Top Items:
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunch:
Google To Take Chrome Out Of Beta — Google vice president Marissa Mayer announced Google Chrome is coming out of beta in an interview with Michael Arrington at Le Web 08. The Google's open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs who can't offer the browser until it is in full release.
Discussion:
CNET News, Silicon Alley Insider, BBC, The Register, TECH.BLORGE.com, InformationWeek, Squash, CenterNetworks, Obsessable and AppScout
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
AOL Gets More Social With Renovation of Bebo (But There's Much More to Come) — This morning, AOL will launch an updated look for its Bebo social networking property, with a new “social inbox” profile for its users. — The inbox, which you can see below in the old and new versions …
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Emily Steel / Wall Street Journal:
AOL Readies High-Stakes Social-Media Debut — Time Warner Bets Big on Bebo as Such Sites Explode in Popularity, but Value as Advertising Vehicles Is Doubted — In the world of social networking, it's time for AOL's big debut, and there's a lot of money riding on the outcome.
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Better Off Without Yahoo! — So, you just got laid off from the struggling portal. Congratulations. — Ten years from now Steve Jobs' iPhone will be just another obsolete gadget. Rob Bailey's vitamin vodka, however, will still refresh. — It never would have happened if Bailey …
Discussion:
p2pnet
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Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
A guide to Yahoo's mass layoff — Yahoo hasn't been able to do anything right lately. Why should Wednesday's job cuts be any different? — Mass layoffs are always traumatic. But Yahoo's human-resources department is not approaching this with any particular grace.
Discussion:
Between the Lines, Silicon Alley Insider, Google Blogoscoped, AppScout, The Register and InformationWeek
Google:
2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist — As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us …
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Blog of helios:
Linux - Stop holding our kids back — This blog is momentarily interrupted to bring you a snippet of recently received email. … Karen xxxxxxxxx — xxxxxxxxx Middle School — AISD — Hmmmm.... I suppose I should, before anything else, thank you.
Austin Modine / The Register:
Amazon Elastic Cloud service storms Europe — EC2 instances go international — Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) service has finally extended to Europe. — The online bookseller announced it will spin up EC2 virtual server instances in two “availability zones” in Europe …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo To Close Brickhouse By End Of Year — Yahoo Brickhouse, the two year old San Francisco based Yahoo business unit to foster new product development, is to be shut down by the end of the year, says a source. The announcement may be as early as Wednesday.
Discussion:
Webreakstuff
PC World:
Verizon Aims for LTE Deployment in 2009 — Verizon Wireless expects to begin deploying next-generation LTE (Long-Term Evolution) wireless broadband within a year, a top executive of the carrier said Tuesday. — “We expect that LTE will actually be in service somewhere here in the U.S. probably …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google Search Wiki To Soon Include An Off Button. Thank You, Marissa. — Hallelujah. Google Search Wiki will soon have an off button. — I spoke with Google's Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer this afternoon at the Le Web conference in Paris, France.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Sony to launch Home virtual world for PlayStation 3 on Dec. 11 — Sony will launch its much-anticipated virtual world, Home, for the PlayStation 3 on Dec. 11. The service will still be in beta testing but it will now be freely available to all 16 million-plus PS 3 users.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Intel: We're on track for 32 nanometer manufacturing — Intel said Wednesday that it has completed the development phase of its next manufacturing process that will shrink chip circuits to 32 nanometers. — The milestone means that Intel will be able to push faster, more efficient chips starting in the fourth quarter.
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
Did Loic LeMeur Just Commit a Kevin Rose? — When Pownce announced their “all sales final” closing sale, I wondered if the service would have fared better if Internet celebrity co-founder Kevin Rose had pushed the service instead of pushing everyone into their competitor, Twitter.
InfoWorld:
HP to offer 3-year laptop battery — A fast-charging laptop battery that promises to last at least three years without any degradation in performance is coming to the market as an option with Hewlett-Packard laptops. The Sonata battery is the product of three years of development work …
Discussion:
CrunchGear
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Martin LaMonica / CNET News:HP laptops to sport long-lasting ‘Enviro’ batteries
Discussion:
Earth2Tech
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
MSI to Demo Touchscreen Wind, Release Wind U110, Wind U115 and U300 in U.S. — MSI has gained a significant chunk of the netbook market thanks to its 10-inch Wind. But can the company keep up in the now crowded space that is saturated with products from the top notebook manufactures?
Margaret Kane / CNET News:
Report: Yahoo investor urges Microsoft search deal — A major Yahoo shareholder is reportedly pushing for the company to renew discussion with Microsoft for a deal over its search business, CNBC reported Wednesday. — Ivory Investment Management, a hedge fund based in Los Angeles …
The Age:
Labor plan to censor internet in shreds — The Government's plan to censor the internet is in tatters, with Australia's largest ISP saying it will not take part in live trials of the system and the second largest committing only to a scaled-back trial. — And the Communications Minister …
Discussion:
p2pnet
Wall Street Journal:
Nortel Taps Legal Advice as Sales Sink — Nortel Networks Corp. has sought legal counsel to explore bankruptcy-court protection from creditors in the event that its restructuring plan fails, according to people familiar with the situation. The move comes as the Toronto-based company grapples …
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Yahoo's secret layoff doublespeak revealed! — Yahoo isn't firing people en masse — it's “getting fit.” That noisome euphemism for today's layoffs of 1,500 people must have hissed forth from the brain of some overpaid management consultant. Likewise for pages upon pages of instructions …
Gavin Clarke / The Register:
Sun closes ‘future’ pay-per-use utility computing service — From flagship to flag maker — Sun Microsystems has killed it's once high-profile utility computing experiment, Network.com, which let customers buy computing power by the hour. — The company revealed it's no longer accepting …
Rick Turoczy / ReadWriteWeb:
Embed Whole Seasons of Hulu Shows with SplashCast — In today's world of DVRs and online video distribution, “prime-time television” is rapidly becoming a meaningless term. Every minute of the day is prime-time for someone. And that makes services that provide easy access to that prime-time content incredibly popular.
Discussion:
CenterNetworks
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Live: Facebook Announces $250,000 fbFund Grant Winners — 5:30pm We're here at Facebook for the announcemet of the Round II fbFund $250,000 grant recipients. 25 entrepreneurs who won $25,000 in Round I of the fbFund competition are here demo'ing their apps for the press and developer community, vying for another $225,000.
Discussion:
Facebook Developers, Webware.com, Mashable!, Profy, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and The Kontagent Blog
Dancho Danchev / Zero Day:
Vint Cerf's Twitter account hacked, suspended for spam — It appears that Vint Cerf, the father of Internet who needs no introduction, has had his Twitter account compromised, with a multitude of spam messages posted on his behalf during the last 24 hours, all of which are redirecting to auction search sites …
VELOCIX:
Velocix to Power the Video Web Revolution with the Launch of Velocix Metro — Velocix Metro corrects Internet Economy ‘fault-lines’ that currently exist between traditional Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and On-Line Video Broadcasters
