credit cards, the company announced Monday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:20 pm iOS 4 Is Going To Up The Ante For Location-Based Startups
First, Scoble’s thought that Foursquare might be in trouble because Yelp copied its check-in badge idea seems a bit premature to me. It was a much bigger deal when they added the whole check-in concept back in January, but the fact that Foursquare has started growing faster than ever since that point shows they have an advantage over Yelp in the realm. That advantage is that they have a social graph built for location, Yelp does not (yet). As we all know, Yelp was built as a rating and review system for local restaurants. It has a social graph, but most people on it are connected to other people because they’re interested in their food/restaurant reviews. It has nothing to do with wanting to see which of their real friends are nearby (which is what Foursquare is all about). That’s why I think it would have been smarter for Yelp to partner with Foursquare (or Gowalla, or Loopt, etc) in the same way a service like Hot Potato has (using APIs). Yelp + Foursquare would have been a formidable power play in the location space. Instead, Yelp’s check-in offering is still pretty weak, while Foursquare’s is still pretty small. Scoble also mentions that it might be wise for Foursquare to buy another service to bolster its offering. That’s not a bad idea, especially when they close that round of funding they’re working on. Scoble specifically menions Foodspotting — a service I like a lot — and that makes a lot of sense. But it may be wiser to think beyond that (or buy Foodspotting and extend their services). Foursquare needs a way to upload pictures and make comments on check-ins (and pictures). Basically, they need to copy the functionality Gowalla has right now. There’s always a fine line between keeping a service simple and cluttering it up with feature creep, but Gowalla’s mixture of check-ins, comments, and pictures is pretty damn perfect in my view right now.
The problem with a check-out is that it’s total feature-creep. And I would bet that only a small percentage of those that check-in would ever explicitly check-out too — it’s simply asking users to do too much. That leads me to my main point. I think we’re on the verge of location services getting even more interesting thanks largely to one thing: iOS 4. Apple’s new mobile operating system (formerly known as iPhone OS 4), which is launching in about a week, brings with it the ability for third-party applications to run in the background for the first time. One of the allowed functions is background location. Here’s how I see this working with Foursquare: you go to a venue, you load up Foursquare and check-in. The app then stays open in the background for a set period of time, notes when your location changes, and checks you out of the venue when you move far enough away. Obviously, this would auto check-out would need to be opt-in, but it seems like the perfect initial use of the new iOS with background location. The next step is the auto check-in — but that’s a bit more complicated, and I think users may not be ready for it yet. Still, it would be a cool option to have. The app could track you location in the background and if you stop at some place for long enough, it could ask you if you’d like to check-in there. By now, you Android fanboys have probably already left several comments along the lines of ”but Android has been able to run location in the background for 2 years.” That’s true, but let’s be honest: it’s the iPhone that’s going to help this type of activity take off (just as it was the iPhone that helped background location take off in the first place). Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, etc still see the vast majority of their activity on the iPhone. Android may be able to extend upon these new location ideas, but it will be the iPhone that puts them in the mind of most consumers. And this is just the most basic functionality made possible by the new iOS. I bet we see a new range of location service pop-up this year thanks to the background location-functionality. And I still bet that a lot of those companies get snatched up by the bigger players looking to compete. And the location turf wars will heat up even more.      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:09 pm Jive’s New Features and Management: Finally a Serious Enterprise 2.0 Play?
