Digg just can’t get a break. On the heels of news that the company had to lay off 37% of its staff and saw the departures of both its CRO and CFO, last night a report surfaced alleging that Digg was gaming its own system, ostensibly to favor certain partners. If true, this would have further undermined user trust in the site’s democratic voting system, and the evidence was convincing that something out of the ordinary was going on. Now Digg has just responded to this accusation with a blog post that boils down to, “Yes, we do have fake accounts voting up stories, but they’re for testing purposes”. Here’s a relevant excerpt:
Before doing that, I’m going to address a story submitted to Digg that called out activity of a number of our internal test accounts. As with many sites, we continuously run tests on the site to expose vulnerabilities in our own security. In this case, we did have a number of our internal test accounts Digging content from the Upcoming section of the site. → Read More
A few weeks ago we saw more than a few Medal of Honor-theme accessories. Now that we’re rapidly approaching the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops we can expect to see Black Ops accessories, too. First up: KontrolFreek’s Limited Edition FPS Freek Prestige. It’s basically a raised texture that you put on your PS3 or 360 control stick to give you a better handle of the situation. That, or you can use a mouse and keyboard like a grown-up. → Read More
Hot on the heels of their first mechanical-key keyboard, the Black Widow, Razer has announced an MMO-orientated model they call the Anansi, named after the spider god of many tricks. That seems appropriate given its intended use: quick access to a huge amount of macros. → Read More
Google TV is now out there in the wild. There’s no indication of how it’s selling just yet, but my hunch is that like early Android, it may be some time before sales really take off. That shouldn’t be too surprising considering that the platform is built on top of Android. But there aren’t a lot of apps and sites yet that are tailored for these new devices. They need more. And they know the way to get them. Free giveaways!
As they’ve announced on their Google TV blog today, the search giant is giving away 10,000 Google TV units to developers. Yes, 10,000. → Read More
Apple raised the bar on ultra-portable computers with the latest MacBook Air. There’s no questioning that. Steve Jobs & Co. took the already-thin MacBook Air and shrunk down both its physical size and price tag. Win win, right?
Well, yeah, but the MacBook Air isn’t for everyone. Good thing the PC world has been doing the ultra-portable thing just as long as Apple and offers some quality alternatives. Sure, there really isn’t one model that soundly beats the new MacBook Air in every category, but the same can be said about the Air versus the five computers listed after the jump. → Read More
When AOL bought us a month ago, we were promised a lot of things: autonomy, resources, inappropriately long corporate meetings, and fame. So far, AOL has come through on the first three. But fame, by which I mean homepage love on aol.com, had thus far eluded us. But today that changed. Boy did it ever.
Yesterday, we got word from our corporate overlords that they were likely to test a link to one of our stories on their homepage in the near future. Today, when scanning our referrer logs, we noticed something interesting. A massively huge tidal wave of traffic from aol.com. → Read More
The Android-powered CherryPad was supposed to amaze us all with its amazing features and low, low price of $188. That said, folks who ordered a CherryPad probably haven’t seen it yet even though news of the device first appeared in September and most CherryPads should have shipped already. One reader, WCS, wrote us saying that he expected his pad to ship on October 15. That date rolled by and on October 20 he received a “tracking number” that tracks no existing package in the UPS, Fedex, DHL, or USPS databases. And then he waited. And waited. And waited. He writes: The Cherrypal “Support” forum (if you can call it that: replies to questions are not permitted, except by the Administrator, and it appears to actually be a polling platform) is increasingly showing posts from people who have received neither their Cherrypad nor their tracking number. In response, the Administrator claims the delay was caused by a typhoon in the Philippines and that everything is fine and users in California and Italy have received their units. Oh, and the “forum” cleverly substitutes the word “issue” when one types “scam”. → Read More
Well, it was fun while it lasted. Just two hours ago, we declared the approval of iDOS (a DOS emulator for iOS) a Halloween Miracle. Really — it was on par with an appearance from the Great Pumpkin, or all of the candy corn in the world suddenly becoming edible. Cue the Sad Trombone: Apple just pulled it. → Read More
“Apple, Inc. (AAPL) in negotiations to acquire Spotify,” read the tip that came in yesterday via email from an anonymous source. Most tips are just outright false, but we dug into this one a little bit.
Here’s what we heard – Apple and Spotify are in on-again, off-again discussions about an acquisition, but at best it’s very early in the process. No firm price has been offered, no term sheet tabled. Still, it’s interesting that the two are talking.
But way more interesting is this – Last year, around the time that Apple acquired music service Lala, Google and Spotify were deep in acquisition discussions, says a source with knowledge of the negotiations. → Read More
Google announced today that it intends to give away $5 million dollars to organizations trying to find innovative ways to continue the practice of Journalism. Great. Anything that even vaguely creates more jobs for writers is okay in my book, especially when I look at my tally of how many times you guys say I should be fired.
