Top Items:
Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Tasks — Posted by Jonathan Terleski, Michael Lancaster, and Brett Lider, Tasks team — People use Gmail to get stuff done, so we've added a lightweight way to keep track of what you need to do, right from within Gmail. — Take entering a new task: just click in an empty part of your list and start typing.
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Gmail Finally Gets A To-Do List — Someone at Google finally realized how helpful it would be to add a to-do list to Gmail. It is called “Tasks” and is now available in Gmail Labs (click on the beaker icon next to “Settings” on the upper right hand corner of Gmail).
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Rumor: Apple's iTunes going DRM-free starting Tuesday — Apple is believed to be on the verge of an end-of-year push that would start by finally offering unprotected iTunes Store music from all major labels and would switch a special post-holiday campaign giving away music and videos to Europeans.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, CNET News, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac, Tech Central, The iPhone Blog, Technologizer, Engadget, Insanely Great Mac and Edible Apple
Google Code Blog:
Native Client: A Technology for Running Native Code on the Web — Modern PCs can execute billions of instructions per second, but today's web applications can access only a small fraction of this computational power. If web developers could use all of this power, just imagine the rich, dynamic experiences they could create.
Nick Bilton / O'Reilly Radar:
The Twitter Gold Mine & Beating Google to the Semantic Web — There's always been jabs at Twitter for not having a viable business model and the chatter has increased in the current economic climate. In a recent interview Evan Williams, Twitter CEO, said “We had planned to focus on revenue …
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Alexandra Kenin / Google Mobile Blog:
New AdWords options for iPhone and G1 — Today, the Google mobile ads team is announcing a new campaign-level option that allows those of you who are AdWords advertisers to show your desktop text and image ads on the iPhone, the T-Mobile G1, and other mobile devices with full (HTML) Internet browsers.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Inside AdWords, Local Mobile Search, Google Watch, Between the Lines, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, AppScout, AndroidGuys, iMAndroid, Search Engine Watch, Android Community, MediaMemo, CNET News, Gearlog, Unwired View, VentureBeat, Kelsey Group Blogs, IntoMobile, Silicon Alley Insider, Search Engine Journal, The Register, TECH.BLORGE.com, Epicenter, Tech Beat, mocoNews.net, TechCrunch, MarketingVOX, Search Engine Land, Mashable!, Technologizer, iPhone Buzz, CenterNetworks, InformationWeek and WebProNews
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Microsoft: To Unveil Zune/Danger Device At CES Keynote? — The Consumer Electronics Show kicks off January 7 with a keynote from Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, taking the spot which in past years had been filled by the now semi-retired Bill Gates. The company always unveils a product …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Gadgetell, The Register, VentureBeat, TECH.BLORGE.com, CrunchGear, Unwired View, TechFlash and Podcasting News
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
What Sequoia Capital Was Thinking — It's been two months since Sequoia Capital gathered its portfolio company CEOs, for an evening of tough talk about new economic realities. It has come to be known as the graveyard presentation, both by those in attendance and the thousands more who've viewed leaked copies online.
Discussion:
Startup Chatter
DealBook:
Tribune Files for Bankruptcy — Updated: The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware on Monday, as the owner of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team struggled to cope with mountains of debt and falling ad revenue.
Discussion:
Tribune Company, Bits, Gawker, Industry Standard, Venture Chronicles, Recovering Journalist and Business Week
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Wall Street Journal:
Yahoo Closer to Naming CEO — Yahoo Inc. directors steering the search for a new chief executive are moving closer to a recommendation and have authorized checking references on a few key candidates, say people familiar with the matter, although a decision is likely to be weeks away at the earliest.
Reuters:
Young graduates struggle for Silicon Valley jobs — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Young professionals and recent graduates have struggled to find work in a sliding economy, but one area — Silicon Valley — has been relatively immune. Until now. — Silicon Valley companies that initially resisted …
Business Technology:
Burn Rate: Laid Off But No Longer Looking — Dozens of Silicon Valley technology startups have cut back on headcount over the past few weeks. But it's not all doom and gloom: Some of those layoff victims have quickly bounced back. — Consider the fate of those recently laid off …
Discussion:
Jobwire
Richard Wray / Guardian:
Technology stalwarts back Google rival Kosmix in fight for cyberspace — A Silicon Valley start-up that is taking on the might of Google has attracted investment from Time Warner, owner of AOL, and the man who launched one of the world's most popular mobile phones.
