The way people talk publicly about Facebook's application platform, you'd think Jesus used it to invite his apostles to the Last Supper. But some industry insiders quietly say they're not at all impressed with the applications people have developed. "None of the most popular apps actually do anything," a high-ranking…
You may remember Steve Case from your spam-filled AOL inbox and your junk-CD-filled postal mailbox. The former CEO of AOL and now the head of the Revolution Health, a flailing healthcare startup, is giving it another go. His latest venture? launched Revolution Money, a nontraditional credit card combined with a PayPal…
Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson haven't yet agreed to participate in the CNN/YouTube debate planned for November 28, the Trail reports. It's a surprising reticence, the TechPresident blog notes, because both campaigns have embraced Web video and YouTube in the past. Romney's YouTube
Over at Forbes.com they're pointing out that since September 10, Yahoo's stock price is up 15 percent, while Google's has only risen about half that much over the same period. Of course, the difference here is that Yahoo still hasn't returned to its 52-week high of $33.61, and Google hit an all-time high of $571.46…
Apparently, the Great Firewall of China — the Chinese government's elaborate system for blocking websites deemed politically incorrect — is only good for censorship, not for boosting the country's network security. Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that the Pentagon traced a June attack on U.S.…
Oh, Canada. With the loonie matching the value of the dollar, a bunch of our northern neighbors are crowing. Yes, yes. Wake us when the Canadian football field shrinks to a normal size, too. Anyway, the Sydney Morning Herald says that Google is considering meeting Canadian legal concerns over its Street View map…
First came Facebook's marketplace feature, a challenger to Craigslist's for-sale listings. Now the social network is taking on filthy-rich Craig Newmark in another key attractor: the couch-surfing market. Travel search-engine SideStep has signed up on Mark Zuckerberg's team by building a Facebook app, CouchSwap, to…
The troubled online universe isn't dead yet, claims the gullible Hollywood Reporter. The Tinseltown trade, spun like a top by Second Life creator Linden Lab's denial campaign, reports on a marketing "success" story. Brand agency This Second Marketing employed virtual street teams in Second Life to promote the 3D Imax…
Six big U.K. advertisers just took Facebook off their friends list. First Direct Bank, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the U.K.'s Automobile Association, Halifax Bank, and Prudential all took offense when their ads appeared on the British National Party's Facebook group page. Many cited corporate policies prohibiting ads from…
Google may not be making a phone, but it sure is spending a lot of money to act like it — and a lot of that cash is splashing down in the Charles River. In Boston, the search giant is making unsolicited bids for the services of every mobile software whiz it can find. And its real-estate agents are on the hunt for an…
In the youth culture of social networks, the worst thing to be is the old guy. Even News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, after shelling out $580 million for MySpace, has tired of the website. And the Facebook frenzy could fade equally fast, if more people follow Jason Calacanis's lead and declare Facebook fatigue. That's…
Promises, promises. Flickr cofounders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, we hear, are finally introducing video to the photo-sharing site they sold to Yahoo in 2005. But they've taken their sweet time. First Fake told Engadget back in 2004 that she wanted the site to introduce "short-form video." Then she told…
The world's largest magazine publisher wasn't kidding about pushing its way onto the Web — even if it had to axe nearly 300 jobs to do it. In fact, Time Inc. has gone almost as crazy for social networks as the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road. Sports Illustrated's social component, FanNation.com, which Time Inc.…
Mountain View-based software company The Multiverse Network has released version 1.0 of its free virtual-world development platform. Great. Just what we need. More crappy virtual worlds.. [Gamasutra]
Yelp, the social network and local reviews site, takes a break from throwing parties to whip up an API for developers. [Tech Crunch]
A growing number of Gmail users are reporting problems with hacked accounts. Password hacking, of course, isn't a new threat. And users ought to be cautious with login information. But what's making users of Google's email system especially frustrated is the company's molasses-slow, user-unfriendly support after their…
When all else fails, deny, deny, deny. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab, is spitting in the face of Wired's recent exposé on the desperate state of Second Life, his company's virtual world. The magazines reported that advertisers are abandoning the thinly populated virtual world after discovering they've…
Forget Second Life. It turns out that kids, not adults, are the ones whose virtual worlds translate into real bucks. On Wednesday, Disney bought New Horizon Interactive's Club Penguin, a website where kids pretend to be penguins and decorate digital igloos. The price tag for putting mouse ears on the penguins? $350…
