ThyNews

I’ll say this about Brazilian startups—they’re certainly not dominated by Web copycats. Perhaps it’s because there aren’t a huge number of Brazilians who’ve made it big in the Valley transmuting the local way of doing things back home or because there’s not a lot of US venture capital flooding into the country. Perhaps it’s the country’s noted isolationist streak, or perhaps it was just the startups I lucked into meeting. But whatever the reason I saw fewer “We’re-the-fill-in-the-blank-Web-company-of-Brazil” ventures than I have in any other market to which I’ve traveled in the last few years. Many Brazilians I spoke with… More »

Live video streaming on the web is becoming more and more popular, and for news organizations and brands who don't want to shell out thousands of dollars a day for a satellite truck there is another option. At SXSW, Kyte is going to release a new product called Kyte LivePro Unwired with Spin magazine. LivePro is a computer in a backpack connected to six data cards all uploading live video at the same time, balancing the load across three different carriers (Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon). It is made by LiveU and Kyte will be reselling it to its larger customers.… More »

Yahoo is backing a cycling team. I don't know why — but they're doing it. And today their passion got a little boost: from Google. Google is announcing tomorrow at the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC that Google Maps will now include biking directions in the U.S. Apparently, this was the most-requested feature for the service, as some 57 million Americans ride bikes. More »

Jon [Miller] came to us and said, `Would you like to be co-presidents?' We said, `Hell yeah.' We didn't have to move our desks," -- Former MySpace Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn's reaction to the abrupt firing of his boss and his promotion to co-president of MySpace. More »

More bad news for an already bullet-riddled MySpace: three key employees have left the company to join Gravity, a cross-town startup founded by former MySpace COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto. We covered Gravity's launch in December 2009. The three MySpacer's are Chief Software Architect Chris Bissell (we previously reported Bissell's resignation), Chief Systems Architect Dan Farino and Development Manager Robbie Coleman. More »

A new study by Comscore will be released on Wednesday that may give hope to social gaming startups trying to monetize users. 35% of the survey respondents said that they engage in "marketing actions" to earn virtual currency (such as watching a video, filling out a survey, etc.), and 53% said they be willing to consider marketing action for currency if given the choice. The study was conducted by Comscore, sponsored by Offerpal, and included responses from 799 Comscore panelists who play games on social networks at least once per month. 54% of panelists play games at least daily. This… More »

With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration. The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you'll find events populated from a ton of sources including the live music tracker SonicLiving (SXSW is first and foremost a music event, after all) and most notably, Facebook. This pre-population is important, because it means the events will already be… More »

Business to business software can be a tough sell. Online B2B can be even a harder sell. While there is certainly money to be made, unless you're one of the big players, the likelihood you're going to succeed is pretty small. Starting today, Google is taking their roll as one of the big players and extending a platform to boost some smaller players. Tonight, Google has unveiled their Google Apps Marketplace. This is an app store for enterprise apps in the cloud. Using a set of APIs, these third-party apps can deeply integrate their products within Google Apps, which already… More »

Zoho, a web-based productivity suite that was called a "fake Office" by a Microsoft VP, is announcing a significant partnership with Google today. The startup will be a launch partner for Google's recently launched Google Apps Marketplace, which allows vendors to sell applications that compliment Google Apps. Here are our notes from the announcement. Zoho will be integrating two of its over 20 business applications - Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects with Google Apps. So starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add on-demand CRM app Zoho CRM and project management software Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While… More »

Tonight, Google launched its Google Apps Marketplace, an online storefront for Apps products and services. Here are our notes from the announcement. And of course, the marketplace is launching with a number of pilot partners (50 to be exact). One of those partners happens to be recently launched Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products. At last year's TechCrunch50 conference, Socialwok made a big splash, winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps. The web-based application was praised for launching a social network that wrapped… More »

You think the iPad will be the only tablet we’ll talk about in 2010? Not even close. According to Arm’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager Roy Chen, we can expect as many as 50 tablets before the year’s end.“The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers. You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter,” said Chen. He declined to name specific companies that will launch the tablets, but he did say some of the top 10 telecoms will launch a tablet. Arm also displayed a taste of what’s to come at the Taipei… More »

We’ve seen many, many iterations of the popular tower defense games over the years, but this one has a special meaning for all you Twitter fans out there.Based on a tried and true concept, Tweet Defense is an iPhone game that lets you fight zombies with various tower defense units, but with a social twist: it grabs your various Twitter stats – number of followers, friends and tweets – and calculates bonuses to your defense based on them. It’s like an infinite time sink which connects two enormous time wasters – Twitter and tower defense. In other words, it’s beautiful.Get… More »

We had a chance to step into MySpace HQ for a chat with new Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones, who preside over the News Corp.-owned social network from a shared desk in Beverly Hills. The joint office speaks to how closely Hirschhorn and Jones are working together to create a unified vision of the future for the lately struggling MySpace, whose former CEO Owen Van Natta exited the company after only 9 months in the hot seat.Hirschhorn describes MySpace as a site that “lacked focus” as he and Jones were getting up to speed and learning about the business.… More »

In November, Phonebooth.com released the beta version of Phonebooth OnDemand, which is a full-featured phone service that lives in the cloud, but can communicate with both cellular phones and IP desk and conference phones. Today, that service — which costs $20 a month per user — is becoming generally available. Phonebooth.com is also leveraging its own private VoIP network to launch Phonebooth Free, a free version of its hosted phone system, which is very similar to Google Voice but aimed at small businesses.Phonebooth.com is a product from Bandwidth.com. While Bandwidth.com might not be as well-known as players like Comcast, Verizon… More »

Back in October we wrote about Appboy, a social network for mobile app developers and users. Since launching, Appboy has continued to evolve into a community for both developers and users to find and rate apps, as well as submit ideas for new mobile applications. Appboy has just rolled out a big update to its site which improves the design, adds stronger integration with Facebook and Twitter, and makes it easy to keep up with what your favorite app developers are doing. The site has also launched a new companion iPhone application and started a new partnership with Best Buy… More »

Today at the Google’s Campfire One event at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View the Internet search giant is launching its new app store for business, known as the Google Apps Marketplace.Last week, we broke the story that Google Apps Marketplace would launch today, reporting that it would be an app store integrated within Google Apps that would allow third-party developers to sell software directly to Google’s business consumers.Now, with developers gathered at the Googleplex, we’re about to learn how Google Apps Marketplace works and, more importantly, which apps are going to be available at launch.My live notes from the… More »

Spam and phishing have been ongoing problems at Twitter for some time, and tonight the company announced that it is stepping up its efforts to stop them with some new features, described as being able to “detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links.”In a blog post, Twitter writes that the protection works by “routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service … even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.”How exactly they do that, we’re not sure, but Twitter… More »

