Tech gadgets come and go. Some succeed, most fail. Most failures disappear without a trace, while others are so awful that we can't seem to forget them. And some failures set the stage for future innovations.  

This list of the 10 most epic tech-gadget failures is by nature subjective. Some of these epic fails just weren't yet ready for prime time, whether due to poor implementation or because the public wasn't fully aware of their usefulness. Others were simply absurd, and no amount of further development or customer preparation would have saved them. You can decide for yourself which category these no-longer-with us devices and technologies fit into. Just be warned that the list veers decidedly toward the absurd as it approaches Number 10. 

1. Minidisc

There were several reasons the minidisc never took off in the US, despite some real sucess in Japan. The initial unit, in 1992, was incredibly expensive at $750. Teenage music fans just didn't have that kind of cash, so they continued to use cassettes for recording their mix tapes, and to do their listening on CDs.

Despite lowering the price to a more reasonalbe $250 in 1998, and bombarding the public with $30 million worth of advertising, people still didn't bite. There were few pre-recorded albums on the format because record labels didn't embrace the smaller disc. If you wanted an album that wasn't by a Sony artist, you were out of luck. And by the time other labels started to eye the Minidisc, a little thing called the iPod revolutionized music. Despite a small following of diehard Minidisc fans, the format finally gave up the ghost in 2011. (Photo from MiniDisc Portable Recorder/Player by mr.smashy on Flickr.)

2. Highway Hi-Fi

Released in a time when classy ladies wore gloves to hide their lye-eaten hands, Highway Hi-Fi by Columbia Records and Chrysler was one of the first ways to take your tunes with you on the road. As you might imagine, it turned out to be a bad idea to use a record player while driving over bumpy roads. The needle pressure necessary to prevent skipping cut gouges into the records and shortened the lifespan of the player and the needle as well. 

The special records required weren't easy to come by either, after you received your initial boxed set. First there were only a few dozen available, all Columbia artists, and you had to order them directly from the label. Add the danger related to changing a record every few minutes as you raced along, and you can understand why the project was quickly scrapped. They tried again a few years later, doing away with the proprietary format and fixing the issue related to changing a single record every time, but it's no surprise the Highway Hi-Fi didn't catch on. 8-Track Tapes came along a few years later and records in cars were thankfully retired. (Photo from The Scooter Scoop.)

3. DivX

DivX was a proprietary compact disc video player designed by an entertainment law firm and Circuit City to ensure that movie studios and other interested parties collected every possible cent owed to them. DivX was marketed, however, as a way to ensure the movies you rented did not encur late fees because they self-erased after 48 hours. The public didn't buy the marketing and they didn't buy DivX either. DivX was gone by 1999, and Circuit City followed a decade later. The DivX name does live on in an online video codec. 

4. Web TV

Have you ever watched a television commercial and wished you could click through to the website? That was the dream of the Web TV television/computer hybrid. Microsoft liked the idea, too, and bought the company - Web TV Networks - in 1997. Sadly it was an idea that was ahead of its time. We now all marry the computer and television through internet-connected TVs, streaming videos on our laptops and AirPlay. RIP Web TV. (Photo from webtv by ehavir on Flickr.)

5. The Audrey Internet Appliance

Named after Audrey Hepburn, Audrey was a 3com device intended to live in different rooms in your home and give you limited internet connectivity for very specific purposes. In your kitchen, for example, you could pull up a recipe without having to lug your laptop from room to room. Of course, the entire point of laptops is portability, so not many people agreed that limited internet devices were necessary. Today, we're stuck to lugging our tablets from room to room for internet snacking, at least until the Internet of Things catches up that is. (Photo from Audrey by 3Com by cimatti on Flickr.)

6. Palm Foleo

I wanted this one so badly. Announced in May of 2007 to critical derision and scrapped a mere three months later, the Palm Foleo subnoted computer was another idea that was on the cusp of greatness but just missed its mark. Not long after killing the project, subnotebooks caught on as netbooks, and decision makers at Palm slapped their foreheads for listening to said critics. Palm was purchased in 2010 by HP and is now virtually extinct. (Photo from Palm Foleo by whatcounts on Flickr.)

7. Panasonic Jungle

MMORPGs - massively multiplayer online role-playing games - are time and mobility stealers. One minute you're at your desk, hunched over your morning bowl of cereal trying to slam as much into your face as possible during load screens, and the next minute it's midnight and there you sit, still at the desk, maybe sobbing over the shell of a real life you're living. Panasonic had a plan to help you.

Panasonic didn't want you to stop playing MMORPGs, it just thought you should retain your mobility while doing so. The company announced The Jungle in the fall of 2010 with three titles supported. Unfortunately none of them were games that people played all that much. Just months later Panasonic admitted that it was not going to produce the handheld MMORPG player after all. Maybe it shouldn't have asked the same team responsible for the 3DO to try their hands at console creating again.

8. Solar Bath Apparatus

If you've ever had catarrh of the head, and who hasn't, you'll appreciate this device.  The solar bath apparatus was one of those weird inventions of the early 20th Century that sounded all scientific and such but was really just bold shenanigans. Go ahead, stick your head in our upside-down trashcan. It will cure what ails your naively trusting broken head.

You do have to appreciate that the literature admits it's not fully tested but that it will probably eventually do what the ad has already claimed it will do. I'm not sure where the solar part comes in. (Photo from Modern Mechanix.)

9. Flobee

This was great for men and women; really anyone who likes to cut their own hair with a vacuum cleaner (still available for purchase if you are so inclined). Apparently not many people do like to vacuum-cut their hair, but everyone can and should watch the instructional video above. See also this early automatic hair cutter/hair burner.

10. Walking Toaster (The Aristocrat of Toasters, The Toast-O-Lator)

Watching bread toast is practically the definition of boring. The walking toaster was designed to solve the problem of boring toast. Instead of having to wait for that one moment of excitement when your toast finally pops up, the Walking Toaster lets you watch the toast through a two inch window as it slowly, tortuously "walks" along a series of steps and eases out the other side. Bread goes in, toast comes out - It's as not as if anything has really changed - except it doesn't even pop up. For even more excitement, watch two of them race. (Photo from Toast-O-Lator by nickbrett on Flickr.)

Have any other suggestions for our list? Please share them in the comments.

Top image photo by 1722 Highway Hi-Fi by bsabarnowl on Flickr.

Unless you're more organized than most, you're probably still looking for a few last minute gifts. ReadWrite is here to help you separate the wheat from the chaff.  Below you'll find 9 great geeky gifts for the kids on your list. 

If we've missed some good ones, please let us know in the comments.

1.  Minecraft Foam Sword

This sword will help your kids avoid Creepers.  It should not be used for mining. $19.99  

2.  Larson Scanner Electronic Soldering Kit

All children should be given the opportunity to build something that requires a cycling red eye.  With all parts included, save the soldering iron, even beginning geeks can use this kit to solder the eye with ease.  $14.99

3.  Ultimate Geek Pen

Your kid is the ultimate geek, so give her the ultimate geek pen.  This James Bond-like pen offers up a ballpoint pen, a PDA stylus, a laser pointer, an LED light and an ultraviolet lamp. They had ReadWrite at ‘batteries included.' $11.95

4.  Han Solo Ice Cube Tray

Han Solo in carbanite was bad. Fake Han Solo in ice, chocolate or some other yummy solid food is awesome.  $11.74

5.  Portal Sentry Turret

A favorite gift on this list, the polite and adorable Portal turret is a must buy. Say “I don’t hate you” in style this year. $39.99

6. Sensu Artist Brush Stylus

Young artists now have a choice. They can create on canvas with paint, like an animal, or use the Sensu Brush Stylus like a gentleman.  Give your artsy kids the gift of painting sans turpentine and sans mess. $39.99

7. Moleskine Pen Holder

Kids who want to be pen-prepared can do it in crafty, hipster-style with this Journal Bandolier, Moleskine not included of course. $18.95

8. Pop Up Paper House

A dollhouse can an awesome gift but - they’re expensive, cumbersome and once they’re done, they’re far less fun. This printable PDF version costs very little cash and still gives the gift of building something cool. $12

9. Chewbacca Pocket Plush

Han Solo rarely traveled without Chewbacca - and neither should your kid. Bonus points awarded for Chewbacca’s lavender scent, because I can only guess that the full-sized version probably smelled much worse. $12

For even more great ideas, see this list of holiday gift suggestions from Nerdy With Children.

There was once a time that a trip to buy something fun could be an enjoyable experience. I remember how much I enjoyed picking out my first computer, a Tandy TRS 80. I browsed Radio Shack for an hour or more, talking to the helpful employee about my plans, picking out the cassette tapes that would one day hold my programming brilliance, attempting to convince my Dad that I needed a monitor to be able to use it. That day is one of my fondest childhood memories.

But retailers increasingly believe that even for luxury items, all the matters is the lowest price - and maybe they're right. But bowing at the altar of the almighty dollar inevitably means less money and attention lavished on the shopping experience. Employees are paid less and get less training. Inventory and quality is reduced. Stores get dingy, dirty and ugly. Too often you end up shopping in a messy, over-lit warehouse, being ignored by reluctant, resentful clerks just to save a nickel on a few poorly made items. Fun.  

The Online Alternative

Compare this experience with that of the online shopper. Sitting at home in comfort, you can browse the best retailers in the world. A quick search finds you the best price. The only reason to get up off the couch is that, sometimes, you may want to check out an item in person before plunking down your credit card. 

Ironically, that makes things even worse for brick and mortar retailers. More and more shoppers now visit retail stores only to check out the merchandise, and then buy online instead.

Called "showrooming," the practice is increasingly performed right from shoppers' smartphones while they're standing in the store. That means even less money for the store, and ultimately an even less pleasant shopping experience - which pushes even more shoppers online. 