We’ll get to why in a moment. But first the news: Jive Software—a nine year old company that Zingale became CEO of in February on an interim basis—is launching two new products today and continuing a big press push that’s tantamount to announcing they are a serious, next-generation enterprise software company. (He’s also recently dropped “interim” from his title, the CEO equivalent moving out of beta.) The company operates fully-featured social networks for businesses that change how people inside the company work and communicate, and how they interact with their external partners and customers. Bolstering the news are some impressive partnerships: Jive will integrate LinkedIn profiles into the site, license the full Twitter firehose of Tweets and offer a free month trial of its service in Google’s App Marketplace. Jive is funded by Sequoia Capital; our previous coverage is here. Feature-wise the company is launching a App Marketplace (who isn’t?) and a “What Matters” product that’s like a corporate news feed. Data from existing business collaboration tools not to mention LinkedIn and Twitter will be pulled up and the most relevant pieces of data will be abstracted from the what-you-had-for-dinner-last-night noise. I am incredibly skeptical about the whole “enterprise 2.0” shtick but Zingale isn’t screwing around with some feel-good freemium model. He’s doing sales in the range of $75,000-$150,000 per company, on average, but the dollar amount is increasing. He’s done ten $1 million deals and four of those came in the last two quarters. The company has 3,000 customers, 15 million users, and will end the year on a $100 million run-rate. Considering that a few years ago open source darlings like Jboss were valued at hundreds-of-millions of dollars when they were doing less than $50 million in revenue, that’s a decent software business. The other reason I’ll give Jive the benefit of the doubt is Zingale. He is a man who has proven the difference between being lucky and being good. Sure, he benefited from the glory days of the business software boom early his career—when a lot of people looked smarter than they were because the world had billions to spend on Greenfield software opportunities. But he’s also He’d just become President and COO of Mercury Interactive with the understanding he’d become the CEO in about six months. The company missed the first quarter in 2005. Uh oh. Then it barely made the second quarter. Not great, but could be worse. These were not exactly enterprise software’s glory days. Then, SEC investigators showed up. Oh, shit. Mercury was proven to be one of the egregious abusers of the options backdating scandals that rocked the tech markets in 2005 and was made one of the biggest scapegoats. Zingale had nothing to do with this— he was on the board of the company but not when it went happened. But he didn’t abandon ship. He quickly fired the people who’d hired him, and he took the CEO job over a few months earlier than anticipated. I called him for an interview when the November 2005 Mercury bombshell hit. I was covering software for BusinessWeek and this was one of the hottest stories of the week. Most CEOs would have said “No comment.” But Zingale—who I’d met just once at an industry dinner— invited me in and we had a frank face-to-face conversation about the situation. He looked me in the eye, told me he had nothing to do with this and how he was going to save this company, and I believed him. He spent much of the rest of the year having the same come-to-Jesus meetings with every shareholder and major Mercury customer. Less than a year later, he sold the company to Hewlett Packard for a $5.1 billion—a 50% premium. Meanwhile a host of hot 1990s software companies who hadn’t had Mercury’s legal troubles were walking dead. Simply put, Zingale is a bad ass. He is one of those rare old-school software salesmen who also comes across as genuine. And he’s beyond battle-tested, pulling a de-listed, radioactive company back from the dead to be worth $5 billion. It’ll take someone like that to actually create a company out of all this Enterprise 2.0 hype. And I hope he can pull it off, because Silicon Valley is desperately in need of an enterprise software resurrection. One thing is certain: Jive will either be raising more money in the future or filing to go public as soon as it can. Zingale has a big vision here and building a real enterprise software company takes cash. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:01 pm Video Gallery: 10 Hot E3 Game Trailers10 of the hottest games of the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2010, presented in glorious video for your perusal
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm The Looming Space Junk Crisis: It's Time to Take Out the TrashThe nightmare scenario an astrophysicist envisaged in 1978 -- of space debris accumulating and colliding -- is now a reality, leaving NASA scrambling to deal with this "runaway environment."
