Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a session at the Cannes Lions 2010. Photograph: Sebastien Nogier/Reuters

Mark Zuckerberg doesn't readily offer himself up for media interviews. But over the summer the 26-year-old co-founder of Facebook met up with the New Yorker magazine for several interviews, resulting in an exhaustive 6,000-word feature.

Going from "Zuck's" adolescence spent building private Instant Messaging (IM) services across his parent's network of computers to the ill-advised college IMs that threatened to prove his undoing, the New Yorker's Jose Antonio Vargas has an insightful take on the man he calls "the boy king of Silicon Valley."

It's worth reading in full – not least as an addendum if you're planning to go see The Social Network, the film about the Zuckerberg due to be released next month – but here's a few sharp takes.

In a selection of IMs leaked to Silicon Alley Insider, Zuckerberg explained to a friend how his Harvard peers ("dumb fucks") trusted him by submitting personal information when signing up to his social network. A conversation he now says he "absolutely" regrets:

"If you're going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right? I think I've grown and learned a lot."

Zuckerberg goes on to distance himself from his younger self: "I think a lot people will look at that stuff, you know, when I was 19, and say, 'Oh, well, he was like that ... He must still be like that, right?'"

Barely 12 months after launch, Facebook began attracting interest from execs big players in the media and technology world, one of which was Yahoo. Terry Semel, Yahoo's former chief executive, who reportedly offered Zuckerberg close to $1bn for the social network in 2006 told Vargas: "I'd never met anyone – forget his age, 22 the or 26 now – I'd never met anyone who would walk away from $1bn. But he said, 'It's not about the price. This is my baby and I want to keep running it, I want to keep growing it.' I couldn't believe it."

And on privacy? Zuckerberg sticks to his line: "A lot of people who are worried about privacy and those kinds of issues will take any minor misstep that we make and turn it into as big a deal as possible."

Read the New Yorker interview in full

The Guardian has teamed up with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to launch a global development website, which went live today.

Guardian Global Development will track the goals set out by the United Nations Millennium Declaration, aimed at improving the lives of the world's poorest people.

And will do so with contributions from the Guardian Data Store hosting data and visualisations from a collection of highly regarded sources.

The new site, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will host comment from a range of voices and provide special focus to the eight goals set out by the UN in 2000.

As the associate editor of the Guardian, Madeleine Bunting, said in an introductory blogpost:

"Meeting all the targets by 2015 was always going to be a huge global challenge, and several are unlikely to be met, but they have proved highly effective at galvanising global commitment and have achieved significant progress in many places around the world.

"These are the greatest promises the world has ever made, and the pressure must be maintained to ensure that there is no reversal of the precious achievements."

Stay with the conversation: @GdnDevelopment and #GdnDevelopment.

Plus things to do with a new Windows 7 setup, is Google arrogant? and more

Scottish ITV licensee STV today launched the first of its local websites across Scotland.

The six pilot STV Local websites in North Lanarkshire mark the company's move into "hyperlocal" publishing, which the STV chief executive, Rob Woodward, says is a "significant" part of the broadcaster's digital strategy.

STV Local websites are geared towards being a more interactive experience than traditional local newspaper websites, with users encouraged to upload their own news stories, announcements, images, reviews and add listings to a local business directory.

To garner interest in the new sites, STV will offer training to interested contributors and engage with journalism and media courses across Scotland. Online portals for the rest of the country will be rolled out throughout 2010 and into 2011.

Woodward said: "This new hyperlocal initiative is a significant part of STV's digital strategy, which is a key growth area for the business."

STV Bellshill: one of six new "hyperlocal" websites launched by STV today

The websites in Airdrie, Bellshill, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Motherwell and Wishaw have been in beta testing mode since the end of 2009, with the pilot versions being rebuilt based on audience feedback.

The STV head of digital at STV, Alistair Brown, said he hopes the service will eventually "become owned by the local communities themselves".

In the past month, STV has appointed two high profile editors to head its local project. Iain Hepburn, digital editor of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail until November, joins as STV Local editor; David Milne, formerly group digital editor with the Herald and Times Group, joins as STV Local executive editor.

