Top Items:
Wall Street Journal:
Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits — After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy. — The decision represents …
Discussion:
NewTeeVee, CircleID, Digital Media Wire, Between the Lines, Slyck, TorrentFreak, Chronicle of Higher Education, Computerworld, Tech Daily Dose, Ars Technica, Industry Standard, GMSV, Music Ally, Download Squad, mathewingram.com/work, Engadget, TechCrunch, Boy Genius Report, CNET News, Obsessable, Silicon Alley Insider, PC World, p2pnet, BetaNews, DSLreports, ZDNet Government, Mobilewhack.com, TechWag, CrunchGear, TechSpot, Aram Squalls, Homotron.net, Zeropaid File Sharing …, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, Epicenter, Computerworld Blogs, Contentinople, The Open Road, AppScout, Neowin.net, DailyTech, Mark Evans, Lockergnome Blog Network, blogs.chron.com, securosis.com, Lifehacker, GeekTonic and iLounge
RELATED:
Fred von Lohmann / Electronic Frontier Foundation:RIAA v. The People Turns from Lawsuits to 3 Strikes
Times Online / Tech Central:
Is the internet going down? Undersea sub-cables have just broken... Breaking news: something's happening to the internet, right now. We're just not quite sure what. — Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.
RELATED:
Bloomberg:
Severed Cables in Mediterranean Disrupt Communication — A A A — Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) — Internet and telephone communications between the Middle East and Europe were disrupted after three submarine cables between Italy and Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea were damaged.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, CircleID, Light Reading, dailywireless.org, Silicon Alley Insider and GigaOM
fibresystems.org:
3 cables cut this morning (Sea Me We3 partly + Sea Me We4 + FLAG)France Telecom Marine cable ship about to depart — PARIS — France Telecom observed today that 3 major underwater cables were cut: “Sea Me We 4” at 7:28am, “Sea Me We3” at 7:33am and FLAG at 8:06am.
Discussion:
Threat Level
Spencer E. Ante / Business Week:
A Wrench in Silicon Valley's Wealth Machine — A year ago, cash rained on tech startups like Digg. Now their valuations are slipping, and venture capital is drying up — A year ago there were reports that Digg had hired investment bank Allen & Co. to put the popular news aggregation Web site …
Discussion:
Furrier.org, Valleywag, WebGuild, HipMojo.com, Tech Confidential, Creative Capital, Venture Chronicles and broadstuff
RELATED:
Dave / MacBlogz:
One More Thing: Apple's New Multi-touch Mighty Mouse — Let's face it, the Mighty Mouse is flawed. Luckily, Apple has filed for numerous patents directly hinting at a multi-touch Mighty Mouse, which could prove to bring us an unexpected treat sometime in the near future.
comScore:
comScore Releases November 2008 U.S. Search Engine Rankings — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In November 2008, Americans conducted 12.3 billion core searches …
RELATED:
english.etnews.co.kr:
Samsung Electronics will launch Google Phone in Q2 — Samsung Electronics will release its first Google phone in the second quarter of the next year in North America. — The launch of Google phone by Samsung is regarded as a signal of its plan for increasing the shares in the smart phone market …
T-Marco / Cell Phone Signal:
T-Mobile G2 coming on January 26th '09 — Yesterday we told you about the new update coming to T-Mobile G1. This update will include new features like mms, and video capable. Unfortunately, some features will not be including for the G1. Instead, they will be include in feature Android devices..oops.. That's right!
Discussion:
IntoMobile, The Toybox, AndroidGuys, Boy Genius Report, Android Phone Fans, MobileCrunch, TmoNews and MobileDevicesToday
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
UPDATED: Palm doesn't confirm Nova launch at CES, but they may as well have — Use a Palm phone? Like the idea of Nova? We hope so, because the company revealed in its earnings call yesterday that it'd be transitioning its entire lineup over to the new, homegrown platform …
RELATED:
Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:Palm CEO Confirms ‘Nova’ OS Is in the Wild
Discussion:
Industry Standard
Steve Poland:
Evan - Twitter needs a better policy on Usernames — I have a bunch of Twitter usernames — I gobbled them up in March 2007. I'd consider them some of the “quality” ones. Almost like the domain game of 1995, I grabbed some of the best Twitter usernames, because I could see value in their use in the future.
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Google's Secret Revenue Weapon Revealed (GOOG) — All quarter long, Wall Street has been trying to figure out why Google has introduced a slew of new revenue-generating products and suddenly developed new religion with regard to costs. The obvious answer is that Google is light on revenue and desperately trying to make the quarter.
Discussion:
HipMojo.com
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Meebo Passes IMs Between MySpace And Facebook — MySpace and Facebook may be frenemies forever, but now they have a new mutual friend that will pass notes between them. Meebo, the Web-based IM service, now supports IM accounts from both social networks. That means you can enter your Facebook …
Arn / MacRumors:
Evidence that Next iMacs and Mac Minis to use NVIDIA Chipsets — Configuration files buried within some versions of Mac OS X show evidence that the next iMac and Mac Mini will indeed be based on the NVIDIA MCP79 chipset. Apple recently switched their MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models to the NVIDIA chipsets in October.
Alexis Madrigal / Wired Science:
Google Shutters Its Science Data Service — Google will shutter its highly-anticipated scientific data service in January without even officially launching the product, the company said in an e-mail to its beta testers. — Once nicknamed Palimpsests, but more recently going by the staid name …
Discussion:
Google Watch
Alan Stafford / PC World:
New eBook Reader Undercuts Kindle, Sony Reader Prices — Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader costs $359—but you can't get one until at least February. Sony's PRS-700BC costs $399—also pretty darn costly. But Foxit Software will soon begin shipping an eBook reader that costs only slightly more than half what Sony's reader does.
Discussion:
paidContent.org, Engadget, SlashGear, Gadget Lab, Download Squad, Obsessable, Gizmodo and CrunchGear
RELATED:
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Windows Expertise:
Windows 7 Beta download coming? — Neowin's Tom Warren is reporting that Microsoft's Windows 7 homepage has been updated with a download link for the beta release. Here's what it looks like: — Currently, the link goes nowhere. — I'm still highly doubtful that the public …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Lloyd Braun's Not Going to Take It Anymore: “I Am Not an Umbrella Thief” (and He's Not, Actually) — There it was again-like the gnarly ghost of Christmas past-in the Los Angeles Times this week. But this time Lloyd Braun wasn't going to take it anymore. — The object of his ire …
Justin Berka / Infinite Loop:
Silent protest planned for Jobs-less keynote — There's a lot going on during your average Macworld keynote, with writers busily typing away, photographers covertly snapping pictures, and Apple fans doing of a bit of cheering. The upcoming Macworld 2009 keynote may have a bit of a different feel …
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Chilling Effects: Another Mixtape Provider Shut Down — A few months ago, the RIAA shut down Muxtape, a very popular and incredibly useful online service that let individuals create “mixtapes” for streaming to others. As anyone with even a hint of business sense would recognize, this was a great promotional tool for musicians.
Discussion:
Epicenter
Michelle Maltais / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
New question for iPod: Am iDrunk? — These days, the iPod can be many things. A musical instrument, a gaming device, a phone, a taxi hailer, a trail tracker. — Apparently, it can also be an alcohol breathalyzer. — With iBreath, a $79 accessory that plugs into the base of the iPod, you can perform your own field sobriety test.
