Top Items:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
Amazon Unbox goes live — Amazon's movie download site, called Unbox, appears to have gone live today. There's no link yet on the front page of Amazon, but the direct link at unbox.com works. We covered early previews of the site last month. Shows may be purchased or rented.
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Mike / Techdirt:
Amazon's Video Downloads About As Me Too (Read: Not Interesting) As You Can Get — It's no secret that Amazon has been preparing its own video download store, and with most people believing that Apple is going to announce their own offering early next week, it looks like Amazon tried …
Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny:
Amazon "Unbox" Video Downloads Launched — Amazon has jut launched their video download service, consisting of both movies ($10 - $15/ea to purchase) and television shows ($2/ea). Purchased shows can be archived to DVD, but are not playable on set-top boxes.
CNET News.com:
Reporters' records hacked in HP probe — update Two CNET News.com reporters' personal telephone records were accessed by a contractor hired by Hewlett-Packard to uncover the source of boardroom leaks to the media, according to the California attorney general's office.
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Bob Sullivan / MSNBC:
HP investigators hacked reporters' phone data — 'Pretexting' scandal at high-tech firm extends outside board room … CNBC TV — Bob Sullivan — In an effort to track down the source of information leaks by Hewlett-Packard Co. insiders, private investigators working …
Zephoria / apophenia:
will facebook learn from its mistake? — As Fred Stutzman noted, Facebook Broke Its Culture this week. In an attempt to provide something that would make people's lives easier, they created a privacy trainwreck. Earlier this week, they unleashed a feature that notified all of your "friends" of EVERY update that you make.
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Wall Street Journal:
New Facebook Features Have Members in an Uproar — Facebook.com, the popular social-networking Web site for students, is suddenly getting the cold shoulder on campus. — On Tuesday, in an effort to make it easier for users to keep track of their friends, the fast-growing site rolled out two new features …
Discussion:
paidContent.org, Publishing 2.0, Church of the Customer Blog, The Post Money Value and Valleywag
Bruce Schneier / Wired News:
Quickest Patch Ever — If you really want to see Microsoft scramble to patch a hole in its software, don't look to vulnerabilities that impact countless Internet Explorer users or give intruders control of thousands of Windows machines. Just crack Redmond's DRM. — Security patches used to be rare.
Discussion:
Techdirt, Ed Burnette's Dev Connection, Paul Colligan's …, InsideMicrosoft, Boing Boing, digg and Slashdot
Elizabeth Montalbano / PC Advisor:
November release date looks safe — Early feedback from testers already using Windows Vista RC1 (Release Candidate 1) report that the OS (operating system) is more stable than expected, which bodes well for Microsoft's plan to have Vista out according to its current schedule.
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Bob Sullivan / MSNBC:
FTC fines Xanga for violating kids' privacy — $1 million penalty against social networking site is largest under 1998 law — Xanga.com, a rival to the popular MySpace.com, allegedly permitted creation of 1.7 million accounts by users who submitted birthdays indicating they were under 13.
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Discussion: Webified Desktop Apps — Already there's some great discussion happening regarding Ebrahim Ezzy's post on Read/WriteWeb entitled Webified Desktop Apps vs Browser-based Apps. As I noted in the intro to that post, in some ways Ebrahim's views contradict my own.
Discussion:
JD on EP
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Ryan Stewart / The Universal Desktop:Rich Internet Applications are the bridge between the web and the desktop
Discussion:
Read/WriteWeb
Yuriko Nakao / Newsweek:
Such Were the Joys — How do I love thee, Vodafone 905SH? Let me count the ways. — The Vodafone 905SH — We're back from a summer in Japan, with fond memories of new friends, shopping bags full of cheap plastic Gundam action figures and several bottles of fine sake.
Oliver / MobileCrunch:
Treemo Launching Today: New Mobile Content Network Opens Public Beta — Treemo, a new mobile content network with a socially responsible twist has officially come online with their public beta. — Much like Mobango which I profiled in early August, Treemo lets you upload music or ringtones …
Business Wire:
AOL to Launch AIM Phoneline Developer Initiative — Will Show Examples of New APIs for Call Personalization, Untethered — Devices and Incoming Call Management at Fall VON 2006 (Booth #449) — Call for Entries: Open AIM Phoneline Developers' Challenge Invites
MacNN:
Apple files Multi-functional hand-held device patent application — On September 7, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple's patent application titled "Multi-functional hand-held device" originally filed in March 2006. — In light of Apple's September 12th "Showtime" media event …
Discussion:
Engadget, CrunchGear, Gizmodo, Good Morning Silicon Valley, VoIP & Gadgets Blog and The Digital Music Weblog
David Pogue / New York Times:
In a Sea of Cellphones, a Pearl — EVERYONE knows that the perfect cellphone doesn't exist, and it's mostly because of physics. You know: You can't have a huge screen on a tiny phone, or a fat battery on a slim phone, or top-of-the-line construction at a rock-bottom price.
Discussion:
MobileWhack.com, Engadget, Gizmodo, CNET News.com, CNNMoney.com, CrunchGear and Mark Evans
John Gartner / Marketing Blog Bent …:
Digg's Kevin Rose on Recent Indiggnation: Fact vs. Fiction — We (Jason, Evan and John) had a conference call with Kevin Rose (President)and Jay Adelson (CEO) of Digg to give them an opportunity to respond to speculation from Evan and others about how a small number of users are controlling placement of stories on Digg's home page.
ongoing:
JRuby Love — Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo, better known as "The JRuby Guys", are joining Sun this month. Yes, I helped make this happen, and for once, you're going to be getting the Sun PR party line, because I wrote most of it. … Jacki DeCoster, one of our PR people …