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm iDirect Releases Evolution Platform UpgradeHERNDON, Va., June 14 /PRNewswire/ -- VT iDirect, Inc. (iDirect), a company of VT Systems Inc. (VT Systems), today announced that it has released iDX 2.1, the latest software upgrade to its Evolution platform.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm Mr. Know-It-All on Kid-Appropriate Writers, Blog Copyright, Weight Loss at WorkYou're under no legal obligation to take part in your company's weight-loss program, says Wired's Mr. Know-It-All -- but engaging in a healthier lifestyle is an idea worth considering.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm June 14, 1948: 'TV Guide' Prototype Hits N.Y. NewsstandsIt's just a little magazine to carry the listings of just the few TV stations in just one city. TV Guide has evolved along with television.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm Natal titles leak ahead of E3, roughly 12 available at launch
Here’s what we got, albeit the details are thin; “River Rush” and “Obstacle Course”, two games pretty much guaranteed to make you flail your arms and legs about, “Living Statue” which apparently lets you send video messages between users (and sounds decidedly creepy to me). We don’t have any real video or still yet, but be sure the that our crack team of reporters will be working on getting us the details as soon as we can come next week. In the meantime, here’s some video to make you laugh at how silly you’re going to appear playing these games: [via Engadget]
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Jun 2010 | 9:56 pm AT&T Blames iPad Incident on 'Malicious' Hackers - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Jun 2010 | 9:20 pm Hong Kong Company Develops Solar-Powered Lightbulbhussain_mkj writes "A Hong Kong-based company, Nokero, has introduced what it claims is the world's first solar powered lightbulb. Nokero is trying to replace traditional kerosene lamps in developing countries with its solar-powered N100 LED lightbulbs. The bulb is about the same size as normal incandescent bulbs, and will shine for two hours when charged for a day. The company claims that the new bulb is five times as bright as a kerosene lamp and uses 1/200th the energy. It will cost $15 for one and $480 for 48."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 9:01 pm What I got wrong about women in science In the comments section of my post last Friday on women in science, a couple people were confused by the idea that bigotry and discrimination could be something done, for lack of a better word, accidentally ... even subconsciously. I can understand why that's confusing. Most of us were raised understanding that discrimination was a bad thing, done by bad people who thought that they were superior to the people they discriminated against. It's logical to look at the way we learn about discrimination and say, "That doesn't describe me, so I'm OK." The truth, sadly, is a bit more complicated. Good people—people who aren't supremacists of any sort—can and do act in ways that support systemic discrimination. We do this, not because we're full of hate, but because we're full of other lessons we learned as kids ... things like, "Girl stuff isn't as cool" or "people of that race aren't like me, and that's bad." We might not cosign those ideas if they were expressed directly, but they can still quietly influence the way we act. And, if we happen to have been born into a non-minority category, we have the privilege of not even noticing when those old lessons direct us to do things that discriminate—because, from our point of view, the world still looks fair. Case in point: That post on women in science, itself. Several hours after I hit "publish", I realized that I'd managed to put together a panel on diversity made up of nothing but white people. I didn't set out to do that. But it happened, nonetheless. And it still furthered discrimination, by making it appear as if there aren't women of color scientists worth talking to, and by implying that their perspective on the issue wouldn't be any different from a white woman scientist's. Neither of which is true. Without intending to, I left out the people who didn't look like me. And because I have the privilege of seeing myself reflected in the media often enough, I didn't notice the point of view that was missing until after I'd already published the story. I'm writing about this now with the hope that it makes it more clear how discrimination happens, even in situations without big, evil villains. Sometimes, people with the privilege to not think about diversity don't, and they make decisions that leave out people not like them. When that same situation happens over and over and over, the people who don't look like the privileged end upmarginalized. It's simple. And, frankly, it's a lot scarier than big, evil villains, because it's harder to change. In the future, I'm going to try harder to think past my own privilege. And, whether your privilege is based on gender, race, wealth, sexuality, or culture ... I hope this post will remind you to do the same. Image courtesy Flickr user fireflythegreat, via CC Source: Boing Boing | 13 Jun 2010 | 8:59 pm New Xbox 360 coming soon, Natal to be renamed Kinect
The new 360 will have Wi-Fi built-in, “Kinect” support, and a 250GB hard drive. It appeared on a Italian site very briefly until being pulled.
