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POPSGoogle Phone Not a Phone? Turns out that Google isn't making hardware...no big surprise there. But if it contracts a handset maker (like HTC, as Forbes writer Brian Caulfield has reported) to build the phone and then installs its own innovative OS, that could still offer real competition to the iPhone.
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POPSPrivately-funded Rocket Reaches Space Just a few days after the Chinese government performed its first spacewalk, SpaceX has achieved the first successful rocket launch funded by a private company. Finally, space exploration as a for-profit venture might be starting to make sense. And that may mean a new sort of race to the moon is beginning--this time between China's government and American private industry.
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POPSThe Robot Wars Begin Wired tells a sad story of a robotic gun killing nine and injurying 14 in a South African miltary exercise. Who needs evil artificial intelligence when there are software malfunctions this dangerous?
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POPSMyspace Still Trashing Facebook Amid the nonstop fawning over Mark Zuckerberg, it's still helpful to remember that Myspace has far more users and far more moneymaking ability than Facebook. Still trying to figure out how Facebook could possibly be worth $15 billion...
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POPSWhy WSJ.com Won't Go Free Blodget makes a good argument for Murdoch keeping the WSJ in a subscriber model...a pretty bold prediction, given the rest of the industry's assurances that the wall is about to come down.
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POPSWhy Google Wins: Really Fast Data Om Malik does an interesting analysis of Google's real advantage: the Web's fastest supply chain in delivering data. To be fair, Google's initial advantage was its search algorithm. But I think he's right that as the company's other products like Apps and the coming Gdrive mature, super-fast data movement will keep Google on top of the heap.
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POPSIs GOOG Too Good? Strange thing about public companies...you have to win, but you can't make it look too easy. Google is eating up market share so fast that Henry Blodget worries it can't keep up a steady diet--and that may mean a hit to its ever-more-ginormous stock price.
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POPSStorm Worm Getting Really Really Scary When security mega-guru Bruce Schneier says it's time to get scared about something, I get scared. Here he enumerates why the Storm worm, (probably the largest bot net of all time--the Washington Post's Brian Krebs calculated that it was bigger than the world's biggest supercomputer) is unlike anything that's threatened the Internet in the past, and speculates on what it could be intended for.
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POPSTalking about Kindle 2.0 Already? A day after Amazon's new reader is released, and Brad Stone at the New York Times is already making "helpful" suggestions about what the next version should include. Sounds like an attitude of tech entitlement. But the fact that folks are already talking about the next version also points out just how many flaws are in the current Kindle, and also how important this area is for personal tech.
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POPSSteve Ballmer Egged in Hungary Ballmer's response: "It was a friendly disruption." Bill Gates slightly more clever response to being hit in the face with four cream pies in 1998: "The worst part was that the pies were not very tasty."
3
POPSGoogling for Hackable Sites Google Hacking is an old trick made popular by the well-known penetration tester Johnny Long. But this is an interesting way to make those techniques more accessible to Web developers. Wonder what Google thinks about all of this...
3
POPSTaliban Attacking Cell Towers A cell tower is sadly much easier to attack than an underground line. But turning off your cell phone at night as obviously the easiest way to avoid an attack. The Register speculates that the phone company attacks are actually just a display of power on an easy target.
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POPSGoogle Wants $100 billion -- In Revenue This is an unbelievably ambitious goal, and would make Google the biggest company in the world. But whether or not it's possible, it's certainly the kind of talk that drives the company's share price higher...hence Blodget's $2000/share talk.
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POPSVolvo Promises Injury-Proof Car Several automakers are working on pre-collision systems that take control of cars and steer them or brake automatically. But an injury proof car? Luckily no one remembers these bold claims 12 years later.
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POPSHow to Kill LOLCats ComplaintRemover is one of the newer entrants into the business of controlling negative content about individuals and businesses on the Web. To point out the problems with the service, Consumerist asks them to remove LOLCats from the Internet. Funny stuff ensues.
2
POPSFacebook's Privacy Hypocrisy Facebook wants to share your private data with advertisers (and share your buying habits with your friends) but Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want to share any details about himself. So it's hard to feel bad for poor old Zucky when a judge cans his legal bid to unpublish personal materials.
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POPSGoogle is Adults Only Probably every company has these strange legal policies that are read by no one and are never enforced. But Google, as usual, gets the most scrutiny.
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POPSWill Zuckerberg Finally Take the Cash? Henry Blodgett does a bit of analysis about the possibility of Facebook's CEO accepting a 3% investment in his company. Not a huge deal, but it could shed some light on whether Zuckerberg is really the next Bill Gates, or just a stubborn kid. Especially at a time when (horror of horrors) Facebook's traffic is down.
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POPSRaul Lifts Cuba's Computer Ban Looks like Raul's leadership is having some small effects after all. The Cuban Internet is still extremely restricted and very expensive, but more offline use could help loosen the control of Cuba's digital media.
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POPSPirate Bay Finally Prosecuted The Pirate Bay--the world's biggest online clearinghouse for music and video piracy by some measures--has flaunted copyright holders for years, even posting cease and desist letters on their site along with snarky replies. Now it looks like Sweden, where the site is hosted, may be cracking down. Pirates everywhere will be holding their breath.
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POPSBust 2.0 Begins? Henry Blodget, of alleyinsider.com, has been harping for weeks on signs that the Internet economy might be headed for a downturn, starting with a drop in mortgage ads following the subprime real estate loan blow-out. Now Nielsen reports that the top ten Web advertisers dropped spending September. Haven't spotted this much elsewhere, but Blodget has been making a good case.
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POPSTaser Creates Peel-and-Stick Electrified Film Taser International is still thinking of new ways to paralyze people, this time with an adaptable stick on surface for any device. From a PR perspective, the company can always argue that these semi-brutal devices are just innovative ways to avoid lethal force.
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POPSChina Cracking Down on Virtual Worlds? Not sure what this news post on China's embassy site means...I'm not even sure if the news agency itself knows, judging by how they spell "virtual." But this may turn into a big deal for China's hordes of World of Warcrafters.
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POPSFortune: Facebook is Dead While the Beacon debacle is mostly something that exists in the minds of journalists and .1 percent of Facebook's users, it's true that Facebook is in trouble. And not just on privacy issues...after a $15 billion valuation of a company with no proven money-making ability, this kind of backlash was inevitable...and with competitors like Open Social popping up, this could sink the company altogether.
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