Author: JD Rucker

Being online is part of our lives in civilized cultures. Most of us are online at some point during the day. Many of us carry the Internet around in our pockets. When it comes to being online, few of us think twice. We just do it. The question has been asked and evidence is strong for both sides – does the Internet help or hurt? Keeping us off the streets and out of the skies helps the environment as the Internet makes traveling to meetings across town or across the world less necessary, but if you convert the monthly searches processed by Google into CO2 expenditure, it’s equal to powering a freezer for 5,400…

The SEC doesn’t get it. Most journalists don’t like it. It seems that everyone from Silicon Valley to Washington DC are down on Demand Media’s push to go public with a $125 million IPO. “From the very beginning, we set out to create an entirely different kind of media company,” reads Demand Media’s Manifesto. That, they’ve done, and as a result they’re mired in red tape as they try to make everyone understand that their “content farms” are not only potentially profitable but that the way they handle their accounting is exactly the way it should be. Demand has 17,000 freelancers supplying content…

Feuds between neighbors have been known to get ugly. This one just got stupid. Earlier this week, Vincent Ardolf of Blaine, MN, confessed to hacking into Matthew and Bethan Kostolnik’s wireless Internet connection to send child porn and threats to politicians in their name. His neighbors had accused him in 2008 of kissing their 4-year-old son and called police. While no charges were filed, Ardolf’s animosity stayed. In February, 2009, he hacked the Kostolnik’s WiFi and created Yahoo! and MySpace accounts in Matthew’s name. There, he posted the child porn on MySpace and sent the pictures to…

It appears that Skype crushed itself under its own weight today with reports of up to 20 million users unable to sign in to the VoIP/Text/Video/Audio chat service. They have been the world up to date with a series of Tweets, but that didn’t last long as Twitter went down. Coincidence? Yes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t stir up the tech conspiracy theorists out there. Twitter just received $200 million in funding. Skype is working towards a $100 million IPO. Facebook is trying to buy Yahoo! to… Okay, so we made the last one up. Skype’s most recent Tweet indicates that things are on their way back to…

Propelling a 5 ton jet to liftoff speed over short distances has been the key to US Naval success for 50 years and the reason why their aircraft carriers are unique. Their steam “catapults” allowed fast enough acceleration for launch. It was a good run, but it’s time to run out of steam. The Navy made history Saturday when it launched the first aircraft using the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, technology. “This is a tremendous achievement not just for the ALRE team, but for the entire Navy,” said Capt. James Donnelly, Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment program manager….

The latest “buzz” in the tablet race comes from a video released yesterday by Motorola. “Tablet Evolution” walks us through a virtual museum with the progressing forms of tablet “technology” represented, starting with Egyptian Hieroglyphics. The format is clever, listing a positive element of each followed by the drawback that plagued them. Their jab at the iPad was particularly clever, saying that, “It’s like a giant iPhone, but… it’s like a giant iPhone.” We’ll know more about it next month at CES, but the presence of a bee at the end of the video has many speculating that it is the predicted…

Cyber Monday broke the $1 billion mark for the first time as online shopping grew across the board in 2010. From November 1 through December 10, nearly $22 billion was spent through online shopping. With Facebook looking at eCommerce for businesses in an effort to become the hub for for online shopping, 2011 will likely continue to demonstrate big jumps around the holidays. This graphic by BuySight breaks down the numbers for us and shows that even in a down economy, people are shifting more of their dollars towards digital. …

We knew it was only a matter of time. As the online world continues to gravitate towards Facebook as a central hub for many of our Internet activities, integration of business tools was the next step along the road to world domination increased profits for the social networking giant. By teaming up with startups, vendors, and even rivals, Facebook is poised to turn shopping into more of a social experience and become a supplement for companies currently using eCommerce to put their products where the consumers are spending large chunks of their time. That’s their hope as Facebook ramps up their…

If you were expecting to see various television makers unveil their offerings for Google TV at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month, prepare to be disappointed. Google TV has received lukewarm reviews since its introduction in October and has asked TV makers such as LG, Sharp, and Toshiba to delay their introductions. “Fine-tuning the software” is the unofficial word and would make sense as Google tries to navigate through the challenging arena of consumer electronics. With the exception of Android for smartphones, they haven’t displayed a lot of success so far. Gina Weakley,…

As online privacy issues continue to pop up in the news, Firefox has officially joined the battle to make our browsing activities a secret from ad providers and malicious web trackers. “Technology that supports something like a ‘Do Not Track’ button is needed and we will deliver in the first part of next year,” Mozilla chief executive Gary Kovacs said. “The user needs to be in control.” Most websites, particularly those supported by advertising platforms, use tracking technology in your browser’s history to personalize both your experience as well as the type of ads that are presented to you….