There is a new social networking program being launched online, this new program is none other than Google+. Read more...

The following originally aired on KCBS

By: Asha Richardson

 Every day I check my Gmail and tell my Macbook Pro how much I love it. But when I graduate from college next year, I’m not sure how much these companies will love me, and by love me I mean hire me.

This year as a part of Youth Radio’s App Lab, I visited the headquarters of one of the world’s biggest tech giants four times and was never introduced to a single black engineer or executive.

Silicon Valley often identifies as a place where people advance based on their ideas and achievements, but what gets glossed over is that it’s only a meritocracy if you’re in the club.

It seems like membership requires attending a well funded high school, doing well on the SATs, and earning top grades…preferably from an Ivy League College. Race, privilege, and class continue to affect Americans’ opportunities.

Hopefully, more tech companies will recognize the value, and profitability, of ideas and input from a variety of demographics. As an emerging entrepreneur, I don’t want my ideas to be funded because I’m a black woman. I want them to succeed on their merits. But for that to happen, I need to be in the room.

Always wanted to bike along the California coast? Or perhaps pedal along Riverside Drive in Manhattan? A new idea called “Google Bike” makes this possible. This system combines Google Earth's street view function with a stationary bike, according to TheNextWeb.com. The rider watches the street view on a screen as they pedal where they want to go.

Here’s how it works according to Instructables:

A sensor from a bike computer is used to detect the rotation of a bike tire. The output of this sensor and the turning angle (controlled by the thumb joystick) is read by an Arduino and relayed to a computer over a usb cable. The computer reads the number of rotations and angle of the joystick and uses these values to control a virtual bike within google earth!

 

Check out a demo video on TheNextWeb.com:

If the following statement is true, then this post’s for you:

You’re an Internet user (this I know, since you’re reading this), but you just don’t know what everyone is talking about when it comes to this Google/Verizon announcement and net neutrality.

What is net neutrality?

Finding a job is like finding a needle in a haystack, it gets harder and more competitive every day. But with the job market getting tougher to access, job seekers are also becoming more creative to get employer's attention.

Take Alec Brownstein for example. He decided to buy Google ad words as a way to promote himself in hopes of landing a job. Six dollars later, he got hired.

Via Media Bistro and Not Cot

Could Google be warping our perception of reality? That's what the authors of a new study suggest is happening.

Because Google relies on popularity of links as part of its top secret search algorithm, information that is popular but not necessarily factual is rising to the top. A USA Today article quotes study co-author Dietram Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as saying that Google's search suggestions are likely shifting our view of science, politics and more:

"I don't think Google is making us 'stupid' but we do see the potential for a self-reinforcing spiral in search suggestions away from the most accurate information towards the most popular," Scheufele says.

From an anecdotal standpoint I can tell you that I experienced just such a Google encounter last night. While looking up information on a certain literary journal (that shall go nameless) I saw that one of the top three suggestions after it's name was "scam". This led me down a rabbit hole that raised more questions than it answered, arguably a good thing. Yet I came away feeling like this is one of the major flaws in our current organization of the web. Few resources exist online to weigh the opinions that are offered: other than the popularity of those opinions. A feedback loop of the worst kind.

In yesterday's electronic version of the New York Times "Media Equation" columnist David Carr caught my eye with the headline "Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Headline" (and I don't even watch Gossip Girl!). The article wasn't even about Ms. Momsen:

One more fact about Ms. Momsen: she has nothing to do with this column, let alone the headline. But her very name is a prized key word online — just the thing to push my column to the top of Google rankings.

Carr's column goes on to be a fantastic diagnosis of the problem that's facing not just modern journalism, but every reader on the web. Sensationalism has always sold-- "If it bleeds, it leads" -- but we're facing a crisis of facts. Consensus reality appears to be breaking down faster than the Gulf of Mexico is filling with crude oil. Or perhaps something more frightening is occurring: perhaps our consensus reality isn't breaking down, it's just no longer reality-based.

[If that's so, can I get the reality with Super-Heroes in it?]

Okay, call this an OLD MAN rant if you must, but I think we've all been crunk on "openness" and the "social graph" for so long that we're forgetting the value of a good secret.

