stone

Chief scientist, two board members exit Twitter

Defections at Twitter are mounting. Not only is Chief Scientist Abdur Chowdhury the latest ranking technologist to resign from the San Francisco-based company, but two key board members are also stepping down.

Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet, two of Twitter's earliest investors, will be leaving at the end of the month. Twitter confirmed this to Peter Kafka at AllThingsD. In early August, Twitter announced that it closed an $800 million venture deal--the largest in history--led by Yuri Milner's Russian venture capital firm DST Global. This brings Twitter's valuation to $8.4 billion. DST also invests in Facebook, … Read more

The 404 900: Where we have sweet dreams of rhythm and dancing (podcast)

Mark Licea transports us back to the '90s on today's 404 Podcast, which also happens to be our 900th episode! How appropriate that the penultimate episode would also fall on Jonathan Taylor Thomas' 30th birthday.

The '90s theme rolls through the show as Mark sings today's "Tang That Tune" music trivia segment, and we'll also reveal details about Nike's Back to the Future sneaker, as well as Rolling Stone's ranking of the worst songs of the '90s. We have a few selections of our own to add!

Finally, we spend a minute talking about a clever algorithm that helped arrange the names on the 9/11 memorial wall. The memorial planners hired a local media design firm to develop a network of names organized by interpersonal relationships.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

The 404 Digest for Episode 900

An algorithm helped arrange the names on the 9/11 memorial. 9/11 memorial guide. No power laces = 100% fail; back to the best shoe Nike never made. Rolling Stone ranks the worst songs of the '90s. This matters: JTT reunites with "Home Improvement" cast to celebrate 30th birthday. Justin's Daily Bathroom Entertainment: dog loop.

Episode 900 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Twitter founders reveal incubator's first project

Biz Stone, the Twitter co-founder who left his daily duties at the microblogging site to restart Obvious Corporation, the company that gave life to Twitter, revealed details of the incubator's first project today.

The company's first project is Lift, an "application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement," Stone wrote in a blog post today titled "Unlocking Potential."

"It's important never to delude ourselves into thinking that technology changes the world," Stone wrote. "People are responsible for change--technology just helps out."

Stone said little else about the app but … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1502: Skype will spy on you (Podcast)

Microsoft patents spy tech for Skype which allow users to listen in on private Skype conversations. This does not sound good as our privacy on the internet becomes less and less private. Google's social media site Google Plus begins with little fan fair hoping to cause a mass migration from Facebook. And a clever Foursquare hack turns New York City Into a giant game of Risk!

Biz Stone, Evan Williams relaunch Twitter incubator

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said on his blog today he is teaming with another co-founder of the microblogging service, Evan Williams, to restart the company that gave life to Twitter.

The Obvious Corporation will be run by Stone, Williams, and former Twitter product chief Jason Goldman. The trio will "develop new projects and work on solving big problems aligned along a simple mission statement: The Obvious Corporation develops systems that help people work together to improve the world. This is a dream come true!" Stone wrote on his blog.

That means Stone will leave his daily duties at … Read more

Portable image package

FastStone Image Viewer Portable is a full-featured image-handling application that happens to be totally portable and totally free. It's an image file browser, editor, and converter that bundles the most useful editing tools, such as red-eye removal, lossless rotation, resizing, and color adjustment, as well as various effects, text, captions, and frames. It creates self-running slideshows, photo contact sheets, wallpaper, and other displays; downloads digital photos; converts, renames, and changes the attributes of batches of files; changes time stamps; compares images; splits and combines files; captures screen images; e-mails images; and a lot more.

FastStone Image Viewer's fully … Read more

Twitter co-founder becomes AOL 'strategic adviser'

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has been tapped by AOL as a "strategic adviser," the company announced today.

Stone's official title is "strategic adviser for social impact." In that role, he will be helping AOL "develop a platform to facilitate people doing service in their communities [and] rally other companies to invest in and deploy best corporate practices." He will also be developing a video series discussing philanthropic and corporate-responsibility efforts on the part of companies and executives.

"My goal in partnering with AOL and The Huffington Post Media Group is ambitious but … Read more

Twitter and YouTube trends of '10

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Twitter releases its top trends of 2010, and I sit down with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to discuss them

YouTube releases its top video views of 2010

Google finally launches a Latitude app for iPhone

T-Mobile says a 4G tablet is on its way

Google indexes search results by reading level

Top Twitter trends of 2010

Justin Bieber is the only living human on Twitter's list of top trends of 2010. The young singer holds the No. 8 spot behind Google Android and Apple iPad.

The top three terms are, unsurprisingly: Gulf oil spill, FIFA World Cup, and "Inception," referring to the Leonardo DiCaprio blockbuster film.

We interviewed Twitter co-founder Biz Stone about the list on Friday.

Other top trends included the vuvuzela and Pulpo Paul, the World Cup-predicting octopus. Stone said that nothing was particularly surprising. But when it comes to Twitter trends, he has learned not to be surprised.

Twitter breaks … Read more

Jabra reveals Stone 2

Jabra has just introduced the sequel to its Stone headset from last year, and it's appropriately dubbed the Jabra Stone 2. It has the same design as its predecessor--the curved hook housed inside a portable "stone" charger--but it now features voice control, so you can answer and reject calls just by using your voice. It has dual microphone noise canceling, A2DP streaming, and up to 10 hours of talk time as long as you remember to keep it in the charger. It will be available on November 21 for $129.99.