Time was, companies knew how to keep track of their important customers. First, they set up loyalty programs: computerised systems that tracked the monetary value of everyone who shopped in their stores or flew on their planes or ate at their restaurant. When a high spender made a booking, the company...

I have much love for Wordle . I’ve used the text cloud generator dozens of time for use in presentations, TechCrunch posts and random stuff ever since I discovered the tool. But as of yesterday, the application is no longer available, and the website only displays the message copied above. In...

I was out of the country for much of 2009, so it wasn’t until I spent two months back in San Francisco that I noticed a big change in the Web community. Babies. I’m not talking about whiny Millennials coming out of college and demanding venture capital for their iPhone app. I’m talking...

Twitter appears to be on the verge of some big changes to its website if a tweet that Twitter engineer Alex Payne sent today is any indication. In fact, the new features may be so good that they could make some people re-examine their use of desktop Twitter clients, apparently. As Payne writes : If...

About three weeks ago, eBay’s electronic payments daughter PayPal suddenly started blocking personal payments going in or coming out of accounts from Indian customers, resulting in a flood of online complaints from the latter that ranged from accusations of racism to sheer amateurism. Last week,...

The European Union has opened an antitrust investigation into Google to look into claims made by three European-based Internet companies. Not surprisingly, this key part of the investigation is said to be about search, which is dominated by Google is most of the EU markets. The Telegraph and WSJ have...

Though they’re not planning to unveil it until next week, Meebo has given us a sneak peek at their iPhone app. My immediate reaction? This will be my go-to messaging app on the iPhone. While there are no shortage of apps that now allow you to connect to a wide range of messaging networks, Meebo’s...

Though they’re not planning to unveil it until next week, Meebo has given us a sneak peek at their iPhone app. My immediate reaction? This will be my go-to messaging app on the iPhone. While there are no shortage of apps that now allow you to connect to a wide range of messaging networks, Meebo’s...

MySpace has just announced that CEO Owen Van Natta has left the company. Taking his place will be co-Presidents Mike Jones And Jason Hirschhorn, who have been serving as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer, respectively. The news comes less than two weeks after we interviewed...

MySpace has just announced that CEO Owen Van Natta has left the company. Taking his place will be co-Presidents Mike Jones And Jason Hirschhorn, who have been serving as the company’s Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer, respectively. The news comes less than two weeks after we interviewed...

“People in technology businesses are drawn to places known for diversity of thought and open-mindedness”, is what Professor Richard Florida concluded after studying the growth and success of 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. The most successful regions were those with the most gays, bohemians, and...

PayPal isn’t working properly in India. eBay’s electronic payment juggernaut appears to be blocking personal transactions to or from accounts of India-based users. It is reversing personal transaction. Transactions involving businesses are still allowed. A reader checked in with us yesterday...