U.S. Senate v. Facebook, John Stewart v. Apple, Google v. All

Given the information overload of social media and technology stories this week, for company with bad news to drop, today would be a particularly good day.

Monday: U.S. States Senate vs. Facebook.

Adding to the confusion and buzz surrounding Facebook’s latest unannounced, and mostly unrequested overhaul of their 3rd party site integration / instant personalization or “Open Graph API,”...

Finding Value in Google Buzz

I’m not an early adopter of the latest tool. I’ll happily  sit back and wait for the dust to settle before I consider using any new application.

It has been my experience that this is a good practice. Most of what hits the social web usually putters and falls into obscurity....

An Intro to Google Buzz

Video demonstration of Google’s latest product, Google Buzz, which the company describes as a "new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting." You can read the Google product announcement here and a good overview of the service over on Techcrunch here....

Google Earth Unveils Technology to Prevent Deforestation

During the UN Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen this week, Google unveiled an advanced Google Earth prototype that allows satellite imagery to show and measure the progression of deforestation in regions around the world. Google teamed up with software experts Greg Asner, from Carnegie Institution for Science, and Carlos Souza, from Imazon (both institutions with forest data programs used in Latin America) and created a “cloud-based computing” technology that gathers all satellite imagery data for a region and displays them in a user-friendly format.

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Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia all Over 100 Million Strong – What Now for Online Communities?

Guest post by Alan Haburchak

The morning of day two here at the Personal Democracy Forum conference was all about online communities, what they mean, how they can be used and what they say about culture and global culture and society today. Randi Zuckerberg (the other Zuckerberg), Facebook's head of marketing was up first and talked a little bit about how communities have arisen on on Facebook that have lead to real-life movements like the anti-farc protests that occurred in Colombia last year....