Top Items:
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 …
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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:
GigaOM, Read/WriteWeb, InformationWeek, Sriram Krishnan, Amazon Web Services Blog, Rough Type, rc3.org, Venture Chronicles and Digg
Phil Windley / Between the Lines:
Economics that are impossible to stop — A few days ago, Jeff Barr, Amazon's Web services (AWS) evangelist visited my class and got a report of what we'd built over the course of the last semester on top of AWS. Each student had built part of a project that eventually used 25-30 independent machines.
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.
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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.
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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.
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
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, Computerworld, Technology Live, Mashable!, ClickZ News Blog, p2pnet, Digital Daily and CNET News.com
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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.
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, PalmAddicts, Lifehacker, InformationWeek Weblog, Infinite Loop, Gizmodo, Engadget, Gadget Lab, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, 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.
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.
Discussion:
HipMojo.com, p2pnet, WebProNews, Valleywag, Silicon Alley Insider, The Social Times and Mashable!
Anne Zelenka / GigaOM:
Webkinz Advertises, and Parents Say That's OK — Kids' plush toy social network Webkinz.com has started running advertising, a move that, if recent articles in New York Times and Silicon Alley Insider are to be believed, has greatly upset parents. In fact, whatever controversy exists seems …
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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:
iLounge, Valleywag, O'Grady's PowerPage, Gadget Lab, The Apple Core and The Unofficial Apple Weblog
Kate Kelly / Wall Street Journal:
How Goldman Won Big On Mortgage Meltdown — A Team's Bearish Bets Netted Firm Billions; A Nudge From the CFO — The subprime-mortgage crisis has been a financial catastrophe for much of Wall Street. At Goldman Sachs Group Inc., thanks to a tiny group of traders, it has generated …