Top Items:
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Microsoft parks “I'm a PC” recording booth outside Apple Store — Microsoft Corp., engrossed in multi-million dollar marketing blitz to counter anti-Vista propaganda from rival Apple, Inc., is now using a portion of its budget to fuel guerilla retail tactics near the Mac maker's stores.
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:
VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, Valleywag, p2pnet, Traffick, All Facebook and Data Center Knowledge
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Is Google Playing Chicken With the Justice Department? — Are Google and Yahoo thinking of walking of away from their 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 …
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Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Talks Over Google-Yahoo Search Deal Fail to Progress
Talks Over Google-Yahoo Search Deal Fail to Progress
Discussion:
The Microsoft Blog, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Portfolio, TechFlash, Ars Technica, Contentinople, Epicenter, Tech Trader Daily, Inquirer, InformationWeek, Mashable!, BloggingStocks, Deal Journal, Between the Lines, MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer, MediaFile, Search Engine Journal and The Register
Monica Chen / DigiTimes:
Asustek expects to ship US$200 Eee PC in 2009, says president — Asustek Computer has announced consolidated revenues of NT$78.26 billion (US$2.39 billion) for the third quarter this year, while net profit after tax was NT$6.38 billion, an increase of 13% on quarter, but a drop of 14.2% on year.
Discussion:
Liliputing, LAPTOP Magazine, Gadget Lab, TechSpot, Maximum PC all, CrunchGear, I4U News, CostPerNews, CloudAve, The Tech Report, jkOnTheRun, GottaBeMobile.com and Gizmodo
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 …
Discussion:
Boy Genius Report, IntoMobile, BlackBerryNews.com, BerryReview.com, CrackBerry.com blogs, BlackBerry Cool and PalmAddicts
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Sprint, Cogent in Peering Feud - Sprint disconnects from Cogent network, impacting customers — Cogent is no stranger to peering disputes, fighting with Level3 back in 2005 and AOL back in 2002. While most peering arrangements involve carriers trading equal amounts of bandwidth …
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Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
Eee PC 1000H Runs Windows 7 Well — Here is a confession: I am getting pretty tired of netbooks running Windows XP. So when we got our Windows 7 Beta disc at PDC earlier this week, I couldn't wait to get it running on a netbook. — This morning we loaded Windows 7 Ultimate (Pre-Beta) on an ASUS Eee PC 1000H.
Live Mesh:
Update on installation of Live Mesh for Mobile - FIXED! — Thank you for using the Live Mesh for Mobile client! For users who saw a failure to add their mobile phone to their mesh, we have deployed an updated build of Live Mesh for Mobile. You will need to download the Mobile Installer from http …
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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.
Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
Yahoo! Video Streams Surge 56% in September to Claim Second Spot to YouTube which has broken 5 Billion Monthly Videos Serve, Nielsen Online — Video streams on Yahoo! dramatically increased in September to 265 million, up 56 percent from August's 169 million.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Would You Pay $162 a Year for All the Music You Can Eat? — That's the offer, sort of, being made by something called Datz Music Lounge. — The details, from MusicWeek (via Coolfer): You give the company 100 British pounds, and for the next year you can download all the music you want.
Glenn Fleishman / Ars Technica:
WiFi thermostat puts power (and cooling) at your fingertips — In an age where we can put WiFi into a plastic bunny that wiggles its ears in response to commands over the Internet, why not stick the same wireless networking into a thermostat that allows remote monitoring and schedule changes?
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.
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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
No Opera Mini for the iPhone — It seems that the engineers at Opera developed a version of Opera Mini that would run on the iPhone (and the iPod touch), but this browser will never see light of day because Apple rejected it from the App Store. … Well that sucks.
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.
RELATED:
Reuters:
Tesla sees new financing, founder offers support — Tesla Motors Inc expects to close a financing round of over $20 million from existing investors as soon as next week to bolster a cash balance now at $9 million, said Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of the electric car start-up.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, VentureBeat, The Register, CNET News, PE Hub News, CrunchGear, Valleywag and Earth2Tech
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.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Reuters, TG Daily, The iPhone Blog, AppleInsider, Macsimum News, Engadget, MacBlogz, 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors and New York Times
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Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Trojan virus steals bank info — The details of around 500,000 online bank accounts and credit and debit cards have been stolen by a virus described as “one of the most advanced pieces of crimeware ever created”. — The Sinowal trojan has been tracked by RSA, which provides security solutions for Fortune 500 companies.
Discussion:
MacDailyNews
Jack Schofield / Guardian:
Microsoft's Azure is not Hailstorm, but what's the point of it? — Microsoft has made its Azure cloud computing announcements at PDC, so now we know what it's doing: it is extending Windows 2008 Server into the online market so that programmers who develop applications in Visual Studio …
Peter Bright / One Microsoft Way:
Ars@PDC: Windows 7 Libraries under the microscope — After using the PDC Windows 7 build for a few days now, one feature I have already grown to appreciate is Libraries. The Libraries provide a view of the filesystem that is tailored to specific content types.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Is There Still A Big Loophole For Software And Business Method Patents? — I've been talking to plenty of people (mostly lawyers) about the Bilski ruling on software and business method patents while also having more time to reread the discussion in detail, and I'm going to backtrack on my original assessment.
AppleInsider:
Apple's NVIDIA-based MacBook Airs arrive early, get unboxed — Apple Store online customers are reporting Friday that their NVIDIA-based MacBook Air notebooks have begun arriving almost a week early. Included are some unboxing notes and photos. — Unboxing notes
Discussion:
MacRumors