Neal Stephenson once wrote that BeOS was the Batmobile of operating systems (Windows was a station wagon, MacOS was a European sports car and Linux was a free army tank). It was created in 1991. In 1997 its legendary file system, BFS was created. Be Inc sold to Palm in 2001, and BeOS was...
Last night, I wrote up my initial thoughts on Google+ after using it for a day. Overall, I find it pretty compelling so far. While there is a bit of a learning curve, after about 15 minutes, I found myself at home using the service. And little things (namely notifications) kept bringing me back....
Facebook has updated its Comments Box plugin for third-party sites with two new sorting options, Reverse Chronological and Social Ranking, on top of its existing chronological ordering, Inside Facebook reports. The update has been rolled out and is available on the 300,000+ sites that use Facebook Comments. Moderators get a new button to play...
Facebook has recently been granted a patent for “Giving gifts and displaying assets in a social network environment” in a bid to retain its dominance in the social network scene despite the rise of group buying and e-commerce sites. Patent number 7,970,657, originally filed by Jared Morenstern back in April 2007, describes social gift giving...
Background checks are now fully mobile, thanks BeenVerified‘s new app for Android and the re-release of the app on iOS. The Background Check App does exactly as you might expect: It pulls data from BeenVerified’s site and allows you to check up on the people you know through name queries or email addresses. Users...
Google Plus is a very impressive product, but in order to test it and not over-hype it, the company offered very few invites to the service when it launched yesterday. Press and a few others were allowed to enter up to 15 email adresses before noon yesterday and all of those people got Plus...
“What will my application be like on the netbook?” This is the question posed by iPhone developers around the world as they begin porting to the Intel® AtomTM SDK. When porting an application from one platform to another, the first item we as developers tend to think about is the programming language. Let us...
A Colorado cleantech venture, Luca Technologies, filed an S-1 today revealing its intention to go public, and raise up to $125 million (though that number could vary with the receptivity of the market by the time they actually go public). The company stimulates microbes with a “proprietary formulation of nutrients,” in already-drilled natural gas...
Twitter is planning to launch a site for developers using the Twitter platform in their applications, GigaOm reports. After several very rocky months between Twitter and developers, the move may be an attempt to smooth things over by giving developers more information, assistance and support. Twitter isn’t holding back: the site will have tips...
I was recently asked to prognosticate about the next decade of TV and online video by an analyst. It was flattering and slightly bewildering, as I’m not exactly a visionary but I have been “in the biz” for a while. While the discussion was free-form, in retrospect, it focused around major trends in the video...