If you are planning on heading to the TechCrunch50, (I am, so come and party with me), the time to buy your ticket is right now. If you wait until tomorrow to purchase your ticket, the cost is going to rise by 500 dollars. Here is the cost structure:

• $995  – Special Recession Buster – through May 31 (limited to 500 tickets; 50% off early-bird rates)
• $1,495 – Extra Early Bird – June 1 through June 30
• $1,995 – Early Bird – July 1 through July 31
• $2,995 – Regular Admission – August 1 forward (based on availability)

This story has been blown out of proportion over and over again, so the first thing to get straight is that this is not a move directed to derail Scientology in any way, and Wikipedia will not be deleting any articles on Scientology. But IP addresses known to be owned by those who work in the offices of the group will no longer be allowed to edit Wikipedia. The impetus for the banning was that time and again, those who were part of the “Church” were editing the article in self-serving ways. Wikipedia, however, has a policy of not letting entities edit their own articles. 

The precedent set here is that Wikipedia can and will go beyond banning individuals who violate the site’s policies. It’s not uncommon in the least for individual users to be banned after, for example, deleting the article on America and replacing it with a graphic of George W. Bush streaking. But never has an entire group with a very real presence offline been prohibited from editing articles.

In some ways, Wikipedia’s prohibiting of edits on one’s own material makes for errors in articles, but in most cases, …

A quick note from the trenches: Google is going to monetize the hell out of its preforming properties. This allows them to build Wave and still have the stock price that they are so accustomed to maintaining. Take a look at this:

Google is brilliant: this ad placement is beautiful. It actually is a pre-search that brings me what I (probably) want before I even have to search for it. The time savings is measurable, Google pads the bank account, and the advertiser gets an even more premier place to push their products.

Usually I am not all that hopped up on Internet Explorer, it sucks, its slow, and I only boot it when I want to watch The Office on Netflix. Even then I hate the damn browser, it crashes and keeps popping up with “alerts” I do not care about. Plus, moving between Chrome and Internet Explorer is like experiencing culture shock. It just doesn’t work. Today though I discovered a little something about IE that actually got me a “little” excited about it for the first time in… forever.

It looks like Spain has set a pretty strong legal precedent on filesharing. A Spanish man who downloaded, for starters, 3322 copyrighted movies, and then shared them, is not guilty of any crime because “there was no evidence that he profitted from downloading the movies and music, or sharing them with others.” While this precedent is pretty liberal definition of filesharing, it does right what so many laws here in the US do wrong: it keeps the law a shield, not a sword.

Too often in in the States, it seems that our legal system is set up to punish rather than to protect. The point of copyright, for example, is so that if I write up some code, Microsoft can’t just sell my code as their own. But copyright law is being abused to sue the pants of kids like Joel Tenenbaum instead of being used properly. In New York, there are street vendors who sell burned CDs all over the place, but you never hear about the RIAA trying to shut down those guys. 

But the problem isn’t just confined to copyright law, though that’s where we see it most. It may be outside the realm of technology, but child …

Either you love them or you hate them, netbooks. While Microsoft bumps around in the dark trying to find the light with Windows 7 starter edition, Moblin is taking two steps forward. Developed by Intel, Moblin is a linux based operating system specifically designed for netbooks. What started out as a horrid looking proof of concept has now bloomed into a workable, and fairly awesome netbook based OS.

Here at Techgeist, we do not like it when software does stuff to other software without asking. The problems are made that much worse when it’s the operating system doing the dirty work. So we are all pretty angry at Microsoft right now. As part of a service pack for the .Net Framework, which they rolled out as a critical update via Windows Update, Microsoft also installed the “.Net Framework Assistant” add-on onto users’ Firefox installations. 

First off, Microsoft, shame on you for messing with Firefox. Messing with any software is bad enough, but to do something to alter a browser, a market space in which Microsoft is constantly losing ground, seems like nothing more than a dirty move. As an outside party, I cannot say anything about Microsoft’s intentions. But what I can say is not presenting a clear option to users before installing an add-on is the way that malware makers operate.

The second big problem is that not only does the add-on give Firefox some security vulnerabilities present in Internet Explorer, but the way by which users can get rid of the the add-on is convoluted at best. You …

Facebook developers, rejoice! Facebook has begun testing a new payment feature for Facebook applications, called Pay With Facebook (creative, I know). Being first implemented on Facebook certified application Groupcard, you now have the option to pay via Pay With Facebook. By pre-purchasing credits, you can automatically have points deducted from your account when purchasing items or features within a Facebook application.

As far as I am aware Pay With Facebook has not yet been integrated with Facebook Connect and is only available to Facebook verified applications. I believe it is safe to assume that a future integration with Facebook Connect will be vital to Facebook’s plan to be an integral (and properiatary) part of the web.

Photo Credit: Techcrunch

This could have a very negative effect on other services that are attempting to monetize the web. Facebook already has significant reach with Facebook Connect and the userbase, 200 million strong and growing, to back up a widespread monetization service for web products. Services like Contenture, who are approaching monetization for content producers in a very innovative way, do not have such benefits. In effect, Facebook has a …

My first taste of real time information was from our current analytic tracking program Clicky, with their amazing Spy feature. With Spy I could see who was visiting my site in real time and see where they were going. Stalkerish? A little bit. Friggin cool? You bet.

Soon after realizing how awesome real time statistics were I started seeing Robert Scoble gush over the new and improved real-time Friendfeed. Vaguely intrigued, I decided to go ahead and check out this new real-time phenomena. I dusted off my old account and logged in, I was impressed. Real-time actually worked, something I was not accustomed to coming from Twitter.

As I used Friendfeed more I began to realize the power of real-time and how useful it actually was. There began my epic impatience. I was growing accustomed to constant bouts of data thrown at me and getting instantaneous satisfaction. I was starting to expect real-time from every service I used, email , Feedburner, and even IM.

Maybe I am being a little over-zealous about real-time, but I want to see it everywhere. I no longer want to wait, I want to get up and go. Friendfeed has been able to do this …

Apparently the incredibly strong reaction against an EU-wide three strikes law left no dent on some British organizations. Groups such as the British Phonographic Industry and the Federation Against Copyright Theft are lobbying Parliament to include provisions in the Digital Britain manifesto which would “force ISPs into banning users caught sharing illegally.” Any law which forces service providers to do this and all the data that watchdog groups claim they have are now and have always been completely bogus.

Let’s start with how wrong the data is. The first stat, that 50% of online traffic in the UK is illegal content, could be correct, but to say that file sharing is going to destroy DVD sales is plain wrong. If Joe Smith wants to own a DVD, he’s going to go and buy it. If Joe Smith instead, however, just has some small interest in seeing some movie once, why would anyone think he’d go out and buy it? If he’s so inclined, he might download it through illegal means, but there is nothing to suggest that every illegal download translates to a direct hit to sales. There’s another story …