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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
New Brain-Machine Interface Taps Human Smarts to Enhance Computers' Abilities, Instead of Vice Versa
The Adult Visual Cortex Neurons in the brain's visual pathway can transmit images to the brain faster than the conscious mind can assess them. But hook a computer to that brain and its visual pathway becomes a supercharged analysis tool Nrets via Wikimedia
Brain-machine interfaces hold potential for a variety of ends, from helping the neurologically or physically disabled communicate and interact with their environments, to creating thought-controlled computers that augment the brain with computing power. A group of researchers at Columbia are turning that model on its ear, using brain power to augment computing tasks. Their device couples the human brain and computers to perform tasks neither could do as efficiently on their own.
The device, known as C3Vision (cortically coupled computer vision) taps into the fast processing power of the brain to help computer programs manage complex problem, particularly those posed by image recognition. An electroencephalogram (EEG) cap on the head of a human user is used to detect neurological signals in the brain. The computer then flashes images up on the screen at a rate of about ten per second. The conscious brain doesn't even have time to adequately consider each image, but the subconscious is hard at work.
The system is great at working our problems that computer language has a problem tackling. For instance, it's easy enough to search for a picture of a bicycle on the Web, but it's far more difficult for a search engine like Google or Bing to search for something that looks "odd" or perhaps "silly." The brain, however, can take these less-defined, more abstract qualifiers and very quickly assess whether or not an image fits the term.
The conscious brain doesn't even have to get involved. The images flash too quickly for a person to rate his or her interest in each one, but the visual pathways in the brain move much more quickly. Machine-learning algorithms can quickly detect the neurological signals that represent the brain's interest in a given image, and helps the computer to rank the images for interest. If the person sees something interesting or different, the computer knows it even if the person does not.
As such, the system has been used in tests to accurately scan satellite images for the presence of surface-to-air missiles faster than either a human or a machine could alone. Which accounts for DARPA's interest in the technology; the DoD research arm has sunk $4.6 million into the development of the tech via a spinoff from the university. But the tech could also be used for a variety of other tasks that require the analysis of large volumes of visual data.
Flash Sales Site Gilt Groupe To Open Traditional Online Retail Store For Men
Gilt Groupe has made a name for itself, particularly in the United States, for operating a successful flash sales site that offers its members products and experiences at heavily discounted prices for a limited period of time. Now, the company is turning to traditional e-commerce for its next trick.
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Facebook Sued For Having Privacy Controls In Place. Yes, Seriously.
Last week Facebook was hit with yet another patent lawsuit, this time by Walker Digital, an "invention company" founded by Jay S. Walker, co-inventor of Priceline.com. And boy does this one come straight out of left field.
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Bezos-Backed Heartland Robotics Raises Another $20 Million
Heartland Robotics today announced that it raised $20 million in a series B venture round led by Highland Capital Partners. Other investors include Sigma Partners and existing investors Bezos Expeditions and Charles River Ventures. The Boston-based company previously raised $7 million in August, 2009. The CEO of Heartland Robotics is Rodney Brooks, a former AI reseracher at MIT and one of the co-founders of iRobot. Instead of making robot vacuum cleaners, time around Brooks is developing a new class of manufacturing robots. I normally don't quote from a press release, but this Brooks quote sounds like something straight out of an Isaac Asimov novel:
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If Causes Had Its Own Social Network It Would Be Jumo
Facebook co-founder and former Obama social media guru Chris Hughes has just launched Jumo, a social network for charities, in beta today. �Jumo aims to help you discover what causes matter to you by allowing you to follow specific charities as well as keep tabs on what your friends are following. Seems simple enough. On Jumo each cause/charity has its own relevant news stream, sort of like what would happen if the Facebook app, "Causes," coincidentally started by Sean Parker and former Zuckerberg roommate Joe Green, had its own social network that allowed you to actually "friend" charities.
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Friday, November 26, 2010
Body Scanners Coming to Trains, Subways and Boats, Homeland Security Chief Says
Navy Archives Station, Washington, D.C. dnewman8 via Flickr
Brace yourselves, commuters - body scanners may be coming to trains, subways and boats, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through," Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on "Charlie Rose." She said as aviation security tightens, "we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime."
Her comments were a response to a question about what terrorists would be thinking in the future. She didn't elaborate on what enhanced security at train stations might look like, however.
