I just got interesting email from Amazon: the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers [...] We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other s...
Two San Diego biotechs, Adamis Pharmaceuticals and La Jolla Pharmaceutical, said today they have agreed to terminate their merger agreement, which was signed three months ago. The Nasdaq market also delisted La Jolla Pharmaceutical today, saying the company is operating only as a public shell with minimal assets and operations. La Jolla Pharmaceutical said that after receiving a total of only 13 percent of shareholder proxies, i...
Its only taken the ultra-secretive fuel cell maker Bloom Energy 8 years and close to $400 million to get it to where it is tonight: finally unveiling its refrigerator-sized fuel cell called the Bloom Box to the public in an exclusive behind-the-scenes interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Bloom Energy founder K.R. Sridhar shows 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl the innards of the Bloom Box, which takes in oxygen and fuel (natural gas, biomass, etc.) to create electricity and costs between $700,000 to $800,000. G...
Twitter just announced that it now sees 50 million non-spam messages every day. That's interesting but it means more when you look at it in context.
The company says that means there are 600 tweets per second. According to a separate Tweet by Twitter's new VP of Communications this afternoon, approximately 83 tweets per second contain product or brand references (20%). Here are some other interesting numbers and an official chart. Putting Twitter in context, Facebook and YouTube remain much larger.
Spo...
Google knows you. It knows what type of car you drive from that time, last year, when you looked up the where you could find a cheap set of tires. It knows that you like Mexican food from all the times you've looked on Google Maps. And Google knows how to leverage this type of information with services like Google AdWords, AdSense, and DoubleClick Ad Exchange but now it's moving into what it's calling "the next generation of ad serving" - a simplified, streamlined ad server.
While Google currently has the ...
Seesmic will release a major update of its web-based Twitter client Seesmic Web today that will introduce a number of new features like drag and drop list management, TweetMeme integration, threaded conversations and a new way to view and manage your retweets. Seesmic Web now also includes a very handy new contact manager for Twitter.
The nicest new feature in Seesmic Web is the ability to drag and drop contacts to any list. Compared to TweetDeck and other desktop too...
Are people are who they really say they are online? Conventional wisdom tells us that social networking sites, blogs and other social media outlets have allowed people to carefully craft online "personas" - essentially idealized versions of who they are in real life. Are you wittier online? More outgoing? More social? Friendlier? For those hiding behind the keyboard and computer screen, personality traits like these are easier to fake. Or are they?
According to a recent research study, maybe not. Psycholo...
What do you get when a Christian pastor, an atheist, a grad student and a lawyer set up a website to criticize churches?
I swear, this isn't a bad joke. It's a very real site, ChurchRater, and it allows anyone with an Internet connection to identify and review church services around the world. Is the site inspiring frank conversations about worship and religion, as its creators intended? Is it allowing sometimes closed or cliqueish communities to see how they appear to outsiders? Or does it, as some users ...
San Diegos Fallbrook Technologies, a cleantech venture developing a proprietary transmission that offers improved efficiency for a variety of vehicles, intends to raise $50 million through an IPO, according to a filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
A Fallbrook spokesman declined to comment on the stock offering.
In its filing, Fallbrook says its NuVinci design (for a continuously variable planetary transmission) ca...
Sony Electronics usually maintains a low corporate profile at its North American headquarters, even though it ranks among San Diegos biggest private employerswith roughly 2,000 workers here. That seemed especially true after its corporate parent announced a massive reorganization at this time last year, which included hundreds of Sony layoffs in San Diego.
So it seemed unusual when Sony Electronics recently broke radio silence. The consume...
Some of the lessons learned from the commercials during Super Bowl 2010: Beer solves lots of problems, women hold men back from their dreams and this year, pants are optional. But there were also some highlights for the web video world.
Flo TV pushed their mobile TV viewing device to hen-pecked men dragged out shopping to the game, but they also got behind will.i.ams My Generation remix.
Google had a relatively clever ad in the second half pushing their search ability but, um, did anyone need to be tol...