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A conversation with Bill Buxton about design thinking

Jon Udell — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:51:14 GMT

In the latest episode of my Microsoft Conversations series I got together with Bill Buxton to talk about the design philosophy set forth in his new book Sketching User Experiences. Nowadays Bill is a principal researcher with Microsoft Research, and before that he was chief scientist at Alias/Wavefront, but his involvement in the design of software and hardware user interfaces goes all the way back to Xerox PARC. Along the way he’s accumulated a fund of wisdom about what he calls design thinking — a way of producing, illustrating, and winnowing ideas about how products could work.

I haven’t yet received my copy of his book, but my background for this conversation was a talk given last November at BostonCHI, the Boston chapter of the ACM’s special interest group on computer-human interaction. In that talk (which summarizes key themes from the book), and also in this conversation, Bill lays down core principles for designing effective user experiences.

He proceeds from the assumption that sketching is fundamental to all design activity, and explores what it means to sketch a variety of possible user experiences. His approach is aggressively low-tech and eclectic. He argues that although you can use software tools to create fully-realized interactive mockups, you generally shouldn’t. Those things aren’t sketches, they’re prototypes, and as such they eat up more time, effort, and money than is warranted in the early stages of design. What you want to do instead is produce sketches that are quick, cheap, and disposable.

How would you apply that strategy to the design of, say, the Office ribbon? When Bill talks about sketching, he means it literally:

You’d start with paper prototyping — quickly hand-rendered versions, and for the pulldown menus and other objects you’d have Post-It notes. So when somebody comes with a pencil and pretends it’s their stylus and they click on something, you’ve anticipated the things they’ll do, and you stick down a Post-It note.

What matters here isn’t the interaction between the test subject and the prototype, because it isn’t really a prototype, it’s a sketch. Rather, what matters is the interaction between the test subject and the designer. The sketch need do no more than facilitate that interaction.

Continuing with the same example, here’s how an eclectic strategy keeps things simple and cheap:

Now that will give you the flow and the sequence of actions, but it will not give you the dynamics in terms of response time. To show that, I’d use exactly the same things, photograph them, and then make a rough pencil-test video so I could play back what I think the timing has to be to show it in realtime. It’s a combination of techniques, where none is sufficient on its own.

Later in the conversation, he challenges some of my favorite themes. Bill’s skeptical about the notion (popularized by Eric von Hippel) that lead users can be co-designers of products. And he doesn’t think that logging interaction data is as useful as I think it is. But he agrees with me that a key weakness of paper prototypes is their inability to incorporate the actual data that animates our experiences of products and services. One of his examples: MP3 players think in terms of songs, not movements, so if you load one with classical music you’ll find a bunch of duplicate songs called Adagio. In such a case, Bill admits, you’d like to have used a more fully-realized prototype that could have absorbed real data and flushed out these kinds of problems. His point isn’t that you should never deploy heavier design artillery, but rather that you should reserve it for when it’s absolutely necessary. Much of the time, he believes, sketching is faster, cheaper, and more productive.

The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter

David Sacks — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:00:50 GMT

This guest post is written by David Sacks, the founder and CEO of new startup Geni. Previously, he was COO of PayPal. He also produced the movie “Thank You For Smoking.”

For the last several years, Yahoo, MSN and AOL have all suffered a declining share of pageviews, but that does not mean the portal is going out of style. Rather it has been redefined, first by Google, and now by Facebook in potentially even more profound ways.

The core question a portal needs to answer for a user is “How do I find the information I need?”

In the early days of the web, the answer was browsing, which made sense when there were a limited number of useful sites. (Remember when it was a big deal for Yahoo to put the “New!” or “Recommended” icon next to a website’s name in their directory?) But as the number of websites became infinite, search replaced browsing as the dominant paradigm for finding new sites, and Yahoo’s failure to keep up in this area allowed Google to take the lead.

Google has continued to leverage its lead in search to become a full-fledged portal. Once users have found what they are looking for, Google makes it easy, through their iGoogle product, to subscribe to that content through alerts, RSS feeds, or a huge selection of widgets, all of which are compacting more useful information onto fewer start pages than ever before. As a result, iGoogle has become Google’s fastest-growing product. But iGoogle has a serious limitation: it doesn’t involve sharing; each user has to make an individual investment in set-up and can’t benefit from the work of others. It’s not really a Web 2.0 product.

