NET NEUTRALITY UPHELD BY FEDERAL COURTS AGAINST CABLE COMPANIES

NET NEUTRALITY UPHELD BY FEDERAL COURTS AGAINST CABLE COMPANIES (GOOGLE FIBER):

Sources: Politico, Youtube

It's Official!

Thanks to a Federal Appeal judge's decision, Pres Obama and some members of Congress, all human beings who reside on American soil will enjoy access to a Free and Open Internet highway.

The Cable company barons have vowed to continue fighting for their legal right to restrict access.

Hello Google FIBER!

***** Court upholds Obama-backed net neutrality rules

A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld a White House-supported effort to make internet service providers treat all web traffic equally, delivering a major defeat to cable and telephone companies.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 vote, affirmed the FCC's latest net neutrality rules, which consumer groups and President Barack Obama have backed as essential to prevent broadband providers from blocking or degrading internet traffic. 

The telecom industry and Republicans have heavily criticized the rules as burdensome and unnecessary regulation, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruzonce labeling it “Obamacare for the Internet.”

AT&T immediately announced it would appeal the ruling, saying it's always expected the issue to be decided by the Supreme Court. 

Several industry trade groups are expected to join the effort.

The court decision marks a victory for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who led the agency’s Democratic majority in approving the rules in February 2015 over the objections of the agency's two GOP commissioners. 

The rules apply utility-style regulation originally written for telephone companies to both land-based and wireless Internet services.

Wheeler on Tuesday celebrated the ruling, calling it a “victory for consumers and innovators who deserve unfettered access to the entire web.”

“It ensures the internet remains a platform for unparalleled innovation, free expression and economic growth,” the FCC chairman said in a statement. “After a decade of debate and legal battles, today’s ruling affirms the Commission’s ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections — both on fixed and mobile networks — that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future.”

Big internet service providers, such as Verizon and Comcast, argued the rules will chill investment in network infrastructure. AT&T and CenturyLink, along with cable, wireless and telecom trade groups, filed the lawsuit to overturn the order.

During oral arguments in December, appeals court judges David Tatel, Sri Srinivasan and Stephen Williams had seemed receptive to the FCC’s decision to ground its net neutrality rules in telephone-style regulation. 

In the majority opinion, written by Tatel and Srinivasan, the judges said the FCC's approach was bolstered by how people view the internet today. 

"These conclusions about consumer perception find extensive support in the record and together justify the Commission’s decision," they wrote.

The majority also let stand the FCC's decision to apply net neutrality rules to the wireless internet, citing the "rapidly growing and virtually universal use of mobile broadband service.” 

That's a critical feature of the rules, since many people today access the web through smartphones.

Williams, the lone dissenter, said he agreed the FCC has the authority to change how it regulates broadband providers, but said the agency didn’t provide enough reasons doing so.

Congressional Democrats cheered the court decision as a win for consumers and free speech, with Bernie Sanders tweeting that it "will help ensure we don't turn over our democracy to the highest bidder." 

Republicans criticized the opinion, and some GOP lawmakers reiterated calls for legislation to undo the FCC's order and create rules that are less burdensome to industry.

"This is why we need to rewrite the Communications Act," Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said. "There's a better way to protect consumers from blocking and throttling without stifling innovation or delaying build-out. That way requires action by Congress."

But public interest groups involved in the net neutrality battle urged industry and Republicans to give up the fight.

"The people have spoken, the courts have spoken and this should be the last word on net neutrality," Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron said in a statement.

Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai — who voted against the net neutrality order — said big cable and telecom firms should keep pursuing the case in court.

"I continue to believe that these regulations are unlawful, and I hope that the parties challenging them will continue the legal fight,” Pai said.

The telecom sector has a successful track record in thwarting the FCC’s net neutrality efforts. 

A lawsuit by Verizon scuttled the agency’s previous 2010 Open Internet order.

APPLE INC v OBAMA ADMIN: APPLE IS RIGHT (PRIVACY)

APPLE INC v OBAMA ADMIN: APPLE IS RIGHT 

PRIVACY (1st - 5th AMENDMENTS)

Sources:  AP, The Wrap, YouTube

Relative to recent controversy between the Federal gov't (Obama admin) and Apple CEO Tim Cook via Cook's refusal to turn over Intellectual Property information on the iPhone's encryption design, Apple is right.

Why?

It's because Pres Obama's administration has proven to be so Politically-motivated, it can't be trusted to use such sensitive Technology information ONLY for America's National Security.

Perhaps Tim Cook thinks Obama's admin will use Apple's iPhone encryption design for its advantage during the 2016 election.

Perhaps yes, perhaps no.

But it's a sad day when the American people can NO longer trust it's own gov't.

It's also a sad day when the Federal gov't no longer supports our highest form of law, the U.S. Constitution (PRIVACY: 1st - 5th Amendments).

**** Apple v. the FBI: Where Obama, Trump, Sanders, Clinton, Twitter and Snowden Stand on Unlocking the iPhone

The world is choosing sides in Apple’s fight with the FBI on whether the company should unlock a murderer’s iPhone.

On Apple’s side are Twitter, Google, and Edward Snowden. Supporting the FBI are the strangest of bedfellows: President Obama and Donald Trump. Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Republican Marco Rubio are somewhere in-between.

Here’s how the two sides are shaking out:

Here’s what’s at issue: A federal court ordered Apple to help the government unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December’s deadly attack in San Bernardino. But CEO Tim Cook said the request would force the company to create a key that could be used to open anyone’s iPhone.

Here’s how the two sides are shaking out:

Google

As the operator of the Android software that powers the majority of the world’s smartphones, Google is the world’s other main encrypter of phone data alongside Apple. And like Apple, it amped up measures in its software two years ago to automatically scramble information on its smartphones.

In a series of tweets, CEO Sundar Pichai called Cook’s letter about Apple’s refusal an “important post.” He noted that the court order against Apple is significantly different from the kind of access Google has previously provided for law enforcement, based on valid legal orders.

Pichai also struck a diplomatic tone, saying he was “looking forward to a thoughtful and open discussion on this important issue.”

Donald Trump

The Republican presidential candidate sided with law enforcement, calling for vigilance on security and “common sense.”

“I agree 100 percent with the courts,” Trump said on a segment with Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” Wednesday. “Who do they think they are? No, we have to open it up.”

He rejected Apple’s argument that creating the tool to unlock the shooter’s phone could jeopardize private citizens’ rights. “Apple, this is one case, this is a case that certainly we should be able to get into the phone,” he said. “And we should find out what happened, why it happened, and maybe there’s other people involved and we have to do that.”

Sen. Marco Rubio

Trump’s Republican presidential rival took a more nuanced position. He called on Apple to voluntarily abide by the court order in the interest of being “a good corporate citizen,” but he noted the complications of the standoff during an appearance on CNN.

