Author Nicholas Carr wrote a controversial post recently about the use of hyperlinks in online content, in which he argued that links were a distraction for readers , and were likely to lead to less comprehension rather than more. This idea was an offshoot of Carr’s latest book, The Shallows, which makes the claim that the Internet — and digital media in general — are making society dumber rather than smarter . Now Scott Rosenberg, one of the founders of the online magazine Salon and of a new media-accuracy startup called MediaBugs, has written an admirable series of posts defending the link as the heart and soul of the…

If you’re a resident of the UK and you get your broadband from BT you may want to check out pal Dean Bubley’s post about the new BT iOS for Smartphones. Add that, download a Truphone client, and start making phone calls. You can of course do the same with Skype, Gizmo or Bria from Counterpath, but I see this as a way for those who don’t need a mobile phone all to still have the benefits of being reached or making calls without a contract or even a pre-paid SIM. For pre-teens who text

Just in time for the Labor Day weekend, we bring you the second installment of our web TV series BBQ&A . In this episode, oDesk CEO Gary Swart turned up the heat with a homemade feast fit for a Silicon Valley king, featuring a super-easy cedar plank salmon, teriyaki tri-tip, corn salad, Caprese salad, and grilled asparagus. (We ran out of time before he could grill up his nectarines to …

When I see a story like the one in the New York Times today about rising airfares , more packed flights and less and less new routes being added, plus the additional costs, hassle factors and fear of being arrested for leaving a laptop on for ten seconds longer than the flight attendant thinks is necessary, my mind goes to the direction of video conferencing. At my home office I can have one on one Skype calls, make use of my client GlowPoint’s Video Exchange Service that provides a platform neutral interconnection service (think having Cisco Telepresence talk to HP Halo or Polycom video) using a LifeSize Passport system I have, fire up former client SightSpeed (they were a client until their 2008 acquisition by Logitech) or dabble with a service like IOCom or Vidyo…

While settling on a standard big data stack is deeply important to the big data industry as a whole, I’m nonetheless questioning the operational and competitive consequences for companies who choose to buy into this standard without first considering the value of building a proprietary solution.

Nova Spivack’s recent GigaOM post, “ Trailmeme and the Web of Intent ,” highlights the growing content clutter problem on the web, but frames the solution set too narrowly and too far into the future. In fact, more robust content filtering tools and the Web of Intent will arrive sooner than you think, based on the implicit messages in users’ actions. Solutions like …

The collective groans of supervisors all over the world was heard this week as the phenomenally successful Angry Birds game was released for the Android platform. Angry Birds is the addictive game that’s been setting the iPhone (and iPad) world on fire. The Android release is an early beta, available in the Android Market as a free download. Rovio Mobile, producer of the game, had intended to conduct a closed Android beta, but pleas from prospective players convinced…

Apple iTunes’ Ping launched Wednesday night to a flurry of chatter  lauding it as a MySpace killer , only to land Thursday morning amid criticism and a  nasty break-up with Facebook . Now that the dust is beginning to settle, let’s take a look at what Ping is, as well as what it could have been. Om claimed that Ping is the future of social commerce , but its sole focus on purchases and its presence behind a walled garden…

As expected , Facebook has started integrating social activity from around the web into the search results on its site, by showing how many people “liked” or shared a specific news story or blog post, as shown in the screenshot below (first noticed by All Facebook ). The results are powered by the social-graph plugins embedded in hundreds of thousands of websites, which Facebook launched earlier this year at its F8 conference. The new feature is the latest step in rolling out the network’s social-search engine — which could

While on-demand services like YouTube and Hulu get all the press, live streaming services have posted dramatic increases in viewer engagement over the last year. Time spent watching live online video increased nearly 650 percent in that time, to 1.4 billion minutes a month.