This afternoon at SXSW, a panel of Gmail and Google Buzz team members took part in a panel where they discussed what goes on behind the scenes at Gmail. The panel covered a smattering of topics, ranging from everything from Gmail stickers to its site speed, but eventually the discussion turned to the elephant in the room: Google Buzz's privacy shortcomings when it launched last month. Google Product Manager Todd Jackson said that Google had learned a lot from the incident, acknowledging that Google was in error when it made the assumption that users wanted to move their email and chat contacts over to their Buzz social graph, and auto followed them. 
Share:  This afternoon at SXSW, a panel of Gmail and <span class="company">Google</span> Buzz team members took part in a panel where they discussed what goes on behind the scenes at Gmail. The panel covered a smattering of topics, ranging from everything from Gmail stickers to its site speed, but eventually the discussion turned to the elephant in the room: <span class="company">Google</span> Buzz's privacy shortcomings when it launched last month. <span class="company">Google</span> Product Manager Todd Jackson said that <span class="company">Google</span> had learned a lot from the incident, acknowledging that <span class="company">Google</span> was in error when it made the assumption that users wanted to move their email and chat contacts over to their Buzz social graph, and auto followed them. Tweet this 

There's a 30 1 engineers to products managers ratio in the Gmail team — it's certainly one of the biggest ratios at Google. The Gmail team is spread over a few offices around the world (including Zurich), it used to be more, but they consolidated to help the product. There are "hundreds of million of users" — the third largest email provider. 
Share:  There's a 30 1 engineers to products managers ratio in the Gmail team — it's certainly one of the biggest ratios at <span class="company">Google</span>. The Gmail team is spread over a few offices around the world (including Zurich), it used to be more, but they consolidated to help the product. There are "hundreds of million of users" — the third largest email provider. Tweet this 

Novatek shares closed up 0.4 percent on the MICEX, underperforming the broader MICEX oil and gas index, which rose 1.4 percent. "We expect Novatek's share price performance in the coming months will be largely shaped by its ability to meet market expectations on production growth and gas price increases," Alexander Burgansky, a gas analyst at Renaissance Capital, said before the results were published. Both output and price "are being challenged by the increasing competitiveness of the domestic gas market.". Novatek produced 32.4 billion cubic meters of gas, a 6.3 percent increase from 2008, the company said. Liquids output rose 19 percent to 3.04 million tons. 
Share:  <span class="company">Novatek</span> shares closed up 0.4 percent on the MICEX, underperforming the broader MICEX oil and gas index, which rose 1.4 percent.<span class="sent"> "We expect <span class="company">Novatek</span>'s share price performance in the coming months will be largely shaped by its ability to meet market expectations on production growth and gas price increases," <span class="analyst">Alexander Burgansky</span>, a gas analyst at Renaissance Capital, said before the results were published.</span> Both output and price "are being challenged by the increasing competitiveness of the domestic gas market.". <span class="company">Novatek</span> produced 32.4 billion cubic meters of gas, a 6.3 percent increase from 2008, the company said. Liquids output rose 19 percent to 3.04 million tons. Tweet this 

Facebook's f8 conference is shaping up to have quite a few improvements in store for developers, and we think we've come across another one: a change to Facebook's data retention policy. Yesterday, Facebook employee Monica Keller (who left MySpace to join the company last month), took part in a conversation on Twitter that seemed to indicate that developers may no longer have to delete user data. The possible change came to light after Gnip CEO Eric Marcoullier gently chided Keller about developers being unable to store any user data, to which she responded , "come to f8!". 
Share:  <span class="company">Facebook</span>'s f8 conference is shaping up to have quite a few improvements in store for developers, and we think we've come across another one: a change to <span class="company">Facebook</span>'s data retention policy. Yesterday, <span class="company">Facebook</span> employee Monica Keller (who left MySpace to join the company last month), took part in a conversation on Twitter that seemed to indicate that developers may no longer have to delete user data. The possible change came to light after Gnip CEO Eric Marcoullier gently chided Keller about developers being unable to store any user data, to which she responded , "come to f8!". Tweet this 

Facebook's future home for big data. Dealing with the terabytes of data generated by users online and serving up relationships tied to that data quickly are forcing web scale sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook to investigate a variety of home built, open sourced and hardware solutions, and reject as many closed source software (such as Oracle) and specialized hardware solutions as possible. It may seem like a forgone conclusion, but the ideological and practical bias against closed source software products, as well as specialized physical hardware inherent in web scale companies, has big implications, not just for vendors like Microsoft and Oracle, if they get locked out of businesses built on the web, but for all businesses. 
Share:  <span class="company">Facebook</span>'s future home for big data. Dealing with the terabytes of data generated by users online and serving up relationships tied to that data quickly are forcing web scale sites like Twitter, Reddit and <span class="company">Facebook</span> to investigate a variety of home built, open sourced and hardware solutions, and reject as many closed source software (such as Oracle) and specialized hardware solutions as possible. It may seem like a forgone conclusion, but the ideological and practical bias against closed source software products, as well as specialized physical hardware inherent in web scale companies, has big implications, not just for vendors like Microsoft and Oracle, if they get locked out of businesses built on the web, but for all businesses. Tweet this 

At last night's "Bigg Digg Shindigg" in Austin, TX, Digg CEO Jay Adelson briefly revealed plans for a massive overhaul of the social news site. This morning, I had an opportunity to chat with Adelson in depth about the new Digg and what users, publishers, and the web as a whole should expect.To sum it up, Adelson calls the new strategy to "enable social curation of all the world's content and the conversation around it." 
Share:  At last night's "Bigg <span class="company">Digg</span> Shindigg" in Austin, TX, <span class="company">Digg</span> CEO Jay Adelson briefly revealed plans for a massive overhaul of the social news site. This morning, I had an opportunity to chat with Adelson in depth about the new <span class="company">Digg</span> and what users, publishers, and the web as a whole should expect.To sum it up, Adelson calls the new strategy to "enable social curation of all the world's content and the conversation around it." Tweet this