Top Items:
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Zune revealed by FCC as "Toshiba 1089" — Well, here's a bit of a surprise: a wireless PMP just showed up on the FCC, featuring a 30GB HDD, FM tuner and a strangely familiar 3-inch screen. And it ain't being manufactured by Microsoft. Instead it looks like Microsoft got their good pal Toshiba …
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Ina Fried / CNET News.com:
Microsoft's Zune aims to be social butterfly — update Microsoft's forthcoming Zune player is shooting to be the life of the party, allowing users to create mobile social networks and stream music to nearby friends or strangers, according to a government regulatory filing.
Discussion:
Microsoft News Tracker
Matt Marshall / SiliconBeat:
Former Tribe leader Pincus back at helm; pledges "new direction" — Mark Pincus has just taken back the helm at San Francisco social networking company, Tribe. We heard about this months ago, but Mark would never say anything publicly, so we just kept waiting.
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Craig Silverman / New York Times:
Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod — Kara Shallenberg and her 10-year-old son, Henry, exhausted the audiobook collection at their library in Oceanside, Calif., five years ago. With Henry's appetite for listening still strong, Ms. Shallenberg began to record herself reading his favorite books.
Sergey Schetinin / Rich Web:
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) — Amazon has started a rather limited beta of their new service Elastic Compute Cloud abbreviated EC2. I am one of the developers who got the invitation to participate. Here's the most important point: … It costs 10 cents per full hour of usage + usual S3 bandwidth fees.
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Software News:
Microsoft winds back Office ribbon — Microsoft has modified its new interface for Office 2007 after complaints from beta testers that the 'ribbon' system took up too much space on screen. — Office 2007 has ditched the traditional drop-down menu approach of most Windows applications …
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
Windows Live Search — Microsoft Windows Live Search has announced a new beta site for Image and Video Search. MSN Search has provided Image and Video search for a long time. This new beta site has an improved User Interface, more AJAX sizzle, and new services like a Scratchpad for saving favorite images.
Discussion:
Incremental Blogger, TechCrunch, Search Engine Watch Blog, InsideMicrosoft and MSTechToday
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The startup sound in Vista ... I'm on the phone with Steve Ball, group program manager for the Windows Audio Video Excellence team (basically, the team that builds the stuff that plays audio and video in Windows). — First, a disclaimer, before I left Microsoft, I got an intimate view …
Discussion:
Microsoft Monitor, Ed Bott's Windows Expertise, brainwagon, cruel to be kind, Incremental Blogger and Zoli's Blog
Ryan Block / Engadget:
FairUse4WM strips Windows Media DRM! — So far as the yet very quiet forums are claiming, a new app called FairUse4WM can be used to strip Windows Media DRM 10 and 11 (i.e. PlaysForSure, but not WM DRM 9). Yes, yes, we know, we've heard this song and dance before.
Miles Weiss / Bloomberg:
Google Seeks Fund Rule Exemption to Increase Investment Returns — Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., owner of the most widely used Internet search engine, is facing a hurdle other companies would love to confront: how to get better returns from investing its cash hoard without being regulated as a mutual fund.
Evan Brown / InternetCases.com:
Evidence-destroying defendant severely sanctioned in P2P file-sharing case — In the case of Arista Records v. Tschirhart, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has shown little mercy on a defendant accused by record companies of illegal file-sharing.
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Apple to recall 1.8 million Sony-made batteries — As of today, Dell isn't the only major victim of Sony's exploding battery fiasco. (Well, if you don't count the millions of consumers potentially in danger — and who does?) Apple has just recalled 1.8 million iBook and PowerBook laptop batteries …
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
More Tiny Towns Get MuniFied — With all the attention being lavished on large municipal wireless networks such as the one being built by the city of Philadelphia, or the one proposed by San Francisco, the fact of the matter is that it is small towns which are (and rightfully so) being more aggressive in embracing MuniFi.
ericsink.com:
How to get people talking about your product — Scene: A Marketing Meeting in the Conference Room — Mickey the Product Manager has called Daisy and Goofy into a meeting to discuss promotional plans for their upcoming new product. — Mickey: Welcome, Team! Time is growing short.
Jeff Howe / Wired News:
No Suit Required — Terry McBride has an idea. Another idea. A good - no, a great idea. McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, is sitting in his Vancouver, British Columbia, office with his local marketing staff discussing strategy for the release of a new album by Barenaked Ladies.
Discussion:
IP Democracy
Economist:
More media, less news — Newspapers are making progress with the internet, but most are still too timid, defensive or high-minded — THE first thing to greet a visitor to the Oslo headquarters of Schibsted, a Norwegian newspaper firm, is its original, hand-operated printing press from 1856 …
Kristan Reed / Eurogamer:
GC: Valve opens up in Leipzig — Half-Life 2: Episode Two and its three-game entourage - on three platforms - has slipped until Q1 2007. February, we're told. But if you ever really expected to play it this year you were probably kidding yourself anyway.