“I don’t have a magic solution for it today. It’s a complicated new issue,” he said.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders

Both Democratic presidential candidates deferred from choosing sides during a Town Hall televised Thursday on MSNBC.

Sanders said Cook has seized on an important — but complicated — civil rights issue. Sanders said he’s “very fearful in America about Big Brother” and worried that granting the FBI access to private information could open the door to wider overreach, though he understood the national security concerns as well.

Clinton similarly weighed law enforcement’s desire to protect public safety with Apple’s worries. “Law enforcement has every reason to want to get information off of a killer’s cell phone,” she said, but added that it could lead to demands not just from “the United States government but the Chinese, Russian, Iranian governments.”

Facebook

The world’s biggest social network vowed to “fight aggressively” against government efforts that would weaken the security of technology products, while also acknowledging that law enforcement’s public safety mandate is “essential work,” according to a statement. It also emphasized its own stance that “those who seek to praise, promote, or plan terrorist acts have no place” on Facebook’s services, which include its massive social network, photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniack

Wozniak stood behind the stance of his company during an appearance on CNBC, saying Apple’s brand recognition, value and profits are based on trust. He added that Steve Jobs, the late Apple CEO, would likely have fallen on the side of protecting customers’ privacy.

John McAfee

In an op-ed for Business Insider, the anti-virus software businessman — who is known for colorful proclamations and his own tangles with law enforcement — offered to help the FBI hack the iPhone to eliminate the need for Apple to create another way in.

“With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet,” he wrote. “I would eat my shoe… if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone.”

The task would take his team three weeks, he said. “If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America.”

GOOGLE CROWNS CHARLOTTE AN GOOGLE FIBER E-CITY

GOOGLE CROWNS CHARLOTTE AN GOOGLE FIBER E-CITY:

GOOGLE FIBER STOPS CABLE COMPANIES FROM OVERCHARGING FOR WI-FI.

GOOGLE FIBER ALSO HELPS MANY SMALL BUSINESSES SAVE MONEY.

~ Google honors Charlotte as one of its top eCities

Highlights:

Internet giant Google names Charlotte a top eCity

Award recognizes the online strength of local small businesses

50 cities were recognized

Charlotte’s small businesses are among the best in the nation when it comes to using the Web to find new customers, connect with clients and power the city’s economy.

So says Internet search giant Google, which has included the Queen City as one of 50 winners of its eCities Award.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts and U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-Huntersville, announced the city’s designation at an event Monday afternoon at Amelie’s French Bakery on North Davidson Street.

“It’s not surprising our entrepreneurs have so enthusiastically embraced the latest tools of technology,” Roberts said.

“The eCities award focuses on small businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. And I’ve been so impressed with all of our city’s small businesses, and the community that they’re building.”

Tillis, a former member of the Cornelius Board of Commissioners, noted that the town of Cornelius won the award last year.

“I want North Carolina to be the most wired state in the nation,” Tillis said. “It just adds another win to have Charlotte join other cities as an eCity.”

Amelie’s co-owner Bill Lamb noted how the bakery uses digital tools to promote word about it worldwide, including a Periscope project broadcasting kitchen production.

Google launched the eCities award in 2013. North Carolina’s previous winners are Cary and Cornelius.

This summer, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company started construction in Charlotte for Google Fiber, its high-speed Internet and television service. Google plans to lay approximately 3,200 miles of cable in the city.

Members of the Charlotte Google Fiber team were at the Amelie’s announcement, and Lilyn Hester, Southeast public affairs spokeswoman for Google, said “a lot of our Googlers come here for coffee and for meetings.”

To conduct the study, Google teamed with research firm IPSOS. Hester said they evaluated towns and cities across the U.S. – as well as 13,000 small businesses – for their use of social media. 

The team also looked at how businesses used websites and blogs, and how they sold goods online.

In its description of Charlotte on the award website, Google calls the city “...future focused. The Charlotte Research Institute helps the University of North Carolina collaborate with industry experts, host science festivals and create incubator-like workspaces for tech entrepreneurs.”

The Charlotte Research Institute campus, located off U.S. 29, includes the nonprofit business incubator Ventureprise, and the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center, known as EPIC, to train future engineers for the energy sector.

In a statement, Robert Wilhelm, vice chancellor for research and economic development and executive director of the Charlotte Research Institute, said it was created “to drive innovation and economic growth in the Charlotte region.

The Google eCity Award recognizes the many collaborators that advance digital business in our community. UNC Charlotte will continue to be a strong partner to create, grow, and attract businesses.”

Credits:  Fox news, Charlotte Observer, YouTube

OBAMA'S PAID INTERNET TROLLS ATTACK BLACKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Why do BLACK Social Media VLOGGERS & Bloggers continue to lag far behind WHITE Vloggers even when our Content is good or great?

Could it be Pres OBAMA'S administration has used Paid TROLLS to Discredit the Reputations of legitimate BLACK Online Entrepreneurs so they can't attract Sponsors?

Prior to Pres OBAMA Black Entrepreneurs made tons of legal Money online.

Now only WHITE and Middle Eastern people are making Money online.

What happened?

Source: YouTube

Mitt Romney "Etch-a-Sketch" Quotes? Democrats' "Etch-A-Sketch" Attack Makes Obama Supporters Look Stupid!!

Democrats are now attacking Mitt Romney with some Stupid ""Etch-a-Sketch" Quote.

Where is the Political Substance in that Strategy?

See this kind of Foolishness is why we are in trouble!

This is why Mitt Romney is beginning to pick up Independent Voters & Big Money Donors.

Why are Democrats being so Corny & Stupid when attacking Mitt Romney??

"Etch-a-Sketch"? So Embarrassing!

Most Democrats Strategists & Advisers have 2 or more Professional Degrees but yet their Strategies for attacking Mitt Romney are so Childish & Stupid!

STOP talking about Corny, Stupid stuff like "Etch-a-Sketch" Quotes & Focus on Substantive Issues like the Economy, Jobs, Racial Profiling, Tax Reform, Entrepreneurship, Tech Start-Up Small Businesses For BLACKS & Latinos, Education, Housing, Energy, etc.,

NOT Stupid "Etch-a-Sketch" Quotes!


Here's why I disagree agree with Democrat Advisers & Strategists continuing to use Cory, Stupid Political Attacks like "Etch-a-Sketch" quotes to Attack GOP Candidates like Mitt Romney.

After Winning the BLACK Vote decades ago from Republicans, Most (NOT all) Democrat Leaders have consistently used Lower Level Politics to Attract & Keep BLACK Voters in their Coffers.

While GOP Candidates often reach up to attract Supporters, Democrats have reached down.

Reaching Down is an Insult.

Once Democrats were elected into Public Office they often governed their BLACK Constituents the same way they campaigned to attract BLACK Voters.

For Example:

When BLACK Constituents would ask BLACK Politicians & Leaders about doing things within BLACK Communities to close the Digital Divide, BLACK Leaders would ONLY provide just a little funding to Open Low Rate Technology Labs to help BLACK People learn Remedial Computer Skills.

