Is it getting hot in here? Or is it just the flames?
In An Early Look At IE9 for Developers, Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer, reports on performance progress, web standards progress (border-radius, bits of CSS3, Acid 3 performance), and “bringing the power of PC hardware and Windows to web developers in the browser” (e.g. improved type rendering via Direct2D, a Windows sub-pixel rendering technology that replaces Cleartype).
The reported web standards improvements (...)
TGV 'explosion' leaves 102 dead, operator claims
French railway operator SNCF has apologised after its website earlier today announced a major disaster involving a TGV, which left 102 dead and 380 injured.…
The power of collaboration within unified communications
Vincent Danen explains how to get more out of the search history features in the zsh shell.
Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe promise a significant advance in on-demand applications this year.
As we have all come to expect, Google tops the web traffic graphs every week for as long as I can remember. But not this week. For the first time Google has been knocked off the top spot by, you guessed it, Facebook. Facebook has taken the #1 US web traffic slot before, but only for [...]
'Sterile'? 'Evil'? How dangerous is the 'closed' iPhone?
Designed to help SXSW attendees exchange profiles with a smartphone scan, the system was seen by many as requiring too many steps. However, it is likely a good first step toward something strong next year.
The number of hate and terror pages on the Web is up 20 percent over the past year, a report finds, with social networks playing a more prominent role.
Ars Technica
| peter.bright@arstechnica.com (Peter Bright)
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Tech News
Microsoft has been quite explicit on the matter: Windows Phone 7 Series is being designed first and foremost for the consumer market. The result is the emphasis on a strong, consistent, effective user interface, possibly at the expense of functionality; Microsoft wants to have this thing out in time for "holiday season" this year, so there's a limited window for further development, at least for the initial release.
That said, the phone does have features aimed at the enterprise market. (...)
If you’re a soccer fan, you’ll understand. If you’re not, well, suffice to say that Europeans (Italians, especially) are (in general) crazy about soccer.
So when Heineken staged a fake classical music concert at the same time of a crucial Real Madrid vs. AC Milan game on October 21st, there was no chance that any real soccer fan would be there…except if their girlfriends, professors and (...)
I really thought this chart from Hitwise (via TechCrunch) was going to be a bigger deal than it actually is.
On the face of it, Facebook just overtook Google as the most visited site in the U.S:
However, Google doesn’t get the benefit of traffic to YouTube; and Yahoo is a mere third, because Yahoo Mail or Flickr aren’t credited towards its total.
Considering Facebook does video, images, messaging, it seems this chart has been carefully crafted to create headlines.
img (...)
There was lots of press coverage about the FCC's broadband plan on Monday, as the commission released an exec summary of its nearly 400-page plan for broadband in the US. If you want to wade through the details, it's all there online for you. But, if you want a basic summary, it appears that, like pretty much everything this FCC is doing, it's a lot of talk and little of consequence. So far, I've seen statements from lobbyists on pretty much all sides of the issues "commending" or (...)
Artefacto writes "Last Thursday, the Eleventh Circuit handed down a Fourth Amendment case, Rehberg v. Paulk, that takes a very narrow view of how the Fourth Amendment applies to e-mail. The Eleventh Circuit held that constitutional protection in stored copies of e-mail held by third parties disappears as soon as any copy of the communication is delivered. Under this new decision, if the government wants get your e-mails, the Fourth Amendment lets the government go to your ISP, wait the (...)
Filed under: Social SoftwareIt seems, within the last few minutes, Facebook has started to roll out QR barcodes on profile pages. I don't mean your drunken and/or emo profile photos have been replaced by an ugly barcode -- I mean you can generate barcodes to be used by your smartphone. You can now generate either a personal barcode or a 'status QR barcode'. Facebook pages (fan pages) also have QR code generation.
The personal code makes sense -- you could leave it stuck on a bathroom (...)
Want to make money? Become a former AOL executive. The Web publisher paid out $28.4 million in cash and stock to four top executives it replaced last year.