Source: CrunchGear | 13 Jun 2010 | 8:08 pm Itagaki returns with Devil's Third - GameSpot
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Jun 2010 | 8:01 pm Video game innovations expected at E3 - San Francisco Chronicle
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Jun 2010 | 7:52 pm Ubuntu Replaces F-Spot With Shotwellclimenole writes "Finally! The much discussed about F-Spot vs. Shotwell battle is over. The new default image organizer app for Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 is going to be Shotwell. This is a much-needed change; F-Spot was simply not enough. Most of the times when I tried F-Spot, it just keeps crashing on me. Shotwell on the other hand feels a lot more solid and is better integrated with the GNOME desktop. Shotwell is also completely devoid of Mono."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 7:37 pm This Is How You Do a Global Meetup [Video]From Bangalore, India, to Sofia, Bulgaria, to Los Angeles, California and back to San Francisco, our network of readers threw an unforgettable, global, TechCrunch birthday bash. As a thank you and tribute to our readers, we’ve put together a brief video to highlight your efforts. Video above. According to Meetup, the final tally was 360 meetups on Friday, with more than 4,400 attendees. There was no dominant format. Some featured full-blown agendas complete with panels and startup presentations, others offered TechCrunch Jeopardy and many, simply featured beer. American Fork, Utah, which did not offer beer or Jeopardy, was still home to possibly the largest TechCrunch event with more than 500 attendees, according to organizer Dan Garfield (manager of online marketing for OrangeSoda). The meetup, which featured musical acts, the consumption of more than 1200 hotdogs and sausages and a dancing man in an orange, full-body spandex suit, was part-barbecue, part-block party, and all held in OrangeSoda’s parking lot. You can find their full video here. Meanwhile, more than 8,000 miles away, underneath a section of scaffolding in Bangalore, India, nearly 150 people gathered to discuss the latest technologies and listen to presentations from local startups. Further south, in Jakarta, Indonesia, 99 attendees showed up, including representatives from Admob and Yahoo Indonesia, to discuss Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Koprol, the investment climate, and how to do business abroad. In Brussels, Belgium more than a dozen readers gathered at a bar named Au Soleil, while in Tokyo, attendees celebrated a man (who for one reason or another, that may or may not be related to TechCrunch) dressed as a storm trooper, and finally, in New York, attendees took advantage of a four-foot tall ice luge. Yes, it was strange, yes, it was wonderful, and yes, this post doesn’t have a lot to do with “technology news,” but we can’t wait to see what you guys come up with next year.      
Source: TechCrunch | 13 Jun 2010 | 7:18 pm Wal-Mart and RadioShack to sell iPhone 4 on June 24 - Touch Reviews
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 13 Jun 2010 | 6:04 pm Can Transistors Be Made To Work When They're Off?An anonymous reader writes "Engineers at the Belgian research institute IMEC are looking at the use of silicon transistors in the sub-threshold region of their operation as a way of pursuing ultra-low power goals. A chip the engineers are designing for biomedical applications could have blocks designed to operate at 0.2 or 0.3 volts, researchers said, according to EE Times. The threshold voltage is the point at which the transistor nominally switches off. Operating a transistor when it is 'off' would make use of the leakage conduction that is normally seen as wasted energy, according to the article."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 5:52 pm A File-Centric Photo Manager?JeremyDuffy writes "I have a photo project of over 7,000 photos. I want to tag them based on location, time of day, who's in them, etc. Doing this by hand one at a time through the Windows 7 interface in Explorer is practically madness. There has to be a better way. Is there a photo manager that can easily group and manage file tags? And most importantly, something that stores the tag and other data (description etc.) in the file, not just a database? I don't care if the thing has a database, but the data must be in the file so when I upload the files to the Internet, the tags are in place."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 4:40 pm Game developers preparing for diverse E3 show (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Jun 2010 | 4:32 pm The Truth About the Polygraph, According To the NSAAn anonymous reader writes "The NSA (the secretive intelligence agency that brought you wholesale warrantless wiretapping) has produced a public relations video about its polygraph screening program titled 'The Truth About the Polygraph.' But is the NSA telling the truth? AntiPolygraph.org provides a critique (video)."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 3:34 pm Chrome OS To Support "Legacy" PC Apps Through Remote Accessadeelarshad82 writes "According to a message posted to a public mailing list dedicated to Chrome OS, a new feature is in the works that will grant users access to 'legacy PC applications' through some kind of remote desktop connection process. Google software engineer Gary Kamark, who first spilled the beans on the feature, calls the process 'Chromoting.' The current speculation amongst Chrome enthusiasts is that the Chromoting process is more akin to a VPN/sharing functionality than anything else. In that case, one would have to leave one's Windows-based desktop or laptop system on in order to access apps via a connected Chrome OS computer — which is hardly a technological leap given that numerous applications today offer users an analogous screen-sharing / remote access functionality."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 2:26 pm Political fundraising tool taps social networks (AP)AP - Candidates in some top political races are raising big sums of money using software that taps donors' social networks, an endeavor that lets the donors track their friends' donations with the zeal a fantasy baseball team owner uses to monitor player statistics.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Jun 2010 | 1:39 pm NASA Aircraft Videos Hayabusa Re-Entryastroengine writes "Flying above the Australian Outback, NASA's converted DC-8 jet videoed the violent re-entry of the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft. Flying in front of the disintegrating probe, the mission's sample return capsule can be seen speeding though the atmosphere. According to reports, the capsule landed safely and will be collected by helicopter in the morning." "Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait posts about the successful return as well.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 1:20 pm North Korean Flash Games For Exportlinzeal writes: "Despite it being pretty-much closed off to the world, North Korea is the next boom place for IT and tech outsourcing, PC World has reported. Flash games are being developed there for outside publishers, largely thanks to the home-grown talent. Does this mean that the the cartoon company that makes The Simpsons might use North Korea as well? Well it looks like they already have started."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Jun 2010 | 12:13 pm HOWTO remove a stripped screw with a rubber band
In theory, this looks like a pretty good way to cope with a stripped screw: use a bigger screwdriver and insert a rubber band between the tip of it and the screw-head to give you some traction. Never tried it, but it looks sound.
