Consider much of this hearsay, but it’s apparently a good time to be a product employee at Google…as long as you don’t mind a little snooping. TechCrunch reports that the company offered two key employees stock grants worth between $50 and $100 million to keep them at Google, as in before they’d told their employer they were …
Apps & Web
Fledgling Aquanaut Richard Branson Teams Up with Google Earth
More details are coming out about billionaire-adventurer Richard Branson and his planned forays into the ocean’s deepest nether regions.
According to the LA Times, Branson’s 20-foot Virgin Oceanic vessel will be feeding previously unseen topographical data back to Google Earth, the free 3D mapping software that lets users do cool …
Facebook Unveils Cool New Servers, and Shares Them with the World
How does Facebook serve up its social network to more than half a billion people around the world–and do it with surprisingly few outages and glitches? It started out seven years ago by leasing servers in data centers as it needed them. Eighteen months ago, it built its own massive data center in Prineville, Oregon–and decided to …
Revealed: The 6 Worst Piracy States in the US
If you live in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York or Texas, then congratulations: Your state is among the six responsible for almost half of all suspected cases of software piracy in the US, according to the Business Software Alliance.
The BSA says those six states are behind 49.3% of all piracy reported to its …
TweetDeck’s Awesome Chrome App Coming to Other Browsers
TweetDeck is accepting sign-ups for a beta version of TweetDeck Web, an in-browser adaptation of the Twitter and Facebook client.
TweetDeck Web will be quite similar to the existing app for Google’s Chrome browser. Like the TweetDeck desktop application, it allows the user to view several Twitter and Facebook feeds at once across …
Chrome OS Coming to Tablets, As It Should
Chrome OS notebooks won’t arrive until later this year, but Google is already planning for tablets.
CNet’s Stephen Shankland found lots of tablet evidence among the Chrome OS source code, including a virtual keyboard and touch-optimized tabs. Google then confirmed that it’s “engaging in early open-source work for the tablet form …
Bad News for Murdoch: The Daily on the Decline
Isn’t it supposed to be the new age of journalism where tech-savvy readers tout their tablets to catch up on the day’s latest headlines? Well, that’s what The Daily thought.
But new data reveals that News Corp’s iPad-only paper isn’t living up to its hype.
According to a Niemen Journalism Lab analysis based off of Twitter …
Google Yanks Grooveshark from Android Market, But Chrome App Remains
This article has been cross-posted from our partner site, Technologizer.
Grooveshark became a rare victim of Android Market policy on Tuesday, when Google removed the streaming music app without explanation of which policies were violated.
Unlike other streaming music services, such as Rdio and MOG, Grooveshark doesn’t license …
Adzookie Will Pay Your Mortgage In Exchange For Your Self-Respect, Home
It’s advertising gone crazy like a fox. Or alright, just crazy. Mobile ad network Adzookie wants to pay your mortgage – as long as it can turn your house into an advertisement for Adzookie.
The promotion – which only has a budget of $100,000, so that whole “paying your mortgage” thing sadly doesn’t mean paying all of your mortgage …
Study: Teens Buy Less Music, Want More iPhones
The kids of today think digital music sucks but want to keep Steve Jobs happy. Or at least that’s my takeaway from the latest of Piper Jaffray’s bi-annual surveys of high school students in the US, which asked 4,500 kids how they felt about Apple products and digital music.
Among the surprising results: The percentage of …
The Three Songs You Need to Download This Week
There’s a lot of music online–more than most people have time to keep up with. That’s why you’ve got us. Every week, we’ll point you toward three excellent new downloads or videos from chart-topping stars, cult favorites and unknown geniuses.
1. As we noted yesterday, David Bowie’s got a “Golden Years” app coming out in a couple of …
GameStop Mulls a Tablet, Will Soon Buy Yours
This article has been cross-posted from our partner site, Technologizer.
When a brick-and-mortar retailer decides to go digital, one possible strategy goes something like this: Buy a smaller digital company or two, and hope to make them big.
That’s what GameStop did last week when it acquired Stardock’s Impulse game download …