At Friday’s close, these were the five highest market cap U.S. companies: Exxon (XOM), $315.38 billion. Microsoft (MSFT): $256.71 billion. Apple (AAPL): $205.48 billion. Wal-Mart (WMT): $205.09 billion. Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA): $202.20 billion. The biggest oil company. The largest retailer. The leading software company. A conglomerate run by the world’s most respected investor. And Apple. Here’s a weekend exercise for you: Looking out five years, which of these would you most want to own? ..   show all text

We generally have a disconnect between the person, business, or agency that we want to be and the reality of who or what we are today.  This disconnect is a great thing, an opportunity for growth an opportunity for improvement.  However, when not understood, it is also a major pain point, something that leads your customers, your citizens, to lack faith in your words and actions. As you begin to make use of collaborative solutions, like social media, it is critical that you recognize the impor..   show all text

Kaiser Kuo presented today at SXSW about Google in China. He spoke about how the Google situation will impact Chinese Internet users, other companies and the Chinese government. In the presentation, Kuo (who also spoke to ReadWriteWeb a week ago) clarified how censorship in China works. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the Great Firewall that has the most impact in China - but something China calls "self-discipline." Kuo also discussed what the next moves will be from Google, since he be..   show all text

The Gotham Gal and I don't normally keep much cash in the bank. We like a portfolio of tax free municipal bonds for our cash that is not invested in venture deals, private companies, real estate, and the like. But recently we closed a few transactions that resulted in some cash being wired into our bank account. I emailed the banker and asked him to move the cash to the brokerage account connected to our checking account and into a tax free money market.  A few days later I was thinking about ..   show all text

MySpace has taken a bold step and put a large quantity of bulk user data up for sale on startup data marketplace InfoChimps. Data offered includes user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes. Friend lists are not included. Remember, Facebook and Twitter may be the name of the game these days in tech circles, but MySpace still sees 1 billion user status updates posted every month. Those updates will now be available for bulk analysis. Th..   show all text

Public Anger continues to spread following the incident which saw governor of Hubei province Li Hongzhong [de] snatch a recording device out of the hands reporter Liu Jie in between sessions at the ongoing Lianghui. Taking their cue from a speech from Prime Minister Wen Jiabao leading up to the Lunar New Year about people's need for greater dignity and another last week calling for greater public supervision of the government, journalists, academics and others from the country have launched a ..   show all text

Google's CEO went to Abu Dhabi this week and preached. He sermonized about Google's exceptional virtue — its indifference to profit and supreme trustworthiness. His speech should have been shocking. Except that delusional self-righteousness is now routine at Google. More »

The 10-year plan would reimagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network.

In this leaked, six-page email, Richard Mollet, the Director of Public Affairs for the British Phonographic Institute (the UK's record-industry lobbyists), sets out the BPI's strategy for ramming through the Digital Economy Bill, a sweeping, backwards reform to UK copyright law that will further sacrifice privacy and due process in the name of preserving copyright, without actually preserving copyright. Mollet's memo, entitled "Digital Economy Bill weekly update 11 March 2010," appears to be ..   show all text

28.8 million people used the Facebook iPhone app in the last month. That's about a third of the 75+ million iPhone and iPod touch devices that have been shipped so far -- a huge percentage of phones. Most super-successful iPhone apps only have a fraction of Facebook's users. That also represents about 7% of Facebook's roughly 400 million users. Read the rest of this story » See Also: STAT OF THE DAY: Apple Owns Mobile Web Consumption STAT OF THE DAY: iPhone App Store Has More Books Than Games ..   show all text

A interview with the Andrey Ternovskiy, the 17-year-old Russian founder of Chatroulette who has abandoned high school to travel the world and meet with technology investors.

MassTLC's Board of Trustees voted this week to officially support the Startup Visa Act of 2010, authored by Senator John Kerry and Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana (photo credit StartUpVisa.com). This bill would modify the EB-5 visa program to create a new "EB-6" visa for foreign-born entrepreneurs seeking to start companies here in the United States. This idea originated among venture capitalists in California and Colorado and is supported by venture capitalists from several local firms incl..   show all text

Thousands of taxi drivers overcharged riders more than $8 million by switching the meter to double the rate, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

The iPad officially became available for pre-order earlier today and while plenty of you are still debating about whether or not to pre-order, it appears as if the device might already sold 51,000 units in just two hours via pre-order. Wow. If you’ve ever doubted how insane dedicated Apple fans are, the background on how these figures were determined will assuage any doubts. A group of particularly prudent Apple fans from the APPL Sanity Board at Investor Village decided to put together a..   show all text

Because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks, the changes approved by the Texas School Board will have a broad influence.

For the past two years, thousands of taxi drivers overcharged passengers a total of more than $8 million by switching the meter to double the rate.

Yesterday, Foursquare turned one. You read that right: The mobile social network that made its splash at SXSW 2009 and has tremendous buzz is just 366 days old. Despite that short amount of time, Foursquare has more than half a million users, 1.4 million venues and 15.5 million checkins, and it’s still growing. Experian Hitwise decided to use this milestone to analyze Foursquare’s growth. As you might imagine, not only have Foursquare’s mobile apps seen growth, but so has Foursquare.com. W..   show all text

On Friday, Netflix announced on its corporate blog that it has settled a lawsuit related to its Netflix Prize, a $1 million contest that challenged machine learning experts to use Netflix's data to produce better recommendations than the movie giant could serve up themselves. The lawsuit called attention to academic research that suggests that Netflix indirectly exposed the movie preferences of its users by publishing anonymized customer data. In the suit, plaintiff Paul Navarro and others so..   show all text

This is Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer for Netflix. About five months ago we announced that Netflix would sponsor a sequel to the Netflix Prize. We've given a lot thought to how to sponsor a contest that discovers more about the predictability of Netflix members' movie watching behavior while always ensuring we protect Netflix members' privacy. In the past few months, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asked us how a Netflix Prize sequel might affect Netflix members' privacy, and a lawsuit..   show all text