It’s coming up on a year since the iPhone was released, and the second version appears to be just around the corner. So it’s a good time to check in with our readers and see just how many of you actually use the device. Please take a second and let us know where you stand. [...]

Epic Gillmor Gang today. Everyone went in with guns blazing over the data portability/ownership debate that has spilled out over the Facebook/Google scuffle. DataPortability founder Chris Saad was also on the call, but failed to take a leadership position in the debate. Their influence may be waning. As the podcast ended the blog posts started rolling [...]

Storyblender, which recently launched in private beta, is a new casual animation platform that will appeal to users who want customized movies in a hurry. The site was a presenter at TechCrunch 40. If you’d like to try it out, you can grab one of 500 invites here. The site is straightforward, which is [...]

Condé Nast has acquired popular technology blog Ars Technica, we’ve confirmed. The site will become part of Wired Digital (which in turn is under CondéNet, run by Sarah Chubb). Wired Digital assets include Wired.com and Reddit (acquired in 2006). The acquisition price will not be disclosed, but our sources say it is in the $25 [...]

Chicago’s Fox affiliate WFLD has launched AirFox Live, a mashup whose spec list reads like a technophile’s pipe dream. The site combines a helicopter, GPS, live video, and Google Maps to produce a realtime data stream of the network’s newscopter that serves as uniquely informative eye-candy. Live video taken from the helicopter’s cameras are displayed [...]

Just over a week ago the founders of and five engineers from VoIP services provider Jangl left for Jajah after the company failed to find a proper suitor. Following their departure, it was unclear what would happen to Jangl’s assets and remaining staff. Now we hear from multiple sources close to the deal that Live [...]

Glubble is a developer of a parental control plugin for Firefox, which aids adults in the ability to watch over their kids internet usage. In their approach is something similar to the Kidzui method, where they create a whitelist of kid-friendly sites. Instead of working on generating the list themselves, the sites on the whitelist are [...]

It seems the rumors reported earlier today by TechCrunch were spot on, and Wired is the proud new owner of Ars Technica. In a call to Alexandra Constantinople, Executive Director of Communications for Wired, she confirmed that, “the story is accurate, but (Wired) won’t be issuing an official statement until next week.” This is sure [...]

Editor’s Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in “The Startup Review” series, please see the details here. STARTUP DETAILS: Company Name: HealthWorldWeb 20 word description: HealthWorldWeb.com is a health-focused patients social network, doctors search portal and community-based reviews and recommendations engine for local medical providers. C

When Data Portability was first announced, it sounded like it would solve what had become one of the biggest problems in the social networking space: a seemingly endless array of new services, each of which required you to setup and maintain your own profile, friend’s list, photo albums, etc. With the support of just [...]

AOL has added a new channel to its AOL Living portal; this one is for parents. As we all know, blogging has become a favorite pastime for parents all over the world. Sites like CafeMom has taken off, and have raked in some high valuations. Most of the older portal sites from [...]

Vodafone, the largest mobile network operator in Europe, has announced the acquisition of ZYB, a company based in Denmark with an eye on content backup as well as social networking. Vodafone intends to add ZYB to its “Total Communications” strategy, in which it seeks to serve customers with an integrated mobile phone and PC experience.The [...]

Weather in San Francisco Bay Area is especially nice and is likely to remain that way for a while. It makes perfect sense to sit outside and talk about the hottest topic to hit the Innerwebs: Data portability/interoperability. Whether it is Facebook, MySpace or Google, each has been coming up with ways to control the [...]

Networking has always been a high art in business. Just ask Susan Roane, my mentor and author of the seminal tome, “How to Work a Room.” (I know a handful of VCs and startup kings on Sand Hill Road who have her book tucked into a drawer.) I’ve been showcasing Roane’s lessons for founders in [...]

Microsoft will hold its fourth Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Road Show at its campus in Mountain View, Calif., next Thursday, May 22. The event, which will showcase examples of all kinds of cool things the Redmond giant is working on, including an Xbox-based programming game for kids to program a virtual robot, is free to [...]

In what is proving to be yet another high-profile Metro Wi-Fi failure, MetroFi, a San Jose-based startup that raised over $15 million from Sevin Rosen and August Capital, is close to shutting down, according to WiFi NetNews and MuniWireless, two blogs that follow the MuniFi industry closely. MetroFi is trying to sell its citywide [...]

However great an idea it might have seemed when it was first conceived, the One Laptop Per Child project has never been something I’ve been able to wrap my head around. I’ve always felt, despite the backers’ good intentions, that it was being shoved down the throats of emerging economies with more dire needs, such [...]

These days, thanks to a visually intensive style of computing, a good GPU can improve the user experience much better than a fast CPU. In the data center certain tasks are moving from commodity CPU boxes to GPUs, meaning that over the next year or two, more of them will be sold for corporate computing use.

