It’s 10pm, do you know where your data is?

With the advent of OAuth, an open standard for authorization, you can easily sign up for new services and apps simply by relying on your Facebook and Google profiles. But that simplicity also makes it easy to give total strangers a window into our lives, as Wired’s Andy Baio explains in a recent post.

Instead of filling out a lot of forms and trying to remember a new password, you can just rely on the … Continue Reading

Path-ological: In 2010, founder Dave Morin said Path never stored user data

It’s the privacy snafu that will not die. A day after a developer discovered that mobile social network Path was storing users’ entire address books on its servers, the startup seemed to have defused the incident by apologizing and deleting all the personal data it had stored.

But now Gawker’s Ryan Tate has published an email he got from Path CEO Dave Morin back in 2010 in which the CEO acknowledges that his company looks … Continue Reading

Fighting obscurity, Wolfram Alpha set to launch pro product with consumer appeal

Apple’s robotic personal assistant has helped show off the sexy side of computational search engine Wolfram Alpha. Now Wolfram is hoping that an upcoming release can breathe even more life into its less-than-wildly-popular search tool.

Three year-old Wolfram Alpha is set to launch a $4.99 per month ($2.99 for students) premium offering Wednesday replete with new features. But, more importantly, it’s finally making an effort to appeal to the average Joes and Janes of the … Continue Reading

Two Facebook graphs Wall Street analysts and investors should ignore

Wall Street likes data. Annual reports and quarterly reports move markets. If Wall Street could access daily data on the ins-and-outs of a company, it would. Hedge funds have been known to use analysis of satellite imagery of Wal-Mart parking lots to try to get a jump on the markets.

That micro level of analysis isn’t going to be very helpful in predicting Facebook’s future. For example, here are two of the types of charts … Continue Reading

Thompson: Yahoo isn’t for sale; will focus on data to improve services

Newly appointed Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson made it clear in a conference call with analysts this morning that the company plans to use its data to regain dominance for its media and digital service businesses.

Previously, critics questioned Yahoo’s ability to challenge its rivals and regain market share that was lost over the last few years — leading to lots of speculation about the company’s future. Some reports indicated that Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang was … Continue Reading

Verizon suffers yet another nationwide data outage

Losing network access seems to be a common occurrence for Verizon Wireless customers these days. They woke up to yet another nationwide data outage this morning.

The outage, which affected the carrier’s 3G and 4G LTE data networks, drove subscribers to Verizon’s technical support board and support Twitter account. Verizon hasn’t yet divulged the cause of the outage, but now it seems service is slowly being restored, Engadget reports. (Above, Verizon’s LTE network coverage in … Continue Reading

Onavo’s Android widget lets you track mobile data usage in real time

Now Android users will have an even better sense of just how much precious bandwidth their apps are using.

Onavo, a company known for its iPhone app that compress mobile data, has upgraded its Android app today with a new widget that can give you real-time feedback on app data usage.

While there are lots of apps that can report on mobile data usage, Onavo’s is the first to let you see in real-time which … Continue Reading

Kayak answers the age old question, when are holiday airfares cheapest?

Travel search site Kayak.com processed a whopping 443 million searches in the first half of 2011. There is an information gold mine buried in those hotel and flight queries, as well as answers to some of our most pressing travel questions: Is it too late to get an affordable plane ticket for the holidays? Are you paying more than average for airfare? What days of the week are cheapest to fly?

We asked Kayak and … Continue Reading

Verizon to offer double the 4G data fun (for a limited time)

Hoping to push more 4G smartphones this holiday season, Verizon Wireless will offer double the monthly amount of 4G data to its subscribers.

The limited-time offer will begin Tuesday and is meant to coincide with the launch of the Droid Razr smartphone on November 11, CNet reports.

Since the deal’s not going to last forever, Verizon will likely convince many prospective phone buyers to pick up one of its new 4G devices. Along with the … Continue Reading

Kaggle raises $11M to make data science competitive, and Silicon Valley bigwigs are impressed

“Spec work” is a term of derision in the creative industries, applied to work that’s done for free to win a prize or a contract. But for some, the model has worked so well that Kaggle is applying the model to science.

