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I also have a large pile of books that I’ve read and probably won’t read again. If you are interested in any of them, can we trade for something you’ve read and probably won’t read again. Here is my list:

7th Son: Descent
The 4-Hour Work Week
The Rise of the Creative Class
Now, Discover Your Strengths
Beyond The Call of Duty
Just a Geek
Linchpin
The Dip
The Power of Charm
Trust Agents
Blue Kingdoms Shades & Spectors
Pirates of the Blue Kingdoms
Rework
Twittfaced
Notes from a small island
The why of Work
The Narrow Road
Killing Giants
Eat People

I’m interested in any political thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, comics and graphic novels, and business books. I could even go for something in photography that isn’t camera specific. Thanks.

Is Steve Balmer Actually Surprised At The Crappy Windows Phone 7 Sales?
Steve, you have to actually build a brand, a community, and a solid app store before you can start to capture market share. Oh, and if you have to battle the retail sales folks for pushing people away from your product, you will have an even harder time selling your product. You have some serious holes in your plan. Read more here: http://thom.ws/qgZ7yI

MOG Launches Free Version Of Music Service
MOG announced today that they are offering an ad-supported free version of their music service. The interesting thing here is they are trying to gamify the service, giving users free music,  based on the amount of sharing, playlist creation, and the number of referrals to the service. This could be interesting. According to their press release “Tastemakers and influencers can easily get a lifetime of free on-demand music.” Read more here: http://thom.ws/o4P0CC

Chegg Buys Zinch In A Move Towards A Social Education Platform
You may not have heard of either of these companies, but they are leaders in their own industries. Chegg is an online book rental service for college students, and Zinch is an online service that connects high school students with college recruiters. On the surface, this is an odd acquisition, but more and more companies are buying complimentary services and products to increase their over all sales. Read more here: http://thom.ws/nvLUNG

Samsung Wants To Own Your First, Second, And Third Screen
Samsung is making a push to build technology that directly competes with Apple and it’s AirPlay technology. The company has had some success in the past, but this push could be fueled by the back and forth patent infringement claims made by both Apple and Samsung. Read more here: http://thom.ws/qZK9T4

Courtney Doyle, Ph. D student, Robotics, College of Engineering – Student Award

Kate Maloney, CEO, CostumeCraze – Rising Star Award

Sarah B. Hiza, Senior Manager, Energetic Materials & Mechanical Testing, ATK – Technology Innovator Award

Jennifer Hwu, CEO, InnoSys – Technology Entrepreneur Award

Patricia Hall, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs and Co. – Technology Excellence Award

Shawn Adamson, Regional Vice President, Xo Communications – Technology Trailblazer Award

Susan Johnson, President and CEO, Futura Industries – Leadership Excellence Award

Congratulations to everyone.

Even Salesforce, according to Robert Scoble, could go after a large part of the social sphere. Why would a company like Salesforce do that? Will that help me as a sales professional do a better job? As a business owner I would question that.

With quick wins, and superficial products, is anyone, any company, developing technology with substance?

Who’s building killer educational software and getting recognized for it?

Who’s building medical software to help us find cures and eliminate disease?

Who’s building technology that helps us better design and implement green communities?

Who’s building technology that helps us discover and tap into cheaper forms of energy?

Who’s developing technology that will help us find more water sources and build better distribution systems?

With all the worlds resources, we are doing something more than building platforms to show ourselves off, right?

New inbound data transfer price for all regions (effective July 1, 2011)

• $0.000 – all data transfer in

New data transfer price for US-Standard, US-West and Europe regions (effective July 1, 2011)

• $0.000 – first 1 GB / month data transfer out
• $0.120 per GB – up to 10 TB / month data transfer out (10 TB total)
• $0.090 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out (50TB total)
• $0.070 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out (150 TB total)
• $0.050 per GB – next 350 TB / month data transfer out (500 TB total)
• Contact us - next 524 TB / month data transfer out (1PB total)
• Contact us - next 4 PB / month data transfer out (5PB total)
• Contact us - data transfer out / month over 5 PB

2. Yahoo Is About To Spin Off A Billion Dollar Business
Yahoo is going to spin off its Hadoop unit this week, a Giga Om report says.

