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What I’m Reading

Shareworthy articles and content syndicated from other sites. These aren’t things I’ve written or necessarily endorse, for the record.

How Facebook Can Kill Google Completely



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Ben Elowitz, cofounder of Wetpaint and Blue Nile, says Facebook can put Google out of business.

At first glance, the statement is absurd. Google seems unbeatable. But Elowitz makes a good point.

Google has been unbeatable because its search algorithm churns out the most accurate results — for anonymous users. 

Should Facebook — which already knows the behavioral patters of 600 million people — move into search, their results could be targeted to specific individuals. Like targeted ads, they could have targeted search.

Elowitz explains on TechCrunch:

Facebook’s data allows it to do more than just guess what its customers might be interested in; the company’s data can help it know with greater certainty what its customers are really interested in. And this key difference could potentially give Facebook a tremendous advantage in search when it eventually decides to move in that direction.

If Google’s business has been built on choosing which Web pages, out of all those in the universe, are most likely to appeal to any given (but anonymous) query string, think about this: Facebook already knows, for the most part, which pages appeal to whom—specifically and directly.

And, even more powerfully, Facebook knows each of our individual and collective behavior patterns well enough to predict what we’ll like even without us expressing our intent.

Of course Google has a many other products besides search. But killing the company’s foundation would be hard to recover from.

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PhotoFast i-FlashDrive does USB on one end, 30-pin dock connector on the other

Apple’s iOS devices may lack native memory expansion, but PhotoFast has now come up with solution that just about bests the official camera connection kit. What you’re looking at here is the i-FlashDrive, a memory dongle that sports both a USB plug and an Apple 30-pin dock connector, and it comes in three flavors starting from 8GB at $95 up to 32GB at $180. What’s more, the drive also works with a free Cupertino-approved app that provides both external and internal file management (for music, photos, movies, and more), contact backup, and native MP3 playback. Want one? Then head over to Taiwan for a mid or late June launch, or watch out for its US debut shortly afterwards. Demo video after the break.

Continue reading PhotoFast i-FlashDrive does USB on one end, 30-pin dock connector on the other

PhotoFast i-FlashDrive does USB on one end, 30-pin dock connector on the other originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jun 2011 09:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Is Now Worth More Than Intel And Microsoft Combined



apple stock chart 6.4.11

MacDailyNews crunched some numbers when the market closed yesterday and found that Apple’s market value is now worth more than Intel and Microsoft combined.

Here’s where everything closed:

  • Microsoft (MSFT): $201.59 billion
  • Intel (INTC): $115.21 billion
  • Apple (AAPL): $317.60 billion

Add “Wintel” up and that comes to $316.8 billion versus Apple’s $317.6.

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