MediaFile

No one needs another Facebook or Twitter so any social networking site had better have something new. Serial entrepreneur Vince Broady, who has experience in knowing what people like through his background with games and entertainment, is convinced he has one. It launched this week as thisMoment.com.

Broady’s idea is to let people create what he calls “moments,” which I would call electronic scrapbooks. ThisMoment is designed to work in lots of places — on the thisMoment website, within Facebook (some security issues are still being resolved, he says, but you can use your Facebook ID to sign up), or on an iPhone.

Content can come from anywhere so long as it’s digital: text, YouTube, a video camera, your digital camera, Flickr, Picassa or Facebook. OK, all that might be tough in your old high school scrapbook.

Broady doesn’t exactly mind the word scrapbook (my word, not his), but he thinks that doesn’t really capture what his new product does.

“A scrapbook is solitary and this is collaborative,” he says, because a group of friends can all pour content into a single “moment,” and they can do it from anywhere. “A scrapbook looks backward, but a ‘moment’ can look forward to a trip I’m going to take, not just one I’ve taken,” he said.

Isn’t today the big big day for the transition to digital television? You can be forgiven for forgetting — in fact that’s just how the Obama administration wants it.

Ill-prepared back in February, when the U.S. was supposed to go all-digital all the time, the government decided to push back the switchover date by four months. Experts tell the Los Angeles Times that the delay should help avoid major problems, although about 2.8 million people could be left out in the cold when they try to turn on the tube.

The smart folks over at RPA, the advertising agency based in Los Angeles, put together of list of the markets that are best prepared — and those that aren’t. It cited data from The Nielsen Co, which has been studying preparations for the transition.

Among all the limelight-hogging features and rock-bottom prices unveiled at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers’ conference on Monday, two underscored the potential for the consumer electronics giant to sidle up and get up-close and personal with users – whether they like it or not.******For the hundreds gathered in San Francisco for the company’s annual developers’ pow-wow, Apple previewed a new iPhone feature that will allow users to remotely locate their  device if they ever get separated from it. Executives highlighted another application that, eerily, can directly monitor a person’s vital signs.******In this day and age, when millions advertise not just their location but what they had for dessert via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s unclear how consumers will respond to functions that monitor their movements or their inner workings. Favorably, judging from the applause and hooting when those features were expounded upon.******Find My iPhone allows users to remotely locate their device via the Web. Logging onto Apple’s MobileMe, users can locate their phone on a map; send a text message to the phone, asking that it be returned; or play a strdient alert or alarm. The feature is intended to aid finding a phone left unattended at a restaurant or hidden under a couch cushion, developers said.******The new software also has a feature that allows users to remotely “wipe” the device of all data if it is truly lost or stolen – but allows users to reload the wiped data via Apple’s iTunes Web site — which usually offers music, applications and even video for sale — if the phone is then found, meaning data is periodically stored via a user’s iTunes account.******Besides additional uses of the phone’s GPS capability, Apple on Monday highlighted a third party app that allows doctors to monitor patients’ vital signs remotely - accessing real-time heart rate, temperature, blood pressure and other data collected by hospital devices on their iPhones – clearly helpful for on-call doctors but also very private information.******The app would allow doctors to zoom in and out, measure different parts of the data, and scroll through historical data.******The Critical Care app from AirStrip Technologies has yet to be approved by the FDA, but the company said it was in advanced testing and expects the app will soon be available.******(By Clare Baldwin)

Reuters is sending live updates via Twitter from the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference, scheduled to start at 10 am Pacific Time (1 pm Eastern). Read the updates below or follow us on Twitter.

More on Apple:

He’s a legend on the baseball diamond.

But Tony La Russa is not inspiring any awe at Twitter, the red-hot microblogging service that La Russa sued last month.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone called the suit — which relates to a Twitter user impersonating the famed St. Louis Cardinals manager — an “unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous,” in a blog post on the company Web site on Saturday titled “Not playing ball.”

