interest

StumbleUpon new things

The ever-popular and unique Web recommendation engine StumbleUpon has made its way onto the Android platform by way of a native app. And from what we've seen so far, it looks fantastic.

With the StumbleUpon app, there are two ways to pull up recommended sites, news, pictures, and videos. You can tap the Stumble button or simply swipe to the left. Either way, the sleek interface makes for some incredibly fluid stumbling. You can also rate each recommendation with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, filter your recommendations according to your interests, and share any of your recommendations on Read It … Read more

Privacy at risk: Who's watching you? (roundup)

The notion of Big Brother has been around for decades, but technology has long lagged behind the Orwellian imagination. Not any more--in the era of smartphones, face recognition, and the omnipresent Internet, the stakes are now much higher. That's what drives the new CBS drama "Person of Interest." Read on for more about the show and about the real-world connectable dots of the everyday surveillance we live with.

Video: "Person of Interest"--Cell phones spying on you

See additional "Person of Interest" videos below.

TODAY'S PRIVACY REALITIES

CNET's Security Center Writers … Read more

Michael Arrington creating VC fund, reports say

Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, is forming a venture capital fund to invest in some of the startups his bloggers write about, according to a Fortune report.

The $20 million CrunchFund will reportedly be funded primarily by AOL, which bought TechCrunch last year, as well as venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Greylock Partners.

Arrington and AOL did not respond to requests for comment.

Although the arrangement flies in the face of traditional journalism's principles of avoiding conflicts of interest, Arrington told The New York Times that the fund'… Read more

Browser-based loan calculator

Web Loanalyzer is a free loan calculator written in HTML and JavaScript. It quickly analyzes a loan's parameters and explains in plain English how long it will take to pay the loan off, how much interest will be paid, and so on. We took a look at Web Loanalyzer Q1.

We extracted Web Loanalyzer's zipped program file and clicked it, which opened the calculator in our Web browser. Web Loanalyzer is locally hosted, so you don't need an active Internet connection to use it. The program's interface is small, about the size of two banner ads … Read more

Facebook, Google spar over data policies

Google's spat with Facebook over data portability and contacts isn't over.

A few days after Google changed the terms of service for sites using Gmail contacts data to require two-way data exporting if they want to allow their users to automatically import Gmail contacts, Facebook figured out a way around the restriction. TechCrunch noticed that Facebook installed a button on its "find your friends" page that lets Gmail users automatically download their contacts as a CSV (comma-separated value) file and then import that file into Facebook.

In response, Google e-mailed tech reporters an unsolicited statement on … Read more

'When's the next Starbucks?' iExit app lists freeway POIs

It's the same sad story: You're cruising along the Interstate, hungry for lunch, so you pull off at the first exit that has food--and end up at Burger King. (The horror. The horror.) Then you get back on the freeway, only to discover there's a Panera Bread at the very next exit. And a Chik-Fil-A! Oh, wretched fate.

Allstays.com's new iExit for iPhone shows you all the points of interest for upcoming exits: food, gas, lodging, auto repair, grocery stores, and so on.

Granted, any GPS (or GPS app) worth its salt will provide similar … Read more

How the U.S. funds open source abroad

President Obama gets a lot of credit for his pro-open source policies, but the United States has been funding open source well before he took office.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which describes itself as the principal federal agency for extending "assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms," has been in the habit of funding open source abroad since at least 2007.

As but one example, USAID kicked off its Open Source Development 2.0 challenge last fall.

The contest and other USAID activities led to a … Read more

Credit card tool

Credit Card Manager 2009 offers users a chance to keep all their credit card information in one place. While the program offers an extremely usable format, some may simply choose to manage a credit card via its Web site.

We made an immediate trip to the program's Help file because the interface was a blank slate with no direction for users. Reading the brief descriptions of the process, we quickly gained footing and a better understanding of the program as a whole. We filled out the vital information for all of our credit cards to find a simple listing … Read more

Pirate Bay judge accused of conflict of interest

This post was updated at 3:23 p.m. PDT to clarify the roles of the different Swedish professional groups.

The judge who ruled against The Pirate Bay defendants on Friday is a member of two copyright organizations, an alleged conflict of interest that could require the case to be tried again, Swedish press reported Thursday morning.

If the judge is formally found to have a conflict of interest, the case would have to be sent back to the district court. The issue is to be evaluated by the high court of justice, Svea Hovrätt (in Swedish), which … Read more