Hadoop is an open source software framework pioneered by Yahoo that’s useful to handle tons of data in the cloud, which is exactly the type of thing that is really hot these days. We wrote previously about Yahoo’s impending Hadoop spinoff; it’s a potential billion-dollar business that’s not in Yahoo’s core, and so would be best spun off with Yahoo retaining a stake.

3. How NextDrop Is Using Cell Phones, Crowdsourcing To Get Water To The Thirsty
In cities where the water coming from pipes is anything but reliable, a new service alerts people so they don’t have to sit at home all day waiting for the tap to turn on.

4. All-You-Can-Watch MoviePass Brings Netflix Model to Theaters
MoviePass, a new $50-per-month service for film fans, will let subscribers watch unlimited movies in theaters using their smartphones as tickets.

Using an HTML5 application (native smartphone apps coming soon), MoviePass will let users search for a film, find a local show time, check in to the theater and go straight to the ticket-taker.

5. Top 10 Reasons Geeks Should Love the Tour de France This Saturday, the 98th edition of the Tour de France starts in Province of Liège, kicking off three weeks of bicycle racing. Twenty-one teams of nine riders each will have to endure 3,400 kilometers of racing and 23 mountain passes to reach the finish line on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. It’s an event full of incredible human achievement and endurance. But it’s also full of geeky goodness. I decided to update my article from 2009 encouraging you to enjoy the race.

BONUS

6. Apple “steps up its game”, new iOS 5 firmware to block downgrades
Apple has started to introduce new security checks in its new iOS 5 software that could possibly restrict owners of an iPhone, iPad or iPod from downgrading the firmware on their devices, the iPhone Dev-Team has revealed.

7. Companies Are Erecting In-House Social Networks
What would Facebook look like without photos of drunken nights out and tales of misbehaving cats? It might look a lot like the internal social network at the offices of Nikon Instruments.

8. Take that Netflix, HBO Go app sees big growth 
If you don’t believe cord cutting exists and that there isn’t any competition between Netflix and cable programmers, then you needn’t read on. If on the other hand, you at least see the potential for Netflix to some day snatch customers away from the cable guys, then take note: this weekend HBO expects to see the 3 millionth download of the HBO Go app, which debuted on May 2, a company spokesman told CNET. There are 28 million HBO subscribers in the United States so the 3 million downloads would indicate that roughly 10 percent of the company’s audience has tried out the app.

2. How to use Twitter in the classroom
The advantage to using a tool like Twitter for education is that it’s instant and it’s to the point. There have been countless articles about whether or not social media makes us lazy, or whether it affects our attention spans. If that really is the case, why not use that to our advantage?

3. Laptops Powered by Typing Could Be on the Way
Australian researchers have figured out a way to harness the energy we use while typing to power a laptop. Using piezoelectricity, this method works in a similar way to cigarette lighters that create a spark by striking a piezoelectric crystal.

4. Stack Exchange Gets In The Conference Game With Stack Overflow DevDays
Q&A network Stack Exchange will be launching Stack Overflow DevDays this fall, a two day series of conferences targeting coders who want to brush up or dive into the latest programming technologies like MongoDB, HTML 5 and Coffeescript, with hour long tutorials put on by speakers culled from the developer community.

5. GitHub Releases Mac Client
Today GitHub announced a client for OSX, GitHub for Mac. The client walks developers through the process of creating a GitHub account and uploading repositories and provides a local admin interface similar to the traditional Web-based one.

BONUS

6. Cloud computing requires new thinking on privacy
The move to the cloud has broad implications on privacy and requires a lot of discussion on the boundaries and expectations for data in a cloud environment. The government’s approach to data privacy, in particular, is of great concern, from the legislation it enacts to the way law enforcement uses it, said Nolan Goldberg, senior counsel for IP and technology at law firm Proskauer.