A reader says there was chatter to that effect this afternoon, as Netflix (NFLX) pushed 6% higher on high volume. Would this make sense? Only if Best Buy (BBY) has been persuaded that the Blockbuster (BBI) - Circuit City (CCI) deal makes sense, which we certainly haven't. On the "why not?" side, a Best Buy - Netflix combination would of course be vastly more powerful than a Blockbuster -

When we saw the first photos of Research in Motion's new "Bold," we assumed co-CEO Jim Balsillie had just plunked Apple's iPhone down in front of his engineers and said "Give me something like this." Not so, says RIM's other co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. In this interview with Natasha Lomas, Mike says RIM's been working on the Bold since time immemorial: This is three years in the ma

Former Jamaican World Cup soccer star Chris Thomas is used to winning. But Thursday night the Cornell engineering student celebrated a different sort of victory: He and his teammates, who created a business plan for battery company Widetronix, won DFJ Gotham's second annual East Coast Venture Challenge. Now the real game begins.Thomas and his Cornell teammates beat out 10 other startup companies f

Yahoo is trying to conceal large parts of a lawsuit brought against the company by shareholders who say the board should have taken Microsoft's bid, the AP says. The suit, filed in Delaware about three months ago, is your standard shareholder complaint, but the fact that Carl Icahn's now making his play makes it more interesting: In a letter sent Friday to the judge overseeing the case in Delaware

Conde Nast is buying tech blog Ars Technica for $25 million, according to Techcrunch. We've confirmed the acquisition but not the purchase price; the company plans on talking about the deal on Monday. Ars' 8-person news operation will be folded into Wired Digital, which is run by CondeNet. It's the second recent content acquisition for CondeNet, which bought travel blog operators SFO Media (HotelC

Alltel, the fifth-largest U.S. wireless carrier, says it will use LTE technology for its next-generation wireless network, not rival WiMax technology. This leaves Sprint Nextel (S) as the only major U.S. carrier using WiMax for its 4G network. (Sprint will spin off its WiMax network into Clearwire (CLWR) this year, pending approval.) Why does this matter? Alltel isn't very big subscriber-wise -- 1

OpenID provider JanRain has launched an interesting project called Demand OpenID, which lets users click a bookmarklet whenever they are on a website that they want to request OpenID support on. It's a handy, if a touch rude, way to demonstrate user demand for OpenID on popular websites. Right now the most popular services for users to demand OpenID are Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Facebook, Amazon an

Snackr is a new Adobe AIR app that lets you display items in your RSS feeds in a beautiful scrolling ticker on any edge of your screen. I am absolutely giddy about it after only a few minutes of use. Snackr is something you'd supplement your existing reader with, not a replacement. It is not for the faint of heart or information averse, either. If you've ever fantasized about having the river o

Six weeks ago, ReadWriteWeb published their definitive list of the top Twitter clients. The methodology for that list was watching the Twitter public feed and logging tweet sources. However, how does the list of clients people are using match up the list of the ones people are talking about? Using data from blog search engine Twingly, we decided to see which Twitter clients are getting the most

Allen Stern points out that RSS filtering service AideRSS has added Twitter to its PostRank algorithm. AideRSS works by measuring social media interaction with blog posts, and then comparing them to what's normal for that blog. The service then algorithmically applies a ranking to each post allowing users to filter out only the best posts based on the theory that people will only bother interact

The music search engine and Internet jukebox, Songza, lets you seek out any song on the web and stream it immediately. In January of this year, we announced the site's partnerships with Seeqpod and Skreemr, which allowed them to grown their online library to 28 million songs. Now, Songza grows again with a launch of a new Facebook app and the arrival of a Songza API. The Songza Facebook app lets

Last August we called Spongecell "the most intuitive of the online calendar apps," and picked it as one of our 10 Must Have Online Office Apps. Since then, though, a lot has changed. Spongecell is no longer just a personal calendar, but rather a full-scale event management platform aimed at businesses with complicated event calendars. Last week I caught up with Spongecell CEO Ben Kart

Sometrics, a startup that's presenting at the next Under the Radar: Social Media & Entertainment on June 3rd, just received a seed round from the newly created Mailroom Fund, the venture love-child of William Morris, Accel Partners, Venrock & AT&T.Lewis Henderson, SVP of digital platforms at William Morris, will be a judge at Under the Radar, though he won't be judging Sometrics of cou

Volunteers Wanted - Under the Radar!We're looking for a few volunteers for Under the Radar on June 3rd. You'll  have a chance to attend sessions and join in on the event meals and the reception - A great networking opportunity!Below are the details. If you're interested, please email giselle at dealmakermedia dot com.Volunteer positions:1. Registration: 7:15AM - 12:15PM OR 12:15PM - 5:15PM- Mater

