TechBlog

Last week, we took a look at Mint’s new app for Android, which lets users track their finances and budget on their mobile device in a safe, read-only app. Mint.com was acquired by Intuit Software in late 2009, meshing the free, Web-based personal finance service with Intuit’s portfolio of financial, accounting, and budgeting services. Today, Intuit announced it is expanding further into online healthcare services with its acquisition of North Carolina company Medfusion for an estimated $91 million in cash. ...

Premium cable TV channel Showtime plans to launch a service that will stream episodes of original series like Weeds, The Tudors and Californication to subscribers, a source told Bloomberg Businessweek. Details about the new service are scarce, but the network is reportedly discussing the plans with the cable operators that distribute its channels, who are undoubtedly concerned that an online service will cut into revenues for traditional cable TV distribution. ...

As Skype prepares to roll out five-way video calling this week — an addition the company plans to charge for at a later date — it’s also thinking of monetizing the now free user-to-user web calling serving with advertisements. In an interview with The Telegraph, CEO Josh Silverman explains that the company — once again its own entity — is challenged by its desire to keep Skype-to-Skype calls free and to maintain the quality of service. As a result, the Skype team is “seriously considering” including ads from third parties in order to continue to operate the service free of charge. ...

If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of terms like “semantic web,” we’ve got a fascinating, entertaining and informative video for you. The Internet currently holds about as much information as 1,700 Libraries of Congress. Some of the leading minds on the web are exploring new ways to sort this data and how to understand not just what data is about, but also how data is linked. For example, a picture on Flickr is more than just a number of pixels and a file size. It was uploaded by a person and might contain images of other people. It might have been taken in a specific place or be about a specific moment in time. Those bits of information link that photograph to other entities: people, places, things and events. When we know how data is linked and we use that information to determine relevancy across media and sources, we’re using the semantic web. ...

According to Australian Macworld, a new version of the MacBook Air may show up in the Apple Online Store tomorrow morning. The same source who correctly predicted the MacBook Pro refresh last month alerted Australian Macworld of a new Apple product number in the Apple database. The product number, MC516LL/A K87 BETTER BTR-USA, suggests that it is a Mac product (the “BETTER” nomenclature is the big clue there, as it often refers to the different tiers of Mac products). As AppleInsider also notes, it is possible that the number could refer to a new Apple Cinema Display, one that is 27″ and matches that of the 27″ iMac, but we’d place our bets on a new MacBook Air. ...

Brian Casel is a web designer and owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes and CasJam Media. You can follow Brian on his blog at briancasel.com or on Twitter @CasJam. WordPress has long been known as a dedicated blogging platform, giving users the tools they need to publish their message and interact with readers. However, with the official release of version 3.0, set to drop this month, the platform will be much closer, if not well within the territory of a content management system (CMS). ...

Late last week, the wires were buzzing over news that the official site of PHP-Nuke “Professional Content Management System“ was serving malware. I am frankly amazed to see the site still infected 4 days later. We see hacked sites everyday and the majority are running PHP-driven applications such as Content Management Systems (CMS). The PHP-Nuke site is currently running PHP v. 5.2.9. Server: Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/5.2.9 ...

Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal is a full-body motion controller, promising an incredibly immersive gaming experience and biting into the market first tapped by Nintendo Wii, back in 2006. Now, Project Natal was all but confirmed for October launch by Microsoft Saudi marketing manager Syed Bilal Tariq in an interview with GamertagRadio. “It is going to be somewhere in October. We will be in a position to confirm the date at E3, which is in June, but definitely it is going to be October 2010,” he said. ...

I had a look at my twitter page early this morning and read “Twitter is a rich source of insanity”, and thought “Wow, the twitter marketroids are really bold, but it’s a good line.” Upon re-reading, however, I realized that what it really said was “Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information.” It might, however, have been a Freudian slip, because twitter got hacked yesterday, and bunches of celebs found they had been forced to follow the hacker. Even worse, as it struggled to right the ship, twitter temporarily removed their followers, and celebs found themselves in the traumatic position of being unpopular, at least for a while. ...

Demand for Evernote’s notetaking tool is growing at an ever increasing rate. The startup has just surpassed three million users, which means the company has attracted over one million new users in four months and that growth is rapidly accelerating. Evernote is now registering 8,000 new users per day — no doubt with the help of its fantastic iPad app. The company also points to international interest as well as partner referrals as drivers of growth. ...