Top Items:
Cying / inside looking out:
What You Need To Know About Amazon SimpleDB — Well after being under NDA for so long, I'm glad to be able to say that Amazon SimpleDB has gone into limited beta. Congratulations to everyone on the SDS / SimpleDB team; their several years of work on SimpleDB (formerly called SDS) is a brilliant piece of engineering.
Discussion:
Read/WriteWeb, GigaOM, InformationWeek, Amazon Web Services Blog, Rough Type, rc3.org and Venture Chronicles
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Amazon Takes on Oracle and IBM With SimpleDB — Companies can now go ahead and fire their expensive database administrators—those engineers who keep the Oracle or IBM databases humming. Amazon has just added an enterprise-class database called SimpleDB to its suite of cloud-based IT infrastructure …
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
A Year Later, the Same Scene: Long Lines for the Elusive Wii — SAN FRANCISCO — Linda Beattie is trying desperately to pay Nintendo $250, but the company is not cooperating. — Two weeks ago, Ms. Beattie went to a video game retailer in the Bay Area in search of a Wii, Nintendo's intensely popular video game machine.
Discussion:
Opposable Thumbs, Techland, Digital Trends, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Kotaku, CrunchGear, Joystiq, Hardware 2.0, Gizmodo, GamesIndustry.biz, GamePro.com, I4U News, Engadget and Go Nintendo
RELATED:
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Nintendo's Wii Rainchecks Mean You Get the Console Plus the Agonizing Wait [Nintendo] — Nintendo's Wii Rainchecks Mean You Get the Console Plus the Agonizing Wait — Kotaku's Brian Crecente is liveblogging a chat with Nintendo US honcho Reggie Fils-Aime, where the first order of business …
Will Greenwald / CNET News.com:
Nintendo, GameStop address Wii shortage — The Nintendo Wii launched more than a year ago, and the system is still incredibly hard to find. This long after the system started shipping, people are still camping in front of stores as soon as they hear about new shipments.
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
What's Wrong With Windows Mobile and How WM7 and WM8 Are Going to Fix It [What's Wrong With Windows Mobile] — We just got the scoop from Microsoft on Windows Mobile 7 and Windows Mobile 8, the two upcoming platforms that will fix what is undeniably broken about the Windows Mobile platform to date.
RELATED:
Federal Trade Commission:
Petition Seeking My Recusal from Review of Proposed Acquisition of Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners V, LP (DoubleClick Inc.) — This statement responds to the "Complaint Requesting Recusal of the Federal Trade Commission Chairman From the Pending Review of the Proposed Google-Doubleclick Merger" …
Discussion:
paidContent.org, Digital Daily, Computerworld, p2pnet, ClickZ News Blog and CNET News.com
RELATED:
Roy Mark / eWEEK.com:Majoras Refuses to Recuse Herself in Google-DoubleClick Review
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch Blog
Nick / Rough Type:
Googlepedia — Just to underscore the impetus behind the launch of Googlepedia - er, Knol - I went back to rerun a test I first ran over a year ago to see how high Wikipedia pages rank in a random set of Google searches. Here were the results on August 10, 2006: — World War II: #1 — Israel: #1
Bill Gates / BBC:
The skills you need to succeed — One of the most important changes of the last 30 years is that digital technology has transformed almost everyone into an information worker. — In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.
eMarketer:
The Promise of Social Network Advertising — How much can social networks net? — Social networking is an Internet success story. — This year, 37% of the US adult Internet population used online social networking at least once a month. That figure will rise to 49% in 2011.
RELATED:
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com:Hype Watch: Social Media Revenues a Tiny Sliver of Online Advertising Pie
Apple:
How to create custom ringtones in GarageBand 4.1.1 — With GarageBand 4.1.1 you can export your original song, your original audio recordings, or use Apple Loops and iLife jingles to create a custom ringtone for your iPhone. — Here's what you need to do it: — GarageBand 4.1.1 or later
Discussion:
Podcasting News, InformationWeek Weblog, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Infinite Loop, Engadget, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Gadget Lab, iLounge and Digg
Mike / CrunchNotes:
The Fact And Fiction Of Sam Sethi — So Sam Sethi, former TechCrunch UK editor, announced the closing of his Blognation blog network today. Hey lays 100% of the blame for the failure on me personally. And while I agree with Mathew Ingram, Techfold and others that it isn't appropriate to lay blame on others for your own failure.
Discussion:
PDA, How To Split An Atom, WebProNews, TechWag, A View from the Isle, MarketingBlog.eu, mathewingram.com/work, paidContent, MediaVidea, TechFold and Valleywag
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Greedy Webkinz Infuriates Parents, Trashes Own Brand — One of the greatest online success stories of the past two years, Webkinz, has suddenly threatened its brand and annoyed its most important constituency (parents) by bombarding kids with ads. — The Webkinz model was simple and brilliant …
RELATED:
Benwilson / iPhone Atlas:
Officially unlocked iPhones not really unlocked — It turns out that the officially (Apple-sanctioned) unlocked iPhone you bought for 649 Euros (about US$965) from Orange in France — which, according to some reports, accounts for up to 20% of total iPhone sales in France — is not really unlocked.
Discussion:
Valleywag, iLounge, O'Grady's PowerPage, Gadget Lab, The Apple Core and The Unofficial Apple Weblog
Tom Espiner / CNET News.com:
Microsoft strikes back at Opera antitrust claims — Microsoft on Friday denied antitrust claims by Opera Software that the software giant is abusing its dominant market position to lock users into the Internet Explorer Web browser. — Opera, based in Norway, announced on Thursday …