ReadWrite managing editor Fredric Paul found that out the hard way on a recent trip to Best Buy (see Another Reason Best Buy Is Doomed - And Why That's A Problem), but he's not the only one. Cyril Vart, vice president of strategy and development for "innovation architects" faberNovel had an even worse experience attempting to buy a digital camera. But Vart says it doesn't have to be this way - and he came up with a presentation on 5 ways brick-and-mortar retailers can fight back against showrooming. Let's hope at least some real-world retailers give it a shot.

With Cyber Monday and the rest of the Holiday season up on us, millions of people will order products online - and end up subscribed to new marketing emails, whether we purposefully ticked that check mark or not. As most folks already struggling with email overload, the last thing we want is even more not-really-wanted messages drowning our Inbox.

A new service called Swizzle claims it can solve the email overload caused by marketing emails by helping you easily unsubscribe from unwanted commercial email and rolling up the emails you do want to keep into a daily digest. It's a smart attempt at solving an important problem.

Too Many Emails

MaryAnn Bekkedahl, President and Co-Founder of Keep Holdings did research into why marketing emails are overwhelming so many people:

• When Keep Holdings asked email recipients why they didn’t just click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of most email, most explained that they just didn’t have the time. They realized that unsubscribing is rarely a fast, one-click solution. Getting out of a marketing email relationship often includes form fill-ins or dastardly ‘login to unsubscribe’ ploys.
• Customers also said that they didn't want to miss out on a sale. Sure, they were overloaded with emails from retail stores and daily deal sites, but many of them had initially subscribed for updates and they just didn't want to potentially miss an important discount.

At the time, Bekkedahl and her team were working on a Web gallery that would allow their customers to choose to receive marketing emails from retailers without committing to an email subscription. While head down on that project, they met Adam Novinska who had just built a simple unsubscribe tool, Unsubscribr, to help him recover from pre-wedding day spam. (Anyone who has ever registered as a bride or groom knows how badly you can get inundated.)

Keep Holdings bought Novinska’s tool, made him CTO and combined and improved the services, creating a one-stop-shop for managing marketing emails. 

The Email Solution: You Choose Who Markets To You

The idea is to put users back in charge of their email inboxes. Many people run their days from their inbox - though that's not a very good idea - and an account overloaded with commercial offers can obscure important emails from the boss or reminders that you need to fund your IRA by the deadline.

Swizzle has a two-step solution. First, you get your email act together: The system scans your email account for commercial email. (It claims it doesn't store your email information once the process is complete.)

You'll likely find some things you no longer want or never opted into in the first place. Swizzle lets you choose which ones you want to unsubscribe from and which ones you want to leave alone.

I am fairly certain I didn't ask to have updates on trade show materials at any point in my email lifetime.  

Next, you can select to get a daily digest of the emails that you want, based on your own schedule. And you can choose to add additional emails to the digest, from the company's list.

You may be wondering why you'd add more newsletters when you are already burdened wtih too much email. Well, that's how Keep Holdings makes money, natch, and by wrapping them all into the Swizzle digest, it's not actually adding any new burden to your inbox. And of course you don't have to add any if you don't want to.

Things That Made Me Go, Hmm...

I liked Swizzle. It made unsubscribing to many email subscriptions very simple. I do have some suggestions, though.

• Allow multiple digests. For instance, I might want to look at a digest containing my retail shopping emails at a different time (say, after work) than when I view my digest of industry emails (first thing in the morning). Maybe I want to save all home and school-related digests until the weekend, so I'd want to have those delivered weekly rather than daily.
• Support other email providers. Swizzle supports only webmail providers like AOL, Yahoo, Gmail (including Google Apps) and Mac.com/Me.com. If you own your own domain, you're out of luck for now.
• Recognize group email lists. I belong to a few Yahoo groups, but Swizzle treated replies to those groups as subscriptions. Not a deal breaker, but something that Keep Holdings could clean up.
• Recognize alerts and notifications. A reminder to attend a meeting is not the same as a message from the Home Depot. An alert that your  bank account is about to be overdrawn is more important than learning that Gap is having a sale. Swizzle doesn't differentiate and if you are not careful, you can accidentally opt out of getting fraud notifications on your credits cards... like I did.
• Ditch Facebook integration or explain it better. I'm not entirely sure why you're asked to connect your Facebook to the app. Even after I did so, I couldn't figure out the point.  

Overall, Swizzle offers a chance at a do-over for your inbox, and that could be a lifesaver in the aftermath of the Holiday shopping season.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Sleek lines, brushed aluminum, shiny glass and rounded corners -- Apple is known for creating beautiful products, and justifiably so. There is probably no company on Earth that puts such an emphasis on design and has such an amazing track record of smash hit products.

Nevertheless, even Homer nods, as they say, and so, at certain times, has the great and powerful Apple, as exemplified by the products in this list which fell well short of Apple's best work. In my quest to find the five ugliest Apple products of all time, I chose to avoid spotlighting Apple products that were merely boxy, prototypes or computers that were ugly simply because they sported the ugly putty color we all came to hate from the 80s -- because that would just be too easy.

1. MessagePad 2100

30 hours battery life... Who cares if you can't connect it to a PC?!?

Image courtesy of blakespot on Flickr

Once upon a time, before there were smartphones, people had to make do with digital organizers and handhelds like the Handspring, the PalmPilot and the Newton MessagePad 2100. Only a jerk used a paper notebook in those days. Oh how times have changed.

If you can sufer through the two minutes hearing a nerd explain what’s so awesome about the Newton MessagePad while just staring at the box, and there’s no reason you should, you can watch this thrilling  unboxing video of a MessagePad, which was 11 years old when the video was made. 

And in case you think I'm mean for mocking this fellow, here’s a video of me unboxing a Zune around the same time. Guilty as charged.

2. eMate 300

Image courtesy of DigitalNative on Flickr

This beauty was Apple’s attempt to get the students on board the Apple train. Running the Newton OS and sporting a lovely plastic handle, the eMate was a portable, low-cost computer, and with a battery life of 28 hours, it wasn’t all bad. The aesthetic, however, left you hankering for the good old days of putty. Sadly, this clam-shelled laptop went the way of the dodo in 1998, but not before influencing the design of the first iBook, which followed soon after and shows up next on my list.

3. iBook

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Sporting bold colors and hanging on to that clamshell design and plastic handle, the iBook launched in 1999. Specs and weight were unfavorable when compared to the PowerBook, but despite this, the iBook was a commercial success. Then again, it was made by Apple - of course it was a success.

The iBook came in multiple flavors: Tangerine, Blueberry, Graphite, Indigo and Key Lime. Yum!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

4. The iMac G3

iMac in Bondi Blue

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

First, I have to grudgingly admit that I lusted after this monstrosity and the included color-coordinated hockey puck mouse when they were released in the late 90s. I never did earn enough money at the time to snag a Ruby iMac and had to settle for a Dell with a red plastic case that popped onto the computer. Sad.

The iMac was a huge hit for Apple, but today it just looks like an ugly, bloated piece of pie-shaped plastic. Which, um, it was.  

Look at the tangerine one. There’s just nothing attractive about that.

Image courtesy of mikes_rite on Flickr

5. iPod U2 Special Edition

Image courtesy of  Bob Reck on Flickr

In 2004, U2 was white-hot and Apple released this ugly iPod and this adequate press release which claimed they planned to "redefine the music business," which I suppose they did, but not due the Apple/U2 "special relationship."

But hey, don’t feel bad if you bought this iPod with red click wheel and engravings of the band’s autographs on the back. The Edge thought iPod and iTunes looked like the future and were good for everybody involved in music. (That's the quote from the press release.) Live and learn huh?

If you are inclined to research Apple design hits and misses further, please check out the Flickr group Apple Prototypes.

While everyone else was likely bored to tears at a dinner party when old Babbage droned on about his Analytical Engine, Ada was fascinated.  She liked it so much that she began corresponding with him, even writing up notes on Menabrea’s summary of Babbage’s plans.  

In those notes, Ada predicted that a machine like the one Babbage was planning would one day be used to compose music, produce graphics and would be employed for practical and scientific use. Of course, like many of the great visionaries, she left us far too young, dying of illness at age 36.

We celebrate Ada not for her visions of computers that would one day bring us joy and pain, but because she suggested a plan for the engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, and that algorithm is now considered the first computer program.  In honor of Lady Lovelace, we have chosen to highlight three remarkable women who made the earth just a little cooler for having been a part of it, just like Ada.

Dr. James Barry

Note:  James Barry chose to live life as a man, so despite anatomy, I've chosen to refer to James as 'he' throughout this post.  

Some time in the late 1790s, the person who would come to be known as James Barry was born.  Records then not being what they are now, and the fact that James lived his life cloaked in mystery, we are not entirely sure how his childhood unfolded.  What we do know is that James was known then as Margaret Bulkley, impoverished niece of the famous Irish artist, James Barry.   

By 1809, Margaret Bulkley was no more, and James Barry had begun his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh, to later graduate with a Medical Doctorate.  He moved on to become Assistant Staff Surgeon at the Royal Military Hospital in Plymouth, and later to hold the position of Medical Inspector for the British Colony of South Africa, in Cape Town.  While there, he performed the first successful cesarean birth in Africa; successful because mom and baby both survived.  

His later postings took him to many Crown holdings, including Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius, Malta, Corfu, Saint Helena, the Crimea, Jamaica, Canada, the West Indies and Malta.

