Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Full Text Of AOL Email: XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile And Bluestring To Shut Down — Below is the full text of the email AOL EVP Kevin Conroy sent out to staff on July 14, outlining the reorganization of his product groups and announcing the “sunsetting” of XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile and Bluestring.
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Andru Edwards / Gear Live:
Apple beta testing iPhone 2.1 firmware, adding more GPS features — We just got word that Apple has released a beta version of iPhone OS 2.1 to developers. Along with the 2.1 firmware, a new version of the iPhone SDK has been seeded as well, but the new SDK can't be used for submitting applications to the App Store at the moment.
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Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Seeds iPhone 2.1 Firmware with GPS Features — GearLive reports that Apple has seeded a beta version of iPhone 2.1 Firmware (Beta 1, Build 5F90) to developers. — According to the site, Apple has included new Core Location features that might suggest that turn-by-turn GPS could become a reality.
Denver Post:
Missing ‘spam king’ kills self, family — BENNETT — Just four days after escaping a federal minimum-security work camp, “Spam King” Eddie Davidson shot his wife and child and wounded a teen-age girl before turning the gun on himself. — Sheriff's deputies responded to a report of gunfire …
Discussion:
InfoWorld, The Register, Threat Level, Computerworld Blogs, TechWeb, Spyware Sucks and Security Watch
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David Pogue / New York Times:
Apple's MobileMess — Two weeks ago, Apple launched MobileMe, the successor to its.Mac service, which costs $100 a year. Among other benefits, it can keep multiple Macs, PCs and iPhones in sync. E-mail, calendars and address books are wirelessly kept up to date. Very cool idea.
Discussion:
MacUser, TechWeb, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, michael parekh on IT, Macworld, MacDailyNews, The Mac Observer, Gadget Lab, Technovia and Ubergizmo
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Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Believe In Superstitions? Avoid The Word “me” In Product Names — If you are superstitious and believe that names can bring (or deny) good luck, avoid giving your products a name that ends with “me”. — This is not a recommendation of any soothsayer but just a personal observation …
Discussion:
MacBlogz
Daniel AJ Sokolov / heise Security UK:
Speculation over back door in Skype — According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged. The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations. At a meeting with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception …
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Android Is For The Masses, iPhone For The Rich — Our network blog last100 has an interesting interview with Nicolas Gramlich, founder of anddev.org - an online community for Android developers. As editor Steve O'Hear notes in his intro, there have been issues with Google's mobile OS of late …
Discussion:
last100
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
The Day After: Looking At How Well Knol Pages Rank On Google — We've been assured that just because content sits on Google's Knol site, it won't gain any ranking authority from being part of the Knol domain. OK, so a day after Knol has launched, how's that holding up?
Kim Hart / Washington Post:
High-Stakes Race to Unlock a Wider Web — Critics Say New Technology May Hinder TV Signals — The nation's top technology companies have spent millions of dollars and nearly two years building devices, poring over laptops and working in federal labs trying to come up with a new way of …
Computerworld:
Forrester: Windows Vista rejected like ‘new Coke’ by enterprises — Even though it's been out for about 18 months now, the Windows Vista OS doesn't seem to be gaining a lot of traction at large firms, according to survey results released by Forrester Research. — SECURITY / more stories...
Discussion:
The Register, TomsTechBlog.com, Asa Dotzler, 9 to 5 Mac, Macsimum News, broadstuff, Forrester Research and The Mac Observer
Robert Vamosi / CNET News.com:
Vulnerable to a DNS cache poisoning at home? — On Wednesday, an exploit code allowing someone to attack the domain name system (DNS) became available. No one has yet used the code, but the advice is simple: Patch. Now. While most of the burden is on the Domain Name System servers …
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Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats:
Second Age of Aquarius: Facebook Connect + Facebook Payments (= Social Sign-on + Viral E-Commerce) — so i went to Facebook F8 yesterday, and i had a good time. — yeah sure, the hype machine was in overdrive & some folks were a little underwhelmed (tho others more excited than usual).
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Blockbuster remembers it bought Movielink for a reason — While company after company enter the digital movie download realm including former outsiders like Apple and Microsoft, the company once synonymous with movie rentals has been noticeably absent: Blockbuster.
Discussion:
paidContent.org
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Brier Dudley / Brier Dudley's blog:
Microsoft CFO to Wall Street: What gives? And forget about a Yahoo deal — If Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and CFO Chris Liddell weren't already bald, they would be from scratching their heads, trying to figure out why their stock is doing so poorly. Especially given the company's recent performance …
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
Griping Online? Comcast Hears You and Talks Back — PHILADELPHIA — Brandon Dilbeck, 20, a student at the University of Washington, was complaining recently on his blog, Brandon Notices, about Comcast's practice of posting ads in its on-screen programming guide. — He assumed he was writing for his own benefit.
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it — The bad dream of DRM continues. Yahoo e-mailed its Yahoo! Music Store customers yesterday, telling them it will be closing for good—and the company will take its DRM license key servers offline on September 30, 2008.
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:The Final Days of DRM: Yahoo Music Store Closing, Will Eat Your Purchased Music
Discussion:
Startup Meme, CNET News.com, Techdirt, MarketingShift, Smalltalk Tidbits … and Electronista
Media Molecule hits little big time / BBC:
Game On — Sony has very high hopes for LittleBigPlanet — Game developer Media Molecule have gone from promising start-up to one of the pillars of the PlayStation empire in two years - and all before ever releasing a game. — Its first blockbuster title, LittleBigPlanet …
Joe McDonald / Associated Press:
China says has more people surfing the Web than US — BEIJING - China's booming Internet population has surpassed the United States to become the world's biggest, with 253 million people online despite government controls on Web use, according to government data reported Friday.
Discussion:
Mashable!
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Ballmer Soars into the Server Cloud … Or so Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer emphasized in his keynote during today's Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond. Steve packed an unusually large amount of looking-forward information during the keynote, which heavily emphasized cloud computing …
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