Top Items:
Wall Street Journal:
Is Microsoft Driving Innovation Or Playing Catch-Up With Rivals? — Microsoft Corp. has put a mountain of money behind its Xbox 360 videogame system and is making another big bet on its Zune digital music player. And after years of research, the company Thursday set in motion …
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Gizmodo:
Windows Live Search For Mobile vs. Google Maps Mobile — Microsoft's Windows Live Search for Mobiles just went live last night, and we took it for a spin, comparing it to Google Maps for Mobile, which has traffic and maps as well. It wasn't much of a comparison, since WLS does local business searches …
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Ryan Singel / Wired News:
MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill — A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.
James Kim / CNET News.com:
CNET editor James Kim, family missing — CNET senior editor James Kim and his family are missing. — The 35-year-old Kim, his wife Kati, and daughters Penelope (4 years) and Sabine (7 months) left their home in San Francisco last week on a road trip to the Pacific Northwest.
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Bloomberg:
Apple Seeks U.S. Patent for Combo Mobile Phone, IPod (Update4) — Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — Apple Computer Inc. sought patent protection for a device that may combine a mobile phone with its iPod music player as speculation intensified that the company may sell a so-called iPhone as soon as January.
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Hitwise US:
Google Properties - The Extended List — This morning I had the pleasure of filming a segment with Bambi Francisco about, among other things, the holiday season, and the dominant role search plays in the online retail sector. Specifically we talked about the holiday season and the continued dominance …
Associated Press:
New rules compel firms to track e-mails — WASHINGTON - U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say.
Ryan Naraine / eWEEK.com:
Cracking the BlackBerry with a $100 Key … O'Connor's paper was briefly posted — and quickly yanked — from a blog entry discussing the future of the BlackBerry device. It is not yet clear why Symantec pulled the paper (the rumor mill says it's being saved for a conference presentation) …
Discussion:
Slashdot
Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
One laptop for the price of five — I love the One Laptop per Child project (David Weinberger takes one for a spin here) and think the criticism of it motivated by PC nitwittery ('you should solve every other problem the poor have before giving them a laptop') or competitive greed …
Consumerist:
Apple Sells "Refreshed" Laptop Filled With Porn To 11 Year Old Girl — An Apple customer was shocked, shocked, when he bought a Macbook from the London Apple Store for his 11-year old daughter, and the desktop was full of pornographic JPGs. — His friend, a Consumerist tipster in good standing …
Steve Rubel / Micro Persuasion:
The Imminent Demise of the Page View — Underneath the Internet advertising economy is a key metric that dictates how properties are valued and how online media is bought and sold - the page view. While it's not the only way to measure the health of a site (time spent and unique users are among the others), it's still very popular.
Business Wire:
BitTorrent Secures $20 Million in Venture Capital — Accel Partners Leads Second Round of Financing — SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—BitTorrent, Inc., home to the world's leading peer-assisted digital content delivery platform, today announced it has closed $20 million in Series B financing.
Ed Burnette / Ed Burnette's Dev Connection:
Nintendo to gamers: "Do not let go of Wii Remote" — Apparently the innovative Wii controller (or Wii-mote as it's affectionately called) is so immersive that games are getting a bit out of hand, literally. Dozens of reports of overzealous gamers damaging TV's, stereos, walls …
Niall Kennedy / Niall Kennedy's Weblog:
Google Mondrian: web-based code review and storage — Guido van Rossum unveiled his first Google project, Mondrian, tonight during a Python tech talk at the Google campus in Mountain View. Mondrian is a web-based code review system built on top of a Perforce and BigTable backend with a Python-powered front-end.
Discussion:
Googling Google
Ryan Block / Engadget:
PS3 to get upscaled DVDs, 1080p/24 — Ok, so the PlayStation 3 wasn't exactly the most flexible high def device out of the gate; despite Sony's claims, DVDs aren't upscaled, there's no component out, and from what we've heard, even though its HDMI 1.3 output technically supports 1080p/24 …
Dave McClure / VentureBeat:
Yahoo just needs to fix one thing: Monetization — Everyone seems to be chapping Yahoo's hide these days, including even Yahoo itself — or at least one very audible Jerry Maguire over there. However while many large companies could benefit from more focus and cost-cutting …
Robert Lemos / SecurityFocus:
Pancakes not worth personal info — For years, privacy advocates have lamented the fact that consumers are willing to turn over their personal information for just about anything. Well, it seems that many Average Joes draw the line at pancakes. — An International House of Pancakes in Quincy …