Top Items:
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Lala's Spectacular New Music Service — For a couple of months now, I've been using a music service that's been in a quiet (but open) beta period. It's been kind of amazing. That service is the all-new version of Lala, and it's officially throwing its doors open to the public today.
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Lala May Have Just Built The Next Revolution In Digital Music — Call me a skeptic. When Lala came to our offices last week trying to convince me that music was heading to the cloud, and that they were going to help lead the transition, I wasn't convinced at first.
Discussion:
The Equity Kicker, Pulse 2.0, Silicon Valley Watcher, Gizmodo, Coolfer and Maximum PC all
Peter Burrows / Tech Beat:
Lala Plays a New Song. — Tomorrow, Lala Media Inc. will announce an interesting new approach to selling digital music. It's based on a new type of license it secured with the four major labels and 170,000 indie labels, that lets consumers pay a dime to own a song that they can listen …
Yahoo! Tech:
Palm Treo Pro: A sweet Windows smartphone — San Francisco - The BlackBerry, iPhone, and T-Mobile G1 may be the kings of smartphone cool, but if you ask me, they all share one big shortcoming: They don't run Windows Mobile. — I know that statement puts me in a distinct minority.
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John Herrman / Gizmodo:
HP Shows Off Two New iPaq Phones: One Touch, One Not — HP's rumored touchscreen handset has showed up in the for of the iPaq Data Communicator, a pop-out QWERTY Windows Mobile handset, with a solid but predictable spec sheet. You'll find a full range of 3G capabilities, Wi-Fi, a-GPS …
Discussion:
Obsessable
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Uses Public Service Ads to Link to Own Election Page — Google AdSense ads are embedded in websites all across the web. As a webmaster, you have the option to let Google display Public Service Ads when they cannot find a fitting other ad; these ads will not earn the webmaster revenue.
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Paul Boutin / Wired News:
Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 — Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug. — Writing a weblog today isn't the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis …
John Markoff / New York Times:
Beware the Digital Zombies — REDMOND, Wash. — In a windowless room on Microsoft's campus here, T. J. Campana, a cybercrime investigator, connects an unprotected computer running an early version of Windows XP to the Internet. In about 30 seconds the computer is “owned.”
Discussion:
UMBC ebiquity
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Brightstorm Raises $6 Million For Online Video Tutorials — If high-school education is failing in the U.S., maybe Web video can help. Founded last April, Brightstorm is a Web video site that brings bright, talented teachers together with students who need some extra help.
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Chris Morrison / VentureBeat:Brightstorm launches into the booming online education market
Discussion:
Startup Meme
Sylvie Barak / Inquirer:
Sony recalls game after music offends Muslims — Allah is not a DJ — SONY IS POSTPONING the release of its long-awaited game LittleBigPlanet, due to concerns that a background song might be offensive to Muslim sensibilities. — Little Big Planet, originally scheduled for release on October 24th …
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Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Scott Rafer: The Facebook Platform is Dead — When speaking at the Facebook developer conference today in Berlin, Scott Rafer declared that Facebook platform dead. He posted statistics including one that I posted that suggests Facebook widgets are dead. Lookery's own statistics …
Chris Morris / Forbes:
Microsoft Xbox: Not Ready For Primetime — There's a new member of the “Not Ready for Primetime Players”: The Xbox 360. — Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) has delayed the launch of “Xbox Live Primetime,” its programmed series of interactive games with real-world prizes, until the spring.
PBS:
Ctrl-Alt-Del: Did Apple reboot an important product announcement? — Apple last week introduced a pair of very nice notebook computers that, not at all surprisingly, looked like riffs on the MacBook Air. The company in a separate announcement released 600 high-definition television episodes through the iTunes Store.
Steve Rubel / Micro Persuasion:
RSS Adoption at 11% and it May Be Peaking, Forrester Says — Forrester Research today published a new report on the state of RSS. In short, while there are bright spots, it does not paint the picture of a technology that's going mainstream anytime soon. — On a positive note …
Discussion:
Mashable!, WebProNews, Regular Geek, Profy, Venture Chronicles, Opinionated and Forrester Research
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
BeenVerified hopes to make background checks easier and cheaper — BeenVerified is looking to shake up the background-checking industry with cheap and fast solutions that small businesses can afford. — The New York-based company is launching a service today that can perform …
Discussion:
CenterNetworks
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Twine Launches 1.0 Version - Eyes Facebook, Google Reader, Delicious, Digg, ... When Twine announced itself to the world exactly one year ago, it claimed to be “the first mainstream Semantic Web application”. However despite raising millions of dollars in its quest to bring the Semantic Web …
Discussion:
Download Squad, The Semantic Web, AppScout, Technology Review, Industry Standard, Webware.com and VentureBeat
Jon Fortt / Big Tech:
Apple's next act: Changing PC buying habits — Nvidia inside: Apple's latest MacBook laptops have an Nvidia graphics processor next to their Intel chips, which puts the spotlight on graphics chips as an important part of today's basic computer system. Image: Apple
Discussion:
MacDailyNews
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
ASUS CEO Reveals Eee PC Sales Numbers, Plans for Touch Eee PCs and More Eee Family Products — Earlier this week the ASUS Eee PC celebrated its first birthday (with a full birthday party and cake at LAPTOP Magazine). It was one year ago that the Taiwanese company began selling its first sub-notebook …
Discussion:
Liliputing, Lockergnome Blog Network, Obsessable, jkOnTheRun, SlashGear, Gizmodo and Engadget
Ken Schachter / Red Herring:
Where Congress Puts Its Own Money — Congressional lawmakers are best known as spenders, allocating trillions of dollars for both guns and butter, but they also are investors with an affinity for technology blue chips. — Three of the four most popular investments of the members of the House …
Discussion:
Techdirt
Lou Cabron / 10 Zen Monkeys:
The Great Google Rebellion — Thursday Google unveiled a new design for its iGoogle homepage service. Unfortunately (according to one geek), it's “a big unwanted piece of crap.” — In an email interview today, Google defended the changes. But Google won't let users switch their home pages …
Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:
Google Being More Careful Amid Slump, Schmidt Says — Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular Internet search site, will make fewer acquisitions and slow hiring amid the global economic turmoil, Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said.
Rob Bushway / GottaBeMobile:
Dell and N-Trig: I've Had It — In many ways, the Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC has become one of my favorite Tablet PCs. It is very thin, light, has ample room on the wrist pad for typing, has a scroll wheel, and is generally pleasant to use in portrait mode. It goes to sleep and resumes very quickly.
