Via Dave Winer: NASDAQ is the First U.S. Stock Exchange to Facilitate Free, Universal Access to Real-time Stock Data:

The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) today announced that The NASDAQ Stock Market (NASDAQ(r)) has launched a new service that places free real-time market data in the hands of millions of individual investors. With “NASDAQ Last Sale,” NASDAQ becomes the first U.S. stock exchange to facilitate universal, free access to real-time stock quotes — or the last quoted price — together with CNBC, Google, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and Xignite.

“This is an important, and in many ways, overdue development in the U.S. securities markets,” stated Adena Friedman, Executive Vice President, NASDAQ OMX. “With universal access to the Internet and the real-time nature of the web, investors need real time data, and now they don’t have to pay for it, thanks to CNBC, Google, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and Xignite.”

“This service underscores CNBC’s mission to deliver news and market data that is fast, accurate, actionable and unbiased,” said Scott Drake, Vice President, CNBC Digital. “CNBC has always provided its television audience with the best real-time market data. Previously, NASDAQ quotes had been operating under a 15 minute delay on the web. As of today, that is no longer the case. CNBC.com and CNBC mobile users will have access to real-time NASDAQ quotes, no matter what platform they use or where they are in the world.”

“Providing real-time market data on Google Finance is an important step forward in delivering useful information to our users that will help them make more informed and timely financial decisions,” said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google. “Historically, real-time financial information has been out of reach for most consumers without access to brokerage accounts or subscription fees. We are pleased to be making this information freely available to all of our users on Google Finance, and other Google search properties.”

“Our millions of users expect and receive the most insightful news and analysis across business and finance, and now they won’t have to wait for 15 or 20 minutes after the market opens to find out how news is affecting their portfolios,” said Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, which will offer the new service on WSJ.com, MarketWatch.com and Barrons.com. “We’re also providing real-time pre- and post-market activity, which will allow us to immediately show, for example, how a company’s pre-market earnings announcement is affecting the stock. Offering the best real-time data available is a benefit that will enable even better decisions, both personal and professional.”

• Blueprint CSS
  Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your CSS development time. It gives you a solid CSS foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, and even a stylesheet for printing.
  (tags: css framework webdesign layout design tools)

• Introducing The “MassivePress” WordPress Theme
  MassivePress is a 3 column widget enabled WordPress theme featuring a thumbnail based posting style which gives you the ability to get more content in front of your users in a way that is clean and organized.
  (tags: wordpress theme themes)

• Latest Web Bloggers Give Cooking The Books a Whole New Meaning
  …”cook-through” blogs, in which someone picks a cookbook and then doesn’t stop cooking and blogging until the dishes for every recipe have been washed and put away.
  (tags: cooking, blogs, blogging)

• Racker Hacker » MySQLTuner v0.9.0
  MySQLTuner
  (tags: mysql performance database optimization tuning)

• SEOmoz | Know Your Playing Field: The Real Top 100 Domains
  The Big Guys Rule – 60% of the top 25 domains are controlled by an elite six. These super internet companies dominate internet usage.
  (tags: benchmarking blogging domain google seo)
• APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Cons – ReadWriteWeb
  building an API, pros and cons.
  (tags: api design software mashup)

APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion on the Pros and Cons – ReadWriteWeb: The API is the frictionless means for any two web-based services to interact and share data and capabilities.

From SEOmoz | Know Your Playing Field: The Real Top 100 Domains:

• 60% of the top 25 domains are controlled by an elite six.
• 43% of the top 100 domains are controlled by an elite dozen.
• Together this elite dozen drives more than 1.3 billion monthly unique visits.

A must read… FYI, the list of top 100 domains is available here:

• CSV
• EXCEL
• PDF
• NUMBERS

Got an email from Google today about how you can avoid phishing, which is defined by Wikipedia as “an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”

Here are the tips offered in the Google email:

• Don’t reply to or click on links in emails that ask for personal, financial, or account information.
• Check the message headers. The From: address and the Return-path should reference the same source.
• Instead of clicking the links in emails, go to the websites directly by typing the web address into your browser, cut and paste or use bookmarks.
• If on a secure page, look for “https” at the begging of the URL and the padlock icon in the browser.
• Keep your computer’s antivirus, spyware, browser, and security patches up to date and regularly run system scans.
• Review your accounts regularly and check for unauthorized activity.
• Use a browser that has a phishing filter (Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera).

A related article by Walter Mossberg was also published at WSJ today, How to Avoid Cons That Can Lead To Identity Theft.

Charlene Li on social networks’ value in a recession: …it means all those me-too, social-network with a twist startups who don’t have a monetization plan, or whose plan is dependent on traffic=advertising, are in trouble. This is social media — media being defined as ways to turn traffic into advertising. Not a good place to be sitting in a recession, when marketers are looking for scale and interaction and persuasion, not just impressions.

thisblogismyblog: Obi-Wan’s appearance at the Pinewood Derby occurs between the events of Episode III and Episode IV.

I found this new blogging client for Blackberry and it seems to work fine with my bb 8830 and my WordPress 2.3.2 blog.

The name of the client is BB Meta Blog Blackberry Client and I am posting this with it.

Does anyone know of any other Blackberry blog clients?

Inside Cable News today is reporting on the sale of the domain names ireport.com and i-report.com to CNN. Domainer Rick Schwartz sold the names to CNN for $750,000.
Note that Rick bought the domains in 1997, long before CNN had ever thought of creating its ireport service (I wrote about its launch here).

So why does Inside Cable News title their story Cyber-squatting pays off? WIkipedia defines cybersquatting as follows:

Cybersquatting, according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.

Was registering the domain ireport.com almost 11 years ago something done in bad faith? Surely not. I would bet Rick’s wife thought he was crazy 11 years ago; buying domain names that had no present value. It’s called speculation, and there’s nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about it. No one had any claim to the term “ireport” at the time.

Now his speculating has paid off, but please don’t paint it with the “cybersquatting” brush, ICN. That’s just incorrect. Registering “BruceSpringsteen.com” and hoping to sell it to the Bruce for a big payday is indeed cybersquatting, but registering generic terms and made up words is not. It’s just capitalism.

Update: ICN has changed the title of their article to Domain name speculation pays off, noting that the term ‘Cybersquatting’ doesn’t apply in this case. All media outlets should learn how to issue a correction like this one, with humility.

Even if you are not a programmer, Rails Is a Ghetto is a must read.