Top Items:
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Apple Apps “Bubble” Talk Just That, As Downloads Soar — You may have seen the Apple advertisement in the New York Times this morning (back page of the Business section) extolling the virtues of the iPhone. Nothing new there. — If you made it through the fine print …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Computerworld Blogs, Gadgetell, VentureBeat, ChannelWeb, AppleInsider, Gadget Lab, MacBlogz and Mashable!
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Jim Dalrymple / Macworld:
Apple: 300 million iPhone apps downloaded — Apple on Friday said 300 million iPhone apps have been downloaded from its App Store since it opened in July. — The news comes in the form of two ads placed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The ads highlight …
Discussion:
Business Technology, MacRumors, TG Daily, Apple 2.0, The Register, InformationWeek, World of Apple and digg.com
Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:
Ballmer: Yahoo Deal Better If Done Soon — Q&A: Steve Ballmer and Qi Lu — After a nearly five month search, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said it has found a new executive to lead its charge against Google Inc. in the online search and advertising business: Qi Lu, a technologist who was previously a top executive at Yahoo Inc.
Erica Sadun / Ars Technica:
Hidden SDK features transform iPhone into TV gaming device — Look what we found — What do you do after uncovering undocumented SDK features? I got in touch with Freeverse, makers of Moto Chaser, one of the top iPhone games in App Store. After a few back and forth e-mails …
Discussion:
Engadget, IntoMobile, Appletell, VentureBeat, TUAW, MobileCrunch, iLounge, MacBlogz, 9 to 5 Mac, AppleInsider, Touch Arcade, 148AppsNews Archives, MacRumors, techeblog.com and digg.com
John Markoff / New York Times:
Thieves Winning Online War, Maybe in Your PC — SAN FRANCISCO — Internet security is broken, and nobody seems to know quite how to fix it. — Despite the efforts of the computer security industry and a half-decade struggle by Microsoft to protect its Windows operating system, malicious software is spreading faster than ever.
J.W. Crump / The Bivings Report:
A Look At Failed Social Networks — Many social networking sites have come and gone, though it's easy to forget about most of them with monsters like Youtube and Facebook acting like they are the only kids in the classroom. Social networking online began with a site called Six Degrees …
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Wikipedia's WYSIWYG Dilemma — The Wikimedia Foundation recently announced a $890,000 grant from the U.S.-based Stanton Foundation to simplify its very techy user interface for editing posts. It's a big chunk of change on top of a new $6 million budget for the non-profit encyclopedia …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft signs major deal with Dell for Live Search — Microsoft and Dell have signed a deal via which Dell will be shipping new PCs with the Live Search toolbar preinstalled, according to sources familiar with the arrangement between the two companies. — Microsoft officials declined …
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Bonnie Cha / Crave: The gadget blog:
Verizon officially rolls out BlackBerry Storm firmware update — Earlier on Friday, we reported on rumors that Verizon Wireless would release a firmware update for the RIM BlackBerry Storm, but it's now official. — The carrier has begun rolling out the software upgrade via …
Discussion:
I4U News, Engadget, SlashPhone, MobileCrunch, IntoMobile, Electronista, BlackBerryNews.com, TechSpot, PalmAddicts, Gizmodo, PhoneDog.com Cell … and The Toybox
Nelson Minar / Nelson's Weblog:
Warcraft account security — My World of Warcraft account is now more secure than my bank account. It is harder to steal 5,000 fake Warcraft gold from me than $5,000 real US dollars. Why? Because unlike my bank, my computer game supports two factor authentication.
Robert McMillan / PC World:
FBI: Criminals Auto-dialing With Hacked VoIP Systems — Criminals are taking advantage of a bug in the Asterisk Internet telephony system that lets them pump out thousands of scam phone calls in an hour, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Friday.
Discussion:
VoIP Watch
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Google Plasters 75% More Ads On Search Pages...Desperately Seeking Clicks? (GOOG) — So far in Q4, Google (GOOG) is serving 3.82 ads per keyword — about 52% more than it did during Q3. During November, Google served 4.38 ads per keyword, a 75% increase over its Q3 average.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Facebook Introduces Embeddable Videos Only Your Friends Can See — Video is not front and center on Facebook. It's a tiny link in the sidebar of a member's homepage that many hardly notice. They are probably more familiar with the random videos from friends that sort of pop up in their News feeds.