Facebook has a new answer to the portal question. The “social graph,” or your network of relationships, will push information to you. You’ll learn from your friends. Thanks to Facebook’s new developer platform, the types of information being disseminated now include not just news, photos, events, and groups but also music, videos, books, movies, causes, political campaigns — and the list is rapidly growing into almost every conceivable category.

The advantage of this approach is that it makes it relatively effortless for users to access a world of information that is both increasingly comprehensive and personal to them. Even if all this information were available through search (and it’s not), search actually requires work; the user must know what they’re looking for and type it in. Then they must parse the results to determine which are valuable, labor which is not shared and reused by others. By contrast, Facebook requires no work once your network is set up. Your friends push information to you that is likely to be useful, and if not you can tune your preferences until it is. Facebook promises a kind of Socratic knowledge: it tells users things they didn’t even think to ask.

While the process of structuring new kinds of information for the social graph to distribute is still sorting itself out, it is easy to object to the frivolity of information on Facebook. For example, Facebook is great at telling me what my friends just had for lunch, but how about hard news? Well, for starters, I’m waiting for the Digg application to not only display articles I’ve digged on my profile, but also to aggregate all the articles dugg by my friends. This could lead to the kind of social news site that MySpace promised but failed to deliver.

Not only Digg, but virtually all Web 2.0 applications which are based on the wisdom of crowds can be reconceived as Facebook apps based on the wisdom (or trust) of friends. To the extent that these services cater to publishers who seek a mass audience, such as YouTube or Flickr, the social graph will not threaten their business. But to the extent they publish content intended for friends, or if the value of their service increases with the participation of friends, these applications face only two choices: get each user to recreate his or her friendship network on their own site or migrate their service to the Facebook platform lest someone else does it first.

The potential for Facebook to layer on any feature whose value increases with the participation of friends is an incredibly broad canvas for a portal. Moreover, as each new application gains acceptance, it enriches the overall value of the network and makes it incrementally more likely that the next application will be tried. Much of what we know as “Web 2.0″ will eventually be rebuilt on top of Facebook.

To be clear, the social graph will not replace search, in the same way that search did not replace browsing. And search may still be more easily monetized than the social graph. Still, as a basis for a portal, neither Google nor Yahoo has anything nearly as cohesive holding its properties together. Google can layer on any feature where search is paramount, which is hugely valuable, but as it expands beyond this core competency, it becomes increasingly hard to press its advantages into new areas. Yahoo already seems to have reached the limits of its far-flung empire, eliminating redundant operations such as Yahoo Photos.

In my view this is a misdiagnosis of what ails Yahoo. The problem is not too much peanut butter (i.e. that it’s spread too thinly). The problem is the bread at the core. Browsing plus second-tier search is not sturdy enough to hold everything together. The new portals are defined by the quality of their bread, not their peanut butter.

Yahoo was right to focus on an acquisition of Facebook but not for the reason it thinks. In its view of the world, Facebook is just another media property, a particularly fast-growing and sticky one to be sure, but ultimately just more peanut butter. In reality, Facebook’s social graph could have provided the bread to connect Yahoo’s far-flung empire.

But what would be in such a deal for Facebook? They will have their own empire soon enough.

Find out more about Geni at the Techcrunch Database.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Deligio Launches Software Search Engine

Kristen Nicole — Thu, 31 May 2007 08:36:05 GMT

Deligio is a search engine that is dedicated to finding software, and has recently announced its launch.

Deligio is looking to provide the largest downloadable exchange worldwide, so providing relevant search results is key to the goals set out for the company. Beyond simply returning a list of results, you can see how other users have rated the software, and how many times it has been downloaded. Filter search queries by tag word or popularity. Viewing another user’s profile shows a list of their favorites, as well as a tag cloud. Users can submit software to be included in Deligio as well.

