Cancer doc urges cell phone precaution
Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, sends list of precautionary measures to faculty and staff.Facebook and the end of sheep tossing as we know it?
The company's out with a new initiative designed to expand its popularity and smooth relations with developers. Rafe Needleman and I got together to take stock of the coming changes.Robert Scoble expands into merchandise [Caption Contest]
If there's a lens, egoblogger Robert Scoble's in front of it. But who's behind it? Rocky Barbanica, the cameraman who Scobleizes the Scobleizer. In this photo, he shows off a pint-sized, plastic version of a much younger Scoble. Can you think of a better headline? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: "China commemorates attack on Olympian Nancy Kerrigan " by theodp. (Photo by Brian Solis)
Sep 23, 2008: Sf Beta 2.6 at 111 Minna Gallery
As Summer wraps up in the Bay Area - did we even get a summer? - SF Beta warms things up. Come check out the crew, the company demos, and the companionship at 111 Minna. (With our now earlier start time)"SF Beta is San Francisco’s largest regular startup mixer. Since launching in September, 2006, our event has brought together thousands of people from hundreds of startups, creating innumerable connections along the way.
Some people come to our event to be social, some come to make business connections, and many come to do both. Our event, called the “king of Web 2.0 mixers,” offers something of everything."
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Fake-gay Facebook profile lands Brit $43,000 in damages [Your Privacy Is An Illusion]
Matthew Firsht, managing director of Applause Store Productions, which finds audiences for television and radio shows, won the equivalent of $33,000 in damages against a former schoolfriend. Grant Raphael's profile for Firsht falsely suggested was looking for same-sex relationships and was signed up with groups including Gay in the Wood…Borehamwood and Gay Jews in London. The judge awarded Firsht $29,500 for libel and $4,000 for breach of privacy. Firsht's firm was awarded $10,000 for libel. [Guardian]
Microsoft CFO: Yahoo a ‘declining asset’
Speaking to financial analysts, Chris Liddell concedes online business hasn't shown much tangible progress, but says Yahoo deal making less and less sense.Steve Jobs’s health leads top Apple flack to contract “common bug” with the truth [Katie Cotton]
The rumors about Apple CEO Steve Jobs's health are a big concern for shareholders. And one would think Apple's head of PR would actively push to clear the air and fight the rumors with a clear statement. But instead of doing her job properly, Katie Cotton has been actively deceiving the public about the state of her indispensable boss's body.
Cotton's title is vice president of worldwide corporate communications at Apple. But her real job is serving as Apple CEO Steve Jobs's personal flack. Always at Jobs's side, Cotton puts Jobs's interests ahead of Apple's — sometimes quite literally, like when she took time away from Apple to handle PR for Disney's acquisition of Pixar, where Jobs was CEO but where Cotton did not work. The Pixar deal may have been good for Jobs personally — he is now one of Disney's largest shareholders, and a board member there — but it's not clear how the interests of Apple shareholders were served by Cotton's extracurricular efforts.
After Jobs's gaunt appearance at the announcement of the iPhone 3G in June sparked questions about his health — including speculation that his cancer might have returned — Cotton had an opportunity to lay out the facts: Jobs's pancreatic surgery in 2004, while successful, was not without complications. Removing part of the pancreas requires a rewiring of the digestive tract. Weight loss is a common side effect, as food rushes undigested through the body. That matter can create blockages, which in turn can lead to infections.
That seems like the most likely explanation for what happened to Jobs before Apple's World Wide Developers Conference: He suffered a blockage which lead to an infection, requiring treatment.
Instead, Cotton told reporters that Jobs had a "common bug" and had been taking antibiotics. Not exactly a lie, but far from the complete truth — her phrasing was obviously meant to suggest Jobs had some kind of cold. In fact, he had to have a surgical procedure to address the problem, the New York Times recently reported. Hardly a "common bug."
Cotton is obviously serving her boss's obsessive need for privacy. But in an age when we ask presidential candidates for their medical records, is it too much to expect a company like Apple to provide basic, accurate information about its CEO's health — especially when billions of dollars of Apple's market value are attributed to Jobs himself?
Cotton should remember this: She doesn't actually work for Steve Jobs. She works for Apple's shareholders. If it's too late for her to start doing her job accordingly, then it's time for her to go.
(Photo by Violet Blue))
CNBC’s editing genius on display in Mark Zuckerberg interview [Great Moments In Pr]
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If you can stand it, it's worth watching a particular excerpt from CNBC's interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg twice. First watch the version CNBC put on the air, embedded above. In that clip, Zuckerberg answers a question sounding sure of himself, speaking in clear, declarative sentences, and smoothly using his talking points, not just rattling them off. Compare it to the clip below of Zuckerberg answering the same question in an unedited version of the interview CNBC reporter Julia Boorstin embedded on her blog. The difference shows CNBC editors' talents — and just how far Zuckerberg has to go before it's safe to put a microphone near him. It all goes downhill after Zuckerberg begins to answer a straightforward softball from Boorstin — "What is the new site design and what does it mean for the user experience?" — by saying, "So for those of you who don't know, I, we just announced, um and launched, started rolling a new site design."
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Microsoft’s Facebook Deal Really A “Threat” To Google? Nope
How so? Last we looked, Google was crushing the search market, with Microsoft a very distant third.
Will adding Facebook's audience - 90 million users worldwide - help Microsoft pick up a little bit of share? It's possible. But it's hard to see it moving the needle that much -- Facebook is a large social network, but in the grand scheme of things it's not that big. At least not yet.
Some perspective: comScore, which also tracks searches on sites that don't actually have Web search engines -- like Facebook -- says that Microsoft had 68.9 million unique U.S. "searchers" in June. Facebook had 16.3 million. We don't know how many of those are duplicative, but for argument's sake, say none of them are. Let's also say that every one of Facebook's "searchers" starts using Microsoft's engine when they want to scour the Web (which will never happen: Lots of those folks will use Google via their toolbars or just go to the site directly). That would increase Microsoft's core search base by 23% -- at best, enough to increase its share by a few points.
Meanwhile, while we don't know what Ballmer paid for the deal, it almost certainly didn't come cheap. Microsoft probably will not get more than a 15% payout per search, because that's about the split they offered another big potential distribution partner, Yahoo.
Bottom line, it's more distribution for Microsoft's search platform, which is a positive. But it's hard to imagine that it's a game-changer. Which might be why Ballmer didn't deliver the news himself, but left it to a VP.