Of lunar eclipses, black holes, social news and oil giants

Tonight is the total lunar eclipse (http://huff.to/jq955z). However, it is not visible from North America. The link above describes how you can watch it on SWAN (Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal) or youtube it. The eclipse begins at 1:24pm EDT (it is over by the time of this writing).

While we are up in the sky, another near and dear topic. Astronomers discover what may be the oldest black hole(s) ever detected. (http://bloom.bg/knpCF2). These black holes are 13 billion years old. Given that the universe itself is 13.4 billion years old, these are pretty old ones out there. Time and again there are older artifacts, gamma rays, stars and black holes found, but none more than the magical 13.4 billion number. I have always been a bit critical of the big bang - that the universe came out of a small point. But all this evidence is startling.

The advent of social networking in all aspects of our life is evident from (http://tcrn.ch/miL2v0). Now news from social media has become mainstream. Reddit, a community new website, hit 1.2 billion monthly pageviews. This is when venture capitalists drool and there are hints of a new paradigm. We have had social networking eat over email (see slide 37 of the presentation by Mary Meeker - a tech analyst turned VC) - (http://slidesha.re/9V9gh4). News, games, phones, texting are next in line.

If we are all sick of Internet ads, picture this (slide 25 of the same presentation). On an apples to apples basis, there is still a $50BN ad opportunity to be had in the Internet. We may not realise it but we spend a lot of time viewing TV ads than we do Internet ads. Another interesting Internet versus TV article is (http://rww.to/m1shiT). Very interesting graphics.

Continuing on the online reputation idea from yesterday, Google has jumped into the fray (http://bit.ly/iofJWn). This tool launched by Google, will help people monitor online mention of their names and take action to protect their reputation.

Finally, a fore bearer of things to come. Total, the fossil fuels giant brought a majority stake in SunPower, a manufacturer of solar panels and systems for $1.3BN (http://on.wsj.com/jSzula). This is significant as the total venture capital and private equity investment in the field was around $7.7BN in 2010 (not including this deal). I guess the oil barons need to get a foot in the future.