STV announced digital revenues of £1.6m and underlying pre-tax profits of £6m in returns for the first six months of 2010, saying its network of local websites would be "at the heart of our digital strategy."

Associated Northcliffe Digital has a network of about 100 local websites in England and has said it aims to double that figure by June 2011. Although not disclosing revenue around the network of LocalPeopl sites, Roland Bryan, managing director of the publisher, told paidContent:UK earlier this year: "We've been seeing really good revenue growth across the sites, well ahead of our expectations."

• Updated at 11.57 to clarify Hepburn is digital editor of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail until November, not editor.

Plus Google's search failings, RSS's slow death, what are the Windows Phone team burying?, and the iPhone v Nokia in 2007

Monday is the big day for 900 teams, including a software testing platform, a designer community and email marketing (Updated: note location is UCL, not Imperial)

Watch this before you read on.

This is the most fun I've ever had with a) Tippex or b) a viral video. I tried tickles, cuddles (this is a bit like Blankety Blank), kisses, eats, licks, sucks (that got a disapproving tut from The Bear) and lastly circumcises, which finally got a #404. See you in about an hour.

Elsewhere we've got babies eating lemons and some fabulous, other wordly, ethereal beach bubbles. And there's this terrifying and thankfully silent footage from a ocean liner in heavy seas. Not what you'd envisaged when handing over that cheque for thousands, is it?

I had a rough crossing on the Pentland Firth once and that's quite enough for one lifetime. The fact the furniture was bolted to the floor should've been a warning.

Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media and edited by Jemima

1 A hunter shoots a bear
Not at all what it seems, and really quite clever.

2 Midichlorian Rhapsody
One for the Star Wars fans among you (isn't that everyone?)

3 Teenage Dream (with me)
Don't knock it - he's had three million views. He could be the next Numa Numa kid.

4 Cat Parkour
Les chats, ils grimpent les choses...

5 MGM lion attack in Las Vegas
Did you call me a pussy?

6 Pacific cruise liner in heavy seas
Scary boat trip.

7 Babies eating lemons for the first time
Ah, the squinting gag-shiver reflex...

8 Ablisa's X Factor audition
Where's the Auto-Tune when you need it, eh?

9 Dirty car artist
Hang on - he cleans it before he paints in it? Not quite in the spirit of 'I wish my wife was this dirty', is it?

10 Giant Stinson Beach bubbles
Like some kind of sea creature from the deep...

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 16:00 on 9 September 2010. The Weekly Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately two million blogs.

Matt Biddulph and Matt Jones, who launched Dopplr in 2007. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Jemima Kiss: Once the darlings of the UK startup scene, Dopplr has dwindled inexorably ever since it was bought by Nokia a year ago

Ever wanted to contact someone but can't find their email address? Social networks, blogs and Twitter all provide ways of contacting people, but there's nothing quite as easy as a phone book equivalent. Except there is - and WikiWorldBook is just one of the companies trying to solve this problem.

Founded by and run by just one man - Oxford-based Ben Leefield - the site started up in June 2008, backed by a handful of angel investors. WikiWorldBook has 20,000 registered users so far but wants 100,000 by this time next year.

WikiWorldBook founder Ben Leefield

• What's your pitch?
"We have reinvented the telephone book for email. To find someone and instantly contact them by email, type their name into Google and if they are registered on our service, their WikiWorldBook address book page should appear high up in Google's results. Click their page and you can instantly send that person an email, without having to register. The user's email address is hidden in order to protect their privacy.

"Users can also choose to build a comprehensive address book page with as much of their contact information as they wish to display. Their contact details such as email, VOIP, IM and weblinks are all hyperlinked to the appropriate service for one-click operation.

"We search engine optimise each user's 'address book page' so that it has the best possible chance of ranking well for their name. We have also established a good amount of trust with Google, so we tend to rank well for people's names – occasionally ahead of Facebook and LinkedIn – although inevitably the SERP's can bounce around quite a lot and it can be challenging with famous or common names."

• How do you make money?
"Currently through advertising on the website. Our traffic has been growing strongly and recently we have been getting around 7,000 visitors a day. When we reach 100,000 registered users, we'll introduce some value-added services to boost profitability."