2. Google Invests $102 Million More Into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center
According to an official company blog post today, Google is increasing its investment into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC) by $102 million, bringing its total investment in the renewable energy facility to $157 million.

3. Tips for taking good handheld photos at night
The problem with taking photographs in low-light situations is that the camera has little alternative but to leave the shutter open longer to soak up more light. These tricks and tools will help you take better nighttime photos, without having to pack a tripod.

4. Music Discovery Platform exfm Goes Mobile With A Killer App For iOS
The artist formerly known as Extension Entertainment, now known simply as exfm, has officially gone mobile today, releasing its first mobile app for iOS. I’ve been enjoying exfm for a few months now through the startup’s Chrome extension, so I’m very excited to be able to finally bring that experience with me on-the-go.

5. A New Mobile Social Games King In The U.S.? Former Facebookers Take Storm8 To 210 Million Downloads
On the heels of PopCap’s billion dollar acquisition comes some interesting news from the social games front: Game developer Storm8 is today announcing a few impressive stats. Among other things, the company is claiming that it has become the “largest mobile social games developer in the U.S.”, boasting over 210 million downloads across iOS and Android. While those numbers are certainly impressive, with Angry Birds raking in over 200 million downloads, I think Rovio, Zynga, PopCap, Outfit7 and quite a few others might have a thing or two to say about that, each of which has fairly sizable user bases in the U.S. Then again, Rovio is in fact Helsinki-based and Outfit7 is international as well so Storm8′s claim to American soil likely stands — at least in relation to the Angry Birds and Talking Tom Cat makers, respectively.

BONUS

6. Google Launches New DOM Snitch Chrome Extension To Keep You Safe From Malicious JavaScript
Google has this week announced via its security blog a new tool its created called the DOM Snitch which is an experimental Chrome extension that enables developers to identify insecure practices commonly found in client-side code.

7. Amazon’s “state of the cloud” — it isn’t stacking up
When it comes to the cloud, just forget about the stack. Cloud computing is evolving beyond the data structure of interchangeable layers, said Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President at Amazon, during his “state of the cloud” address at GigaOm’s Structure conference.

2. How NASA, DARPA Are Keeping Kids Interested In Space
The end of the Space Shuttle era is slightly depressing. NASA won’t be flying its own astronauts into space for a while, either, putting a further damper on the good PR that comes from the visually and intellectually stimulating space program, which encourages students of engineering and science. To keep folks interested, NASA and DARPA are pushing (a little) money into a program that’s directly aimed at students themselves.

3. CHART OF THE DAY: People Are Spending More Time In Mobile Apps Than On The Web
People are spending more time inside mobile applications on average than they are on the web, according to an analysis from Flurry, a mobile analytics firm.

4. Adobe releases tools for creating mobile apps
Adobe has released an update to its Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 software to enable developers to build applications for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook.

5. Windows SkyDrive Says Sayonara To Silverlight, Embraces HTML5
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about consumer cloud services. There’s Apple’s recently-announced iCloud, Amazon’s Cloud Drive, Google’s Music Beta (which is your music in the cloud) and, of course, Microsoft’s SkyDrive. All of these to one extent or another are moving away from simple online lockers, and we see that today with the release of the latest update to SkyDrive.

BONUS

6. Sony Ericsson Preps NFC For Android Phones
Talk of NFC has been around longer than I can remember, but when are we actually going to get to wave our phones around and magically pay for soda, or a movie, or whatever else our little hearts desire?

7. An educator’s thoughts on using iOS 5 features in an iPad classroom
Apple’s announcements at WWDC included a large array of improvements to iOS, including beefier AirPlay support, wireless syncing with iTunes and iCloud backups. Fraser Speirs, the Head of IT at Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock, Scotland, recently took a look at what those new features mean for an educator using iPads in the classroom.