With new U.S. presence, Shopcade expands its social commerce business model
Sat, 26 May 2012 00:05:26 +0000

Riding the wave of social commerce, London-based Shopcade launched in November with a platform that lets people earn rewards for recommending products to friends. Now, it's expanding its presence stateside and beefing up its business model with new ways users can receive those rewards.

Andy Carvin on Twitter as a newsroom and being human
Fri, 25 May 2012 22:14:03 +0000

In a discussion about his use of Twitter as a reporting tool, NPR strategist Andy Carvin made some interesting points about the value of crowdsourced journalism -- including the importance of being transparent about the process, and the virtues of being human.

Can the Web make mental-health treatment more mainstream?
Fri, 25 May 2012 22:07:35 +0000

Launched with $650,000, NY-based Talktala believes it can bring counseling to more consumers with a Web platform that provides anonymity and more affordable prices.

Behind the scenes of a failed Kickstarter project
Fri, 25 May 2012 21:02:14 +0000

A little more than half of the projects on Kickstarter fail. But understanding those failures can help others avoid the same fate. So, I spoke to one of the founders of a failed project to understand what lessons others might be able to learn.

New medical spectrum will untether patients from their monitors
Fri, 25 May 2012 20:37:53 +0000

Soon, a stay in intensive care will no longer mean being physically tethered to every monitoring device imaginable. The FCC has designated a slice of radio airwaves for medical body area networks, which will allow hospitals to cut the cord on bulky vital-signs monitoring gear.

How Intuit uses big data to ‘delight’ you
Fri, 25 May 2012 20:01:04 +0000

If you've ever wondered what big data means at an individual level, this realization about sums it up: "I could either keep dying my hair or retire a year earlier." It's those types of realizations Intuit hopes its heavy big data use will help uncover.

BYOD didn’t kill Cisco’s tablet; it was a doomed idea
Fri, 25 May 2012 18:29:55 +0000

Citing employee preferences and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, Cisco is no longer investing in the Cius Android tablet it announced in 2010. I say bull: The product had "fail" written all over it and never gained traction for several reasons.

MongoDB or MySQL? Why not both?
Fri, 25 May 2012 17:48:21 +0000

NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Cassandra or CouchDB are a key foundation for web startups. But those companies might be better served using an old-fashioned relational database when it comes to their bread-and-butter transactions, according to Thrillist CTO Mark O'Neill.

New Orleans, newspapers and the beginning of the end
Fri, 25 May 2012 16:40:55 +0000

As painful as the decision to stop printing daily may be for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and its staff, it grappling with a reality that almost every newspaper will have to face sooner or later, whether they want to or not.

Has Google changed its mind about sharing its fiber network?
Fri, 25 May 2012 16:26:21 +0000

It looks like Google is backing off its commitment to an open fiber to the home network, according to my conversations with sources, a reading of the Google blog and evasions by the search giant when I asked about its stance.