Top Items:
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Sony hates you, offers $50 “Fresh Start” option to build your laptop crapware-free — Sony has quite the history of crippling excellent, beautiful hardware with horrible, useless software. The company's UX UMPC bluescreened on us the first time we turned it on, and crashed the first time we tried …
Discussion:
Good Morning Silicon Valley, Download Squad, TechConsumer, Electronista, Out of the Box, OhGizmo!, Gearlog, p2pnet, CyberNet, The Boy Genius Report, Dan's Tech-n-Stuff Weblog, Mark Evans, Gizmodo, michael parekh on IT, Guardian Unlimited, Michael Gartenberg, jkOnTheRun, Boing Boing Gadgets, 9 to 5 Mac and Hardware 2.0
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Peter Sayer / IDG News Service:
Sony Removes Bloatware—for a Fee — For only $50, Sony will uninstall some of the trial software it loads onto new Vaio laptops. — Sony is offering to remove some of the trial software it crams onto the hard disks of new laptops — for a fee. — Buyers of the configure-to-order versions …
Dan Ackerman / Crave: The gadget blog:Sony charges fifty bucks for a crapware-free system
Discussion:
Alice Hill's Real Tech News
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Facebook Toast? Hot Today, Dead Tomorrow—Like AOL? — For now, Facebook continues to take over the world. Its global traffic is about to blow past MySpace's, its image (and Mark Zuckerberg's) has recovered from the Beacon fiasco, and it has raised a big enough cash pile that it should be able to power through any downturn.
Discussion:
The Bivings Report, All Facebook, The Real McCrea, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs and Economist
Farhad Manjoo / Salon:
The Wall Street Journal's Web site is already (secretly) free — Late in January, Rupert Murdoch put an end to speculation that he would set free the Wall Street Journal's subscription-only Web site. — While he planned to “expand” the site's free offerings, “the really special things …
Discussion:
Epicenter, Valleywag, Silicon Alley Insider, TeleRead, Technology Evangelist and Boing Boing
Stefanie Olsen / CNET News.com:
Q&A: Battelle talks blog roll-ups, Google, and Federated Media's future — John Battelle knows tech booms and busts. He's been at the forefront of them for nearly two decades. — In 1993, he co-founded Wired, a print magazine that set a standard in technology coverage and spawned popular sites …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Federated Media's Battelle Slams Rival, Hints At Investing In Publishers
Tom Krazit / One More Thing:
Think before you install — Look, people, it's 2008: You're responsible for what you install on your PC. — The outrage is spewing forth over Apple's move to include Safari 3.1 as part of its Software Update program. The new twist is that Windows users who never had installed Safari …
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Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Gibson turns volume up to 11 with new ‘Guitar Hero’ lawsuit — Legendary guitar manufacturer Gibson Guitar has sued six major retailers—Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, Gamestop, and Toys-R-Us—for selling Activision's Guitar Hero video game series, MarketWatch reported Friday.
Discussion:
E-Commerce Times, paidContent.org, Engadget, Gearlog, Geek Gestalt, Kotaku and Dan's Tech-n-Stuff Weblog
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
CBS Sports Facing March Madness Backlash on Facebook. “This App Blows.” — Don't mess with March Madness. CBS Sports is learning that lesson the hard way on Facebook, where a major backlash is happening over its NCAA basketball bracket application. Yes, this is the same application …
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn, Now For Companies — LinkedIn, the boring social network that won't find you a date but may land you a job, is expanding beyond people profiles. — On Friday morning they will launch company profile pages that partly serve as fact sheets for about 160,000 companies and partly serve …
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Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Report: 95% of Internet video stuck looking longingly at TV — Video content online may be growing in popularity, but the vast majority isn't getting anywhere near a TV screen. New survey results from Macrovision (commissioned by Harris Interactive) say that only a small number of adults …
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Little old lady suing Sony, Samsung, Nokia and everyone else for infringing on her laser patents — Oh sure, she looks friendly enough. But don't let her matronly, argyle looks fool you. Retired Columbia University Professor, Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, is looking to extract some cold …
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Doug Aamoth / CrunchGear:
Firefox 3: So easy a caveman could do it — Firefox 3 won't be out of beta until the end of June but Mozilla told Reuters yesterday that anyone can go ahead and download the most recent version and run it without worrying too much. It's now stable enough for everyone, not just developers.
Nivi / Venture Hacks:
Getting Recommended … On April 1st, we started publishing the best damn term sheet hacks we could find. Why? Because a lot of entrepreneurs ask the same question: … We're trying to make everything we've learned—from other entrepreneurs, investors, and lawyers—readily available.
Discussion:
HipMojo.com, FoundRead, VentureBeat, Brij's One More Idea, TechCrunch and MYBLOG by Ouriel
Austin Modine / The Register:
Bain and Huawei bail on 3Com buyout — $10,000 Panda Challenge - are you really protected? — Claiming an inability to stifle US government concerns over a 3Com acquisition, Bain Capital Partners and Huawei Technologies are now taking their ball and going home.
Discussion:
E-Commerce Times
Sarah Lai Stirland / Threat Level:
Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig Bets ‘Wikipedia’ Approach Will Transform Congress — Stanford law professor Larry Lessig plans to use collaborative software to change Congress. — Courtesy Larry Lessig — A prominent Stanford law professor on Thursday launched an ambitious project …
Discussion:
Ars Technica, Computerworld, TeleRead, The Drama 2.0 Show, IT News Digest, CNET News.com, p2pnet, open, Slashdot, Sunlight Foundation and techPresident
Susan Crawford / Public Knowledge:
Why Block C matters — Today the FCC announced the winners of the 700 MHz auction - and you can see from pp. 62-63 of this document that Verizon won Block C. (Block C was set up in two nationwide paired blocks of 11 MHz each, which were auctioned off in very large geographic areas …
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