Dylan’s Desk: Is it time to occupy Silicon Valley?

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In the past four weeks, “Occupy” protests have spread from Wall Street to San Francisco to nearly every major city in the U.S. and many others around the world.

I’ve been trying to figure out the movement’s relevance to Silicon Valley and the tech industry in general. Why aren’t people occupying Sand Hill Road, the … Continue Reading

Web 2.0: MC Hammer reveals deep search product WireDoo

Is there something wrong with search? There are many answers to that question, and rapper M.C. Hammer took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit with his own, WiredDoo, a deep search solution. With the tagline, “Search once, see what’s related,” Hammer said that with any product there is always room for improvement, so there’s nothing wrong with today’s search.

As an example, Hammer walked through a slide deck with a real estate search for … Continue Reading

Motorola Droid Razr will get Ice Cream Sandwich update in early 2012

Motorola must have felt a little left out yesterday when it launched its slick-looking Droid Razr smartphone because Samsung launched an even bigger phone with the newest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, later the same day. Not unexpectedly, Motorola said it has plans in place to update the Razr to Android 4.0 by early 2012.

Google launched Android Ice Cream Sandwich last night in Hong Kong alongside the much-anticipated Samsung Galaxy Nexus (formerly Nexus … Continue Reading

Aol’s new online radio service is powered by pros, not your friends

Aol Radio has relaunched. With all the buzz around super-social music apps like Spotify and Turntable.fm, you’d think the company would have jumped on that trendy bandwagon. But the new Aol Radio will be powered by Slacker Radio. While there will be some social integrations in a few months, social media is not a primary source of data for an programmatic, algorithmic approach to serving up songs.

In a chat this morning with Slacker CEO … Continue Reading

One more thing: Steve Jobs was working on his next product the day before his death

Steve Jobs was well-known for his relentless energy, firing off emails until late at night. Now we know that dedication to work continued right up until the day before he died.

According to Softbank chief executive Masayoshi Son, whose company distributes the iPhone in Japan, Jobs made a call to current Apple chief executive Tim Cook October 4th, the day of the iPhone 4S launch. He wanted to talk products.

Son’s comments, made in a … Continue Reading

Google Analytics can visualize traffic data for web sites

Google has created “flow visualization” tools for its analytics service so that web site owners can better understand the flow of traffic into their sites, the company announced today.

Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of ads at Google, announced the addition to Google Analytics at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

“You can understand your data and dive in,” she said. “You can see how users are moving across your site with it.”

As … Continue Reading

Web security for dummies: Google dives into privacy with “Good to Know” center

Concerned about cookies? Disturbed over data? Stymied on safety? Google’s coming to your rescue.

Google has taken a proactive stance on privacy with its Good to Know resource center, which features information on personal safety and how your data is used on the web.

Normal end users are becoming more and more concerned about privacy and security of web browsing, especially when it comes to companies tracking their activity online.

Google’s Good to Know pages … Continue Reading

In Tesla vs. Top Gear, car maker loses libel case

A UK high court today ruled that it would not uphold the libel claims brought against the BBC TV show TopGear by car maker Telsa. For those of you not familiar with TopGear, it features a trio of badly dressed men of a certain age engaged in a series of ever more zany challenges involving cars.

The two outfits have been in a standoff since earlier this year when Telsa sued for libel and malicious … Continue Reading

Now you can tell Siri to Remember the Milk on the iPhone 4S

Task management service Remember the Milk has just unveiled a method to let users add tasks with the iPhone 4S’s Siri virtual assistant — a first for a third-party service.

Siri currently works with data from Yelp and the knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, but developers are eagerly anticipating the chance to make their own services Siri compatible.

RTM is apparently using a simple workaround to take advantage of Siri: It involves creating a new CalDav … Continue Reading

Console owners are consuming more and more downloadable content (exclusive)

Video game console owners are purchasing more and more downloadable content, according to a survey by market analyst firm EER.

