Top Items:
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
That He Not Busy Being Born Is Busy Dying … A big part of what makes Apple so fascinating is that they're so utterly unlike other companies of similar size and stature. It's hard to imagine any other company abandoning something like Apple's traditional role at Macworld Expo.
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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.
Jonny / Distorted-Loop.com:
Apple takes an iPhone slice of Imagination — Despite public clamour over the rift between Apple and Macworld, the company's secretive plans to develop its own mobile processors for future iPods, iPhones and other devices remain critical to its future, or so it seems.
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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.
PR Newswire:
Toshiba Launches Industry's First 512GB Solid State Drive and Next-Generation SSD Family Using 43nm MLC NAND — New SSD Family Achieves High Levels of Performance, Endurance, Capacity and Reliability to Meet Market Requirements for Notebook Computers, Gaming and Home Entertainment Systems
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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 …
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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:
PhoneReport v2.0, Fast Company, Gizmodo, SlashPhone, Electronista, Unwired View, CrunchGear, Engadget Mobile, PhoneDog.com Cell …, Gadget Lab, Engadget and The Toybox
Rob Beschizza / Boing Boing Gadgets:
Mac OS X Netbook Compatibility Chart (updated) — Who needs Psystar? — Apple says it's had “pretty interesting ideas” for a Mac netbook, but it's everyday users who've already taken action. Due to their similar technical underpinnings, most of the popular netbooks can run OS X …
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
The iPhone is Apple's Netbook: Almost Half of All Traffic from WiFi Networks — According to the latest report from AdMob, 42% of all requests from iPhones to Admob's partners worldwide are coming in over WiFi instead of through the networks of mobile operators.
Discussion:
The Open Road, 9 to 5 Mac, The Toybox, GigaOM, Search Engine Watch, MobHappy, Electronista, DSLreports, InformationWeek, Macsimum News, Local Mobile Search, Know It All and broadstuff
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 …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Joost Just Gives Up On P2P Altogether — Joost's two year old online video service was a pretty darned smart idea when it first launched. — Instead of streaming video through the Joost website, users would download a Mozilla-based client and watch it there instead. The user experience could be more tightly controlled.
Discussion:
Podcasting News, broadstuff, paidContent.org, Lifehacker, Industry Standard, Clickety Clack and Ars Technica
Guardian:
100 top sites for the year ahead — Two years after we last picked the web's cream of the crop, our latest selection finds that location-based services, work-anywhere collaboration and video are prominent — The online world has changed dramatically even since we last drew up a list of 100 useful sites in December 2006.
wmpoweruser.com:
Asus Glaxy 7 gets a first look — We have written about this mysterious device before, but Mobile-review.com has ripped away the veils and have given us our first good look at the device. — The report the device, has about the same dimensions as the HTC Max 4G and iPhone …
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
Cable to temporarily pause digital switch — The cable TV industry is pausing its transition to digital TV to reduce consumer confusion over the broadcasters own transition to digital happening early in 2009, according to letters sent to members of Congress Wednesday by the industry's trade association.
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DSLreports
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Ask.com Plays The Google AdWords Arbitrage Game — Ah, Ask.com. Since I wrote their obituary in March, not much has got me thinking they'll make a comeback. Sure, there was the gimmick of kind of bringing back Jeeves himself. But the spate of “hotels.ask.com” ads I see them running …
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Are bloggers & social networks killing the big shows? — I've noticed a trend lately (actually I noticed it back when I worked at Microsoft and my bosses kept refusing to buy booths at conferences, saying they didn't return the ROI, but that trend has grown and grown big time).
Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC:
Sky moves towards 3D broadcasts — Sky has filmed several sporting events using the new technology — Sky TV says it has made a significant step towards bringing 3D television to British viewers. — The satellite broadcaster says it has successfully tested the delivery of 3D programming …
InfoWorld:
Will Capgemini convince enterprises to trust the cloud? — Large tech vendors such as Sun Microsystems and Red Hat, small ones like Elastra and RightScale, and even consultancy Capgemini are all clamoring to help big businesses get on Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud offering, or EC2.
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eWeek
James Lewin / Podcasting News:
Free iPhone Audio Recorder — Rockifone's Easy Recorder (App Store link) is a free iPhone app that turns your iPhone into a dictaphone-style audio recorder. — Easy Recorder doesn't have a lot of features, but it lets you record audio at three quality levels and the price is hard to beat.
JKK / jkkmobile:
Dell Mini 9's shipping with smaller batteries than they should — Quality control problem or margin seeking? Click here to see more Peter has been testing his Dell Minis and noted that one of his Mini 9's had smaller 24Wh battery than on the other one. Marking on the both states it should be 32Wh.
Chris Williams / The Register:
More execs quit Phorm — CFO and UK CEO out — When half of Phorm's board quit earlier this month, it was spun as a strategy disagreement between the US and UK operations. But now, the firm's London-based UK chief executive has quit too, along with its chief beancounter.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
BlackBerry Storm Buyers Returning Phones En Masse? (RIMM) — RIM's new BlackBerry Storm — the phone Verizon Wireless is hoping will keep people away from rival AT&T (T) and the iPhone this Christmas — is still back ordered. But is it a real hit? Or are people rushing to return the phone?