Even though the Majority of BLACK Constituents have Owned PCS & Lap Tops in their homes for Years, this includes Low Income BLACK Constituents, BLACK Leaders thought We were Stupid or Dumb & Needed "Remedial" Help to Close the Digital Divide in BLACK Communities.

WRONG!

What BLACK Communities Needed was Training & Funding for Tech Start-Up Small Businesses to establish Internet Businesses like Facebook, Twitter, Cloud Computing, Web Design, Small Businesses Online, etc., NOT funding for "Remedial" Community Computer Labs!

This is just one example of why I am so against Democrats using Corny, Stupid Political Strategies to reach BLACK & Latino Constituents.

I Don't Need Anyone Talking Down or Reaching Down To Me!

Instead I Need BLACK Leaders Reaching Up & Talking Up To Me.

I Need BLACK Leaders & Politicians Who Have HIGH Expectations For BLACK & Latino Constituents.

Word!



Etch A Sketch comment no child's play


The fiery Republican nominating battle has forged Mitt Romney as the party's "inevitable nominee," a Romney advisor said Wednesday. And when the end is in sight, he continued, other candidates should bow out.

The absence of a GOP challenge could allow Romney to "hit a reset button for the fall campaign," Eric Fehrnstrom said on CNN's "Starting Point."

But it's what he said next that Romney opponents are jumping all over.

"Everything changes. It's like Etch A Sketch," he said. "You can shake it up and we start all over again."

Rival presidential hopeful Rick Santorum seized on the comment at a Wednesday morning campaign event and said it shows Romney is anything but a consistent conservative.

"He will say what he needs to say to win the election before him, and if he has to say something different because it's a different election and a different group of voters, he will say that, too," Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, said in Harvey, La.

"Well, that should be comforting to all of you who are voting in this primary: that whoever you vote for is going to be a completely new candidate," he said. "Remove all trace of any kind of marks and be able to draw a new picture, maybe a picture similar to when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, not as a conservative."

Fehrnstrom, the Romney adviser, made his comments when asked if the continuing challenge from Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was driving Romney "so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election."

With Romney's win Tuesday in Illinois, the delegate math is increasingly in his favor. He has 562 delegates and is just shy of half the delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination. Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania stands at 249, former House speaker Newt Gingrich is at 137, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul has 69 delegates – all less than a quarter of the way towards 1,144, the magic number.

The race for delegates has produced, as in prior contests, sharp language between the candidates.

"Emotions run high. Elbows get sharp and get thrown in different directions," he told CNN's "Soledad O'Brien." "Usually when the contest comes to its natural end in a primary, people get behind the inevitable nominee, and in this case it's Mitt Romney."

Fehrnstrom acknowledged that the decision to enter or exit the race "is a very personal one that can only be made by the candidate."

"But I can speak to what happened four years ago when Mitt Romney stepped aside for John McCain," who went on to win the GOP nomination in 2008, Fehrnstrom said. "At the time, John McCain did not have the delegates he needed to clinch the nomination but he was clearly on a path to doing that. The math was very challenging for Mitt Romney."

Fehrnstrom's comments come as a conservative group behind the tea party movement, FreedomWorks, said in a Washington Times newspaper report that it would no longer protest Romney.

Romney's exit helped McCain, who endorsed Romney this cycle, consolidate the party in his favor. Fehrnstrom suggested a similar case could play out this year.

"Now, in Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, these are both decent, honorable men who have run good campaigns," he said, calling them "good Americans" and "good Republicans."

"And ultimately, I'm confident they'll make a decision that's not only right for their party, but right for them."


Sources: CNN, TPM, Google Maps

SXSW: Annual Tech Start-Up Indie Expo A Boon For Job Growth: SXSW 2012

5 things to watch for at SXSW

South by Southwest, the tech-music-movie conference getting under way here Friday, isn't typically a place for big newsy announcements.

The indie ethos of SXSW is more about discovering the hot emerging thing -- a new mobile app, a bold filmmaker, a brilliant set by an undiscovered band.

It's hard to predict what everyone here will be talking about by the time SXSW wraps on March 18. The festival is too huge and fractured for that, and tastemakers often disagree.

But based on early chatter, here are some guesses about what will make headlines at SXSW 2012:

Start-ups

Each year, the tech press at SXSW anoints an emerging digital-communications trend as the Next Big Thing. In 2010 it was location-based social networking, led by Foursquare and Gowalla. Last year it was group-messaging services such as GroupMe or Beluga.

This year everyone is buzzing about something called "ambient location" and "social discovery," terms for mobile, GPS-based apps that run in the background on your phone and scour Facebook or other networks to alert you when friends, or even strangers with similar interests, are nearby. Among them: Sonar, Banjo, Highlight, Gauss and Glancee.

The early favorite in this space appears to be Highlight, which will detect other Highlight users near you and show you what you have in common, such as favorite movies, TV shows, bands or mutual friends. (Hey, you like "Dexter" and Bon Iver -- me too! Let's hang out!)

Despite some obvious privacy concerns, expect to hear a lot more about these apps in the coming weeks.

Ideas

At its best, SXSW Interactive (the tech part of the conference) is about lofty ideas: how the Internet has changed us; how game mechanics can make our lives better; can social networking bring meaningful social change? And so on.

The conference hosts hundreds of talks and panels on almost every conceivable digital subject. Among this year's meatier topics: the failure of news sites' commenting systems, why happiness is the new online currency and whether photo-sharing apps such as Instagram are creating magic or filter-laden mediocrity.

We'll also hear from Sohaib Athar, the Pakistani man who unwittingly live-tweeted about the raid last spring that killed Osama bin Laden, in a talk that should shed new light on the expanding role of citizen journalism.

And then there's former Vice President Al Gore interviewing former Facebook President Sean Parker on Monday. It's not clear yet what they'll be talking about, but we're not going to miss it.

Movies

Last year's SXSW saw the launch of the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller "Source Code" and Jodie Foster's drama "The Beaver," which marked Mel Gibson's uneasy return to movies.

This week's slate of premieres looks more promising. "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon is here with a new horror film, "The Cabin in the Woods," that's gotten early buzz.

Austin native Richard Linklater is back with "Bernie," a dark comedy about a small-town Texas mortician starring Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey.

And several of Bob Marley's children are in Austin to promote "Marley," a documentary by Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland") about their late, legendary father.

Music

Every club, concert hall and courtyard in town will be booked wall-to-wall next week with gigs by hundreds, if not thousands, of artists in every musical genre.

Which ones will break out is anyone's guess, although pre-festival buzz is building around indie popsters Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Montreal singer-songwriter Grimes, disco-punk outfit Eyes Lips Eyes and College, the French composer behind the music in the film "Drive." Just to name a few.