Jack LaLanne, the 92-year-old fitness guru, on public speaking: "If you believe in something, you can talk about it. To get in front of a crowd drives me nuts, but I have a message to deliver."As you may or may not know we do quite a bit of preparation with our Under the Radar presenting companies. We go over pitches and decks and talk about technology, business models, market shares and

STRATEGY SERIES EVENT May 21st LAST 3 EVENTS SOLD OUT! May 21, 2008 | 6:30pm – 8:30pm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips | San Francisco, CA Ad-based business models aren't revolutionary - it's the heartbeat of nearly every successful media company. However, the playing field is much more confusing - and crowded - than ever before. Frankly, there's only so many ad dollars and eyeballs to go around. If

Following the last post, here's another great example for writing a press release from the good folks at Stage Two Consulting.....

I’ve been following the PR backlash drama this weekend and luckily I’ve found something positive in it. I discovered the blog PR Squared from Todd Defren at SHIFT communications. I've never met him but I've just become a fan.I'm really impressed with what he's done with his blog - if you are a startup, entrepreneur, marketer or just need some tips on social media - look no further. Check out the

The Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, whose long-term goal is to present "one web page for every book ever published." A recent release of the Open Library brought the total number of book records to over 13.4 million (including over 234,000 records with full-text for the book).

As portable GPS devices become increasingly commonplace in cars, it was only a matter of time that such devices would become also networked and programmable. Dash Navigation, the maker of Dash Express, a "two-way, Internet-connected GPS navigation system," announced yesterday DashApps, an API and developer program for the Dash Express.

Yesterday, Yahoo announced its new Internet Location Platform API, "a resource for managing all geo-permanent named places on Earth" that "provide[s] the Yahoo! Geographic Developer Community with the vocabulary and grammar to describe the world's geography in an unequivocal, permanent, and language-neutral manner."

Google announced Friend Connect today, a new service that will allow any web site to enable social networking features for their visitors. And the key piece of the strategy is that to do so only takes a few lines code, similar to the ease with which AdSense ads can be to any web page.

The spring conference season is in full swing at the moment and we're seeing a lot of conference sessions and tracks focused on web APIs, platforms and mashups. Here's a rundown of these events happening this month and next.

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The following is also my column in next week's AdAge. Over the last five years I have been asked countless times: "Steve, what's the next hot online community?" It seems as though everybody is on the lookout for the successor...

I love Friendfeed. However, I am far more enthusiastic about the platform's robust RSS and search capabilities than its current value proposition as a universal social aggregator. I find it generates too much noise at times, but when you tap...

Anyone who knows me well would never characterize me as a Renaissance Man, which from here on in I will call a Polymath to keep this post gender-neutral. A Polymath is "a person with encyclopedic, broad, or varied knowledge or...

Photo credit: "A-Rod taking a practice cut" by Dog Company Recently, I was interviewed by Kellie Kass from Simply Communicate for an in-depth business profile called "How Did I Get Here." In the article, I share something I don't think...

Google Reader has added a new feature called "Note in Reader" that lets you share any item from the Web, not just RSS feed content. To share something, all you need to is is drag this bookmarklet to your bookmarks...

How to tag nearly anything anywhere in Leopard | Dennis Best (tags: OSX Leopard Tags spotlight lifehacks) Geek Tip: Keep Your iPod Cords Untangled For Free | geeksugar (tags: ipod iphone lifehacks) Is Your Consumer Using Social Media? - Advertising...

Mobile advertising is still a very young market in the US, as mobile web usage here has lagged after many other countries due to inferior access to quality mobile devices and services. But mobile usage is growing as access has improved, which means the opportunity for mobile advertising has, too. Besides mobile advertising efforts by [...]

More on Facebook profile changes: The feed wall — The new profile is slated for launch later this year. The latest new feature the company is previewing: A “feed” portion of the new design, where you can easily add content from within a standardized interface. The goal is to make Facebook easier to use. The [...]

Below you’ll find this week’s PartnerUp Opportunities of the week. PartnerUp is an online community for entrepreneurs and startups that helps them find people for their business, such as co-founders, business partners, advisors, board members, and skilled technical people. In addition, PartnerUp helps entrepreneurs ask for and offer up advice, find commercial real estate, and find [...]

The Indus Entrepreneurs Conference (TiEcon) kicked off today with near-record attendance of more than 4,000 people in spite of the economic slowdown. The conference for entrepreneurs is in its 16th year and has become a powerhouse networking event for South Asian investors and tech entrepreneurs with strong ties to mainstream tech leaders. This year, as I walked [...]