by Scott Austin, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Working for a start-up is hard enough. Trying to wittily describe “the unique entrepreneurial culture that sets their company apart and inspires them to go to work each day”–in 140 characters or less–is equally challenging.
That was the task set by the National Venture Capital Association and job board StartUpHire, which asked for Twitter-esque submissions from start-up employees in celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week.
by Daisuke Wakabayashi, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
As Sony Corp. scrambles to reassert its technological relevance, Chief Executive Howard Stringer is betting on a strategy for the electronics giant that focuses on adding online content to more of its gadgets.
Speaking at the first joint public appearance by Sony’s new management team since a shake-up in February, Mr. Stringer said the Japanese giant is “moving faster than we’ve ever moved” to meet parallel challenges.
Brizzly, the Web-based Twitter client from Thing Labs, covered in Almost Famous two weeks ago, begins public beta today.
In addition to opening its “expanded” Twitter interface to the world at large, the start-up is offering an on-the-fly translation tool for foreign tweets. And it has hired former FriendFeeder and current Facebooker Ben Darnell.
by Scott Austin, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Remember paying astronomical prices for college textbooks that, once class was over, had only one possible use: as paperweights?
To the relief of parents everywhere, shelling out $182 for Principles of Biochemistry may become a thing of the past. Several recently funded start-ups make it cheaper, or in some cases free, for students to obtain books.
by Dionne Searcey, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Big Brother is watching. That is the message corporations routinely send their employees about using email.
But recent cases have shown that employees sometimes have more privacy rights than they might expect when it comes to the corporate email server. Legal experts say that courts in some instances are showing more consideration for employees who feel their employer has violated their privacy electronically.
by Matthew Shaer, Reporter, Horizons Blog, Christian Science Monitor
Fans of “Twilight” and “New Moon” already have plenty to be scared about–vampires, werewolves, a swirling debate over the feminist values of Stephenie Meyer’s hit series.
Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)
by James T. Areddy, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
China’s military is under attack. At least its Web site is…from hackers.
In a sign that China’s Ministry of National Defense faces the same kind of Internet security challenges that militaries around the world have reported, its new Web site was attacked more than 2.3 million times within a month of its August launch. The state-run People’s Daily newspaper reported that revelation Wednesday in an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Chinese defense department’s site, Ji Guilin.
Washington policy makers, long concerned about how marketers use consumers’ personal data to their guide sales pitches on the Internet, have stepped up scrutiny of the increasingly sophisticated ad-targeting techniques used in other media, ranging from mobile phones to TV commercials to the ads consumers get in their mail boxes.
by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The use of peer-to-peer networks for sharing files has come under fire during recent months, including the dismantling of Swedish BitTorrent site Pirate Bay, but it turns out even members of Congress need to be kept in check over their file-sharing practices.
The great promise of HTML5 is that it will turn the web into a full-fledged computing platform awash with video, animation and real-time interactions, yet free of the hacks and plug-ins common today.
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