Today, Google is launching one of its most ambitious and interesting updates to its search engine in recent months. Starting in a few days, you will start to see large panels with additional factual information about the topic you were searching for take over the right side of Google’s search result pages. The panels are powered by what Google calls its new “Knowledge Graph” and they will serve two different functions. Google will use this space to show you a summary of relevant information abo...  show all text

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General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook after determining its paid ads had little impact on consumers. The news comes just days ahead of Facebook's IPO.

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Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea. More »

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An ode to the father of the electric age. View

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Starting today, you can discover the best of Twitter in a weekly email digest delivered to your inbox. This summary features the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter. Stories feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, emphasizing who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you. Click any headline to finish reading the story, add your take by tweeting directly from the email, and see rel...  show all text

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Nick Bilton, in today’s The New York Times, writes about Facebook’s ability to look at what is happening on its network and predict the future. He says since more than nine million apps and services use Facebook Connect, the Open Graph developer platform, the company can essentially predict what comes next. Maybe! In reality, what is more likely is that Facebook can turn on or turn off the traffic spigot and hence play the king maker. Bilton quotes an anonymous source as saying, “Facebook is now  show all text

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Dave McClure speaking at the US Embassy in Mexico City. Photo by George Kellerman It’s around 8:30 on a warm Friday night in Mexico City, and we’re all milling around a podium set up in the lobby of the private residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Earl Anthony Wayne. Dozens of Mexico’s tech entrepreneurs and investing elite are mingling with more than 40 members of Geeks on a Plane, a traveling tech-revue of sorts organized by the Silicon Valley investment group, 500 Startups. Just outsi...  show all text

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Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation. The company will apparently say he is leaving for “personal reasons.” But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is clearly the key r...  show all text

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Facebook’s founder will soon face the unfamiliar landscape of running a public company, monitored by a merciless stock market.

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When Eduardo Saverin was 13, his family discovered that his name had turned up on a list of victims to be kidnapped by Brazilian gangs. Saverin’s father was a wealthy businessman in São Paulo, and it was inevitable that he’d attract this kind of unwanted attention. Now the family had to make a permanent decision. They hastily arranged a move out of the country. And of all the places in the world they could move to, the Saverin family saw only one option. They took their talents to Miami. Would ...  show all text

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Thousands stage nationwide anti-government rallies, a year after movement that inspired 'Occupy' protests was born.

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Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc., renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.

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For Google Maps, winter is coming. Potentially. As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, with the upcoming iOS 6 software, Apple intends to replace the Google Maps aspect of their default Maps application with their own, in-house version. Mark Gurman of 9to5 Mac was the first to report this news, and dives into more of the detail behind it, including the 3D aspect. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD confirmed the change. And after talking to my own source, I can beat the dead horse in confirming the switc...  show all text

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• Discussed hacking allegations with Cameron in 2009-11 • Had 'informal role' in lobbying for News Corp's BSkyB bid • Brooks denies Cameron texted her 12 times a day • Says it was more like once a week, sometimes twice • Politicians did not use her to get access to Murdoch, she says • Brooks commiserated by Cameron, Osborne, Blair when left NI • Disagreed with Murdoch on some political and editorial issues • Spoke to Murdoch 'very frequently' when Sun editor • Murdoch hosted her 40th birthday p...  show all text

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Only 12% of your friends see your average status update, but Facebook is testing an option called “Highlight” that lets you pay a few dollars to have one of your posts appear to more friends. Highlight lets the average user, not Pages or businesses, select an “important post” and “make sure friends see this”, but not color it yellow as Stuff wrote when it first spotted the feature. A tiny percentage of the user base is now seeing tests of a paid version of Highlight, but there’s also a free one...  show all text

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Gina Trapani says the technology companies that promote a culture of frat house fun will lose out in attracting the smartest people.

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After the Huffington Post was acquired by AOL last year, HuffPo chief technology officer Paul Berry estimated 15 percent of his time was spent dealing with corporate politics. A year later, that figure had zoomed to 85 percent while 15 percent of his time was devoted to building technology. Now, just a few months after leaving the Huffington Post position he held for more than five years, he’s back to creating things again on a full-time basis. Berry left the Huffington Post in February and got...  show all text

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From Yahoo! News: President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

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In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the would-be suicide bomber dispatched by the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen last month infiltrated the terrorist group and volunteered for the mission, officials said.

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Mr. Sendak, known in particular for “Where the Wild Things Are,” was widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century.

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Are you annoyed by all those automatic Facebook news apps? Apparently you're not alone. They're falling off a cliff right now. The Washington Post was the first publication to experiment with a "frictionless" social reader app, which launched last year. If you use Facebook you've probably come across it: it manifests as a clustered list of stories that are almost completely unrelated except for the fact that they all come from the same publication. If you decide to click on a link it doesn't ...  show all text

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More than two decades after selling lifetime passes for unlimited first-class travel, American Airlines begins scrutinizing the costs — and the customers.

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Fashion retailer C&A may be a fading brand in much of Europe, but its Brazilian arm is doing what it can to stay on the pulse of social media. A new initiative called Fashion Like allows people...

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We may be seeing the beginnings of a lesson as to why it's not always the best idea to buy your competition outright. Mobile giant Zynga's game development philosophy has always been, "If you can' beat 'em, buy 'em," followed by the less welcome "If you can't buy 'em, clone [...]

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Today was just another Saturday morning in blog land when Robert Scoble, the well-known tech startup enthusiast, went to post a comment on a Facebook post written by Carnegie Mellon student (and TechCrunch commenter extraordinaire) Max Woolf about the nature of today’s tech blogging scene. Scoble’s comment itself was pretty par-for-the-course — generally agreeing with Woolf’s sentiments and adding in his own two cents. But when Scoble went to click post, he received an odd error message: “This ...  show all text

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Mr. Yauch, whose nom de rap was MCA, helped make the first hip-hop album to top the Billboard chart, and later became involved in championing freedom in Tibet.

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Adam Yauch one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys has died at the age of 47 Rolling Stone has learned Yauch also known as MCA had been in treatment for cancer since 2009 The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland "It is...

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LinkedIn has just acquired professional content sharing platform SlideShare for $119 million in cash and stock. We’ve pasted the release below. SlideShare is a sharing platform for business documents, videos and presentations. SlideShare lets anyone share presentations and video and also serves as a social discovery platform for users to find relevant content and connect with other members who share similar interests. The company also has a huge enterprise following, and companies like IBM and ...  show all text

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Web video is supposed to disrupt cable TV. And maybe it will, one day. In the meantime, the cable guys are doing just fine. Here’s a proof point: Discovery Communications, parent of the Discovery Channel, has purchased Revision3, a Web video start-up that makes and distributes its own shows, like “Tekzilla” and “Epic Meal Time.” Discovery isn’t disclosing a purchase price, but multiple sources familiar with the transaction tell me the cable guys will pay around $30 million for the start-up. The...  show all text

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