Roundup: Facebook movie casting, Yahoo shuts down Mash, and more

Venture Beat — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:28:53 -0700

The Facebook Movie has a very unofficial casting call — Yesterday, top Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin let it be known he was working on a movie about the high-flying social network. Here’s a (rather entertaining) formulation of which actor might play which geek role. Yes, Michael Cera (a co-star in Juno) would be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. [Michael Cera image via Radar Online.]

Linux rises to 13.4 percent of the server market — CNET’s Matt Asay examines the market share of open-source software Linux versus competitors like Windows.

Document-sharing site Scribd gets a redesign — The site gets more than half its traffic from search engines, according to Techcrunch. So the redesign includes a more prominent search box, in an effort to make it more of a destination site.

Bloomberg publishes Steve Jobs obituary by mistake — We didn’t give this story more attention because it was a sad editorial accident, followed by a lot of tasteless editorializing.

Yahoo shuts down social network Mash — It’ll be gone on September 29th.

IPhone factory cameo photo a “beautiful mistake” — At an iPhone factory on the other side of the Pacific, this picture was taken on an iPhone that went to a consumer — it has become an internet sensation. A factory spokesperson responded by calling it a “beautiful mistake. [Said photo via Macrumors.]

There’s no student version in the works for digital book-reading device Kindle – The rumor had gone far and wide in the blogosphere, but Kindle creator Amazon says there will be no new version of Kindle this year. Maybe next year.

Super Rewards: A company that makes money for top Facebook app games — We’ve covered how Mob Wars is making possibly a million dollars a month. Inside Facebook has a look a big monetization strategy — using cost-per-action incentive ads from a company called Super Rewards.

McCain uses Google to attack Obama — Tis the season for political attacks on the internet. Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign has purchased Google search ads that appear prominently next to searches such as “Joe Biden” — the Democratic vice presidential nominee. The Wall Street Journal has more.

Gory comic apps apparently not welcome on the Apple App Store — Apple has already put one, Murderdrome, down for the count.