Top Items:
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft still paying people to search — Microsoft's latest effort to get people to use its search service is something called SearchPerks, which gives people points for using the search engine that can later be redeemed for prizes. — Users who agree to download a small program to track …
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Kip Kniskern / LiveSide:
Live Search Perks - more rewards for using Live Search — It all started with Live Search Club, the somewhat maligned program to reward users for playing games using Live Search (and somewhat skewing search share counts, causing a bit of a scramble by Compete.com and others).
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:Microsoft tries to lure more searchers with another giveaway
Discussion:
Mashable!
Werner Vogels / All Things Distributed:
Expanding the Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server on Amazon EC2 — The backend servers that power the world of Internet Services have become increasingly diverse. With today's announcement that Microsoft Windows Server is available on Amazon EC2 we can now run the majority of popular software systems in the cloud.
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InfoWorld:
Ballmer: Microsoft will soon release ‘Windows Cloud’ OS — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed a few details on Wednesday of a forthcoming operating system that will help developers write Internet-based applications. — Within a month, Microsoft will unveil what Ballmer called “Windows Cloud.”
Discussion:
GottaBeMobile
John / What They Play:
New Wii due by 2011 — What They Play has heard from multiple sources in the game development and publishing community that Nintendo is currently showing early presentations of its next home console hardware. Apparently set to hit the market “by 2011” the new device is said to be the true …
Discussion:
CrunchGear, DVICE, Electronista, Joystiq, I4U News, Kotaku, GamesIndustry.biz, The Tech Report, Engadget, Technology Live, techtickerblog.com, Gizmodo and Edge Online
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
The Future of Widgets on Facebook: Dead — When Facebook released their platform last year, the company generated more buzz in the Valley since Google went public. Thousands of developers flocked to their platform and now more than 40,000 applications have been built.
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Vasanth Sridharan / Silicon Alley Insider:Facebook Redesign Succeeds: Widgets Are Dead
Discussion:
Lonely CEO Media
Cleve Nettles / 9 to 5 Mac:
Apple drops NDA on released iPhone software — Apple today gave up the fight to keep the NDA on released iPhone applications built with the iPhone SDK. The NDA has recieved much bad press and complaints from developers who wanted to communicate their experiences with developing programs for the iPod/iPhone platform.
Discussion:
TUAW, Ars Technica, MacRumors, Technology blog, ReadWriteWeb, Rev2.org, Silicon Alley Insider, TeleRead, TechCrunch, Macworld, DailyTech, Unwired View, Valleywag and Engadget
Jonathan Skillings / CNET News:
HP to buy LeftHand Networks — Hewlett-Packard announced on Wednesday that it intends to buy storage specialist LeftHand Networks for $360 million. — Privately held LeftHand will fill out HP's virtualization offerings as the tech giant targets midsize companies and corporate branch offices trying …
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BBC:
Blizzard wins Warcraft bot payout — World of Warcraft creator Blizzard has won $6m (£3.36m) in damages from the makers of a software ‘bot’. — The damages award comes after Blizzard won the first round of its legal battle against MDY Industries in July 2008.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple TV Gets An Upgrade — Without Steve Jobs' Help (AAPL) — A neat new feature is coming to Apple TV, Apple's (AAPL) set-top box, without Apple's help. No, it's not a DVD drive, which we suggested yesterday. But clever coders have devised an easier way to add more software to your Apple TV …
John Biggs / CrunchGear:
Netflix to stream movies from Starz — In an interesting move by Netflix and Starz, about 2,500 featured movies and concerts are now available for instant streaming over the Internet and using the Roku Netflix box. Because Starz offers first run “premium” content, this move expands …
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Craig Hockenberry / furbo.org:
[REDACTED] — Thank God—that's the last time I'm going to type that word for awhile. The meme is dead, long live the SDK. — As a way to celebrate the lifting of the NDA, we bring you some very special source code. To wile away the time between our product submission and the launch …
Discussion:
Macworld
Savio D'Souza / Reuters:
Slide and Facebook to Broadcast CBS, News Corp, Warner Brothers, NBC's Hulu Video — Slide, the maker of software apps for social networks Facebook and MySpace, signed a deal with CBS Interactive, Comcast's E! Entertainment channel, Time Warner's Warner Brothers, News Corp and NBC Universal's Hulu …
Discussion:
Valleywag
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Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:Slide Cuts Deals With Time Warner, CBS
Discussion:
Epicenter, Mashable!, CNET News, MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer, paidContent.org and BoomTown
Mike Ricciuti / CNET News:
Oracle buys maker of 3D retail software — Oracle is adding to its retail software lineup by acquiring Advanced Visual Technology, a maker of 3D space planning software for retailers. — AVT, based in Hertfordshire, England, sells a product called Retail Focus, which lets retailers plan store floors and shelf space.