His career, which began as a hospital assistant and ended with the rank of inspector-general of hospitals (Canada), was long and storied.  James survived yellow fever, fought for sanitation and hygiene, encouraged healthy food for patients and soldiers, was a vegetarian and teetotaler, and crusaded for better treatment for commoners and the poor.   Glowing reviews of his person not withstanding, his behavior was a little unorthodox.  He fought duels to prove his masculinity, was reported to be blunt and impatient when sharing his opinions and was punished throughout his career for breaking the rules, at least once resulting in a demotion of real significance.  He was hot-tempered, but damn good at doctoring.

James died in 1865, of dysentery, and it was upon his death that his charade was uncovered, literally.  Why Margaret became James is hotly debated.  I won’t guess, but mad props to this lady who fought for the poor, healed the sick and fought her duels as good as any man.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer

The next doctor on our list is famous for her bluntly specific sex help, but her story is so much more than that.  Ruth Westheimer was born in 1928, the adored and spoiled only child of doting Jewish parents in Germany.  Her idyllic childhood would soon end with the Nazi arrest of her father in the late 30s.  Her mom promptly sent her to safety in Switzerland with plans to meet after the mixup was worked out.  Both of her parents likely died in concentration camps, writing letters to her until 1941 when the letters abruptly ceased.

After reaching her majority in the Swiss orphanage, she went to Palestine, joining an underground Jewish military group.  Trained as a sniper, she never had to kill anyone but did suffer a serious injury, after shrapnel from a bomb pierced both of her legs.

After a long and painful recovery, she went to Paris, studying and later teaching at the Sorbonne.  She used the small amount that Germany paid her in reparations, around $1,500, to book passage to New York.  It was a stint at Planned Parenthood that convinced her to study human sexuality.

Once shocked by the frank talk about sexuality she heard in New York, she later came to embrace it.  And who among us doesn’t remember the little old lady who was always talking about penises, vaginas and orgasms as blithely as if she were discussing a grocery list.  Dr. Ruth helped many of us embrace our sexuality as normal and healthy, and in doing so made her mark on the world in a mighty way.  And she’s not done yet.  Her latest book, about caring for a parent with Alzheimers is due to be released in November.  

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Babe, or Mildred, Didrikson, was the sixth child, of seven, born to Norwegian immigrants in 1911 in south Texas.  Though not a strong student -- she failed 8th grade and eventually dropped out -- Babe was destined for greatness.  She embraced all sports in school, playing for the all-city and all-state teams.  

Her first adult job was as a secretary for an insurance firm, hired because she was an ace at b-ball and they wanted her to join their company team, the Golden Cyclones.  In what would become a habit, her team was victorious, snagging the AAU Basketball Championships in 1931.  From there, she went on to represent Employers Casualty Insurance Co. of Dallas at the AAU 1932 Championships, competing in eight of the 10 events held, and qualifying for the Olympics to boot.  I should point out that she also marched in the opening parade as the entire team, because in essence, she was.

She won five of the eight events, and tied for the sixth.  At that competition, she broke four (FOUR!) women’s world records.  Her score of 30 points was eight points higher than the second-place winner.  

As you can imagine, Babe caused a stir and it wasn’t just because she was a somewhat arrogant and insanely competitive lady.  She was also a rock-star athlete and had the chops to back up that chip she proudly wore on her extremely fit shoulders.  She excelled at everything, from playing her harmonica (in Vaudeville) to sewing (Babe won a championship for that too).  

She went from there to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles.  She could only do three events there, darn rule book, but took the gold in two of them, breaking world records in both events.  In the high jump, she had to accept the silver due to a rule violation.  She went over head first, which was against the rules at the time.  Her height was the same as the gold medalist, but diving over was a foul in 1932.  It was not very long at all after this that they changed that rule.  Later she would be credited with tying the world record in that jump too, and tying for the gold.

Babe’s celebrity status was assured with the strong showing.  Unfortunately, amateur athletes don’t get paid, and getting paid was what Babe needed most.  She had to turn pro to pay the bills, so she posed for an automobile advertisement and thus began the Babe Didrikson campaign for fun and profit.  She did some vaudeville, took part in MLB stunts, toured with a women’s basketball team, Babe Didrikson’s All-Americans, and then an all-bearded team (other than herself), called the House of David.  Babe married a wrestler, taking his name, and Babe Didrikson was now Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

A massively talented athlete, Babe made a name for herself in track and field, basketball, baseball, tennis, diving, billiards and later golf, only taking it up after her fame in basketball and track and field was achieved.  But she was no slouch there either.  After winning the Texas Women’s Championship in 1935, the Golf Association in a dastardly move, declared that Babe wasn’t to be considered a golf amateur because she was a pro in other sports, “for the best interest of the game.”  They changed their mind in 1945, making her an amateur again, and in 1945 she won 13 consecutive tournaments.  When she chose to turn pro in 1947, she won all of the tournaments, save one.  Bobby Jones, yes, THE Bobby Jones, called her one of the 10 best golfers of all time, male or female.  

A few of her achievements:

• 2 Olympic world records

• 2 Olympic gold medals

• 1 tied Olympic world record

• 1 tied Olympic gold medal/1 Olympic silver medal

• First American to win the British Women’s Amateur

• First American to win both the British Women’s Amateur and the American Women’s Amateur

• Won U.S. Women’s Open, World Championship and the All-American Open in 1948

• First Woman to win the Western Open three times (as an amateur and pro)

• Member of the Ladies Golf Hall of Fame

• Co-counded LPGA 1949

• Named Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press (1945-1947, 1950, 1954)  

In 1953 she was diagnosed with colon cancer.  Despite removing the tumor, the cancer had spread and she was told she would die.  In 1954 she won the U.S. Women’s Open for the third time, by 12 strokes, but the pain was too great to continue, so she retired from golf.  She died a year later at age 45.

Now you know the story of three awesome women.  Go and enjoy your Ada Lovelace day in a grand style!

Eloqua has published another of their Grande Guides, this one devoted to Community Management. I was able to get a copy on Thursday and wanted to share my review with all of you, now that it’s available for all. The ebook is written by some well-loved folks in the community management and content strategy sphere, Brett Petersel (Co-Founder of The Community Manager) and Jesse Noyes (Managing Editor at Eloqua) wrote the bulk of the document with contributions from Nate McGee, Alan Belniak and Lauren Harper.

The guide starts with some basic territory, explaining what a community manager is and the different roles community managers play on a regular basis. Anyone who has done community management for a few years can tell you that it’s one of the weirdest jobs out there. On any given day, depending on your company’s unique requirements, you may be settling community disputes, approving a set of wireframes for the new community area, ordering lunch for 500 people and queuing up hundreds of social updates for 10 different channels.

The work is uniquely variable, meaning that you have to be a self-starter and willing to work very odd hours. The work is fast paced and exciting, and though it may have a few drawbacks, is very rewarding. In every meeting, there are a dozen people who advocate for the company’s needs. The only role that is specifically designed to advocate for the community is that of the community manager.

Crisis Management

An explanation of why the discipline matters to a company follows this role introduction, followed by an excellent overview of a crisis situation. If you are unable with what a crisis situation is, count yourself fortunate. In a heartbeat, you can go through a product or service catastrophe, a PR snafu, a legal misstep or even an outside attack, and if you aren’t ready with a plan in place, you can muck it up quite easily. Companies that handle crises well, do so because they are able to respond proactively, with a pre-written plan, rather than reactively, often with negative consequences.

Any community manager who has not yet written a crisis plan should be able to take this overview and easily craft her own plan, without missing any major areas. This was probably my favorite part of the ebook.

Measurement

Defining success in any job is crucial to your job security, but that’s even more important in a discipline that is relatively new and largely undefined. To determine how you’re doing, you have to know where you’ve been, where you appear to be going and where you’d like to go. That means defining your overall goals that map to set company goals, understanding, through benchmarks, where’re you’re starting and drafting a set of tactics to achieve those goals.

Just as important, it means aligning measurement with those tactics to see if you’re actually meeting goals. It’s extremely important that you understand what you’re measuring and why you are measuring, else the goals you achieve may not be ones that really matter to your company.

Landing a Job in Community Management

The guide continues with the expected salary of a community manager, which as you might expect is largely dependent on their demand and their years of experience. One of the most frequent questions I hear from budding community managers is how to land the first gig. The answer, like many other answers you learn in life, is hard work and fierce determination. It’s a popular job and for every open role you may have a hundred people or more interested.

Many of us got started by volunteering, and I think that’s a healthy way to get your foot in the door. Many businesses just can’t afford a community manager, but they understand the need and are willing to take on an unpaid intern for a season. The result is often a mutually beneficial relationship.

Resources

The ebook is not intended to give you everything you need to know about the subject. Eloqua publishes these Grande Guides to give you a basic overview of a discipline and whet your appetite for further study. This 10 page ebook will give you enough information to know if you want to further study community management. If you do, there are several options for intensive study, including at least 3 certification programs (here are links to GetSatisfaction’s, Online Community Roundtable’s and Pillar Summit’s), and at least a few  college programs (here is a link to USC Annenberg's program) and dozens of books. Disclosure: I wrote and teach the certification program for GetSatisfaction. 

Overall, the guide is a great first step to understand community management and I recommend you go out there and snag a copy tout de suite.

7 Essential Apps for Entrepreneurs

These days everyone has their favorite mobile apps, ones that make both their personal and business lives run smoother. But are there any apps that are must haves for entrepreneurs and startup founders? For startup entrepreneurs, it’s crucial to find the apps that actually make a difference to you and your business. Plenty of startup founders are already experts in this area. Heck, apps are the business of many startups these days. But startups in other fields may not be so savvy. More

[Infographic] What is Slowing Down Your Mobile Apps?