The community aspects of Deligio make this a recommendation service as well. In this regard, Deligio is much like a social bookmarking tool. This niche social search engine could be integrated into another search service, offering up search results based on the specifics of software. This tactic can prove fruitful if done correctly, which we’ve witnessed with blinkx for video search.

Deligio is similar to Wakoopa in its recommendation capabilities, and is similar in concept to SourceForge, which recently partnered with Krugle to power the search for SourceForge’s 145,000 open source projects.

Recommended: MySpace MP3 Player at Mashcodes!

Wesabe: Bringing Social Networking to Personal Finance

Appscout — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:11:47 GMT

I know how to balance my checkbook, make a budget, stick to it, and manage my day-to-day finances. But when it comes to bigger financial chores, like managing my retirement fund and saving for the future, sometimes I feel overwhelmed. I see commercials for expensive services where people will essentially tell you how to manage your money or do it for you, and I think to myself that it's silly to pay for that if I can just learn how on my own. Even so, a little help doesn't hurt. Enter Wesabe, a service that brings social networking together with money management.

Perhaps one of the best things about Wesabe is its personalized approach to money management. By bringing together a community of people who are vested in making each other's financial independence and success a reality, the service has a wealth of knowledge and financial tips under its belt. Users help each other out with financial tricks and advice, and help each other towards their financial goals. For an additional element of personalization, you can enter in your bank or credit card account information and Wesabe will download statements and payment information. (If you're wary of handing over your financial information, as you should be, check out the site's data security info before signing up and then make your decision.) Using that information, Wesabe can help you reach your financial goals, whether it's to save a certain dollar amount or put aside money for a trip around the world.

The service also effectively blends both the community and personal aspects of its services, so when you're examining your own progress towards a specific goal, you might see a relevant pop-up tip that might save you a little more money, or recommend what you can do next to maximize your returns on an investment. You can turn to a community of friends when you need advice, and participate and share when you're doing well. The service is free, and signing up allows you to manage up to 12 bank or credit card accounts.

Post by Alan Henry

Windows Server 2008 Resources

jeffa36 — Fri, 25 May 2007 23:47:04 GMT

As you may have heard we have released the name of Longhorn server as Windows Server 2008. Not too much of a surprise there but it's the name anyway. With that we have released a whole bunch of resources as well which I've made available in this post for your reference.

Webcasts

TechNet Webcast: Achieving High Availability with Windows Server “Longhorn” Clustering (Level 200)
TechNet Webcast: Internet Information Services 7.0 in Windows Server "Longhorn" (Level 300)
TechNet Webcast: Technical Overview of Windows Server "Longhorn" (Part 2 of 2) (Level 300)
TechNet Webcast: Windows Deployment Services Overview (Level 200)
TechNet Webcast: Next-Generation Networking with Windows Server “Longhorn (Level 200)
More On-Demand Webcasts

Virtual Labs

Managing Windows Server "Longhorn" and Windows Vista using Group Policy
Managing Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" Network Bandwidth with Policy-based Quality of Service
Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 2 Server Core
Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 2 Server Manager
Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 2 Terminal Services Gateway and Remote Programs

Podcasts

TechNet Radio - Behind the Scenes on Windows Server “Longhorn” Beta 3
TechNet Webcast: Achieving High Availability with Windows Server “Longhorn” Clustering (Level 200)
TechNet Webcast: Introduction to Terminal Services in Windows Server Code-Named "Longhorn" (Level 300)
TechNet Webcast: Windows Server "Longhorn" and Windows Vista: Better Together (Level 200)
TechNet Webcast: Overview of Networking in Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" (Level 200)

Chats

An Introduction to Windows Server "Longhorn"
Identity and Access Technology and Windows Server "Longhorn"
Network Policy Server in Longhorn
Windows PowerShell, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 and Windows Server “Longhorn”

Cheers, Jeffa

Here Comes Zonbox - the $99 Zero-Emission, Linux Computer That's "as simple to use as a Mac"

BL Ochman — Fri, 25 May 2007 17:18:55 GMT

The revolutionary Zonbox - the $99, ultra low-power, zero-emission Linux computer from Zonbu, is sure to be all the rage when it's launched next month. The computer is a fanless 1.2MHz platform that uses Amazon’s S3 storage servers to save your files.