Discussion:
All Points Blog
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Studios Sue to Bar a DVD Copying Program — Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle-based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program that allows people to make digital copies of their DVDs. — As the opening warning on every DVD indicates, Hollywood has bitterly opposed such copying.
Todd Haselton / LAPTOP Magazine:
XOHM WiMAX In Baltimore: Speed Tests With XOHM ExpressCard — We went to Baltimore today to check out America's first fully-functional XOHM city for ourselves. Earlier today, we had a hands-on experience with XOHM using a Nokia N810 WiMAX tablet. Since then, we've gone out and purchased …
Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:
StumbleUpon 2.0: Good-bye, software toolbar — On Tuesday night StumbleUpon is changing the way users interact with the service, ditching the need for a software-based browser toolbar in place of a small frame that loads on top of the Web site you're on. Users with the toolbar installed …
Ann Smarty / Search Engine Journal:
Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What's Better? — Facebook allows for 2 networking tools: — Creating/ joining a Facebook group; — Creating/ joining a Facebook fan page. — While the major differences become evident only after you try out them first, we decided to create and promote both for Search Engine Journal:
Discussion:
MarketingVOX
Mike Atherton / Times of London:
Apple threatens to shut down iTunes over royalty hike — Apple considers shutting down their online music store if panel decide royalties for downloaded tracks should be increased — Apple could shut down iTunes, the world's biggest online music store, if a ruling expected tomorrow forces …
Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:
Leaked: RIM's New BlackBerry Terminator 9900! — On AT&T waiting for the Bold? Visions of a BlackBerry Storm dancing thorugh your head? Screw it! Set your eyes on RIM's latest device, the BlackBerry Terminator. With no less than four machine guns, this baby is RIM's literal response …
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Bezos, Benioff invest in appointment-booker ZocDoc — There are some big new names backing ZocDoc, a start-up that lets you book doctor's appointments online (currently just in New York). Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has contributed an undisclosed amount to the company, as has Bezos Expeditions …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, AppScout, VentureBeat, paidContent.org, Mashable!, CenterNetworks and CRM FYI
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Where Are All The RDF-based Semantic Web Apps? — RDF is the cornerstone of The Semantic Web, yet there still very few commercial RDF apps. — In the latest issue of Nodalities, a magazine about the Semantic Web by UK company Talis, there is an article by Talis CTO Ian Davis about the state of Semantic Web applications.
Discussion:
The Semantic Web
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Kevin Mitnick detained, released after Colombia trip — Since being released from prison eight years ago, Kevin Mitnick's brushes with the law have consisted of a few parking tickets and a citation for driving without a front license plate—that is, until he returned from a trip to Colombia two weeks ago.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
BlackBerry Storm launching on Vodafone world wide November 9th? — We're working to completely confirm this info, but it does sound about right. Two of our sources have told us that Vodafone's global launch date for the BlackBerry Storm is on November 9th.
Jon Fortt / Big Tech:
Why Palm needs Android — The new Treo Pro runs Microsoft's Windows Mobile - but Palm may get even more mileage out of embracing Google's Android for future phones. Image: Palm — Unless you're Google, these look like rough times to launch a mobile operating system. — That puts Palm (PALM) in an awkward position.
