Four and a half years ago, I proudly joined the ranks of America's Finest News Source, a/k/a The Onion. For a comedian, tech geek and politics and news junkie, it was and remains an epic high in my life. Today, with a deep sense of nostalgia, I'm excited to move to the next chapter of that insane life having stepped down as Director of Digital to pursue more entrepreneurial ventures. It’s been an amazing ride. Acting as politics editor, I played a part in The Onion's 2008 "War For The White H...  show all text

posted by friends:  (7)

posted by friends of friends:  (6)

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.

posted by friends:  (8)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

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 »

posted by friends:  (8)

posted by friends of friends:  (11)

Quora co-founders Charlie Cheever & Adam D’Angelo @ Crunchies 2010 Quora, a Palo Alto-based knowledge (read: Q&A) community has raised a whopping $50 million in Series B funding from co-founder Adam D’Angelo along with Facebook early funder Peter Thiel, Northbridge Ventures and Matrix Ventures. D’Angelo, who was chief technology officer of Facebook, has put $20 million of his own money (big props for that) in Quora while others chipped in the rest.  D’Angelo co-founded the company with Charlie ...  show all text

posted by friends:  (8)

posted by friends of friends:  (4)

An ode to the father of the electric age. View

posted by friends:  (8)

posted by friends of friends:  (10)

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

posted by friends:  (9)

posted by friends of friends:  (13)

When it comes to the traditional screen that families gather around, live television is competing against a growing array of self-selected content, and audiences are bolting.

posted by friends:  (10)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

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 a 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  show all text

posted by friends:  (8)

posted by friends of friends:  (20)

Google has a somewhat tense relationship with the traditional newspaper industry, since publishers like News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch still believe it is depriving them of revenue by “stealing” their content and aggregating it at Google News. So you might think that Google’s head of news products, Richard Gingras, would try to smooth over any ruffled feathers when talking about the future of news. He did the opposite in a recent talk at Harvard, however — comparing newspapers to old-fashioned int...  show all text

posted by friends:  (10)

posted by friends of friends:  (6)

We’ve written a lot at GigaOM about the rise of newspaper paywalls, a trend that seems to be accelerating as the financial health of the industry continues to deteriorate, and in particular I’ve written a number of posts about what I see as the downsides of paywalls. But the announcement this week that a paywall is coming to Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail — where I spent a large chunk of my career as a journalist — made me stop and think about my opposition to them in a more pe...  show all text

posted by friends:  (10)

posted by friends of friends:  (5)

[Re-posted from last night.] Below is a remarkable document. It's a memo circulated by Jan van Lohuizen, a highly respected Republican pollster, (he polled for George W. Bush in 2004), to various leading Republican operatives, candidates and insiders. It's on the fast-shifting poll data on marriage equality and gay rights in general, and how that should affect Republican policy and language. And the pollster's conclusion is clear: if the GOP keeps up its current rhetoric and positions on gays a...  show all text

posted by friends:  (8)

posted by friends of friends:  (9)

“I am honored to be doing this cover. It’s a celebratory moment for our country, and that’s what I tried to capture. (I don’t especially like those rainbow colors, but they are what they are—I had to use them.) I wanted to celebrate the bravery of the President’s statement—a statement long overdue—but all the more appreciated in this political year. We are on the right side of history.” —Bob Staake, the artist who created “Spectrum of Light,” the cover of next week’s issue.

posted by friends:  (13)

posted by friends of friends:  (10)

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 users, 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 designed t...

posted by friends:  (6)

posted by friends of friends:  (6)

One man’s ruthless, relentless pursuit of market minutiae.

posted by friends:  (13)

posted by friends of friends:  (9)

posted by friends:  (7)

posted by friends of friends:  (16)

We weren’t sure about this one at first, but now we have two independent sources confirming that AOL is exploring the sale of its cornerstone technology sites Engadget and TechCrunch. The two would likely be sold together as AOL Tech, possibly including smaller assets like TUAW and Joystiq. The asking price? A hefty $70 million to $100 million. AOL is hoping to make something off the drama of the past couple of years: $70 million would net the struggling Internet company about $10 million profit  show all text

posted by friends:  (13)

posted by friends of friends:  (9)

Gay rights laws in America have evolved to allow — but in some cases ban — rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people on a range of issues, including marriage, hospital visitation, adoption…

posted by friends:  (26)

posted by friends of friends:  (23)

No, Facebook news reader apps aren't declining because users suddenly got fed up with auto-sharing. The user loss is likely due to the transition to "trending articles", a new way of surfacing recently read articles in the news feed that Facebook is testing. Update: The Washington Post confirms my hypothesis: "Social reader "collapse" is b/c of evolving FB modules. Before: "double-double," 4-5 stories down in a list, w/ friend icon - drove growth."Previously, Facebook had been driving huge numb...

posted by friends:  (17)

posted by friends of friends:  (12)

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

posted by friends:  (35)

posted by friends of friends:  (16)

posted by friends:  (14)

posted by friends of friends:  (4)

A board remains in lock step with Rupert Murdoch, despite a growing storm of investigations.

posted by friends:  (9)

posted by friends of friends:  (3)

Tom Brokaw blasts the White House Correspondents Association dinner.  On Meet the Press Sunday, Tom Brokaw of NBC News, an iconic figure in broadcast journalism, ripped into the annual ritual that media people in DC call “the prom,” hoping that their gentle ridicule of it will defuse some of the rage that they know the event inspires outside the Beltway club. Brokaw essentially told them that the game is up. The people he meets on his book tours are saying: “What’s happened with political cover...  show all text

posted by friends:  (9)

posted by friends of friends:  (2)

Fox is the empire’s good son, but also its most toxic legacy.

posted by friends:  (11)

posted by friends of friends:  (1)

Updated. 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 messag...  show all text

posted by friends:  (8)

posted by friends of friends:  (3)

I first met Adam Yauch in 1982, in Brooklyn, when I was fifteen. I was sitting on the red steps in the lobby of St. Ann’s, where I was a sophomore in high school. His bandmate, Michael Diamond, was a grade ahead of me. Occasionally Mike and I would talk about records and argue. We talked about doing a newsletter, but that was also just talk. His hardcore band, the Beastie Boys, was getting bigger in the very small pond of downtown Manhattan. (In the nineteen-eighties, folks didn’t play rock mus...  show all text

posted by friends:  (12)

posted by friends of friends:  (13)

Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief executive, spoke about the state of the wireless industry at a conference this week, and he shared some surprisingly frank comments about the iPhone. He said he loses sleep over services like iMessage.

posted by friends:  (6)

posted by friends of friends:  (8)

posted by friends:  (6)

posted by friends of friends:  (2)

The search giant rolls out upgrades to its news pages, including bigger images, real-time coverage, and Google+ comments posted alongside the articles. [Read more]

posted by friends:  (5)

posted by friends of friends:  (3)

Through technology, we can change the world. Activate is the Guardian's platform for people who are using technology to make the world a better place

posted by friends:  (7)