noah

For those who would have liked to know the value of a Twitter follower, you'll have to wait for another lawsuit.

Last December, the mobile phone site PhoneDog sued former employee Noah Kravitz when he left the company, alleging that he took as many as 17,000 of its Twitter followers with him. PhoneDog estimated each follower was worth $2.50, money it wanted back.

The case drew national attention because it was the first with the potential to put a monetary value on an individual Twitter follower. As an employee, Kravitz had produced video blogs and reviews for … Read more

Who really owns your Twitter account, anyway?[*] That's the question at the heart of a lawsuit that could redefine the right of employers to seize and make use of employees' social-media accounts.

[*]OK, technically the answer is, "Twitter." But it's obviously more complicated than that.

For four years, writer Noah Kravitz produced reviews and video blogs for the mobile-phone site phonedog.com. During the same period, he also posted on Twitter under the handle @PhoneDog_Noah, eventually gathering 17,000 followers. When Kravitz left PhoneDog in October 2010, he changed his Twitter handle to @noahkravitz and continued … Read more

George Clooney seems like a delightful man.

When he isn't seen with beautiful ladies half his age, he's seen with Brad Pitt. He has a house on Lake Como in Italy, the home of louche sophistication. He is politically engaged, but never, it seems, romantically.

So how on earth might anyone think that His Suaveness could possibly play Steve Jobs?

This almost rhetorical question tortures me this morning because of a report in the highly authoritative Now magazine that Clooney is being considered for the lead in a new Steve jobs biopic.

Yes, Jobs was a notoriously sophisticated … Read more

Who would you pick to play Steve Jobs in a feature-length fimic biography of the tech titan?

You can bet that question is being pondered mightily by producer Mark Gordon and his production entity MG360, who, along with Sony Pictures, may eventually bring such a biopic to the screen. (And you can bet an actor or three is howling at his agent to "Get me that part!")

We're wondering if Noah Wyle is possibly in the running. As you may recall, the "E.R." star played Jobs in the 1999 made-for-TV flick "Pirates of … Read more

If you have nowhere to run in a typhoon, flood, tsunami, or earthquake, break out the evacuation lemon.

The Noah personal evacuation shelter is an oblong sphere that can fit four adults. It will automatically right itself in water and stay afloat if carried off by a tsunami.

Made in Japan from tough fiberglass-reinforced plastic, it can take blows from a 220-pound iron block and survive a 33-foot drop into water.

The Noah weighs about 150 pounds, is about 5 feet across, and has an interior pole for support.

Cosmopower, a small environmental projects company in Kanagawa southwest of Tokyo, has received more than 500 orders for the shelter, the Asahi Shimbun reported. It will sell for roughly $3,950. … Read more

Noah Everett is looking to take out the bird with one clone. The Twitpic founder appears to be serving up a bit of revenge with his latest venture, Heello, a feature-for-feature Twitter clone, right down to the "@" symbol and the pastel tones.

The start-up may or may not be motivated by vengeance, but it's tough to ignore the fact that Heello was launched a day after Twitter announced its own photo-sharing service, which competes directly with third-party photo services built on Twitter's API like Twitpic.

Still, Everett claims the launch date has more to do with a certain anniversary than a jab at the blue bird.

"We launched Heello the company one year ago today and today we're launching Heello the service," he pinged to his Heello listeners earlier today. Pings are the Heello equivalent of tweets and a listener is the same as a Twitter follower.

CNET has contacted Everett for comment and will update this post when we hear back.

Everett tells VentureBeat that the project started last year as a way to make Twitter "suck less" and revolve more around e-mail, but later opted to stay closer to Twitter's social formula.

If Heello's initial offering is any indication, they didn't change much in the formula, but Everett says video and texting integration are on the way, as well as a feature called "channels" that allows listeners to be grouped together in a manner that sounds awfully similar to Google+ circles.

Perhaps Everett really has no score to settle with Twitter. He's likely more focused on celebrating today anyhow--aside from the launch, it's also his 27th birthday, or so he just notified all his fans... on Twitter. … Read more