Top Items:
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple iTV availability to escape Macworld Expo — Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs should have more to say about the company's forthcoming iTV set-top media hub at next week's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, but the launch party may have to wait a few more weeks.
Discussion:
Infinite Loop, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Apple Gazette, broadbandreports.com and digg
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Jason D. O'Grady / The Apple Core:
Crystal ball: Macworld Expo 2007 — Another January means another round of fortune telling. The week leading up to Macworld Expo is when pundits predict what Apple has in store for us in the new year. With that let's dive into what Steve Jobs could announce at the Moscone Center in San Francisco one week from today.
Discussion:
The Test Bed, O'Grady's PowerPage, Mickeleh's Take, VoIP & Gadgets Blog and Laughing Squid
Antony Bruno / Reuters:
Ailing music biz set to relax digital restrictions — LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - The anti-digital rights management (DRM) bandwagon is getting more crowded by the day. Even some major-label executives are pushing for the right to sell digital downloads as unprotected MP3s.
Mike / Techdirt:
Kevin Martin To AT&T: Okay, Now Feel Free To Ignore Those Concessions You Just Promised — from the say-what? dept — There was a lot of controversy on Friday after the late Thursday agreement by AT&T to offer some concessions in order to get its merger with BellSouth approved.
Discussion:
broadbandreports.com
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Carlo / Techdirt:AT&T Says Let The Post-Merger Innovation Commence: Bring On The Bundles
Discussion:
Reuters
Christopher Elliott / New York Times:
Wi-Fi Is Hitting the Road in Cars From Avis, but Technical and Legal Bumps Lie Ahead — Try connecting to a high-speed wireless network from a car, and you are pretty much limited to one method: rigging your laptop computer with a special modem and subscribing to a costly, and sometimes temperamental, wireless service.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Techdirt, CrunchGear, Gizmodo, Wi-Fi Networking News, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, dailywireless.org and Uber-Review
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Damon Darlin / New York Times:
Is it a bargain or obsolete? — It's getting harder to know when to buy — The day after Christmas, prices on big-screen TVs went down and Raul Axtle pounced. — Axtle and his 16-year-old son, Shaheen, headed to a Best Buy electronics store in Emeryville, Calif., to buy the TV that Shaheen …
RELATED:
Mike / Techdirt:Product Improvements Outpacing Even Planned Obsolescence?
Discussion:
robhyndman.com
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
2007: Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn't Live Without — A year ago I wrote a post called "Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn't Live Without" and listed thirteen startups who's products made a real impact in my life. Those were the products that I loved, and used every day.
Ethan Smith / Wall Street Journal:
Music Industry Changes Its Tune on Podcasting — After two years of hesitancy, the music industry is finally taking its first steps toward embracing podcasting. — When podcasts attained prominence in 2004, amateurs and advertisers alike heralded the downloadable audio programs as the next step in the evolution of broadcasting.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
14 "Is Google Evil?" Tipping Points Since 2001 — Earlier I wrote how Google seems to have had a bad week, with some recent negative publicity making it seem like the tipping point of Google becoming the big bad company they don't want to be happening — at least perhaps in the eyes of many opinion makers on the web.
Discussion:
digg
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Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Bad PR for Dell but not for Apple? — I totally forgot about the amount of mainstream press that Jeff Jarvis' generated against Dell when Dell's customer service told him to "pound sand." — Duncan Riley reminded me again that the press treats Apple differently than it treats Dell and other companies.
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Dave Winer / Scripting News:
RSS wasn't invented — In the dustup over Microsoft's RSS patents, some of the mainstream press brought up, once again, the issue of Who Invented RSS. But RSS doesn't have an inventor. It wasn't invented. Something else happened, something harder than invention, imho …
BBC:
$100 laptop project launches 2007 — The first batch of computers built for the One Laptop Per Child project could reach users by July this year. — The scheme is hoping to put low-cost computers into the hands of people in developing countries. — Ultimately the project's backers hope …
Discussion:
Techdirt
USA Today:
'Gears of War' breaks out for Xbox — In what is expected to be another record-breaking year for the more than $10-billion-a-year video game industry, the breakout hit is a science-fiction action game called Gears of War. — The game didn't sneak up on anyone — developer Epic Games …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Video retrenchment begins, Juice Wireless going for broke — Juice Wireless, the New York mobile video-sharing start-up, is still on hunt for financing, raising questions about its prospects amid a retrenchment hitting the video sharing industry in the new year.
Ellie Gibson / GamesIndustry.biz:
Xbox 360 topped US hardware sales chart over Xmas - NPD — But Nintendo Wii close behind with 1.8m units sold — Market analysts NPD have suggested that the Xbox 360 was the best-selling console in the US over Christmas - with the Nintendo Wii trailing by just 200,000 units.
Discussion:
InterActive Home, GigaGamez, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, Neowin.net, Microsoft News Tracker, I4U News and Guardian Unlimited
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Using Web Cams but Few Inhibitions, the Young Turn to Risky Social Sites — Popular Web sites like YouTube and MySpace have hired the equivalent of school hallway monitors to police what visitors to their sites can see and do by cracking down on piracy and depictions of nudity and violence.
Discussion:
Techdirt, NewTeeVee, IP Democracy, The Trademark Blog, ClickZ News Blog and blackrimglasses.com
