Technology

On December 16 Yahoo accidentally told the world they were shutting down popular bookmarking site Delicious. They fired most or all of the Delicious staff. Then they untold that story, saying they intended to sell it off and that the press got it all wrong.

Ok great. So how’s that sale process going?

Not so well, according to a handful of interested buyers I’ve spoken with. I know of five companies and venture firms that have reached out to Yahoo to talk about buying Delicious. Three of them have confirmed to me that Yahoo either hasn’t responded, or hasn’t responded with any serious level of engagement. According to one source, Yahoo has told people that they are planning on starting a sale process in mid-January — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Right now there is a massive worldwide shortage of clean drinking water. People in countries like Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Madagascar, and Haiti only have access to the dirtiest water in the world. But students from the University of Washington may have come up with a solution, and all it will cost is $3.40 each.

The students, Chin Jung Cheng, Charlie Matlack, Penny Huang, and Jacqueline Linnes, took on a challenge put forth by the Bolivia-based nonprofit group, Fundación SODIS to develop a method of providing clean drinking water to those who currently lack it. — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Researchers have successfully transferred spin information from an electron to a more robust atomic nucleus, accessing the information 2,000 times in 100 seconds before it decayed.

It was believed to be the first demonstration of electrically readable nuclear spin memory, and could pave the way for spin-based electronic devices – or spintronics – of the future — via redwolf.newsvine.com

It’s a common problem: your beloved smart phone gets wet, and suddenly it’s not functioning so well. Blogger Darian Cabot tried an oft-quoted trick — putting the phone in dry rice to let it absorb the moisture — and found it worked very well.

Cabot’s post is appealing in part because he freely admits that the phone got damaged after a night of drinking rather than blaming external factors, but also demonstrates that water plus phone doesn’t always have to be a fatal combination. We’ve offered up similar hints in the past, but it’s always good to see a technique used successfully — via lifehacker

Dozens of innocent men and women in a north Wales town were branded paedophiles and had their photographs posted on the internet, a court heard.

Rory Fyfe Smith, 31, of Llanrwst, Conwy, targeted an ambulance service first responder, school employees and students, magistrates were told.

Smith admitted seven sample charges of posting grossly offensive material on the internet and 27 similar offences were considered.

He was bailed for a psychiatric report — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Internet phone and video service Skype went down in a global service outage today, underscoring a weakness of the free online communication tool.

Skype, partly owned by web retailer eBay, said some users were having problems signing on. Users in the United States, Asia and Europe complained of the outage on social network site Twitter — via The Age

I came across his guide when I was looking for some new designs for my blog here and for the Daily SearchCast, plus a few other little projects I’m doing. I thought of blogs with looks I liked, and Aaron’s SEO Book was one of them. Chris did Aaron’s blog, I learned, so I headed over to Chris’s place and found the tutorial — via Daggle