Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Is Google Playing Chicken With the Justice Department? — Are Google and Yahoo thinking walking away from its controversial search advertising deal, as reported in an amusingly hedged report in The Wall Street Journal last night? — How's this for covering your bases in a story …
Discussion:
Techdirt
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Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Talks Over Google-Yahoo Search Deal Fail to Progress — The likelihood that Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. will walk away from their planned search partnership has risen, say people familiar with the matter. — The two Internet companies have so far failed to reach an agreement on their partnership …
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Court Greatly Limits Software And Business Method Patents — from the huge-victory-for-innovation dept — I don't say this often, but it looks like the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) — or “the patent court” — got a big one mostly right.
Discussion:
Reuters, A VC, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Between the Lines, CNET News, Mashable!, Windows-Now.com, broadstuff and The Technology Liberation …
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Dennis Crouch / Patent Law Blog:
In re Bilski: Patentable Process Must Either (1) be Tied to a …
In re Bilski: Patentable Process Must Either (1) be Tied to a …
Discussion:
Bits, John Palfrey, Feld Thoughts, Tech Daily Dose, BlawgIT and LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®
Michael Calore / webmonkey:
OMG! Gmail Adds SMS Chat — Users of Google's Gmail service can now send text message chats to mobile phones using the webapp's built-in Chat feature. — Google is adding the experimental functionality through Gmail Labs. To turn it on, go to the Labs tab within Gmail's settings.
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Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Apple hires top IBM chip designer and blade server guru — Apple's decision to hire Mark Papermaster away from IBM could mean that its Xserve lineup is taking on a more prominent role. — (Credit: Apple) — Updated throughout at 4:55 p.m. PT with additional details and comment from IBM.
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John Markoff / New York Times:
I.B.M. Sues to Block Executive's Move to Apple
I.B.M. Sues to Block Executive's Move to Apple
Discussion:
Edible Apple
Kiyoshi Takenaka / Reuters:
Nintendo sees overseas DSi launch by next summer — TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd will likely launch a new model of its top-selling handheld player, the DS, in overseas markets by the summer of 2009, President Satoru Iwata said.
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Shino Yuasa / Associated Press:
Nintendo eyes record profit in fiscal year
Nintendo eyes record profit in fiscal year
Discussion:
Agence France Presse
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
BlackBerry Curve 8900 First Impressions (Kills the Original) — RIM excels at many things, but keeping secrets ain't one of 'em, so we'd eyeballed the BlackBerry Curve 8900 (nee Javelin) quite a bit before this AT&T-branded one dropped in our laps. It's a Bolder version of the current Curve …
Kirk / Medialoper:
Waiting for Google's Kindle Killer — During an onstage interview with Chris Anderson at this year's BEA, Jeff Bezos described his vision of a world where any book ever published would be available anywhere, at any time. At the time it seemed like one of those distant fantasies that might be decades away.
Amanda Kelly / Inside AdWords:
Improvements to Ads Quality — We're always working on improvements that will help us show the most relevant ads to our searchers, and we're excited to tell you that we'll soon introduce two changes designed to enhance how we calculate Quality Score and rank ads.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents — Google has announced that it will now begin including scanned documents in its search results - a feat that requires an immense amount of processing power and advanced image recognition technology. Unlike standard text documents …
Discussion:
GigaOM
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook May Be Growing Too Fast. And Hitting The Capital Markets Again. — When Facebook raised $240 million from Microsoft in 2007, and another $235 million in debt and equity in 2008, everyone thought they had plenty of cash to get through their big growth phase.
Discussion:
Data Center Knowledge
Kurt Mackey / Ars Technica:
More on the Windows 7 UI: new taskbar will be mandatory — While we haven't yet gotten our hands on a Windows 7 build with the new taskbar, we did talk to Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky about the various UI changes and what we can expect at release time. — It's not a surprise …
Discussion:
OSNews
Charlie Sorrel / Gadget Lab:
8 Things to Expect in the Next iPhone Update — One of the great things about the iPhone is the regular software updates. Free and automatic improvements are piped, hot and steaming, to your pocket computer. — We don't know exactly when the next version of the iPhone operating system …
Arn / MacRumors:
Opera Browser Not Allowed in iPhone App Store — The NY Times profiles Opera Software, the company that distributes the Opera browser for multiple platforms. According to the article, however, Apple is not allowing an iPhone version of the browser into the App Store:
Discussion:
Technologizer, AppleInsider, Apple Gazette, Unwired View, Mac Soda, VentureBeat and digg.com
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Yoono Announces Support For IE, New Services — Yoono, the slick browser plugin that serves as both a social network aggregator and media hub, has announced its impending support for Internet Explorer which will be available on November 7th. In conjunction with the the new version …
Rick Turoczy / ReadWriteWeb:
Selling Ads on Your Twitter Background? You'll Love Magpie — While Twitter has been less than forthcoming on how they plan to monetize their service, there is no shortage of ideas from third parties on ways to get paid for spending time with Twitter. From pay-to-tweet to selling off …
Discussion:
Mashable!
Jim Zemlin:
Linux to Ship on More Desktops than Windows — For those that decry the constant prediction of the “year of the Linux desktop” I am happy to say that next year Linux may actually ship on more desktops than Windows or the Mac. That is right, I said next year. What is driving this? Two words: fast boot.
Discussion:
DesktopLinux.com, InformationWeek, OStatic blogs, Linux News from Linux Loop and Computerworld Blogs
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Study: Google runs more than 10 million Web sites — There's no doubt Google is a vast power on the Internet, but because the company uses its own software to host Web sites, it's possible to see just how powerful. — Specifically, Google operates about 10.5 million Web sites in October …
Discussion:
Broadband Developments
John Kennedy / Silicon Republic:
BlackBerry Storm price plans revealed — Vodafone today revealed the price plans for the much-anticipated BlackBerry Storm device that will enter the market just in time for Christmas. The device will come with mobile TV and music downloads included. — The new BlackBerry …
PBS:
Azure Blues: Microsoft and the electric power industry have a lot in common. — It isn't very often I get to apply Moore's Law to a non-Information Technology business and rarer still that I can then relate the whole thing back to Microsoft, so I'm going for it. Here's what the solar power industry can teach us about Microsoft:
Discussion:
Microsoft Watch
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Electronics Arts reports loss, will lay off more than 500 workers — Electronic Arts reported a big loss today and said it would lay off 6 percent of its 9,000-person work force, or roughly 540 people. — The cutbacks come after a huge increase in the employment rolls thanks to acquisitions …
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Hard Times? Not for iPhone Developers — Job seekers struggling to land gigs during the economic downturn are going to wish they had iPhone programming skills. — The demand for iPhone developers worldwide has grown 500 percent in the past six months, according to oDesk, an outsourcing firm for technology jobs.