Stone said reports that Twitter has settled the suit and agreed to pay La Russa’s legal fees are “erroneous,” noting that Twitter’s policy is to suspend, delete or transfer control of false accounts and that its staff acted in accordance with the policy when it was notified about the La Russa situation.

The top brass from Twitter and Facebook have been all over the place in recent days, starting with the Reuters Global Technology Summit. No matter the venue or the executive, the questions are pretty much the same: Are you going to put the company up for sale? If not, when are you going public? And how on earth are you going to make money? And when?

We’ll skip a rehash of yesterday’s news and interviews, but you can find articles just about anywhere you want. Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, BreakingViews, paidContent, Advertising Age, and, well, basically every other media outlet are carrying stories today about one or both of the web darlings.
So instead we’ll ask you a straightforward question. Which one — Facebook or Twitter — would you buy a piece of, if you could?

Keep an eye on:

The following from TechCrunch: “Sources close to AOL tell us that the board of directors will make a final decision on the AOL spinoff at a board meeting this Thursday, May 28, possibly undoing the $147 billion 2001 merger of the two companies. Sources characterize the decision as ‘a done deal’.” Microsoft goes at Apple — again. The company plans to launch a new version of its Zune portable media player later this year in the United States, incorporating high-definition video, touch screen technology and Wi-Fi connection. (Reuters) BookExpo America isn’t looking so hot this year. In the New York Post, Keith Kelly writes that “the turnout is expected to be way down — about 20 percent less exhibition space was booked this year — and many big publishers like Random House are cutting back while others like Macmillan and Rodale plan to skip the floor show entirely.”

(Photos: Twitter’s Biz Stone (l.), Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (r.); Reuters)

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Tuesday and while he wouldn't touch TechCrunch's report about financing and valuation, he did opine about a few of Facebook's Web peers:

On the difference between Facebook and MySpace:

I think MySpace defines themselves as more of a media company and a media portal. A way to see the different content that is going on, or a way for a News Corp parent company to spread content through the network. Facebook has always been more focused on helping people build out their identity, helping people maintain their relationships and communicate really efficiently. We have talked about ourselves as a technology company a lot as opposed to a media company.

On the difference between Facebook and Twitter:

We respect Twitter and we think they are a great company. I think Twitter's focus different is markedly different from Facebook's. They are not really at all about a user's identity. They are more about real time communication. People are sharing more and more information...and on a more frequent basis. If you extend that out then there is a good amount of information that is being shared in real time. That's where a service like Twitter comes in, and that's why that's also one piece of what we want to do. If your friend does something important...there is no reason why you don't want that update immediately. Real time is clearly one of the growing trends but i don't think it's the whole picture.

In the adrenalin-fueled world of Internet start-ups, where “Biz” is usually followed by “Dev,” where did Twitter co-founder Biz Stone get his nickname?

After talking to the Reuters Technology Summit of growth rates and future revenue possibilities, the Twitter co-founder chatted with the Reuters San Francisco bureau about his unusual moniker and why it can pose traveling hiccups.

Christopher Isaac Stone said his parents first began calling him Biz when he mispronounced Christopher, saying “Biz-ah-bah” instead.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Monday that unless Twitter’s growth rate slowed, by the end of the year its user base would exceed the population of Planet Earth.

Break out those calculators, nerds!

Let’s put Biz’s admittedly tongue-in-cheek statement to the test, using some back-of-the envelope math and the much-hyped, newly launched online knowledge compendium Wolfram Alpha.

Estimates of Twitter’s user base vary widely. Let’s take the frequently cited figure of 10 million, and double it to 20 million, since we’re feeling generous and Oprah is involved.

Too bad the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t charge for its information or make money off its website — they could have made a pile of cash on the swine flu scare. (You know, if it wasn’t a government site.)

Web traffic measurement firm comScore says traffic soared at CDC.gov last month, as people visited the website amid concerns over the H1N1, or swine, flu.

In April, CDC.gov saw a 142 percent increase in traffic, or 5.7 million visitors, making it the top audience gainer among websites, comScore said. “When news of the swine flu pandemic erupted, many Americans turned to the Internet as their primary source of information for how to keep themselves and their families safe,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore Media Metrix.