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Teens in Tech, a blogging network that's written by young adults, announced Friday that it has acquired Youth Bloggers Network for an undisclosed sum. According to a post on the Youth Bloggers Network blog, both companies "decided that by joining forces, our projects could help each other vastly." Going forward, the combined company wants to create unique Wordpress themes, e-books, coupons, and a variety of community features "to slowly transform Youth Bloggers Network into a social network for young and teen bloggers."

Kardia Health Systems, a company that was formed to commercialize the Echocardiography Information … Read more

There's a catch to this program that promises to "recover" temporary Internet files from Internet Explorer's cache. It only works if the files haven't been erased using Disk Cleanup, Internet Explorer's built-in cleanup tool, or another temporary file remover.

IE Cache Files FlashGet 2007 won't help you recover deleted files, but it can help you sort through cache contents to find a missing file. The program's interface is simple in design and holds only a few command buttons, a file tree, and a pane to view a list of recovered files. The … Read more

This very basic alarm clock claims to offer users a little extra jolt to wake them up in the morning. After putting it to the test, we were left still snoozing at its performance.

Get Up offers an extremely plain and, thanks to a few spelling errors, unprofessionally designed user interface. You have to input the day, month, and year to set the alarm, along with the specific time, which is in military style. There aren't any options to set the alarm for multiple days; you can only set it for one day at a time. You also won'… Read more

Accidentally deleted your files? GetDataBack Data Recovery can track them down--for a price. It even works with corrupted drives and those not recognized by Windows. This version only recovers files from NTFS drives, but it does offer a search tool for quickly locating a file by its date, name, or size.

If you suspect your actual disk is about to bite the dust, you can create a drive image to use during recovery. The utility can't make rescue discs, however, so if you want to do that, you'll need to build yourself a bootable Windows PE disc and … Read more

Accidentally deleted your files? GetDataBack Data Recovery can track them down--for a price. It even works with corrupted drives and those not recognized by Windows. This version only recovers files from FAT drives, but it does offer a search tool for quickly locating a file by its date, name, or size.

If you suspect your actual disk is about to bite the dust, you can create a drive image to use during recovery. The utility can't make rescue discs, however, so if you want to do that, you'll need to build yourself a bootable Windows PE disc and … Read more

A coalition dedicated to paving the way for plug-in electric cars in communities launched on Tuesday, highlighting the technical and economic challenges to electric transportation.

Project Get Ready is spearheaded by think tank the Rocky Mountain Institute and includes a few municipalities, utilities, and nonprofits as members. It counts automakers, including General Motors, and technology companies as advisers.

The group's goal is to accelerate plug-in electric car adoption by helping communities create multi-year plans for adoption. It will initially work with three communities--Raleigh, N.C.; Portland, Ore.; and Indianapolis, Ind.--and convene with over 20 communities later this year … Read more

Shazam, a mobile music discovery service for the iPhone, T-Mobile G1, and other devices, announced Friday that it has added 20 million users since September and now has 35 million users worldwide.

Shazam's success is due in part to its availability. According to the company, its app can be found on phones offered by 75 carriers across 60 countries. Shazam users are tagging an average of 10 tracks per month, and the company claims that a total of 1 million tracks are being tagged monthly around the world. By the end of 2009, CEO Andrew Fisher expects the app … Read more

Somebody in the U2 camp has been paying attention to recent album releases by Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne and Brian Eno, and Paul McCartney's The Fireman project.

Like these forerunners, U2 is kicking off the promotion for its upcoming album, No Line on the Horizon, by offering the first single as a free online stream, and will offer the album in five packages at different price points--from the superfan box format with a CD, DVD, poster, and hardcover book at $66.49 (if you if you preorder from Amazon, otherwise it's close to $100) to the mere … Read more

Back in 2002, Jim Allchin was co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division and was, in his own words, "scared" of the momentum behind Linux, as noted in an email [PDF] sent to several of his direct reports.

Why scared? Because Windows was starting to lose to Linux:

My conclusion: We are not on a path to win against Linux. We must change some things and we must do it immediately. The current white papers, etc. are too high level and they are not going to cut it.

So what did Allchin do? As court documents in the Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust suit demonstrate, and as Roy Schestowitz pointed out on his blog Sunday, Allchin started to buy facts. Lots of facts.

What facts? "Facts" about Windows alleged superiority as a preemptive kernel and asychronous I/O, facts that demonstrate that "Linux is old unix." Facts about Windows alleged security superiority over Linux. Facts that go to the heart of Red Hat and IBM's patent indemnification offerings and, frighteningly, Allchin seems to be foretelling Microsoft's later patent FUD against Linux:

We need to understand exactly the risk a customer is under if a patent lawsuit happens and Linux is challenged....There MUST be risks to customers that are being passed on. I want this understood precisely. We need to get the license from IBM given to customers and investigate.

To his credit, Allchin's e-mail constantly re-emphasizes that he's looking for facts, not tabloid marketing against Linux:… Read more