TWiST #165 News

The National Sheriffs' Association and other law enforcement groups have announced plans to strongly support a new proposed federal law that would mandate ISPs to store logs about their customers for 18 months. The argument is this: a lack of standards for how ISPs store and organize data makes it much harder for law enforcement to find, arrest and convict the suppliers and collectors of child pornography.

The legislation, introduced to the House by Republican Lamar Smith of Texas and Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida would force all ISPs to store network addresses for 18 months, though it does not apply to wireless carriers. Similar legislation was introduced in 2006, but never received a floor vote after civil liberties and privacy groups raised objections.

QUESTION: Think this legislation or something similar will eventually be passed, or are Americans too aligned against having their online privacy invaded? What do you think - if any - would be the impact on average consumers who are not child pornagraphers, but who otherwise may be using the Internet for illegal activities, like copyright infringement?

SOURCE: CNET News

Tuesday saw the release of a significant amendment to Zynga's IPO filing, and perhaps the most talked about addition to the public information on the company is how closely tied its revenue and f*ture is to Facebook. Zynga - the largest and most popular producer of Facebook games - disclosed that nearly all of the company's revenue comes in from Facebook, and also acknowledged in a significantly redacted "developer addendum" that Facebook holds exclusive rights to a number of Zynga's most popular games, such as "FarmVille" and "Mafia Wars." Also, though the details are murky, it has been called into question whether or not Zynga is actually free to develop games for other social networks besides Facebook.

QUESTION: Business Insider's reaction to the news was to declare that Facebook "essentially owns Zynga." Does this sound accurate? How significant is this issue to the f*ture development and growth of Zynga?

SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News

This is an issue Jason has introduced on the LAUNCH blog. Thus far, Google has held firm that its Google Plus social network is only for individual users, not companies or brands. They have even started to remove pages that appeared to be created on behalf of organizations, as well as accounts that were set up for fictional characters or fake personas (such as Darth Vader's page.) Google has insisted that a Google+ solution for businesses, brands and publishers is in the works, but because the site has become so popular so quickly, obviously a lot of people are chomping at the bit to be included.

QUESTION: Should Google+ just open its doors for businesses to use it as they please? Or do they have a right to restrict what kinds of pages can be set up, if they think it's in their best interests and the best interests of the community?

SOURCE: LAUNCH

Real estate listing site Zillow opened on Wall Street at $60 per share on Wednesday, 200% above its price, only to see these shares plummet 45% to $33 by midday. So the folks who chased this IPO on opening day and paid more than the opening price likely got burned. (For a bit of background, Zillow is a bit smaller than the average IPO company, with 2010 revenues of $30.5 million. It's not yet profitable.)

QUESTION: Think the price of Zillow will rebound? How does this bode for other, smaller tech companies looking to go public?

SOURCE: TechCrunch

Steve Jobs had introduced the new version of Mac OS X - nicknamed "Lion" - with great fanfare, announcing that it would have over 250 new features and that it would bridge some of the gap between the iOS mobile platform and the OS X desktop version. In particular, Apple has touted Mission Control, a new platform for launching apps said to be simpler and more intuitive than the previous desktop organizer, The Finder.

Lion was in the App Store as of Wednesday and the reviews have been mixed. Most reviewers seemed to enjoy some of the aesthetic touches - such as the vanishing "Scroll Bars" and the switch to inverted scrolling that matches the iPad's interface - though of course there were some that preferred the old way of doing things. One of the more negative takes came from Lifehacker's Jesus Diaz, who called Mac OS X a failure, compared it to Microsoft Vista and saved particular venom for the much-touted "Mission Control" feature, which he described as chaotic and a broken bridge.

QUESTION: Who has played around with Lion? Thoughts?

SOURCE: Lifehacker Australia