Top Items:
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Dell's Mystery ‘Adamo’ Could Be Thinner Than Air — When Apple released the MacBook Air, someone viewed the sleek notebook as an opportunity to make fun of clunky, old Dell on YouTube with a parody ad. But what if Dell is about to have the last laugh in the ultra-light laptop race?
Discussion:
Gadget Lab, DisplayBlog, Electronista, Gizmodo, CrunchGear, I4U News, Engadget, The Toybox and Boing Boing Gadgets
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Now Growing by Over 600,000 Users a Day - And New Engagement Stats — It was just at the beginning of December when Facebook crossed the 130 million monthly active user mark. Today, that number is up to 140 million. — While Facebook has been growing at around 300,000 …
Jesse Johnson / The Bivings Report:
The Use of the Internet by America's Largest Newspapers (2008 Edition) — Every year, The Bivings Group conducts a study of the web features of America's largest newspapers as a way to gauge how papers are dealing with the threat and opportunity presented by the rise of the Internet as a news source.
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Verizon: BlackBerry Storm Return Rates ‘Lowest’ Of Any Smartphone (RIMM) — Good news for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) and Verizon Wireless: People buying their latest smartphone, the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm, are not ditching them as much as we'd heard.
Discussion:
IntoMobile, Between the Lines, Tech Beat, Engadget, mocoNews.net, CNN, Electronista and MacDailyNews
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Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Apple buys stake in mobile graphics chip designer — Future versions of Imagination Technologies' graphics cores could mean iPhone games far more sophisticated than ‘Super Monkey Ball.’ — Apple has taken a small stake in a British chip designer, revealing how the company plans to power …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Tech Trader Daily, The Tech Report, 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors and mocoNews.net
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Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Apple finally outed as mysterious PowerVR licensee — New evidence that Apple is the mysterious licensee of Imagination Technologies Group's PowerVR mobile graphics technology broke today, when the company publicly announced that Apple has subscribed to 8 million new shares of IMG, giving the iPhone maker a 3% stake in the firm.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
TechCrunch's Yertle the Turtle Tantrum Over News Embargoes — Yesterday, the one-man-band of a tech blogger, Michael Arrington, let loose with yet another outrageously indignant diatribe-this time that he and his TechCrunch site would forthwith break all news embargoes.
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BBC:
BBC iPlayer now available on Mac — The BBC has created a version of the iPlayer that works with both Mac and Linux computers. — The two systems, which have been able to stream BBC programmes via the iPlayer for a year, will now be able to handle downloads.
Google Earth Blog:
New York City in Photo-Realistic 3D Now in Google Earth — Google has updated the 3D buildings in Google Earth for New York City! This is a HUGE update with at least hundreds (if not thousands) of new 3D buildings with photo textures applied. Basically, Google has completed nearly every building …
Discussion:
Lifehacker, Maximum PC all, ReadWriteWeb, CrunchGear, Google Blogoscoped, PalmAddicts, InformationWeek, Mashable! and SEO and Tech Daily
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
What Is Steve Jobs Worth to Apple? About $20 Billion — Jeff Segal of BreakingViews tries to calculate the value of Steve Jobs to Apple. — Apple Mac Line at twice the industry average multiple (1.3 times revenue) is worth about $19 billion. — iPod business at five times EBITDA is worth about $14 billion.
Discussion:
San Francisco Chronicle, Gadget Lab, SmoothSpan Blog, Changing Way and Tech Check with Jim Goldman
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Brett Terpstra / TUAW:
iPhone thief thwarted by MobileMe sync — To say that MobileMe hasn't made everyone happy may be a bit of an understatement. We don't generally hear from the satisfied customers, but we have received a fair amount of email from dissatisfied users of Apple's “cloud computing” solution.
