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.
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, Brier Dudley's blog, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Cult of Mac and MacUser
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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:
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, eWeek, Search Engine Watch Blog, Furrier.org, bub.blicio.us, PR 2.0, Web Strategy, CyberNet, Six Apart News & Events, Joe Duck and Startup Meme
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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
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft Live Search Coming To Facebook — When Microsoft made its investment in Facebook I always had thought 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 …
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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.
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 …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:Ballmer seeks to justify Microsoft's bottomless-pit online spending
Discussion:
Beyond Binary
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.
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Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:
Sprint to Sell Cellphone Towers, Use Money to Pay Down Debt — Sprint Nextel Corp. agreed to sell nearly all its cellphone towers to a private-equity-backed firm called TowerCo in a deal that will generate about $670 million in cash for the struggling wireless carrier.
Discussion:
CrunchGear, Electronista, DSLreports, Communications …, Unwired View, FierceWireless, IntoMobile and textually.org
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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 …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, VentureBeat, Forbes, ReadWriteWeb, Search Engine Watch Blog, Mobile Marketing Watch, MarketingVOX and Geek.com
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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.
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:Open Web Foundation Launches to Do the Dirty Work for Data Portability
Sirius:
XM and SIRIUS Confirm Discussions to Settle FCC Enforcement Matters — WASHINGTON and NEW YORK, July 24, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ — XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: XMSR) and SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) today confirmed that the companies …
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Brad Stone / Bits:
Hasbro Notches Triple-Word Score Against Scrabulous With ‘Lawsuit’ — UPDATED — Looking to cut down its main competition and most high profile copycat in the growing market for social gaming, Hasbro has sued the two Indian brothers behind the popular Web game Scrabulous …
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:
Techdirt, A VC, Ars Technica, Times of London, The Digital Home, Guardian Unlimited, Mashable!, Industry Standard, Virtual Economics and WebProNews
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:
TwitterStars.com, Webware.com, Why does everything suck?, Chuqui 3.0, Zoli's Blog, WebProNews and Startup Meme
Robert Vamosi / CNET News.com:
DNS exploit code is in the wild — As of Wednesday, an exploit code allowing someone to attack the domain name system (DNS) was available in various places on the Internet. — On July 8, IOActive researcher Dan Kaminsky disclosed a flaw in the DNS but would not provide the details until …
Discussion:
Zero Day
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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, Boing Boing Gadgets, Anything But iPod and Crave
Raanan Bar-Cohen / WordPress for iPhone:
Version 1.1 and Beyond — First of all, thanks for all the feedback people have sent in - we really appreciate it. — Our first priority is to fix all the bugs, and once the app is stable and bug-free start looking at adding new features. Here are a few notes about the bug fixes …
Discussion:
The Unofficial Apple Weblog
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).
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James Kendrick / jkOnTheRun:
Zune phone really in the works at Microsoft? — The success of the iPhone, both the original and the recently released 3G model, has fueled rumors that Microsoft is working internally on a similar phone built on the Zune audio player. The Zune player has failed to compete against the iPod family …
