Web 2.0

May 16, 2008

Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first (Bruce Schneier/Guardian)

Friday, May 16, 2008 3:25 AM

Bruce Schneier / Guardian:
Taking your laptop into the US?  Be sure to hide all your data first  —  Last month a US court ruled that border agents can search your laptop, or any other electronic device, when you're entering the country.  They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days.

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0

Danish Mobile Social Network ZYB Acquired By Vodafone For €31.5 million

Friday, May 16, 2008 3:09 AM

ZYB, a mobile social network that we gave high marks to in August 2007, has been acquired by Vodafone for €31.5 million, or about $50 million. The company had raised just €3 million in venture capital. ZYB was smart in how they built their service. At first they were a simple address book backup-to-web service. But [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Facebook has a point where it comes to your privacy (Robert Scoble/Scobleizer)

Friday, May 16, 2008 2:55 AM

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Facebook has a point where it comes to your privacy  —  My ex-boss, John Furrier, goes after Facebook after Facebook blocked Google's Friend Connect from using its API to inport friends from Facebook into Google's Friend Connect.  —  I saw Dave Morin, who runs Facebook's developer platform, at Google's event Monday night.

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0

Data Portability: It’s The New Walled Garden

Friday, May 16, 2008 2:22 AM

The scuffle today between Facebook and Google has very little to do with user privacy and everything to do with user control. A huge battle is underway between Google, MySpace and Facebook around control of user profiles and, therefore, users themselves. And their three new products, Data Availability, Facebook Connect, and Friend Connect, are all [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Android vs. LiMo: What’s the difference?

Friday, May 16, 2008 2:15 AM

With LiMo’s recent announcement that Verizon had hopped onto their Board of Directors, things are starting to heat up between the LiMo platform and Google’s competing product, Android. Both are open-source Linux-based platforms, and both are aiming to rock the handset market sometime in the next year or so. LiMo is Linux-based. Android is Linux-based. [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Disqus - After 5 Days on Disqus, I'm Turning Back to Wordpress Comments (Ryan Spoon)

Friday, May 16, 2008 2:00 AM

Ryan Spoon:
Disqus - After 5 Days on Disqus, I'm Turning Back to Wordpress Comments  —  I'm an avid reader of Fred Wilson's blog and was tempted to test-drive Disqus when Fred first integrated it onto his site.  I finally decided to install it on my blog (which is powered by Wordpress) after Fred wrote his post “Three Reasons to Use Disqus”.

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0

Blaine Cook Joins Today’s Gillmor Gang, Talks Twitter

Friday, May 16, 2008 12:42 AM

He was pretty careful about what he would and wouldn’t talk about, but former Twitter Chief Architect Blaine Cook bravely faced the Gillmor Gang today to talk about the challenges facing Twitter, the feasibility of a decentralized Twitter competitor, and other Twitter related issues. The timing is perfect, as big media is starting to take [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

May 15, 2008

Google Translate adds 10 new languages... (Jeff Chin/Official Google Blog)

Thursday, May 15, 2008 11:15 PM

Jeff Chin / Official Google Blog:
Google Translate adds 10 new languages...  ...and that's great news any way you say it.  Language is one of the biggest challenges we have in making information universally accessible.  As part of the machine translation team within Google Research, I'm happy to report we've been hard at work to overcome this challenge.

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0

Exclusive Look at Plazes for iPhone

Thursday, May 15, 2008 10:13 PM

Today Plazes CEO Felix Petersen gave us a peek at iPlazer, the upcoming iPhone client for the geo-tagging social networking site. The app will be available when Apple’s official App Store launches in mid June. Plazes has been around for a while - it was one of the first companies to be covered [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Rumor: Google To Launch Hosted Site Search, Ditch Mini

Thursday, May 15, 2008 9:26 PM

A source has informed us that Google plans to announce the replacement of its Mini Search Appliance with a new enterprise search solution called Hosted Site Search in the next few days. We hear it will be a for-pay product that, as the name suggests, will allow businesses to search their websites and other data stores [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Jennifer Aniston Geeks Out, Let’s Revise Those Kindle Estimates Upward

