48190823
submission
SpicyBrownMustard writes:
Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet. By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz's life. The speed controller allows you to adjust how fast you travel, the pause button will let you stop at interesting points. In addition, a calendar at the bottom shows when he was in a particular location and can be used to jump to a specific time period. Each column corresponds to one day.
45780141
submission
SpicyBrownMustard writes:
Forbes has an article that follows up on the news/hype/buzz/hysteria of the acquisitions of Summly and Wavii and Yahoo and Google respectively. It's a rather comical write up with a rather sad ring of truth to it, especially that we now know that Summly was little more than a collection of existing technologies built by others. Summaries are the "big new thing" apparently. Don't miss out, make your summarization app today and ride that train of gravy!
35853869
submission
SpicyBrownMustard writes:
There's no secret to a rising level of "Silicon Valley fatigue" lately, and the new reality show certainly isn't helping. And with hacker hostels packing in twenty somethings fueling the "it's okay to fail" incubator culture that now is actually hurting startups, it's no wonder weariness with the culture is setting in. Forbes.com asks the question, Is Phoenix The Next Silicon Valley (also picked up by Chicago Tribune), covering a startup with a couple names you might know who picked Phoenix due to its much lower cost of living and quality of life. Quoting the startup's CTO, "Wirtz explains that having so much more financial freedom lowers the stress associated with working for a startup, as he can enjoy work/live balance." Their location certainly didn't hurt fund raising as they managed $2 million in seed capital. Are we indeed done with Silicon Valley for tech startups?
14579978
submission
SpicyBrownMustard writes:
Wire magazine has coverage of the sudden numerous lawsuits filed by Righthaven, LLC regarding the content of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money."
The owner of the LVRJ comments on the strategy and the Las Vegas Sun has extensive coverage of each suit filed. The owner of one site has apparently settled for more than the site has made in six years. Media Matters suspects many if most of the suits may be politically motivated, and violates federal election law.
636428
submission
SpicyBrownMustard writes:
An FBI Powerpoint presentation provides details about a criminal investigation into counterfeit CISCO hardware originating from China, and sold by Gold/Silver partners to numerous US government, military, and intelligence agencies. The concern of the article's author and the FBI is that the counterfeit equipment may be state-sponsored to aid in accessing otherwise secure systems (slides 46+47). Says the article author: "The threat is real. Compromised hardware of potentially hostile foreign origin sits within secure networks of the US government, military, and intelligence services. And as you now see, the FBI has been concerned about it."
