MSNBC.com Renamed to NBCNews.com as Microsoft and NBC Divorce  —  On Sunday night, MSNBC.com did something that successful Web sites almost never do: it renamed itself.  —  The site became NBCNews.com, signifying the end of a relationship between NBC and Microsoft that dates back to the earliest days of the commercial Web.

In Defense Of Free  —  I have written so much about free here at AVC that it should be called AVFree.  In fact, I've even written a post with this exact same title (almost exactly seven years ago, the summer we invested in twitter, zynga, and tumblr).  —  I haven't touched this subject …

Goldman Sachs and a Sale Gone Horribly Awry  —  THE business deal from hell began to crumble even before the Champagne corks were popped.  —  The deal, the $580 million sale of a highflying technology company, Dragon Systems, had just been approved by its board and congratulations were being exchanged.

Microsoft Isn't The Only Tech Company Doing Forced Employee Ranking  —  Microsoft has been taking a lot of heat over its employee review process known as “forced ranking” or “stack ranking.”  —  But Microsoft is far from the only tech company doing it.  —  We've heard from employees at Dell …

What Exactly Is GitHub Anyway?  —  Andreessen Horowitz announced a whopping $100 million investment in GitHub this week.  You can read commentary and speculation all over the web about what GitHub will do with the money, whether this was a good investment for Andreessen Horowitz and whether taking …

Finland team uses Earth's magnetic field for phone indoor positioning system  —  (Phys.org) — Finland-based engineers have worked up a novel approach toward an indoor positioning system (IPS) inspired by the way certain animals—from homing pigeons to spiny lobsters—navigate their way with the help …

Here is why Facebook bought Spool  —  Over the weekend, news reports emerged that Facebook was buying Spool, a mobile-oriented social bookmarking service started by Avichal Garg and Curtis Spencer.  At the surface, this seems like yet another acqua-hire but scratch a little deeper and you start …

The Bookless Library  —  Don't deny the change.  Direct it wisely.  —  I.  —  THEY ARE, in their very different ways, monuments of American civilization.  The first is a building: a grand, beautiful Beaux-Arts structure of marble and stone occupying two blocks' worth of Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

Linux developers working on Windows UEFI secure boot problem  —  Summary: With Windows 8 PCs with UEFI secure boot locked PCs on its way, Linux developers are working on addressing its problems.  —  Follow @sjvn  —  We all know that Windows 8 PCs will come locked up tight Microsoft's UEFI …

How Kate Middleton's Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia's Woman Problem  —  According to Wikipedia's 2011 Editor Survey, just 9 percent of Wiki editors are women.  While the gender gap is better than it was—in the early '00s, it was more like 3 percent—and the proportion of new editors …