As I watched Apple’s iBooks event in New York City last week, my mind began to race about the ramifications of such announcements. Everyone had a pretty good idea for weeks (or months if you read the Steve Jobs biography) that textbooks would be a focal point for Apple, but there wasn’t much thought given to what...
Megaupload is clearly gearing up for legal warfare amidst its takedown and indictments this week. According to The Hollywood Reporter, as it prepares for those legal proceedings, the company has dropped its lawsuit against Universal Music Group over the takedown of its horrendous, yet somehow catchy, “Megaupload Mega Song”. That was the promo song...
Before SOPA was pulled from the House yesterday, opponents of the bill argued (among other things) that sites accused of making copyrighted material available could be shut down without being given full, adverserial, due process. Was this an accurate assessment? Viacom’s General Counsel and EVP Michael Fricklas and David Sohn, General Counsel and Director of the Center for Democracy...
Last week BetaBeat’s Nitasha Tiku first reported impending layoffs at Gilt Groupe. We confirmed the rumor from a source who said 50-60 people would be let go in the next week or so. Some of those cuts happened yesterday. A source told Betabeat the experience was “super uncomfortable” and the “general atmosphere was terrifying.”...
When social news startup Summify announced Thursday that it was being acquired by Twitter, it looked like the Summify’s existing users were out-of-luck — the company said the current version of the service would be shut down. Enter News.me. The company is best-known for its iPad newsreading app (which was developed at The New York Times, then...
What You Need to Know About SOPA in 2012 Many of us needed to know why SOPA, and its sister bill in the Senate, PIPA, was so dangerous to innovation and to your liberties. Dan’s lengthy SOPA explainer is an excellent resource for everyone who needed to learn what SOPA is, and why it...
How much does Google make in advertising from mobile? Cowen analyst Jim Friedland estimates that Google is generating $7 per year from each smartphone (and tablet). This includes both search and display advertising in mobile apps on both Android and iOS (iPhones and iPads). Thanks to the rapid growth in active smart mobile devices...
Just three days ago, the Google+ team announced a new social feature that let you start a conversation based on any search you did on the service. In my post about the feature, I wondered out loud about how long it would take Google to integrate that same feature into its main search engine:...
Cellphone contracts suck, but pretty much everyone in the U.S. still has one. For the vast majority of people, signing a contract is the only way to get the phone they want for a price they can afford. But contracts present problems: They’re 24 months long, but phones typically have issues after the first...
I am a big fan of David Eggers, first having come across his A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, part novel, part autobiography, several years. Since then the man has become a paragon of bringing good writing to the children of various inner cities with his 826 Valencia projects (where I once volunteered, name...