Ever try to launch a mobile application and get nothing but a spinning wheel? You're not alone. 74% of users will leave a mobile website if it does not load after five seconds, according to a survey conducted by Compuware, a software company. People are more patient with apps, as 50% of users will tolerate load times longer than five seconds. What is slowing down your apps? More

Girls Who Code: Crashing the “Brogram”

The high-tech industry is largely a guy’s world made up of "brogrammers" and job ads that ask, “Want to bro down and crush code?” Small wonder that women made up just 21% of all programmers in 2010, off from 24% in 2000. Or that less than 10% of venture-backed companies have women founders. An organization called Girls Who Code is trying to reboot the system starting from the beginning. More

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Online Video Ads Hit a Record: 11 Billion Spots Streamed in June

It's official: Online video advertising is a force to be reckoned with. More than 11 billion ads streamed over the Web in June, amounting to 25% of all video content viewed. That online video ad traffic, as reported by comScore, translated to 4.6 billion minutes watched by 180 million Internet users in the United States. The average duration of an online ad was four seconds. The top five ad networks streamed at least one billion ads each. Google took the lead with 1.41 billion ads streamed. Google's domination isn't surprising; YouTube serves more than 99% of video on Google-related properties and is the third most popular website in the world, with 72 hours of video content uploaded every minute. More

Mark Zuckerberg Wins Approval For His First-Ever Patent Application - From 6 Years Ago

In the last few months, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took his company public, got married and scored a nearly $6 million home loan at just over 1%. What could possibly top all that? How about approval of his very first patent request from way back in 2006 - covering privacy issues no less? Turns out the US Patent Trademark and Office (USPTO), though it originally rejected it, just granted Zuckerberg a patent that can only be described as the ultimate geek vanity trophy. More

How Microsoft Plans to Use the Business Market to End Apple’s Tablet Dominance

In 2010, Apple blindsided Microsoft - and most everyone else - with the phenomenal success of the iPad. That success is now eating away at Windows PC sales. While Apple’s innovation took Microsoft down for the count, the software giant has regrouped and is trying to come back by shifting the battlefield from consumers to businesses. To turn the tide, Microsoft is counting on business users, a market where Apple remains relatively weak and CEO Steve Ballmer’s crew retains several critical advantages. Microsoft’s counterpunches will include Windows 8 and Office 13, a combination Apple can’t match in the business world. More

Instagram Growth Far Outpaces Facebook or Twitter

Instagram is exploding. Sure, the mobile photo-sharing service has been the object of buzz and adoration since day one, but few could have predicted a growth rate quite this phenomenal. Instagram boasts an amazing 80 million users, the company announced today. When Facebook announced its acquisition of Instagram in April, the photo-sharing app's user base approached 30 million. In just under four months since, its user base has grown by more than 166%, fueled in large part by the release of an Android version and tightening integration with Facebook. Instagram acquired 15 million users in the six months between Sept 2011 to March 2012. It ballooned by another 20 million between April and May. Another 30 million users in the last two months? No problem. More

Diagnosis Promising For mHealth

mHealth is an emerging trend in technology. It stands for 'mobile healthcare' and means utilizing smartphones and medical mobile devices to help diagnose and monitor health conditions. According to a new research paper from the Economist Intelligence Unit (commissioned by PwC), the adoption of mHealth will be slow in the healthcare industry. That's due to complexities and technology incompatibilities. However, there is more immediate hope with the thousands of consumer mHealth apps available on smartphones. More

Google Search Shapes Memory, New Research Shows

What’s the first thing you think of when faced with a difficult (or even a not-so-difficult) question? According to four recent studies, your mind is primed to think about computers. In the past decade, we have retrained our minds to google just about everything we want to know, according to new research by Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu and Daniel M. Wegner. “The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves,” the researchers, who are based at Columbia University, University of Wisconsin, and Harvard respectively, write in the July issue of Science. More

Facebook Shares Slip After Disappointing Zynga Earnings Report

Zynga's share price plummeted almost 40% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company reported a $22.8 million loss for the second quarter. The social gaming developer also revealed that it was lowering its outlook for the rest of the year, due in part to "a more challenging environment on the Facebook web platform." Zynga is hugely dependent on Facebook; it reported earlier this year that 92% of its revenue was generated through the social media giant. More

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These Designers Did for Fun What News Sites Can't Do to Save Their Business

A Web design studio built the first news site I’ve ever read from top to bottom two days in a row, and it did so as a side project. Mule Design is not in the journalism business. It builds sites to solve all manner of client communication problems. But it did in a week’s work what news organizations can’t seem to do at all: deliver their output in a form that's comfortable and convenient for the audience. I couldn't help myself. I had to figure out how and why. More

Yes, MacBook Pro's Retina Display Is Brilliant, But Not For the Average User

First, I'd like to thank all the readers who commented on our post. Some of the criticisms made me cringe, such as being called a "link-baiting whore," while other remarks were more insightful and worth taking seriously. But whether the comments were for or against the post, I'm humbled that so many people took the time to participate in such a lively discussion. Because of that, we want to explain our reasoning further. More

Twitter's Credibility Problem

Where you read something may impact credibility as much as what you read - especially if where you read something is on Twitter, according to a new study. Published last month in Communication Quarterly, the research by Mike Schmierbach and Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch used two experiments to show that a New York Times story posted on the website was seen by respondents as more credible than when the same story was posted on the newspaper’s Twitter feed. Additionally, stories posted on Twitter were seen as less important than stories in a newspaper or linked by a blog. More

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What Google Lost When Marissa Mayer Left to Run Yahoo

On Monday, The New York Times broke the story that Marissa Mayer, employee No. 20 at Google, had suddenly resigned by phone to become the CEO of Yahoo. Yahoo’s gain is Google’s loss, as Mayer was personally responsible for some of Google’s most iconic products. Here are just some of Mayer’s accomplishments over her years at Google. More

[Infographic] Survey: Consumers Are Concerned About Privacy, Tracking, Advertising

How much do social and mobile service providers know about you? What are they doing with your personal information? If you're worried, you're not alone. A Harris Interactive survey commmissioned by TRUSTe, which helps its clients manage customer privacy, shows that 60% of adults surveyed are more concerned about their online privacy now than they were a year ago. More

From Inmates to Entrepreneurs: The San Quentin Startup Accelerator

Prison inmates have all day, every day, to sit around and think. It could be the world’s largest pool of untapped brain time. Chris Redlitz decided to put it to productive use. He founded the Last Mile startup accelerator program at San Quentin State Prison in California. “I’ve driven by San Quentin every day for the last 14 years, but never bothered to understand the prison system,” says Redlitz, who lives in Marin County north of San Francisco (where the prison sits on San Francisco Bay) and runs the KickLabs tech accelerator in San Francisco. More

How to Get Bloggers to Write About Your Startup: Insider Advice

It’s every startup’s dream - to get the attention of the people who matter. You might think that refers to customers or clients, or even venture capitalists or angel investors. Nope. We’re talking about bloggers. Sure, investors and customers are vital to the success of a startup business, but few things can turn your tech startup into the “it” company on everyone’s lips (and tweets) as quickly as getting mentioned by a prominent blog or blogger. More

5 Surprising Facts About Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer confirmed on Monday that she and husband Zachary Bogue are expecting a son in October. Her pregnancy makes all the more notable Mayer’s landmark appointment to the helm of a tech titan - only 19 Fortune 500 companies are headed by women, and not long ago a pregnant chief executive was unthinkable. But beyond her pregnancy, she is a multifaceted, dynamic leader who might prove to be the smartest choice for Yahoo since it fell from grace. Here are some lesser-known facts about Mayer that hold clues to her ability to save Yahoo. More

Age Bias: Young Startup Founders Get More Investor Cash

Blame Mark Zuckerberg. Since he invented Facebook in the third grade (or so it seems) high-tech investors have been throwing more and more money at younger and younger whiz kids. Older entrepreneurs may not like the trend - but it shows no sign of slowing anytime soon. More

The New Microsoft Office: 20 Things to Like, Not Like and Worry About

For all the parental and media hand-wringing, sexting remains a poorly studied phenomenon. But according to new peer-reviewed research, that concern might not be unfounded. Teen texts are indeed ablaze with sexual content - but how does technology-based sexual activity intersect with actual behavior? More

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Google Gets the Biggest FTC Privacy Fine in History - and Deserves It

Google is about to settle with the Federal Trade Commission for $22.5 million for violating the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser. Apple’s default setting prevented third-party sites from tracking users as they visited different sites, but Google (and several other, less reputable companies) exploited a loophole to do it anyway. More

Leaked Twitter iPhone App Update: Here's What to Expect

If you tweet from your iPhone, get ready for big changes. Twitter's official iOS app is about to get a meaty upgrade, judging by screen shots leaked from the App Store. Twitter 4.3 for iPhone is expected to deliver deeper interactivity, improvements to search and more granular push notification settings, among other things. More

SOPA Lives! New Bill Seeks to Resurrect Expansion of IP Enforcement Powers

A new bill is about to be officially introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives that would resurrect some unsavory aspects of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that sparked widespread protests last winter. More

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Get Your Startup Into a Top Accelerator: 4 Insider Tips

The top startup accelerators in the world - programs like TechStars and Y Combinator - receive a couple thousand applications for just a handful of spots each session. It’s harder to get into one than Harvard or Stanford. So how do you do it? More

Kippt Reinvents the Internet's Favorite Hobby: Sharing Links

With its update on Monday, the link listing tool Kippt adds social features that make it a one-stop shop for practicing the Internet’s favorite hobby: sharing interesting links. It helps you keep track of links you like, as well as find and follow people who share interesting things. You can easily share links with your friends on Facebook or wherever else, but your list belongs to you instead of disappearing into the Facebook ether. It's the kind of thing you probably won't know you need until you try it. More

Apple's App Store Secrecy Hurts Indie Developers

The timer in the built-in Clock app on the iPhone sucks, so David Barnard built a new one, Timer. But if you search for “timer” in the App Store, you won’t find it. Because of Apple’s obscure, ever-shifting search method, making the best timer in the store is not enough. Barnard invested $7,000 to build this app. It’s the best timer iOS could ask for. Instead of a fiddly, spinning wheel, it has giant buttons that represent preset periods of time. All you have to do to start a timer is tap the interval you want. To set a new one on the fly, you dial it in with the full-sized phone keypad. It’s fast, smooth, easy on the eyes, and it costs a buck. More

From Contest to Company: 6 Tips for Taking a Startup to the Next Level

From hackathons to programming contests to business plan competitions, competitive events are a great way to test the potential appeal and viability of a startup idea. But what happens after the contest? Win or lose, how can a new company make the most of the experience and the exposure? Let's say your team was good enough - and lucky enough - to make it to the finals of one of these events - or maybe you even won the grand prize. After you have had a chance to get some sleep and gather your thoughts, then what? More

What Is the Point of: Google+ Hangouts?

