Geekly Update April 12

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

The HP Social Computing Lab in Palo Alto has found that social media sites can foretell realtime outcomes. The study found that Twitter users could accurately predict box office revenue from movies before they were even released. The lab used Amazon Turkers to sample tweets and an algorithmic classifier to rate about 3 million of them. In related news, Twitter users are allegedly predicting a HUGE spike in the price of HP stock.

Steve Jobs has to be the best salesperson on the planet as Apple reports that they sold about 450,000 iPads since its launch day. I haven't taken the plunge, but friends who have gotten iPads are very pleasantly surprised at what it can do.

In a case that involved Comcast, the FCC and the Net Neutrality issue, the D.C. Court of Appeals slapped the over-reaching hand of the federal government. The court ruled that the FCC lacks authority to regulate how Internet service providers manage traffic on their networks.

Palm has fired ad agency Modernista after finally getting the message that the creepy lady and human flowers in their Pre commercials were sending the wrong message.

Now that you finished your census and mailed it back (you did, didn't you?) Retrevo has a Gadget Census for geeks. Meant for finding Internet trends and stats, it will shorten your life by about 10 minutes if you choose to participate.

Good news for those of you who check your email at work. The New Jersey Supreme Court held that a company does not have the right to read email from an employee's PERSONAL account even if he/she was using a company computer.

The New Millennium Research Council, a Washington, D.C. based think tank, released a study revealing that prepaid cell phone users outnumbered those with contracts for the first time. As of Q4 2009, the prepaid market went up 17% while subscriptions for those who were committed only rose 3%. One of every 5 of the 285 million users fit in that category.

After finding themselves involved in at least 3 class action lawsuits that claim user feedback was manipulated and small businesses bullied, Yelp has decided to change its site. Formerly, negative reviews were automatically removed by software. The company has discontinued the practice as well as the "Favorite Review" feature.