A social network for people who hate social networks
Like many people, Randy Hallet is fed up with the Facebooking of the planet. Unlike most, he's decided to do something about it. The 30-something Webpreneur has created what he calls "the anti-social network." Hallet declined to...
The Obama Administration is open for your questions
Ever wanted to quiz the prez? Now you may finally have your chance.The Obama administration has launched a new subsite at Whitehouse.gov called "Open for Questions" that lets you, Joe Q. Public, submit questions to the president...
Breaking open Google's big black box
Stop me if you've heard this one.Big publishers are complaining that Google gives short shrift to the originators of content, favoring the blogosphere over traditional mass media. A story by Nat Ives in today's Ad Age summarizes the...
Browser wars redux: Happy days are here again
I'm partying like it's 1997. I haven't seen this much action on the browser front since the Microsoft-Netscape death match at the height of the dot com boom.Last week Mozilla released its third beta of Firefox 3.1, and hinted a...
No news isn't good news
Today the Seattle Post Intelligencer is shuttering its doors after 146 years and becoming a Web-only news service. On this St. Patty's Day let us raise a glass and drink a toast to a once-great newspaper. The Post-Intelligencer is...
Happy birthday, Hulu
Hulu, the joint video venture between NBC and Fox, turned one year old yesterday. And what a precocious rugrat it's become. To celebrate, Hulu announced it's becoming more social, adding a feature called, appropriately enough,...
Social media? Booming. Social media advertising? Not so much.
Social networks are growing like kudzu in August. You knew that already; now the Nielsen Online folks have made it official. According to its Global Faces and Networked Places report [PDF], Netizens now spend more time on social...
ZillionTV: Part Deux
I admit, I was a bit harsh on ZillionTV last week. I based my report on a limited amount of information - essentially, the press release and the Web site - both of which left a lot of room for interpretation.Shortly after that item...
ZillionTV: What's wrong with this picture?
Hollywood has finally figured out how to merge the old media of TV and movies with the new media of the Internet. It's called ZillionTV, and if you're anything like me, you may want to run screaming as fast as possible in the other...
Welcome to Utah, online porn capital of the USA
For most of my life I have lived in the cauldrons of sin - first New York, then California. These Bluer than Blue states are the source of most of our society's ills, or so we are constantly told. When it comes to online smut,...
Did the blogosphere kill newspapers?
The news this week that the Hearst Corp. may shut down the San Francisco Chronicle if it can't find a buyer was bittersweet at best. For 20 years I lived in the Bay Area, and during that time I read the Chronicle, first and foremost....
Microsoft brings you the Internet of things
Last week I saw the freakiest thing to come out of Redmond since the original Microsoft/Timex Data Link watch in 1995. The weird thing about the Data Link was how you transferred data to it: You'd hold the gizmo up to your CRT...
iPhone, SchmyPhone: Five wicked cool cells
I've just returned home from a whirlwind week at the Mobile World Congress, seeing the best the mobile market has to offer. Aside from windmill-powered cell towers and eco-friendly phones, the most interesting thing I saw at the show...
Google Android: It's put up or shut up time
I sit here in Barcelona awaiting the start of the Mobile World Congress, a T-Mobile G1 Android phone blinking by my side. According to some, the MWC - the world's biggest cell phone show - was supposed to be Android's coming out...
Think you're really anonymous? Think again.
It's been a big week for anonymity on the Net, but not necessarily a good one. First, there's "Anonymous," that amorphous collective of Netizens that recently celebrated a year of driving the Church of Scientologist up the...
Is your cell phone spying on you?
Last week I wrote about Google's plan to put a social network in your pocket via its new Latitude mapping app for smart phones. Latitude uses cell phone towers, GPS, or WiFi to locate you and several hundred of your closest personal...
Is Google taking too much "Latitude"?
In what seems to be a weekly occurrence, Google has announced yet another new product seemingly designed to suck what little privacy you have left out of your life. It's called Latitude, and it uses your phone's GPS chip and/or cell...
Bloggers beware: Bad ads can come back to bite you
Last week I wrote about Linkstar, a UK-based company that offers to place text ads for its clients on small, low-traffic Web sites. (See "The curious case of Linkstar Media.") Though Linkstar is extremely close-lipped about who it is...
The curious case of Linkstar Media
Some day I plan to run my own vast Web 2.0 empire, and the media world will tremble at the mere mention of my name. For now, though, I operate a humble blog (Tynan on Tech) that, well, let's just say it isn't exactly burning up the...
Just how private is your data?
You might not know it, but today marks the second annual international Data Privacy Day. So Happy DPD. And what happens on DPD? Not a whole lot, as far as I can tell. State legislatures issue proclamations declaring it Data Privacy...