Google’s call for medium-sized cities to pilot its high-speed broadband network has attracted the marketing wit of another locale: Greenville, South Carolina.Citizens of Greenville have launched the “We Are Feeling Lucky” campaign –- an obvious play on Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button — an effort that will culminate in citizens trying to form “the world’s first and longest human Google chain.” Glowsticks will apparently be involved in the event, scheduled to take place on the evening of March 20.The site makes heavy use of Google products and services — likely not a coincidence — in getting its message across. There’s… More »

Mollie Vandor is the Product Manager for Ranker.com and Media Director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter and on her blog, where she writes about the web, the world and what it’s like to be a geek chic chick.Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes — lately, it seems like there’s a new natural disaster wreaking havoc on poor planet Earth every week. From our television sets to our Twitter streams, it’s impossible to ignore the devastation these disasters leave behind. And, no matter where you’re watching from, it’s hard not to feel just a little bit helpless in… More »

The Super Bowl may be long over, but Brand Battle 2010 continues to rage on, as yet another commercial is bit by the controversy bug — this time one of those adorable spots from E-Trade featuring a talking baby named “Lindsay.”According to the New York Post, actress Lindsay Lohan is suing the investment site on the grounds that the man-eating, substance-abusing baby in the commercial is based on her.Lohan’s lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, is asking that the commercial be taken off the air and every copy of the offending spot be rounded up (which could now be more difficult given today’s… More »

I’m Never Going Back To Our Regularly Scheduled ProgrammingAt last, I can watch my favorite commercials without sitting through all those annoying shows.Concise storytelling. Striking visuals. Hapless, overfed man-children in comical situations. These are the things I love about television – or rather, used to love about television, before it turned into a cheapo cesspool of “reality” freakshows. Nowadays, the real artistry comes in thirty-second chunks. Turns out that soda companies, breweries, car-insurance firms, and fast-food chains are the only entities left with enough money to make anything worth watching. And I’ll be watching, believe me, with this TiVo Series… More »

Cinnamon and marinara sauce French fries and chocolate milkshakes Hamburgers and velvet Sun-dried tomatoes and the tears of orphans Bread pudding and the music of Joanna Newsom Zima and that clown from your birthday party Lamb shanks and my father's disappointment Melted gouda and Han Solo action figures (original or Hoth) The oral history of the Underground Railroad and the color teal Those old aluminum swimming pools and socialism LASIK surgery and your first crush Sandy Nelson's "Live! In Las Vegas" and a single grain of sand International test cricket and sneezing A savage wildcat and the aroma of melted… More »

The below video is a tad NSFW due to language and slightly adult content, but if you haven't seen this year's Oscar-winning animated short Logorama yet, give this a click. Watch as a Los Angeles made up entirely of corporate logos and mascots EXPLODES before your very eyes. You know, when you get home and maybe after you've put the kids to bed. We here at Woot feel only slightly snubbed by the exclusion of our iconic Exclamation Point, but we'll let it slide. Hopefully, their people can do lunch with our people and get us a spot in the… More »

Oooh, Father-in-Law’s birthday?I’ve got the perfect gift.I’m serious; hear me out. A Stanley 3-in-1 Tripod Flashlight with Mini-Tripod Keychain is the perfect gift for an older male in your life who you don’t really know all that well yet but with whom you are forced to awkwardly converse and spend extended periods of time with around the holidays. It’s not like you don’t like the guy; you just don’t know the guy. Hence, an awesome flashlight setup with a tripod. Your father-in-law’s an accountant? So what? Mine’s got a Doctorate in Organic Chemistry and he captains his own fishing boat.… More »

    That's right, it's just that simple. Ripped from the pages of the always-cutting-edge deviantART.com, Virtual Hamster is a 21st Century hamster raising scenario.     And the combinations are limitless! Will you choose to withhold love and offer food instead? Will you choose constant sleep and no washing? Well, it doesn't really matter, because there are no long term consequences or repercussions or anything. Your hamster will just keep on sitting there and smiling adorably no matter what path you choose.     It's just too bad that the Virtual Hamster people didn't include a "punch his smug… More »

ViceSonny Justice was calm in his Ferrari, parked across the street from the hottest video store in town. It was almost time to move in.Bathed in the blue light from the neon sign, Sonny gave his partner, Tubbs Purebottom, the nod. Tubbs didn’t answer right away. Sonny understood. He’d been in a flashback once or twice himself. He knew how it went. In the office, months ago, Tubbs was talking to the new rookie, Carlotta, who was only twenty three. “Why is some stupid show that’s older than me so important to you guys?” Carlotta asked as Sonny chuckled to… More »

I Can’t Believe They’re Making Me Work On My BirthdayNo presents. No cake. There isn’t even anyone here. Sigh. Another year alone, I guess.Well, to heck with everybody. I’ll throw my own birthday party. That’s right! In fact, I’m already throwing one with my two best friends, these refurbished red and black Gateway 10.1” Netbooks with Windows 7! They love me. They care about my special day. Isn’t that right, Mr. Black Gateway? That’s right! We’d never leave the warehouse without your clever writeups and wonderful way with words. It’s fantastic people like you that love our 1.GHz Intel Atom… More »

Live BaitSorry, HP. I’m observing a one-man Blu-Ray boycott until Hollywood wakes up and gives us an HD reissue of the greatest flying-carnivorous-fish movie ever made.I speak, of course, of James Cameron’s finest work: his 1981 magnum opus Piranha II: The Spawning. As far as I’m concerned, you can take Avatar, Titanic, and The Terminator and sink them in an alien steamship from the future. Only Piranha II: The Spawning fully explores Cameron’s gift for sensitive, authentic portrayal of murderous mutant sea life. Under normal circumstances, I’d be on this HP 17” Notebook like a flying piranha on an expendable… More »

The spirit of Jackson Pollock in flash game form, or paintball without guns? The object of Splatz is to burst your red paint blobs where they'll take out the maximum number of blue paint blobs. I finished it in 78 retries, almost all of them on the Satanically diabolically final level. It was more fun than watching paint dry. (Sorry.)   More »

Join the TomTom ClubJust where do you think you’re going?OK, you’ve probably seen TomTom’s model XL 340S out there in your travels across this great land of ours. By which we mean “on your way to the liquor store.” It’s a perfectly handy little satellite navigat-a-mo-bob, and you could do a lot worse. But friends, this is not the XL 340S. This is the XL 340S LIVE, and if you don’t think that sounds like a very big difference, imagine two cabarets beside the highway: one that advertises “LIVE nude girls” and one that doesn’t specify. See? It is a… More »

