Tech Town, NC

Microsoft pulled the trigger on a smaller than rumored investment in Facebook today to the tune of $240 million. What will 240 million buy in this bubble-ish world? A measly 1.6 percent, that’s what! That puts the valuation of Facebook at $15 billion, which is quite a vote of confidence. If […]

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One of the few shows that I will actually tolerate ads for is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. However, Viacom and their $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube made it difficult to find the best and freshest clips from the show.
Up to now the best place to watch these shows […]

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Economics, apparently. Even as Chapel Hill activates wi-fi hotspots downtown this month, there is a disturbing trend of failed Muni wi-fi networks in larger cities. Slate is running an excellent analysis of the problems many cities are encountering in their utopian pursuits of free city-wide wi-fi access. The article illustrates how economic […]

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This report from the NY Times does the (dis)service of bringing Adblock Plus into the mainstream, informing all the Mom & Dad internet users out there that they can block advertising on any website. The article itself presents somewhat of a paradox, in that it is reporting on Adblock as a “niche” add-on for […]

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No one is sure when it will happen, but at this point it’s almost certain Google will announce a mobile device to debut sometime in the next 6 months. Just like everyone else, I’ve read the rumors about what it will do and look like, and what it will mean to Google’s competitors. […]

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The last couple months have seen increased attention (or some would say heat) on the practices of Text Link Ads and the market they’ve created. This is an important issue for many reasons, ranging from the mostly theoretical “democratic web” debate to the most nitty-gritty “this affects my bottom line” reality.
SEOmoz provides […]

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With the news this week that Business 2.0 may be shutting its doors after the September issue the tech community is starting to feel for the fortunes of the old guard of Print Publishers (Yes, in the tech community a 7 year old publication counts as the “old guard”). In these heady days of […]

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The ongoing YouTube experiment (financed by Google) continues as the buyer tries to find ways to monetize the content. Today, for the first time, I noticed a new sort of ad that appeared as a banner at the bottom of a video I was watching. The video happened to be one of the […]

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