Whenever a new Web trend comes along, people ask, “What is the point of this?” If millions of people are using something, there has to be a reason. In our What Is the Point of… series, we’ll explain it to you. This week, we’re asking, What is the point of Google+ Hangouts? It hasn’t exactly taken over the world yet, but Google+ has become the social backbone of all Google’s services. If you “upgrade” your Google account to Google+, as more than 200 million people have, your profile becomes the way people find you in search and communicate with you across the Google-sphere. More

Russia's New Censorship Law Diminishes the Entire Internet

Russia's new Web blacklist is only the most recent of an alarming series of authoritarian moves to muzzle networked communications. National governments bent on censorship are eating away at the global, public Internet. On Wednesday, the Russian parliament's lower house approved legislation that would block Web pages selectively. The proposed law reportedly lets officials filter out specific domain names and IP addresses. Law enforcement agencies could add URLs to the blacklist without a court order. Hosting services would need to remove banned materials within 72 hours or risk being shut down. More

Teen Sexting Really Does Mean Teen Sex

For all the parental and media hand-wringing, sexting remains a poorly studied phenomenon. But according to new peer-reviewed research, that concern might not be unfounded. Teen texts are indeed ablaze with sexual content - but how does technology-based sexual activity intersect with actual behavior? More

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Richard MacManus explains how Google+ has evolved over the past year and whether it delivered on its promise. Mobile continues to dominate in 2012. After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

How Google+ Has Morphed Over The Past Year & What We Can Expect in 2013

One year ago, Google+ launched to the world and was greeted with the collective cry, "Not another social network!" But over the past year Google+ has cemented its position as one of the Big Three social networks, alongside Facebook and Twitter. Or has it? Google+ boasts similar user numbers to Twitter, but if we look more closely we see that Google+ hasn't lived up to its initial promise as a new type of social network. In fact, it's morphed into something completely different for Google... More

Top Trends of 2012: The Continuing Rapid Growth of Mobile

In our half-yearly review of the top Internet trends of 2012, there's been a common theme: mobile is the main driver for all of them. The Visual Web (Instagram, Pinterest and similar image-focused apps), the Consumer Cloud (Evernote, Dropbox, iCloud and others), social video apps (Socialcam and Viddy) and video on tablets (BuzzFeed, Flipboard and others). Each of those trends are popular in 2012 because of smartphones and/or tablets. More

In Closing Its Platform, Twitter Risks Destroying Its Community

After attaining unlikely success as an open platform, Twitter is demanding that third-party apps show Twitter’s stream the way the company wants them to. “You need to be able to see expanded Tweets,” Product Manager Michael Sippey wrote in an announcement on Friday afternoon. He said those features make Twitter “more engaging and easier to use.” But if Twitter squeezes too hard on third-party developers, it risks damaging something more important to the company than any set of features: It risks destroying the culture that has grown up around it. More

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Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

If you’re missing email messages, don’t blame Facebook: The social network says you are simply “confused.” Facebook spent a second straight weekend dealing with complaints from users about a switch in the default user email addresses, this time with users complaining that the change was resulting in lost messages and contacts. More

Where Google Is Going Next: 5 Things You Need to Know

On the last day of the Google I/O developers conference, we sat down with engineering director Peter Magnusson to digest the introduction of Compute Engine, which adds Google-scale processing power to the company's list of cloud offerings designed to take on Amazon Web Services. Here are the announcement's five key implications. More

How Open Source Hardware Is Driving the 3D-Printing Industry

The potential of 3D printing to transform the way we get things - the market is predicted to hit $3.1 billion in the next four years - gets a lot of press. But not much of that attention has focused on the unique role of open source hardware in enabling 3D printing to realize its promise. Open source software has been a key player in all kinds of disruptive technologies - from the Web to big data. Now the nascent and growing open source hardware movement is helping to power its own disruptive revolution. More

Top Trends of 2012: Social Video Apps (Warning: Seedy Content!)

Continuing our review of the first half of 2012, we look at an emerging product type that became popular this year: social video apps. The two leading contenders are Socialcam and Viddy, each vying to be the breakout app. But at least one of those apps is using dubious seeding tactics to get ahead... After image sharing network Instagram was acquired by Facebook in April, attention turned to the same type of app - but for video. Essentially social video apps have the following characteristics. More

What if RIM Supported Windows Phone 8?

Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system has been delayed to, at the earliest, early 2013. That could prove to be a deathblow to the storied but struggling smartphone maker. RIM is going to miss out on the important holiday season with BlackBerry 10, and that could prove to be the weight that finally breaks the company’s back. In its dire straits, RIM has reportedly started to consider alternatives to BlackBerry 10 and its current strategy. Does that mean aligning itself with Microsoft and its Windows Phone platform? And how would such a move remake the smartphone landscape? More

Why We Still Need the Open Source VLC Media Player

The Monday Version 2.0.2 release of the free open source VLC media player points out a surprising hole in the age of the Internet video - there is still no universal standard for video formats and players. Fortunately, VLC is there to fill in the gaps among proprietary formats and competing ecosystems, playing just about every video in use. More

Why “Good Enough” Security Really Is Good Enough for Most Companies

When it comes to security, the human quest for perfection can end up muddying our thinking. We act as if we don't know that, on any given day, even the lowly Cubs can beat the mighty Yankees, and that a lucky hacker might be able to break into the most secure business system. We demand perfection, and we're continually disappointed. And that makes it harder to think clearly and objectively about actually reducing our company's security risks. More

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After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

Olympic Social Media Guidelines Muzzle Athletes

Media outlets are billing the upcoming London Summer Olympic Games as "the first social media Olympics." That means athletes and coaches will be posting, tweeting, Facebooking and generally bringing fans closer to the action more than ever before. So why is the International Olympic Committee trying to censor participants? More

Top Trends of 2012: The Visual Web

Continuing our mid-year review of the top trends of 2012, in this post we look at the emergence of the Visual Web. Two of the hottest products in the first half of 2012 are the best examples of this phenomenon: Pinterest and Instagram. But one or two swallows don't make a summer. Beautiful design is a key part of online business in this era, which has resulted in more images and video all across the Web. More

Design Is Now Crucial to Startup Success

Remember the good old days? When a startup founder could draw up his own clunky logo, slap it on a Web page and call it a day? Now every startup needs to spend time, attention and money on slick branding and design sophistication - just to get in the game. More

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How To Use Facebook’s Newest Stalking App

Facebook has quietly rolled out a new feature that allows you to easily find profiles of people who are close in physical proximity to you. Unlike previous Facebook apps, which have primarily been aimed at helping you strengthen connections with existing friends, Find Friend Nearby is aimed at helping you make more connections. More

Facebook Knows What You're Doing (Even If You Don't)

If you think a site that pulls your Facebook status updates and FourSquare check-ins to tell the world if you’re hungover, doing drugs or looking to get fired is unsettling, consider this: It’s fairly simplistic when compared to what social networks will one day be able to figure out based on what you choose to broadcast to the world. More

Firefox for Android Reveals the Future of the Mobile Web

In an era when tech companies are attempting to squeeze more data and more dollars out of users, it is refreshing to know that there are organizations that aim to make the Web a better, more functional place. Mozilla is one. On Tuesday it unveiled the latest version of Firefox for Android. While the browser is an excellent update, the most interesting thing about it is what it says about the future of the mobile Web. More

Google I/O: Web or Native Apps? Google Has it Both Ways

The two keynotes at the Google I/O developers' conference presented two divergent approaches to Google's future products - and users inevitably must choose between them. Wednesday's keynote emphasized native Android apps downloaded from Google Play. Thursday's focused on Google's browser, Chrome, with its own store for Web apps. Will the company's two-prong strategy pull it apart? More

RWW Recommends: The Best Mobile RSS Reader

RSS lives! Not everything is a real-time stream of status updates from Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Subscribing to an RSS feed is still the best way to closely monitor your favorite blogs and topics. So where to check your feeds? Google Reader is the undisputed king of RSS Readers for the desktop, mostly because it's the Last One Standing. However, there is much more competition among RSS Readers for smartphones and that means there are some great options out there. In this post we give you our recommendation for best mobile RSS Reader. More

Web Developers Brace For the MacBook Pro's Retina Display

The Web is about to get uglier - that is, if you're eager enough to plunk down $2,200 for the new MacBook Pro with its ultra high-resolution "retina" display. The new laptop, which Apple unveiled last week, already has Web designers and developers trying to figure out how they're going to create sites and Web apps that look good on the new machine without leaving the rest of the Web's population behind. More

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[Video] Surface vs. iPad: Microsoft's Getting Rusty At Stealing from Apple