Discussion:
Scobleizer
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Social Network Profile Costs Woman College Degree — Forget losing your job, apparently your MySpace or Facebook profile and photos can now cause you to lose your degree. In what may be one of the most frightening rulings regarding social networks and privacy to date …
Discussion:
GMSV, TECH.BLORGE.com, VentureBeat, The Social Times, Ars Technica, Chronicle of Higher Education and digg.com
Brad Stone / Bits:
Pirates of the Amazon Abandon Ship — Earlier this week, two students from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, made headlines by releasing a plug-in for the Firefox Web browser that made it easy for people who were browsing books, music and movies on Amazon.com to download …
Discussion:
nettime mailing list, Zeropaid File Sharing …, Threat Level, TechnoLlama, Slashdot and digg.com
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Hate Vista? Dell Now Charging $150 Extra for Windows XP (MSFT) — We know that many consumers just don't like Windows Vista. But just how much more will people pay for a copy of the now nominally off-the-market Windows XP? — More and more. In June, Dell (DELL) …
Sindya Bhanoo / Industry Standard:
Facebook Connect vs. Google Friend Connect: A battle for Internet mindshare — One hour after Google did a public launch of Google Friend Connect, Facebook launched Facebook Connect. The simultaneous launch is not a coincidence — the two competing services are battling for mindshare …
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:
First Qualcomm Snapdragon netbook concept is a tablet — What do we have here? Looks like some of the first pics I've seen of a netbook based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset have appeared at Silicon.com. While the eight portraits likely represent more concept design rather than actual product, I like what I see.
Paulita David / Google Retail Blog:
Cyber Monday is the new Black... Labels: 2008 Winter Holiday, Online Traffic Trends, Seasonality — ...Friday that is. Fashionistas and Frugal Freddies alike hit the keyboards in record numbers this Cyber Monday. According to comScore, the four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday saw spending online up 13%.
Andy Patrizio / internetnews.com:
Does Google Have a Secret OS? — Net Applications caused a bit of a stir this week with a report that showed Microsoft's operating system share had dipped below 90 percent. This played very well where anti-Microsoft sentiment was strongest, not surprisingly.
Discussion:
Forbes
Rik Myslewski / The Register:
Ex-Appler resurrects Mac-friendly RAID — ‘Set and forget’ — Apple's XServe RAID may have given up the ghost, but now there's a new option for storage-hungry Mac shops. — Today, The Reg spoke with Alex Grossman, formerly the senior director of hardware server and storage at Apple …
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Qitera: Social Bookmarking for the Deep Web — Earlier this year, we featured a stealth startup called Qitera, which just launched publically today. At its core, Qitera is a social bookmarking service, but unlike most of its competitors, Qitera can not only save a screenshot of the site …
Discussion:
RotorBlog.com
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Did YouTube Just Turn On HD For Real? — After teasing us for a year with the option to watch “higher quality” videos that weren't quite high-def, it appears that YouTube is making the switch to HD, at least for some videos that have been uploaded in that quality.
Discussion:
Webware.com, iTWire, NewTeeVee, Industry Standard, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, TheNextWeb.com, TechSpot, Epicenter, Scobleizer, Engadget HD, Electronista, SlashGear and Silicon Alley Insider
Charles Arthur / Guardian:
Charlie's Angles: Why rickrolling is bad for the link economy — The other day a message popped up on Twitter. Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at New York University, asked — in all seriousness, and innocence — “I know I sound clueless and that's never pleasant, but... what in tarnation does ‘rickrolled’ mean?”
Andrew Noyes / Tech Daily Dose:
Change.org Gets Boost From Obama Transition Site — With increased attention to Change.gov, President-elect Barack Obama's transition Web site, we wondered whether Change.org — a self-described “social entrepreneurship venture” based in San Francisco — might be benefiting from a surge …
Will Park / IntoMobile:
HTC MAX 4G reviewed, liked — The world's first GSM/WiMAX handset was launched not too long ago for use exclusively on Russia's Scartel-owned Yota WiMAX network. The HTC MAX 4G sports GSM/EDGE and WiMAX hardware on top of the WiFi radio to ensure high-speed wireless connectivity …