The company’s hope is that the competitive spirit can produce new data analysis algorithms as well as it does logos and website designs.

Promulgated by sites like 99designs, the idea behind speculative work … Continue Reading

Visual.ly raises $2M to make your data pretty and interesting

Infographics startup Visual.ly has raised a new $2 million round of funding, the company announced today.

Visual.ly is building a service that will allow people to create beautiful, custom infographics using information from various databases and APIs. The service will be automated, which means users only need to specify the kind of information they want to visually display to produce an infographic. The company produced an example of what the service can do with its … Continue Reading

Demo: BringShare combines your marketing analytics tools in one place

Cloud marketing startup BringShare launched the public beta of its data service on Tuesday at the DEMO Fall 2011 conference.

BringShare’s purpose is to make marketers’ lives easier when it comes to managing their data and making their workflow faster and more cost-effective when it comes to measuring online marketing efforts.

BringShare CEO and co-founder Justin Spring (pictured) claims that marketing professionals spend five to 10 hours a week aggregating and analyzing data related to … Continue Reading

Sprint may offer iPhone 5 with an unlimited data plan that puts AT&T, Verizon to shame

In a bid to differentiate itself from AT&T and Verizon, Sprint may offer the iPhone 5 at launch with an unlimited data plan, Bloomberg reports.

Truly unlimited plans are a rare thing these days — both Verizon and AT&T have already nixed them — so Sprint may be able to tempt customers by bundling the iPhone 5 with unlimited data for a flat fee. The carrier is expected to start selling the iPhone 5 in … Continue Reading

Vehicle pricing platform TrueCar goes on a spending spree with $200M funding

Online car pricing platform TrueCar has raised $200 million in funding and is immediately acquiring CarPerks, the company announced today.

Acquisitions are critical to Santa Monica-based TrueCar, which publishes real-time transaction data for new and used vehicle sales in the U.S. market. That data comes from dealer management systems and well-known sales aggregators. TrueCar data is designed to help customers recognize and act upon fair car prices. Staying on top of the data industry means … Continue Reading

Huddles and Hangouts: Google+ conferencing tools aren’t just gimmicks

Google’s newest social network, Google+, features group chats for its mobile app (on Android and iOS) and in-browser video conferencing. They aren’t new ideas, but the execution for both is top-notch and they are useful for both businesses and typical consumers.

Here’s a breakdown of the new features and some cool things you can do with each:

Google+ Huddles

Huddles are group chats that you can create to communicate with other Google+ users. It’s like … Continue Reading

Jaw-dropping: Dropbox raising $200-$300M round at a $5B valuation

Cloud storage service Dropbox is raising a new $200-$300 million round of funding at a $5-$10 billion valuation, reports TechCrunch.

Previously, Dropbox was valued at just $7 million. The new funding round, if true, would put Dropbox on the same level as microblogging social network Twitter.

From an investment standpoint, there is plenty to like about Dropbox. Its user-friendly cloud storage service, which has a total of 25 million registered members, has made it the … Continue Reading

Verizon to kill unlimited data plans on July 7

Beginning Thursday, Verizon will no longer offer new customers an unlimited data plan for smartphones, the company confirmed to FierceWireless.

Verizon is making its newest customers pick from four data plans capped at between 75 megabytes and 10 gigabytes of data. The monthly data fees range from $10 for the 75-megabyte plan to $80 for the 10-gigabyte plan. Tethering the phone to another device to enable Internet access on any plan will cost an extra … Continue Reading

Not a fan of Google+? Save everything with Google Takeout before you trash it (video)

Google has launched Google Takeout, a service that downloads all of a user’s saved information on Google’s servers.

Google users can download all the information stored on Google’s servers related to Google Buzz, Gmail contacts, the Google+ activity stream, Picasa photo albums and their Google profile. All the files are then compiled on Google’s end and wrapped up into a single file that users can unzip and peruse. Google gives users a quick glance at … Continue Reading