Unfairly blamed for the decline of media by Rupert Murdoch and his ilk, perhaps the higher ups at Google feel bad about their status as scapegoat for the Internet’s effect on the news industry and that’s why they’re feeling so generous? → Read More
The music industry lawyers just put another notch on their wall. After ten years of existence, peer-to-peer music sharing service LimeWire is joining Napster, Kazaa, and all the rest. It will abide by a court-ordered injunction today and begin to disable the file-sharing and music-searching features of its P2P software. Years of legal battles and the prospects of paying astronomical fines finally did the service in. We are putting it in the deadpool.
The company, LimeCompany, will soldier on. Transitioning to a music store or legal streaming music service, however, will be tough. It fought a good fight, and lasted longer than most other P2P services. Partly that was because there was usually a bigger P2P sharing service freaking out the music industry. Once the lawyers got rid of those, they finally got around to LimeWire. → Read More
A guide for watch gifts this holiday season from a watch expert. Twelve categories and sixty watches for all budgets, with prices, and links to more information. It is the definitive place to start when interested in buying a new timepieces for yourself or others this year. → Read More
It’s October 26, so that means two things: one, Fable III has been released (to solid scores), and two, the zombified DLC for Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare, has also been released. Here’s the launch trailer. → Read More
A small Turkish startup called lunar technologies has raised $1 million for one of its ventures, Trend.ly, managing director Ercan Yaris tells me. The money comes from undisclosed angel investors, two of them partners in one of the biggest telecom companies in Turkey.
Trend.ly is a very basic site any way you look at it. Visitors can go to the site to enter any two-element poll (live examples: love vs. sex and Jessica Biel vs. Scarlett Johansson) and have the community vote on them by ‘liking’ one of the other.
Then again, the site has been live for less than 2 months now. Yes, that’s two months. → Read More
Greenpeace‘s latest Guide to Greener Electronics shows that great progress in greenification has been made by some companies, but that other companies are still lagging behind. Philips and HP are applauded for their efforts, while Microsoft and Toshiba have been called out for either backtracking on their promises or misleading the public “about its commitments” to making green products. → Read More
The US solar market took another step forward this week with the federal government’s approval of Solar Millennium’s plan to build a massive thermal power station in Blythe, California. Located between Phoenix and Los Angeles in the arid Palo Verde Valley, this thinly populated city will soon be home to the world’s largest solar project.
Solar Millennium, a German firm, plans to build four plants on the expansive property with a total capacity of 1,000 megawatts— which is roughly on par with the country’s current total solar capacity. With 1,000 MW at completion, the station would be able to power more than 300,000 homes. The hope, the company says, is to start supplying the grid with electricity by 2013.
Construction is set to start later this year. → Read More
With the extremely high house prices and rents in certain parts of the UK, particularly in cities like London, flatsharing is a popular alternative even if it often means moving in with total strangers. One of the most popular sites to address this need is ten year veteran Easyroommate.co.uk, and today it launches on iPhone.
The idea is pretty simple: users can survey the area that they’d like to move into, using the Easyroommate app on their iPhone to locate potential flatshares in the vicinity. Details of available flatshare offers are displayed on a map of the local area, along with contact details (phone number or email), making it possible to arrange a viewing without the need to be in front of a PC. → Read More
To the moon, Alice! Romain Jerome, makers of the DNA series of fancy watches (you probably remember the Titantic DNA) has created a goofy-looking pen to commemorate Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing. Sadly, they missed the actual anniversary so they’re releasing it right now for all you space cadets out there. The pen is made of “moon dust” and silver along with tiny bits of the Apollo II, like a moon-dust poutine. The press release, apparently written by a very nervous robot, is all but unreadable and the pen is probably too expensive for mere earth men to afford. → Read More
This past June, we noted that Twitter had zoomed past 200 employees — basically doubling in just six months. The rapid hiring pace continues at the startup, though not quite as quickly. The company has just hired their 300th employee a tweet confirms today.
And with that growth comes the need to expand. As we noted back in September, Twitter confirmed that at some point relatively soon they’d likely have to look at new office options. That search is getting close to coming up with a new place, we’ve heard. And they’re very likely to stay in the SoMa district of San Francisco. For their part, Twitter will only say they have “no updates on this right now“. → Read More
Last week San Francisco car matching startup UberCab was served a cease and desist order by the city of San Francisco because it did not have taxi licenses or taxi insurance and goes beyond the normal duties of a limo service by picking people up right away.
As UberCab (which has now changed its name to Uber) served primarily Silicon Valley elite, there is much Internet debate over whether this is another case of “Innovation vs. Establishment” or a startup just straight up breaking the law. → Read More
