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, Electronista, DisplayBlog, 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 …
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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Rob Beschizza / Boing Boing Gadgets:
Techcrunch: start breaking embargoes already! — Mike Arrington wrote a pleasingly forceful denunciation of embargoes yesterday. Embargoes are agreements between PR people and reporters to hold publication until a certain time, but they always get broken and generally have become useless and counterproductive.
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.
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:
VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, Macsimum News, The Tech Report, 9 to 5 Mac, Tech Trader Daily and mocoNews.net
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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.
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 …
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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.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
BlackBerry Storm Selling Well, As Expected (RIMM) — We got some validation this afternoon for our Nov. 20 BlackBerry Storm review thesis, which was “RIM's BlackBerry Storm is no iPhone, but should sell well.” — Indeed, RIM's (RIMM) new Storm is no iPhone — a recent RBC/ChangeWave survey suggests …
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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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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.
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun, Unwired View, AndroidGuys, WebProNews, Phone Scoop and Google Android News …
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.
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.
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 …
PC Authority:
Wireless Power Consortium pushes for standard — Sounds like sc-fi, but wireless power is real and it's getting tantalisingly closer. — A consortium of eight companies has launched an initiative to develop a wireless power standard aimed at driving development and convenience in electronics charging.
Discussion:
Slashdot
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
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 …
YouTube Blog:
Hi-Definition Rollout and New Landing Pages on YouTube — We have two developments that we would like to share with you: the expansion of our HD player and a test of three new landing pages designed to help you find the news, music and movies on YouTube that matter most to you. — HD on YouTube
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.
Sony Electronics Blog:
The March is on to CES — Every year at this time, the swirl of the Holiday season - which in my case includes both the business and the family — is compounded by annual preparations here at Sony Electronics for the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 8-11, 2009.
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 …
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
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 …
Paul Buchheit / FriendFeed Blog:
Simple Update Protocol: Update — Several months back, we announced SUP (Simple Update Protocol), a proposal for making RSS and Atom feed updates faster and more efficient. Since then, a number of services have added SUP support, we've SUP-enabled our feed fetcher, and there are now thousands …
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
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 …