Eliot Weisberg did a video mixup that compares Steve Job's initial presentation of the iPad to Steve Ballmer's presentation of the Surface. Played side by side, you can see the similarities. Take a close look at the clothing choices, similar phrases and even the touted features. It's a short video, but definitely worth a look. More

Survey: Tablet Owners Prefer Browsers to Native Apps

Browser or app: Which is a better way to reach readers on mobile platforms like iOS and Android? Publishers and developers haven't been shy about offering their opinions, but what about the people who actually use the devices? Among tablet owners, at least, reading on the mobile Web is preferable to using native apps, according to a recent survey from the Online Publishers Association. More

Startup Accelerator Fail: Most Graduates Go Nowhere

Startup accelerators continue to grow in popularity. There are now more than 200 around the world attracting twice as many applicants as they did just two years ago. But there’s a dirty little secret: A lot of accelerators are just spinning their wheels. Last year, Aziz Gilani, a director at Houston venture capital firm DFJ Mercury, ran a study of 29 North American accelerators for the Kauffman Fellows Program. He found that 45% of them produced not a single graduate who went on to raise venture funding. More

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Top Trends of 2012: The Consumer Cloud

In 2012 we've seen amazing growth in the Consumer Cloud, meaning cloud computing for everyday users. There are three main categories in the Consumer Cloud: storage, sync and notes. Dropbox, Apple's iCloud and Evernote (respectively) have been the most impressive performers in each category so far this year. More

Nobody Is Using Facebook's Life Events - Not Even Mark Zuckerberg

When Facebook announced Timeline in September last year, a key new feature was the ability to define different types of "life events." Events such as starting a new job, entering a new relationship or getting married, making a home improvement, getting a tattoo. The idea behind Life Events was to better structure Timeline data. Unfortunately for Facebook, very few people are using Life Events. More

How To Track Topics On The Web

It's easy to get obsessed with the super-fast, real-time cycle of online news. But don't forget that the Web is a massive treasure trove of information about any topic. With just a bit of work, you can set up tracking and get regular updates about topics you're passionate about. In this how-to article, we share our tips on topic tracking. More

Why Security Could Be Apple’s Greatest Threat

Apple is sitting on top of the tech world. The company has set the standard for smartphones and tablets, tech’s biggest growth markets, and the company’s Mac sales in the U.S. are growing faster than the industry average. So what could derail the most valuable company in the world? Forget rivals like Microsoft and Google: Apple’s biggest threat may come from hackers. These cyber-criminals are upending Apple’s carefully cultivated perception that the Mac is more secure than Windows PCs. Hackers smashed that notion in April when 650,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback Trojan. More

Retailer's Tax on IE 7 Users Opens New Front in Browser Wars

When Australian retailer Kogan.com enacted a “tax” on customers using Internet Explorer 7 last week, it may not have been trying to become the poster child for worldwide Web-developer frustration with Microsoft browsers. But the stunt seems to have tapped into a seething undercurrent of animosity for Internet Explorer that could bring new combatants to the ongoing browser wars. More

Reimagining Books: How Citia's iPad App Compares to a Paper Book

Kevin Kelly's book "What Technology Wants" was one of our favorite nonfiction books of 2011. In Richard's April 2011 review, he gave it five out of five stars. It's fitting that Kelly's book is the first to be turned into an iPad app on a new iOS platform called Citia. The result isn't an e-book, though; it's more like a condensed summary of the book's main ideas. So is Citia just a modern-day CliffsNotes, or something more substantial? More

How to Keep Facebook from Recognizing Your Face

Now that Facebook has bought facial recognition vendor Face.com, many users are worried that the giant social network will use the technology to infringe on their privacy. While you can’t stop Facebook from grabbing the facial-recognition data, there are ways to limit the service’s use of that information. More

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Are IT Fears Holding Back Cloud Computing?

As corporate IT workers adapt to the shifts towards decentralized, cloud-computing services in place of in-house technology assets, they have to be asking themselves: “Am I working myself out of a job?” This fear, justified or not, is one way to explain the persistent efforts of many enterprise IT departments to forego public cloud-computing services in order to maintain their own private-cloud systems. It may also offer insight into the hype around datacenter tools such as Hadoop, Cassandra and Pig. More

How Windows 8 Throws Computer Users Under the Bus

Whatever you think of Windows 8’s Metro interface on smartphones and tablets, Microsoft’s decision to force computer users to deal with Metro will needlessly alienate and confuse many of the company's most loyal customers. It’s as if Apple suddenly required Mac users to rely on iOS instead of OS X. More

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Facebook Advertising Report: It's the Fan Engagement, Stupid

The ComScore report released Tuesday that propped up Facebook as a worthwhile avenue for advertisers to consider underscores what most social media observers have known for quite some time: Not all customers - and not all fans - of a company or brand are created equal. More

Apple's Opportunity: Disrupt the Credit Card Business

Apple has never been shy about bringing change to complacent industries. Its products have reinvented music distribution, mobile phones and, with its new mapping app, GPS navigation devices in cars. It may be time for a new sector to sound the alarm: Apple appears to be maneuvering itself into position to challenge Visa and Mastercard like no company has before. More

Why Twitter May Have the Edge in Online Ads

For all their popularity, social networks have turned out to be barren soil for advertisers. Facebook famously has 901 million users, but it only saw $4.12 in revenue from each of them last year. Twitter has taken even longer to implement a business plan for monetizing its 140 million users. But as it reveals its strategy, it's starting to look like it may have an edge over Facebook in selling ads online. More

Top Trends of 2012: Video on Tablets

One in every ten tablet users views video content almost daily on their device, according to a new report by comScore. The study also found that tablet users are nearly three times more likely to watch video on their device compared to smartphone users. Nearly one in four smartphone owners now owns a tablet, according to comScore. That's an increase of 13.9 percentage points since a year ago. More

Apple's Love/Hate Relationship With iOS Jailbreaking

As developers converged on San Francisco to find out what's next for Apple's hardware and platforms, there was another discussion going on in the background: What does iOS 6 mean for the jailbreak community? Did Apple borrow any ideas this time? How soon will we see an untethered jailbreak for iOS 6? More

5+ Ways Entrepreneurs are Different from Everyone Else

Successful entrepreneurs are really smart. Just look at Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, guys who could get a lobotomy and still do your math homework. But intelligence is not the defining characteristic of successful entrepreneurship. Instead, the secret is a more prosaic quality: good old-fashioned stick-to-itiveness. More

Q: Why Does Microsoft Need Yammer? A: To Save SharePoint

Microsoft is reportedly set to acquire the Yammer business social network for an estimated $1 billion. The deal would give a much-needed social network injection to its SharePoint business collaboration platform. Yammer - with an estimated valuation of $500 million - makes business-oriented social network tools for internal company sharing and discussion centered on blog posts and automatically generated content (such as notifications that a document is ready to edit or a sale has been closed). More

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Millennials: They Aren’t So Tech Savvy After All

Even as millennials (those born and raised around the turn of the century) enter college with far more exposure to computer and mobile technology than their parents ever did, professors are increasingly finding that their students' comfort zone is often limited to social media and Internet apps that don’t do much in the way of productivity. One professor at the University of Notre Dame, for example, reports that many of his students don't even know how to navigate menus in productivity applications. More

Which Of These 3 Social Media Profiles Are You?

You've got a new piece of content you want to share, but where do you put it? Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, your Wordpress blog... all of the above?! With these and many other options to choose from, posting on the Web can be confusing - even a little stressful. But never fear, ReadWriteWeb is here to help. We've identified three main social media profiles, based on the Big 3 networks: Facebook, Twitter and Google+. More

5 Ways to Tell Which Programming Languages are Most Popular

Are older programming languages like Java and Perl giving way to newer languages like Python and Ruby? Is HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript overtaking Flash and/or native mobile application development? Do Microsoft’s languages still have a large developer following, even as Microsoft promotes other languages as first-class citizens on platforms such as Windows 8 and Azure? Finding the answer to these questions can be harder than you think. More

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Making the Most of Social Media Analytics

Don't believe the next social media expert who tells you "social media is intangible" when it comes to building your brand. Sure, it's difficult to calculate a precise return on investment for social media marketing efforts: Just ask General Motors, which pulled $10 million in Facebook advertising last month because it couldn’t track measurable results. But social media reach is more measurable than some people would have you believe. More

Why London's Police Just Set a Horrifying Precedent on Mobile Privacy

London's Metropolitan Police recently started using machines that allow law enforcement to tap into any mobile device and download call registers, photographs, videos, SMS, email and even social networking data in under 20 minutes. Even more shocking, the information they collect will remain in the police's possession long after the suspect is released, even if no charges are filed. A machine of this sort sounds like something that would have been found in the dank depths of some palace in Tripoli after the downfall of Gaddafi, not in a British police station. More

The United Nations Could Seize the Internet, U.S. Officials Warn

Several emerging countries are rallying behind a campaign to have the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N.'s global standards body for telecommunications, declare the Internet a global telecommunications system, U.S. officials testified on Thursday before the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Led by China, Russia, India and now Egypt, which recently launched its own proposal, such a move would allow state-owned telephone networks to expand into VoIP. It would also give them the opportunity to charge fees for Internet service - and put the Internet at the mercy of international politics. More

What Ever Happened To... Start Pages

In this new ReadWriteWeb series, we look back on products that were important innovations of their time. But this isn't merely nostalgia. As Confucius said, we'll make it relevant by identifying lessons to apply now and in the future. We start with a product category that was all the rage in 2005-06, but is an endangered species in 2012: start pages. More

Avoiding Password Breaches 101: Salt Your Hash

“Change your passwords now. Like, every password you use on every website you have ever visited.” You may have heard this advice from tech publications and mainstream rags after password leaks were discovered at LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm. It is a good idea to change passwords at least a couple times a year anyway. But the problem does not lie solely with the users. It also lies with the way companies approach password security. More

How to Jailbreak Your iPhone, iPad or iPod Running iOS 5.1.1

Looking to do a little more with your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch? The latest untethered jailbreak tool for iOS arrived last week, racking up a million downloads in just a few days. Absinthe 2.0 works on most iOS 5-compatible devices, except for a later model of the iPad 2 that contains the 32-nanometer chipset. The process is incredibly straightforward and requires no technical sophistication - only a few clicks and a little bit of patience. More

Apple is Trying its Best to Kill HTC (And Doing a Pretty Good Job)

There is blood in the water, and the big fish are circling to put the struggling, wounded little fish out of its misery. The little fish, which has some good qualities to offer the world, is having more and more trouble keeping the big fish away. This is happening now to smartphone manufacturer HTC - and the biggest fish of all, Apple, is circling in for the kill. More

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After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

94% of U.S. Wineries Are On Facebook, 73% on Twitter

A survey from ABLE Social Media Marketing found that most U.S. wineries are on Facebook and Twitter. The study covered both French and U.S. wineries, and French social media usage was not as widespread. To see the full study, and Richard's observations, check out 94% of U.S. Wineries Are On Facebook, 73% on Twitter.