Let's take the North Carolina pizza joint who fired a waitress for complaining about a crappy tip on Facebook for example. Now I'm not going to agree with Brixx Pizza's policy of policing their employee's social media pages and taking employment related punitive actions against them. That's just dumb. Employers shouldn't have the right to put their workers under the same scrutiny that, say, a politician deserves.

Yet they do. Moreover, they're going to keep doing it until the social media era is over. Which is to say: never.

So what's a pissed off service industry worker to do? Well you can try practicing your inside voice for a while. I know. It sucks. The whole point of the social networking phenomenon was that we were supposed to be able to speak our minds to who we wanted to and keep everyone else out. Private spaces that were hiding in plain sight. The only problem is that in the "era of free" no one can make any $$$ by helping you keep your secrets. Because you're not paying Facebook, MySpace, and yes, Google to keep your secrets: advertisers are paying them to know everything they can about you.

There are different levels of privacy, everyone who has made it past potty training understands this inherently. Yet it feels like our technology is pushing us towards a binary definition of public/private. At some point the social networking providers are going to learn that we need simple to use controls that help us define our semi-private spaces online, or be crushed by an upstart that "gets it".

Until then we're going to have learn that everything you say online can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion. That while you may have lots of friends online, the Internet itself is not your friend. It's a megaphone, and the wrong people are just as likely to be listening as the right ones.

Venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkin's is, in a very real way, responsible for the world we live in today. He's backed both Amazon and Google well before they were household words. On the other hand he also backed the Segway- which was hyped so hard that nothing short of the hoverboards from Back to the Future 2 would have slatted the thirst of the masses. The actual dork-mobile that is the Segway went beyond disappointment.

With this in mind there's some cautious optimism brewing around Doer's biggest bet yet: the Bloom Box. The brainchild of an authentic rocket scientist, former NASA engineer K. R. Sridhar, the Bloom Box just might the most revolutionary fuel cell ever invented. The media blitz on the Bloom Box is just getting rolling, with CBS' 60 Minutes and Fortune magazine getting the exclusives ahead of this Wednesday's press conference (check the countdown on the Bloom Energy site).

Big questions have yet to be covered: no one is saying anything about emissions, for one. Add to this the fact that green tech is seen as the next big market and we could just be looking at a Segway like attempt to hype a Kleiner Perkin's project into cultural dominance. Yet Sridhar's science chops are real- and the reason for the public unveiling is pressure from Bloom Energy's first wave fo corporate clients. Little firms that want to make a mark on the world too: FedEx, EBay, and Google.

It's not like the economy needs a big win right now.

[Here's a little more on Bloom Energy from the Christian Science Monitor]

While this isn't at the scale of say, Kraft acquiring Cadbury or even Apple picking up Lala there's been some M&A (that's mergers and acquisition for those not up on business-speak) action in the realm of the teen tycoons. The 17 year old CEO of Teens in Tech, a teen blogging community, Daniel Brusilovsky [@danielbru on twitter] has announced the acquisition of the site Yazzem.

Yazzem, based in Michigan and founded by two 14 year olds, is a topic-based microblogging service. A user starts a topic thread in 200 characters or less and can carry on a back and forth with other users. Think of twitter with an attention span. Brusilovsky plans on integrating Yazzem's tech and features into the Teens in Tech service, which has finally emerged from private alpha this week.

Yazzem was acquired for the princely sum of $15,000, or 1.2 million XBox Live points.

Teens in Tech will be hosting a conference in San Francisco come February 6th at the Google offices in San Francisco. Who's laughing now?

[via TechXav]

Giving birth can be one of the most exciting moments in one's life, but what happens if your wife or girlfriend can’t make it to the hospital. What do you do? 29-year-old Leroy Smith found himself in this predicament. Luckily Smith had his blackberry on him. He looked up step-by-step instructions on how to deliver a baby. He went on wikiHow and was able to deliver his daughter safely.

The Sun quoted Smith about the delivery as saying, “The BlackBerry told me that when I saw the head, I had to support it….And when the baby actually comes out, I had to place her on Emma's chest, then covered them both with a blanket and make sure they were both comfortable and relaxed.”