Plenty of bigger names will be on hand, too: Fiona Apple, singing songs from her long-delayed album; indie darlings the Shins, whose new record hits stores this month; electro-dance artist Skrillex; Brooklyn trash-pop duo Sleigh Bells; and of course, rock grandaddy Bruce Springsteen.

Springsteen will give a talk Thursday afternoon and then play a gig that night at an as-yet-undisclosed Austin club. Admission is by lottery only and may become SXSW's toughest ticket.

Comedy

SXSW is getting serious about being funny. The SXSW Interactive keynote is being given by comedian Baratunde Thurston, Web editor of The Onion.

The creators of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" talk about making political jokes on the Internet, while "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane will explain his upcoming movie about a man whose teddy bear comes to life.

And "The Office's" Rainn Wilson has been given a slot on the conference schedule for an event titled "The View From Inside Rainn Wilson's Brainstem." There he will riff for an hour on, well, whatever he wants.





A first-timers' guide to South by Southwest


For first-timers, South by Southwest Interactive can be a little intimidating.
The Austin technology festival, which kicks off Friday, swelled to nearly 20,000 participants last year. This year, there'll be more than 1,000 panels and presentations spread across 15 campuses in an increasingly crowded downtown.

Surviving is one thing, but really experiencing and enjoying the fest often depends on what you bring, and just as importantly, don't bring.
Here's some advice on what to equip yourself with and what to ditch before you hit SXSW.

Bring: A game plan. The Interactive schedule is daunting, and that's not even counting nighttime parties and unofficial gatherings. It pays to go through the schedule on the official site and also to skim it on sites such as lynrd.com and sched.org, or sxshhh.com, a new paid site that for $5 rounds up RSVP info for SXSW-adjacent parties.

Make a tentative plan for what you want to see and have it handy in a phone or online calendar you can access at any time during the fest. The official app of the fest, "SXSW Go," is available for iOS, Android and soon Windows and BlackBerry phones.

I find the iPad version is the easiest to browse through, more so even than the SXSW website itself. It doesn't hurt to double- or triple-book your calendar for panel slots or parties in case a room fills up or if a line is too long. Always leave yourself some extra options.

Don't bring: Inflexibility. Once you have a set plan, be prepared to abandon whole chunks of it. You'll meet new people, perhaps find old friends, hear about a great party that's happening or discover that the panel you were dying to attend has been canceled or has reached capacity.

Be flexible, go with the flow and have no regrets about missing something; there's plenty to see and do. You'll wear yourself out and miss potentially serendipitous moments if you hold too firmly to your schedule.

Bring: Extra battery packs and your own Internet. A good day at SXSW Interactive is at least 12 hours long, and you might be using your smartphone, tablet or laptop a lot to look up information or try new apps. Your batteries will get depleted, and it's not always easy to find a free power outlet in packed panel rooms.

Bring charging cables and power supplies for your gear. You can also find cheap, portable backup battery chargers for most smartphones on Amazon for as little as $6 to $10. Buy at least one, maybe two. A portable power strip wouldn't hurt either if you want to share power outlets with your fellow attendees.

Some years, wireless phone networks haven't held up under the strain of all the tech-centric attendees. Outside the Convention Center in the downtown wilds, there aren't as many free Wi-Fi locations as you'd hope. If what you're doing at the fest requires a constant Internet connection, consider bringing your own Wi-Fi hotspot device.

Don't bring: Expensive tech gear or cameras that haven't been backed up. Every year, I hear about someone who had a laptop stolen or lost a camera containing a memory card full of precious photos that were never transferred to a computer. Keep your stuff safe and don't bring anything irreplaceable.

Bring: A giant smile. Texans are very friendly. We want nothing more than for you to go home after your trip and rave about how delicious our barbecue tastes and how we're all as soulful and attractive as the characters on "Friday Night Lights." But it only works if you're humble and attitude-free.

Which brings us to ...

Don't bring:

Attitude. In recent years, the influx of social media gurus and marketing mavens has changed the vibe at some parts of SXSW Interactive from a spring break for nerds to a focus group for startups aimed at Twitterholics.

Leave behind the smarmy business networking and condescending attitude toward those who aren't online rock stars. Don't be That Guy (or Gal).

Bring:

Comfy shoes, light clothes and an umbrella. March and October are our best weather months in Austin, but it can turn on a dime. Dress lightly, but bring a jacket for the colder evenings and have an umbrella handy in case a thunderstorm rolls through. And wear comfortable, broken-in shoes -- you'll be on your feet a lot.

Don't bring: Ostentatious cowboy boots and a 10-gallon hat you only wear when you're visiting Texas. We Texans see right through that crap.


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Sources: CNN, GoKit, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Congressional Black Caucus Launches "Voter Suppression" Tour For Re-election NOT BLACK Upward Mobility!

Congressional BLACK Caucus Members Will Launch A "Anti- Voter Suppression Tour" In March.

Of Course!

Its Only Because They Want To Be Re-elected.

Any Other Time They Can't Be Found Unless....

You Are A Member Of Their Fraternity Or Sorority.

CBC Members Push For Re-election Just To Warm Seats On Capitol Hill (Personal Gain) & Help Keep Most BLACK People As A Permanent American Under Class.

That Is Unless You Fit Into Their Personal Inner Circles.

More Poor BLACK People = More Social Safety Net Programs = More BLACK Social Worker Jobs For Friends Of BLACK Congress Members.

Versus....

More BLACK Entrepreneurs & More BLACK Tech Start-Up Owners Which = More JOBS For BLACK & Latinos = Self-Sufficiency = Fewer BLACK People Living Off The Federal Government.

I Will Support Pres. Obama's Re-election, However I Haven't Yet Decided The Political Fate Of Most BLACK Congressional Democrats.

Do They Actually Deserve My Valuable BLACK Vote?

For What????

Excuse Me If I Sound Somewhat Cynical About The Congressional BLACK Caucus.

I Promise To Cheer Up When The Number Of BLACK Entrepreneurs & BLACK Tech Start-Up Owners, Surpasses The Number Of BLACK People On Unemployment, Welfare, Food Stamps & Those Working For Someone Else Rather Than Work For Themselves.

Peace.


Sources: CBC, Youtube

Missoni Fashion Craze Crashes Target Stores Website Servers

Missoni for Target line creates Black Friday-like demand

The much-anticipated launch of a new collaborative line between Italian designer Missoni and Target caused the retailer's website to crash several times Tuesday.

"Target.com is seeing greater item demand than we do on a typical Black Friday, and the excitement for this limited-time designer collection is unprecedented," the store said in a statement. "We are slowly bringing the site back online to ensure we can provide a positive shopping experience to our guests."

By Wednesday, the site was back up and running, but many of the colorful, zigzag designs were out of stock.

Between 7:47 and 8 a.m. ET Tuesday, the Target.com homepage was completely down with a connection timeout error, according to AlertSite, a Web performance monitoring business. For most of Tuesday afternoon and evening, the homepage displayed a courtesy page of the Target dog letting visitors know the site was overloaded.