Is it fair to criticize lawyers for having represented Guantanamo detainees? More »

President Obama’s health reform plan is a mixed bag for those who care about keeping down medical costs. More »

Prosecutors accused Colleen R. LaRose, who called herself “JihadJane,” of involvement in a plot with militants. More »

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will discuss military cooperation and Iran’s nuclear program, officials said. More »

Economists said the data signaled a rebound in consumer demand in the U.S. and other Western markets. More »

By one new metric, Michelangelo has been bumped from his perch atop the Italian art charts by Caravaggio. More »

Militants attacked the offices of an Christian aid group in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, killing five people working for the organization, police said. More »

As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted to a web of corrupt contractors, a report found. More »

Senator Bob Corker wants a proposed bank agency to be more lenient, but critics say consumers would be hurt. More »

Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch will unveil a plan that includes borrowing billions and imposing curbs on future spending. More »

Concept Feedback – Free feedback for marketers, designers and Micropreneurs. Share your website and get quick feedback. Excellent resource for fast, free site reviews. lehan. paper. design. – Need an elegant “Thank You” card for a client? Or a custom card with your logo and message? Professional and elegant designs from a paper craftsman. HotNameList – If [...] More »

Each of us has our own set of strengths and weaknesses but we never take the time to figure out what they are. Even if you did would you know what to do with the information? You’ve probably heard that you need to identify weaknesses so you can fix them. After all, if you’re already strong [...] More »

By now we’ve discussed the fact that you should first plug your funnel, then improve conversion rates, then work on sending as much traffic as possible to your website. But we haven’t talked about how big of a role traffic quality plays in determining your conversion rate. Traffic Quality By “quality” I mean the following: how close each [...] More »

The Two iPhone App Stores – An insightful post about the two app stores – the “simple shallow” store and the “deeper, more expensive” store. The press loves to cover the “simple, shallow” store but the “deeper” store encompasses most of the apps. Lessons from a “Pay What You Want” Software Sale – A key takeaway: [...] More »

I had a realization recently while talking with a Micropreneur Academy member: focusing on increasing traffic and improving conversion rates is a fantastic game plan for a startup. But if you offer a recurring service a third step is required: retaining your existing customers. If you’re focusing hard on optimizing your website sales funnel it’s easy [...] More »

Here’s an interesting exercise: find a startup or microISV founder and ask the following: What are the top 3 approaches you use to find customers? The most common responses will involve search engine optimization, AdWords, blogging, podcasting, and perhaps social media. And this is good – these methods can drive substantial traffic to your website. Then ask about [...] More »

The Micropreneur Spotlight is a look at a Micropreneur Academy member who has launched their product. This episode’s Micropreneur is Ruben Gamez who recently launched online design proposal software Bidsketch. == Rob: Thanks for your time today, Ruben. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Ruben: First off, thanks for inviting me to be part of the [...] More »

The phrase “joining the dark side” perfectly summarizes my feelings about the fact that I joined Twitter a few weeks ago. It was the Business of Software 2009 conference that did it. They announced that you would miss out on certain parts of the conference if you weren’t on Twitter so I broke down and joined. Like [...] More »

I’m really into saving time, and one way I’ve found to do that is to skim books, or listen to them as abridged audiobooks when I’m on the road. In line with this, about a year ago I found an awesome collection of summaries of the best marketing books ever (in the opinion of the book’s [...] More »

My roof is leaking. In five places. Whoever thought it was a good idea to build a house with a flat roof should be forced to duplicate Google’s PageRank algorithm in assembler. So I called a roofer, Fred, to give me a quote to fix this mess. His skin is like leather and his voice sounds [...] More »

There's nothing worse for a bicyclist than finding yourself a mile in to a two-mile stretch of shoulder-less, busy, highway-speed traffic with no alternative route. Before today, this was a common occurrence if you went to trusty Google Maps to get bicycling directions, but starting today, that has all changed. Google has added bicycling directions, lanes and routes to Google Maps, meaning you no longer have to drive, walk or bus to get directions. And we can tell you, bicyclists are excited. Sponsor Before now, the only option to cyclists to get even remotely appropriate directions, was to use the… More »

Bookmarking service Delicious has just rolled out a Google Chrome browser extension. Like other Chrome extensions we love to play with, this one is lightweight, fast and useful. There's no bulky sidebar here. Bookmarks can be created and saved with a miniscule "TAG" button and they can be searched from Chrome's excellent omnibar. So, do you think this will prompt loyal Delicious users - many of whom had been holding out on Chrome in favor of Firefox - to switch to Google Chrome entirely? Sponsor This is what the button and simple form for bookmarking a page look like: More »

Social media gurus: We all know one. If you're lucky, you know only one. They are the attendees of tech parties, the "Twitter consultants," the armchair generals of the Internet, and their numbers grow by the day. Yet most of them couldn't distinguish a line of code from a badly punctuated haiku. What's to be done with the social media experts? Accept that their blathering may contain some wisdom? Or require technical exams for all Twitter users with more than 1,000 followers? You decide! And make the NMDs among us take our "technical" quiz. Sponsor There is always grave danger… More »

Phonebooth.com, a VOIP service for individuals and small businesses, just launched a free version of its service. Phonebooth, just like Google Voice and Ribbit Mobile, provides its users with a free local phone number that can be forwarded to any cell phone and landline. Phonebooth also offers voicemail transcriptions. What makes it stand out from it competitors, however, is that it offers an auto attendant feature that allows you to route callers to different employees. Sponsor It's worth noting that Bandwidth.com, the company behind Phonebooth, has been providing infrastructure services to other VOIP services, including Voxeo and Yext, for more… More »

A ReadWriteWeb Guide OMG! Kevin Rose just touched my shirt! Don't lie - we know you get butterflies at the thought of bumping into iJustine or Robert Scoble at a tech conference. We've pulled together a nice little cheat sheet just for you, friends. Whether you want a simple handshake, and autograph on your iPhone or a chance to pitch your idea for the Next Big Web App, here's ten places, panels and parties where you can track down the Internet famous at SXSW 2010. Don't forget to leave your tips in the comments! Sponsor This is part of a… More »

Google launched an application marketplace today comprised of services from third-party providers that integrate with the Google Apps ecosystem. The news has been anticipated for some time. In particular, it shows how much Google is embracing open-standards and leveraging its search and Google Apps platform to attract third-party developers. Sponsor Google made the announcement at its Google Campfire One event tonight. The emphasis Google is putting on the enterprise is apparent in how much attention the company put into the event. Over and over we heard that Google passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend. It is that… More »

