This week Facebook became the next tech giant to build upon Google Android. That raises quite a few questions — and some potential answers — about privacy, control over Android and who might use Facebook Home as their full-time Android launcher. Read more »
How exactly will Facebook be using your data if you download the new Home launcher on Android or buy the HTC First phone? Facebook says it won’t be collecting your data any differently than it does with the traditional app. Read more »
Its a unicorn. No it’s a phone. Actually it is Facebook Home, for now; Apple’s China Syndrome is making it think different; The Bit coin boom (& bust); Chrome & WebKit go to war and did Vdio really kill the Rdio star? Read more »
Starting April 12, you can get the HTC First from AT&T: An LTE, Android 4.1 phone with Facebook Home as your launcher. AT&T hasn’t provided many specs, but some nosing around on the HTC site yielded quite a few. Read more »
Facebook didn’t quite unveil its own phone, but you can make your Android phone a Facebook phone with a custom launcher. The question now is: will you? Read more »
The financial company Bloomberg says it will add Twitter to its platforms now that the SEC has given a green light to companies to use social media to announce market moving news. Read more at paidContent »
A year ago, it seemed mobile was going to be Facebook’s achilles heel. Things seem to have turned around, though I am not entirely convinced that it means big dollars for the company. Read more »
Applied Micro, a chip company with a market cap of $500 million, is set to take on Intel and AMD with the first 64-bit, ARM-based server part that mimics an entire rack on a chip. Read more »
Got 20 minutes to spare on your commute or at work? Why not tune in to this week’s call in podcast where we answer your tech questions. Plenty of Chromebook tips on this week’s show as well as thoughts on the Facebook phone. Read more »
There’s little doubt that Facebook will unveil a new phone on Thursday, but the star of the show will be software, not hardware, in this battle between Facebook and Google for user engagement. Read more »
Facebook has built a new open source tool for benchmarking graph databases, called LinkBench. And although the chances are your infrastructure and workloads look nothing like Facebook’s, the good news is LinkBench was built with configurability in mind. Read more »
A reported leak of the software that will power Facebook’s upcoming phone shows specs of the handset as well as capabilities of what appears to be a dedicated Facebook home screen for Android devices. Read more »
A “Facebook phone” is one of the longest-running rumors in the technology world, but a number of observers think such a beast is actually going to make an appearance next week. But do users actually want one? Read more »
The era of constrained resources is just beginning, so right now access to resources acts as sort of dark matter, quietly putting pressure in complex ways on how the virtual world operates. Read more »
Twitter may be run by a private corporation, but it has quickly become one of the strongest tools we have for free speech, which is why it’s so important that the company resist efforts to curb that speech. Read more »
Instagram might be changing the economics of the paparazzi business, but the photo-sharing service and its social media peers can also make celebrities — willing or not — out of ordinary people. Who should pay when digital activity has real-world consequences? Read more »
A recent study found strong correlations between people’s Facebook likes and a number of personal characteristics such as sexual orientation and intelligence. But relying on correlations as proof of anything is a questionable practice. Read more »
Google+ announced Monday that it’s incorporating some photo editing and filtering features into its iOS app from the team at Snapseed, which Google acquired back in September 2012. At this point the “photo wars” seem to have died down slightly, but Google+ gets into the mix. Read more »
For better or worse, we all live in glass houses. Yet social media has made it easier and faster than ever before to throw stones, and that’s not always a good thing. Read more »
Want to see big data in action? When it comes to planning out data center capacity, data can influence everything from the power usage to planning for disasters. Read more »
With Facebook’s appointment of Mike Schroepfer as its new chief technology officer, the company is putting in place a person who has overseen an infrastructure strategy that has made an industry take notice. Read more »
Ready for some #social #disruption? Reports from the Wall Street Journal and AllThingsD indicate that Facebook is considering adopting the hashtag on its platform, which would help users organize content around particular topics and give advertisers more opportunities. Read more »
Facebook is perfecting the algorithms that deliver results in its Graph Search tool, and more improvements are coming. It would be wise to watch the social networking giant tweak such a large database search. Read more »
Facebook announced some tweaks and updates to its Timeline on Wednesday, simplifying the layout and emphasizing content recommendations only a week after the updated news feed design made similar advances. Read more »
Netflix rolled out its Facebook integration for U.S. subscribers Wednesday, offering them an easy way to see what they friends are watching on the service. Read more »
Silp creates jobseeker profiles by pulling data off Facebook profiles and other public sources, while x28 specializes in smart matching techniques. Together, they hope to build better recruitment technology. Read more »
The biggest challenge for modern etiquette is that we have so many different forms of communication available to us now, but not everyone agrees on how or when it is appropriate to use them. Read more »
The business and technology worlds are talking about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In. After reading it, we’re weighing in here. Read more »
“Friend” has a new meaning, “Web site” should be avoided, and some tech concepts still lack words. A panel at SXSW Sunday discussed how language is changing in the digital age. Read more at paidContent »
First the New York Times rankles Facebook and then they release a new feed redesign; technology is making people richer, though not as many billionaires; Time runs out for Time Inc.; some VCs have problems & Spotify has more new competition; and a few stories we recommend. Read more »
Facebook recently announced a redesign of its newsfeed – one that it plans to roll out to its billion customers. I got a chance to take the new newsfeed for a spin. Here is my take on the changes and their business implications. Read more »
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the social network is trying to create “the best personalized newspaper” with its news feed. But we all know what has happened to newspapers — can Facebook somehow avoid suffering the same fate? Read more at paidContent »