Thursday, July 29, 2010 Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey   To the President of Syria, Mr. and Mrs. Bashar al-Assad Mr. and Mrs. President Bashar al-Assad: At the tender age of 17 months my severely ill daughter Sofia, an American citizen, was abducted by her mother on Monday, July 26, in Istanbul, Turkey, and taken to Syria. I was informed yesterday by Sofia's mother that she will not be coming back to the United States nor will she allow Sofia to return home. Sofia has been diagnosed with a severe medical condition that requires immediate treatment in the United States. It was scheduled to start on July 27, 2010, in New Jersey, the day after her abduction and was supposed to last until she reaches the age of 3. Any delay in the urgently needed treatment will result in a life-long disability for Sofia and make her dependent for the whole of her adult life. The treatment i... (more)

Google Building Its Own Facebook: WSJ

Google is looking to build its own Facebook to defend against Facebook and its 500 million members running off with too many ads or even starting an ad network across other sites à la Google's AdSense according to the Wall Street Journal. The search giant has reportedly been talking to online game companies about it like Electronic Arts, Playdom - just bought by Disney for $563.2 million - and Zynga - where Google is investing over a $100 million in aid of its plans according to the New York Times, which jumped on the Journal's story. Social games are something people do a lot of... (more)

The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem

In the run-up to the next Cloud Expo, 7th Cloud Expo (November 1–4, 2010) being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, it's time to give my earlier list a complete overhaul. Here, accordingly, is an expanded list of the most active players in the Cloud Ecosystem. I have increased it from the 'mere' 150 I identified back in January of this year, to 250, testimony – as if any were needed! – to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe ... (more)

A Personalize Magazine for iPad - Flipboard

I've got an iPad and have enjoyed it - particularly when it comes to reading the WSJ, NYT or the various books I am reading. However, last night after a suggestion from my friend Clint Lee I got the Flipboard app (watch video below), a free "social magazine" that debuted to great reviews, resulting in a digital traffic jam at Apple's App Store that made it hard to download the program. Wow. Now when I’ve referred to new business models that incorporate fresh ways of delivering content - this is what I was talking about. So what is Flipboard? Imagine the huge list of updates ... (more)

[Updated] Google Twists in the Wind over Beijing

Google's quixotic and poorly executed attempt to do business in China on its terms rather than the Chinese government's has suffered another serious setback. Google's Internet Content Providers (ICP) license to run google.cn expired on Wednesday and the Communist regime told the company it won't be renewed if Google keeps automatically redirecting google.cn search traffic to its uncensored Chinese language site in Hong Kong. That's where Google unilaterally retreated to in March after the government called its bluff on leaving the country if search was going to be censored. Now ... (more)