It never ceases to amaze me how many high-tech industry elites get ensnared in every Twitter phishing attack. (See our November story 7 High-Tech Twitter Users Who Fell for Phishing Scams) This evening Twitter announced that a new program will intercept links sent out by Direct Message and through email, checking to make sure they are safe. Phishing prevention is no small matter. Twitter's is a good move but a lot more is needed all over the web. If we want a transactional developer ecosystem of distributed identity and portable user data, there are both user education and technical changes… More »

Sales and marketing are not the same thing. It's true they both deal with relationship management and it's true that neither of these job descriptions require hardcore engineering, but just because they're both in the realm of words over code does not mean that they are the same. At the risk of muddling your mind with HR jargon, the core competencies of a marketer are very different from those of a sales person. Surprisingly, many startup CEOs insist on hiring for a VP of Sales and Marketing position. Sponsor If you're the VP of sales and marketing for your company,… More »

Seth Goldstein comes up with a lot of ideas. Some of them work and some of them don't. He was one of the original backers of Del.icio.us (bought by Yahoo), Etherpad (bought by Google) and Bit.ly (huge via Twitter). He was also President of the short-lived Attention Trust and built a browser plug-in that allowed people to track, manage and sell on the Chicago Board of Trade futures in their browsing history and other online attention data. That didn't work out so well, though it was a very interesting idea. Two years ago he raised $10m, built an advertising network… More »

It's services like Put.io that are behind why Google executives argue desktops will be irrelevant in three years, why Steve Ballmer says Microsoft is betting the bank on the cloud, and why storage stats for the newest gadget are becoming less and less important.Everything is going to the cloud. Does it often feel like a waste of time to download something just to watch it once and then delete it? Then Don't. Use Put.io. Put simply, Put.io fetches files from the Internet and allows you to either store them there or immediately stream them. Sponsor Put.io can get files from… More »

One of the most striking images from The Terminator was the weapon he carried and used in his first attempt on Sarah Connor's life: the .45 Longslide, with laser sighting. Who can forget the scene in the gun shop? The gun was likewise such a striking presence on screen it was used on the film's poster. There are T-shirts dedicated to the gun. Terminator was released in 1984, and while laser sights on weapons are common now, when the film was first shown the red laser was able to communicate something subtle and powerful to the audience: this is a… More »

Apple COO Tim Cook's warning from early 2009 wasn't the only one that handset makers received before Apple sicced the lawyers on HTC last week. According to a research note from Oppenheimer analyst Yal Reiner, Apple began warning top executives at companies such as HTC and Motorola in January that it wasn't too happy about seeing allegedly iPhone-related IP showing up in proposed new products. According to "industry checks," Cook's comments last January during the quarterly analyst call—that Apple "will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal"—were taken… More »

A typical neuroscience paper (or a typical report on one) is a laundry list of structure:function relationships between brain regions and the mental tasks they perform. The amygdala deals with registering rewards, the hippocampus handles memory, and so on. These relationships have been the result of over a century of work, starting with rare cases of brain injury and building through modern medical imaging, which can detect ever-smaller lesions and associate neural activity with specific cognitive processes. Doctors routinely rely on the combination of brain imaging and structure:function relationships for diagnostic purposes, but is wider society willing to trust it… More »

Facebook is allegedly planning to roll out location sharing capabilities next month, once again playing catch-up to other services that have gained popularity thanks to location data. The rumor comes courtesy of anonymous sources who have been "briefed on the project" speaking to the New York Times, who said that Facebook will announce the feature at Facebook's annual f8 conference in late April. The company's plans for such a feature have not been entirely secret—Facebook hinted at location features when it updated its privacy policy in November. Like other postings made to Facebook, location information will only be made available… More »

The Microsoft browser ballot released this month to Windows users in the EU is already doing Microsoft's rivals a favor. Two of the major competitors to Internet Explorer have seen an increase in downloads, while the other two are not willing to share data. We contacted the makers of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera; here's what they had to say. Opera, the Norwegian browser maker that first filed a complaint with the European Union in December 2007, accusing Microsoft of violating EU antitrust law by bundling IE with Windows, is pleased with the progress its browser is making. "Since the… More »

Google's recent announcement of a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home testbed has communities across the US salivating—but imagine what the Internet might be like if that connection to your home were even faster. Say... 100Gbps. In less than 20 years, such speeds will be possible, but only for companies who installed the right sort of fiber architecture. The UK telecoms regulator Ofcom commissioned a lengthy report on the future of fiber (PDF) (or "fibre," in this case) from the firm Analysys Mason. In it, the company sketched out the future of fiber capacity with a pair of handy charts. Both are clear: between… More »

Apple subsidiary FileMaker has released version 11 of its flagship FileMaker Pro database. The updated software purports to make building and maintaining databases even easier, while acknowledging that many users are accustomed to using spreadsheets for database purposes by including pivot table-like reporting and Excel-like charting features. FileMaker Pro Server has also been updated, dropping the simultaneous client access limit for the Advanced version. FileMaker Pro already laid claim to being one of the easiest cross-platform database tools available, but the company added additional features designed to enhance that ease of use. The Quick Start screen has been improved, offering… More »

The European Parliament is fed up with the secrecy surrounding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Today, representatives from all the major parliamentary coalitions introduced a resolution demanding that the European Commission release all negotiating texts, inform Parliament about the negotiating process, and absolutely refuse to countenance any sort of "three strikes" Internet disconnection penalty for online copyright infringement. The measure comes up for a vote tomorrow and looks set to pass—it has the support of all the important groups in Parliament, including the EPP, S&D, ALDE, and the Greens/EFA. One notable supporter: Christian Engström, the Pirate Party's lone MEP in… More »

Microsoft today began rolling out its new MSN homepage, but not everyone will be getting it at once: the update will trickle out over the next few weeks to the site's 100 million US customers. The software giant is touting the new version as "its most significant homepage redesign in over a decade." It comes with a new MSN butterfly logo (which complements the Bing logo), a larger Bing search box and tighter integration with the search engine, local information from a new feature dubbed MSN Local Edition, as well as the addition of three social network streams: the Windows… More »

The .xxx domain is back on the table. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will reconsider the top-level domain during a meeting in Kenya this week, nearly three years after it was shot down and nine years after it was first introduced as a way to identify pornography sites and hopefully confine them to their own Internet red-light district. The .xxx domain was first proposed in 2001 and approved in 2005 for exclusive (but voluntary) use by the adult entertainment industry. The idea was to provide a place for porn sites online that would be explicitly obvious… More »

Repetitive tasks can quickly become tedious. As a designer, you probably often find yourself designing the same elements over and over from scratch. STOP! Wasting time is so old-fashioned. It also means you’re wasting money! So, let’s review some ways that you can automate and systematize your Photoshop workflow. And be sure to download the project [...] More »

