by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said Friday that the online encyclopedia aspires to be a higher-quality source of information but added that mainstream publications could learn from its disclaimers and community features.
“Our goal is to make Wikipedia as high-quality as possible. Britannica or better quality is the goal,” he said during a question-and-answer session at the ad:tech conference in New York.
by Pui-Wing Tam, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Atherton, Calif., is the mansion Mecca for many of Silicon Valley’s tech multi-millionaires. And so far in 2009, even though home sales and median property sale prices in the town have slowed from a year ago, The Wall Street Journal found that there hasn’t been as little activity as some techie buyers might think.
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 Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Eric Schmidt is brimming with Bay Area pride.
In the 33 years that the Google CEO has lived in the Bay Area, Schmidt says he has watched a long list of regions try–and fail–to create technology capitals of Silicon Valley’s scale.
by William M. Bulkeley, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Is a computer with no disk drive and no applications software still a computer?
Litl LLC, a small Boston company, says its eponymous Litl device is the future of personal computing. Litl is a Web computer with a full keyboard and an operating system designed for people who use online software like Google Docs and store their photos on Flickr or Shutterfly.
by James T. Areddy and Ellen Zhu, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal
Walt Disney won’t make Shanghai the happiest place in the world.
That’s the early reaction from a surprising number of netizens, or Chinese Internet users, to confirmation early Wednesday that plans for Shanghai Disneyland have the green light to proceed. Of the posts streaming into tianya.cn, a major portal, early Wednesday, the negative views were solidly outweighing positive views.
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.
The turf battle between two Chinese bureaucracies appears to be escalating, with NetEase and the World of Warcraft videogame at its center.
According to a statement, China’s General Administration of Press and Publications said it rejected NetEase’s application to operate Burning Crusades, the latest version of World of Warcraft.
For students of the Chinese language, there is one electronic dictionary application that seems to stand in a class of its own, made by a small New York-based software company called Pleco.
Certain language learners (myself included) have been known to carry otherwise useless (and outdated) Palm Pilots for the sole purpose of using the Pleco dictionary.
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.
by Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
At its media event in early September, Apple threw down the gauntlet to Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. Dedicated gaming gadgets like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable “seemed so cool,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, but “they don’t stack up against the iPod touch.”
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