• How are you surviving the downturn?
"We're in pretty good shape, although cash is tight. Advertising revenue per click is down but traffic has continued to grow. Luckily our running costs are very low, being a directory type service."

• What's your background?
"Chartered Surveyor. I was building office buildings. It's a long story …"

• What makes your business unique?
"No one else is really in our 'instant email' space at the moment, but why wouldn't you have an email directory in the same way as you have a telephone directory? And, of course, why wouldn't you access it via Google?"

• What has been your biggest achievement so far?
"An amazing review from Kate Russell on BBC Click, which was our first big media break. Then being tweeted by Stephen Fry came a close second. So a deafeningly loud thank you to both Kate and Stephen."

• Who in the tech business inspires you?
"Google for their values (which even they find it hard to live up to) and Markus Frind of Plenty of Fish for his technical ability. His visual design skills may suck but his technical brilliance of running such a vast and fast web service with so few physical resources is inspirational."

• What's your biggest challenge?
"Media coverage. Reaching the 10 million people out there who I know will sign up tomorrow if they hear of our free service. That figure is based on our conversion rate."

• What's the most important web tool you use each day?
"I think I have RSI from pressing the Search button on Google."

• Name your closest competitors
"Our closest competitor are Telnic's dot tel domains, which are a similar address book service with an annual charge. Other competitors include OnePage, which is beautifully designed, although they don't use search engines as a starting point, which I think is a strategic mistake. Most people use Google, Bing or Yahoo to find people – a third of all search queries are people related."

• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"Ten million users would be perfect. With good media coverage and a free service, I can't see why it wouldn't be achievable."

• Sell to Google, or be bigger than Google?
"Sell to Google. Business is about both striving to achieve and being pragmatic."

wikiworldbook.com

• Arthur Sulzberger on charging online: to succeed, we need to take risks >> Editors Weblog
• Kno gets $46m for digital tablet textbook >> NYT
• iPhone apps downloads overtaking songs >> NYT
• Twitter has become a news platform >> GigaOM
• Yahoo's Shine editor-in-chief departs for Conde Nast >> AllThingsD
• Amazon acquires music site Amie Street >> PC Magazine
• Study: The design of a social network influences behavior >> Econsultancy
• Rounding up the iPod reviews >> NYT
• Broadband speed gets laser boost >> BBC
• My classmate Mark Zuckerberg >> Daily Beast
• Brain drain claims Yahoo finance head >> AllThingsD
• Coaxing startups out of their shells >> WSJ
• 75% of US internet users fall victim to cybercrime >> NYT

Photo by Robert Scoble on Flickr. Some rights reserved

• Google unveils tool to speed up searches >> NYT
• Thoughts on Google Instant >> Matt Cutts
• Google Instant - how Yahoo could have won in search >> Stephen Hood
• Why Google Instant may make you click more ads >> TechCrunch
• 'Google Instant' on smartphones may be wishful thinking >> PC World
• Google search accelerates with 'instant' results >> AP
• The Google ad Steve Jobs will hate >> Gawker
• Google now serves one billion users each week >> TechCrunch
• Google Instant predictions from A to Z >> Mashable
• NY town votes to stop Google Earth pool searches >> AP
• What's next for Google search? Two icons hold the clue >> TechCrunch

There was a time, before the Facebook reign truly began, when specialist networks seemed to be the direction in which social networks were headed. Although a handful of big-name sites now dominate the space, there are still opportunities, now the marker has matured a little, for a well-executed niche network to build a strong business.

That's exactly what ResearchGATE has done for the scientific research community by building a site that crowdsources research. With an impressive set of experienced investors, the Berlin and Massachusetts-based site is announcing its first major funding round today. Medical doctor and PhD Ijad Madisch founded the site two years ago to build a community around scientific research but also to capture what he describes as "research redundancy".

"People only report positive results, whereas research is really often based on what didn't work," he said. ResearchGATE has 2,600 groups covering various projects and lab methods, with those communities replacing what had traditionally been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at seminars. It's about presenting work in progress and sharing practical research tips.

Madisch said scientists and researchers from 196 countries and principalities are contributing to the site, with users in the US, UK, Germany and India making up the bulk of the 500,000 registered users. Madisch said the undisclosed amount of funding will be used to expand the staff team in Berlin and accelerate growth of the company and audience base.

