Top Items:
Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Enlists Jerry Seinfeld In Its Ad Battle Against Apple — Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.'s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld. — The software giant's new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded.
Discussion:
Contentinople, Silicon Alley Insider, All about Microsoft, Digital Daily, Mark Evans, WebProNews, MacRumors, Gawker, Cult of Mac, Global Nerdy, VentureBeat, Hardware 2.0, TUAW, Epicenter, TechBlog, Between the Lines, Microsoft News Tracker, BloggingStocks, MacUser, CrunchGear, MacDailyNews, GottaBeMobile, Insanely Great Mac, The Raw Feed and Smalltalk Tidbits …
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Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Microsoft enlists Seinfeld, Gates to battle “Get a Mac” ads — Those Apple “Get a Mac” ads have long been an annoyance to Microsoft and to Bill Gates in particular. No surprise as Apple, emboldened by rising market share, continues to ratchet up the venom with quips like …
Discussion:
Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, AppScout, eWeek, Electronista, AppleInsider, Gizmodo, Newlaunches.com, ClickZ News Blog, MEDIANAMA, CNET News.com and Digg
Amazon Web Services Blog:
Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) - Bring Us Your Data — A few months ago I talked about our plans to offer a persistent storage feature for Amazon EC2. At that time I indicated that the service was in a limited alpha release with a small number of customers.
Discussion:
GigaOM, Amazon Web Services …, InformationWeek, Data Center Knowledge, Beyond Search and TechCrunchIT
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Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Photosynthing the nation's capital — A synth of images of the Lincoln Memorial. Click on the image for a larger view. — (Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com) — WASHINGTON, D.C.—On Monday, I got a demo of how Microsoft was opening up Photosynth to consumers. On Wednesday, I put it to the test.
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Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Microsoft launches 3D wonder Photosynth for consumers — On Wednesday night, Photosynth, a technology demo from Microsoft Live Labs, is graduating from its “ooh, that's pretty” status to being a viable Web service for consumers. — The technology, which takes a grouping of photographs …
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Fair use gets a fair shake: YouTube tot to get day in court — The saga of the copyright-infringing toddler continues as a California court refused to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that Universal Music had filed an improper takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
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Stephanie Condon / CNET News.com:
Judge: Copyright owners must consider ‘fair use’
Judge: Copyright owners must consider ‘fair use’
Discussion:
Electronic Frontier Foundation
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
12seconds extends its 15 minutes of fame with an API — 12seconds has a goal: It wants to be the go-to platform for video status updates. In order to make a good platform, you need a good application programming interface (API). Today, 12seconds is launching that API and announcing its first three partners.
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Michelle Thatcher / Webware.com:
Video status site 12seconds launches API — Video sharing site 12seconds, which launched its private alpha late last month, has declared its intent to become the premier site for video status (the Twitter of video, if you will). To that end, the company announced on Thursday morning …
David Chartier / Infinite Loop:
Microsoft demands Xbox LIVE iPhone app to be set free — People seem to really like this App Store thing we keep hearing about, and apps are selling for the iPhone and iPod touch like hot cakes. One too-descriptively-named app, 1337pwn XBOX Live Friends Application (iTunes link) …
Ryan Grove / wonko.com:
Yahoo! Search brings Search Assist, SearchMonkey, and more to the iPhone — In June, my boss came to me with a challenge: bring the full Yahoo! Search experience—including SearchMonkey, Search Assist, shortcuts, and other awesome Yahoo! Search features—to the iPhone with as few compromises as possible.
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Fred / A VC:
Ten Things I Want On My Mobile Phone — 1) Shazam for places - I blogged about this when I was in Scotland earlier this month. I met a company at TechStars yesterday that might be able to build it. I hope they do. — 2) Shazam for people - same idea. even more possibilities for this one.
Discussion:
Mobile Industry News
Jonathan D. Glater / New York Times:
Welcome, Freshmen. Have an iPod. — Taking a step that professors may view as a bit counterproductive, some universities are doling out Apple iPhones and Internet-capable iPods to students. — The always-on Internet devices raise some novel possibilities, like tracking where students congregate.
Seeking Alpha:
Salesforce.com F2Q09 (Qtr End 7/31/08) Earnings Call Transcript — Executives — Marc Benioff - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer — Graham V. Smith - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President — Analysts — Steven Koenig - Keybanc Capital Markets — Presentation
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Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Video: BlackBerry Bold vs. iPhone Web Browser Showdown (It Gets Ugly) — We've seen the BlackBerry Bold and iPhone head-to-head before, as well as the Bold's greatly improved browsing powers over past BlackBerrys, but not side-by-side in a web browser race. It actually gets pretty ugly, uglier than we thought it would.
Discussion:
Electronista, The Mobile Gadgeteer, Mobile Computer, jkOnTheRun and CrackBerry.com blogs
BBC:
Web browser to get ‘privacy mode’ — Microsoft is planning a “privacy mode” for the next release of its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. — By clicking a button, users of IE8 will be able to limit how much information is recorded about where they go online and what they do.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
LinkedIn launches an iPhone app, it's simple but it means business — If the iPhone wants to be taken serious as a business device it's going to have to have applications other than More Cowbell (the app that lets you simulate playing a cowbell). A definite must-have for business users is LinkedIn, the professional online network.
Jeremiah Owyang / Web Strategy:
What Facebook's New ‘Engagement Advertising’ Means to Brands — Update: Only a few brands will trial these new ads, after testing, will then be broadly released later in the year. — A few days ago, I had a private briefing before the press with Tim Kendall, Director of Monetization at Facebook …
Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
Zoho launches document sharing service — Today's addition to the rapidly-expanding suite of Zoho's productivity apps is Zoho Share, a straightforward utility for sharing word processing documents, spreadsheets, PDF files, and slide shows. The online app reads in several popular document formats …