Gizmodo says

"It's as simple to use as a Mac...pre-loaded with best-of-breed open source software for almost anything you'd need...all managed via the other cool thing the Zonbu has: A 4GB CF card that acts as a cache for the 25-100GB of personal storage on Amazon's S3 servers. In other words, this machine syncs, swaps, and backs up your data automatically, over the wire. I love it."

According to the company website, the Zonbox consumes only about one third of the energy used by a typical light bulb. It's a fanless, silent, miniaturized personal computer preloaded with 20 pre-installed software applications, and providing data protection, application update, and system management service starting at $99. It's got cellphone-like service plans starting at $12.95 a month.

Zonbu also has a free take-back program for recycling, automatic backup of the entire contents of the computer, access to data from any computer, and everything is plug & play.

Chairman and co-founder Alain Rossmann managed marketing for the original Macintosh launch at Apple Computer, and is, his bio says, "widely recognized as the father of the wireless Internet for his pioneering work on the convergence of Internet and mobile phone services, and developing the WAP industry standard." Zonbu is co-founder Grégoire Gentil's fourth startup in twelve years; his most recent success was Twingo, acquired by Cisco Systems in 2004.

ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT review roundup

Donald Melanson — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:46:00 GMT

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

We've already seen it benchmarked, but those of you considering ATI's new top-end Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card now have a number of full-on reviews to sink your teeth into, all of which seem to be roughly in line with each other. On the all important point of performance, ExtremeTech, HotHardware, and [H] Enthusiast each found that the card held its own against NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS in the usual array of tests, although it fell well short of NVIDIA's pricier GeForce 8800 GTX, which ATI still has no answer to. All three also found many of the same things to complain about, most notably the card's noise and excessive power consumption, although ATI is promising a driver update to cut down on some of the racket. HotHardware also points out that the ATI card likely has more room to grow through driver updates than the NVIDIA, and speculates that a 65nm version of the card could arrive "sooner rather than later." Until then, however, all three look to be sticking with NVIDIA hardware, with the 8800 GTS offering a better value for the money, and the 8800GTX providing the necessary all-out performance to those who demand such things.

Read - Extreme Tech ([8/10)
Read - HotHardware
Read - [H] Enthusiast

[Thanks, Mathieu]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

AMD Phenom CPU and ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT finally official

Ryan Block — Mon, 14 May 2007 05:51:00 GMT

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops

Looks like AMD and its graphics division ATI have a couple of new bits to announce today. First up: the Phenom X2 and X4 CPUs, AMD's latest dual and quad-core chips destined for their new FASN8 (get it?) enthusiast platform, which also features DDR2 SDRAM, HyperTransport, 128-bit FPUs, shared L3 cache, and the Socket AM2 and AM2+ interface with Dual Socket Direct Connect. We're not done yet, though, since the other half of the FASN8 platform is ATI's Radeon HD 2000 series graphics adapters, including the new R600, erm, Radeon HD 2900 XT ($400), 65nm DirectX 10 devices with Avivo Blu-ray and HD DVD acceleration. Also, be sure to keep an eye out for other versions, like the HD 2600, HD 2400, Mobility Radeon HD 2300, and the like. Watch out, we're sure to be flooded with new machines and accompanying benchmarks in short order.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

RFID / RFA anti-theft technology could hit optical media

Darren Murph — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:01:00 GMT

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Utilizing RFID technology to defuse the threat of theft isn't a fresh idea, but NXP Semiconductors and Kestrel Wireless are looking to make good on the premise by cranking out an anti-theft solution that just might appear on the next DVD you buy. By combining NXP's RFID technology with Kestral's RFA (radio frequency activation), manufacturers could install a minuscule chip on the optical media at the beginning of the supply chain which would render it unplayable, but having it scanned at a checkout counter would enable a series of authentication checks to occur and eventually unlock the media for playback. While the scenario may sound convoluted, it could allow manufacturers to skimp on bulky, restrictive packaging, and moreover, it could be applied to other items in the consumer electronics universe in order to deter thieves from trying to swipe expensive handheld gizmos. Of course, we can already envision the complaints that are sure to arise from legitimate buyers bringing home a coaster if the activation process happens to fail, but apparently, both companies are already hard at work persuading studios to write 'em a check and get these things into stores.

