| Just How Popular Are Unofficial Twitter Clients? When Twitter's platform lead Ryan Sarver sent out a missive to developers last week telling them to stop building Twitter clients, he argued that users should rely on the "official" Twitter apps. Sarver maintained that, indeed, most users were already doing so: "According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis." That assertion caught the attention of Sysomos, as Twitter's data seemed inconsistent with some of the analysis that the social media analytics company has done of the Twitter ecosystem. So Sysomos took a sample of 25 million tweets from Friday March 11. That data shows that 42% of tweets were made by unofficial apps - more than four times the figures that Twitter claims.
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Skype Launches Qik Video Connect iPhone App Once a competitor of Skype, the video-streaming company Qik was acquired by the VOIP giant in January. But it appears this hasn't ended the development of Qik's live-streaming software, as Qik is launching a new iPhone app today. Qik Video Connect offers video streaming and video calling - available for real-time viewing or recorded and sent as a video message. The app will also allow you to post live video links to Facebook and Twitter.
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5 Tech Companies Investested in Today: Which Will Change the World? In today's lineup of companies that earned venture capital funding, we've got a site to manage buying and selling tickets to a large or small event, a mobile network focused on growing in developing parts of the world and a video production system for editing HD and standard definition video, among several others. As usual, we're curious about which company you think will impact our lives the most? And, read on to find out about Friday's poll winner.
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Real-Time Japan News Resources Part of covering the culture of technology is covering technology's use by the culture at large. At a certain point, however, I have had to acknowledge that we are not a general news organization. We don't cover world news, conflicts, crises. We cover technology. And when you attempt to force news to fit inside your frame, you run the risk of deforming it. As @laurenist put it, "Every major news event now also turns into a story about social media." Social media is common enough, thankfully, that it has become a tool for dealing with news in a larger context. The mere fact that people are using social media in a given situation does not make that a piece of tech news.
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Flickr Head of Product Steps Down: Is It an Omen? While Yahoo has said that it is "absolutely committed" to social picture sharing site Flickr, the same might not be said for the folks at the top of the company. Today, Flickr head of product Matthew Rothenberg announced that he would be "stepping away from Flickr," the third such departure since Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake left in 2008. Can Flickr hang on in the photo sharing realm or will other niche social photo sharing services and Facebook - the biggest photo sharing site on the Internet - take its place?
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Dot Obits: Supercomputer Scientist & Residential T1 Pioneer Dr. Phil Andrews. Andrews was project director for the National Institute for Computational Sciences at the University of Tennessee at his death at 55 of a heart attack earlier this month. Prior to Tennessee, Andrews worked for a decade as the director of high-end computing technologies at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California. His professional interests included artificial intelligence and 3-D software. But his interests did not stop at the edge of his lab.
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Scientists Can Now Take Over Your Car An unexpected result has come out of the investigation into the apparent accidental acceleration of Toyota cars. The National Academies created the Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration. According to a report by Technology Review, the scientists in the group proved they could take control of cars using "GM's OnStar and Ford's Sync, as well as through the Bluetooth connections intended for making hands-free phone calls."
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Foursquare Launches Effort to Create a "Rosetta Stone" for Location Data As location-based services continue to spring up, it's becoming increasingly important that these companies have access to correction location data. However, there's no one place where developers can go to access or verify this data, and there's no single database for location-based information. But Foursquare has just announced an effort to move things in that direction: a "venue harmonization map" that it says it hopes can serve as a Rosetta Stone, of sorts, for location data.
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AT&T To Cap Its DSL Customers' Broadband Usage AT&T will begin capping its DSL customers' monthly usage beginning May 2. According to Broadband Reports, which broke the story last night, the cap for DSL customers will be 150 GB per month and 250 GB per month for U-Verse customers. AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom confirmed the story, saying that customers will soon receive notices informing them of the changes to the company's terms of service. Bloom says that the new limits will involve overage charges, but these will only be billed to users who exceed their monthly caps more than three times. These overcharges are currently set at $10 for every 50 GB over the limit.
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Kayak Launches Direct Hotel Booking Feature as It Preps for an IPO Travel search company Kayak has just announced that it will begin handling hotel reservations itself, rather than just referring customers to its partner sites when they are ready to book a room. This marks Kayak's expansion beyond just aggregating travel information, so users can research and reserve their travel needs. Kayak is introducing the "Book Now" feature in limited beta, but the simple booking process will be available on its website and mobile apps in the coming weeks. Customers will still have the option to book their hotel rooms elsewhere. But the move will help keep users on the Kayak site, rather than driving them elsewhere to complete their purchases.
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