Over the weekend, Elijah Manor tweeted about a new IDE, called WebStorm, that is currently being offered as a public preview, from JetBrains. After spending a few hours with it, I’m extremely impressed! In this video quick tip, I thought I’d show you some of my favorite features that you, frankly, just don’t see much [...] More »

jQuery is not always as it appears. There's a lot of cool stuff going on under the surface, and there are many methods just waiting to be discovered, and many potential usages of jQuery's API that you may not have considered before. In this article I'll be taking you through a few of the not-so-obvious [...] More »

When space is at a premium, making use of sliders is the optimal way to present information. Today, we’ll take a look at how to create a slider similar to the one used in the iTunes store. Developers often seek the functionality provided by sliders in order to fit lots of information in [...] More »

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Google has released a new geocoding web service that is sure to bring a smile to map mashup developers working with the Google Maps API. Announced earlier this week on the Google Geo Developers Blog, version 3 of the popular geocoding web service has been released, with several improvements and new features that will make it easier geolocate addresses. The new geocoding web service shares many of the geocoding improvements included with v3 of the Google Maps API. More »

If you're looking to run a successful developer program, you should probably pay attention to Mathys van Abbe. He's the founder of Mobypicture (our Mobypicture API profile), which has just celebrated its 500th developer. More »

The US Army has joined the ranks of government agencies courting developers by announcing a new competition called "Apps for the Army" (A4A). The competition aims to promote some fresh ideas and practical web and mobile applications for use within the military: More »

For several years millions have shared the places they've been using the Where I've Been website and Facebook application. The site also has an API (our Where I've Been API profile), which allows for much of the same functionality, such as searching countries, marking it visited and adding content such as a story or photo. More »

Have you had to pick someone up from the airport only to end-up doing several laps of the airport because the flight was late? This sort of setback due to arrival delays is one of those modern day inconveniences that FlightCaster and their FlightCaster API hope to eliminate. More »

Once again this week we had a variety of new APIs added to our API directory. Some notable new entries include an API for a corporation accountability research service, mobile identification API, a mobile network lookup service API, Google's new power consumption meter API, and the Guardian's Politics API to UK political resources. Below are more details on each of these new APIs. More »

This past week's new mashups in our mashup directory combined 28 different APIs. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Google OpenID, Heyzap, Menu Mania, Microsoft adCenter, RescueTime, RPX, Windows Live ID Web Authentication and Yahoo Search Marketing. The most often used APIs this week are Box.net, Facebook and Google Ajax Search. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Security (4 APIs, 4 mashups), Shopping (3 APIs, 3 mashups) and Video (3 APIs, 3 mashups). More »

An early influential Google Maps mashup now gives users the chance to change mapping imagery. The GMaps Pedometer (our GMaps Pedometer mashup profile) has six different tile options, the most recent of which is OpenStreetMap, the free editable map of the world. More »

If the Queen of England used public transportation, she wouldn't have far to walk from her Buckingham Palace home. And finding her nearest stop is now very easy since Transport of London has implemented a Google Maps mashup of bus routes. More »

Once the mouthpiece and aggregator of the blogosphere, Technorati lost its luster long ago. And now it's lost its API, too. The developer page promises a new API but also makes one thing clear: the old one is gone. More »

I find it difficult to believe, but the reports keep pouring in via Twitter and email: many candidates who show up for programming job interviews can't program. At all. Consider this recent email from Mike Lin: The article Why Can't Programmers... Program? changed the way I did interviews. I used to lead off by building rapport. That proved to be too time-consuming when, as you mentioned, the vast majority of candidates were simply non-technical. So I started leading off with technical questions. First progressing from easy to hard questions. Then I noticed I identified the rejects faster if I went… More »

I apologize for the scarcity of updates lately. There have been two things in the way: Continuing fallout from International Backup Awareness Day, which meant all updates to Coding Horror from that point onward were hand-edited text files. Which, believe me, isn't nearly as sexy as it … uh … doesn't sound. I am presenting and conducting a workshop at Webstock 2010 in New Zealand. This is a two week trip I'm taking with the whole family, including our little buddy Rock Hard Awesome, so the preparations have been more intense than usual. On top of all that, according to… More »

How much is a good idea worth? According to Derek Sivers, not much: It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until… More »

Have you ever opened a simple little ASCII text file to see it inexplicably displayed as onegiantunbrokenline? Opening the file in a different, smarter text editor results in the file displayed properly in multiple paragraphs. The answer to this puzzle lies in our old friend, invisible characters that we can't see but that are totally not out to get us. Well, except when they are. The invisible problem characters in this case are newlines. Did you ever wonder what was at the end of your lines? As a programmer, I knew there were end of line characters, but I honestly… More »

As a long time reader of Joey DeVilla's excellent blog, Global Nerdy, I take exception to his post Fast Food, Apple Pies, and Why Netbooks Suck: The end result, to my mind, is a device that occupies an uncomfortable, middle ground between laptops and smartphones that tries to please everyone and pleases no one. Consider the factors: Size: A bit too large to go into your pocket; a bit too small for regular day-to-day work. Power: Slightly more capable than a smartphone; slightly less capable than a laptop. Price: Slightly higher than a higher-end smartphone but lacking a phone's capability… More »

I'm a big fan of John Gruber's Markdown. When it comes to humane markup languages for the web, I don't think anyone's quite nailed it like Mr. Gruber. His philosophy was clear from the outset: Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible. Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters — including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText — the single biggest… More »

I can't believe it's been almost two and a half years since I built my last PC. I originally documented that process in a series of posts: Building a PC, Part I: Minimal boot Building a PC, Part II: Burn in Building a PC, Part III: Overclocking Building a PC, Part IV: Now It's Your Turn Building a PC, Part V: Upgrading Now, lest you think I am some kind of freakish, cave-dwelling luddite, what with my ancient two and a half year old PC, I have upgraded the CPU, upgraded the hard drive, and upgraded the video card since… More »

You may notice that commenting is currently disabled, and many old Coding Horror posts are missing images. That's because, sometime early on Friday, the server this blog is hosted on suffered catastrophic data loss. Here's what happened: The server experienced routine hard drive failure. Because of the hard drive failure, the virtual machine image hosting this blog was corrupted. Because the blog was hosted in a virtual machine, the standard daily backup procedures at the host were unable to ever back it up. Because I am an idiot, I didn't have my own (recent) backups of Coding Horror. Man, I… More »