"We are suddenly extremely popular," the page said.

The fervor wasn't only online. At stores nationwide, customers eager to grab up the colorful zigzag designs began lining up hours before opening. Stores reported selling out of stock within hours as shoppers grabbed up clothing and housewares at deeply discounted prices.

A full-priced knit scarf by the iconic Italian designer runs from $175 to $200 at department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. The Missoni for Target collection includes knit dresses and sweaters between $40 and $60. On the pricier side, a women's bike costs $399.99 and a 28-inch piece of roller luggage, $199.99

The reaction comes amid considerable buzz leading up to the public debut of the collaboration. A private launch event September 7 in New York's Times Square was described in media reports as a "madhouse" with celebs such as Emma Roberts, Camilla Belle and Rachel Zoe in attendance.

Actress Jessica Alba tweeted that she "dreamt about the Missoni 4 Target bike last night" and that she hoped her husband was "going to get it 4 me?!?" Singer Jessica Simpson retweeted Alba, saying that she wanted the bike, too: "So cute!"

Target has collaborated with other designers before, from Isaac Mizrahi to Jean Paul Gaultier, but none to this effect. The collection was scheduled to be available from Tuesday through October 22 at Target stores and Target.com. It was unclear how Tuesday's activity would affect future sales.


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Sources: AP, CNN, Missoni, Target, TIME, Google Maps

Black Techies & Entrepreneurs Seek Their Piece Of Silicon Valley Too!

Despite Lies From GOP & Tea Party Leaders About How Dismal The American Economy Is, Many Economists Agree There's No Better Time To Start A Small Business Than Right Now! Especially In The Service & Technology Areas. And...Where Are The BLACK Bill Gates & Steve Jobs? Why Only ONE Black Techie? (Omar Wasow) It's High Time More Of Us Get Our Piece Of Silicon Valley's Pie Too!

‎"It's hard to find black geeks. We're out to start a movement that affirms the geek in you. A movement that says black geek is ok. We're out to support each other and grow an interest in tech in the people around us. We're out to solve hard problems and engage others. We're about being inclusive of all people, yet we have a special dream for our communities to become more engaged in tech. Here, the rubber meets the road. Welcome!" - Blacks In Tech Meet Up: http://www.meetup.com/NY-B​lacks-in-Tech/



Black entrepreneurs pitch their dreams to Silicon Valley

Hank Williams has performed dozen of times to audiences like the one here on Thursday at the Kapor Capital investment firm.

This time, however, the 46-year-old software veteran wasn't the only black person in the room, as is often the case at fundraising meetings in Silicon Valley.

Williams is a member of the NewMe Accelerator's inaugural class. The tech incubator was formed to help minorities get advice from successful executives and put their new Internet ventures in front of investors.

For two months, eight black entrepreneurs worked (and some lived) together in a rented house in Mountain View, California, which is the same city Google, a NewMe sponsor, calls home.

Having removed himself from the Silicon Valley technology scene for a decade, Williams re-emerged on Thursday to demonstrate the project he's been working on for four years with two colleagues in New York.

When Spaces begins testing in the next few weeks, people will be able to sign up for an online storage locker, which allows them to organize, search and transmit various types of data. It can handle files, e-mails, calendars, Twitter messages and other digital information that competitors generally don't facilitate.

The concept is unique, yet familiar to investors salivating over the unexpected success of another new Web-storage service, Dropbox. Williams' Kloud.co has been self-funded so far, but he is about ready to exchange equity in his company for cash.

Before the dotcom bubble burst a decade ago, Williams had raised $40 million for an Internet music service called Clickradio. But he is an anomaly of sorts in the Silicon Valley institution, where black people don't typically start Internet businesses and, for that or whatever other reason, rarely receive venture capital.

Despite his legacy and deep connections in Silicon Valley, Williams was nervous on demo day.

"I will never go up there in front of a roomful of people and not be nervous," he said in an interview afterward. "The tech industry is pretty clubby," he said earlier, and it often shuns prospects who "didn't go to Stanford or work at Google."

Among the presenters, Williams stood out not because he's a person of color but because he's the grayest of those who presented on stage, with salt-and-pepper hair on his head and face.

The rest of the class is fairly green when it comes to raising capital. Associating with this minority-focused Web startup group, an innovative idea in Silicon Valley, has helped them to secure meetings that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, said several of the entrepreneurs.

"People like to think of us in terms of what they already know," said Crisson Jno-Charles, one of the NewMe Accelerator participants. "The way Silicon Valley works is word of mouth."

Last year in Boston, Jno-Charles, a black computer programmer, began building Fetchmob, along with Alisa Boguslavskaya, who is not an ethnic minority but as a woman, is likewise a minority in the tech industry. Fetchmob is targeting colleges with an online marketplace for ordering groceries that other students can volunteer to deliver.

Another male-female duo started BeCouply, which makes an application for scheduling and chronicling dates. Statistically, blacks and women get little venture funding -- less than a tenth combined, according to some studies. BeCouply founders Pius Uzamere and Becky Cruze have another factor stacked against them: investors tend to shy away from entrepreneurs who are romantically involved, they learned.

"He's black; I'm a woman; we're a couple," Cruze said in an interview. "So we're screwed, right?"

Angela Benton, the NewMe event and group organizer who also pitched an app called Cued that offers restaurant recommendations based on a person's interests, said she would consider the incubator a success if three of the companies received funding.

Some investors here were more optimistic.

"The expectations aren't set, and we need to do something about that," said Mitch Kapor, a software pioneer turned venture capitalist who lent his office and contacts to the NewMe Accelerator.

James Joaquin, who attends the top incubator events and pitch presentations, said of the NewMe crop: "These entrepreneurs, these startups are at the same caliber."

Matt Van Horn, an executive at the venture-backed social networking company called Path, spoke at an event for the NewMe class and he agreed. "I've just seen a lot of growth," he said.

Joaquin is the CEO of a popular service for synchronizing bookmarks between Web browsers. He also finances young companies, a practice called angel investing. He added, "I think the majority of these companies will get angel investments."

He named Pencil You In as one of the standout presentations. The service, led by Tiffani Bell, lets people schedule haircut appoints online.

Other presentations included:

Aislefinder is a digital grocery list that tags each item with the aisle number the store stocks it in, as long as the product is among the 80,000 at 1,300 stores in the database. Users have made 12,000 shopping lists so far.

Playd, an app geared toward video-game players, is expected to launch this month.

Central.ly has a drag-and-drop website geared toward small businesses and is already bringing in revenue.

Wayne Sutton, whose service called Vouch lets users endorse associates via social networks, offered what sounded like music to a tech financier's ears. "We're going to have an API integrated with mobile apps, and we're going to make some money," he said in rapid succession, to laughter.

