Roundup: PG&E installs smart meters, Stewart cows Cramer, the market seesaws and more
MySpace Events get an upgrade — The network’s new event invite system takes more advantage of users’ social circles. TechCrunch has more.
PG&E smart meters get the green light — The utility will spend $467 million in taxpayer money to install the meters in California homes. The San Jose Mercury News has the story.
Student VC firms feel the burn — The downturn has dried up cash for small university-based venture firms run by students, just like their professional counterparts,… Continue Reading
Twingly launches microblog search — Twitter search with a sprinkle of Jaiku and a dash of Identi.ca
Blog search tool Twingly’s new microblog search, as a concept, makes a lot of sense. You enter a keyword in one search box and get results from services like Twitter, Jaiku and Identi.ca. But in practice there’s a problem — and it’s not Twingly’s problem — it’s every service besides Twitter’s problem: Twitter overwhelms the results.
You see, Twitter is much more popular than any of the other services being indexed, so if I do a… Continue Reading
Google’s new year’s revolution: Six products slashed or maimed
Well, Google picked a good day to announce layoffs and kill a bunch of products. While everyone is busy reading about Apple chief executive Steve Jobs’ leave of absence for health related issues, Google has more or less killed six of its products. Let’s survey the damage, shall we?
Dodgeball
First up, Dodgeball, a service close to the hearts of many of San Francisco’s tech elites (but few others) is being shut down. Dodgeball is a mobile… Continue Reading
Jaiku comes back with a new TOS and unlimited invites
The life-streaming site Jaiku has come back online after being down the entire weekend and the first part of this week while it moved to Google datacenters. While the look and feel of the service are exactly the same as before it went down, users were greeted with a shiny new terms of service (TOS) agreement to accept. The big news though is that now users have unlimited invites to send out.
Almost immediately after purchasing… Continue Reading
Google finally ready to take Jaiku seriously?
When Google bought Jaiku in October of last year, there was some thought that it would overtake Twitter as the go-to lifestreaming/status update site of choice on the Internet. Instead, Google completely and utterly neglected the service and gave its users a product that ranged from laughably inconsistent to unusable. But there’s a sign that’s about to change.
If you try to visit the Jaiku site right now, you’ll be greeted by a bird notifying you:… Continue Reading
Roundup: Silicon Valley hot in mobile, Jaiku, LinkedIn, IAC, more
Here’s the action that you missed over Thanksgiving break:
1. Silicon Valley becoming mobile innovation hub
2. Why Google bought Jaiku
3. LinkedIn drawing suitors?
4. IAC to spend $100M in China
5. NeoEdge launches ad network for casual games
6. Feds may subsidize broadband access
Silicon Valley becoming mobile innovation hub — Despite the U.S. being the laughing stock of the world for its backward mobile networks, Silicon Valley is becoming a center for mobile innovation anyway. Nokia, the large Finnish… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo’s Chinese stake, AT&T spectrum acquisition, Facebook app fund and more
Plenty of moves by big companies in today’s action:
1) Yahoo expands stake in Chinese search portal
2) AT&T buys up $2.5 billion worth of 700mhz spectrum
3) Facebooks FBfund chucks initial applications
4) Twitter’s first attempts to monetize
5) More details on Google’s plans for Orkut
6) E.ON blows another $1.4 billion into wind power
7) Vlaze may be today’s MTV
Yahoo expands stake in Chinese search portal Alibaba – As China’s Alibaba.com prepares to go public next week, Yahoo has invested… Continue Reading
Google buys Jaiku, Twitter losing ground
Jaiku, the popular service that lets you blast short blog updates to friends about you’re doing, has been snapped up by Google for an undisclosed amount.
Jaiku, based in Helsinki, Finland, has been a fierce rival to Twitter, a San Francisco company that is a favorite among the Silicon Valley digerati. During the summer, Jaiku picked up users almost as quickly as Twitter lost them, leaving the latter with only a marginal lead over Jaiku, according… Continue Reading