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 Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Want to know how your email usage stacks up?
The results of our informal email survey provide some food for thought (though clearly not much science). Inspired by a Journal article earlier this week entitled “Why Email No Longer Rules,” we asked readers to tell us how many emails they sent on Monday, and a little bit about themselves. They could respond by email, commenting on Digits, or Twittering. Here’s what we learned from our 48 respondents.
by Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.
In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold–services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world.
by Jonnelle Marte, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Who takes down your email and Flickr accounts after you’re dead?
As we increasingly live life on the Web, services are popping up to help people manage their online lives after they die. At the same time, regulators are cracking down on privacy violations for the deceased.
by William Bulkeley, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
International Business Machines Corp. will try to sell a new package of low-priced computer desktop applications to companies and governments in Africa, challenging Microsoft Corp. and other rivals in the region.
by Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-chief, Search Engine Land
Newsletters, product offers, Facebook and Twitter notifications, that person you don’t know who emails you a 7MB file. It adds up. And Gmail’s supposedly “endless” space might not be keeping pace.
by Elizabeth Bernstein, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Notice to my friends: I love you all dearly.
But I don’t give a hoot that you are “having a busy Monday,” your child “took 30 minutes to brush his teeth,” your dog “just ate an ant trap” or you want to “save the piglets.”
by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A report from security firm Proofpoint shows that email isn’t the only inside threat companies face–confidential information is leaking out via blogs, mobile devices and social-media sites.
Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.
by Marisa Taylor, Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
SpinVox, a British company that converts voicemails into text with speech recognition technology, has been accused by the BBC of using humans at call centers to manually conduct the majority of the translations.
Email logs can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point. That’s the tantalising suggestion to emerge from the pattern of messages exchanged by Enron employees.
by Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Every year, the annual E3 videogame expo kicks off with media briefings by the three console makers: Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. The trio vie to get the most buzz for their games and products by trying to one-up each other with the most entertaining, star-studded show they can muster up.
by Marisa Taylor, Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Impending hurricanes and missing children make the local news, but what about smaller incidents–like senior citizens who wander from their care facility or nearby traffic accidents–that residents still want to know about?
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.