More than 51 percent of owners of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have purchased downloadable content (DLC), or games such as expansion packs or indie games that can be downloaded in digital form over the internet to a console, in the past 12 months. That compares to 40 percent in 2010 and 34 percent … Continue Reading

Crowdpark raises $6M for social betting games

Crowdpark has raised $6 million for its social betting games business, it said today. Will Netflix’s CEO get fired? Will the economy tank in 2012? Will Mitt Romney snag the Republican presidential nomination? All of these topics are fair game for Crowdpark’s “dynamic betting” platform, where you can make wagers — with virtual currency — on just about anything.

“It basically works like a stock market, and we think it’s a game changer,” said Ingo … Continue Reading

Google Music Store coming soon and will “have a little twist”

Google is “close” to launching its own MP3 music store, Android head Andy Rubin said today. The company has been in talks to offer a music store for some time, but Rubin shed a little more light on the upcoming service today at the AsiaD conference.

Update: We’ve just learned what that “little twist” is: peer-to-peer file sharing for songs, and it’s all legal.

Google couldn’t launch a full-service music offering earlier, so it launched … Continue Reading

Fast-talking internet sage Mary Meeker predicts a mobile revolution — yet again (video)

Mary Meeker knows how to pack a lot of facts into a 66-slide PowerPoint deck. Fortunately, the Kleiner Perkins partner is also quite good at decipering what all of those facts mean for our mobile computing future.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday, Meeker returned to talk about internet trends at a pace that was faster than I could type. So I recorded her talk on video (see below).

Her first … Continue Reading

Game investments are on track to double fundings of 2010

Investments in game companies have accelerated once again, according to a study of third quarter game investments and acquisitions by Digi-Capital, a boutique game investment bank in London. If the current trend continues, game startups could raise double this year what they raised in 2010.

“Even though Q3 2011 has just finished, global games investment so far this year is pushing towards double that of 2010, and global games mergers and acquisitions are more than … Continue Reading

Samsung Galaxy Nexus was built to avoid more Apple patent disputes

If I were Samsung, I’d be tired of Apple’s patent complaints, too. Samsung mobile head JK Shin has admitted that with its new Galaxy Nexus Android phone, the company took great pains to avoid more legal attacks from Apple, Yonhap News reports.

“Now we will avoid everything we can and take patents very seriously,” he told reporters last night, seemingly hinting that Samsung was a bit carefree with intellectual property concerns previously. “We will see … Continue Reading

OwnLocal nabs new funding from Automattic to resurrect newspaper revenues

Many local newspapers may be teetering on the edge of death, but web publishing service OwnLocal doesn’t think they’ll be meeting their maker anytime soon. The company has just nabbed an undisclosed round of funding to help traditional paper newspapers boost their income.

OwnLocal provides a variety of white-label software services to help newspapers increase their advertising revenues. The new funding was led by WordPress developer Automattic, with participation from 500 Startups, Justin Kitch and … Continue Reading

Dolphin Browser on Android updated with bookmark sync and Webzine enhancements

Mobotap’s Dolphin Browser has updated its powerful Android app to version 7.0 with new features that let users sync settings and bookmarks as well as give better access to frequently visited sites with its Webzine feature.

The Dolphin Browser recently made headlines by finally making its way over to the iPhone and iPad, but it humbly started as a faster and better functioning alternative to the Android browser. And while the stock Android browser has … Continue Reading

LinkedIn launches new headhunting-like service for job recruiters

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals is launching a new service called Talent Pipeline that focuses on helping job recruiters find and place job seekers, the company announced Tuesday at its Talent Connect customer event in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The recruitment process used by many recruiters of major companies involves watching several social media activity feeds for talent leads, gathering resumes from multiple job board services and communicating with potential hires. The idea behind Talent … Continue Reading

Web 2.0 Summit: The open Web is a dance of despots of democracies

The future of the open Internet is a delicate dance being played out between democratic governments and despots alike.

This and other surprising nuggets were part of the talk delivered by  Danny Weitzner, deputy CTO of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, at the Web 2.0 Summit today.

As we’ve seen with the Arab Spring, and the growing movement known as Occupy Wall Street, the Internet is an unparalleled tool for organizing … Continue Reading