The Pulitzer Prizes:
Pulitzer Prizes Broadened to Include Online-Only Publications Primarily Devoted to Original News Reporting … The Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, which honor the work of American newspapers appearing in print, have been expanded to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations …
Discussion:
Twist Image, TechCrunch, CNET News, Mashable!, GigaOM, Podcasting News, Gawker and paidContent.org
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Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
First look: Firefox 3.1 beta 2, now with private browsing — Mozilla has announced the official release of the second Firefox 3.1 beta. This version introduces the new private browsing mode feature and several other noteworthy changes. — The 3.1 roadmap began to coalesce after the release of 3.0 earlier this year.
Discussion:
Mozilla, Computerworld, AppScout, Lifehacker, TheNextWeb.com, Between the Lines and Mashable!
Yahoo! Search Blog:
BOSS Reaches a Milestone — We launched Yahoo! Search BOSS this past July and we just reached a significant milestone - the BOSS API is currently serving more than 10 million queries per day. 10 million in and of itself isn't particularly significant, but we're sharing it because we believe growing …
Discussion:
Webware.com, SitePoint, WebProNews, Silicon Alley Insider, Search Engine Land and The Semantic Web
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Is Google Ready to Make (Unpleasant) History? — I vow to provide some upbeat news here sooner than later. But until then, here's another downbeat data point, from Citibank's (C) Mark Mahaney: He predicts that search advertising, which has been the one dependable growth business during the econalypse …
Discussion:
Smalltalk Tidbits …
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Dell Sees Double With Data Center in a Container — Ty Schmitt, principal thermal and mechanical architect for Dell's Data Center Solutions group, outside of Dell's double-stacked data center in Round Rock, Tex. (Credit: Erich Schlegel for The New York Times)
Chris Preimesberger / eWeek:
Cloud-Service Provider RightScale Deposits $13 Million in VC Funding — Resource Library: — RightScale's Web-based, cloud-computing management platform enables the use of its own scalable IT infrastructure on demand, while the user maintains complete control of the application itself.
internetnews.com:
Yahoo Counting on New Ad Tech as Woes Mount — As a year of turmoil ends in a sour economic climate, the troubled Web pioneer remains hopeful for the future of display ads. — The jots and turns throughout Yahoo's past year paint a clear enough picture of a Web pioneer struggling to figure out its future.
Tim Stevens / Engadget:
Contract-laden 3G Acer Aspire One hitting US at just $99? — These days most people wouldn't think of buying a new phone without getting a couple hundies off in exchange for their wireless free will. But netbooks? Internationally such deals aren't altogether uncommon, but we haven't seen one here yet.
Business Technology:
Samsung: It's Ugly Out There — Samsung Electronics, South Korea's largest electronics company, is often considered a bellwether for the global electronics manufacturing industry. If that's the case, things aren't looking so good for the industry. — At Samsung's Tech Forum in San Francisco …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nvidia will comply with OpenCL standard for new graphics-based computing — For the past couple of years, graphics chip maker Nvidia's big strategic thrust has been to make its chips capable of more than just graphics processing. It unveiled its own proprietary CUDA programming language …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
What's Up With Seagate? — To answer my own question, there's probably nothing up with Seagate (STX). But the stock has spiked today even more than the broad market; and the stock Web site TheFlyOnTheWall.com asserts that the disk-drive maker is being lifted by “renewed buyout chatter.”
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Oxite: Just MIX and Serve — The thing is called Oxite, and Microsoft released the code to its CodePlex site on Dec. 5, but made the announcement today. Oxite is labeled an alpha, and as of this posting a whopping 344 people had downloaded the software. Let's not rush to give up Movable Type or WordPress, shall we?
Don Reisinger / The Digital Home:
Why Apple should keep its prices high during the recession — An analyst named Ezra Gottheil from Technology Business Research said late last week that Apple needs to consider bringing the prices of its computers down to fall in line behind other PC vendors that are lowering their own PC prices to compensate for less consumer spending.
Discussion:
TUAW
Glenn Fleishman / Ars Technica:
Broadcom squeezes 11n, Bluetooth, FM into new, cheap chip — Broadcom has released the latest of its so-called combo wireless chips, this time putting single-stream 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and FM radio reception and short-range transmission into its BCM4329.
Discussion:
Gearlog, SlashGear, eWeek, Electronista, dailywireless.org, DSLreports, Slashdot and Gizmodo
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Yahoo Plans to Launch a Mail App Platform — Yahoo, the beleaguered web giant, is planning to launch a new program that essentially turns its email offering into a platform on which to run applications, much in the same way Facebook does, according to some of my sources.