Trains have already been terrorist targets in England, Russia and Spain, with catastrophic results; just last month, a Pakistani-American was arrested after a thwarted plot to bomb the Washington, D.C. metro system. So it's somewhat surprising the government took this long to acknowledge our other modes of transport are also at risk.
Granted, a would-be terrorist would not necessarily need to board a train to do some damage - just look at train graffiti and you realize how easy it is to access parked trains and all those miles of exposed track. So in some ways, screening passengers seems kind of silly. Plus, rush hour is bad enough in our big cities - scanners and pat-downs on the D.C. metro and New York subway seem impossibly dilatory.
Napolitano's comments came during the busiest travel week of the year, amid a national outcry over new airport scanners and Transportation Security Administration pat-downs. She didn't give any details about how soon the public might see changes, however.
[The Hill]
How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog: New Course Starting Soon
While great content doesn’t guarantee success,� it sure does help! Yet so many bloggers struggle to produce content that engages with and meets the needs of readers. As a result, Chris Garrett and I have put together a brand new short course?Create Killer Content for your Blog?to help set you on the right track. The [...]
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How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog: New Course Starting Soon
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How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog: New Course Starting Soon
While great content doesn’t guarantee success,� it sure does help! Yet so many bloggers struggle to produce content that engages with and meets the needs of readers. As a result, Chris Garrett and I have put together a brand new short course?Create Killer Content for your Blog?to help set you on the right track. The [...]
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How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog: New Course Starting Soon
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EMC ELECTRONICS FOR IMAGING ELECTRONIC DATA SYSTEMS ELECTRONIC ARTS
Inevitable! Google Chrome Extension Exports Your Facebook Contacts
Last time we checked in on the Facebook/Google slapfight, Facebook had removed the option to import your contacts from Gmail and was still holding strong on the whole "denying contact info access to Google" rigamarole that started the fight in the first place. Up until now many no other choice but to use Yahoo Mail if they wanted to mass export their Friends data from Facebook into Google. Well Happy Thanksgiving data reciprocity fans! A third party developer has decided to build "Facebook Doesn't Own My Friends," a Chrome extension that lets you easily export your Facebook Friends' contact information.
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OPENWAVE SYSTEMS ON SEMICONDUCTOR NVIDIA NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS
Thursday, November 25, 2010
How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog: New Course Starting Soon
While great content doesn’t guarantee success,� it sure does help! Yet so many bloggers struggle to produce content that engages with and meets the needs of readers. As a result, Chris Garrett and I have put together a brand new short course?Create Killer Content for your Blog?to help set you on the right track. The [...]
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How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog: New Course Starting Soon
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Are You Living The Life Other People Expect You To
Are You Living The Life Other People Expect You To
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How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate
This post is by Clare Lancaster, of WomenInBusiness.com.au. As a blog business owner, your brand needs to reach beyond your blog. Your presence on social media is a valuable one. In some ways, it?s the ultimate opt-in. When someone follows you on Twitter, subscribes to your YouTube channel or likes your Facebook page they?re making [...]
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How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate
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How Article Frames Show Readers a Clearer Content Picture
Consider these two ideas: tennis and your lounge room. These ideas appear disparate. Tennis? My lounge room? So what? Put a Nintendo Wii into the picture. Now you have a frame?or context?for the two ideas. Within the frame provided by the Nintendo Wii, tennis in your lounge room makes sense. A frame is a great [...]
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How Article Frames Show Readers a Clearer Content Picture
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Archive Gallery: Thrilling Trains of the Future
July 1934
If only our Thanksgiving travel plans included rides on cross-country high-speed rails, propeller-powered monorails, and the mythical Long Island bullet train
Nothing makes you wish for a high-speed rail, a flying car, or a teleportation device like having to travel over Thanksgiving. Apparently, the future of chaos-free commuting is in Europe, Japan and China, where passengers enjoy the luxury of trains that glide along at 200 miles per hour. Meanwhile, those of us living in America get to choose between radioactive scanners, enhanced pat-downs, and the joy of holiday highway congestion. Injustice! Suffice to say, our maglev train envy is making the spirit of Thanksgiving a little harder to grasp this year.
Click to launch the photo gallery.
Alas, high-speed rails may not arrive on our fair shores until the year 2040. Lord knows we've hankered after them for a good 138 years now. Even people traveling by steam engine knew that the future of American train travel needed to break 200 miles per hour.
