connected

How to watch the ConnectU founders row in the Olympics

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been in the press a lot recently for being "those guys who sued Facebook." As two of the three founders of ConnectU, they had accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of intellectual property theft long before he was Silicon Valley's youngest billionaire. Unfortunately, courts didn't tend to side with the brothers Winklevoss, largely because the dorm-room start-up didn't have formal paperwork to prove a breach of contract.

That case has been settled (though ConnectU has contested it), and the Winklevosses--a pair of six-foot, five-inch identical twins with a penchant for wearing … Read more

2009 BMW M models get new nav system

Word is out that BMW's updating its high-performance M line of vehicles for the 2009 model year. Featuring a host of external tweaks, such as new taillight designs and exterior mirrors, the most noteworthy updates are the inclusion of the new iDrive across the M line, a competition package for the M6, a new hard drive-based navigation system, and what BMW calls ConnectedDrive.

On the performance front, the entire M line will see incremental power upgrades and suspension tweaks, but the M6 gets the biggest bump with the addition of an optional competition package. This primarily suspension package consists … Read more

Facebook Connect's chances of world domination? Remote, I hope

I've been reading what all the wise people (they have beards) have to say about Facebook Connect.

This is, so I learned, Facebook's attempt to pile more and more information about you into their tall metal server boxes so that they can sell advertisers on their ability to target better than Google or Dick Cheney.

I think I'm beginning to understand all this.

But I find myself trying to translate everything into the real life I know.

I'm trying to imagine any area of existence in which people will trust just one brand or product with … Read more

Facebook applications finally grow up

I've long been a critic of Facebook: too noisy, too superficial, too cluttered. This week, however, Facebook revealed plans to promote a range of new applications that are (gasp!) useful and not designed to simply occupy one's time for a few seconds. According to a New York Times article:

Frustrated (by "trivial applications that have clogged the site"), Facebook has tried to counter that and put more emphasis on significant and trustworthy applications...Facebook announced a series of new incentives for developers to write what it characterized as "meaningful" tools for the service. It … Read more

WiebeTech's Forensic UltraDock V4: When drive docking gets serious

A while ago, I got my hands on WiebeTech's USB DriveDock V4 and was very impressed by its versatility. The device allows for quickly docking any IDE or SATA hard drive, 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch, to a computer via a USB 2.0 connection.

Today, WiebeTech introduced the Forensic UltraDock V4. The Forensic UltraDock supports all hard drives and all existing connections for external storage devices including USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA. This guarantees not only the versatility but also the speed, making recovering data much faster, especially considering the ever increasing capacity of … Read more

Report: Some dial-up users wish to stay that way

Got dial-up and don't want to give it up? You're not alone.

An estimated 10 percent of Americans are surfing the net via dial-up connections, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

And a lot of those people apparently see no compelling reason to change. The report indicates that those users are not itching to make a change to a speedier broadband connection in large part because, they say, broadband is too expensive.

Of this dial-up group, 35 percent cited the cost issue, while 19 percent say nothing will ever prompt … Read more

Microsoft's Facebook stake influenced ConnectU case

UPDATE:To include mention of a report that Facebook valued itself at $3.75 billion.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--What is Facebook really worth?

One of the burning questions in the technology business during the past year also played a major role in the dispute between social networks ConnectU and Facebook, according to documents obtained by CNET News.com.

Some interesting details about Facebook's valuation were revealed in partially redacted court records released Wednesday by federal district judge James Ware. The documents were a transcript of a June 23 hearing in the case, which Ware had closed to the public. … Read more

Judge in Facebook-ConnectU case to open sealed transcripts

SAN JOSE, Calif.--The public will be allowed a peek at some of what was said last week during a settlement hearing in the long-running legal dispute between ConnectU and Facebook.

James Ware, a U.S. district court judge, barred reporters and the public from attending the June 23 hearing in San Jose, Calif. He also put many of the documents in the case under seal. CNET Networks filed an objection to Ware's decision last week.

On Wednesday, Ware said he would release a redacted copy of the transcript from the June 23 hearing and allow a magistrate judge … Read more

Facebook close to putting ConnectU behind it

The legal spat is winding down between Mark Zuckerberg and the former college classmates who accused him of stealing Facebook's business plan from them.

The two sides will be in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday to iron out the details of a settlement between Facebook and ConnectU, founded by Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra.

The three ConnectU founders claimed in a lawsuit filed in 2004 that Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, stole ConnectU's code and business plan while all four were students at Harvard University.

ConnectU tried to back out of the … Read more