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Matt Hickey / CrunchGear:
Breaking: American Airlines to offer Wi-Fi service next year; takes lead as first totally not-crappy airline — We got a tip that something cool is about to hit. I keep saying that the "no electronic devices on airplanes" thing is crap, and American Airlines, it seems, is seeing my point of view.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Switched, The Boy Genius Report, DVICE, WebMetricsGuru, GottaBeMobile and Gizmodo
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Susan Stellin / New York Times:
Web Access and E-Mail on Flights — Passengers may soon hear a new in-flight announcement: "You can now log on." — Starting next week and over the next few months, several United States airlines will test Internet service on their planes. — On Tuesday, JetBlue Airways will begin offering …
Jon Fortt / Big Tech:
Apple's $15 billion cash hoard — Pop quiz: Which tech company has the most cash? — (A) IBM (IBM) — (B) Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) — (C) Intel (INTC) — (D) Google (GOOG) — (E) Apple (AAPL) — If you picked E, congratulations. Apple's $15.4 billion stash is indeed the biggest of the group …
Discussion:
Bits, Between the Lines, Silicon Alley Insider, Digital Daily, Insanely Great Mac and MacDailyNews
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Edgeio To Shut Down - In The DeadPool — Edgeio, a company I co-founded in 2005, had a final board meeting this evening and made the decision to shut down operations of the company. We are putting it into the TechCrunch DeadPool. — Edgieo first launched in February 2006 after a beta period.
David Pogue / New York Times:
The Dr. Seuss Jumble: Naming Web Sites — Could it possibly be true? Has all wit and cleverness already dried up in the naming of Web sites, less than 15 years after the Internet was opened to the public? — In the beginning, Web sites announced their own names.
Dave Taylor / The Intuitive Life Business Blog:
Big Business "Blog Council" created, business world yawns — I woke up this morning to a lot of fawning messages from people in the blogosphere about the new Blog Council, founded by a dozen big companies that generally just don't have a clue about modern customer relations and marketing …
Discussion:
mathewingram.com/work, Direct2Dell, cruel to be kind, Paul Mooney, PR 2.0, TechCrunch and Now Is Gone
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
The Crazy Cousins Thank Gordon Crovitz — One of the nice things about having a blog is that I can mouth off on just about anything I want and include whatever I want too (such as, for example, shamelessly making videos of my kids in a fruitless attempt to try to cajole Yahoo's Jerry Yang into having lunch with me).
Discussion:
paidContent.org
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
EchoStar Now DISH Network — Spins Off SlingBox, Set-Top Biz — EchoStar, the satellite broadcasting company, is finally changing its name to DISH Network, according to a filing with the SEC. Why the change? EchoStar wants its name to truly reflect its true business.
Becky Bitzenhofer / Compete Blog:
Google Docs and Spreadsheets — Lately, I seem to be getting more invites to view a Google document (rather than a Word document). I guess I'm not surprised though. It has been just over a year since Google Docs and Spreadsheets was officially released, and it has been just under a year since Microsoft released Office 2007.
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Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google — Matt Cutts of Google said at PubCon that Google will be treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders on a site. I reported this at the Search Engine Roundtable on a post by Tedster at WebmasterWorld, where Tedster said:
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
The Cult of Kindle — I'd not given Amazon's Kindle ebook reader much chance of succeeding given the stratospheric price tag combined with DRM, but then I started reading the customer reviews for it and just realized that the Kindle has already amassed quite a considerable cult following, and this could be crucial to its success.
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Martin LaMonica / CNET News.com:
Software Freedom Law Center goes after Verizon over GPL — The Software Freedom Law Center on Friday said it has filed a suit against Verizon Communications alleging that it has violated the terms of the General Public License, which governs the use of thousands of free and open-source software products.
PC World:
Counterfeit Software Entering Retail Stores — Counterfeit products and software are becoming so sophisticated it's often hard for users to distinguish the real from the fake. — Maxine Cheung, IT Business.ca — Recommend this story? — Two years ago, when Amanda Barr tried installing …
Discussion:
Ars Technica
Peggy Mihelich / CNN:
Commodore 64 still loved after all these years — (CNN) — Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people's hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever.
Gerry Block / IGN Gear:
Nyko Reveals Wireless Wii Nunchuck — Exclusive news and first pictures revealed. — The Wii is a pretty slick system in many ways, from the small and understated proportions of the console to the minimalist yet powerful Wiimote. In our minds, its only really glaring aesthetic shortcoming …
Louise Story / New York Times:
Coke Promotes Itself in a New Virtual World — COCA-COLA lovers will have a new place to hang out starting today, and it is an island on the Internet that is shaped like a Coke bottle. — At CC Metro, the name of the island, visitors can set up a virtual alter ego known as an avatar …
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
HTC Shift Gets (Carbon) Dated? [Delays] — HTC Shift Gets (Carbon) Dated? — While the HTC Shift was supposed to be released in November, the world is still waiting anxiously for this quasi-UMPC device to show up in stores. Now the company has announced a January 11th launch date in Britain …
Discussion:
Gadget Lab
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
Macrovision Buying Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 Billion — Content protection firm Macrovision (NSDQ: MVSN) is acquiring Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 billion in cash and stock. The companies say there will be opportunities to combine Gemstar's guide services with Macrovision's own distribution and delivery technology.
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