Facebook hits 100 million users

Facebook has hit 100 million active users. No formal press release has been issued, so you're going to have to believe the guy who built the site.

The news came straight from the source: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and several of his fellow executives put it in their status messages on the social network, and platform manager Dave Morin broadcast it in his Twitter feed. At least one of them referred to the number being "active users," the statistic that Facebook prefers to use, rather than registered accounts overall.

While Facebook got its start at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. in 2004, most of this recent growth is coming from outside the US. Recently released statistics for July from traffic firm ComScore say that out of the approximately 145 million unique visitors coming to Facebook's domain, under 40 million of them were from its home country.

Via CNET News

Serious games for serious people

In a paper titled "It's Time To Take Games Seriously", Forrester analysts TJ Keitt and Paul Jackson came up with a new phrase to describe video games:

"The phrase the industry should rally around is 'serious games' to bring together the numerous disciplines. However, Forrester recommends identifying individual games with the underlying goal of the game, for example, calling Volvo Car UK's game an immersive learning simulation. We don't see this being an issue in a few years, as the old guard in the workforce is replaced by younger colleagues. As this happens, doubts about calling a game a game will subside. Future business leaders are already thinking in terms of games as seen with IBM's BPM video game coming out of a competition between business students at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill."

For the next-generation workforce, accustomed to virtual worlds and everything digital, it's not a stretch to imagine that work will be more game-like, with winners and losers at the core and multiple scenarios to follow and calculated risks. As long as the games lead to "serious" results, yielding increased productivity and employee and customer satisfaction, they will be embraced by management no matter what they are called.

Via CNET News Blogs

SanDisk: "Show us your slot"

Memory merchant SanDisk is so concerned that you don't know where your slot is, and what to stick in it, that it is seeking partnerships with media outlets to entice you to stuff a SanDisk memory card in your empty slot.

During a recent conversation with Dan Hogan, SanDisk's global marketing manager for Mobile Products, he hinted that while increasing the storage capacity for mobile memory cards is an inevitability, SanDisk is focusing efforts on partnering with media content partners with plans to include media, music or videos, on SanDisk memory cards in the future.

"Whether it's videos or movies or an artist's tracks, these are avenues we are very interested in pursuing," Hogan said.

Matching mobiles with movies, music or other content looks set to be big business. Nokia recently released a limited-edition N82 with the feature film Batman Begins preloaded on the phone's memory. Nokia is also rumored to be launching a video downloads service.
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Woman to virtual ex: "I won't be ignored!"

This has to be the weirdest and saddest, crime-of-virtual-passion story I've come across.

Kimberly Jernigan--a 33-year-old woman from North Carolina--was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Del., came to an end.

The pair apparently met through the online community Second Life and began a virtual relationship. The two finally met in reality several months ago, and the alleged victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.

In early August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim's Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint, according to local news station CBS3.com. When she was unsuccessful, according to the report, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim's Delaware address, and posed as a postal worker to do so. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.

On August 21, police said, Jernigan broke into the unnamed victim's apartment with a Taser, a pair of handcuffs, a BB gun, her dog, and a roll of duct tape. He wasn't there, so she waited. When the virtual ex arrived home he saw what looked like a laser beam projecting on his chest. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted the Newcastle County Police.
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Google cutting back on free-food perks?

Blame the mounting economic pressures, or too many chubby engineers: Google has decided to stop offering free dinner, afternoon snacks, and its "tea trolley" to employees, according to an unconfirmed rumor floated on Valleywag.

A Google representative did not immediately return my request for comment, so this one is still hanging around in the gossip-sphere. But Valleywag reported that the changes are slated to be announced Monday, which would mean that either a confirmation or debunking should be available within hours.

Google has become renowned for its employee perks: massages, game rooms, gyms, laundry facilities, and free food three times a day. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin went out on a limb in creating the free-food strategy, which they said was a worthwhile investment to make employees healthier, happier, and more efficient. The food's even good enough for Google's original head chef to have penned a cookbook.

Cutting perks always results in bad PR, something that Google learned the hard way when it shot the cost of day care for employees' kids into the stratosphere, for example. But cutting back on free food, one of Google's most visible and unique perks, may be over the top for some workers.
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