Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
New Microsoft Commercials Are Live — The three new non-Seinfeld commercials, which the New York Times described earlier this week, still don't talk about Vista features. But they do try to break the stereotype that cool and interesting people use Macs, and everyone else is on a Windows machine.
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John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
There's Nothing There — The odd saga of Microsoft's nascent $300 million rebranding campaign brings to mind this nugget of genius from Paul Rand: — “A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it represents is more important than what it looks like.”
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
That Was Fun, But Now Ebay's Selling Off StumbleUpon — In May 2007 eBay acquired website recommendation engine StumbleUpon for $75 million. Now, less than a year and a half later, they're trying to unload it according to a source with knowledge of the sale process.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Sergey Brin Launches A Personal Blog, Talks About His Risk Of Parkinson's — Google Cofounder Sergey Brin launched a personal blog today at too.blogspot.com. — In his first blog post, he explains the blog name: “Welcome to my personal blog. … In the second blog post, he gets a little more serious.
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, Business Technology, Search Engine Land, New York Times, BBC NEWS and Brier Dudley's blog
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Twitter Blog:
Changes Afoot — We're getting ready to launch a refresh of parts of the Twitter.com interface. This release does not include any new features (well, one). It's mostly cosmetic changes. This post describes what we're doing and why. — Moving the tabs
Caroline McCarthy / Webware.com:
O'Reilly: Stop throwing sheep, do something worthy — NEW YORK—Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, is known as a futurist, but his keynote address on Thursday morning at the Web 2.0 Expo was heavy on the realism in the wake of sobering news from Wall Street.
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Kim Zetter / Threat Level:
Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy — A person claiming to be the hacker who obtained access to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's private Yahoo e-mail on Tuesday has posted a supposed first-person account of the hack, revealing the relatively simple steps he says he took to crack the private e-mail …
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Too-Powerful Google Thumbs Its Nose at Everyone-Good Luck With That, Eric! — It used to be, many years ago, that longtime Silicon Valley tech exec Eric Schmidt could work up a very significant head of steam when talking about the thuggish monopolistic practices of Microsoft and its negative impact on the tech industry.
Cap'n Pam Greenebearde / The Official Google Blog:
Google in one more language — As we've written before, one of our goals is to enable everyone using Google to find the information they want easily, no matter what language they speak. — It recently came to our attention that Google was not accessible to a large, influential, and notoriously quick-tempered community: Pirates.
Adam Pash / Lifehacker:
Yugma Integrates Screen Sharing with Skype — Windows/Mac OS X: Free Skype plug-in Yugma Team Collaboration adds a screen sharing feature to Skype. The plug-in is an offshoot of previously mentioned Yugma, a standalone web conferencing and screen-sharing tool that you can use independently if you're not already a Skype user.
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch UK:
Hubdub signs partner deal with Reuters — Hubdub, the UK-based news prediction market aimed exclusively at a US audience, has today won a partnership deal with Reuters. Hubdub allows users to trade predictions with virtual money on the outcomes of breaking news stories and future events.
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
Next-Gen E-Readers Arrive — Amazon's Kindle was fun. Now it's time for electronic readers to get to work. — On Monday, Netherlands-based iRex Technologies is slated to unveil the iRex Reader 1000, the first in a wave of e-reader devices that promise bigger screens and improved interfaces and functionality.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Roundup: Brin's blog, O'Reilly gets serious, Joost's browser version goes live and more — Google's co-founder Sergey Brin starts his own blog — Dubbed “too”, Brin starts off by detailing his fears of getting Parkinson's disease since it runs in his family.
Bret Taylor / FriendFeed Blog:
New FriendFeed design launched... with an exciting new feature! — You might have noticed the new look for FriendFeed. We've been tinkering with a new design for a few weeks, and after spending some time in beta, it's finally ready for primetime. — larger screenshot
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, RotorBlog.com, Pulse 2.0, Webware.com, webmonkey and The Inquisitr
Saul Hansell / Bits:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers — So where were the quants? — That's what has been running through my head as I watch some of the oldest and seemingly best-run firms on Wall Street implode because of what turned out to be really bad bets on mortgage securities.
Discussion:
broadstuff
Rob Diana / Mashable!:
The Future is Yahoo the Platform — During the Microhoo debacle, everyone was wondering who was going to buy Yahoo. While all eyes were on that, Yahoo has been quietly going about its business. Their business now seems to be wanting to become the platform that everyone develops for …
Discussion:
The Real McCrea
Symbian Smart Phones World:
ULTRA HOT: Two New Nokia Eseries Phones In The Works - Nokia E72 and E75 Leaked!!!!! — + ULTRA HOT: Two New Nokia Eseries Phones In The Works! — Nokia E72 and E75 Leaked!!!!! — Two New Nokia QWERTY Phones In The Works! — Leaking confidential information is the growing problem.
Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:
Mobilize: Launchpad — Judging the Launchpad startups. — Here's the end-of-the-day portion of the show that many of us have been waiting for all day: the Launchpad, where a dozen startups get a few minutes to convince us they rock. — Here are our lovely judges.
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
How Many Web Services Can One Person Use? — How many more new social networking or micro-blogging or video-sharing site can one person use? Most of us don't have time to respond to voicemail and e-mail every day, nonetheless check our Twitter updates and Facebook accounts and Flickr friends.
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Considering ‘At a Glance’ Notification Screen for iPhone — A recent patent application from Apple reveals that the company is considering adding a proper “At a Glance” notification screen for the iPhone. The proposed screen would allow users to quickly jump to the desired notification simply …
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet, 12 Inches of Touchtasticness — Lenovo's X200 tablet isn't the best kept secret, but it's a nice looking convertible laptop now that we have the full specs. At 3.5lbs, the configurable tablet features a 12.1" touchscreen (in pen or finger input options) …
Adam Pash / Lifehacker:
Five Best BitTorrent Applications — The days of peer-to-peer file sharing tools ushered into popularity by the original Napster are over and done, and today, BitTorrent reigns supreme. It took some time for BitTorrent to gain mainstream popularity, but now that it has …
XBMC Media Center:
XBMC ‘Atlantis’ Beta 1 released - now serving all common platforms — Team-XBMC is proud to announce the first cross-platform Beta version of XBMC media center for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger), Windows, and Xbox, in preparation for the upcoming stable release of XBMC, code named ‘Atlantis’.
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
Thoughts on the Evolution of Facebook — After months of hard work, we're at a point where almost all 100 million people around the world on Facebook are using the new design. As we continue to roll this out, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we've built and why I think it's an important step for us.
Stephen Totilo / MTV Multiplayer:
GameStop Promises Huge Stores, More Games, Special Drums And No Fear Of ‘Burnout’ — Last week, about 4200 GameStop store managers from across the United States gathered in Las Vegas for the gaming retail giant's annual eXpo. Game publishers showcased their line-ups.
