Top Items:
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
The case of the 1.4 million missing iPhones — The talk among Apple (AAPL) watchers today is Toni Sacconaghi's dogged pursuit of the 4 million iPhones Steve Jobs claimed to have sold as of Jan. 15, the date of his Macworld keynote speech. — AT&T (T), the iPhone's exclusive U.S. carrier …
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Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Spectrum auction starts, draws over $2.7 billion in first-day bids — Auction 73, the long-awaited 700MHz spectrum sell-off, got under way yesterday as the Federal Communications Commission conducted two rounds of bidding by the 214 qualified bidders. Action was brisk, although none …
Discussion:
Epicenter, IP Democracy, Wired News, Digital Daily, DSLreports, Computerworld, Bloomberg, Reuters and Voices
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Dan Meyer / RCR Wireless News:700 MHz auction ends first week of bidding at $3.7B
Discussion:
dailywireless.org
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Scoble Sells Out — Robert Scoble, who has long been proud of the fact that his popular blog remains free of advertisements or sponsorships, will soon put ads on his site, he told me yesterday. — The change comes as part of his move to Fast Company, who will sell the ads on his behalf and will also be redesigning the site.
Larry Shaughnessy / CNN:
Double amputee walks again due to Bluetooth — WASHINGTON (CNN) — Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bleill lost both his legs above the knees when a bomb exploded under his Humvee while on patrol in Iraq on October 15, 2006. He has 32 pins in his hip and a 6-inch screw holding his pelvis together.
Barry Neild / CNN:
Bill Gates' new project: Farming — DAVOS, Switzerland (CNN) — Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates announced a new direction Friday as he pledged $306 million in grants to develop farming in poor countries, leading the charge for corporate responsibility at a major meeting of business chiefs.
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Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:Gates' “creative capitalism": profits plus philanthropy
Discussion:
CNET News.com
Matt Asay / The Open Road:“Kinder capitalism"? It's called open source, Mr. Gates. You should try it
Discussion:
Joe Duck
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Latest Test for DMCA Safe Harbors: Warner Sues SeeqPod — Warner Music Group has sued SeeqPod (complaint, 500k PDF), a “Web 2.0” music search engine (combined with embedable playlists, etc, etc) that has been gaining in popularity in recent months. — This is the latest in a string of lawsuits against Web 2.0 companies.
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Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Palm Realizes It's Not Apple; Closes Retail Shops — Over the last decade, plenty of technology hardware companies thought it would make sense to open their own retail shops. Sony, Gateway, Palm and Apple all went down that path. Of that list, only Apple has been able to turn those retail stores into something valuable.
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Miguel de Icaza:
Usability Disaster Story — In December, someone asked me about how many Mono downloads we had per month to estimate the size of Mono users. With software like Mono the download numbers do not mean much, because most of our users get their software through their distribution, package channels or as a bundled executable.
Discussion:
Jeffrey McManus
Ryan Block / Engadget:
MacBook Air review — It fits in a manila folder, you can slide it under a door, and if you threw it hard enough you could probably chop someone in half with the thing. It's the thinnest, and if we may say so, the sexiest laptop around today: the MacBook Air.
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Mark Hefflinger / Digital Media Wire:
Murdoch: WSJ.com to Retain Subscription Model, Raise Prices — Davos, Switzerland - News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Friday that he plans to keep a large portion of the content on the website of his newly acquired Wall Street Journal behind a subscription firewall …
Discussion:
Davos Conversation
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Artur Bergman / O'Reilly Radar:
Books that make you dumb — Wikiscanner hacker Virgil Griffth told me a while ago about his latest data mining project, to visualise the relationship between books and SAT scores. Today he released his findings at Booksthatmakeyoudumb. — He does this by cross referencing the 10 …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Windows 7: The Anti-Vista? — Even with Windows Vista's one-year anniversary launch just a week away, all that anyone in the tech-enthusiast community seems to want to talk about is Windows 7 (Except for those who are already sick of hearing about 7, as one Windows user characterized himself in a conversation I had yesterday.)
Eric Lai / Computerworld:
Software ‘tweaks,’ Chinese new year delay Everex CloudBook — The UMPC won't appear in U.S. stores until late February — Computerworld) Everex said today that its highly anticipated ultramobile CloudBook PC won't make it into U.S. consumers' hands for another month or so …
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
OLPC angering donors: “Give 1 Get 1... some day... probably” — The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative launched the Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) program in November, which allowed individuals in North America to obtain an OLPC XO laptop by making a donation of $399.
Charles Spirakis / Google LatLong:
Making changes — At Google, we're encouraged to move to different groups and learn new skills. I recently transitioned to the Maps team — specifically, to the group that empowers local experts like you to improve your virtual neighborhood on Google Maps.
Discussion:
Insider Chatter, Webware.com, Search Engine Land, O'Reilly Radar, Screenwerk, Computerworld, Mashable! and Understanding Google …
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News.com:
In-flight Internet: Grounded for life? — If Wi-Fi is available at thousands of Internet cafes on even the most remote beaches in Southeast Asia, why isn't it ubiquitous on airplanes in the United States? — For those travelers who desperately want to know, the answer is that it's nearly here.
Discussion:
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim
The New York Times Company:
The New York Times Delivers News and Opinion Through Text Messages — Readers Can Text in for the Latest News, their Favorite Columnists or the Most E-mailed List — The New York Times (www.NYTimes.com) announced today the launch of a text messaging service that will deliver the latest news …
Brian Morrissey / Adweek:
Yahoo! Dumps Brand Universes — NEW YORK Yahoo! has scrapped its plan to create dozens of destinations for consumers to celebrate brands. — Dubbed “Brand Universes,” the sites were intended to tap into the allure of hot brands—notably those in technology and entertainment …
