Pierre Omidyar

Famed investor Warren Buffett announced that 40 billionaires have committed to donate at least 50% of their fortunes to charity as part of the Giving Pledge, a project that targets America's richest to pledge to donate their wealth.

The annual subscription for Honolulu Civil Beat is a pricey $240, attracting plenty of skeptics. But don't count it out yet -- Omidyar may have timed the bottom of the paid-content news market well. Watch this space for an indicator of where the news business is headed.

According to a data mining company, the old adage of being judged by the friends you keep translates easily into the digital friends you keep. Rapleaf, a social media monitoring company, claims that by analyzing public information such as the friends you have on Twitter it can assess how...