I recently added microformat support to the free public CVs at careers.stackoverflow.com by popular demand. Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. The official microformat "elevator pitch" tells us nothing useful. That's not a good sign. It doesn't get much better on the learn more link, either. I'm left scratching my head, wondering why I should care. What problem, exactly, do microformats solve for me as a user? As a software developer? There's lots of hand-wavy talk about data, but precious little in the… More »

I've been unhappy with every single piece of software I've ever released. Partly because, like many software developers, I'm a perfectionist. And then, there are inevitably … problems: The schedule was too aggressive and too short. We need more time! We ran into unforeseen technical problems that forced us to make compromises we are uncomfortable with. We had the wrong design, and needed to change it in the middle of development. Our team experienced internal friction between team members that we didn't anticipate. The customers weren't who we thought they were. Communication between the designers, developers, and project team wasn't… More »

Last week I introduced you to the latest collaboration between Rockable Press and FreelanceSwitch, How to Write Great Copy for the Web by Donna Spencer. I am happy to announce that the book has been launched today and Rockin’ List members get a $5 discount on the digital book, bringing the book’s price down to [...] More »

This post is an excerpt from my eBook, The Blog Business Funnel. It teaches freelancers how to run a profitable freelance business, fed entirely by a healthy and thriving blog. This excerpt is from Chapter 7: Scaling Up. FreelanceSwitch readers can claim a special discount at the end of this post. One of the nicest things [...] More »

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As a freelancer, I’ve tackled plenty of projects. Not all have been enjoyable, naturally, but I’ve been able to keep a steady flow of work. I don’t think every job has to be perfect, and as long as I’m making good money and maintaining my freedom, I’m generally satisfied with my career. While I’ve worked regularly [...] More »

As a freelancer, you may find yourself either a) too busy or b) too clueless to handle your own marketing. This happens more often than you might think, and even some excellent freelancers with a strong reputation aren’t doing a very good job at marketing. But you, you’re smarter than that. And you realize you should [...] More »

A couple of years ago, FreelanceSwitch brought you How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer by Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, which helped a lot of you find your feet in the world of freelancing. Since then, FreelanceSwitch and Rockable Press have been working together to bring another great guide to your bookshelves: How to Write Great [...] More »

Staying motivated isn’t easy – we often convince ourselves not to be. We often give ourselves excuses, allow other people to put us down, or look at the success of others and think, “That’ll never be me.” There are two basic types of motivation: intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from the feeling of self-achievement [...] More »

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If you’re working for an employer, your career patch can be pretty clear: work hard and move up the corporate ladder, hopefully winding up somewhere near the top. But when you’re freelancing, your career path can be a lot less clear. We all want to land more clients and earn more per hour, but where [...] More »

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at website maintenance packages and what to do if people have a problem with were you live. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a new regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that [...] More »

This year, I'm helping the User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) conference put their proceedings videos online so that more people can access them. So far, I've gotten most of the videos from this year uploaded to the conference YouTube account. If you've closely followed the tech media coverage, you might recognize projects like the pressure sensitive keyboard and Mouse 2.0.However, one of my favorite projects this year was a muscle sensing system that (among other things) allows you to play Guitar Hero without a guitar. It directly senses the electrical signals in your arms and maps those to the… More »

Some of my colleagues in the Applied Sciences group in Microsoft Hardware have recently gotten some media exposure for one of their recent projects: the pressure sensitive keyboardCongrats! It's a very nice prototype, and I look forward to seeing what the students at UIST cook up in the innovation contest.If you aren't familiar with UIST (User Interface Software and Technology), it is a conference dedicated to new interface research. It is one of my favorite conferences to attend. It's where I demonstrated my past work like Automatic Projector Calibration, Foldable Interactive Displays, where Chris Harrison (recently known for Physically Changing… More »

It's always good to give people reminders of what is possible when you don't stick with just a mouse and keyboard. This is a very nice piece of interface work for 3D drawing. The system is called Rhonda. The drawing is a bit on the abstract art side, but it's easy to see the level of control he has.The great thing about 3d drawing is that the current tools are awful, so new ways of doing it are always interesting. Unfortunately, the bad thing about 3d drawing is that there are a relatively small number of people on the planet… More »

If you've been wondering why my project blog has been pretty quiet, I can finally say it is because I have been helping Xbox with Project Natal. If you haven't seen the vision video, it is definitely worth checking out: Now, I should preface by saying I don't deserve credit for anything that you saw at E3. A large team of very smart, very hard working people were involved in building the demos you saw on stage. The part I am working on has much more to do with making sure this can transition from the E3 stage to your… More »

Since, I'm on a bit of a mini-robot kick at the moment. I thought I would share some of the videos I've seen lately that at least inspired it. The elegance of some of these movements and the music remind me of the child-like imagination that we perhaps once had before becoming more jaded with age. At least, the dreams of a little engineer.This last one is just fun. More »

A couple of weeks ago, I was participating in the Siggraph Jury review process looking at some of the projects submitted this year. There were a couple of submissions using humanoid servo motor robots. Since I have always had an itch to play with robots that I've never had a chance to scratch, I decided to look into buying one. One of the best selections of these robots I found online was at Trossen Robotics. After a lot of reading and video watching, the current highest rated robots appear to be the Robonova, Kondo KHR-2HV, Futaba RBT-1, and the edutainment… More »

In a bit of procrastineering research, I started looking into making my own ferrofluid. Apparently the best stuff to use these days is Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) Toner. But, it's a little hard to find in bulk. The most amazing work I've seen done with ferro-fluid is by Sachiko Kodama:It's difficult and messy stuff to work with. Not to mention you need to know how to generate custom magnetic fields to move it. So, it's always been a little low on my project list. Though, in my brief search for materials, I came across this wonderful artwork by flight404.… More »

This is absolutely astonishing! What are YOU doing with your sheep? eh? Whatever it is, it's probably not as good as this: More »

It's not often you hear that phrase. I don't think I've ever used it myself, but a few people have been tossing that around when talking about Kutiman's work at Thru-You.com who does video remixes of musicians around the world to create amazing new musical/video pieces. The one that is getting the most blog exposure is called The Mother of All Funk Chords. However, the one I think more clearly demonstrates the subtlety and intricacy of this artistic contribution is below entitled "I am new":There have certainly been many video remixes before, but this steps it up a few notches… More »

I'm not sure who Vincente Sachuc is, but he's certainly got a career in cinematography if he wants one. This makes me want to get back into creative film work rather than technical videos. He mentions this is captured with a Casio EX-F1 at 300 fps and edited at 24 fps. A skateboard and a Steadicam Merlin help with the smooth traveling shots. Of course, you could buy one of my Poor Man's Steadycams at 5% of the cost of a Merlin =o). Colorization done in Premiere and Photoshop.New York 2008 from Vicente Sahuc on Vimeo. More »