In a business environment that values teamwork, at least one person in this crop of entrepreneurs possesses a skill uncommon among the typical pasty-faced programmer.

Hajj Flemings, who co-founded a personal website builder called Gokit, concluded his speech saying: "I'm a former college athlete, and I always play to win."


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Sources: Black Techies, CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Federal Workers Warned Not To Read Classified Wikileaks Docs

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Don’t Look, Don’t Read: Government Warns Its Workers Away From WikiLeaks Documents


In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to view the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said the notice sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads, urging them to distribute it to their staff.

The directive applies to both government computers and private devices that employees or contractors might have, as long as they are accessing the documents on nonclassified government networks. It does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems, a White House official said Saturday. And it does not prohibit federal employees from reading news stories about the topic. But if they have “accidentially” already downloaded any of these documents, they are being told to notify their “information security offices.”

The Department of Defense, in its own directive to military personnel and contractors, says that simply viewing these documents, without proper authorization, will violate long-standing rules even though they are accessible to the public at large on Internet sites.

"Viewing or downloading still classified documents from unclassified government computers creates a security violation," a spokeswoman said in a statement on Saturday.

The effort, while understandable, seems entirely futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit group that has combated government efforts to keep certain government documents secret.

“It just may be a little too late for the government to push these documents down the memory hole,” Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center did not support the initial public release of the material. “This is Orwell thought police in the age of the Internet, as these are already so widely accessible on servers around the world.”The Library of Congress has joined in the push, blocked visitors to its reading rooms, or anyone else using its computer system, from accessing the WikiLeaks site, noting that “unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

The moves have not apparently discouraged staff at WikiLeaks, as the organization continues to post Twitter feeds mocking the efforts to limit access to the documents, including one note on Saturday reading: “Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks”.


Sources: Meet The Press, MSNBC, NY Times

Mark Zuckerberg Unveils New Facebook Redesign On "60 Minutes"

Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook: What's Next?


If you have a Facebook account, you've probably reconnected with an old pal, shared photos with your family, and gotten advice from your friends on what to buy and what to read. It's pretty likely you logged on today.

Lately, the social networking site has been introducing new products - one after the next - with the goal, it seems, of turning the entire Web into one big social network, so eventually the Internet will be Facebook.

As if the company wasn't surging enough, the movie "The Social Network" about the creation of Facebook has heightened interest, especially in its 26-yr-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Now Facebook is about to get a facelift, and agreed to launch its new look on "60 Minutes."

Correspondent Lesley Stahl went out to Palo Alto, Calif. and sat down with Zuckerberg to discuss his creation, which is used today by a whopping 500 million people in 70 languages all around the world.

"When you first thought about this, 19 years old, is this what you had in mind? Did you see this far into the future? Or is it way beyond what you dreamed?" Stahl asked.

"Well, it's funny. When I was getting started, with my roommates in college, you never think that you could build this company or anything like that, right? Because, I mean, we were college students, right?" Zuckerberg said. "And we were just building stuff 'cause we thought it was cool. I do remember having these specific conversations with my friends where we thought, you know, someone is gonna build this. Someone is gonna build something that makes it so that people can stay connected with their friends and their family, but no way would we be the ones who were contributing to, kinda, leading the whole Internet in this direction."

But that's what he's doing - leading the whole Internet in his direction. In a non-descript T-shirt at a non-descript desk, Zuckerberg runs a vast global empire with the world's largest population after China and India.

Stahl first met him three years ago, at Facebook's old graffiti'd building in downtown Palo Alto. The company has since decamped to giant hangers nearby to accommodate their explosive growth. The graffiti is largely gone, except for one word you just can't miss.

"I see 'hack' everywhere: 'Hack,'" Stahl pointed out. "It has a negative connotation, doesn't it?"

"When we say hacker, there's this whole definition that engineers have for themselves, where it's very much a compliment when you call someone a hacker, where to hack something means to build something very quickly, right? In one night, you can sit down and you could churn out a lot of code, and at the end, you have a product," Zuckerberg explained.

Which is what he expects from his 500 engineers: as we walked through the Facebook offices, we got a sense of high-level competition, whether it's writing code into the night or taking breaks to play speed chess. It's a constant game of one-upmanship.

Zuckerberg told Stahl about the company's "hackathons."

"Hackathons are these things where just all of the Facebook engineers get together and stay up all night building things," he said. "And, I mean, usually at these hackathons, I code too, just alongside everyone."

As he spoke, Stahl remembered his awkwardness from three years ago, and how he rarely blinks. But he's far more relaxed now, easier to smile, and noticeably more confident, as he tells you about all the new products they keep launching.

On Monday, Dec. 6, the company will launch a new layout for the heart of the site: every user's profile page.

For example, Zuckerberg's old page is filled with scrapbook-like entries in no order of importance, like "Andy Samberg plays me on Saturday Night Live."

You have to dig around to get any real sense of who Zuckerberg is as a person.

The new page is in effect "the Mark Zuckerberg story"- or how he wants his friends to see him. His bio information is right up top, with the kind of details he'd tell you if you met him.

"I work at Facebook and I spend all of my time there, right? I mean, here are my friends. I grew up in New York and now I live in California, right. Those really kind of basic, important things," he explained.

Under the bio are the latest photos posted by him or his friends. It's like a running ticker tape of his life. Every day, a staggering 100 million photos are uploaded on to the site.

"Lots of photos," Stahl remarked, looking at the new design.

"People love photos," Zuckerberg said. "Photos originally weren't that big a part of the idea for Facebook, but we just found that people really like them, so we built out this functionality."

A dozen engineers and designers worked on the new layout in a war room of sorts. They raced against a real countdown clock, telling them how much time was left to complete each high priority task.

They came up with several new features, including a new section, located on the left of the profile page: where you can now list the important people in your life, like your parents, siblings, spouse, roommates, or friends.

Another new feature, called “the friendship page,” pulls up a history of your relationship with any of your Facebook friends.

"You can see all the things that you have in common with that person. And it gives you this amazing connection with that person in a way that the current version of the profile that we have today just doesn't do," Zuckerberg said.

For the over-sharers among us, you'll still get the newsfeed.

Also new: there's lots more graphics under "What's important to you." Zuckerberg likes Lady Gaga and epic movies; and finally, there's a sports section. He plays tennis, and likes the Yankees.

But whenever Facebook introduces something new, there are always questions about how it protects our personal data.

"There's a sense that you, after all this time, aren't always aboveboard, and that there's some hidden motive to, kind of, invade our privacy, take the information and use it to make money," Stahl pointed out.

"We never sell your information. Advertisers who are using the site never get access to your information," Zuckerberg said.

But the new layout does encourage us to reveal more about ourselves on Facebook. Earlier this year, the company also introduced a new button, where users can tell Facebook what they "like" in over 100,000 sites: whether it's a new pair of jeans, or a "60 Minutes" story.