Thursday, May 15, 2008 8:34 PM

One thing Citi analyst Kevin Mahaney didn’t know about earlier this week in his very optimistic sales estimates for the Kindle: Jennifer Aniston is apparently a fan. At least, that’s what it looks like in the picture above published by US Weekly (that is the first time and also the last time that publication will [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Get the Lowdown on Cloud Computing at GigaOM’s Structure 08

Thursday, May 15, 2008 6:44 PM

Next month GigaOM will hold Structure 08, a conference centered on the changing face of computing infrastructure. The event will discuss the wave of cloud computing technology that has been driving a revolution in web applications and has started to overthrow the notion of conventional servers. Structure 08 will feature a workshop on Google App [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Yahoo! Responds to Carl Icahn's Intention to Nominate Candidates ... (Business Wire)

Thursday, May 15, 2008 6:25 PM

Business Wire:
Yahoo! Responds to Carl Icahn's Intention to Nominate Candidates for Election to Yahoo!'s Board of Directors  —  SUNNYVALE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - News), a leading global Internet company, today sent the following letter in response to Carl Icahn's announcement regarding …

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0

Microsoft Joins Effort for Laptops for Children (Steve Lohr/New York Times)

Thursday, May 15, 2008 6:05 PM

Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Microsoft Joins Effort for Laptops for Children  —  After a years-long dispute, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child said Thursday that they had reached an agreement to offer Windows on the organization's computers.  —  Microsoft long resisted joining …

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0

BoomTown Decodes Carl Icahn's Letter to Yahoo! (Kara Swisher/BoomTown)

Thursday, May 15, 2008 5:40 PM

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
BoomTown Decodes Carl Icahn's Letter to Yahoo!  —  BoomTown's most favorite part of the Yahoo takeover circus?  —  The dueling letters, of course!  How the lovely practice of missives has fallen out of favor, as soulless emails have grown in use.  —  Well, not in the land of hostile takeovers!

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0

Poor Children Of The World No Longer Will Have To Struggle With Linux

Thursday, May 15, 2008 5:34 PM

One Laptop Per Child will ship a special version of Windows on their low cost laptops for poor children, the two companies announced this afternoon. Previously the laptops, which to date have been tested in a number of countries, ran only Linux. Trials of the Windows version of the machines will begin in June in [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

He Said, She Said In Google v. Facebook

Thursday, May 15, 2008 5:17 PM

More details on Facebook’s banning of Google Friend Connect from the Facebook API earlier today. I spoke with Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly and Google’s Director of Engineering David Glazer about the banning to get a fuller picture of the conflict. Here’s an example of how Friend Connect (more details) works in practice. A third [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Spellr.us Launches: Check Your Site For Spelling Erors

Thursday, May 15, 2008 5:10 PM

Last month we ran a brief post introducing Spellr.us, a service that monitors websites for spelling errors. Little was known about the site at the time - all we had to go by was a teaser splash page. The site has finally entered a private beta, and it shows a lot of potential. [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

The Mike Arrington Show

Thursday, May 15, 2008 4:02 PM

Yeah that’s right. I have a puppet parody now, too. This is pretty tame stuff compared to the hit job Loren did on Shel israel. Before you hit play, note that there is some offensive language in the video, referring to our recent dispute with Wired. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets [...]
Source: TechCrunch
Categories: Web 2.0

Amazon Kindle a $750 Million iPod-Like Business By 2010 (AMZN) (Henry Blodget/Silicon Alley Insider)

Thursday, May 15, 2008 3:45 PM

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Amazon Kindle a $750 Million iPod-Like Business By 2010 (AMZN)  —  The Kindle could contribute 3% of Amazon's overall revenue in two years, argues Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, who has a born-again relationship with the device.  Combining device and book sales in an iPod/iTunes-like model …

Source: Techmeme
Categories: Web 2.0