The payouts are part of a broader reorg CEO Tim Armstrong has put into place since coming aboard from Google (GOOG) a year ago. And most of the eye-popping sums are really a reflection of employment contracts the executives signed with the company when it was run by Time Warner (TWX). Still, they’re big numbers: Former CEO Randy Falco: (...)
I always knew Jenny would grow up to be a bad girl, but is it hard for anyone else to watch just how bad she's getting!? Ugh. The drama hit an all-time high between Jenny, Lily, and Rufus during this episode of Gossip Girl, while Chuck finally gets some face-to-face time with his mother. What went down this week on the Upper East Side? You tell me - see if you can recall all the tech details in this quiz!
Photos courtesy of The CW Take the (...)
After wrapping up a panel with a gamut of pro- and anti-VC types at SXSW, I'm left wondering why there aren't more services-oriented startup firms.
Let me explain: Most of the time, when a startup goes after venture capital, they're still in the process of building a product and bringing it to market. They need things like servers, developers, marketing tools and sometimes office space. Do they need money per se? Or is capital an increasingly arbitrary and unnecessary step in building a (...)
When I blogged about truly open data, readers sent me a lot of interesting links. I've collected them all below. Enjoy!
The Centre for Environmental Data Archival (CEDA) -- hosts a range of activities associated with evironmental data archives. (Director is on Twitter, @bnlawrence) CONNECT -- open source healthcare data exchange being developed with Brian Behlendorf, one of the original developers of the Apache web server. Phil Agre's Living Data -- prescient article in Wired from 1994. (...)
Hiroko Tabuchi took New York Times transparency to new levels; Mike Sampson found big trouble in little Austin; and Anthony Ha discovered a door was closed to him. Travel troubled the Twitterati.
The New York Times's Hiroko Tabuchi went for full disclosure, then an editor's note, note then a full Twitte-retraction.
After losing his credit card at South by Southwest, entertainment blogger Mike Sampson was forced into a life of rulebreaking.
The Chicago Tribune's Rob Manker explained why (...)
"Facebook Inc. edged past Google Inc. (GOOG) to become the most visited U.S. Web site for the week ended March 13, the first time the Internet giant has been topped since 2007, according to Hitwise."
In what could be the final deathblow to dial-up connections, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday will outline to Congress how it will spend $7.2 billion in stimulus funds to provide high-speed broadband Internet access to millions of Americans.
The FCC, under Chairman Julius Genachowski, has spent a year working on a plan that would reallocate up to 500 megahertz of the radio frequency spectrum through voluntary auction. That would add more broadband Internet via airwaves (...)
Axosoft, the developer of project management software OnTime is releasing a new version of its product that includes an innovative new way for developers to visualize, review and manage the life cycle of backlog items. The first 10 People to use coupon code “TechCrunch” to buy Axosoft’s OnTime Hosted Solution for 1 year from the Axosoft Store will get $790 off on their purchase ($790 is the cost of OnTime 5-User starter pack for 1 year).
The new version includes a dead simple project (...)
Matt Drudge and Michael Arrington found themselves in an unpleasant position last week when visitors to their sites were targeted by malware that appeared to have come from ads.
louisgray.com
| louisgray@gmail.com (Louis Gray)
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Tech News
Although I covered a pair of panels from the South by Southwest conference in Austin yesterday, I didn't go deep and explain why I chose to return to the event, which I first participated in and attended last year. Thanks to work at home and with Paladin, I almost opted out of SXSW in 2010, but after being offered the opportunity to speak on behalf of users everywhere and talk about how we may be losing the battle against products that are poorly designed or don't have our input, I had to (...)
More than ever, governments around the world are threatening online free expression. Forty countries have taken measures to limit this freedom, up from only a handful a few years ago. Google and YouTube services are or have been blocked in 25 of those nations.
On Thursday night in Paris, we took an important step to highlight this crucial issue by sponsoring the first Netizen Prize (or more elegantly, “Le Prix de Net Citoyen”) awarded by the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without (...)