Small business management software suite Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: billing, CRM, enterprise, pm, sbweb More »

CRM software Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: CRM, email, sbweb More »

Project management software Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: collaboration, enterprise, pm, project-management, sbweb More »

Vendor tracking and management service Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: contracts, enterprise More »

Social conversation aggregator Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: analytics, sbweb, social More »

Tools for creating visual knowledge bases Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: cms, tools, visualization More »

Online marketing automation service Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: enterprise, marketing, sales More »

Create entreprise-facile automations and mashups Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: enterprise, invoicing, sbweb More »

Online document collaboration, storage, and publishing Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: documents, enterprise, sbweb, social More »

Online image and graphics editing service Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Tags: photo, tools More »

A lot of developers just like to code. They aren’t promoters, they hate tracking down payment, and they don’t know the first thing… More »

We always talk about all the new innovations the internet brings to your computer.  But what does it do for your TV? Atlanta… More »

A Guest Post by Jason Cohen. NetFlix just posted their first ever decline in subscribers. They attributed this to Blockbuster — the company… More »

The Gillmor Gang talks Buzz with Kevin Marks, Robert Scoble, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Wednesday, March 3, 2010. Audio Only (right click… More »

The barriers to creating a TV show online are infinitely less than they are on traditional TV.  We have grown from a society… More »

A guest post by Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network. As soon as I took on the job of CEO for the world’s… More »

It’s pretty easy to waste a lot of time finding entertaining content on the web.  There are 1000 videos that have no relevance… More »

Audio Only (right click to save to your computer) More »

Help me spread the word about this program! I’m a mentor and investor in CapitalFactory, a seed-stage startup mentorship program in Austin, TX.… More »

It’s easy to get excited about real-time analytics tools or plugins that increase your traffic.  Security tools don’t really get exciting until you’ve… More »

Editor's Note: This version replaces a prior one that suggested rollout had already started.When Google Buzz debuted a month ago, integrating a new social network into your GMail, it did not roll out to business accounts running GMail on Google Apps. At the time, the company promised Apps customers would see Buzz added "within a few months." A premature promotion of the mobile version of Buzz to both consumer GMail users and Apps users made some see Buzz erroneously, before its time.On Tuesday, as Susan Beebe's showed, many Apps users saw Buzz appear as "New" in their GMail settings, with a… More »

Twitter's growing ranks continue to swell practically every Monday this year, and today is no exception, as the blue birded microblogging service added four more to its arsenal today with an interesting mix of well-known tech faces and a curveball, also taking on an executive from a franchise furniture store in San Francisco. The latest hires take the company's full-time roster closer to 150, and swell the number being followed on their official list to more than 170.Last night, you could see three of the four new hires getting what they called "first day of school anticipation" jitters, as Bryan… More »

A year ago, I introduced you to a simple, but challenging, iPhone game called Doodle Jump. Produced by Lima Sky, the fun game, which took advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer and had you jumping from platform to platform in search of new high scores, has seen phenomenal success, passing one million downloads before the end of 2009. Thus, it's no surprise that its success has drawn what I perceived to be the highest form form of flattery - complete copying, possibly with the intention of making you think there is a new companion game to the app, called "Doodle Run".This… More »

Increased use of Twitter has made the users sharing and clicking on links more attractive to both legitimate businesses and ill intended people looking to steal passwords or guide you to unsavory sites. Seemingly each week there are new stories about phishing attempts that prey on direct messages (DMs) from trusted people, and if compromised, these accounts could lead to more spam, just spreading the mess further. SocialToo, a company led by Jesse Stay, and one where I am an advisor, has opted to take a proactive approach to enable phishing protection for all users, not just those with a… More »

BackType, the best comments search engine on the Web, which launched in 2008 and has since morphed to act as a "real-time, conversational" search engine, today announced the introduction of BackType Labs, an "in progress" look at some of their newer projects. The first to debut is a service called BackType Me, which aims to find out what content is being shared by people you follow on Twitter.Funded by Y! Combinator, BackType has grown from its two cofounders to a team of three, and is actively looking to hire two more engineers, focused on software and search. In the last… More »

Facebook is huge in practically every way measurable. The site sports more than 400 million active users, and just passed Yahoo! for the 2nd most trafficked site on the Web, made even more impressive by the number of hours each active user on the site spends using the platform each month. The company's Facebook Connect product is setting itself up as a challenger to represent your identity online, and many anticipate the company taking on PayPal or other products for online transactions. But even more than the raw numbers, the impact Facebook has, from sharing, to members' gestures, to the… More »

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Do you drink too much? Do you have what it takes to be a movie critic? Are you the Foursquare mayor of your own office? A new service, in its infancy, has emerged to find out the answers to those questions and others, by analyzing your Twitter stream, providing you with a score, per category, and pitting your results against those of other Twitter users from across the Web. In its undiscovered phase, the app doesn't have too many results, but if you run the service against your account (and so do your friends), you just might find out you're… More »

If you haven't seen a lot of applications built in the last few weeks that leverage the Google Buzz API, it's because there aren't any. In fact, Google hasn't yet rolled out any API for Buzz. According to the company, this isn't due to any backroom dealings where they plan to introduce proprietary code and hooks that tie activity to their platform, but instead, because they wanted to be sure they could first build a product that in fullness leveraged open Web standards, and start with that foundation to deliver an interoperable system that could continue to function even if… More »

Today, at the RSA conference, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX), aimed to increase trust in online identities, and backed by the OpenID and Information Card Foundations, announced its inception. In parallel, the U.S. Government is recognizing multiple technology companies as meeting federal standards for identity assurance, including Google, PayPal and Equifax, essentially securing users' ability to register and log in at federal Web sites with credentials from each of those services.Goals of the Open Identity Exchange include building online users' trust and confidence in the exchange of identity credentials, standardizing these interactions and reducing hassle with online logins, registrations and… More »

Stories: 1) After Digital Switch, Basic TV Offers Cable Alternative 2) Google Case In Italy Raises Web Freedom Concerns 3) Internet Freedom A Relative Concept 4) Software Mimics Person's Voice 5) Where R U? Tech-Savvy Burglars Want To Know 6) U.S. Crafts Plan To Quicken Broadband Speeds More »

Stories: 1) Cell Phone Data: Can You Track Me Now? 2) Who Was Behind Attacks On Google? 3) For Mature Audiences Only: Video Game Ratings 4) Concerns Of Racism In Multiplayer Video Games 5) With iTunes Consumers Ponder Ditching Cable More »