If there's one thing Popular Science has taught me about retrofuturism, it's that even the most improbable ideas never die. They crop up, go dormant for twenty years, and reappear once a new generation of visionaries grows tired of the status quo. Take, for example, the super speedy, aero transit monorail. In 1919, a French inventor proposed combining an airship, a fuselage, and a train to create a propeller-driven monorail with wings. We were interested, but skeptical that it could actually reach 150 miles per hour without using wheels. Eleven years later, a Scottish inventor built a similar train, but with an overhanging rail instead of wings. We were excited for awhile, but got distracted by magnetic levitation. In 1972, long after Japan unveiled its Shinkansen trains, we began to suspect that it'd be decades before we could implement that technology. So we began dreaming of hanging trains again, but this time, minus the propeller.
More than likely, it will be awhile before America gets its own high-speed rail. Perhaps by then, flying cars and teleportation devices will have gone commercial, thus eliminating the need for high-speed rails. One thing's for sure though--until high-speed rails become obsolete, and as long as we have a traffic problem, our hearts won't give up on a New York - California Maglev train.
While waiting for the turkey to finish roasting, click through our gallery to read about the Soviet Union's amphibian rail, the Long Island/New Jersey bullet train, and more concept vehicles from the future past. Believe it or not, nine out of 10 of these railway systems were designed to beat 150 miles per hour.
Source: http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2010-11/archive-gallery-20th-centurys-most-thrilling-trains
Tell Me About Your Favorite Local Business
Tell Me About Your Favorite Local Business
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Don't Blame 'Piracy' For Your Own Failures To Engage
I kind of don't know where to begin with this blog post from comic artist Colleen Doran at The Hill -- the place where "law makers blog" -- about how awful "piracy" is? Anyway, she seems extremely angry, mixing in vitriolic and pedantic scorn with flashes that she actually understands what's happening... and then ignores it for more scorn. It's really kind of weird. For instance, a few quotes from the article:
Instead, she expected money to just show up at her doorstep. Which is strange, because money doesn't tend to do that....
Case in point? Just a few weeks ago, Techdirt had a couple of posts about someone in the IDENTICAL position to you. Comic artist Steve Lieber. Just like you, he had his works "pirated" on these sites. What did he do? He went and engaged with them and realized they were some of his biggest fans and saw his sales jump by a MASSIVE amount.
And that proves the point, doesn't it? It's not the people copying who are the problem. If you actually worked at engaging with the audience and giving them a reason to buy, they will.
The best part is the tagline at the end of the story:
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"For more than 20 years, I've written and drawn comics for a variety of major publishers: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image and Disney. Like many artists, I've seen my sales figures chipped away as the print market shrinks due, in no small part, to rampant online piracy."No evidence to back that up, of course. Just a statement of fact, that isn't a fact. Oh well....
"I made my comic series, A Distant Soil, available as a free webcomic less than two years ago. Despite assurances that the many sites pirating my work were doing me a favor with their ?free advertising? I never saw a single incoming link from them, saw no increase in traffic, and made virtually no money."Hold on, let me get this straight. You offered it for free, the "pirate" sites offered it for free... and you STILL lost traffic to those sites? Methinks perhaps that if you, the creator of the comic, can't differentiate yourself from filesharing sites that offer fans no connection with you, no insight into the work, no expertise in the offering, and no personal involvement with the creator, then that is YOUR problem, not the "pirates." For God's sake, people want your stuff! And you were smart enough to price the content the same as the unauthorized places! All you had left to do was offer them something the pirate sites couldn't, and you'd be home free!
Instead, she expected money to just show up at her doorstep. Which is strange, because money doesn't tend to do that....
"Frequent original content (often pirated the day I post it,) increased my traffic, not pirate "advertising." Pirates draw traffic from my site, and cost me millions of hits annually, which cuts my advertising revenue."Again, in the first sentence she gets it! Keep creating and releasing! If your goal is to draw readers to YOUR site, one way to do that is to ALWAYS have the most up to date offerings of your creative work, and you do that by continuing to create. And pirate SITES don't draw traffic from yours, they draw traffic from the great pool of web surfers. You're both drawing against each other, and YOU have the advantage!
