Rise in Tech Investment Could Signal Economic Recovery

Venture Capital investments were up 13% in Q1 of 2010 does this signal a recovery? I say No. Tech has been wrong before, remember the tech bubble of the 1990’s…

http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/vc-recovery-2/

Youtube Gets a New Video Player

I personally like the new player, check it out for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/user/TrafficIsGold

More from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/youtube-new-player/

Or just see it in action: http://www.youtube.com/user/TrafficIsGold

Will Facebook’s Like replace Google’s Links

Not sure but I just added a like button on my site using a wordpress plugin. Took all of 2 minutes! See it in action at the top of this post:

Or read more over at CNN http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/29/cashmore.google.facebook/

New Interesting Twitter Stats

• African Americans account for 25% of the Twitter population, which is double the percentage of African Americans living in the U.S.
• Twitter users are more likely to live in higher income households.
• Four in 10 Twitter users (39%) own three or more computers.
• Twitter users are three times more likely to follow brands on Twitter than on other social networking sites.
• Less than half of regular Twitter users post updates (47%), although 70% of these same Twitter users do post status updates to other social networking services like Facebook.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/twitter-usage-america/

Gowalla Beats Foursquare to the iPad

Get the full scoop from the folks at TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/29/gowalla-ipad/

Sponsor: http://www.checkindeals.com/

Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies Buys IQC

$187.5 million later and Digital Sky is the proud owner of IQC?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/04/dst-aol-icq.html

New iphone coming in June

Apple should announce the new iphone during the June 7 -11 Apple dev conference in S.F.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/28/new.iphone.wwdc/index.html

World Cup Goes 3D

For the first time…

“Soccer’s world governing body FIFA has announced that 25 matches will be broadcast in 3D, with seven cameras at each of five grounds in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. The 2D broadcasts will require 32 cameras at each stadium.”

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/football/04/28/football.world.cup.3D/index.html

Facebook is a Popular Search Term

According to Hitwise “Facebook” was the most searched term in March: http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/search-terms-mar-10/

HP to Acquire Palm

Palm sells to HP for 1.2 Billion

http://mashable.com/2010/04/28/hp-acquires-palm/

Schools are Turning to Google Apps

“Today, the entire public school system of Oregon will embrace Google Apps. 400,000 Students, teachers, and administrators will have access to a common e-mail and chat system, cloud-based collaboration tools, and a robust multimedia streaming service.”

Two years ago I made the switch over to Google apps for my business email provider.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/28/schools-google-apps/

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RIM shows off BlackBerry 6 on video

At the WES 2010 Blackberry releases a teaser video of the Blackberry 6 operating System:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/27/rim-shows-off-blackberry-6-on-video/

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/27/blackberry-os-6-0-pinned-for-summer-release-upgrades-possible/

Television Takes over Top Spot on Facebook Fan Pages

The Family Guy takes the number one spot.

Be sure to “Like” the Traffic is Gold Facebook page.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/04/27/television-takes-over-our-list-of-top-20-facebook-pages

GetGlue links Web resources for movies, books and music together

Great idea and service for movie lovers!

“If you’re looking at data for “The Godfather” on IMdB, GetGlue will show a trailer on YouTube and reviews on other sites. The application pulls from more than 300 popular websites.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/04/getglue.html

China already has iPad knock offs

Ipads international launch is not until the end of May, but don’t tell China that. China is already selling a cheaper version (counterfeit version) of the ipad ($410 USD).

http://mashable.com/2010/04/26/cheaper-ipad-knock-offs-thrive-in-china/

Read a great quote today: “You Can’t Be Scared of Failure. You’re Already Failing” This was geared toward new businesses and start ups.

Ipad Gets Facebook Friendly Video

So when will Facebbok support video via the iphone app?

http://mashable.com/2010/04/27/facebook-ipad-video/

Clean out your Twitter Account

Mashable post some great tools to help clean up your Twitter account. I’ve use Twitter Karma, but once you get past 5k followers the system was unusable (at least it was that way 1 year ago).

http://mashable.com/2010/04/26/twitter-organize/

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Which is Better: Buying Apple Products, or Buying Apple Stock?

This is a very interesting idea.  In 1997, if you had NOT bought the new “Apple PowerBook G3 250” and put the $5,700 in Apple stock, your Apple Stock would now be worth $330563.38!!!!

Check out this grid for many more examples: http://www.kyleconroy.com/apple-stock.php

http://mashable.com/2010/04/26/apple-products-apple-stock/

The Nook Passes the Kindle in Sales

More bad news at Amazon… First the ipad release. Now the Nook pass the Kindle in Sales for the month of March.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/26/nook-passes-kindle-sales-in-march/

Sony To stop Making Floppy Discs

A 30 year old product, will come to an end March of next year. Not really a big deal. But similar to the end of the 8 track.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/26/sony-to-stop-manufacturing-floppy-discs-after-30-years/

World Cup to drive record social media traffic

Football (Soccer) the World’s biggest sport will be covered in depth by the World’s largest social networking site. If you’re a fan of the beautiful game, this World Cup will be awesome!

The games start (as of today): 45 days, 22 hours, 15 minutes

“FIFA has its own social-networking service on FIFA.com — called “The Club” — which has 1.6 million members, but the organization is about to make a bigger push into social media.”

For those of us fans who will not make it to the games in South Africa, this will be the best World Cup for us to follow.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/football/04/26/football.world.cup.social/index.html

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How Facebook won the web

Pete Cashmore of Mashable discusses the impact of facebook’s new “like” button.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/22/facebook.won.the.web.cashmore/index.html

Are the Facebook “Like” buttons evil?

Techcrunch covers the tech communities reactin. “The Open Graph is open only in name.”

TC’s take on the whole issue: “A lot of this boils down to a nerd fight that Zuckerberg is likely to win.” (Classic TC style!)

How To Turn an iPad Into an iPad 3G

Tiger Woods and EA Sports giving away $10K in cash (facebook)

Tiger has enetered the world of virtual currency. Here’s the deal, for every friend that signs up for the online version of the PGA tour, they get $10,000 in game currency.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/22/tiger-woods-virtual-currency/

Amazon and Microsoft report large profits

Microsoft’s Income Rises 35%, Driven by Sales of Windows 7
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/technology/23soft.html

Profit Rose 68% at Amazon, Topping Analysts’ Forecasts
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/technology/23amazon.html

Facebook or Microsoft to acquire Foursquare?

Techcrunch is repoeting talks between the companies. This should be interesting. Will the CEO Dennis Crowley sell or try and grow this thing big?

Foursquare hits 1 million users

Some lucky chap from Escondido California secured the 1 million user slot.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/foursquare-one-million-users/

Also it looks like Foursquare is rolling out more business tools. Great start at earning your bubble $100 million valuation!

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/foursquare-business-friendly/

Don’t count out StumbleUpon as a large Traffic Source.

According to StatCounter’s GlobalStats research arm, StumbleUpon represents 25% of social media traffic, second only to facebbok.

Source TC: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/statcounter-facebook-stumbleupon-generate-more-traffic-than-twitter/

Source Statcounter: http://gs.statcounter.com/#social_media-ww-monthly-200903-201003

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