How To Remove a Stripped Screw Without an Extractor
(via Making Light) Koja's novel THE CIPHER to be a film
Hooray! Kathe Koja's classic debut novel The Cipher has gone into development as a feature film, entitled "The Muse." No further details yet, but Cipher was one of those lavish, frightening, erotic novels that you never forget. This is stellar news.
Source: Boing Boing | 13 Jun 2010 | 12:03 pm Top 10 Gamertell posts for the week of June 06, 2010FROM GAMERTELL - Haven’t caught all of the Gamertell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles… Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 13 Jun 2010 | 11:00 am NASA Aircraft Videos Hayabusa Re-EntryA stunning video of Hayabusa's atmospheric re-entry has been released. The footage was taken by an airborne laboratory inside a converted DC-8 jetliner, showing the speeding capsule and spacecraft break-up.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:11 am Premier Reverse Closings Online Rate Calculator a First in the Reverse Mortgage IndustryROCKLIN, Calif., June 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Proving they are at the forefront of the reverse mortgage industry, Premier Reverse Closings (PRC), divisions of National Closing Solutions and Placer Title, launched their online rate calculator, www.PRCfees.com on January 1st, 2010 just as their clients were adapting to the new HUD-1 format.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Jun 2010 | 10:00 am Top Android phones shouldn't be wary of new iPhone 4 (Appolicious)Appolicious - Despite the iPhone 4's key new features, the battle for buyers is intensifying as several top-notch phones powered by Google's Android mobile software are now on the market. Innovation in this arena no longer belongs only to Apple, as shoppers have a rich array of choices for phones that run apps, shoot crisp video and inform you instantly what your friends are doing.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Jun 2010 | 7:52 am Linux Trojan Raises Malware Concerns (PC World)PC World - [Author's Note: The article has been modified to correct the assertion that Unreal IRC has any relation to Unreal--the first-person shooter developed by Epic Games.]Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Jun 2010 | 7:46 am Windows that Work as Solar CellsA Swiss researcher developed low-cost solar cells that can be placed in windows, for which he received the Millennium Technology Prize.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 Jun 2010 | 7:24 am Bacteria Strain Could Aid In Oil Spill CleanupResearchers have discovered a new strain of bacteria that can produce non-toxic, comparatively inexpensive “rhamnolipids,” and effectively help degrade polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs – environmental pollutants that are one of the most harmful aspects of oil spills.Because of its unique characteristics, this new bacterial strain could be of considerable value in the long-term cleanup of the massive Gulf Coast oil spill, scientists say.More research to further reduce costs and scale up production would be needed before its commercial use, they added.The findings on this new bacterial strain that degrades the PAHs in oil and other hydrocarbons were just published in a professional journal, Biotechnology Advances, by researchers from Oregon State University and two collaborating universities in China.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Jun 2010 | 7:05 am Tracking The True Tale Of TurkeysNew research analyzes the life and times of the UK's favorite poultryThe turkey dinner is a staple part of Christmas Day, but new research at the University of Leicester reveals that the history of the much loved poultry is in fact rather varied and unexpected.Brooklynne Fothergill, from the University's School of Archaeology and Ancient History, has found that the turkey was not always used as a meat product.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Jun 2010 | 6:44 am Insects Tiny Brains Still Capable Of Huge FeatsImage Caption: A male hoverfly, Eristalis, attempting to woo a female (feeding from the flower) with his impressively controlled hovering flight. The flies use visual motion to stabilize and control their flight and to maintain their distance from nearby objects. Photo by Doekele Stavenga.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Jun 2010 | 6:40 am Harbor Seal Whiskers Can Detect Fish TrailsWhen a hungry harbor seal sets off in pursuit of a fish diner, the animal has a secret weapon in its tracking arsenal: its whiskers. Detecting hydrodynamic trails in water with their sensitive whiskers, seals easily track passing fish even in the most turbid conditions.