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On Thursday we interviewed the much-talked-about CEO of Color, Bill Nguyen, and the story ended up being our top post of the week. Color is the location-based photo-sharing app that raised $41 million before it even launched. That price tag - along with the underwhelming first impression the app makes - left a number of people questioning the sanity of the VCs involved. But Nguyen's conversation with reporter Mike Melanson made a convincing argument that there may be more to Color than what meets the eye.
After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key trends that are shaping the Web - mobile, location, Internet of Things, real time - plus highlights from our six channels. Read on for more.
This week's top story was Marshall Kirkpatrick's revelation that Google has plans to launch a new social network. Does it exist? Does it not exist? Google tried to shoot down the story (which is what companies with sekret projects usually do) but Marshall's analysis and reportage paint a fairly comprehensive picture of what that service might be. Scoop! Denial! Repeat! Oh tech blogging, I wish I knew how to quit you.
After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key trends that are shaping the Web - mobile, location, app stores - plus highlights from our six channels. Read on for more.
Our top story this week came from our ReadWriteBiz channel, where writer John Paul Titlow discovered that even though teenagers in the U.S. are online pretty much all the time, they don't want to like your business on Facebook. Here's one of the more damning statistics: Only 26% said they feel they can trust a company's profile on a social networking site. If you listen closely I think you can hear the sound of 10,000 social media marketing experts weeping into their coffee.
After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key trends that are shaping the Web - mobile, location, Internet of Things - plus highlights from our six channels. Read on for more.
Ashton Kutcher, star of TV and Twitter, was at TED this last week when a surprising tweet popped up in his stream: "Ashton, you've been Punk'd. This account is not secure. Dude, where's my SSL?" Laugh all you want - when was the last time you double checked to see if you were using https://twitter.com, Twitter's secure URL?
After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key trends that are shaping the Web - mobile, location, app stores - plus highlights from our six channels. Read on for more.
Our top story this week was about "zippy cloud machines," which are not, as I first hoped, personal flying machines. Instead Marshall Kirkpatrick looked at the Jolicloud operating system, which you can now run on computers as old as 10 years. Turning a Dell that's older than your kids into a usable computer isn't a jet pack, but it's still pretty cool.
In mobile news, Sarah Perez looked at what you can do if the Windows 7 update bricked your phone. The top location story was about how the designer of Google Images is launching a search engine for hotel rooms. Read on for more to stories.
A dissection of failed Facebook marketing campaigns topped this week's list of our readers' favorite stories. As a few commenters noted, success comes down to one thing: keep things simple. As always, this week we followed several of the key trends shaping the Internet today. In mobile news, Netflix had some good and bad news for Android owners. Audrey Watters found that location marketing dollars go to Facebook Places over Foursquare and Groupon. And if you were worried about our new overlords, Alex Williams had a smart piece on how the Jeopardy man vs. machine contest had little to do with science and a lot to do with hype. Read on for more.
Groupon, long known for its smart-aleck daily deal descriptions, took the joke a little too far last weekend and ended up insulting pretty much the entire Internet with a tasteless Super Bowl ad. Marshall Kirkpatrick's reporting on the fiasco was this week's top post. In mobile news, Android's market share numbers got a serious critique. As part of our ongoing coverage of location technology, Curt Hopkins looked at new software that helps rebuild ancient cities. And my favorite top post of the week: the geek who saved 172 BBC websites for $3.99. Read on for more geeky goodness.
The violence, ongoing turmoil, and occasional triumphs in Egypt impacted our news coverage every day this past week. But it was Marshall Kirkpatrick's tale of life on the AOL content farm that ended up as readers' top choice in the week's most popular stories. Verizon, and its plan to throttle high-data users in the wake of the new iPhone release was the top mobile post. In location news, Facebook Deals arrived in Europe. And Richard MacManus profiled a leading innovator in the Internet of Things. Read on to find out who, as well as more top stories.
They are the common, proletarian tools of communication and now the crucial gears in budding revolutions: social networks, SMS, mobile phones. This week was filled with photos and stories about protests in Egypt, but it was Curt Hopkins' post about the Internet being blocked throughout the country that drew the most attention from readers. What would be an inconvenience for those of us in North America was a critical moment in a civil uprising that appears to be spreading across the Middle East and North Africa.
In location news, open-source geocoding came to Ushahidi. One of the top mobile stories was about the apparently unquashable "Facebook Phone" rumor. And don't miss our summation of the top Internet of Things stories. Read on for more.
