Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Steve Ballmer: Killing Apple and Google With Kindness? — BoomTown is flatly fascinated by the rather incredible memo Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer penned to his troops yesterday, with news of the reorganization of its massive Platforms and Services Division and the departure of its president, Kevin Johnson.
RELATED:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's Full Memo to the Troops About New Reorg — Here is the full memo Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent out to the troops about the big changes in its organization, including the departure of Platforms and Services Division President Kevin Johnson, in which he addresses Apple, Yahoo, Google and more:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Who Will Be Microsoft's Next Online Chief? McAndrews? Miller? BoomTown? — BoomTown was all busy trying to think of execs to replace Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, as pressure mounts on him to right the troubled Internet company. — But now, Yang's position feels safer than ever and it's …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Why Facebook Connect Matters & Why It Will Win — Facebook kicked off their second annual developer conference in San Francisco this afternoon with a keynote by founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The overproduced keynote, with too many words repeatedly incessantly, seemed like a lullaby sung by a nanny in a language alien to yours.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, Six Apart News & Events, Search Engine Watch Blog, Web Strategy, CyberNet, Joe Duck, Startup Meme and Digg the Blog
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Takes The Fast Lane To Boring — I agree with Sam Gustin when he says that yesterday's Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco was in the end a snoozer, but not because CEO Mark Zuckerberg failed on stage. — First of all, saying the event itself was sleep-inducing is just factually incorrect.
Discussion:
Tech Ticker
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft looks to ‘Mojave’ to revive Vista's image — REDMOND, Wash.—After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista's skeptics. — Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks …
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Zimbra Releases Version 3 Of Open Source Email Client, And It's Awesome — Yahoo's Zimbra launches version 3 of its open source desktop email client this morning that is designed to compete with Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc. This is a new iteration of their browser-based offline product announced in March 2007.
RELATED:
PR Newswire:
XM and SIRIUS Confirm Discussions to Settle FCC Enforcement Matters — XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: XMSR - News) and SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI - News) today confirmed that the companies are in discussions with the Enforcement Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission …
RELATED:
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft Live Search Coming To Facebook — When Microsoft made its investment in Facebook I always had though that Live Search would come to the site, together with search monetization. Later it appeared that search wasn't part of the deal. Facebook's competitors all have web search …
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch Blog
RELATED:
Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:
Breaking: Facebook Signs Search and Advertising Deal with Microsoft — CNBC is reporting that Microsoft and Facebook have signed a search and advertising deal. The partnership involves integrating Microsoft Live Search on Facebook, which will include the software giant's search advertising.
Discussion:
Clickety Clack
Sprint:
Sprint Nextel Announces Tower Sale to TowerCo for Approximately $670 Million in Cash — Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) today announced an agreement to sell approximately 3,300 towers to TowerCo for approximately $670 million in cash. Additionally, the two companies have entered into a long term leasing agreement …
Discussion:
mocoNews.net
RELATED:
Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:
Sprint to Sell Cellphone Towers, Use Money to Pay Down Debt
Sprint to Sell Cellphone Towers, Use Money to Pay Down Debt
Discussion:
CrunchGear, DSLreports, Communications …, Unwired View, Electronista, FierceWireless, textually.org and IntoMobile
Nigel Morris / The Independent:
Music industry to tax downloaders — £30 ‘licence fee’ set to revolutionise illegal file-sharing — Internet users could face an annual charge of up to £30 to download music, under plans to be unveiled today that aim to tackle illegal file-sharing.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, A VC, Guardian Unlimited, Industry Standard, The Digital Home, Mashable!, Virtual Economics, WebProNews, p2pnet and TorrentFreak
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
AdMob Makes Mobile Ads Suck Less. Will Give Away One Million Dollars Worth of Ads To iPhone App Developers. — On the iPhone, even the ads are cool. Mobile advertising network AdMob is launching a whole new set of customized ads for iPhone apps. As CEO Omar Hamoui explains in the video above …
RELATED:
Nik Cubrilovic / TechCrunch:
Open Web Foundation Officially Launches — This morning at that OSCON conference David Recordon of Six Apart will announce on stage the formation of the Open Web Foundation. The new foundation is about providing a home for the development and ratification of web-related standards efforts.
RELATED:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Open Web Foundation Launches to Do the Dirty Work for Data Portability
Open Web Foundation Launches to Do the Dirty Work for Data Portability
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
New Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Causes Chaos — Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Punishes Community Managers and Causes Follower Counts to Drop — Did you notice a big drop in your Twitter follower numbers yesterday? It seems that the Twitter team recently decided to step up their Twitter spammer detection …
Discussion:
The Web Services Report, TwitterStars.com, Why does everything suck?, Chuqui 3.0, Zoli's Blog, WebProNews and Startup Meme
Ricky Cadden / MobileBurn.com:
Video: Samsung's i8510 Innov8 S60 smartphone — Snapshot by Ricky Cadden on Wednesday July 23, 2008. — This evening at an event in New York City, we had a chance to handle Samsung's latest smartphone, the i8510, which uses Nokia's S60 user interface (3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2).
RELATED:
Creative:
CREATIVE INTRODUCES THE UNIQUELY DESIGNED ZEN® MOZAIC MUSIC, PHOTOS AND VIDEO PLAYER WITH IMPRESSIVE BUILT-IN SPEAKER — Bold Design and Attractive Pricing Make ZEN® Mozaic a Must Have For an Avid Digital Lifestyle — Creative Technology Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products …
Discussion:
Podcasting News, Homotron.net, Nothing But Creative, jkOnTheRun, Anything But iPod, Boing Boing Gadgets and Crave
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Apple's MobileMe Is Far Too Flawed To Be Reliable — People who work for large corporations are used to having their email, contacts and calendar appointments synchronized instantly among their various computers and smart phones. But average consumers haven't had an easy way to do that.
John Morris / The Core Truth:
Intel launches new chip for consumer electronics — In its latest bid to expand beyond PCs and servers into industrial and consumer electronics applications, Intel has announced a new family of embedded processors. — These chips are not based on the Atom processor already used in netbooks …