Steve Jobs is taking medical leave of absence for 6 months.
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The Times Online UK publication wrote an article referencing a claim made by Environmental Fellow at Harvard Alex Wissner-Gross.  Google believed the claim was wrong so they wrote a counter-argument.  But it turns out that The Times Online UK misrepresented Wissner-Gross to begin with.

The claim was that everytime a search query was made on Google, seven grams of carbon dioxide was released.  Google put the estimate at 0.2 grams.  Wissner-Gross stated that his paper never mentioned how much carbon dioxide was released by websites through networks, servers, and PCs.  The paper has not yet been finalized and does not contain any data on Google.  The paper also does not even mention a seven gram figure.

Wissner-Gross did discuss broad generalizations with The Times and mention that Google uses energy that could cause carbon dioxide to be released.  The editors of the paper wanted to confirm the 7g, but Wissner-Gros snever confirmed that figure.  Wissner-Gross did see a draft of the paper and suggested some edits to be made, but they were not done.

It seems like The Times U.K. was being irresponsible in this case, making Google look like the bad guy.  And you really have to try hard to make Google look like a bad company.

Pierre M. Omidyar, the Iranian-American philanthropist and founder/chairman of eBay that is worth about $7.7 billion is now working on a new business.  Dan Primack of PEHub found a regulatory filing that lists Pierre as an executive of a company called Ginx.  Although the company is still in stealth mode and requests users to provide their Twitter username/password and secret code, the company has raised $2 million according to the filing.

Ginx is believed to be a recommendation website based on Twitter.  So if I do an action on the Internet and want to share it within the Ginx community, it will show that pulled website to other Twitter users through Ginx.  It is able to show this action through a URL shortening service through Ginx.  For an example, go to this website: http://ginx.com/-Bl6.

Omidyar seems to have a keen interest in social media so this type of service is right up his alley.  One of the most interesting tweets I’ve read by Omidyar was during the Presidential Debates between Obama and McCain.

[via PEHub]

TheKnot.com parent company Knot Inc. has acquired Breastfeeding.com for an undisclosed price.  Knot Inc. is a wedding preparation website and publication and Breastfeeding.com is an advice website that provides information about everything related to breast-feeding.  Breastfeeding.com also contains a directory of lactation consultants.  The Knot Inc. owns WeddingChannel.com, TheNest.com, TheBump.com, and LilaGuide.com.

Breastfeeding.com is mainly user-generated content and features live chat sessions with lactation consultants.

The acquisition marks a strategic move for Knot Inc. as they plan to become the one stop shop for all things related to marriage and raising children.  Last week TheKnot.com launched several local programs that features venues for marriage in 10 major cities. Last February, TheKnot acquired TheBump.com for $1.4 million.

Another reason why this acquisition is interesting is because within the last month, Facebook decided to block uploaded pictures of women that are breastfeeding.  This sparked an outrage among the Facebook community.  Over 150,000 people joined the Facebook Group called “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!(Official petition to Facebook).”

Regardless of Facebook’s decision, breastfeeding is an important part of raising a baby.  This is proven by Knot Inc.’s acquisition.

Infomedia, the creator of iFart, most likely had a brain fart when it came up with the idea for Mobile Syndication Service.  Mobile Syndication Service allows anyone to have their own personalized iPhone content delivery app.

Here is how Mobile Syndication Service works. Let’s say you are a Lawyer who wants to tap into the iPhone userbase. You simply pay Infomedia lots of money to “create” a piece of junk app for you that syndicates your news and events to potential clients who own an iPhone. When a potential client downloads your app and launches it,  they see a splash screen with your picture and phone number. When the app starts, the potential client can access your news, events, videos, and Twitter feed within the app. The content on the app is updated through a dashboard provided by Infomedia.

Why is this such a bad idea? Because everything the app does can be done on the iPhone’s web browser.  Why would someone go through the trouble of downloading and installing an app just to follow one specific person or organization. It’s illogical.

iPhone Mobile Syndication Service is a senseless and unnecessary product.

The Huffington Post raised about $25 million in funding at the beginning of December.  As you may recall, HuffPo had a record breaking amount of traffic during election season.  Now they are getting into the acquisition game by buying out 236.com (known as 23/6).  236.com is a comedy website that was created in November 2007 as a partnership between Huffington Post and InterActiveCorp.

This acquisition indicates that The Huffington Post wants to seek other avenues of potential revenue and not just straight commentary.  236.com receives roughly 2 million unique visitors per month.  HuffPo gets about 16 million.   Through the acquisition, content made for 23/6 will be added to a comedy section of The Huffington Post.

“After a successful first year as a standalone comedy site we are excited to bring 236 into The Huffington Post as we launch our comedy vertical,” stated Arianna Huffington, co-founder of Huffington Post. “We look forward to creating a section that serves not only as a one-stop-shop for humor with a satirical take on the news but a spirited community for all comedy lovers.”

[via CNET]

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Anti-virus company AVG has bought out a company that provides a similar service.  Sana Security has built software that detects malicious activity based on behaviors.  AVG paid cash to buy out Sana, but did not disclose the dollar amount.  Sana’s 14 employees will be working for AVG now.

Various other antivirus companies are looking to make similar approaches to detecting viruses as Sana.  Software would monitor how applications and code behave on PCs in order to challenge advancement in malicious viruses.  The most common approach to discovering computer viruses is signature-based.  Sana’s software can detect when programs start automatically.  It is also able to detect 0-day attacks.  This is when a hacker exploits flaws in various software programs and is able to penetrate systems through those flaws.  “If anything seems out of the ordinary they flag it, they identity it and they stop it,” stated AVG CEO J.R. Smith.

AVG plans on integrating Sana’s software into their own by the end of June.  Although behavioral technology won’t be added to the free version of AVG’s antivirus software, they made consider it in the future.  Sana was founded in October 2000.

[via PC World]