Top Items:
New York Times:
Patent Lawsuit Names Leading Technology Firms — In 1997, Jonathan T. Taplin, a veteran film and television producer, stood up at a cable industry convention and asserted that in the future all movies would be distributed over the Internet. He recalls being laughed out of the room.
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Mike / Techdirt:
Company Gets Patent On Digital Downloads; Sues Everyone — from the great dept — There's been quite a trend lately of companies who had otherwise completely failed in the marketplace to suddenly reinvent themselves as "patent licensing firms" and then go and sue everyone who actually was able to successfully innovate in the market.
John Mills / plasticlogic.com:
New volume manufacturing facility to ramp-up in 2008 — Plastic Logic announced today that it will build the first factory to manufacture plastic electronics on a commercial scale. The facility will produce flexible active-matrix display modules for 'take anywhere, read anywhere' electronic reader products.
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Peter Marsh / Financial Times:
Plastic may spell the end of the silicon microchip — The list of achievements of Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory - one of the world's most prestigious centres for physics research - is about to get a little longer. — Responsible over the past 136 years for a stunning series of discoveries …
Discussion:
The Tech Report
New York Times:
Protecting Internet Democracy — One of the big winners in the last election may turn out to be the principle, known as net neutrality, that Internet service providers should not be able to favor some content over others. Democrats who are moving into the majority in Congress …
Discussion:
Slashdot
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Smaran / Torrentfreak:
BitTyrant: The "Selfish" BitTorrent Client — BitTyrant is a new "selfish" BitTorrent client based on Azureus. The developers claim that it speeds up downloads by up to 70% by connecting to the peers that have high upload speeds, and peers that give you the best send / receive ratio.
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Have you ever made a profit from a catering business or dog walking? Do you prefer to work alone or in groups? Have you ever set a world record in anything? — The right answers could help get you a job at Google.
VoIP & Gadgets Blog:
Digium releases AsteriskNOW — Digium today released AsteriskNOW, a turnkey easy-to-use version of Asterisk with a web-based GUI that they claim can get a working version of Asterisk up-and-running in 30 minutes. AsteriskNOW is Digium's answer to the popular trixbox "plug and play" Asterisk distro.
Brian / Caydel's SEO Blog:
Google is Beta-Testing Keyword-based Ad Filtering — About a week and a half ago, I wrote a post 'Adsense Should Allow Contextual Ad Filtering by Keyword'. In it, I made the suggestion based upon an article posted by EGOL at SEOmoz that in order to prevent certain types of ads from showing …
MediaShift:
DIGGING DEEPER Nielsen BuzzMetrics Tries to Measure Buzz in Social Media — Last year was a watershed for social media, with millions of people creating and sharing their own media on sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr and turning away from traditional one-way media such as TV, radio and newspapers.
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Richard Mitchell / Xbox 360 Fanboy:
Announcing two new gateways to Halo 3 beta — Microsoft today announced two new ways for gamers to gain access to the Halo 3 beta. The first wave of the beta registration took place in December, and these two additional ways seem to be the only remaining methods for hopeful players to register.
Luke Smith / 1up.com:
RARE FOUNDERS LEAVE TO 'PURSUE OTHER OPPORTUNITIES' — Chris and Tim Stamper left the company at the end of 2006. — Chris and Tim Stamper, two of Rare Ltd.'s (Goldeneye 007, Perfect Dark and Viva Pinata) three founders have left the studio. While the news surfaces in the wake …
Discussion:
Opposable Thumbs, You NEWB, Xbox 360 Fanboy, Kotaku, Microsoft News Tracker, Bink.nu, Joystiq and digg
Marty Graham / Wired News:
Where to Catch Some Wi-Fi Waves — Wi-Fi is like sand — it gets everywhere. If you're toting your laptop to some sunny paradise this winter, you'll find you can combine body surfing, board surfing and web surfing at hundreds of public beaches all over the world.
Max Wang / DigiTimes:
Apple and HP to launch LED-based notebooks, Taiwan LED makers unlikely to benefit much, say sources — Although US-based brands such as Apple and Hewlett Packard (HP) are expected to launch notebooks using LEDs as the backlight source starting from the second quarter 2007 …
Kathy Sierra / Creating Passionate Users:
The "Dumbness of Crowds" — Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence. The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an I poked out. Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" …
Ryan Naraine / eWEEK.com:
Five Hackers Who Left a Mark on 2006 — In the security year that was 2006, zero-day attacks and exploits dominated the headlines. — However, the year will be best remembered for the work of members of the hacking—er, security research—community who discovered and disclosed serious vulnerabilities …
Discussion:
digg
Michael Barbaro / New York Times:
Embattled Chief Executive Resigns at Home Depot — Robert L. Nardelli, the chief executive of Home Depot, who came under heavy criticism for his pay package and failure to lift the chain's stagnant stock price, has abruptly resigned, the company said today.
Harrison Hoffman / LiveSide:
Nemo surfaces! Windows Live for TV in the wild — Here's a little something to kick off our birthday celebration in style! Back in October, we reported on Project Nemo, a Windows Live product for Media Center being developed behind the closed doors of Redmond.