Stories: 1) Do Smart Phones Thwart Public Records Laws? 2) Despite Glitches, Electronics Make Cars Safer 3) How Governments Control The Flow Of Information 4) Video Game Lets You Drop Beats As You Drop Blocks 5) Experts Gather For Hackers' Convention 6) Google's New Ventures Examined More »

Stories: 1) America's Cup Sails Into (And Over) Uncharted Seas 2) Using Haiku, Sun CEO Resigns On Twitter 3) For Telecommuters, It's Not About Going To Work 4) $7.2 Billion For Broadband Is Largely Unallocated 5) Thanks To Hulu, Indie Film 'Strictly Sexual' Hits Big 6) Dante's 'Inferno' Makes A Hell Of A Video Game More »

Stories: 1) iPad Morphs From MADtv Sketch To Apple Device 2) Mobile Device-Use Constrained By Bandwidth 3) Geek's Dream Lab Could Create Jobs In Michigan 4) Listener Says John Edwards Should Cheat Smarter 5) Texting Underground Can Save Lives And Caves 6) Catching Hospital Workers Dirty-Handed More »

Stories: 1) What's The Allure Of Tablet Computers? 2) Hollywood's Computers: Telling A Story In A Flash 3) How Flash Brought The Internet To Life 4) In An Era Of Immediacy, Why Fear The E-Book? 5) State Department: Internet Freedom Critical 6) What's In That Fish Stick? Give It A DNA Test More »

Stories: 1) Google Executive Weighs In On China, Censorship 2) Donations To Haiti Pour In Via Text Message 3) The Doomsday Clock Takes A Step Back 4) Communications A Priority In Disaster Zone 5) Scott Simon In The Valley Of The Monkeys 6) The Phone Book's Days Appear Numbered More »

Stories: 1) Hot Gadgets Vie For Attention At Electronics Show 2) Web 2.0 Suicide Machine: Erase Your Virtual Life 3) Tighter Smog Rules No Longer Just An Urban Concern 4) Virtual Coin Toss Lets Football Fans Watch The Flip 5) The Coolest Gadgets You're About To Want 6) Mobile Advertising A Huge Battle For A Tiny Space More »

Stories: 1) For Veterans With Burns, A Virtual Reality Aid 2) China Aims To Ride High-Speed Trains Into Future 3) The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse 4) World Awaits Release Of Google Phone 5) A Once-Dark Polaroid Factory Goes Green 6) What To Watch For At CES: Netbooks, eBooks More »

Stories: 1) Republican Politicians Make A Social Media Push 2) Zhu Zhu Pets: The Video Game 3) Internet Memes Spread Viral Amusement 4) Technology: Apps Are Where It's At In 2010 5) Ex-Hedge Fund Analyst Finds Calling On YouTube 6) Cell Phone Voice Quality Assessed More »

You don't have to log in to TwitPic to post your pictures. Download TwitLoader and experience easier posting of your photos to Twitpic and Twiiter. Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Developer: shamekh Tags: messaging, photo, social APIs: TwitPic, Twitter More »

Italian public jobs search engine and map. The jobs are grabbed from the Gazzetta Ufficiale. Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Developer: demysc Tags: italy, jobs, mapping, recruiting APIs: Google Maps More »

Enter your words. The most popular in Twitter will win. Twitwinner compares your words based on live data and shows the results in a visual way. Date Updated: 2010-03-09 Developer: twitwinner Tags: messaging, microblogging, search, SEO, social, trends APIs: Twitter More »

Qype reviews on an map. Date Updated: 2010-03-08 Developer: chris299 Tags: mapping, recommendations, reviews, social APIs: Google Maps, Qype More »

WordPress & Commission Junction Working Together. This WordPress Plugin is for search, analysis and promoting. You can manage your CJ account from within your WordPress blog. Date Updated: 2010-03-08 Tags: blog, shopping, wordpress APIs: Commission Junction More »

Converts between all major currencies using the latest exchange rates, including United States Dollar (USD), Euro (EUR), Japanese Yen (JPY), Chinese Yuan (CNY), British Pound (GBP), Canadian Dollar (CAD), Australian Dollar (AUD) and more. Date Updated: 2010-03-08 Developer: alanj Tags: converter, currency, finance, Foreign, money APIs: Foxrate More »

A2TA allows you to discover and locate businesses and services in the area you designate-be it large or small, near or far-to save you time and money. Businesses: A2TA brings customers to your door: Date Updated: 2010-03-08 Developer: mrbaxtor Tags: business, Directions, index, locate, maps, search APIs: Bing Maps, Ifbyphone, WeatherBug More »

The Link Inspector lets you get in-depth information about all the backlinks pointing to your site. It will even search for new backlinks that you are not aware of, good or bad. Date Updated: 2010-03-07 Developer: zacusk Tags: internet, social APIs: Facebook, Google Ajax Search, Google Base, Google Chart, Google Checkout, Google OpenID, Google Search, Google Single SignOn, Google Visualization, RPX, Windows Live ID Web Authentication More »

This gadget mashes Google Maps with Geolocation information of ip addresses. Date Updated: 2010-03-06 Developer: infosniper Tags: address, geolocation, localization, mapping, widgets APIs: Infosniper.net More »

Using Google Translate (Text to Speech) and Facebook, Status Speak allows you to listen to all your friends' latest status updates for a given time period. Date Updated: 2010-03-05 Developer: mkocher Tags: social, telephony APIs: Facebook, Google Translate More »

Saturday’s guest will be Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, General Manager of Venture Frogs, coming to you live from SXSW.  Many of you already know Zappos and the amazing customer service and culture that surrounds the company but what do you know about it’s CEO?  I thought I’d focus on somethings you might not know: He [...] More »

Jason expresses his disappointment in President Obama’s priorities in placing health care over job creation and entrepreneurship.  He goes on to challenge President Obama to be bold and great and not to try please everyone. More »

Download the MP3 Here! Jason’s guest this week was Howard Morgan, Co-Founder of First Round Capital and a  30 year veteran of the technology industry.  Highlights of the show this week include: biggest passes that did great, incubator programs and what they offer and who are the greatest tech. entrepreneurs of the 80s, 90s, 00s. Announcements: next [...] More »

Six Lounge: 117 West 4th Street Austin, TX 78701 More »

SAVE THE DATE:  This Week In Startups will be live from SXSW on Saturday the 13th 4-7 pm (Central), 2-5pm (Pacific). That’s right, 3 hours of TWiST live, we will be announcing three amazing guests, who knows who will show up unannounced. If you are interested in sponsoring please email us at: partners@thisweekin.com DETAILS TO FOLLOW! More »

Jason’s guest this week will be Dr. Howard Morgan, Co-Founder of First Round Capital, he brings 30 years of