Regardless of what you think of Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington’s ethics, what has been revealed via the Techcrunch #twittergate is some of the most fascinating information to have hit the mediasphere in a long time.
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.)
The hacking of Twitter CEO Evan Williams’s email account has sparked an ethics debate after TechCrunch said that it would publish some of the confidential documents that the hacker leaked.
Brooke Hammerling (publicist) and Erin McKean (entrepreneur) are in a Sand Hill Road conference room, hashing out plans to unveil Ms. McKean’s new Web site, Wordnik.
When I read the news on TechCrunch that Valleywag’s longtime editor, Owen Thomas, was leaving the gossip site, I wondered whether there was a bit of schadenfreude in this reporting.
Once again, Google is the favorite bogeyman responsible for the rapid deterioration in the health of the news industry.
Yesterday, as Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington was leaving the DLD conference venue in Munich, one of the conference attendees walked up to him and spat in his face. I’ll say that again. One of the attendees. Walked up to him. And spat. In. His. Face. And then without a word, the attacker turned on his patent leather heel and vanished back into the crowd.
By the end of 2008, venture capital had been officially declared dead. Start-ups were laying people off so fast that even TechCrunch couldn’t manage to keep up. University endowments and foundations, the source of the “capital” in venture capital, were hemorrhaging so badly from their public company investments that many long-time believers in “alternative assets” declared a moratorium on venture capital. And the IPO market was a distant memory. Good times!
If you could search your friends’ thoughts, interests, and activities, would that be a better search experience? In many cases, it would be. Searching for restaurants, books, or movies, would turn up recommendations from people you actually know.
It hasn’t even been a month since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a German blog that growth, not monetization, was the priority for the social-networking site. In fact, he even went so far as to say that he didn’t see a revenue plan coming into play for three more years.
Razr anyone? Motorola can’t even give those things away anymore. The once-proud company reported horrible earnings today, with sales down 21% and a net loss of $194 million. But the big takeaway was the 39% collapse in its mobile phone business. Mobile device revenues in the quarter dropped $2.1 billion compared to last year.
Coincidentally enough, that is almost exactly how much Apple made last quarter over the past three quarters on iPhone sales. That figure comes to $2.3 billion (including lumped-in sales of Apple TVs, which likely made up a very small portion of that total).
After the derision that greeted the New York Times’s blogging-will-kill-you story on Sunday, I’m probably not going to do much for the reputation of the mainstream media with hard-core bloggers. So it goes.
Out of curiosity, I drew up a list of 55 technology journalists to find out how many use Twitter, arguably one of the most important social-media technologies on the scene. I included names of some online reporters–including colleagues from CNET as well as TechCrunch–but in the main, the list is comprised of people employed by A-list newspapers and periodicals.
There is a new casual gaming network in town that’s got some serious cross-platform chops. Don’t be fooled by the cutesy graphics. Today, Mytopia is simultaneously launching across Facebook, Bebo, MySpace (currently pending approval) and its own Web site with eight games (chess, backgammon, sudoku, dominoes, bingo, spades, hearts and video poker). On Monday, it will release the same games across the major Web and desktop widgets: iGoogle Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, Yahoo Widgets and Windows Vista Toolbar Widgets.
On the left is a picture of plain old Angelina Jolie. But on the right… well we’ve got Angelina after she’s been through the Taaz virtual makeover service.
An editorial to be published in the American Journal of Psychiatry argues that Internet addiction is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder that should be added to psychiatry’s official guidebook of mental disorders.
Report author Dr. Jerald Block defines Internet addiction as including “excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations and email/text messaging.” Block says that those suffering Internet addiction experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online.
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.
So here is exactly what we do:
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
