Results tagged “technology”

Tired of attending conference after conference in which attendees were regaled with unblemished successes, Cassie Phillipps was inspired to organize FailCon, which went down yesterday at the Kabuki Hotel and which featured panel discussions with startup CEOs and former CEOs talking about their errors and grand failures. Panel members included Max Levchin talking about early failures and missteps with PayPal and Slide, Mark Pinkus talking about the troubles with Tribe.net, and former Friendster CEO Dan Olsen, who now heads YourVersion.com -- a site that finds you new web content tailored to your interests and frequent search terms -- which, for better or worse, won the prize for audience favorite at FailCon.

The fantastic and fantastically brilliant @rebecca_f informs us of a most important day happening tomorrow: Women Tweeting Women Day. And it goes a little something like this: "the idea is to post information about inspiring women throughout the day. On Twitter please use the hashtag #wtw09 when tweeting about the inspiring women in your life." Also acceptable: Twitter updates about yogurt, dark chocolate, and/or husbands who won't get off the couch. [via Viva La Feminista]

Arse Elektronika 2009, the annual conference on sex, technology and the future, kicks off tonight. Here's how this year's kinky conference (“Of Intercourse & Intracourse”) is being described.

According to a study done by the Nielsen Company, Facebook and Twitter users are wealthier and than their MySpace counterparts living on the other side of the railroad tracks. Computer World notes, "The survey, which studied the top seven social networking sites, showed that Facebook users generally have an 'upscale profile,'" going on to point out, "Nielsen also noted that people who are more affluent than the other two-thirds of the population are 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the the lower third. And conversely, those in the bottom third of the financial chart are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third."

Mayor Gavin Newsom's office will be launching the first in a series of virtual Town Hall meetings tonight at 6 p.m. via Ustream, and users will be able to "chat" their questions to the mayor in real time. RSVP here or here. Apparently, users will also be able to watch/chat via Facebook, but we can't find any links for that. The Our Blog post about the meeting is confusing.

Trying to figure out if that guy in your office was born a homosexual? (Hint: he probably wasn't, you stalker.) Well, a few clever AP-wads at MIT have developed software that, using Facebook technology, can figure out if he prefers penis or vagina.

      

They're very shiny.

Ack.

If you're like us, you judge a restaurant by the beauty and cleanliness of their bathroom. So, it makes sense to judge social media network bigwigs Twitter and Facebook based off of their offices. (OK, that's tenuous, but you get the point.) Fortunately, the divine Mr. Tate at Valleywag has a boatload of images showcasing both Facebook's and Twitter's Silicon Valley and SOMA headquarters, respectively.

Stamen Design, the folks behind Oakland Crimespotting, have just launched a companion site, San Francisco Crimespotting, which is a sleek, user-friendly interface that blows SFPD's clunky Crime Maps out of the water. Users can easily identify which types of crimes have taken place in their area, including the date and time of day they occurred. (We were quite relieved to see the absence of any murders or aggravated assaults in our vicinity.)

Today, San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon will announce a newfangled way to help stop crime. It's called Text-A-Tip, and it will allow you to do just that, text a tip anonymously to the SFPD. According to NBC Bay Area, "Text-a-Tip is currently being used by police in 40 states." Whoj is magically landed in San Francisco is anybody's guess. (Oh wait, you don't have to guess. It's because of Chief Gascon, who believes in silly little things like technology and THE FUTURE.) But the best place to use Text-A-Tip, it seems, is on Muni. Police Lt. James Miller, NBC Bay Area goes on to report, "told commissioners at a recent meeting that the program will be especially helpful for Muni passengers who want to report a crime without drawing attention to themselves." So, the next time teen thugs are mugging someone while everybody looks on, please take a picture of said thugs (provided they have picture-receiving capabilities) and send it to Text-a-Tip. (We'll update as soon as we get a police agency ID number. Which, yeah, would be helpful.)

Apparently, most of 11th Street (between Mission and Bryant Streets) was deleted from Google's Street View a few months ago, which was not fixed in yesterday's update. It also appears in the above graphic that 16th Street, between Folsom and Harrison, is not available either. Here's evidence from 2007 that Street View was in fact once available on 11th Street.

