ReadWriteWeb

It will take some getting used to. Okay, I take that back: No, it won't. The official explanation from Microsoft this afternoon for its design choice for the new Windows 8 logo - a white cross on a tilted blue rectangle - is that the logo wanted to return to its origins and stop being a flag.

One of the reasons Google makes its Chrome browser is to push the Web forward relentlessly. Google engineers aren't afraid to do things like invent new formats for Web images or build WebGL-powered 3D maps of the world, even if most of our systems aren't ready for it.

But in the interest of a faster, more capable Web, Google builds it anyway, and it encourages developers to contribute. It hosts a gallery of Chrome Experiments (with the tagline "Not your mother's JavaScript.") where it encourages developers to go nuts stretching these new Web technologies to their limit.

Why do I feel like everybody is lying to me all the time? I cannot get around the idea that every technology company with a major platform is doing everything it possibly can to get as much data from me as it possibly can through any means necessary. No barriers go un-trampled in the quest to track me, cookie me and use my personal information to obtain the greatest level of profit ... from me.

Google gets a lot of blame for its tracking behaviors in relation to advertising and cookies. I stopped trying to hide data from Google a long time ago because I am not sure it is even feasible anymore. I am a denizen of the Internet, therefore Google knows everything about me. The undisputed king of tech, Apple, often gets a pass on privacy concerns because we all love our damned iPhone and iPads so much. Apple should get no such pass. It wants your data as badly as all the other tech companies and it does not want to share. Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon? Yeah, you are in this discussion too. At some point I just throw up my hands and say, "you know what? Screw all of you."

Just a few short years ago, the problem of database size scaling to colossal capacities that exceeded the scope of entire network storage units, seemed insurmountable. Today, it's practically under control, with a wealth of open source technology emerging not from database engineers but rather from Internet architects. Hadoop has transformed the very nature of transformation, becoming one of the most readily adopted technologies in the history of the data center.

But is it mature? And will businesses have access to the right people with the skill sets necessary to master this new aspect of information management? After having spent five years as a senior engineer at Sybase, another six years as a development director at Informix, and over three years managing DB2 development for IBM, Anjul Bhambhri is arguably one of the most skilled plain data architects in the business. In September 2010, IBM promoted her to the new post of Vice President for Big Data and Streams. In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, we asked Bhambhri whether the big data tools developed in so short a time are mature enough to be used by IT workers everywhere, or whether they will truly require a scientist to master.

Amazon Web Services, OpenStack, CloudStack, VMware... Developers have no shortage of IaaS offerings to support. And, lucky them, no shortage of different APIs to deal with, either. DeltaCloud, a top-level Apache project, is designed to help developers cut through the complexity and work with everything from EC2 to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager (RHEV-M).

DeltaCloud works with 11 different compute APIs (ranging from EC2 to vSphere) and five different storage APIs (including S3, Eucalyptus Walrus, and Google Storage). The 0.5 release also has experimental support for the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI).

Login and make a Facebook birthday wish! Receive a multitude of classic happy birthdays. Celebrate your existence on Earth in a truly virtual style.

The oddest aspect of Facebook birthdays is the re-emergence of dormant social connections. Facebook makes it oh-so-easy to reconnect with people you may have forgotten you were even "friends" with. And then all of a sudden they're up on your wall, sending you birthday shoutouts like the good ol' days.

If anybody could pull it off, it would be Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. The comedy duo and stars of the often demented Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! have a rabid and loyal enough fan base that releasing their new movie in an experimental new way just might work.

Tomorrow night, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie will debut on Facebook, a full two weeks before it arrives in theaters. For $10, fans will be able watch the movie and chat with its stars in real time. The model represents a new sort of social cinema that, while not widespread, appears poised to become a potentially major trend.

Teddy Ruxpin, meet Siri.

Imagine a children's toy designed by the people behind the Toy Story and Finding Nemo movies but connected to the web and chock full of artificial intelligence. Then add in visual tracking, speech recognition and massive network scalability. It appears that's what San Francisco startup ToyTalk is building, based on conversations and information available online.

The company is putting together a powerful team of technologists and creatives from Pixar and SRI (makers of Siri) and is being relatively open about what it's up to. But it has received no press coverage anywhere as far as I can tell. That's going to change once word gets out about who they are and what they're doing. The possibilities in both entertainment and education are amazing.

Coffee & Power's third workclub is set to open in Portland, Ore. at Urban Grind, a favored ReadWriteWeb remote workplace. The San Francisco-based "meta-company" opened its first workclub in its home city and a second one opened under its own power (and coffee) in Santa Monica, Calif. in December.

Portland will now be the third front in Coffee & Power's campaign to provide an economic backbone for the new normal: remote, independent, project-based work. Whether you're a Web developer, a costume designer or a little bit of both, Coffee & Power provides a network for job listings, discovery, trust and payment. The workclubs provide coffee, power and space for everyone's work and collaboration.

The "backend-as-a-service" segment of the mobile development community is evolving. Several startups got into the game early and helped define the market, such as StackMob, Parse and Kinvey. Others have followed suit and attempt to give developers similar options while integrating other value added services. Israel-based Applicasa is one of those.

Applicasa released a program this week it calls "Start-App." The program is designed to give developers all the cloud functionality and content management system services for free until an app has 100,000 downloads. Applicasa claims to be the "one stop shop" for all mobile developer needs.

Like its users, Facebook's media apps are fickle.

Yesterday Facebook launched 12 media apps: for Buzzfeed, CBS Local (Los Angeles and New York), The Daily Show, MTV News, TODAY Show, MSNBC.com, photo-sharing site Pixable, entertainment social network GetGlue, CMT (Country Music Television), SportingNews (coming in March) and The Huffington Post.

After trying all of them on both Chrome and Firefox, only three actually worked. At some point, all of the apps will work. But in the meantime, why should Facebook users to read via social apps? What extra value do they provide, if any?

Google's having a down moment in the press. It can't catch a break. Every public, top-level decision it's made recently is either the end of "Don't Be Evil" or impossibly optimistic. After all, "Giant Company Falls From Grace" is the kind of headline industry reporters dream of writing, so we pounce on any scrap of evidence.

But lord knows tech news is an echo chamber. A successful meme like "Google sucks" tends to amplify. It's easy to laugh at blustery executive statements and paint a whole picture of Google's decline. But, surprise surprise, things are more complicated than what you read on the blogs.

Where did Facebook's profits go last year?

Fortune is pointing out that, according to the company's initial public offering, 8% went to its top five executives. That's more than most Wall Street firms, including JP Morgan Chase, which only shelled out $79 million to its top five executives.

In the wake of several companies admitting to uploading iPhone address book data without permission, Dan Frommer wonders if Apple should consider another go at social. While Ping wasn't the success Apple hoped, Frommer suggests Apple may still be smart to return to the drawing board and create full featured social network for iOS users.

Should Apple build its own social network? Does it make more sense to merely continue supporting other social networks instead?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and presented them back to you with Storify. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.