Giving iPad PowerPoint Presentations Just Got a Lot Better

Microsoft finally killed the confusing "Windows Live" branding it has used since 2005 as its primary online brand. It will now consolidate messaging around promotion of its biggest software brand, Windows OS, and an identity system, creatively called a "Microsoft Account." To learn more about why its making the switch, read Why Microsoft Killed Windows Live.

Google Launches Full-Scale Shopping in Search

This week Google began offering additional options for advertisers who want to sell their products via Search. The changes come close to Paid Inclusion, but are clearly marked and Jon Mitchell feels that Google hasn't comprimised organic search. Read more about Jon's thoughts on this big change, and how the SERPs will change in Google Launches Full-Scale Shopping in Search.

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BlackBerry CEO Hints Research In Motion May Be Up For Sale

Research In Motion is a company in transition. It is going from a global-powerhouse smartphone maker to a struggling equipment manufacturer with too much company bloat, an aging operating system and a declining user base. In a letter to investors, CEO Thorsten Heins acknowledged that RIM had contacted bankers from J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets to assist RIM in reviewing its financial stability and goals. In essence, Heins said that RIM, or at least parts of it, may be up for sale. More

Tim Cook at the D Conference: Between the Lines

Apple boss Tim Cook spoke Tuesday night at the D10 conference, his first major public interview since becoming CEO of Apple last year. His chat touched on everything from what he learned from Steve Jobs to his big-picture goal for Apple: to build great products, of course. But as always, when a big-company CEO like Cook speaks, the most interesting stuff is what he didn't say. More

Facebook Can't Have a Phone Until It Becomes an Operating System

One thing to realize about Facebook is that it is a platform. A platform allows developers and companies to build on top of it, build apps for it and interact with it through a variety of mediums. In that way, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are both platforms, but Android and iOS are also operating systems - complex sets of software that connect hardware to the platform. Facebook is a fine platform, but it is not an operating system. And that is going to make the company’s attempt at building a “Facebook Phone” extremely difficult. More

More Bad News For HP: The New Google Chromebook Compared to a Typical HP Laptop

On May 29th, Google announced two new computers, the latest Chromebook laptop and a new desktop machine called the Chromebox. After reading Jon Mitchell's thorough review, it became apparent that there's now very little difference in user experience between the Chromebook and a traditional laptop (for example, one from HP that runs on a Windows OS). Should traditional PC manufacturers such as HP - not to mention the world's biggest software provider for laptops, Microsoft - be worried about this? You bet they should. More

Be sure to check out our Hangout video where we discuss the Chromebook and how it compares to a low-cost laptop.

The Flame Virus: Spyware on an Unprecedented Scale

Security researchers recently discovered one of the most complex instances of computer malware on record. Flame, which also goes by the names SkyWiper and Viper, has infected hundreds of computers across the Middle East and Europe. What does it do? Where did it come from? Who unleashed it? More

Brands Step Up Open Graph Efforts on Facebook

Brands are increasingly abandoning efforts to get users to “like” their Facebook pages and instead focusing their marketing efforts on Open Graph, the protocol Facebook uses to reflect third-party app use in a user's social activity. More

Why Evernote's Hello App Is Different on iPhone and Android

Evernote's Hello app for iPhone and Android devices helps you remember people you meet. But here's the rub: Each platform offers different features. In fact, the Android version, released on Wednesday, leapfrogs the older iPhone app with a bunch of cool goodies. Why not give the iPhone the same love? Evernote CEO Phil Libin explains his multiplatform strategy. More

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• Game Over for GameStop and Video Game Retailers?
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• Facebook Can't Have a Phone Until It Becomes an Operating System
• BlackBerry CEO Hints Research In Motion May Be Up For Sale
• Cutting all the Cords: The Feasibility of a 100% Mobile Lifestyle

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• Heroku Chief Opens the Door to More Processes, Bigger Ecosystem, Less Amazon
• The Cloud's Killer App? SAP's Bid to Own the Enterprise Social Space
• Government Market Drags Microsoft Deeper into the Cloud

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• MIT Brain Who Beat the Casinos Launches Service to Quantify Developer Performance
• New Pipl API Pulls in a Staggering - and Creepy - Amount of People Data Into Your Apps

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• 5 Ways to Tell if a Co-Working Space is Right for Your Startup
• Are Incubators Really Necessary for Startup Success?
• 10 Secrets of Successful Crowdfunding - From Scott Steinberg
• How Not to Screw Up Your Startup Presentation

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Computer Programming for All: A New Standard of Literacy

Some programmers believe that the knowledge of programming will eventually be included in literacy standards. However, others believe we have too far to go to achieve current literacy standards to see programming added any time soon.

Let us know what you think in the comments on Computer Programming for All: A New Standard of Literacy.

Microsoft's New Social Network, So.cl: It's Like Google+ for Wonks

Microsoft released its social network, So.cl, this week. Richard MacManus says it's a derivative product and doesn't stand a chance at achieving widespread usage. That said, he does see opportunities for the new site in the education sector. Read Richard's deep dive in Microsoft's New Social Network, So.cl: It's Like Google+ for Wonks.

YouTube's Big Transition: Moving From Amateur to Professional Era of Online Video

Online video is changing. The era of the amateur video sensation is fading to make room for professional video producers. Check out how YouTube, and online video in general, is evolving in YouTube's Big Transition: Moving From Amateur to Professional Era of Online Video.

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Mobile Marketing Set to Create Havoc and Opportunities

Procter & Gamble should be kicking itself for not developing a mobile operating system when it had the chance: More people worldwide own mobile phones than toothbrushes. Get ready for a tsunami of mobile marketing and commerce to crash on the shores of retail. More

What Google's Acquisition of Motorola Means for Android

Google now owns Motorola. Chinese regulators followed the U.S. and Europe in clearing the deal earlier this week, removing the last barrier. Although the acquisition opens new territory for the search giant, its most immediate effect could be remaking the existing Android landscape. Will Google use its new arm to pound all competitors, or just Apple? More

Why The iPhone's Success Has Women To Thank

Women are the hot new demographic to court in the social space (if you can call half the population a "demographic”), but the fairer sex is catching up when it comes to mobile, too, largely thanks to the iPhone. But is Apple’s gender-blind wunderkind truly more popular with women - or is Android, the iPhone’s de facto rival, just less popular? More

How Does Facebook Make Money?

Facebook's first few days on the stock market are in the books: Shares closed Tuesday at $31, down significantly from their $38 issue price. You may wonder: How does Facebook make money? Sure, 900 million users and billions of photos, but how is this a business? It's pretty simple, actually. More

What It's Like for an App in Apple & Google's Crosshairs

UpNext Maps for iPhone is beautiful. It's the smoothest, fastest map we've ever used. It renders 3D buildings for virtual exploration of certain cities. Its look and functionality are distinctive. It's free. And both Google and Apple want to build these features themselves. Is this a kamikaze mission for UpNext? More

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• College Degrees: More and More, They're Just a Piece of Paper
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• Disassembling Android Part 2: Who Wields the Blowtorch?
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• ownCloud Growing Into Its Own With Versioning, APIs and Collaboration
• Blowing the Cloud Wide Open: Box.net to Begin Negotiable Enterprise Licenses
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• A Utility That Makes You Master of the Twitterverse
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• Could You – Should You – Fund Your Startup With Credit Cards?
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Google Goes Back to What It Does Well: Finding Things

Google released the Knowledge Graph this week and Jon Mitchell explains the ins and outs:

In the new Google, with the Knowledge Graph online, a new box will come up. You'll still get the Google results you're used to, including the box scores for the team Google thinks you're looking for, but on the right side, a box called "See results about" will show brief descriptions for the Los Angeles Kings, the Sacramento Kings, and the TV series, Kings. If you need to clarify, click the one you're looking for, and Google will refine your search query for you.

Giving iPad PowerPoint Presentations Just Got a Lot Better

If you've ever tried to give a presentation with your iPad, you know it's virtually impossible if you want to use presenter mode. That all changed with the recent release of SlideShark. Get a good look at the app by reading David Strom's review of the presentation app, SlideShark.

