Note From The Editor | featured news

Betaworks bought Digg, the website, for about half a million. It’s a complicated sale. Linkedin acquired the patents, and Washington Post got the talent (the engineers).

The first thing Betaworks did was relaunch the site on August 1st. I noticed because their RSS feeds stopped working on Wopular. They had rebuilt and redesigned the site from scratch in just six weeks.

Design-wise, it’s now a three-column site - like Wopular (and Pinterest) - with headlines and thumbnails spread within each column. It doesn’t look as organized as before when headlines only occupy one column.

I finally had to do it. I stuck with Digg for as long as I could. It’s the first social news site. Even after the infamous version 4, I stuck with them.

A decent number of Digg's hardcore users had already jumped ship since v4. I was too lazy to do the switch - mainly because the headlines I saw on their homepage didn't quite fit those on Wopular's. Digg was still providing me with relevant and interesting news.

I guess you just can’t be in the middle when you’re covering news: “CNN, founded in 1980 and now owned by Time Warner Inc, has tried to hold the middle ground in its news coverage, a position that some blame for its ratings erosion, while ratings have risen for competitors Fox News and MSNBC, which blend news with opinion and political commentary.”

Late last year, I had a virus on my Toshiba Satellite laptop running Windows XP. It’s been awhile, so I’ve forgotten what the virus was, but I think it’s the one that redirects search results to malware. I’m always surprised when I get a virus because I rarely download videos, music, or software. I’m mostly surfing websites for research for blog entries and whatnot. I have AVG Anti Virus installed and running. Still, every so often, I’ll get a nasty virus that’s difficult to remove.

When I first saw the headline “Facebook Places Ads on Zynga” on The Wall Street Journal, my mind almost fell into an infinite loop. You see, Zynga is already buying ads on Facebook to promote their games. I had thought that headline meant that Facebook is returning the favor by buying ads on Zynga to bring on more users.

Nope.Turns out Facebook is testing out their own ad network on Zynga. Yes, looks like Facebook will be launching an ad network to compete with Google’s Adsense.

Between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, I was rooting for the team in a small town. I was also rooting against Lebron James.

Yesterday, Microsoft showed off their tablet computer Surface. According to the New York Times, it “has the same weight and thickness as an iPad, with a 10.6-inch screen.” According to PC Magazine, it weighs 1.49 pounds, which is about the same as Apple’s iPad. However, it still feels bulky.

In a previous article, I wrote: “Awesome Screenshot - Aptly named. It is awesome! Probably better than anything on Firefox. It’s my favorite Chrome app for taking screencaps. Features include cropping and annotation.”

I saw a tweet last night from FilmSchoolReject.com, a film site, that said how the “Pocket” app’s integration with Chrome had changed his workflow. As someone who’s always looking for online tools that would improve my productivity, I was curious.

Turns out the “Read It Later” app has rebranded itself as “Pocket.” The tagline is when you find someone you like on the net, put it in your pocket. Yeah, whatever.

I didn’t watch the fight. I’m not a boxing fan. If it’s on TV and I’m channel-flipping, I’ll watch it. I tend to prefer the faster punching of lightweights than the slumbering heavyweights. Being a fan of martial arts movies,I like watching boxing, but I’ve never became a fan. After what happened over the weekend, I’m not sure if I’ll ever become one.