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Layoffs at Palm come in OS development
A anonymous tipster tells us Palm will lay off 250 employees, confirming our previous report. "The biggest cuts are from OS development," our source says. "[SVP Mark] Bercow wants the OS sold by April or worst case scenario — abandoned." Which seems strange, considering Palm went through some gymnastics just to get is old operating system back from the Japanese company, Access, which had bought it. The rumor, however, jibes with the Wall Street Journal's report last week on former Apple exec and current Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein's plans for the company. More »
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Google tries search design AOL discarded
Here are the dangers of imitation: Google has rolled out a new search results page. When I search for vitamin water, I get video and products results in the right-hand sidebar. This is a variation on AOL's old FullView search results — a design AOL labored over and then discarded in favor of blindly copying Google. The design is moderately helpful for me, as I was trying to find an online distributor for Vitaminwater. Not all of my colleagues see the new results, so Google may be slowly rolling this out from datacenter to datacenter. As for AOL? Having abandoned the idea of innovation in search, it now finds itself needing to copy Google just to get back to where it started. Full screenshot is below the jump. More »
2:43 PM on Wed Dec 12 2007
By Jordan Golson
18,592 views,
5 comments
Latest by IdeasOfOrder: As the principle architect of AOL's FullView product I think its important to understand that its primary purpose was always to correlate rich structured vertical content with algorithmic search results. The approach was a logical even obvious attempt for AOL to more »
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Larry and Lucy didn't get married Saturday
Yesterday was a beautiful day in the British Virgin Islands, as you can see from this sunset snap submitted to us. And strangely quiet. That's because, we hear from a source working the festivities, Larry Page and Lucy Southworth didn't get married. More »
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Mark Zuckerberg cashes out?
Venture capital's ancien régime is on the verge of being overturned. We hear Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, may have cashed out — before an IPO, before a sale, and before his investors. In the company's recent financing round, insiders believe, he sold about $40 million worth of stock. A tiny portion of his $5 billion stake, but in cash rather than on paper, and "enough that he never has to think about money for the rest of his life," says a person made privy to details of the sale. On the Sand Hill Road of old, this is simply not how things are done. More »
10:58 PM on Fri Dec 7 2007
By Owen Thomas
11,207 views,
18 comments
Latest by Valleywag confession: We're frigtards on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Nick Denton, who still claims he's the world's greatest investigative journalist even though he twice incorrectly identified Fake Steve and swore both times he had me dead to rights, is determined to make a go of this Valleywag gossip blog. more »
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Yahoo has launched, in an invitation-only trial, MyM, a "social messaging" service. How many social networks does one company need? Nowhere are Yahoo's scattershot efforts more evident than in this field. On top of Yahoo Mash, Yahoo 360, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and — if you believe Yahoo president Sue Decker — Yahoo Mail, you can now add MyM to the list.
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Yahoo to launch MyM "social messaging" site
Yahoo has launched, in an invitation-only trial, MyM, a "social messaging" service. How many social networks does one company need? Nowhere are Yahoo's scattershot efforts more evident than in this field. On top of Yahoo Mash, Yahoo 360, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and — if you believe Yahoo president Sue Decker — Yahoo Mail, you can now add MyM to the list.
More »
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Snooping on user profiles isn't the only special privilege Facebook employees have. They also get to test the site's latest features. Like news feed voting. Above is a mockup of my news feed as a Facebooker would see it, based on real screenshots from an inside source. (Showing a screenshot of his actual news feed would out my source to Facebook management, I fear.) Notice the "plus" and "minus" buttons? Those are new. Not yet available to the public, those will allow users of the social network to vote on items that appear in their news feeds. The news feed is a stream of friends' activities on the site, filtered by Facebook's algorithms which try to predict what you'll find interesting. Voting means users will have active input into those algorithms. If you're thinking "cute feature," think again. Here's why Facebook's voting-rights move is worth watching.
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Facebook to let users vote on news feed
Snooping on user profiles isn't the only special privilege Facebook employees have. They also get to test the site's latest features. Like news feed voting. Above is a mockup of my news feed as a Facebooker would see it, based on real screenshots from an inside source. (Showing a screenshot of his actual news feed would out my source to Facebook management, I fear.) Notice the "plus" and "minus" buttons? Those are new. Not yet available to the public, those will allow users of the social network to vote on items that appear in their news feeds. The news feed is a stream of friends' activities on the site, filtered by Facebook's algorithms which try to predict what you'll find interesting. Voting means users will have active input into those algorithms. If you're thinking "cute feature," think again. Here's why Facebook's voting-rights move is worth watching.
More »
10:32 AM on Fri Nov 9 2007
By Owen Thomas
7,273 views,
4 comments
Latest by Owen Thomas: @DaveMcClure500Hats: Yes, as we noted. more »
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"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.
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Facebook employees know what profiles you look at
"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.
More »
1:00 PM on Sat Oct 27 2007
By Nick Douglas
178,733 views,
72 comments
Latest by ceokhan: I am not surprised at all... This is just normal behavior from social networ sites. In the name of freedom, anything is possible! @orioles: That is sooo strange! I look at my girlfirend's page like 50 times a day! I more »
