Whom do you want to meet? Put your list online

The people who dreamed up Seattle-based 43Things now have a new social-networking project called 43People. More than 2,800 users have listed 3,500 people they know or would like to meet, using tags to describe them.

No surprise, the names Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have popped up on the site, but with very different tags.

Microsoft Chairman Gates gets tagged with the words "entrepreneur," "foul-mouthed," "geek," "genius," "megalomaniacal" and "microsoft."

Among the words used to describe Apple CEO Jobs were "charismatic," "genius," "hero," "rebel," "ruthless," "turtleneck" and an unspecified word describing a posterior region of the body.

Another name high on the "world wants to meet" list was God, whose online photo gallery already includes four pictures.

Sharing anew

With the death of Grokster and the bridling of BitTorrent, unauthorized file sharing has gotten a lot tougher. Even so, legal file-sharing services have found they need to team up to get their message out and compete with the likes of iTunes.

Small screen


The number of mobile-phone subscribers who watch TV programs on phones is expected to reach 15 million in 2009 from 1.2 million this year.

Source: eMarketer

Seattle's Shared Media Licensing (Weedshare) said last week it was joining forces with London-based record label Magnatune and the peer-to-peer file-sharing technology maker LimeWire. Magnatune, whose slogan is "we are not evil," lets people listen to its catalog of music for free and allows buyers to determine the exact price of albums they download.

Magnatune had rejected digital-rights management in the past but now says some DRM is acceptable if it helps promote Weedshare's business model. Weedshare users make money when their friends buy music they have recommended.

All geek to me

It's that time of the year when new words that have infiltrated our vocabulary get added to the dictionary.

How about playlistism, vodcast and ubersexual?

Such geek speak might not be ready for Merriam-Webster, but it made the top 10 list of new words going into T9's dictionary for text messaging, according to Seattle-based Tegic Communications.

Tegic, owned by America Online, provides the T9 Text Input software that predicts words based on a few keystrokes.

Tegic defines playlistism as "judging a person based on what songs are on the playlist of his or her digital music player." A vodcast is a video podcast. A podcast is ... never mind, that's so 2004. An ubersexual is defined as "a heterosexual man who is masculine, confident, compassionate and stylish."

Exporting IT

Add another couple of words to the list for defining trends: tipping point.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris reports that China overtook the United States in 2004 to become the world's leading exporter of information- and communications-technology goods such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras.

China exported $180 billion worth of such goods last year, while the United States exported $149 billion in goods. China's share of world trade in IT-related products rose to $329 billion in 2004 compared with the U.S. share of $375 billion.

Still shopping?

It's not exactly tech-related, but we couldn't help sharing the worst holiday promotion we've heard so far: "Thinking of buying that special someone jewelry this holiday season?" asks a news release from Dynasty Financial Group. "Give her something she'll cherish even longer — soybean futures."

Download is gathered by The Seattle Times technology staff. We can be reached at 206-464-2265 or biztech@seattletimes.com.