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[Infographic] Taking HTML5 to the Next Level for Mobile

By 2013, there will be more than one billion HTML5-capable browsers in use throughout the world. Applications for those HTML5 browsers will be created by two million HTML Web developers, according to research from IDC. There is no question that HTML5 is going to be a major factor in mobile development during the next five to 10 years. The rise of HTML5 does not mean the death of native applications, but as the standard progresses, many developers will begin to incorporate more HTML5 into their apps than native code. More

Study: Facebook Timeline Improves Fan Engagement For Brands

Facebook posts by brands live longer on Timeline than they did prior to the social network’s massive overhaul, according to a study released Monday. While the analysis by London-based social media analytics firm Sotrender is limited in scope, covering just 130 brands headquartered in the U.K. and 5,000 posts, it is the first such empirical review since Timeline became mandatory for all Facebook brand pages at the end of March. More

Computer Programming for All: A New Standard of Literacy

Everyone ought to be able to read and write; few people within the global mainstream would argue with that statement. But should everyone be able to program computers? The question is becoming critically important as digital technology plays an ever more central role in daily life. The movement to make code literacy a basic tenet of education is gaining momentum, and its success or failure will have a huge impact on our society. More

What Is the Point of: #Hashtags?

Whenever a new Web trend comes along, there are people who ask, "What is the point of this?" If millions of people are using something, there has to be a reason. In our "What Is the Point of..." series, we'll explain it to you. This week, we're asking, What is the point of #hashtags? More

Staying Off Facebook Won't Protect Your Privacy

Stay away from social networks and people won't know who you're hanging out with or what you're doing, right? Wrong. When it comes to social networking, a recent study suggests, you can run but you can't hide. More

A Discreet Guide to Using Mobile Devices in the Loo

Last year, British researchers swabbed 390 cell phones and analyzed what they picked up. Know what they found? One in six phones has poop on it. Four out of five are contaminated by some kind of bacteria. Sure, we all like to make our own calls while answering Mother Nature's, but that's just gross. Here’s a surefire way to avoid a crappy user experience on your smartphone or other mobile device. More

How and Why Your Startup Should Go Virtual

Working virtually sounds like heaven to many startups. After all, not having a central office staffed with employees saves money on rent, utilities, parking, etc., freeing you to invest in research, development or marketing. On the other hand, operating virtually is no panacea. Before you make the virtual leap, you need to figure out exactly what working virtually means to your business. More

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• Mobile Marketing Set to Create Havoc and Opportunities
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What Is the Point of... Foursquare?

If you've tried to figure out why people use Foursquare, Jon Mitchell explains that beyond the badges, check-ins and branded ad campaigns, Foursquare offers significant user value in its recommendations.

Forget the annoying badges and mayorships, too. There's one useful thing at which Foursquare is very, very good: recommendations.

10 Beautiful Apps & Websites To Drool Over

Some apps are very clearly not blessed with beauty. These apps are different. They stand out from the pack because thoughtful design and elegant UI is more than skin deep. There were a few more great finds in the comments:

"Google+, Chrome Beta, Pocket, YouTube are some gorgeous apps on Android." - Redwan Huq

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Who's Winning The Battle For The Interest Graph: Facebook, Google+ or Twitter?

Do you use Google+ more than Facebook? Are you an avid Twitter user, but not so active on Google+? Do you autoshare online media, such as songs or news articles, on Facebook? These are just some of the questions being asked in the ongoing evolution of the "Interest Graph," succinctly defined by software engineer Adam Rifkin as "WHAT people care about." He was contrasting it to the term popularized by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "Social Graph," which is WHO people care about. More

The Future of Social is Video: Interview With Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel

Socialcam is being called the "Instagram for Video" app. With this phrase comes the idea that, like seemingly every startup nowadays, the goal is to build an awesome and thriving community, pump up the product to the level of ultimate coolness and then cash in by selling to a bigger social company that may or may not have a working business model. That's one way to look at it. More

New iPhone, iPad and Android Apps for April 2012

Following all the great apps released for iOS and Android in March, it seemed like we were in for an April letdown. That is not the case. Some huge names published great apps this month, including Google releasing its Drive app for Android and Instagram making its debut outside of the iPhone. Taken by themselves, that would make for a notable month of apps. But, we have more. A lot more. What were the top apps this month? Check out the second edition of our ReadWrite Recommends Apps of the Month for iOS and Android. More

The Rise of Beautiful Apps

A noticeable trend this year is beautiful apps or websites. It's all part of a larger trend that we're calling The Visual Web, meaning that images and video are becoming an increasingly important part of what we consume online. Pinterest is the best example of that larger trend. But by "beautiful apps or websites," I'm specifically referring to extremely well-designed apps or websites. Ones that make you drool. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I think we all agree that Johnny Depp and Reese Witherspoon are particularly fine examples of beauty in human form. So what's the app equivalent of Johnny Depp? Or the website version of Reese Witherspoon? More

Cartoon: Pinterest for Dummies

OK, Can We Have Super Mario for iPhone Now?

Nintendo is in trouble. The Japanese gaming giant, which has long felt building pressure from mobile computing platforms, is now officially losing money. Lots of it. Last week, the company reported an operating loss of $458 million, the first such deficit in its long history. While larger economic trends are partially to blame, it certainly doesn't help that Nintendo is refusing to consider the one thing that could possibly save it. More

Why "Instagram For Video" Apps Will Go Big

The latest trend in smartphone apps is social video. That's because ever since Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 Billion, attention has focused on video sharing apps and whether one of them will win the next Zuckerberg lottery. The two leading contenders are Socialcam and Viddy. ReadWriteWeb's Alicia Eler profiled those two apps, along with a third called Klip, in a post Wednesday. More

10 Executives Who Lied On Their Resumes - And 2 Who Got Away With It

We learned that Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson's resume boasts a computer science degree he never got. This news is likely to have a ripple effect as we discover who else in the Valley has tried to pull a stunt like this. Here's what happened to 10 other executives who fibbed on their resumes. More

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The Google Drive Review You've Been Waiting For

Google Drive launched this week to much attention. Jon Mitchell did an in-depth review on Google Drive, based on his early preview of the service. And, while he doesn't feel that Google Drive goes far enough, he is very encouraged by this latest offering from Google. Check out our Google+ Hangout to learn more about Google Drive, or check out some screenshots of the service for a quick look at the UI. We showed you some

US House Passes CISPA

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 248-168. Scott Fulton explained some of the ramifications of CISPA, sharing why some portions of it are necessary, but how dangerous the bill will be without changes.

Check to see if your Representative supported CISPA.

More Top Stories

How the iPad Is Changing Education

The iPad may only be two years old, but it's already begun to change many things. Reading is one of them. Work is another. It is selling like crazy, but it will be some time before most of the people you know own a tablet. The market for this type of device may only be in its infancy, but it's already becoming clear how it will revolutionize certain aspects our lives. Education is a huge one, as recent developments have demonstrated. More

Apple's Huge Quarter in Charts

Apple posted another monster quarter, just as some were starting to doubt it. Again, Apple's most impressive statistic is its overall sales growth: With more than $39 billion in revenue last quarter, Apple's sales grew 59% year-over-year, far faster than its peers. The iPhone business continues to lead Apple, and the 35 million iPhones shipped during the quarter were above expectations. More

How the iPad Is Revolutionizing Local Businesses

It was dinner at a fancy restaurant in Boston. After the last sip of Scotch was polished off, the waiter came over with the check... and an iPad. It was to take a survey about the quality of service, but it just as easily could have been used to pay the bill. More

Why Would a Financial Services Firm Want to Use Pinterest?

"PINTEREST: Can financial services firms use this new platform effectively?" That was the subject line of an email in my inbox this morning. It came from Corporate Insight, a financial services consulting firm. The email went on to note that "Pinterest values imagery over text and incorporates many social aspects of Twitter and Facebook to connect users and spread content." While admitting that "no financial services firm uses Pinterest today," nevertheless Corporate Insight thinks that financial institutions should have a presence on Pinterest. More

iPads in the Office: What Are They Really Good For?

When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad, he acknowledged that for a tablet to have a “reason for being,” it had to be “far better at some key things” than either a smartphone or laptop. In the consumer market, tablets have some advantages in each of the seven categories Jobs mentioned: browsing, email, photos, video, music, games and e-books.. More

Macs Spread Malware To PCs

Call it Steve Jobs' revenge. Security vendor Sophos has discovered that one in five Mac computers surveyed carry malware that could infect Windows PCs. In a bit of delicious irony, only one in 36 Apple computers were found to be infected with Mac OS X malware. The results bring an odd sense of urgency to worries about Mac security. More

Apple Could Buy T-Mobile With Its Q2 Earnings

Apple reported another very successful financial quarter this afternoon, exceeding expectations. In the quarter ending March 31, the company brought in a net profit of $11.6 billion on a grand total of $39.2 billion in revenue. As has been the case in recent quarters, the vast majority of Apple's revenue came from sales of iPads and iPhones. Together, the two devices made up nearly 75% of Apple's revenue last quarter, a percentage that continues to grow over time. More

Microsoft's Mobile Comeback Is Looking Terrible

Microsoft ruled the PC market for decades with utter dominance. But today, as the future shifts toward mobile devices, things are not looking good for Microsoft. It's not that it's not trying: Microsoft is spending a lot of money and effort on cracking the mobile market, now in lockstep with Nokia, its top partner. But there's no indication yet that it's having any real success. More

Twitter Can't Beat Facebook

Hardcore Twitter users, I know you're a loyal bunch (in fact, I consider myself one of you). So don't take this personally. This article is about Facebook and how it is either going to destroy Twitter, force the microblogging service to change or make it an aquisition target by a rival, such as Apple or Google. More

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• Publishers Starting to Reject e-Book DRM
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• As Apple Dominates U.S. Sales, Smartphone Focus Shifts Overseas
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• What Apple's Spectacular Earnings Mean For Phone Carriers
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• How U.S. Policy Creates Barriers for Cloud Providers
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• 4 Cool Things You Can Do With Wappwolf and ifttt
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