While j-schoolers at Cal are busy bemoaning the state of the Journalism and perfecting that well-worn journalist look (hint: spiral notepad, unkempt hair, elbow patches, lots of chin scratching), a hacker breached UC Berkeley's School of Journalism server in July. According to the Daily Cal, "500 applicants to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism were notified [Tuesday] that their Social Security numbers and other private data may have been compromised in a recent campus security breach." This most recent hacking affects "people who applied to the school between September 2007 and May 2009." While, most likely, no one is at real risk of any serious identity damage -- real journalism students have neither a hefty bank nor decent credit -- students were notified weeks after the actual attack. According to Shelton Waggener, the school's "associate vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer," a delay in notification is typical in these situations. "It just takes time to do the investigation," he said. "Once we were certain of as much info as we could be, we began the notification process and developing the notification strategy."

Sheer heresy, right? To ban laptop power connectivity at your favorite cafes? Well, that's just what some cafes in New York City, according to a article, are doing in an effort to get squatters to shift it. See, many customers (including some of you right this very second) buy a cup of coffee, then set up shop at a cafe for hours and hours in between small sips -- basically, running a business or obtaining a pointless college degree from a cafe for mere pennies. Which, really, isn't a good thing for the cafe, whose power and free wi-fi most of you gobble up on a daily basis. They're businesses, not libraries. (Fine. Your SFist Editor must admit to, at times, running this site at SOMA's Epicenter Cafe or The Creamery. Guilty as charged. But we do wolf down at least three onion bagels with cream cheese while squatting, so, you know, we're not that bad. Anyway.)

Yesterday's Twitter outage, it seems, was the result of one blogger, a separatist in the Republic of Georgia. According to CNET:

Twitter is down this morning. So is Facebook at times, but only because people are rushing over from Twitter to cry. Anyway, the fine folks at Twitter are in the process of fighting a DOS attack, something we understand all to well, so please be patient, folks. Update: Twitter is back up and running. Intermittedly, anyway.

Since working for both Google and Apple is starting to look odd, Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently ditched his gig on the board at Apple. Being on the board since 2006, Schmidt thought it best to excuse himself, especially now as Google "develops products that compete with Apple's core businesses, including the popular iPhone." So, yeah, that's a wise move. Other noted members of Apple's board, according to CBS 5/AP, include "former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Genentech chairman Arthur D. Levinson and Andrea Jung, the chairwoman and CEO of Avon Products." Levinson, by thew way, serves on Google's board. No word as to whether or not he will step down soon.

Did you today is System Administrator Appreciation Day? It is. And did you know that most of you should show them more respect than you do? It's true. They're the smarties you call, angrily, after you fill up your system with crap MP3s, never delete your emails, refuse to write down any error codes whatsoever, ignore their important emails, demand them to make your orange iMac laptop "go faster," and never seem to invite to after-hour drinks with your colleagues. Read more about how bad you treat your system administrator here, stop acting stupid, and then go get them a box of donuts, you jerk. But to all the system admins out there, we salute you! [via Laughing Squid]

If you receive an iPhone text message with a "single square character," be afraid. Be very afraid. It's could be hackers using a iewly discovered iPhone SMS bug to infiltrate your precious phone. According to CBS 5. "Famed hacker Charlie Miller discovered the flaw and told Apple about it six weeks ago. The company has not issued a fix, so Miller will pressure Apple by showing exactly how to hijack the iPhone at a cybersecurity conference on Thursday." Miller warned yesterday, "Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this." IntoMobile explains how it works: "Using the exploit, hackers could send a succession of SMS text messages to an iPhone, allowing them to gain complete control of the handset. Hackers can then commandeer the iPhone to send similar text message strings to other iPhones, spreading like wildfire." If you get this square-character message, there's not much you can do other than turn your phone off.

After months of tiresome foreplay -- or is that redundant? -- Microsoft and Yahoo have finally done the deed. Sunnyvale-based Yahoo and Microsoft will join forces to try gaining an edge on the market that Google snatched up with ease. The new deal goes something like this: Microsoft's new search thingamajig, Bing, will be the "exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform" for Yahoo, there's some sort of $500M revenue sharing agreement, Yahoo will handle all sales, and the partnership will last for at least ten years per the agreement. "Success in search requires both innovation and scale," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. "With our new Bing search platform, we’ve created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search." Today's deal, according to Valleywag, will lead to "Yahoo's annihilation." (Good luck, Carol Bartz!)

SFist is a big fan of Google. So, naturally, we were elated to hear that Google VP of Search Product and User Experience and fellow air sign Marissa Mayer is now on Twitter. So far, she's messaged about Google comics, some guy named Bob Iger, and the keen philosophies of the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore. Now, this is all well and good -- and she'll probably continue to post Twitter messages about super smart stuff that will go over our head -- but we hope, pray to God, she throws down tidbits about, say, life at the top of Four Seasons, or what Google dreamboat Sergey Brin is really like. (Just a scrap of something swoon-worthy on Brin will do nicely, Marissa. We're desperate. Obviously.) Anyway, if the mood should strike, follow her.