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Jun 2010 | 6:31 am Songbirds Learn Songs While They SleepA model for speech learningPreviously the researchers, Sharon Gobes, Thijs Zandbergen en Johan Bolhuis, had demonstrated that the way in which zebra finches learn their songs is very similar to the way in which children learn to speak. In both cases learning takes place during early youth and involves considerable practice. Also, in children and songbirds alike, different brain regions are involved in learning and in speaking or singing. The new research shows that, just as in human infants, the brain of the young zebra finch is also active during sleep. This makes songbirds a good animal model to study the role of sleep in human speech acquisition.The brain is active during sleepIt has been known that sleep plays an important role in learning in humans and other mammals. In songbirds it had been shown previously that during sleep the brain has the same pattern of activity as during singing the day before. The present findings show that the more young songbirds have learned from their father’s song, the more active their brain is during subsequent sleep.---Image Caption: Photograph of a zebra finch. Courtesy Maurice van Bruggen - WikipediaSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Jun 2010 | 6:26 am Dell Shares Rise After News Of Fraud ProbeAfter Dell said on Friday that it would set aside 100 million dollars in connection with a fraud probe, shares for the company slightly increased slightly. Shares went up 0.15 percent to 13.09 dollars within two hours of the opening bell on Wall Street.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Jun 2010 | 6:15 am Aqua Satellite Captures Shiny Oil Slick On June 10Image Caption: NASA's Aqua satellite flew over the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, June 10 at 19:05 UTC (3:05 p.m. EDT) and the satellite's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured an image of the thickest part of the oil slick. In the image, the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is positioned in sunglint. In the sunglint region—where the mirror-like reflection of the Sun gets blurred into a wide, bright silvery-gray strip—differences in the texture of the water surface may be enhanced. In the thickest part of the slick, oil smooths the water, making it a better "mirror." Areas where thick oil cover the water are nearly white in this image. Additional oil may also be present. Credit: NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team/ Holli RiebeekSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Jun 2010 | 6:10 am Trade Commission To Probe Apple After HTC ComplaintThe US International Trade Commission said Friday that it will look into a patent infringement complaint by Taiwan-based mobile phone maker HTC Corp launched against Apple Inc, which is seeking to ban iPhone, iPod and iPad sales in the United States.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Jun 2010 | 5:30 am Obama Not Angry At Britain For Oil SpillPresident Barack Obama said on Saturday that his criticism of BP was not directed towards Britain as the U.S. Coast Guard increased pressure on BP to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Jun 2010 | 5:25 am
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San Mateo, CA-based 
This 
As we all know by now, comments on the Internet are a fascinating thing. My favorite involve the word “fanboy.” Generally speaking, it means you write (stories, tweets, whatever) about a certain topic with a positive angle. It’s meant to be derogatory, but the truth is that it’s so overused that it’s almost completely meaningless. But for the sake of this post, I’ll play ball. I have a confession to make: I’m a fanboy.
This story fascinates me on so many levels. Here are the basic facts: Zynga has been 
Yesterday, 
Another idea Scoble brings up is a “check-out.” I love this. He talks about it from customer loyalty perspective, which is a good point, but I think it goes beyond that. One problem I have with Foursquare is that it’s too often populated with inaccurate (old) information. That is, I may go somewhere check-in when I get there, but 30 minutes later I’m gone. Someone who shows up 15 minutes after that (after seeing my check-in on Foursquare) will have missed me. This happens quite a bit. Sadly, the only way to “check-out” of a venue is to check-in to another one. That’s no good.
As much as I’d love to claim the scoop is ours, the LA Times are actually the ones who got the word on what the first Natal games are going to be. All we have is a few names, but they sound promising.
