As far as web sites go, there’s only one site I look at more than Google Reader. You’re on it right now. There’s nothing technically “wrong” with Google Reader, but when you look at it every five minutes, every day of your life, another RSS reader option is super exciting.
Enter Subpug. It’s a new RSS reader that just launched on Christmas and it’s pretty slick if I do say so myself. It’s aimed toward more of the light news reader, rather than someone like myself with thousands of subscriptions. Still, it gets the job done.
You can choose from certain pre-subscribed options like Gadgets, Music, Fashion, and even Geek Humor, or you can build your own/import your Google Reader OPML. The set up process takes all of three seconds and you’re ready to read, mainly because there’s no sign up or log in of any kind.
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Groupon has continued its (talent) acquisition spree with the recent purchase of a hot Silicon Valley startup before they even launched – and with extremely little fanfare.
We’ve learned that Campfire Labs, which was founded by ex-Googler Sakina Arsiwala (previously Head of International at YouTube) and her husband, social search technology expert Naveen Koorakula (previously at search companies like Inktomi, Yahoo and Picch), was quietly bought by Groupon. → Read More
Oh, how I love Reddit AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) posts. In almost all cases, the inherent down-to-earth nature of a community-driven interview leads the most interesting of people to open up in genuine, honest ways that they otherwise might not in a one-on-one interview. Plus, they’re almost always jammed with all sorts of interesting facts and stats.
Take this AMA with Khan Academy’s founder, Salman Khan, for example. Currently the top post on Reddit, Khan has spent the last two hours detailing everything from their recent growth and his workflow to the team’s plans for the future.
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A leaked Windows Phone roadmap made the rounds earlier today, and if its contents hold true, then Microsoft will be going big on hardware when it comes time for Windows Phone Apollo to take the stage. Even though the budget-friendly Tango update will hit devices first, Microsoft has apparently made the development of “superphones” a priority for next year. → Read More
Quick, how many pairs of chromosomes do you have?
If your mind just drew a blank — or an image of Ethan Hawke fiddling around with tweezers in GATTACA — then you probably aren’t alone.
The answer, of course, is 23 pairs, for a total of 46 chromosomes. And it’s what the name of well-funded genetic testing company 23andMe, which has raised some $52.6 million to date, refers to.
Despite the reference (which may not be obvious to most people), that name isn’t a bad one, as it makes an intimidating topic sound more friendly and accessible. But now the company has another option at its disposal that’s a lot more straightforward (and SEO friendly, no doubt): GeneticScreening.com.
As was first reported by DomainShane, 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki bought the domain for a mere $2200 on Sedo in the last two weeks. → Read More
If you’re a New York Times subscriber — or even if you’re not — you may have received that following email this morning, implying that you have cancelled your subscription. Many many people did, it’s all over the tweets.
Even though the email was sent from an address that had sent out legitimate emails in the past, “email.newyorktimes.com,” it wasn’t actually from the New York Times, as some of their more tech hipster reporters and their official Twitter account confirmed, “If you received an email today about canceling your NYT subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us.”
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It seems like December just can’t end soon enough for the folks at Verizon — we’re getting reports that Verizon’s data network is once again on the fritz.
Like both other times this month, not everyone is affected, but I can safely say my little part of New Jersey is without data. Users on Verizon’s support forums have reported similar issues in parts of Georgia, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, California, Virginia, Washington, Texas, and Maryland.
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M-Edge, a small Maryland-based company responsible for many popular Kindle cases, last week filed suit against Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, M-Edge claims that Amazon has repeatedly tried to change the terms of a contract put into place all the way back in 2009, and has bullied the accessory maker each time it fights back.
In the original contract, Amazon was to receive a 15 percent commission on all sales that go through Amazon’s Kindle store front. Apparently this wasn’t enough for Amazon, who later requested an increase in commission to 32 percent and threatened to remove M-Edge cases from the store if the Maryland-based company didn’t concede. → Read More
And that, friends, is what we call seizing the moment. (Meme-ment?) → Read More
We all know that not much happens in the week between Christmas and the New Year. But less well know is how little has happened culturally in the last twenty years. Indeed, so little has happened in this time (except, of course, for all the all-important caveat of technological change), according to the writer and broadcaster Kurt Andersen, that we are still listening to the same music, watching the same sort of tv shows, wearing the same style of clothing, driving the same kind of cars and living in the same kind of homes as we were in late Eighties. → Read More
For a young startup, sometimes you want any funding you can get. For an incubator program, sometimes any startup is what you’re looking for. Finding each other won’t necessarily make either one successful, but more pairings might help overall. Or so believes TechStars, which is launching what it intends to be the Common Application of the startup world.