A new iPhone application will allow marijuana aficionados and medicinal mary jane recipients to find a pot dealer on their phone. Yay! "Cannabis," according to , "lets users search by city for their nearest medical cannabis suppliers, doctors, clinics, lawyers and other relevant organisations." But don't get too excited, cocaine and meth users, this Apple-approved app only covers legal pot spots. The Sun goes on to report that "it currently covers 13 US states which have passed laws allowing medical cannabis use, legal cannabis 'coffee shops' across Europe and uses Google Maps for directions." Alas.

Since people now swill the stuff, wash their hair with it. and even use it as a disinfectant (if you reacal, Monica used Chandler's to get rid of a nasty jellyfish sting, but since they ended up marrying each other a few seasons later, that was probably golden shower-related foreplay more than anything else), it makes sense that scientists have now figured out a way to power your car with urine. Yes, one day soon, your pee might make your Prius even greener -- well, a lighter green to be exact. How so? According to , a scientist at Ohio University, Garardine Botte, has "developed a catalyst capable of extracting hydrogen from urine." Said hydrogen would then be used to start your car.

The Silicon Valley set has been abuzz this week after TechCrunch published private Twitter documents obtained by a hacker. Said secret documents went up on Tuesday and include, according to Baynewser, "everything from growth projections to job applicant resumes to personal credit card numbers" to tales about business-to-celebrity relationships. Needless to say, the docs are way too smart and far too tech-ish for us to understand -- lots of fancy code and ones and zeros, we can only assume -- but Twitter is none too thrilled. Rightfully so. However, the posting of the hacker-cracked documents are protected by the First Amendment, or so says the Citizen Media Law Project. In the end, though, everyone will come out of this relatively unscathed; just a little bit of internet drama to snack on. Nothing to see here. Go back to following @newsomshair.

Last night Google announced that it would soon be open-sourcing a new operating system, Google Chrome OS, to be run on netbooks for an ultimate 2010 release to consumers. Google says, "It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be," but as TechCrunch puts it: "Let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its [blog] post, 'However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.'"

As of today, Google will remove the "beta" tag from most of its products, namely Gmail, which is over five years old and wildly popular with both business and personal users. While the moniker implied "serious kinks were still being worked out, [and] also made the idea of a beta test seem almost meaningless," it also sort of told users, ideally, that Google would continue, now and forever, to make their products better. So, GMail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Talk will all get their "beta" wings snipped. They are, it seems, officially ready for use.

In an effort to make itself relevant again, Yahoo will undergo an extreme makeover. According to All Things Digital, "in what many sources at the company said is a major push, Yahoo (YHOO) is working on a massive plan to overhaul its brand in order to repair a damaged public image and focus consumers on what defines Yahoo." Just what that definition is these days is anybody's guess -- that is, aside from the wildly entertaining / scary Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. The onetime internet giant, we're told, hired San Francisco branding gurus Landor Associates to help re-imagine the Sunnyvale-based portal. So, dear readers, do you have any advice for Landor and Yahoo? We're certain they'd love to hear your ideas. Let them know in the comments.

              

Here are some scenes from this morning's wait at the downtown Apple store in San Francisco. People stood, sat and squatted in line since late last night.

According to KRON4, folks are lined up outside the downtown Apple store to grab one. And, according to Darya Folsom, it's nuts! But, look, check out this Craigslist ad, which takes all of the line-waiting out of buying a new iPhone. It also takes all of the dough out of your pocket. Behold.

Ever since "hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets" in Iran, accusing the government of holding a fraudulent presidential election, social sites like Facebook and Twitter have played a wildly significant part in getting information out. (An aside: Do you see, you foolish and stubborn book / print fetishists, what the point of typing out silly little words is all about? That, in the end, it is just about communicating information? Communicated to as many sets of eyeballs as possible? Free of any arrogant literary stank? That your dusty 'zines stacked at Dog-Eared Books and your elite writers compounds speak to no one but you?) It seems the Iranian government found out about the world wide web, and then started blocking those sites in their country. As the Slog posted yesterday, proxies came to the rescue. That is to say, you could allow a n Iranian protester to connect to your computer instead, then they could use Twitter or whatever. (The protesters really could use it.)