"Readers assume they are only nickel and diming rich corporations with their bit torrent naughtiness, but I am a middle class artist and farmer for whom a few thousand dollars a year in lost income means I can't afford health insurance."Come on now. You're a 47 year old cartoonist/artist that's been pumping out works, both for publishing companies and some self-published, since you were 12 years old. You're a GOOD artist. There's no need to make plays on our sympathies by mentioning the other things you choose to do, like "farming". That isn't what we're talking about. That kind of transparent attempt to play the victim does not move the discussion forward. Oh, and bit torrent naughtiness is a great name for a forward-looking cyberpunk porn thriller....
"Creators and publishers can?t compete with free and the frightening reality is that even free isn?t good enough. Pirates aggregate content in ways creators and legit publishers can?t. Why go to dozens of web pages for entertainment when you can go to a pirate and get everything you want? There?s no connection to creators as human beings who work hard and make money from that work, and who need income from past work to finance future work."Sigh. Can't compete with free? Then you can't compete period. Because if all you have to offer is what others can manage to offer for free, then you don't actually have anything to offer to start with. Thing is, you DO have something to offer... you just don't seem to want to offer it. Oh, and that last part, about there being no connection between fans and creators? That's YOUR job, not the fans'. You have to make that connection. We're not mindless moths, fluttering about the heat of your light, desperate to slam our bodies against the fixture. You connect with us, since you're doing the selling, not the other way around....
Case in point? Just a few weeks ago, Techdirt had a couple of posts about someone in the IDENTICAL position to you. Comic artist Steve Lieber. Just like you, he had his works "pirated" on these sites. What did he do? He went and engaged with them and realized they were some of his biggest fans and saw his sales jump by a MASSIVE amount.
And that proves the point, doesn't it? It's not the people copying who are the problem. If you actually worked at engaging with the audience and giving them a reason to buy, they will.
"Everyone gets paid -- manufacturers of computers, iPads, electricity, bandwidth -- everyone except the creators of content."Ah, so no content creators are getting paid? Funny, there seems to be an awful lot of stuff out there -- including those in the same position as you. Oh, and the internet isn't NEW anymore, okay? And it has yet to create a barren wasteland devoid of downloadable content. With all the evil piraters out there, how could that be?
"It costs big bucks to finance these pirate sites. Major advertisers and open source ad providers like Google pay them."Google bad? Then why does it feel so good? I assume, since Google is evil, that you have gone directly to your robots.txt and made sure you aren't indexed? Also, it's not Google who's "paying them," which sounds like Google has them on the payroll. They're putting ads on their sites and competing. You can do that too -- and, if you engage with your fans, they'll focus on going to where you want them to go.
The best part is the tagline at the end of the story:
"Colleen Doran is a cartoonist and illustrator with more than 500 credits for companies as diverse as Lucasfilm, Disney, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Random House, Houghton Mifflin, Harper Collins, and Image Comics. Her work includes illustrations for Captain America, Sandman, Wonder Woman, Amazing Spider-man and many others."Again, Colleen, you're just so far ahead of the game here that it almost feels strange to see what you've written. That's quite a list of paid work, some which I imagine you could build upon to solidify your reputation and garner even more paid work. Through your own talent and hard work, you're set up to really be able to work with new media and emerging business models. Why not really dig down and embrace them?
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How to Use a Manifesto to Spread your Blog?s Message
This post is by Clare Lancaster, of WomenInBusiness.com.au. Ever since I read Chris Guillebeau?s manifesto, 279 Days to Overnight Success, I?ve been inspired to create one for my own blog. The way that it communicated the message of his blog, packaged in an attractive, shareable, valuable asset that cemented his place as a niche leader, [...]
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How to Use a Manifesto to Spread your Blog?s Message
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Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Count Your Mobile Device Traffic
Last week, I talked about how I’ve been experimenting with monetizing mobile traffic using the WPTouch mobile theme and AdSense. Another great feature of WPTouch is that it allows you to post metrics code into the the ads, so you get a true picture of how many people are viewing your site not only on [...]
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Count Your Mobile Device Traffic
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How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate
This post is by Clare Lancaster, of WomenInBusiness.com.au. As a blog business owner, your brand needs to reach beyond your blog. Your presence on social media is a valuable one. In some ways, it?s the ultimate opt-in. When someone follows you on Twitter, subscribes to your YouTube channel or likes your Facebook page they?re making [...]