Called Accelerato.rs, the application is a standard online form that asks founders basic investor-type questions, and lets them write one version then send it to any of the dozen or so participating programs. Funded by the entrepreneurship-focused Kauffman Foundation and under development since earlier this year, Accelerato.rs also lets startups track their acceptance status for each of the programs that they apply to.
“One of the big things that a lot of the accelerators are looking for are more applications,” TechStars cofounder David Cohen tells me. ” Y Combinator, Seedcamp, TechStars and some of the other big accelerators are getting thousands of applications but only accepting a few percentage points.” → Read More
One of my favorite services to pop in the second half of 2011 is “If This, Then That,” or if you’re really dorky, IFTTT. Among a small group of faithful nerds on Twitter, IFTTT is a simple yet powerful service that generates warm, fuzzy feelings among those who are hooked. Based in San Francisco, the company has received funding from Betaworks and is closing out 2011 with momentum.
Briefly, IFTTT is a service that allows users to set a number of alerts, or “tasks,” that will “trigger” a preset function based on what you set. For example, you can set IFTTT to send you an email every time a specific user on Twitter sends a tweet or have a copy of every Instagram photo you snap to be automatically sent to your Dropbox, which I wish I would’ve set before the last iOS5 update wiped clean two months of my pictures. The different permutations of “triggers” you can set are sort of endless. To help you wade through them, you can browse different IFTTT “recipes” and browse this thread on Quora. → Read More
Which countries really, really love Facebook? If you guessed the U.S., you would be somewhat right – this country ranks #7 on Pingdom’s new list of countries comparing the number of Facebook users as percentages of the population.
To be clear, we’re not talking about raw number of Facebook users. The U.S. is still #1 there. This is ranking countries by what percentage of the population (online and total) is on Facebook. Or, more simply put, it’s looking at how popular Facebook is in that country.
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If you didn’t get everything you wanted this holiday and still have a few thousand left over, why not blow it on a box that you put next to your stereo that literally does nothing for the circuitry inside? This box by Less Loss is a “shield” that keeps “noise” out of your stereo. It costs (I’m not making this up) $1,323.
The box, when paired with $700 RCA cables, promises to reduce noise in your stereo equipment and, as one reviewer noted, it will cause your body to spasm wildly. → Read More
While bookstores are reporting increased sales this month, I foresee a time when “Staff Picks” at the local booke shoppe will soon be replaced by recommendation engines that tell you what ebook to pick up next.
Services like Amazon’s own recommendation engine and smaller guys like Booklamp all promise to let you know what tome to crack after you finish the Stephen King epic but GoodReads adds a bit of value-add to the burgeoning self-publishing movement.
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This is smart: a new alarm clock application for the iPhone and Android wakes you earlier if it snowed last night. Called simply, “Winter Wake-Up,” the app lets you configure its settings to wake you up earlier than your scheduled alarm depending on weather conditions, with separate settings for both “Frost” and “Snow.”
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The Gillmor Gang – Paul Greenberg, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor – are recording live at 8am PT.
Recording has concluded. → Read More
comScore just released new numbers on U.S. online holiday spending for the season-to-date, and found that consumers continued to shop online in record numbers. For the first 56 days of the November-December 2011 holiday season, $35.3 billion was spent online – an increase of 15% over the corresponding days last year, and a new record.
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Tech-savvy fashionistas finally have a reason to rejoice with the official release of LG’s Prada 3.0 handset. Namely, it’s the first time a in a long while that the company’s fashion phones aren’t completely outclassed by the competition.
When I say outclassed, I’m referring strictly to performance. With it’s 4.3-inch WVGA NOVA display, 1 GHz dual-core processor, and 8-megapixel camera, the Prada 3.0 is a solid little package, but one that’s a bit lacking considering its premium price tag.
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Marketing technology company Fiksu tracked the impact of the iPhone 4S on iPhone app downloads and found that download volume of the top 200 free apps increased 15% from October’s previous record high of 4.91 million daily downloads. In November, the firm’s “App Store Competitive Index,” which measures this trend, peaked at 5.65 million downloads per day – the first time it has topped the 5 million mark. That’s an increase of 83% over November of last year.
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