Top Items:
Loïc Le Meur / Loic Le Meur Blog:
20 reasons why Seesmic acquired Twhirl — As TechCrunch just announced, Seesmic just acquired Twhirl. And here are 20 ways it will benefit the Seesmic community —Staying in touch with your friends using microblogging is much easier using a client than through your browser
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Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Seesmic Acquires Popular Twitter AIR Client Twhirl — San Francisco video/chat startup Seesmic has acquired Twhirl, a popular application created by German developer Marco Kaiser that allows users to access the Twitter service directly from their desktop, and also cross post to other services like Pownce and Jaiku.
Google Public Policy Blog:
Cone of silence (finally) lifts on the spectrum auction — For three weeks at the end of January and early February, a small team of us holed up in double super secret “war rooms” in Mountain View, CA and Washington, D.C. to bid on Google's behalf in the FCC spectrum auction.
Discussion:
DSLreports, TechCrunch, Search Engine Watch Blog, IP Democracy, IDG News Service, WebProNews, Silicon Alley Insider, Wall Street Journal, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, localmobilesearch.net, Engadget, CNET News.com, mocoNews.net, VentureBeat, Gearlog, InformationWeek Weblog and Phone Scoop
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
A SaaSy SAP vs. Salesforce debate: Is Benioff overestimating his platform? — Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and SAP Chairman Hasso Plattner dueled at the Churchill Club in a debate about the future of software and the generation gap couldn't be larger. — Benioff brought the bluster …
Discussion:
deal architect
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Dan Farber / Outside the Lines:
Salesforce.com's Benioff bests SAP's Plattner in debate — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Two titans in the enterprise software business faced off Thursday at a Churchill Club event at the Computer History Museum here, and a bit of history was made. — The sage, 64-year-old Hasso Plattner …
Laura M. Holson / New York Times:
Mobile Phone Industry Takes Aim at the iPhone — LAS VEGAS — Last year, the wireless industry obsessed over the iPhone. This year, the industry is buzzing about how to beat it. — Touch screens, the mobile Internet and devices packed with multimedia capabilities dominated the discussion …
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Ruling: No safe harbor when the questions discriminate — The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reaffirmed (PDF) a previous decision saying that Roommates.com does not qualify for protection under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in housing discrimination lawsuits …
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Ashish Thapliyal / Ashish Thapliyal's Blog:
Silverlight Roadmap questions — Silverlight is about 7 month old kid but it is already making such a big buzz. One of my colleague Rahul did excellent job in terms of putting up a FAQ regarding the roadmap — 1. When exactly will Silverlight support all the codecs that a standard Windows Media Player support?
BBC:
Policing internet 'not ISP's job' — The head of one of Britain's biggest internet providers has criticised the music industry for demanding that he act against pirates. — The trade body for UK music, the BPI, asked internet service providers to disconnect people who ignore requests to stop sharing music.
Discussion:
Slashdot
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Stephen Crowne / BBC:
Net gains — The head of the government agency which promotes technology in schools says good things will come out of growing use of computers and the internet by children. — Two separate reports have recently highlighted the dangers and risks that children face when they use the internet.
Andrew Orlowski / The Register:
MySpace Music leaves creators cold — $10,000 Panda Challenge - are you really protected? — What a pity that while raging against the (dying) major record label, keyboard warriors are content to see them gain more power over creators than ever before. MySpace announced …
Fred / A VC:
Something Important Is On The Horizon In The Music Business — Having ceded the file based music opportunity (mp3s and drm'd file formats) to Apple, the recorded labels are now getting hip to the much bigger opportunity, streaming music. — Yes, it's true that listeners will still want to own files for a few more years.
Richard Thurston / The Register:
Creative climbs down over home brew Vista drivers — Daniel-K slams ‘arrogant and sarcastic’ company — $10,000 Panda Challenge - are you really protected? — A Brazilian developer threatened with legal action by Creative for making its soundcards work better with Vista has had his work reinstated on the company's website.
Discussion:
Techdirt
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report:
The Vista license “loophole” that isn't — Software licensing is often hard to understand. But that's no excuse for so-called Windows experts to deliberately publish sensational stories that turn the facts upside-down. — I'm talking about the fuss that Scott Dunn and Brian Livingston kicked …
Daniel Terdiman / Geek Gestalt:
How to survive the next-gen confab — There's no fighting it. Conference 2.0, as some have called it, is here to stay. — The term refers to tech confabs where audiences communicate about what they're witnessing via a vibrant backchannel on Twitter, blogs, IM, and other forms of live media.
