Although my passport has me down as British, anyone monitoring my computer use over the last few months would know I should really have dual nationality as a citizen of the UK and of Twitter.
A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.
This week: A video visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Chris Wetherell and his creation, Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
News Corp.’s digital chief said Thursday that the company’s social-networking property MySpace is going in a different direction than rival Facebook, based on how its members socialize and share interests.
by Jeffrey Zaslow, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A 17-year-old boy, caught sending text messages in class, was recently sent to the vice principal’s office at Millwood High School in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The vice principal, Steve Gallagher, told the boy he needed to focus on the teacher, not his cellphone.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Peek, a New York mobile start-up, has begun selling TwitterPeek, a new device for posting and reading Twitter updates.
TwitterPeek became available on Amazon and Peek’s Web site Tuesday. Its $100 price includes a full keyboard, always-on tweet delivery and nationwide Internet coverage, plus six months of service.
by Vanessa O'Connell and Elva Ramirez, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal
A self-described iPhone freak, designer Norma Kamali spends each morning reading the day’s headlines on her gadget’s current-events application. To unwind, she plays Scrabble on a game app. When her miniature dachshund Zeke acts up, Ms. Kamali looks up her iPhone’s encyclopedia on canine ailments.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
One of the frequently heard complaints about iPhone applications is that with more than 85,000 options, finding good ones can be tricky and time-consuming. Could the answer be yet another app?
Envio Networks on Tuesday is launching Chorus, a free app that shows users the ones their friends are trying out and suggests ones that might interest them. The Andover, Mass.-based company, which has received funding from Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, specializes in social-networking technology and saw the Apple device as a good showcase for what it can do.
At the 140conf conference in LA, Jeff Pulver asked me to think about the future of Twitter and even though I obviously have no crystal ball, I took some risks and here you go, I gathered my predictions here, in the form of “tweet slides” so you might want to watch the video too.
by Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Earlier this week, we told you about a project by real-estate site Zillow.com to use their data to figure out which are the best neighborhoods to hit on the trick-or-treat circuit.
Initially, Zillow’s Trick or Treat Index was only available for Seattle and Los Angeles. But after being inundated by blog interest and requests for additional data, Zillow added lists of the top candy-harvesting neighborhoods in San Francisco, Chicago and Boston.
by Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Facebook Wednesday threw its software developers a bone, releasing a “roadmap” of forthcoming features to help them plan their products. They include new ways for software applications, like games, to messages Facebook users when their friends want to play Scrabble, for instance.
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 Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
This Is Why You’re Fat, a Web site for food gone awry, is holding a photo competition in which contestants visit New York street vendors and shoot themselves with coronaries-on-plates.
It’s not a contest for the faint of heart. For a site whose tag line is “Where dreams become heart attacks,” each food truck will create an appropriate contest dish, like chocolate cupcakes with bacon shavings.
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