taylor

Zynga, the social-gaming company responsible for sensations like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Pet Society, owes a big chunk of its runaway success to Facebook and the network of social connections that its developer platform opened up. But has its weed-like growth meant that it now even surpasses Facebook in employee head count? Maybe.

Bret Taylor, Facebook's chief technology officer, said in an onstage interview at this week's Web 2.0 Expo in New York that he believed Zynga now had more employees than Facebook. If that's accurate, it's an astonishing statistic considering that not only is … Read more

One of the great mysteries involving Apple Records, the music label created by the Beatles, is why the band's music is still not available online--legally.

Perhaps that could change as Apple Records has at least now for the first time made some of the label's catalog available for download. In partnership with EMI Music, Apple Records announced Tuesday that it is releasing 15 remastered albums that it will also make available for download on October 26.

Among the acts whose music is being released by Apple Records, the chief division of the Beatles' primary business entity, Apple Corps, … Read more

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday that Director of Platform Bret Taylor has been promoted to chief technology officer--a position that the company had not previously counted among its ranks.

Taylor joined Facebook last summer when the company acquired his start-up FriendFeed, a social-media aggregator that was rife with ex-Google engineering talent and Silicon Valley early-adopter hype, but slow on mainstream uptake. Shortly after Taylor and his team joined Facebook, the company open-sourced the Tornado server, which powered FriendFeed's impressive real-time streaming capabilities.

The reasoning behind Taylor's promotion appears to be logistical, judging by an internal e-mail from Facebook that was conveniently forwarded to TechCrunch. &… Read more

You know how it is when you're grilling: it's easy to lose track of time. While friends and family are over and the drinks are flowing, the simple task of cooking can turn into something of an adventure. All too often this means burnt hot dogs and overdone steaks. Standing guard over the grill isn't always an option, but with a little planning, being untethered doesn't have to mean ruined food.

Buzzing in your pocket like a cell phone, the Taylor Remote Thermometer alerts you to when foods have reached their desired temperature. Great for monitoring … Read more

I missed the live Grammy Awards telecast this year, but Monday at the office, one of my colleagues remarked about Pink's Cirque du Soleil-style performance, wondering if she'd been trained as a circus performer. Then, I saw several of my Facebook friends commenting that Taylor Swift should have learned how to sing before sharing the stage with Stevie Nicks. Much to my surprise, there were suddenly two Grammys videos I wanted to see.

I turned first to YouTube, but the first video I found of the Pink performance was appallingly low quality, like somebody had shot a video … Read more

You guys filled up our voice mail box over the weekend with your thoughts on the new Apple iPad, but we have to spread the hate around with a quick chat about last night's Grammy Awards, PETA's robotic groundhogs, and high school reunions. We've also got plenty of your sticker pictures to show off, including one that might be NSFW....big surprise, 404!

The Grammy Awards are becoming less and less significant to our personal music tastes, but something has to be said about a show that nominates NICKELBACK for Best Hard Rock Performance. To make matters worse, the show paired together some of the worst collaborations in the history of live performance.

To quickly recap the night, all you need to know is that Lady Gaga won two well-deserved awards and performed Speechless with Sir Elton John, Green Day took the award for Best Rock Album, poor Stevie Nicks looked pissed to be singing about locker room romance with 16-year-old darling Taylor Swift, and the live studio audience got treated to a 3D clip from Michael Jackson's "This Is It" while the rest of us settled for 2Ds and a subsequent headache.

Speaking of bad news, we've got some bad news about the Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the new Broadway musical coming soon to New York. We just found out that the entire musical soundtrack is composed by U2's Bono and The Edge. Don't get us wrong, the three of us all have a special place in our hearts for U2, but their music just doesn't evoke images of a masked web-crawler slinging his way about town snapping photos of criminals and taking down a few in the process.

Finally, much thanks to everyone for sending in their sticker pictures! We've sent out hundreds of envelopes so far, so keep them coming; send a photo of where you put the stickers and tattoos to the404(at)cnet(dot)com!

Dave Taylor is a tech author, journalist, blogger, and question answerer. His Web site, AskDaveTaylor.com, is a place where anyone can submit a question or learn from his many previous answers. Larry Magid asked Taylor about his most common questions, which turn out to be password recovery for people who's social-networking sites were commandeered and iPod issues.

Magid and Taylor also talked about what impressed them at CES. Taylor's response was "smart energy monitoring for the home."

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Facebook has unleashed a Tornado, and it's hoping that some eager engineers will go catch it.

Earlier this month, Facebook released the open-source Web server framework called Tornado, which powers the real-time streaming behind its latest toy, social feed aggregator FriendFeed. And on Wednesday evening at the office that most recently housed the FBFund incubator program, senior open programs manager David Recordon and director of products Bret Taylor held a "tech talk" to pitch Tornado to a crowd of several dozen interested members of the Web development community.

"We had actually been planning … Read more

Fresh from San Francisco where she was covering last week's Apple announcements, Natali Del Conte joins us on the today's pop-culture-y episode.

Of course, the big Twitter and Facebook news of the day is Kanye West's unwelcome outburst at last night's MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) show. The producer slash performer just can't seem to keep his head above water. In case you haven't heard, Kanye rudely interrupted Taylor Swift's award acceptance speech to announce that Beyonce should have won for her "Single Ladies" video. Whether that's true or not (some of us think it is), the millions of Tweets and status updates indicate that the public isn't on his side, despite his half-hearted apology that someone should probably post on this Web site.

Speaking of celebrity freak-outs, Serena Williams has her own apologizing to do, but this time it's to a line woman who became the object of her public outburst after a call was made in Serena's error. The charitable Williams, albeit unsatisfied with the result of the match, managed to keep her composure and must have thought the woman looked a little hungry, because she offered to feed her a tennis ball down the esophagus. She politely declined the meal. Watch the disaster unfold.

Finally, we do actually have some good news to report today: Captain EO is making its triumphant return to Disneyland! Even though the classic 80s movie has already made its way to YouTube, watching it on a computer doesn't even compare to wearing those cheesy pink 3D glasses and watching it in a giant theater with all the physical effects. We're not sure what changes are in store for the film, but rest assured that you'll be the first to know once we get more info.

Unfortunately, no Calls from the Public segment today because, well, we didn't get any! None that were good, anyway. So give us a call and tell us how much you like/love/hate/despise the show. You know how it works- call 1-866-404-CNET and you might get played on the air. We also accept e-mail submissions (preferably of you holding a 404 sign or something) like the one we received from our buddies Ammi and Samri in Sweden over the weekend. Send 'em our way at the404(at)CNET[dot]com.