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:
Toshiba Offers “Industry's First” 512GB SSD Flash Drive — Each year I that attend CES, I can't help but swing by the huge HDTVs and see the new “world's biggest” set. It's a status symbol of course, but this year might be the first time I focus more on the “world's biggest” Solid State Disk capacity.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Loopt Snags AT&T, Now Available On Every U.S. Carrier — Mobile social network Loopt goes live on three AT&T phones today, which was the last major carrier holdout. Loopt is now available in the U.S. on Sprint, Verizon, Metro PCS, T-Mobile and Boost. The service is free for a year and then a $4/month fee kicks in.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Google Mobile Blog:
Optimized search results pages for Android and iPhone — Whether you're using Google search through the search widget on the Android home screen, the built-in search box of the iPhone's Safari browser, or google.com on either device, you'll now end up with search results optimized for your phone.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Ad network Glam sees record 4th quarter, puts entire workforce on “variable” pay — Glam Media, one of the newfangled content and advertising networks assumed by many industry observers to be vulnerable to financial meltdown, says it still hasn't seen any marked decline in online display advertising.
Discussion:
TechCrunch
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Can a Deflated Adobe Remain Independent? — Shares of Adobe performed so well over the past ten years that the company's value soared to the point of putting off many potential suitors. But a recession, troubled financial markets and slowing economic growth have helped erase more than half …
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Twitpay brings micropayments to Twitter — The New York Times has a nice little writeup about Twitpay, an experimental new app that lets you send payments using Twitter. — Here's the premise: Sign up, put some cash in your Twitpay account through another payment service like PayPal …
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Where To iPhone app sells for $70,000 — A couple of months ago, when iPhone application developer Tap Tap Tap announced that it was shopping around its flagship Where To software, we wondered how much an iPhone app, albeit a successful one, might be worth. — Now we know.
Stephen DiMarco / Compete Blog:
Amazon.com is Fueling a Strong December for Online Retailers — Whether you're an analyst, economist or a just a red-blooded American consumer, your eyes are probably fixed right now on the retail industry. We're all looking for a glimmer of hope that consumer spending during the holidays …
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Ustream: There Is Life After Puppy Cam — Ustream.tv came out swinging from all angles this year in the live video market. Techies streamed Macworld in January and politicos on both sides got an inside look at the RNC and Obama's victory speech. And, topping it all off amid an economic crisis …
Apple:
Mac OS X 10.5: Software Update stops responding during “Configuring installation” — Symptoms — When attempting to update software using Software Update in Mac OS X 10.5, the update process may stop responding while “Configuring installation” is visible in the update window.
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft job listings reveal Zune expansion plan, and Musiwave's role — At this point, it's clear that Microsoft plans to expand its Zune initiative beyond the current music device, software and service. The question is how. With the Zune Phone rumors fading into the background …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Even Silicon Valley Isn't Shopping — For many Web 2.0 start-ups, build-it-to-flip-it has been a mantra of sorts, with most hoping to get big payouts when Google, Yahoo or AOL cuts them a big check. Unfortunately, the credit crisis has turned those dreams into layaway plans.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Matt Hickey / CNET News:
How do you like them Apple-branded apples? — (Credit: Blog! Nobon) — Some of you may have heard of a thing called the Apple iPod. Today, an apple farmer out of Japan brings you the iPod Apple. By placing hand-cut stickers of the Apple logo or a silhouette of an iPod on the fruit …
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
2009 is the year of the Moto for Verizon; more upcoming handsets revealed — When our ninjas get going they don't stop until the job is done. Yesterday your pals here at BGR gave you an exclusive preview of four tasty upcoming Motorola handsets - codenamed FLASH, RUSH 2, CALGARY and INFERNO.
Discussion:
Unwired View, Fast Company, Electronista, SlashPhone, PhoneReport v2.0, CrunchGear and Gizmodo
Kenneth Li / Financial Times:
Palm reports $506.2m in losses — Palm reported more than a half a billion dollars of net losses in its fiscal second quarter as it lost more customers to rivals Apple and Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry. — The maker of the Treo smartphone said its second quarter net loss widened …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Universal Music seeing ‘tens of millions’ from YouTube — YouTube's traffic machine may finally be turning into a cash machine. — For the first time, there are signs that YouTube is driving significant revenue for itself and some of the video site's partners.
Discussion:
TechSpot
