twitter

Rael Dornfest is joining Twitter.

Formerly an editor and a CTO for O'Reilly Media, his most recent project is a software house called Values of n, which makes the clever app (and Webware 100 winner) I Want Sandy and the virtual sticky note service called Stikkit.

Both products will shut down at 5 p.m. PST on December 8, according the Values of n blog. However, the Twitter blog says, "The technology...will live on and potentially re-emerge as part of Twitter's systems." It'd be pretty cool if the auto-concierge of I Want Sandy made … Read more

Twitter made the right decision by not accepting the Facebook deal. It's as simple as that.

Even better news: you can now subscribe to this show. Just add it up right here!

And as always, drop me a line or follow me on Twitter!

Twitter and Facebook seem like a nice match, don't they. It was no surprise that rumors started about a Facebook acquisition of Twitter. It was hardly a shocker when the rumors turned out to be true.

But it's good that the talks fell apart. (Story source: Kara Swisher: When Twitter met Facebook.)

From the outside, it looks like Facebook and Twitter could be happy social stablemates. Facebook has its own Twitter-like function, but it's not the core of the service. Twitter gets its users talking, but doesn't have the robust social features of Facebook. Melding Twitter … Read more

Rafe and Molly square off over the reuse of air conditioning technology, the fail whale sinks a deal between Facebook and Twitter, Gmail is cracked, and an enterprising astronaut creates the ultimate in must-have space tech: a zero-G coffee cup.

Twitter rebuffs a Facebook poke? http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10106391-2.html

Gmail exploit may allow attackers to forward e-mail http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10106275-83.html http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/breaking-gmail-security-flaw-more-domains-get-stollen/

EU strikes down French “3 strikes” copyright infringement law http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/23/1952248

Has … Read more

You know it's going to be really bad when the man who first revealed that the world is flat, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, says it's going to be really bad.

Here's how bad it is: Russians are drinking less vodka.

So, as you gird your loans and tighten your money belts, perhaps it's time to live a simpler life. One that revolves far less around luxurious and complex technologies.

Here are five tech products that you will surely be able to live without in this recession/depression/secession from Alaska.

1. Twitter. … Read more

Maybe it wasn't just egregious Valley gossip-baiting when Federated Media CEO John Battelle asked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg earlier this month if his company was going to buy Twitter.

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD reported early Monday morning that actual acquisition talks held between the two companies have fallen through.

The deal would have been for $500 million in Facebook stock, Swisher wrote.

Facebook's not big on acquisitions. The only sizable purchase the company has made was of a start-up called Parakey, and that was really just a way to bring on board founder Blake Ross.

Twitter's a … Read more

Flickr photos, Twitter and Facebook updates, and RSS stories are depicted as rafts floating along a river in Ziibii's creative iPhone app. You can slow or speed the current by flicking the screen in either direction, or pause at any time to delete or select a "raft." If you tire of the free application's aquatic theme, you can switch to list view to get your headlines oriented vertically, then flick left and right to further browse. To read stories from just one source, tap on Filter to select it. We appreciate the ease of posting headlines … Read more

It isn't so much the technology behind Zumobi's free app Ziibii that refreshes RSS on the iPhone and iPod touch as it is its presentation. Ziibii, which means 'river' in Algonquin*, extends the metaphor to depict posts from your various RSS feeds as rafts floating along a stream of information.

Watching posts float by is fun concept--for a few minutes at least--and one that's heightened by the fact that stories, photos, and friends' status updates appear in random order as a round-up of all your RSS subscriptions.

Ziibii's feed flexibility is good, but not great. Twitter, … Read more

I was pointed toward a new Twitter ranking tool by Louis Gray. The tool of the day is TweetValue.

Following the controversy surrounding Twitterank, TweetValue assigns a dollar value to your Twitter profile. While the site does not disclose how this value is calculated, it does give a message that reads, "The value is calculated with a Ph.D. algorithm that is based on the public information available on your Twitter profile."

Call me skeptical, but it isn't really apparent that the figures are based on any actual factual valuation of Twitter profiles. Rather, it appears to … Read more