In today’s round-up, Zuckerberg & Baidu will bring Facebook to China, Steve Jobs agrees to a written biography, LifeEnsured takes care of your digital life once you’ve passed, The New Yorker allows Facebook fans special access to stories, Adobe reveals colorful Photoshop apps for iPad, Peter Thiel calls out higher education, and much more!
1. Weekend Recap: 20 Stories You May Have Missed. StumbleUpon hits 1 Billion Stumbles, Google Earth stops taking pics in Germany, Twitter trends, and How-To guides. [Mashable]
2. Facebook Travels To China. In the press, this has been cited as a big win. Zuckerberg has signed a contract with Baidu.com, China’s largest search engine, to build a jointly-owned network that complies with China’s domineering censorship laws. Some uneasy questions still linger- will the Communist regime use Facebook to control human activist rights, and will Facebook have to apply the censorship laws to all of its algorithms? [Atlantic]
3. FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. Social media has the ability to make one feel a mixture of anxiety, restlessness, and the fear you’re being left out of great parties and events. [NYT]
4. Must-See Technology Stats: Tweets and Teens. Huffington Post’s weekly digital digest, featuring Twitter’s growth spurt, tablets over paper books, and Netflix’s dominance. [HuffPost]
5. Steve Jobs Biography. Simon & Schuster announced this Sunday that Walter Isaacson’s book, “iSteve: The Book of Jobs” will be published in early 2012. Many biographies have been written before about Jobs, but none have met with his approval until now. [HuffPost]
6. A Complete List Of Tech Incubators And Accelerators. [Tumblr]
7. Prepare For Death In A Digital Age. It’s not a pleasant thing to think of what will happen to your tangible possessions after you die. Living in today’s age has brought another question- what will happen to your online life? Luckily, the site LifeEnsured allows you to make arrangements for the deletion of files, transferable files for online accounts, etc. LifeEnsured will even deal with your social media profiles like Facebook (what will your final status be, etc., changing your biography to past tense), Match.com and E-Harmony. All information is encrypted and highly inaccessible, even to LifeEnsured employees. [DigitalLife]
8. What’s Your First Internet Memory? Remember dial-up, Oregon Trail, Windows 95, and online chat rooms? We do too, and so do many others over at Gizmodo. Check out some of the responses! [Gizmodo]
9. New Yorker Allows Facebook Fans Special Access To Specific Stories. The New Yorker releases free articles on it’s online website, and now there are articles only available through Facebook. This decision reflects the influence social media has over businesses, and this is one more strategy to gain fans and followers. This week, if you like The New Yorker on Facebook, you will be able to read a Jonathan Franzen story on David Foster Wallace. [Bloggasm]
10. How To Remove Unwanted Software From Your P.C. A quick guide to understanding the basics of software removal and new computer protection. [NYT]
11. Beware The Twilight Game On Facebook- It’s A Scam. If you’ve been invited by friends or family on Facebook to play the “Breaking Dawn” Twilight game, don’t click the link! It’s designed to make you immediately “Like” the page and spread spam links on Facebook walls and via Facebook chat. [Mashable]
12. Tech Students Present Creations At HackNY’s Hackathon. HackNY, an internship program founded to provide computer scientists students with positions at places like Buzzfeed, OKCupid, etc., hosted their yearly hackathon this weekend. Students from NYU, Rutgers, Juliard, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Brown, after one weekend, demoed their creations to a panel of judges. The top three winners were The Etsy Shopping Network, a Boxee app that lets you shop through the Etsy catalog on your T.V., WebGL filters, an app that uses web-based graphics to edit photos in your browser (comparable to Photoshop), and COME @ ME BRO, a Twitter app that allows you to figure out who you should battle based on your taste of movies. [Betabeat]
13. Adobe Reveals Three Photoshop Apps For iPad. The three apps will turn tablets into an interactive touchscreen, allowing you to have full control over editing software, while making it compatible with your PC or MAC desktop. All three are highly interactive- Eazel ($5) lets you finger paint and wirelessly transfer the files to your PC. The second, Color Lava (3$), lets you work with a palette and create your own colors and themes. The third, Adobe Nav (2$), lets you access a version of Photoshop and control PC documents. Watch a preview of the three below. [HuffPost]
14. United States Venture Funds Reveals Highest Influx In A Decade. According to the Dow Jones LP Source, the total raised for new funds was $7.7 billion. Venture capital firms have raised more money in the last quarter than any period since 2001. Capital going into VC funds is up 97%, sources say. Angel investors and limited partners are pooling their money into venture capital, but limiting it to few, high-quality, early stage funds. [TechCrunch]
15. Level 3 Communications Aquires Global Crossing For $3 Billion. The deal was an all-stock transition, valued at $23.04 dollars per share, which amounts to approximately $3 billion. Global Crossing is an IP services that provides dialup, audio and video conferencing, long distance telephone lines, colocation (computing services in a third party location), and various managed services. After Global Crossings rocky past (the company filed for bankruptcy in 2002, found Gary Winnick sued for fraud) these two companies will create a wider impact in the networking space. Jim Crowe, executive officer of Level 3, provided a positive remark: [TechCrunch]
“By leveraging the respective strengths and extensive reach of both companies, we are creating a highly efficient and more extensive global platform that is well-positioned to meet the local and international needs of our customers.”
16. Peter Thiel: The Bubble We’re In Is Higher Education. For founder and CEO of Paypal, the bubble we’re in isn’t on housing, it’s on education. Thiel states:
“A true bubble is when something is over-valued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”
Thiel discusses the promise of attending a private university over alternate education. Supposedly, if you go to Harvard, you’re going to get one of the best educations, graduate, and find that wonderful job that pays off that quarter million in student loans. With an unstable market and unemployment looming left and right, that statement may not be true. His solution: try to poke a hole in the Ivy League bubble and convince 20 students to drop out and take an alternative path. [TechCrunch]
