Author: kg4vma

CountryGeek passed us a link to a story in the Birmingham News, saying that schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop. The piece touches on a bit of the project’s history, and seems to indicate the Birmingham school district is ready to make a serious commitment to these devices. “Langford has asked the City Council to approve $7 million for the laptops and a scholarship program that would give Birmingham students with a C average or above a scholarship to college or tech school of their choice. The City Council has not yet approved the funding. The rugged, waterproof computers will be distributed to students on April 15, Langford said, and children will be allowed to take them home. If a computer is lost, the school system can disable it, rendering it useless, Langford said. Students will turn in their computers at the end of their eighth-grade year.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

College grad Jon Morrow busted his butt to get straight A’s in college, but his 3.92 GPA didn’t do much for him in the “real world.” Now he regrets spending all that time worrying and working on his grades.

I was told that having a high GPA would open all kinds of doors for me. But you know what? I interviewed with lots of companies, received a total of 14 job offers after graduation, and none of them asked about it. They were much more impressed with stuff like serving as Chief of Staff for the student government and starting a radio station run by 200 volunteers.

Of course, a high GPA is important to students going onto grad, law, or medical school, but for the rest of us, it looks like being a well-rounded student will do more for you in the long run than being a straight-A student.

Six Apart has sold its hosting blogging platform LiveJournal, which it acquired in January 2005, to Moscow-headquarted SUP (pronounced “soup”), the company said this evening. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SUP previously acquired licensing rights in October 2006 permitting them to manage LiveJournal in Russia, where the platform dominates blogging culture.

“This allows Six Apart to focus on their remaining three brands (Vox, TypePad and MoveableType)” CEO Chris Alden told me this evening. LiveJournal, created by Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999, was the lone service not built in house. “We have very ambitious plans for our remaing brands going forward” he added.

Since the 2005 acquisition, Live Journal has grown from 5 million to over 14 million accounts. But overall unique visitor and page view growth has been static for the last year. In October 2007 Comscore says LiveJournal had 13.8 million worldwide unique visitors generating 475 million page views. That’s up only slightly from the 11.1 million visitors and and 408 million page view per month a year ago.
Article source:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/02/six-apart-sells-livejournal-to-sup/

Writers striking over Internet reject $130 million offer
Source: Valleywag
Hollywood studio bosses, in the guise of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, said they offered writers striking over Internet video payments a three-year deal which amounts to a $130 million increase over the $1.3 billion they currently receive each year. Writers quickly dismissed the offer calling it “dispiriting news” and a “massive rollback.” The strike continues, offering writers the chance to make more funny videos for YouTube, like this one, starring Christina Applegate. Has anyone pointed out to them that they’re not getting paid for these videos either?

Brian Cartmell writes “An article at the Minneapolis — StarTribune site covers a significant setback for the Hormel food company, in a case that’s being closely watched by security companies across the country. Seattle-based Spam Arrest has gone up against the creator of the food substance in court, fighting for the right to use the word spam in its company name. The US Trademark Trial and Appeal board has sided with the spam fighters, agreeing that consumers of the Spam product would never confuse the food with junk email. ‘Derek Newman, Spam Arrest’s attorney, said the decision opens the door for many other anti-spam software companies … “Spam Arrest fought this battle for the whole software industry,” Newman said.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Three of four people arrested for allegedly holding a Perry County woman against her will and abusing her for months tell their sides of the story.

I just had to share this story, because I heard it on Z-Rock 103.3 this morning. I have to agree with Twitch in saying that it seemed like during the interview the family was trying to create an episode of Springer…

Facebook has bigger problems than the possibility of an FTC inquiry. 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl recently visited the company’s Palo Alto offices, says Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. According to Swisher, Stahl interviewed CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Kelly, the network’s chief privacy officer. Which can only mean one thing: A major exposé on Facebook coming soon on the hard-hitting CBS news show. Don’t think it’s serious?

Then just remember Razorfish. What’s that? You don’t remember Razorfish? Exactly. Jeff Dachis, former CEO of the online ad agency, was crucified on television by a 60 Minutes episode in which he proved unable to define what, exactly, his dotcom did to earn its keep. “We’ve asked our clients to recontextualize their business,” said Dachis. Gotcha. While the 60 Minutes appearance wasn’t the only thing that did Razorfish in, Dachis’s company, once worth $4 billion, was soon sold for $8.2 million. Let’s hope Zuckerberg fares better on camera.

Article Source: Valleywag.
URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20081210163144/http://valleywag.com:80/tech/media-relations/facebook-faces-60-minutes-inquisition-328112.php