Top Items:
The Official Google Blog:
Lively no more — In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it's the best way to create groundbreaking products …
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Kills Lively — Even Google is getting into the downsizing spirit. It just announced that it is killing Lively, its browser-based virtual worlds that could be embedded into other Websites. Lively launched just last July. The death notice on the site says it will shut down on December 31 …
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
BlackBerry Storm review — By now most of us have heard this story in one fashion or another: when Steve Jobs and Apple were in the planning stages of the iPhone, the first carrier they brought the device to was America's largest network, Verizon. Even if you haven't heard how the tale ends …
Discussion:
Personal Technology, Alec Saunders SquawkBox, Gearlog, Switched, Edible Apple, All About Symbian, Engadget Mobile and techeblog.com
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The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Verizon BlackBerry Storm review — The BlackBerry Storm. It feels like ages ago since we first broke news of this bad boy, but the release is finally right around the corner. Literally, it's tomorrow! Need we say more? Heck yeah! We've got a pretty substantial review on the device …
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft, labels try to revive subscriptions — With fewer consumers than hoped for signing up for all-you-can-eat music subscriptions, Microsoft and the record industry are trying to make the option more appealing. — As of Wednesday, those who pay for the $14.95 a month Zune Pass subscription …
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Apple:
Apple TV: About Apple TV software updates — Products Affected — Apple TV — Refer the table below for Apple TV Software Update 2.3 features: — How To — AirTunes Streaming from Apple TV — Music can be streamed via AirTunes to Airport Express speakers or other Apple TVs in your house.
Discussion:
Podcasting News, Gadget Lab, AppleInsider, TheAppleBlog, 9 to 5 Mac, SlashGear, MacRumors, The Mac Observer, O'Grady's PowerPage, CrunchGear, Appletell, Engadget, Macworld, Gizmodo, iLounge and MacBlogz
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John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Google Mobile Uses Private iPhone APIs — Google's just-released and much-publicized update to their Google Mobile iPhone app features some very clever interaction design for the voice search feature. There is an on-screen button you can tap to initiate a voice search manually, but …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Makes Up 88 Percent Of Mozilla's Revenues, Threatens Its Non-Profit Status — Today, the (for-now) non-profit Mozilla Foundation released its financial statements for 2007 (embedded below). Revenues for the organization behind the open-source Firefox browser were up 12 percent to $75 million …
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Mitchell / Mitchell's Blog:Sustainability in Uncertain Times
Discussion:
Computerworld, CNET News, The Register, Ars Technica, Between the Lines and Outside the Lines
Yahoo! Search Blog:
Gluing Together the Best Content on the Web — You may have heard about our experimental visual display of search results on Yahoo! India, called Glue™ Pages. Tonight we're launching a similar, but slightly different experience in the U.S. with Yahoo! Glue™ beta.
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Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Samsung launches 256GB solid state drive — Samsung said it has begun mass producing 256GB solid state drives. This size tops the largest-capacity SSDs found in laptops today. — Samsung currently offers 64GB and 128GB SSDs for laptops. — The new 256GB drives are faster too …
Kate Greene / Technology Review:
How Google's Ear Hears — The new voice-search application for the iPhone marks a milestone for spoken interfaces. — If you own an iPhone, you can now be part of one of the most ambitious speech-recognition experiments ever launched. On Monday, Google announced that it had added voice search …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
SnapTell: Instant Product Lookup From The iPhone. You Want This. — If you have an iPhone, you'll probably want to check out SnapTell Explorer, a free application now available on the App Store. The premise is simple: take a photo of the cover of any CD, DVD, book, or video game …
Mobispine AB:
Mobispine Delivers First Ever True MMS for iPhone — Mobispine AB (MOBS) the market leader in delivering mobile solutions to operators announced the availability of the world's first true Multimedia Messaging (MMS) for iPhone. Mobispine is now offering a “white label” MMS service for iPhone to global operators.
Jeff Young / Chronicle of Higher Education:
Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts — Many students don't even want a college e-mail address these days because they already have well-established digital identities before they arrive on campus. That's the conclusion that officials at Boston College came to in a recent review of their online services.
IEBlog:
IE8: What's After Beta 2 — The announcement of IE8 Beta 2 started an important and public phase of the product development cycle getting broad public feedback. The team is providing detailed information and answering questions about the product in many different places.
Annie Chen / Gmail Blog:
Spice up your inbox with colors and themes — Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven't been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today …
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Mike Snider / USA Today:
‘Grand Theft Auto’ yields road to the ‘Lost and Damned’ — The upcoming episode of the video game Grand Theft Auto IV looks to be a wild one. — GTA IV, which was released in April for the Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, focused on former Eastern European soldier Niko Bellic …
Discussion:
Kotaku, Destructoid, Joystiq, Xbox 360 Fanboy, GamesIndustry.biz, videogaming247 and Edge Online
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
SimCity for the iPhone may ruin my life (in a good way) — No game captured my imagination when I was growing up like SimCity. Certainly, a part of it was my God complex, but more it was the open-ended nature of a game with few rules that let you build a city.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Here Come The Crunchies (Again) — After a very successful debut last year, The Crunchies are returning to once again celebrate the best of entrepreneurship and new startups. With the economy being what it is, 2009 is going to be a tough year for everyone and I see events like The Crunchies …
New York Times:
Web Retailers Are Waging Seasonal Price Wars — SAN FRANCISCO — As deserted malls and department stores struggle to court cash-short consumers with steep discounts this holiday season, a similar and even more ferocious price war is being waged online. — Internet retailers …
