These are arti­cles I found valu­able and rec­om­mend reading.

  • Do You Hear What I Hear? Yes, It’s Pay­pal Steal­ing Money From Kids
    by TechCrunch
    It’s the hol­i­day sea­son, when a webmaster’s mind turns to thoughts of love and char­ity. Take Regretsy, for exam­ple. The site col­lected a bit of money and began buy­ing and send­ing gifts to the kids in the Regretsy com­mu­nity whose par­ents were hav­ing finan­cial prob­lems. In this econ­omy, that could be just about any­body and, the Inter­net being the Inter­net, there was an out­pour­ing of affec­tion and dona­tions. It warms, as they say, the cock­les of the heart. Unfor­tu­nately, Regretsy used Pay­pal. A…
  • Swiss gov’t study: down­load­ing leads to sales, so we’re keep­ing it legal
    by Boing Boing
    The Swiss gov­ern­ment com­mis­sioned a study on the impact of copyright-​​infringing down­load­ing. The inde­pen­dent study con­cluded that down­load­ers use the money they spend to buy more legit­i­mate enter­tain­ment prod­ucts. So they’ve con­cluded to main­tain Switzerland’s extant copy­right law, which makes down­load­ing for per­sonal use legal. It’s a rare vic­tory for evidence-​​based pol­icy in a world dom­i­nated by shrill asser­tions of lost jobs and rev­enue, backed by funny-​​number “sta­tis­tics” from industry-​​comm…
  • 25 bat­tery break­throughs for gad­gets, elec­tric cars & the grid
    by GigaOM
    A lack of progress for bat­tery tech­nol­ogy is (arguably) the sin­gle biggest bar­rier for gad­gets, elec­tric vehi­cles and the power grid. But there con­tin­ues to be inno­va­tion, like last week researchers at North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity unveiled tech­nol­ogy that can boost gad­get bat­tery life by ten and charge a bat­tery in min­utes instead of hours. And there’s hun­dreds of researchers, entre­pre­neurs, uni­ver­si­ties and large com­pa­nies work­ing on bat­tery break­throughs. Here’s 25 you should know about: 1). Se…
  • Thanks To The 7 Deadly Web­sites, We’re All Sinners
    by TechCrunch
    Sins used to require effort. In bib­li­cal times, even sloth meant hav­ing to sit around using your imag­i­na­tion. Now, a 1-​​inch hand ges­ture is all that sep­a­rates human kind from the book­marked sin of choice. The faintest desire for a fix of nar­cis­sism sees us paw­ing through Face­book and Twit­ter for Likes and retweets. If the task at hand seems daunt­ing, we can hastily retreat to Net­flix where we’re only asked to stare. A stray car­nal thought can be indulged at any moment thanks to 4Chan and YouPo…
  • Apple, Microsoft, and 27 other major com­pa­nies are implic­ity sup­port­ing SOPA
    by Ven­ture­Beat
    While many tech com­pa­nies have been vocal about their dis­dain for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) — a bill that is mak­ing the rounds on Capi­tol Hill and that could lead to unfore­seen cen­sor­ship on the web if passed — oth­ers like Microsoft and Apple have been mum on the sub­ject. Now it’s clear why: Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and 26 other tech giants are mem­bers of the Busi­ness Soft­ware Alliance, which has thrown its sup­port behind SOPA, reports the Next Web. In a news release from Octo­ber, B…
  • Life­time value of a customer/​cost per customer
    by Seth’s Blog
    Two things every busi­ness and non-​​profit needs to know: How much does it cost you to get one new cus­tomer. On aver­age, what’s that cus­tomer worth over the rela­tion­ship you have with her? The inter­net rev­o­lu­tion­izes both sides of the equa­tion. Face­book and Twit­ter are mar­vels because for each, the cost of a new cus­tomer is van­ish­ingly close to zero. When you can get peo­ple into a rela­tion­ship for noth­ing, you don’t need to make much on each one to be delighted with the out­come. Note that…
  • The Fall of Giants: Sony and RIM Con­tinue To Lose Ground
    by TechCrunch
    I wasn’t sur­prised to hear that both Sony and RIM are spi­ral­ing into mar­ket irrel­e­vancy. It’s been an inevitabil­ity since about 2009 that Sony would see declin­ing for­tunes and it’s been clear for months that RIM is near death. I’m just sad to see both of them go. Sony is los­ing because it lost the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. Once upon a time, Sony build solid, pop­u­lar prod­ucts for the world. How­ever, with the rise of mobile tech­nol­ogy and the ridicu­lous Sony Eric­s­son part­ner­ship that effectivel…
  • Ohne Ver­schlüs­selung: Uni­ty­media öffnet dig­i­tale pri­vate TV-​​Programme
    by Golem​.de
    Uni­ty­media hebt auf Druck des Kartel­lamts die Ver­schlüs­selung des pri­vaten dig­i­talen Fernseh­pro­gramms auf. Damit soll die Übernahme von Kabel BW möglich wer­den. (Kabel Deutsch­land, Kabelnetz)
  • FREAK Shots: An Irra­tional Tip
    by Freako­nom­ics
    Here’s some nerd humor. This one comes to us from the Fail Blog; it’s titled “It’s Not That Your Ser­vice Was Irra­tional, Just Your Tip Amount”:
  • How Google Ana­lyt­ics can help improve your online checkout
    by Google Ana­lyt­ics Blog
    [The fol­low­ing is a follow-​​up post for a video (see above) that we made about web­sites that are dif­fi­cult to use. Please watch, share and com­ment!] Poor “nick4ever”. All he wants to do is buy a loaf of bread from the super­mar­ket, but the store’s poli­cies and pro­ce­dures get in the way of him accom­plish­ing this seem­ingly sim­ple task! What appears to be a com­pletely absurd sit­u­a­tion is actu­ally some­thing that many online shop­pers have to deal with on a reg­u­lar basis. Some online stores have less-​​th…
  • Plu­gin by C. Mur­ray Consulting