Clearspring, a fairly well-financed widget platform and advertising network has announced today the purchase of AddThis, the producer of one of the most popular widgets for allowing Web content to be easily shared on a variety of services like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Facebook. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.
Clearspring’s mission is [...]

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is at SXSW doing press interviews today and many people want to know what his thoughts are concerning data portability. There’s a big web out there that would like to give and take user data in and out of Facebook. We focused on data portability in our conversation with Zuckerberg and [...]

So much for the theory that online ad networks are immune to an economic slowdown: PubMatic, a company that helps online publishers sift through ad network offerings to find the highest-priced ad, said average ad network prices were down 23% from March to April.
But here’s the disturbing part: In March, advertisers on the 300-plus major [...]

Say what you will about a certain search giant, but the company can commit.  Google has leased 42.2 acres of land from NASA as part of an agreement that will stand for a minimum of 40 years.
Google has promised to pay NASA $3.66 million per year.  Assuming NASA doesn’t raise the rent - and it [...]

More options to refine based on current events!
Google’s spidering of the Internet appears to have picked up pace dramatically, as the company noted its related search suggestions will be much fresher for users of their search engine.
Algorithmic tweaks for faster information processing make the search result suggestions appearing at Google a more timely prospect.
The announcement [...]

Yahoo wants you to know that the company has not, in fact, curled into a fetal position. In particular, it wants you to know that contrary to our reports, it hasn’t stopped hiring. Proof? A new ad campaign which leads surfers to a page offering 696 jobs.
Our tipsters tell us that Yahoo (YHOO) isn’t likely [...]

AP) - Microsoft Corp.’s abandoned takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. appears to have culminated with a disheartening thud for those two companies but amounted to yet another coup for online search leader Google Inc.
What began in January as Microsoft’s most audacious attack yet on Google instead paved the way for the Internet’s most [...]

When it comes to your broadband connection, Google wants you to know that it has your back.
The Internet giant is developing a suite of tools to help broadband users identify traffic discrimination by their Internet service providers, according to a report in The Register.
“We’re trying to develop tools, software tools…that allow people to detect what’s [...]

After finally getting the Microsoft monkey off its back, Yahoo must now deal with the news that its exodus of executives is continuing, with two senior executives and one longtime employee leaving the web portal.
According to The New York Times’ Bits blog, Jeff Weiner, EVP of Yahoo’s network division, and chief data officer Usama Fayyad [...]

There’s been a lot of hand wringing in the media over the weekend about Yahoo’s rejection of Microsoft’s takeover bid. Most of the coverage has focused on the (very serious) financial and people issues that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang is now facing. But let’s turn some attention to Yahoo’s product line for a moment. How [...]

Google I/O is the first event for web developers that Google has run. It happens later this week on 28/29 May and Google is expecting 2,500 people to attend. The I/O stands for “Innovation/Open” (i/o is also a programmer term input/output).
Recently I spoke with Tom Stocky, a Director of Product Management at Google, to discuss [...]

According to Microsoft Evangalist John Martin , the company is set to release a product called “Social Bookmarks ” this week. The product sounds a whole lot like del.icio.us, and will initially be deployed on MSDN and TechNet, so look for it to be mostly hardcore techie bookmarks for now. Features include bookmarking (presumably via [...]

In the recent weeks we’ve seen Facebook take baby steps towards openness (as well as some backtracking). But TechCrunch reports, citing “multiple sources” that “sometime soon, perhaps this week, Facebook will turn the year-old Facebook Platform into an open source project.”* (see bottom of post)
What will this mean? Well, it could mean that any social [...]