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How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate
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Marketing Is Your Most Important System
Marketing Is Your Most Important System
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ON SEMICONDUCTOR NVIDIA NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS NOVELLUS SYSTEMS
How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate
This post is by Clare Lancaster, of WomenInBusiness.com.au. As a blog business owner, your brand needs to reach beyond your blog. Your presence on social media is a valuable one. In some ways, it?s the ultimate opt-in. When someone follows you on Twitter, subscribes to your YouTube channel or likes your Facebook page they?re making [...]
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How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate
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Body Scanners Coming to Trains, Subways and Boats, Homeland Security Chief Says
Brace yourselves, commuters - body scanners may be coming to trains, subways and boats, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through," Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on "Charlie Rose." She said as aviation security tightens, "we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime."
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Technology, Rebecca Boyle, airport scanners, airport security, metro stations, trains, transportation security administrationTrains have already been terrorist targets in England, Russia and Spain, with catastrophic results; just last month, a Pakistani-American was arrested after a thwarted plot to bomb the Washington, D.C. metro system. So it's somewhat surprising the government took this long to acknowledge our other modes of transport are also at risk.
Granted, a would-be terrorist would not necessarily need to board a train to do some damage - just look at train graffiti and you realize how easy it is to access parked trains and all those miles of exposed track. So in some ways, screening passengers seems kind of silly. Plus, rush hour is bad enough in our big cities - scanners and pat-downs on the D.C. metro and New York subway seem impossibly dilatory.
Napolitano's comments came during the busiest travel week of the year, amid a national outcry over new airport scanners and Transportation Security Administration pat-downs. She didn't give any details about how soon the public might see changes, however.
[The Hill]
Judge Says No Fair Use For Jailbreaking Xboxes; The Law Doesn't Care If Jailbreaking iPhones Is Legal
Last month, we pointed out how ridiculous it was that modding your iPhone is considered perfectly legal, but that modding your Xbox somehow can get you three years in jail. That was to point out just how silly it was that the DMCA does not allow fair use when it comes to its anti-circumvention rules. This has long been a huge problem (and a potential Constitutional problem) for the way the DMCA is constructed. The only exceptions are manually chosen every few years by the Librarian of Congress (who recently granted the ok for modding your phone a few months back, but wasn't even asked about game consoles). Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the judge in the case has said that this does not matter and fair use cannot apply. Again, this isn't a surprise but it does highlight how ridiculous the DMCA is.
It would seem that this case could become a rather useful one in testing the constitutionality of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules and the lack of fair use exceptions. It's hard to think of a situation that seems more unreasonable than saying that you can jailbreak consumer electronics device 1 "because of the Librarian of Congress said so," but you cannot jailbreak consumer electronics device 2 "because the Librarian of Congress did not say so." That hardly seems like a situation that copyright law should ever allow, as it presents an undue penalty on certain new technologies.
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It would seem that this case could become a rather useful one in testing the constitutionality of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules and the lack of fair use exceptions. It's hard to think of a situation that seems more unreasonable than saying that you can jailbreak consumer electronics device 1 "because of the Librarian of Congress said so," but you cannot jailbreak consumer electronics device 2 "because the Librarian of Congress did not say so." That hardly seems like a situation that copyright law should ever allow, as it presents an undue penalty on certain new technologies.
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SYKES ENTERPRISES INORATED SYBASE SUN MICROSYSTEMS STANDARD MICROSYSTEMS
FeelGooder: the Backstory Behind My Newest Blog
Earlier this week I launched a new blog: FeelGooder. This post will give some of the backstory behind it (expect another one next week with more). What? Another blog? Are you crazy? One of the most common reactions I get when I mention that I’m starting a new blog is something along the lines of, [...]
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FeelGooder: the Backstory Behind My Newest Blog
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
WordPress A Bit Too Quick In Doing DMCA Takedowns
It's becoming increasingly common for companies to try to go up the network stream with various takedown messages. Rather than just hitting a website with a takedown over certain content, they'll also hit their ISP and their registrar. What's unfortunate is that these higher level service providers are often less willing to take the time to understand the specifics, and are quick to pull the plug to avoid liability for themselves. With WordPress becoming a larger and larger ISP for many blogs, it's getting a lot more such requests.
It's unfortunate that the company is responding to them in misleading ways. For example, it recently took down some content and blocked the ability to post any new content, based on a DMCA takedown message claiming, incorrectly, that "we were legally required to remove the file from our servers." That's not quite true. First, Wordpress is not legally required to do so. It is true that the company is certainly strongly incentivized to do so, since not doing so could open it up to liability, but that's not the same as saying they're legally required to do this.