[Via Physorg]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Intel's Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro Santa Rosa chipsets go live

Paul Miller — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:35:00 GMT

Filed under: Laptops

If you haven't noticed by now, the laptop industry is going Santa Rosa crazy today, and for good reason: Intel's next-gen chipset is officially "out" as of now, following up the Napa / Yonah combo of last year. Intel is sticking with the Core 2 Duo "Merom" processor for the time being, but is releasing new, faster versions that take advantage of Santa Rosa's faster front-side bus, which is up at 800MHz, compared to 667MHz of prior versions. The new processors are odd-numbered to set them apart, and include the 1.8GHz T7100, 2GHz T7300, 2.2GHz T7500, 2.4GHz T7700, 1.4GHz L7300 and 1.6GHz L7500 -- with the latter two being low-voltage versions. As seen on many of the models announced today, or leaked in the recent weeks, the new Intel 965 Express Chipset includes more than the FSB goodies, with support for the new DirectX 10 and Vista-friendly Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics and the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN 802.11n chip. That's the gist of the consumer-oriented Centrino Duo, while the Centrino Pro adds in a Gigabit Network Connection that supports remote wake-up over WiFi. Unfortunately, while the processors and front-side bus are all ready to go, laptop memory is still stuck at 667MHz, and Intel hasn't made it clear whether the Santa Rosa platforms will be able to handle the 800MHz memory due to launch later this year.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Good and Bad RSS Syndication Practices

Sun, 06 May 2007 03:05:51 GMT

I have been asked by a number of people to list what I consider are good and bad RSS syndication practices. I reserve the right to modify this list as thoughts and ideas come in that I think are worthy of adding to the list.

Good things Media Sites do with Syndicated Content

Attribution with Hyper link back to Content Origin Point
Original RSS Feed clearly seen and linked to.
No other confusing RSS links are associated media listing
Audio and Video Media is not altered or trans-coded
Audio and Video Media is not cached direct link only
Publishing Author Name on Media Listing
Make Listing Opt In
Claim a Feed
Pay content producers a revenue share on site advertising.

Bad things Media Sites do with Syndicated Content

Auto adding content versus asking to become listed!
Replace RSS feed with sites own.
Pre-Roll or Post Roll ads in the syndicated sites media player!
Not allowing one to claim there own feed.
Not allowing one to opt out.
Not linking directly to the media file.
Not honoring Creative Commons License.
Add to Digg etc links that drive people away from original content point.
Trans-coding media into a new format without permission.

$10 DNA replicator

Thu, 03 May 2007 23:00:19 GMT

Lots of makers sent this in today, a $10 DNA replicator... Ben writes -

A pocket-sized device that runs on two AA batteries and copies DNA as accurately as expensive lab equipment has been developed by researchers in the US. The device has no moving parts and costs just $10 to make. It runs polymerase chain reactions (PCRs), to generate billions of identical copies of a DNA strand, in as little as 20 minutes. This is much faster than the machines currently in use, which take several hours.

Mini DNA replicator could benefit world's poor - health - 01 May 2007 - New Scientist - Link.

[Read this article] [Comment on this article]

Today's links

dave@scripting.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:31:40 GMT

Slingbox supports AppleTV.

Adam Curry has a gripe with SplashCast.

The #87th most influential person in IT.

How to design a podcast player

dave@scripting.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:11:18 GMT

Notes from today's *excellent* discussion.

It's listed as a panel, but I'm the only official panelist.

Our topic of dicussion is, officially, How to design a podcast player.

I wrote a piece about this, with three points, in February.

1. Self-contained, untethered synchronization, much the same way a Blackberry gets email.

2. Read-write, two-way, should be able to record and connect with a publishing system for automatic upload and feed production.

3. Must be a platform, that is, people other than the manufacturer can add apps.

After we discuss that, we'll talk about whatever people want to talk about.

Some more ideas...

