| I Like to Dislike! Facebook Introduces Comment Voting, Threads For those of you tirelessly campaigning for a dislike button, it looks like it's arrived, at least in some format. Facebook has upgraded its comments plugin and now allows users to up- and down-vote other comments, finally giving us the ability to simply disagree, no ifs ands or buts about it. While the company has been very careful, it seems,... Continue Reading »    CarWoo Promises to Take the Hassle Out of Car Buying Buying a new car should be fun, but the haggling over prices and high-pressure sales tactics at many dealerships can quickly make it anything but an enjoyable experience. CarWoo, which officially launches today, wants to transform car buying by giving its users the ability to negotiate prices and get quotes from multiple dealers online. While... Continue Reading » A Search Market Craters - Welcome to the App Diaspora After the collapse of the economy two years ago, a market force took effect that has led to the "cratering," of a small but telling sector of the enterprise search market. The story demonstrates how open-source technologies are now more than alternatives for enterprise search. They are the norm. Hadley Reynolds, a senior analyst at IDC, said in... Continue Reading » Overall Investment Dollars Down, Says Quarterly Report, But Seed Deals Strong Investment research firm CB Insights has released its report on the third quarter of 2010. And the report is very much a mixed bag: overall funding dollars are down, but the number of deals is up. And seed funding in particular, according the report, is strong. VC funding dipped to $5.4 billion in the third quarter of this year, a five quarter... Continue Reading » Collect and Curate Data with Wolfram Alpha's Volunteer Program The goal of Wolfram Research is both impressive and bold: to make the world's knowledge computable. Best known, perhaps, for the Wolfram Alpha, the online answer engine, Wolfram today announced a new Volunteer Central site, a place where volunteers can contribute data to the project. There are a number of areas in which Wolfram Alpha is... Continue Reading » Apple Awarded a Patent To Prevent Texting "Objectionable Content" Apple has been awarded a patent that can keep you from sending or receiving "objectionable" text-messages. The patent, filed in January of 2008 and approved today, will allow certain content to be filtered, based on parental controls. The description of the patent doesn't mention sexting, although that may be the main thing many parents would... Continue Reading » 20 Years Ago Crossing the Berlin Wall Was No Game Jens Stober, a 24-year-old university student in Karlsruhe, Germany, has chosen a unique way to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has created an FPS, a first person shooter video game, that forces the player to take the role of an East German guard and provides the player with the opportunity to "kill" people... Continue Reading » Dot Obits: Pixar, Talking Computers and the Bomb Problem This is the latest in an occasional series on people who have passed away, folks who have contributed in some way to the development of, or the way we look at, the Internet and Web. If you know of someone who should be featured, please let us know. Andrew Witkin: Oscar-winning scientist. The phrase "Oscar-winning scientist" is rare. So was... Continue Reading » Facebook Rolls Out Security Changes, Including Ability to Generate Temporary Passwords Facebook has launched two security features today, aimed at protecting the accounts of those of us who access Facebook from public computers. The first feature is a one-time password. To use this feature, you have to have a mobile phone number associated with your account. Then, if you want to generate a temporary password, text "otp" to 32665.... Continue Reading » To Protect and to Project: Another Take on Digital Privacy The subject of "personal data protection," long the exclusive domain of experts and activists, has recently earned its political pedigree. The French Edvige file, the endless extension of Google's services, Facebook's use of personal data, biometric IDs, contact-less chips have all sparked heated public discussions that, in many case, have... Continue Reading » Digg CEO Says "We're Sorry," Brings Back Some Old Digg Features Responding to the vocal backlash against Digg v4, Matt Williams, Digg's new CEO, has issued an apology, promising to bring back some of the features that the new Digg ditched and that long-time users loved, including the "bury" button. "We hear you loud and clear," says Williams. What's Old (Digg) is New (Digg) Again "In the past two weeks,"... Continue Reading » Social Media and Network Security: Balancing Threats and Benefits As we reported earlier this year, research from Cisco's Mid-Year Security Report found that 50% of end users admitted to accessing social media tools at work at least once a week, in spite of company rules. And another 27% have changed the settings on a company device to access prohibited sites or applications. While social media sites are often... Continue Reading » | 
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