However, in this case, the details look even worse. The "content" in question was merely a link from a blog to an unauthorized version of an ebook. The author of the blog, which talks about ebooks, was complaining about certain ebooks not being available:
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It's unfortunate that the company is responding to them in misleading ways. For example, it recently took down some content and blocked the ability to post any new content, based on a DMCA takedown message claiming, incorrectly, that "we were legally required to remove the file from our servers." That's not quite true. First, Wordpress is not legally required to do so. It is true that the company is certainly strongly incentivized to do so, since not doing so could open it up to liability, but that's not the same as saying they're legally required to do this.
However, in this case, the details look even worse. The "content" in question was merely a link from a blog to an unauthorized version of an ebook. The author of the blog, which talks about ebooks, was complaining about certain ebooks not being available:
In a blog post, Ricardo had bemoaned the fact that a book, Ken Follett's 'Fall of Giants,' wasn't available in Spanish on the Kindle. He noted, however, that the publishers of the book didn't mind people converting other formats but presumably to save people the bother of messing with DRM removal, he linked to an already converted copy hosted on a file-hosting service.The local IP "protection" group posted a comment on the site, demanding he take that down, and when he either didn't notice the comment or didn't realize it was real, they went to WordPress, claiming that he had ignored their takedown request. Furthermore, as the article notes, under Spanish law, a link to infringing content is not, itself, infringing. In the US (where the servers were likely hosted -- so it could have an impact), links are still something of a gray area, unfortunately. Of course, it's rather amusing, as noted in the TorrentFreak article that the very first comment on that particular story complains that "the link doesn't work." So this whole thing may have been over absolutely nothing...
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Which Domain Is Right for You?
This guest post is by Karol K of newInternetOrder.com. If you’ve ever wondered about domain name selection, you probably already know that there are basically only three main types of domain names. And they are: semantic names unusual names combined names Which will be best for your next blog? If you’re not quite sure yet, [...]
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Which Domain Is Right for You?
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FCC Head: The Google/Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal Slowed Us Down
Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, FCC head Julius Genachowski sat down with New York Magazin's John Heilemann. One question Heilemann asked was Genachowski's thoughts about the joint Google/Verizon net neutrality policy that they put out there in August. "I would have preferred if they didn't do exactly what they did when they did," Genachowski said. "It slowed down some processes that were leading to a resolution," he said.
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Twitter Raising New Venture Round at $3 Billion Valuation
Twitter is mulling over raising a new round of financing, we've heard from multiple sources, and a variety of venture firms are frothing at the mouth to lead the round. The valuation is likely to be in the $3 billion range, and they'll likely raise more than the $100 million they took a little over a year ago at a $1 billion valuation. To date Twitter has raised around $160 million. Who are the likely investors? Russian firm DST, which has invested in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, is certainly trying to lead the round. But we hear that they are just one of many twisting arms to get in. We recently reported that some funds set up to buy Twitter shares from employees were closing sales at $1.6 billion for larger transactions. Smaller transactions have apparently been closed at much higher prices.
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October Trends + The 10 Horrors of Blogging
For those celebrating Halloween, it?s the spooky season, with haunted houses, terrifying costumes, and creepy decorations around every corner. What better time to look at the horrors that plague bloggers? Gruesome typos and grammatical errors, ghastly headlines, confusing echo chambers, dreadfully empty comments sections, and more!
Since it?s the end of the month, it?s also time to unveil October?s most-blogged-about stories, according to Regator.com?s trends. They were, in order: Halloween, Windows Phone, Brett Favre, Chilean Miners, Breast Cancer, ?The Social Network?, Jon Stewart, World Series, Kanye West, and Nobel Prize. We?ll use posts from Regator about these top stories to illustrate how you can avoid the ten horrors of blogging?
Since it?s the end of the month, it?s also time to unveil October?s most-blogged-about stories, according to Regator.com?s trends. They were, in order: Halloween, Windows Phone, Brett Favre, Chilean Miners, Breast Cancer, ?The Social Network?, Jon Stewart, World Series, Kanye West, and Nobel Prize. We?ll use posts from Regator about these top stories to illustrate how you can avoid the ten horrors of blogging?
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
October Trends + The 10 Horrors of Blogging
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/kqXVZ9pWNDg/
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