The round was led by Benchmark, with Accel and various UK superangels including Bebo founder Michael Birch, Accel's Simon Levene and Rolf Christof Dienst of Wellington. Scout24 founder Joachim Schoss, idealo.com co-founder Martin Sinner, Sedo.com co-founder Ulrich Essmann and MyVideo.de found Christian Vollmann have all joined the funding round. It's like buses. Benchmark's Matt Cohler, with Leven and Schoss, join the board.

Is this is threat to UK research startup Mendeley? Madisch doesn't think so. "I believe in more diverse apps. Mendeley is more about literature - we cover literature but also collaboration, events, jobs... I want to be very diversified because everyone needs something different." Different, but also with every chance of making a real difference. This is where the promise of crowdsourcing and collaboration could really be fulfilled.

• Former Google China head and startup whisperer Kai-Fu Lee >> AllThingsD
• Tumblr's soaring traffic brings growing pains >> NYT
• The next five years in social media >> Mashable
• Google lets Yahoo users sign in with OpenID >> Wired
• Five of the best tablets revealed so far >> Gizmodo
• Should Android be startups' first choice? >> GigaOM
• Google TV to go global >> WSJ
• Google's Schmidt: Autonomous, fast search is 'our new definition' >> mocoNews
• How Ping might grow >> Daring Fireball
• 3D TV is here to stay >> TechCrunch
• The future of search: news before you know you want it >> Econsultancy
• New demo of Google TV >> Daring Fireball
• Firefox 4 Beta: Faster graphics and visual sound >> TechCrunch
• iPod nano - sixth generation, late 2010 >> Macworld
• Justin Bieber has dedicated servers at Twitter >> Gizmodo

Photo by kindofadraag on Flickr. Some rights reserved

• HP challenges Hurd's new role >> FT
• Ten alternatives for the iTunes 10 icon >> TechCrunch
• Eric Schmidt: Welcome to "age of augmented humanity" >> NYT
• Daimler to launch the Twitter of ride sharing >> NYT
• Can Android be stopped in the world of smartphones? >> NYT
• All we can take is one day of logos. >> TechCrunch
• Thoughts from a former Craigslist sex worker >> Huffington Post
• Google courts Yahoo users with one-click account creation >> Mashable
• Freed journalist tricked captors into Twitter access >> PC World
• Samsung to sell 10m Galaxy Tabs by Q3 2011? >> VentureBeat
• Web privacy startups struggle >> WSJ
• Craigslist quiet on fate of adult services section >> Yahoo

Via Google Reader

The 13-year struggle to take Duke Nukem Forever from idea to release, a round-up of the headlines from the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, the team look back at 2010 for the UK games industry, and the producer of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Photograph: Andrew Winning/REUTERS

PDA's Newsbucketnews

The BBC's iPlayer is used by 5 million people every week, so any redesign needs to be pretty confident. The new version instated today has had extensive work done behind the scenes and has some social media and recommendation features added.

This version is not new, exactly, as it has been running as a beta since June. It recently accounted for 10% of overall iPlayer use and with 18,000 people choosing to link iPlayer to their Facebook or Twitter profile. Around 700,000 programmes were 'favourited'... no surprise that Doctor Who, Eastenders and Top Gear were top, though Mock the Week and Sherlock were popular too.

This new design will now take over from the previous incarnation, and as well as the social media features there's a simpler, slicker design. "Given that we'd be making some major changes to a popular product, we were very conscious of the need to be careful," iPlayer head James Hewines said in a post.

"While some users are generally receptive to change (especially where it brings obvious benefits) others may be more cautious. The key design challenge was to add in these richer, more interactive capabilities without detracting from the overall simplicity of the experience. It's been possible to reconcile these competing goals (richer interactions, simpler experience) by making some basic design decisions that keep things simple - most notably separating TV from radio, and reducing the number of modules on the BBC iPlayer homepage."

Technically, the service will be faster - at least in terms of page size and rendering. iPlayer technical architect Simon Frost recently explained that personalisation features require more processing power, because each user is, in effect, being served a different version of the site, as well as changing the development framework of the site.