Top Items:
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 …
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, The Boy Genius Report, DVICE, Switched, WebMetricsGuru, GottaBeMobile and Gizmodo
RELATED:
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 …
Michael Learmonth / Silicon Alley Insider:
Gemstar-TV Guide Sold; Murdoch's Nightmare Over — Gemstar-TV Guide (GMST) finally found a buyer, and Rupert Murdoch found a way to offload his 41% stake in the company—ending the most significant losing bet he's made in the last decade. It's not too hard to see how owning Gemstar …
RELATED:
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:Macrovision Buying Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 Billion
Discussion:
Tech Trader Daily
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.
Discussion:
Techlog
Bills Due:
$20M Funding For Chinese Video Sharing Site 56.com (æˆ'.) — Hot on the heels of Youku.com's $25M round, 56.com(æˆ'.) has just closed a $20M round of funding, I believe at a post-money valuation of $70-80M. The round was led by Hikari Private Equity (HPE) and Susquehanna International Group China(SIG).
Charlie White / Gizmodo:
Western Digital 1TB MyBook Drives Infested With DRM? [Peripherals] — The guys at Wired and BoingBoing stirred up a hornet's nest this morning by alleging that Western Digital's 1TB MyBook World Edition external hard drives "won't share media files over network connections."
RELATED:
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:Western Digital network drives crippled — no serving any multimedia files
Discussion:
Bits, Gearlog, Compiler, Gadget Lab, Computerworld, Techdirt, Tech_Space, BetaNews and Slashdot
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 …
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.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, mathewingram.com/work, Screenwerk, /Message, PE HUB, alarm:clock, uncov, bub.blicio.us, The Last Podcast and Zoho Blogs
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.
Business Week:
Next-Gen DVDs: Advantage, Sony — Sony-led backers of Blu-ray seem to have pulled ahead of rivals in the race for a single high-def DVD standard — It's a fight with more plot twists and intrigue than a Hollywood thriller. For two years now, rival camps have been battling over which new DVD format …
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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:
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
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.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Venture Summit: Has the Internet Jumped the Shark? — So I moderated a panel yesterday at AlwaysOn's Venture Summit West, held at the Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay, California, with the title "Is There Still an Upside to the Internet?" — Of course, I redubbed it: "Has the Internet Jumped the Shark?"
Addy Dugdale / Gizmodo:
Man Proposes to Girlfriend Using Zune, Glenn Medeiros, Cheese and Love [Man Uses Zune To Propose] — Gizmodo reader Ben Podbielski proposed to his girlfriend on Wednesday, using a pink Zune Original. Uploaded onto the player was a video set to a romantic ballad.
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 …
