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Over the past few days, I've been using an upcoming e-mail helper called Gist.

Similar to Xobni (coverage) Gist is all about piggybacking on the e-mail systems you're already using to unearth information that's often tucked away. This includes the relationships you have with people you're e-mailing--both professionally and in your personal life.

The big difference is that Gist makes URLs, attachments, and conversation threads easier to get at. And instead of being relegated to Microsoft Outlook, like Xobni is, Gist works with Web mail too.

The service can tap into both Gmail and Outlook, as … Read more

Amber Ettinger, better known as "Obama Girl," has teamed up with Stickam for coverage of the presidential inauguration. Live coverage will be streamed live Monday at 8 p.m. EST from InauguralFest, and viewers will be able to see what she is doing all day at the inauguration starting at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday.

Integrated Media Measurement, an online research firm, found (PDF) that women between the ages of 15 and 48 tend to watch a television show and surf the Web an average of 17.5 minutes per day, while men do the same for just … Read more

Correction, 12:10 p.m. PST: This story misspelled the name of one of the private investors in Snooth. His name is Kevin Fortuna.

Apple announced Friday that over 500 million apps have been downloaded from its App Store. Amazingly, the company only reached 300 million downloads on December 5, meaning its App Store has enjoyed accelerating growth since the holiday season. The announcement, which was made in the form of an advertisement on Apple's home page, also claims that the App Store now features more than 15,000 apps.

A new report from the Pew Internet and American … Read more

A security researcher has discovered fake profiles for celebrities on LinkedIn that have links to malicious code, according to a blog posting on Trend Micro's site.

The celebrity profiles that are not to be trusted include ones created using the names: Beyonce Knowles, Victoria Beckham, Christina Ricci, Kirsten Dunst, Salma Hayek, and Kate Hudson. They were uncovered by Trend Micro Advanced Threats Researcher Ivan Macalintal.

In its blog posting late on Monday, Trend Micro said it was continuing its investigation. The links on the professional networking site attempt to lure viewers by purporting to be nude shots of the … Read more

Business networking site LinkedIn has confirmed reports that its founder, Reid Hoffman, will return to the CEO post to replace resigning CEO Dan Nye.

Hoffman had stepped down as CEO in 2006 but remained chairman of the board and stayed active in product development operations. This month, LinkedIn hired Dipchand Nishar as vice president of products, with the objective of taking over some of the duties that Hoffman had been handling. Meanwhile, former Yahoo executive Jeff Wiener, currently the executive in residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, will take over as interim president at LinkedIn.

Nye plans to step … Read more

InternetNews.com's Andy Patrizio pens an excellent analysis of why EMC, the storage giant, just might gobble up Sun, the former Unix king. While there are potential conflicts to such a match, the synergies might well outweigh them.

Patrizio walks through a range of benefits EMC could derive from Sun's hardware prowess (tape storage to complement EMC's expertise in NAS and SAN, enhanced server throughput performance. ZFS, etc.), as well as its software line-up (Java, RSA security, database replication, etc.). The list is long and the potential benefits would be huge.

But it's actually in the … Read more

SugarCRM announced a new Cloud Connectors program on Monday that opens the leading open-source CRM solution to cloud services like LinkedIn.

SugarCRM also got a bit more social, with a new Social Feeds feature that provides alerts and status updates found in Web services like Facebook.

It's a great way of opening up the SugarCRM system beyond mere source code, as PC World reports:

If you're logging into third-party sites "while you're on the phone with someone, you're going to be hemming and hawing and you're not going to have it at your fingertips,&… Read more

It's a rough market, and likely to get worse before it gets better. For those (developers or otherwise) who think they may need to be finding new employment soon, I'd highly recommend that you sign up for the Open Source Group on LinkedIn. New jobs are constantly being listed. Here are a few from today:

The group provides other useful information and services, but given the criticality of employment, it may be the first thing that catches your eye.

TechCrunch reports that LinkedIn just upgraded its people search, but fails to mention the technology behind the upgrade: Lucene, the open-source search project. Nor is LinkedIn alone: MySpace has also used Lucene to revamp its search functionality, as Ars Technica reported earlier in June.

Indeed, borrowing from open source is now standard operating procedure for Web companies. What is interesting in the use of Lucene is how the Web is branching beyond the familiar LAMP stack to build in technologies like Lucene, Yahoo!'s User Interface Library, and other open-source components.

Arguably, the Web could not exist without open-source software, … Read more