“Don’t let him climb a wall. We haven’t finalized his life insurance plan.” That was one of the first directions I was given at Digg when I started in early 2008. “Him” was Kevin Rose, the founder of the widely popular social news site, and I was on my third day. It was widely...
It looks like a titanic legal struggle has been avoided. Mobile payments startup mPowa has responded to a cease-and-desist letter from Square by taking down a photo on its home page that Square said was swiped from its site. You can read more the dispute in yesterday’s post, but basically, Square’s lawyers said it...
Nokia’s sales offices in Chengdu and Shanghai are shutting down, Nasdaq.com has reported, Nokia transitions to a new mobile platform and a leaner corporate structure. Also, as its market share contracts, it simply has less need for its formerly fitting infrastucture. The number of layoffs that would be involved were not disclosed. Nokia recently announced,...
Nodejitsu announced a long awaited public beta for its Node.js platform cloud service this week. The service can be run from private or public clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Joyent and Rackspace. The company also offers suites of tools for deploying, monitoring and managing Node.js applications in cloud environments. Nodejitsu launched its first private...
This morning, Apple’s outgoing Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, Bob Mansfield, posted a letter on the company’s website. It announced that Apple would be adding its products back to the EPEAT database and re-adopting the ratings standard for its products. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool is a ranking system for customers that allows...
Traveling by train from Glasgow to London can be such a bore – but not when you’re sitting next to fascinating people like Tim and Freya. Scottish comic and writer Janey Godley overheard the soon-to-be-ex lovers squabbling and seized the opportunity to live-tweet the event. Analyzing Godley’s technique, we’ve uncovered some tips to help...
Rural America has a surprising mix of broadband options from fiber to the home in a few places to satellite broadband in the most remote. But the most common speeds aren’t much to write home about. Median downstream speeds were between 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps in the first quarter of 2012, according to...
Dalton Caldwell, the man behind failed startups Imeem and PicPlz, recently ruminated on what he wished Twitter could have become. Now he’s moving ahead with his own paid alternative that promises to shun advertising and focus on customer trust. Caldwell unveiled his big venture called App.net in a lengthy blog post Friday and kicked off a...
The recent work of Chinese artist and programmer Raven Kwok is an exceptional example of code as art, where complex mathematics are leveraged to create something surprisingly beautiful. These pieces, surfaced by Processing‘s own exhibition curator Creative Applications Network, are embedded below and showcase the growing field of creative coding, which is empowered by...
The Digg Townhall meeting broadcast live from the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. 2008. Photo courtesy of Eric Magnuson, via Flickr Having spent a major part of the week sitting on a beach, practically disconnected to the incessant drumbeat of the news cycle, it was hardly surprising that I missed yesterday’s hoopla about...