The UpStream

If you missed the Olympic opening ceremony, you missed one of the biggest honors that Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee will ever receive. While you may not know the name, you know what he is responsible for: the World Wide Web. Because of his contributions to society, for better or for worse, the host nation of England honored one of their own with a segment titled "Frankie and June Say 'Thanks Tim.'"

While the segment was showing both the positive and negative impacts of constant technology on society, Berners-Lee certainly was shown the respect he deserved. Sitting at a desk, in the middle of the stadium, with a CRT monitor, he posted a message to the world through a series of thousands of tiny screens around the stadium: "This is for everyone." A simple message put exactly the way anyone who knows the man would expect.

If you truly have not seen the opening ceremony, you should. It was one of the most impressive I have experienced, and a shout-out to the creator of the technology that changed a generation and has spawned thousands of businesses was a highlight for tech junkies like us.

Remember the whole Google Street View issue of May 2010? You know, the one where Google was tapping into your WiFi and collecting any and all information it could, only to have to pay $25,000 for the damages they caused? Well, if you thought the ridiculously low fine for Google was enough, think again. The Google anti-trust drama continues to get even more interesting.

It took everything for Google to admit they were collecting WiFi information from over 30 countries back in 2010, including England. Britain's Information Commissioner's Office then sent out a request ordering Google to delete all information they had on file aside from the actual Street View images they were supposed to be collecting. News has surfaced this week that Google did not really delete the information, even though the company signed an agreement in November 2010 saying that they would.

What happens now and did Google fess up to the new allegations? We talk about it after the break.

It feels like it was just yesterday that Microsoft had its //build/windows Conference, even though in reality it was almost a year ago. In that event we were granted the access to the wonderful Windows 8 that we are all sorts of excited about. After it was all over, the only thing I could think about was when the next BUILD conference would be and what we'd see next.

Well, good news for you is that this week we learned of exactly that thing. Not to let the Windows 8 hype die out, shortly after release of the new operating system and hardware on October 26th, Microsoft has set the date of this year's //build developer conference, and it will be from October 30th to November 2nd, right at the heart of the company's home operations base in Redmond, Washington. As always, the event is geared towards developers and how they can use the full potential of the Microsoft environment and the insane amount of products the company has. However, similar to Google's I/O and Apple's WWDC, the average consumer always wants to know what's coming next. Because of that the BUILD event will also have announcements about upcoming projects and updates and Microsoft said this year they will talk about Windows Azure, Windows Phone 8, Windows Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 and a bunch of other exciting new products.

Microsoft's first annual developer event was last year in Anaheim, CA and had 5,000 people attend 275 sessions with 350 speakers. On moving BUILD back home to Redmond, GM Tim O'Brien said,

BUILD 2012 will be on the Microsoft campus, and I know what you're thinking... if it's not in some cavernous convention hall, then it must be a dialed-down version of last year's event, etc.... but don't be confused: this will be unlike anything we've held on our corporate campus in a long time.

We hope Microsoft lives up to its promise and delivers yet another exciting look into the world of Windows. This will also be where they will have all of the sessions that would have appeared at MIX, as the company has decided to no longer host that event individually. Registration for BUILD is August 8th and that will also be the day Microsoft releases the sessions and speakers they have lined up for the conference. Of course, you can be assured we will deliver any awesome information we learn from the event. What are you looking for to hearing about? Let us know in the comments section below.

It has only been two weeks since the discovery that Digg's value was incredibly low, and we are only 3 days away from the new owners' relaunch of the platform. That relaunch will include an integration with a new social search and statistics engine, Realtime. Realtime is a service provided by URL shortening service, Bitly, who is owned in part by Betaworks, the new parent company of Digg. See a trend here?

In addition to Bitly, Realtime and now Digg, Betaworks also owns Chartbeat, which is a real-time website statistics service, similar to Google Analytics, as well as SocialFlow, a multi-network social engagement service. Clearly Betaworks has a focus on social and they are going for it full steam ahead. They even seem to have a plan on how to integrate their services to make one powerful network. Using the data collected through Realtime, Digg will be able to effectively compete with Facebook's new news suggestion service integrated into their timeline. While Facebook can make suggestions based on popular articles on their own network, Realtime will give Digg the power to suggest articles popular on all of the networks.

I suggested last week that Digg would have to do something major to be able to prove relevance again, and this might just be the move it needed. In experimenting with Realtime myself, I can say there is a lot to be excited about but a lot to be concerned about, too. Some categories return incredibly accurate results, while others are all over the place. For Digg to be truly successful again they need to know that Realtime's results are not always accurate and take that into consideration. They also have to keep Facebook's news bar into account, and be prepared for Google's URL shortener, as well as their lack of interest in sharing the data they mine with anyone.

What's your take? Will this help keep Digg alive, or will they be destined to be the first major casualty of the Web 2.0 bust? Let us know below.

Last month, when I reported that Draw Something would turn into a TV game show, I thought that was pretty crazy as it was. Granted, previous shows Pictionary and Win, Lose or Draw were very successful but my feeling was that for this day in age, a social media game turned TV show could be a little farfetched. However, this week Twitter has decided that they are missing the spotlight and reports are coming in that the company is considering producing a reality TV show all about Twitter.

Does this all sound a little nuts to you as well? Well, read on, because we have the full story after the break.

When Zynga purchased developer studio OMGPOP for $200 million, we thought they were either crazy or were going to make something happen and we just weren't aware. Shortly after the big expense, however, the social game company put on an "Unleashed Event" to show the media the new games they were coming out with in order to save the company. Unfortunately, the thought of new games like Elite Slots and Matching with Friends has not been enough for the company, who has seen a sharp downturn in the amount of people actually playing Zynga games in the past two months.

This week, things are worse for Zynga and during the after-hours trading on the 25th, Zynga's stock value went down by 35 percent. Investors and stockholders alike were obviously not pleased with the company's monumentally awful earnings call and spoke with their dollars about losing a lot of faith in the social game giant.

How much money was lost and what happens now? We have the details after the break.