| Weekly Wrap-up: Zippy Cloud Machines, Will Libya Crisis Shut Down .ly Domains? Hotmail One-Ups Gmail, and More... Our top story this week was about "zippy cloud machines," which are not, as I first hoped, personal flying machines. Instead Marshall Kirkpatrick looked at the Jolicloud operating system, which you can now run on computers as old as 10 years. Turning a Dell that's older than your kids into a usable computer isn't a jet pack, but it's still pretty cool. In mobile news, Sarah Perez looked at what you can do if the Windows 7 update bricked your phone. The top location story was about how the designer of Google Images is launching a search engine for hotel rooms. Read on for more to stories.
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Can Online Sharing Stats Predict the Oscars? When it comes to predicting the future, we don't need a crystal ball anymore. These days, we just need to look at how people act online - what they share with their friends on Facebook and Twitter - to predict things like box office success or the stock market. With that in mind, we're here to see if some social media statistics and science can help us call some Oscar winners a couple days early.
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A Step Toward Inbox Zero: Email That Self Destructs If you go and look at your inbox right now, we're willing to bet that there's some email in there that's completely stale. There's no reason to reference it, search for it sometime down the road or keep it around for sentimental value. It's just expired. If OtherInbox CEO Joshua Baer has his way, this email could simply delete itself, rather than lurking in your inbox and continuing the clutter.
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What 10 Years of Blogging Has Taught Heather Armstrong "What the last 10 years has taught me, the main lesson, is to first give someone the benefit of the doubt." Heather Armstrong is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her trailblazing blog Dooce this week and there aren't very many people who can claim that kind of longevity online. It's a new media world and Armstrong is on the short list of people who have advanced that sea change the most. She's spent the last decade opening up possibilities for self-expression that the rest of us are just the beginning to take advantage of. I spoke with her last week by phone about how blogging has changed, about Facebook and about what she's learned from the last decade of leadership in online self publishing.
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Wikipedia's Goal: 1 Billion Monthly Visitors by 2015 The Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia and nearly a dozen other wiki-based projects, announced its five-year strategic plan today. The plan is the product of a collaborative effort that began in 2009 and involved more than 1,000 participants from around the world. In it, the organization lays out a number of goals it hopes to reach by 2015, including increasing the number of editors, articles, users and more. After more than a year in the making, Wikimedia released the final version today, saying that it is "energized and enthusiastic about where Wikimedia is heading."
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This Library E-Book Will Self-Destruct After 26 Check Outs There's a certain amount of wear-and-tear on library books. You can only check out Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince so many times, for example, before a well-loved book becomes a little too well-loved for circulation. Librarians are masters at maintaining books - repairing spines, patching torn pages, protecting covers, keeping books available for library patrons. But imagine, if you will, a publishing company - oh, let's say HarperCollins - telling libraries that after checking out a book a certain number of times - oh, let's say 26 - that they've reached the cap on loans. The book can no longer be shared, and libraries need to return the copy or buy the book again. Sound crazy? Well, that actually is the new policy for HarperCollins, reports Library Journal, detailing the new terms for its e-book loans via OverDrive, the main e-book distributor for libraries.
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LinkedIn Company Search Opens Up the Other Half of the Professional Social Graph LinkedIn, the social network for the career-minded, has unveiled Company Search, a way to "search for companies not only by attributes such as location, industry, and size but also by how you are connected." The feature not only makes it easier to search for companies, and employees of those companies with whom you have a connection, but also follow those companies explicitly so you can keep up to date with news, hiring and other events. For a social network centered around professional connections, it only makes sense to make explicitly accessible the other half of the professional social graph - the company.
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Antennagate 2.0? Consumer Reports Won't Recommend Verizon iPhone Either Oh no, please tell us this isn't the start of another "antennagate," but it appears that Consumer Reports is again making headlines for throwing the iPhone 4 under the proverbial bus. "The Verizon iPhone 4 has a problem that could cause the phone to drop calls," notes the American product reviews publication. That's not a huge surprise, considering that the Verizon iPhone is pretty much the same device as AT&T's version, the only external difference being slightly displaced volume buttons and mute switch.
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Bing's Travel Search, So Much Better Than Google, Gets Even Better Google does almost nothing interesting in travel search. Bing offers a much more compelling travel search experience and today added a new little feature that makes me want to use it even more. Search on Bing for the phrase "fly to..." and the name of a major destination city and you will now see an automatic display of the best dates to fly from where you are to that place, with the lowest price for a round trip ticket and advice about whether the price is likely to go up or down if you waited to buy the ticket later. It's really cool.
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