So the company does compile and control an ever-growing inventory of your likes and interests, and if Facebook itself doesn't sell the information to advertisers, applications (or apps) that run on Facebook by outside companies have been known to.

"It's against all of our policies for an application to ever share information with advertisers," Zuckerberg said.

"But they do. They do," Stahl said.

"And then, we shut them down if they do," Zuckerberg said.

Stahl talked to Kara Swisher, the editor of "All Things Digital," a Web site about high tech in Silicon Valley.

"You know, I wonder if Facebook can exist if it doesn't invade privacy," Stahl said.

"That's right. That's exactly right," Swisher agreed.

"So it needs to invade privacy. The issue is transparency, isn't it?" Stahl asked.

"Kind of, yes," Swisher said.

"How up front they are with the users…," Stahl said.

"That is, I think, Mark's one weakness. And I think that was why he got so nervous in the interview we did," Swisher replied.

Swisher is referring to a conference in June where she grilled Zuckerberg on privacy in an interview she calls a "sweat-o-palooza." "And he had, like, flop sweat and it was really quite disturbing actually to watch," she remembered.

She was pushing him to admit that Facebook is misleading about its privacy policies - an issue that comes up time and time again.

"Now, do we get it right all the time? No!" Zuckerberg told Stahl. "But it's something that we take really seriously, and every day we come to work and just try to do a good job on this."

"And yet, you've got the FTC looking into it, you have members of Congress looking into it. There have been privacy groups have lodged formal complaints. You've hired a lobbyist in Washington to deal with this, so you know it's a problem," Stahl said.

"Well, I think that it's a really important thing for everyone to…just be thinking about. I mean, privacy and making sure that people have control over their information is, I think, one of the most fundamental things on the Internet," Zuckerberg said.

It has become even more important as Facebook introduces one new product after the next.

Chris Cox, 28, is head of product development. He sits across the desk from Zuckerberg and thinks about what's next for Facebook. And increasingly, he's thinking outside your desktop.

According to Cox, over 200 million people are accessing Facebook through their mobile device. He told Stahl it's a huge part of the future.

"Is Facebook developing a phone device? Like Apple did iPhone?" Stahl asked.

"No," Cox replied. "We're working on building software that can be used on all phones."

Their latest product is "Messages," which combines e-mail, cell phone texting and instant messages into one. They call it the ultimate switchboard.

Asked if he thinks e-mail will become obsolete, Cox told Stahl, "I'm not sure. But what we've found is that more people are using messages, are moving away from e-mail. And so if we build a really compelling experience, I think people are going to switch over. But I'm not going to call the end of anything."

"Was this directed at Gmail? Google's e-mail?" Stahl asked.

"No," Cox said.

"Because everybody is talking about a Gmail killer," Stahl said.

"It's certainly what everyone's writing about," Cox acknowledged.

When asked if Facebook and Google are on a collision course, Kara Swisher told Stahl, "They are indeed."

The fight, Swisher explained, is over search. "How people find, discovery, search."

Say you want to buy a car. You can type "Prius" on Google and get publicly available information. Or you can type "Prius" in Facebook and get personal advice about it from your friends.

"Are you tryin' to turn everything we do on the Web into a social function?" Stahl asked.

"I think what we've found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about, they tend to be more engaging," Zuckerberg said. "I think that we're really going to see this huge shift where a lot of industry is and products are just going to be remade to be social."

It's already happening: this year, people spent more time on Facebook than on Google.

"So you're out here in Silicon Valley. Can you feel a tectonic plates…shifting over?" Stahl asked Kara Swisher.

"Well you can see the talent shift over," she replied. "You know, and there's been a big war about talent and payments, millions of dollars to keep people, engineers at Google."

Zuckerberg's number two, Sheryl Sandberg, defected from Google; he recently wooed over the inventor of Google Maps, and he even poached Google's cafeteria chef.

"There's kind of a talent brain drain from them to you, something like 200 people who work for you. Ten percent are former Googlers, right?" Stahl asked.

"I do think it's clear there are areas where the companies compete. But then, there are all these areas where we just don't compete at all," Zuckerberg said.

"Is the goal for you to conquer the whole Internet? To own the Internet?" Stahl asked.

"Well, think about it like this: people, if they can use the product of any category, photos, groups, music, TV, anything, either by themselves or with their friends, I think most of the time, people want to do those things with their friends," he replied.

"So, is the answer yes?" Stahl asked, laughing. "Come on."

"The answer…is that we want to help other people build a lot of these products," he replied.

He doesn't like to talk about competing with Google, just as he didn't three years ago, when Stahl compared him to its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

"You seem to be replacing Larry and Sergey as the people out here who everyone's talking about. You're just staring at me," Stahl said to Zuckerberg in their first interview, in 2007.

"Is that a question?" Zuckerberg replied, after a long pause.

That line is now in "The Social Network," the movie about Facebook.

The question is: who is the real Mark Zuckerberg? And how did Facebook really get its start?

Facebook's launch of its new profile page will include a tutorial on all the new features, and for a while you'll be able to choose between staying with your old profile or upgrading to the new, where you get to tell your friends who you really are. We decided to take the opportunity of the launch to find out more about who Zuckerberg really is.

As Facebook becomes an intrinsic part of so many lives, how the site came to be in the first place is now the fodder of creation myths, a handful of lawsuits, at least two books, and a movie: all focusing on its co-founder and CEO.

"Half a billion people give you their personal information. Do you feel that because of that, they have a right to know a lot about you personally? About your values….?" Stahl asked.

"Yeah, I think that because of that, we have to do a very good job of communicating, as a company, really…," Zuckerberg replied.

"No, you. I'm talking about you, Mark Zuckerberg. Is it important to know who's running Facebook in light of that?" she asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is," he replied.

Interest in what makes Zuckerberg tick has heightened since the release of the movie "The Social Network," that depicts him as a callous genius, who betrays friends and principles to protect his creation, Facebook.

The real Zuckerberg vowed he would never see the film; on opening day he changed his mind.

"We took the whole company to go see the movie," he recalled. "I actually thought it was pretty fun."

"But I guess my question is: Was it hard to watch for you?" Stahl asked.

"In watching it, it's pretty interesting to see what parts they got right and what parts they got wrong. I think that they got every single T-shirt that they had the Mark Zuckerberg character wearing right. I think I actually own those T-shirts," Zuckerberg said. "And they got sandals right and all that. But I mean, there are hugely basic things that they got wrong, too. I mean, they made it seem like my whole motivation for building Facebook was so I could get girls, right? And they completely left out the fact that my girlfriend, I've been dating since before I started Facebook, right?"

"Wait, what? Say that again. The girl, your current girlfriend, you were dating back then?" Stahl asked.

"Yeah, I've been dating my current girlfriend…since before I created Facebook," he explained.

"You know, I've heard two reactions. One is about you very personally, and it's not so flattering. The other is that, 'Wow, he's a really great entrepreneur,'" Stahl said.

