Internet & Media

Etsy, the handmade goods online marketplace, has appointed its CTO Chad Dickerson (pictured here) as CEO. He replaces founder Rob Kalin, who stepped back into the top leadership role in late 2009.

Kalin is again transitioning out of the day-to-day management at the New York-based start-up.

In a blog post about it, Dickerson wrote, in part:

With engineering well in hand and a strong partner in Adam Freed (our COO), it's time for me to focus my attention on other aspects of the business. I'm stepping into the role of CEO at Etsy, and I'm looking forward … Read more

Supporters of a bill designed to block access to Web sites trafficking in counterfeit or pirated merchandise are pulling out the stops in their public relations campaign.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce began circulating a testimonial from a woman who says her friend died as a result of taking prescription medicine she bought over the Internet (you can watch her video above).

Glenda Billerbeck, a resident of Rhinebeck, Iowa, says Marcia Mooty Bergeron died in 2006, a day after Billerbeck concluded a visit to Bergeron's home in Canada. According to the statement from Billerbeck, her friend relied on … Read more

Wolfram today rolled out its Computable Document Format, which is designed to turn documents into interactive applications.

The goal is to turn "lifeless documents" into ones that bring data to life, show the data behind assumptions and illustrate concepts. Conrad Wolfram, strategic director of Wolfram, said the CDF effort has now reached the point where the company can open it up to developers, publishers, and other interested parties.

Wolfram is still working out the business model behind CDF, but publishers have reportedly shown "great interest." For now, CDF is delivered via a free player that can bring infographics, journals, and math lessons to life. It's not a stretch to see how a magazine like Popular Science could publish in the CDF format.

The rub is that Wolfram needs adoption and there's already a dominant document format in Adobe's PDF. One big challenge would be figuring out the interplay between CDF and PDF. Would someone want to embed a CDF document into a PDF? Conrad Wolfram said that "the CDF format will be open" with the goal of becoming a public standard.

For now, Wolfram needs developers on board. CDF has reached the point where a developer with the know-how to author an XML document can bring publications to life. Indeed, the use cases for CDF revolve around journal articles, knowledge apps, textbooks, infographics, and presentations and reports.

This story originally appeared on ZDNet's Between the Lines.… Read more

Fridge, a group social-networking site, was acquired by Google last night, co-founder Austin Chang tells AllThingsD.

It's an interesting move for Google+, whose signature feature is its Circles, which are managed by each person rather than as collaborative groups.

New York-based Fridge, which offered a simple and pretty group-communication tool with photo-sharing and event-planning features, had raised some curiosity when it told members last week via e-mail that it was shutting down its product. Users were told to download and save their data by July 19. (That date has now been extended to August 20.)

"Fridge will be … Read more

New to Google+ and looking for more contacts? A feature launched yesterday lets you hunt for potential prospects by uploading your address book from Microsoft Outlook and other desktop e-mail clients.

As described in a Google+ post by Google technical staff member Paul Lindner, the feature works with several e-mail and address book programs beyond Outlook, including Outlook Express, Mozilla's Thunderbird, and Apple's Address Book. But it apparently also supports any e-mail address book or contact list that can be exported to a VCard/VCF or CSV (comma separated values) format.

I tested the feature using Microsoft Outlook … Read more

Those of you who use or want to try out Gmail's voice calling feature to make phone calls can now set up multiple calls at the same time.

Unveiled almost a year ago, Gmail's phone call feature lets you make calls to other Gmail users as well as to regular cell phones and landlines. Calls to the U.S. and Canada are free, while calls abroad typically cost a few pennies per minute. The feature even includes video chatting.

Until now, you could only make one phone call at a time. But in a recent update to the … Read more

Online personal-financial management service Mint is giving some CNET readers the chance to try out a new feature it's testing.

Called Bill Reminders, the service sifts through the Mint user's bank statements from the prior month and plucks out the bills they pay. From there, users can determine whether they want to be notified about the bills to ensure they're not late on future payments.

According to Mint, the reminders are sent to users via e-mail, SMS, or both, depending on their preferences. Users of the company's iPhone app will receive notifications about upcoming bills right on their smartphone, but they will not be able to use Bill Reminders from the app. Mint told CNET in a phone interview yesterday that notifications will be available to Android users "at a later time."

In addition to having Mint find bills, the service also lets users input bills the company might have missed. To do so, users need only assign the bill a name, input an amount, choose a date, and save it.

One of the features Mint touts is its timeline. On the main Mint page, users can view the next month, and find out which days they need to pay bills, marked by green bars. The bars come in different sizes, depending on how much the user owes. The taller the bar, the more they owe.

I had a chance to try Mint's new feature, and I was generally pleased. It found several of my bills without any trouble, and inputting new bills was quick and easy.… Read more

Acer plans to acquire cloud-service provider iGware, the company announced today.

According to Acer, the companies have agreed to a selling price of $320 million. In addition, iGware can earn $75 million if it hits certain performance-based milestones. With iGware's technology, Acer says that it will deliver a new service, called Acer Cloud, "to serve and benefit Acer customers, and enhance brand value."

iGware has largely been under the radar in the cloud space, but the company has achieved some success. According to Acer, iGware's cloud software and infrastructure tools are available on over 100 million … Read more

In a move reminiscent of one done by Facebook in 2009, Twitter is close to completing an $800 million funding deal that will include a second part in which around $400 million of the total will be used to cash out current investors and also employees.

According to several sources close to the situation, the complex transaction could be completed within two weeks.

Along with basic funding needs, this is largely being done this way to give those with stakes in the San Francisco microblogging company an ability to monetize its privately held common stock and also to do this … Read more