Top Items:
Ryan Singel / Epicenter:
Facebook's Gone Rogue; It's Time for an Open Alternative — Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg's dreams of world domination. It's time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed.
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Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Facebook Blames Riot Over Privacy On Media, Says Users “Love” The Changes (MSFT) — Facebook is getting lots of heat about privacy lately. — But a company exec told Computerworld that any complaining you're hearing is not from real users. — It's just noise from “media, organizations and officials.”
Matt McKeon:
The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook — Facebook is a great service. I have a profile, and so does nearly everyone I know under the age of 60. However, Facebook hasn't always managed its users' data well. In the beginning, it restricted the visibility of a user's personal information …
Discussion:
Wikinomics, Digits, FlowingData, Asa Dotzler, The Huffington Post and Help Net Security, Thanks:atul
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Zynga Gunning Up (And Lawyering Up) For War Against Facebook With Zynga Live — The relationship between Facebook and its biggest gaming partner, Zynga, are at an all time low, we've heard from multiple sources. The level of stress, says one source, is “intense.”
Discussion:
PC World, Silicon Alley Insider, TNW Social Media, ZDNet, SocialTimes.com, GigaOM, Socialmedia.biz, All Facebook, Blue Frog Blog, Crave, Joystiq, SecondShares, Velocity and PE Hub Blog
RELATED:
Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:
Apple developing Flash alternative named Gianduia — As Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight duke it out over their plugin-based, HTML-alternative web platforms, Apple is using Gianduia, its new a client-side, standards based framework for Rich Internet Apps, to create production quality online apps for its retail users.
Alexia Tsotsis / SFWeekly Tech:
Conan O'Brien at Google: The World Has Completely Changed — Rounding out an unofficial tour of Silicon Valley, Conan O'Brien visited Google's Mountain View headquarters on Wednesday, ribbing Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra about the company's infamous aloofness: “You guys are so power mad …
Boy Genius Report:
BlackBerry Bold 9800 slider gets caught on video — One of our BlackBerry connects sent us in a nice treat a little while ago... it is the first ever live video of the mythical BlackBerry Bold sliding device coming out of Waterloo. The quality of the video is also decently clear, so check it out, okay?
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
FCC hands Hollywood the keys to your PC, home theater and future — The FCC has given Hollywood permission to activate the “Selective Output Control” technologies in your set-top box. These are hidden flags that allow the MPAA to deactivate parts of your home theater depending on what you're watching.
Discussion:
paidContent, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Threat Level, CNET News, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, Media Decoder, Mediactive, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press and Silicon Alley Insider, Thanks:manan
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Brad Feld / Feld Thoughts:
Software Patent Absurdity — As long time readers of this blog know, I'm strongly against software patents. Succinctly, I think they are (a) invalid constructs, (b) totally unnecessary, and (c) a massive tax on and retardant of innovation. — More and more of my VC brethren are beginning …
Discussion:
A VC
Erico Guizzo / IEEE Spectrum:
Robots With Knives: A Study of Soft-Tissue Injury in Robotics — UPDATE: It turns out the brave individual in the video is Sami Haddadin, the study's lead author, who was clearly confident in the collision-detection system he devised. I incorporated some additional details he gave me into the story.
Open Source Subnet / Network World:
The Defensive Patent License makes patents less evil for open source — Two law professors are developing a software patent license in the image of the GPL — Two law professors from UC Berkeley have come up with a novel idea to protect open source developers from patent bullies.
Jeremy Nicholl / The Russian Photos Blog:
We Stole Your Pictures, Now We're Going To Sue You — Morel's publications under the AFP-Getty-Suaero byline — Imagine you're in an earthquake. Even as the aftershocks continue, looters steal your property. Shortly after you see your stolen belongings up for sale.
