Originally published on Fri January 25, 2013 11:02 am
If you thought 140 characters of text was too short, try grabbing your Twitter followers' attention with six-second videos. Six seconds.
Twitter on Thursday launched the video app Vine, which allows users to shoot brief videos and directly tweet them. The social media company acquired the video-sharing startup last fall, according to All Things D.
A wave of racist tweets prompted a Jewish student organization to file a lawsuit asking the American company Twitter to reveal the identities of users sending anti-Semitic tweets. Twitter says data on users is collected and stocked in California, where French law cannot be applied.
A French judge will decide this week if Twitter must hand over the identities of users sending anti-Semitic tweets. The case, brought against Twitter by a Jewish student organization, pits America's free speech guarantees against Europe's laws banning hate speech.
The controversy began in October, when the French Union of Jewish Students threatened to sue Twitter to get the names of people posting anti-Semitic tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif, or "a good Jew."
Lots of companies make products that don't have much in common, but AeroVironment specializes in two products that are very different — electric vehicle chargers, which keep cars like the Nissan Leaf on the road, and military drones. The Los Angeles-area firm is a leading manufacturer of small unmanned aircraft.
Originally published on Mon January 21, 2013 5:25 pm
The Presidential Inaugural Committee released a smart phone app this week to help people follow inaugural events in real time. It has maps of the parade route, volunteer opportunities and real-time updates. It also has an invisible feature — the app could be mining data for Democrats.
Originally published on Mon January 21, 2013 5:26 pm
The Presidential Inaugural Committee might have its first-ever smart phone app, but for the hundreds of thousands of onlookers flooding into the National Mall on Monday, there were plenty of other reasons to be clutching a mobile device. Many just wanted to say, "We came."
Originally published on Mon January 21, 2013 5:24 pm
Laura Sydell gives a look ahead to the week in tech news. She covers the launch of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's latest website and the rollout of what Facebook is calling its "graph search."