"I get two reactions, too," Zuckerberg said. "But they're actually a little bit different from the ones that you said. There's a set of people who, I think, have been following the Facebook story who, I think, had a deeper analysis of which things in the movie were true and which ones were false and all that.

Then the rest of people, I just think were pretty surprised and even amazed that, like, 'Wow, Facebook is an interesting enough thing to make a movie out of,' or 'This Mark Zuckerberg person, I never heard of him, like, this must be interesting.' And I can't tell you how many messages I've gotten from people who use Facebook writing in to say 'This movie was really inspiring to me. After seeing this movie, I want to start a company.' Or 'I want to go into computer science,' or 'I want to study math.' And if the movie had that affect on people, then awesome, right? I mean, that's great."

"You almost sound enthusiastic about this movie," Stahl remarked.

One part he doesn't like has to do with the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron.

In real life, they're Olympic rowers who claim that when they were at Harvard, they had the idea of a university based social networking site first. That in 2003 Zuckerberg agreed to work on their project, but instead, they say, he ripped them off.

"When we approached him, we had been working on the idea for almost a year at that point. We had a sophisticated code base. It wasn't an idea scribbled on a napkin. It was a very, sort of mature idea. And we brought him on to bring it to completion," Cameron Winklevoss told Stahl.

"We agreed to work on this project. He sabotaged our project; and he betrayed us," his brother Tyler added.

"There were other social networking sites already there. It isn't as if you had the first idea, right? You admit that?" Stahl asked.

"That's a typical argument that comes from Facebook that social networking existed at the time," Tyler Winklevoss said. "We weren't individuals on separate sides of the country developing social networks unbeknownst to each other. We were teammates. We were partners."

"So how did you actually find out that he was working on a different project?" Stahl asked.

"We found out by reading the Harvard student newspaper," Tyler Winklevoss recalled.

Asked what the article said, he told Stahl, "It said to the effect, Mark Zuckerberg launches the Facebook.com. It described a bit about it. We turned to each other and we said, 'Isn't that the Mark Zuckerberg that's working with us on the same project?'"

So they sued, and in 2008 the case was settled out of court for a reported $65 million. But the twins have since appealed, arguing that Facebook misled them about the value of the stock in the settlement.

"Why are you pounding away at this when you're making so much money?" Stahl asked.

"This is all about principle," Tyler Winklevoss said.

"Well, I have to be honest with you, it doesn't look that way," Stahl remarked. "It looks like it's all about money."

"No, you will have, I'm not sure anybody can quite put themselves in our shoes and understand what it must've felt like to start an idea in 2002, to approach a fellow student in 2004, to have it stolen, sabotaged, ripped off," he replied.

Recently leaked instant messages, reportedly from Zuckerberg's old computer, suggest he did deliberately delay the twins' project.

"He premeditatedly sandbagged us because he knew getting there first was everything. There wasn't room for two social networks at Harvard and universities around the country," Tyler Winklevoss said.

"What do you say to people who say, 'Come on, give the guy a break. He was 19 years old,'?" Stahl asked.

"I know that when I was 19, I wouldn't have behaved that way. I would have, you know, certainly not betrayed fellow classmates," Cameron Winklevoss said.

When Stahl asked whether they had profiles on Facebook, the twins said yes.

"Let me ask you about the Winklevoss twins. They sued, you settled. They're still coming after you," Stahl said to Zuckerberg.

"You know, it's hard for me to fully wrap my head around where they're coming from on this. You know, early on, they had an idea that was completely separate from Facebook. And that, I mean, it was a dating site for Harvard. And I agreed to help them out with it, to help them. Right, I mean, it wasn't a job, they weren't paying me, I wasn't hired by them or anything like that. And then, the idea that I would then go work on something completely different, like Facebook, and that they would be upset about this all these years later is kinda mindboggling for me. Now, I mean, this is another thing that I think the movie really missed is, I mean, they make it seem like this whole lawsuit is such a huge part of Facebook's history. I've probably spent less than two weeks of my time worried about this lawsuit at all, right?" Zuckerberg replied.

"Maybe you should've worried about it a little more," Stahl remarked.

"Maybe I should have earlier on, right?" he replied. "But I guess the point that I'm trying to make is this has never been a big deal to Facebook or its evolution."

"Do you feel any, any remorse at all about the twins or anything that happened with them?" Stahl asked.

"I mean, after all this time, I feel bad that they still feel bad about it," Zuckerberg said.

Kara Swisher says she doesn't feel sorry for the twins. "I'm sorry. They got paid $65 million for one medium idea that they never could've made into anything," she said.

"Well, you sound very sympathetic to Mark as an individual, to me," Stahl said.

"In this case, yes, 'cause he is the entrepreneur. I think he definitely tried to screw with the Winklevoss [twins]. That's clear. He promised to do a service for them he didn't do. He did. But he also did build the business without their help," Swisher said.

Three years ago, Swisher coined the term "Toddler CEO," referring to Zuckerberg.

"And you told us that you thought he was inexperienced and way too young to run this company," Stahl remembered.

But three years later, Swisher said, "He's done a great job. He's a prodigy. The toddler's a prodigy, as it turns out."

"When I was here three years ago, they were calling you the Toddler CEO, and they don't say that any more at all. This is a tough question, but try: How would you grade yourself as a CEO, as the leader of this business?" Stahl asked.

"I mean, that is a hard question," Zuckerberg replied. "I also don't think you can ever win by answering that question. Now, we've made a huge number of mistakes along the way. Right, now I always say I just think we've made probably every possible mistake you could make."

"Is there a decision that you've made that the people around you told you was a mistake and you defied them and you were right?" Stahl asked.

"You know, the most famous one, I think, probably has to do with selling the company, right? I mean, in 2006…we had this opportunity to sell the company to Yahoo for a billion dollars. And we turned that down. I think a lot of people at the time thought we should sell the company," Zuckerberg said.

"But you know, I felt really strongly," he explained. "And I think now, people generally think that that was a good decision."

Since that decision, the company has grown considerably. Estimates are that if there were an initial public stock offering - an IPO - today, Facebook would be valued between $35-and $50 billion.

Asked if he is ever going to have the IPO, Zuckerberg said, "You know, maybe."

"It's like you can't let go," Stahl remarked.

"I don't think it's letting go. Here's the way that I think about it: a lot of people who I think build startups or companies think that selling the company or going public is this endpoint. Right, it's like you win when you go public. And that's just not how I see it," he said.

"You're 26 years old," Stahl said. "Feel old?"

"Yeah," Zuckerberg replied.

"Yeah, running this giant company. Your personal worth is said to be $6.9 billion. Do you ever just pinch yourself? Do you ever just say, 'Wow, this happened to me'?" Stahl asked.

Zuckerberg replied, "I mean, it is pretty crazy!"
"That part," he replied, laughing.


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Sources: CBS News, 60 Minutes, Facebook, Wikipedia, Google Maps