From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes. Go to Full Article

Interesting, and I think it is a good move by Facebook. -- KM *** According to Lee Lorenzen, of Altura Ventures, and AllFacebook, the "Social Ads" advertising service Facebook is supposedly set to launch next week will take Facebook ads outside the social network. The rumored...

Another way of saying that the social networking market has room to quadruple in size. -- KM *** San Francisco Chronicle: Does cyberspace provide enough companionship? Some say yes. The survey queried Americans about their social-networking habits and the extent to which their...

The fact that a one person company can be worth a billion dollars is what is really exciting about the web now. This type of stuff is going to drastically change how companies are financed and grown. Markus is a trailblazer here. -- KM *** We've written before about PlentyOfFish, one...

Google, as usual, hits the nail on the head in terms of what is needed strategically. -- KM *** Google may have lost the bidding war to invest in Facebook, but it is preparing its own major assault on the social networking scene. It goes by the codename “Maka-Maka” inside the...

The stuff that is currently thought of as unethical -- i.e. RSS scraping, or domaining, for instance -- will, ironically, end up being tools that can be used for branding (RSS to create a branded portal, domaining in the way Squidoo has, as noted in the post below). -- KM *** Thirteen...

I'm starting to really believe in Flock. The main question I have is adoption. The browser game is so tough to play because of adoption issues. But the personal social network (i.e. the Inverse Universe) is where it's at. -- KM *** I have been using the Flock 1.0 beta for a few...

Proposals to boost the taxes paid by the managers of private equity and hedge funds will have the side-effect of damaging the US's thriving venture capital business, according to a public letter signed by 500 entrepreneurs Go to Full Article

Nice insight into social search here and how it could change search. I think a personalization component is still needed though (i.e. I may only want to see recommendations made by those in my social graph). -- KM *** Stumbleupon is one of may favorite social media sites, Not only can...

During the interview, Haass predicted that the crisis over Iran's nuclear program could come to a head within the next few months and that war with Iran would result in oil prices rising to $200 a barrel. Go to Full Article

I'm very interested in finding the intersection between retail RFID and consumer-facing web services -- i.e. open platforms. -- KM *** The next time you go for shopping to a retail store and the shopping cart tells you that you have the following items in your cart and other products...

The Hawaii Department of Agriculture may be the first US state agency to launch a pilot of RFID tracking designed to help farmers, distributors and retailers track their produce through the supply chain, and to allow for traceability in ... Go to Full Article

Thanks to the internet, a wealth of data on individuals that used to be under lock and key in various paper and proprietary databases is swarming around the ether (protected and unprotected). Consider the following consumer ... Go to Full Article

In an effort to protect net neutrality, Senators Bryon Dorgan and Olympia Snowe have sent a letter to Sen. Daniel Inouye, who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, requesting a hearing for the discussion of phone and cable ... Go to Full Article

It's interesting to see how the techniques and technologies of amateur, citizen journalists are adopted, co-opted, and integrated by the mainstream media. Take blogs, for example, which earlier in this decade seemed like just an outlet ... Go to Full Article