1. Checkbox News.

2. Twitter as coral reef.

3. Spreadsheet calls over the Internet.

WebFS

dave@scripting.com — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:44:44 GMT

WebFS is a "web services protocol used to exchange files and associated metadata between web applications and services. It's primary intentions are to allow the free-flow of files and data between web services and applications."

I'm sitting next to Nick Cubrilovic of Omnidrive, who is developing this protocol as an interface to his service, and is working on an open source implementation as well.

Other developers are working on it, but he doesn't have clearance to reveal their names.

He has a private mail list that's he opening up.

Silverlight is Argentum in a Flash

Scott Hanselman — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 22:58:33 GMT

Doh! Silverlight! After the Silverlight podcast I kept asking myself, why are all the DLLs and Javascripts called things like aghost and agcore? Because Ag is the symbol for Silver. Silver in Latin is argentum. Thanks Alexey!

Download Silverlight for Windows here and Silverlight for Mac here. It's only a meg and is harmless.

Be sure to check out Alexy's blog post (via Mike Harsh where I stole the Silverlight Logo) with his WPF/e (Silverlight) 3D demo based on his Bubblemark 2D Benchmark that includes:

Silverlight
XBAP (XAML Browser Application)
DHTML
Flash/Flex
Apollo Flex and Apollo HTML (requires Adobe Apollo)

I got over under each demo. Things slowed down with 128 balls, but I greatly suspect that it's a JavaScript problem at that point, and not an animation engine problem.

ASIDE: On an unrelated note, if you ever wanted to get Windows Media working in FireFox, download the WMP Plugin for FireFox and you'll be on your merry way.

© 2007 Scott Hanselman. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is likely pure evil and should be stopped.

How to linkbait me

dave@scripting.com — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:04:55 GMT

Today's meme, thanks to Jason Calacanis, is linkbaiting. Not why it's bad, or why he won't do it, or respond to it; rather what you should say if you want him to link to you, and what you shouldn't say.

Okay I'm game, even though this is likely to spawn backlash from the people who say the A-list sucks or it's a boys club, or whatever.

First, in the positive -- here are things that get my attention and make it more likely I will link.

1. Your name is Scott Rosenberg. He's a Berkeley neighbor, founding editor of Salon, a very nice person, but none of that is why I will link to his pieces more often than not. The basic reason is he generally says things I find interesting, even essential. Very rarely do his posts mention me or my work, so clearly I'm not being linkbaited. He's a good journalist, and imho a great thinker, and a very lucid writer.

2. It says it on the What is Scripting News page: "A link on Scripting News means that I thought that the story was interesting, and felt that an informed person would want to consider the point of view expressed in the piece." I know it's corny, but that's more often than not the reason I link to something.

3. If you link to something I wrote recently and add something to the discussion, esp an experience or point of view that hasn't come up before. I often start threads here, or pick up threads from other sites. If you're continuing a discussion that's hot right now, I'm likely to link.

4. If you say I deserve a MacArthur or Pulitzer, I'll probably link to that.

Now reasons I might not link.

1. If you call someone, esp me, a bad name.

2. In an email or other kind of direct communication you say or imply that I have an obligation to link. Anything other than "FYI" or "I thought you might find this interesting" is pretty much guaranteed not to get a link from me.

3. Lack of reciprocity. If I observe over time that the linking is one-way, i.e. I link to you but even when I'm on-topic for you, I don't get a link from you, that will dampen my enthusiasm.

PS: Obviously this is one of those times Jason wants some link-love. Jason, if you're reading this, see item #3 above.

Stockpickr Acquired By TheStreet.com

Michael Arrington — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:04:04 GMT

In January StockPickr announced an investment stake and partnership deal with TheStreet.com. It looks like both sides liked the deal; this evening TheStreet.com announced that they acquired the company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Stockpickr is one of a few new startups in the financial markets space that we’ve been tracking. See our coverage of SeekingAlpha, Zecco, Motley Fool as well.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Head researchers turn their attention to beer

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Brewers should get a new level of control over their beer heads thanks to the mathematics of bubbles

Smarter people are no better off

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:16:00 GMT

Contrary to common expectation, intelligence does not always predict financial wellbeing, and neither does it protect people from financial difficulty