Top Items:
Cleve Nettles / 9 to 5 Mac:
HP MediaSmart Home Server may get some competition from Apple — HP this week updated its MediaSmart home server, which has many services Mac users would love to take advantage of. Centralized iTunes music database for the home, picture sharing, even file sharing over the Internet.
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
Vaja Also Hints at iPhone Nano? — Relatively well-known iPhone case manufacturer Vaja has curiously added an “iPhone Nano” listing to their website. The link simply directs you to a form asking you to sign up for information about “the upcoming release of our iPhone nano cases.”
Discussion:
HotHardware.com News, AppleInsider, Tech-Ex, Gizmodo, iPhone Buzz, InformationWeek, MacBlogz, Engadget, Tech Beat and Gadget Lab
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
What does the “netbook” craze tell us about the future of laptops. — There isn't much mystery to why a little-marketed computer known as the Eee PC has lately seized the top spot on Amazon's laptop best-seller list. The machine, a three-pound ugly duckling made by the Taiwanese company Asus …
Rick Merritt / EE Times:
Server makers get Goooogled — Elements of Google's most secretive product—its unique PC server design—is beginning to ripple throughout the rest of the industry. — Like many companies with giant Internet data centers, Google uses big clusters of commodity x86 servers.
InfoWorld:
What future is in store for Microsoft? — It's been six months since Bill Gates retired from Microsoft, though he remains an adviser, and the Redmond giant is chugging away as if business were usual. Work continues on Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, Windows Mobile 6.5, the Azure cloud development platform, and so on.
iSuppli:
Second-Generation PlayStation 3 Features Cost Reduction, Supplier Shifts — Sony Corp.'s new-generation PlayStation 3 (PS3) features a cost-reduced design due to integration and some key changes in components from the previous-generation model, according to a teardown conducted by iSuppli Corp.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
It's Time For An Apple Tablet: Where's My iPod Touch HD? (AAPL) — Apple's (AAPL) iPod touch is a hit, and PC makers like Dell (DELL) and Asus are doing good business selling cheap, small “netbook” laptops. It's time for Steve Jobs to smash them together into a killer multi-touch tablet.
Michael Santo / Alice Hill's Real Tech News:
Facebook's War Against Lactivists — As a new father, I have to admit, watching my wife breastfeeding our daughter brings on feelings in me, but not sexual ones, rather sweet ones, as I find the interaction between mother and daughter beautiful. Facebook, on the other hand seems …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
It's Not How Many Followers You Have That Counts, It's How Many Times You Get Retweeted — Over the weekend a lot of tech bloggers got into a tizzy over a suggestion that Twitter search should rank Tweets by authority, with Tweets from people who have the most followers coming up first.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
CES preview: what to expect at the big, not-so-gloomy tech trade show — THE BIGGEST U.S. TECH TRADE SHOW WILL FEATURE EMERGING MARKET TECHNOLOGY, 3-D GLASSES, AND DIGITAL CONTENT, ACCORDING TO SHOW CHIEF GARY SHAPIRO — The International Consumer Electronics Show coming up next week promises to be a sober extravaganza.
TOP 20 MSI News:
The World's First Hybrid Storage Netbook- MSI U115 Hybrid — Taipeiã€' MSI today announces U115 Hybrid. The very first notebook computer in the world that is capable of operating both SSD and HDD hard drives simultaneously, combining all the features of SSD and HDD in the U115 Hybrid for your enjoyment.
David Meyer / CNET News:
Microsoft outlines pay-per-use PC vision — Microsoft has applied for a patent on metered, pay-as-you-go computing. — U.S. patent application number 20080319910, published on Christmas Day, details Microsoft's vision of a situation where a “standard model” of PC is given away or heavily subsidized by someone in the supply chain.
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Daniel Lyons / Washington Post:
The iPhone's Golden Touch — Ge Wang never dreamed of becoming a high-tech Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He's an assistant professor at Stanford, a specialist in computer science and music whose biggest passion has been organizing nerdy “laptop orchestras” composed of 20 people each “playing” a notebook computer.
Discussion:
textually.org
Andrew Chen / Futuristic Play:
Freemium business model case study: AdultFriendFinder ARPU, churn, and conversion rates — A case study for the Freemium business model — There's been a lot written about the Freemium model over the years, particularly from Fred Wilson at AVC. Here'a couple articles I'll recommend on the topic:
Lyndon W. Wong / The Official Netflix Blog:
New DVD shipping process — Netflix recently changed the DVD shipping process when your first choice movie is not available at the shipping center nearest you. — We have 55 shipping centers throughout the U.S., including Anchorage, Alaska and Honolulu, Hawaii.
Wall Street Journal:
Internet Providers Join Broadband Push — President-elect Barack Obama's call to improve the nation's broadband infrastructure has cable and phone company lobbyists maneuvering to get a leg up. — Lawmakers in Congress want a plan that will create jobs over the next two to three years …
Steve O'Hear / last100:
Deja vu: Internet ‘widgets’ coming to the TV in 2009 — I'm getting a case of deja vu. Apparently, 2009 will be the year that Internet ‘widgets’ come to the TV. — At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to be held in Las Vegas next month, Samsung, Toshiba and other manufacturers …
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Samsung Snubs Qualcomm, Builds 4G Chips — Samsung Electronics is making its own WiMAX and LTE baseband chips for wireless handsets, according to an article in EETimes. The move by the Korean electronics maker shows how much opportunity it sees as the wireless industry transitions to 4G …
MSRC:
Questions about Vulnerability Claim in Windows Media Player — Happy holidays to everyone. While it's been a snowy holiday season for us in the Pacific Northwest (some of us are still snowed in), the MSRC never closes and we are always working to help keep customers safe.
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Not Coming Soon: Facebook Indefinitely Scraps Plans for Platform Payment System — It was one year ago last week that Facebook announced the beta test of its Facebook Platform payment system that would allow applications to start accepting payments from users directly inside their Facebook apps.
Shira Ovide / Digits:
How Long Can Wikipedia Sustain its Ambitions? — Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales' latest fundraising plea for the user-edited online encyclopedia raises questions about how long one of most popular Web destinations can sustain itself on donations alone. — Some critics have compared …
Discussion:
Profy
Wired News:
Vaporware 2008: Crushing Disappointments, False Promises and Plain Old BS — Welcome to Wired's 11th annual Vaporware Awards, our annual roundup of the tech industry's biggest, brashest and most baffling unfulfilled promises. — This year, handset makers were exhaling more vapor than anyone …
Discussion:
Homotron.net, PalmAddicts, CrunchGear, TG Daily, Kotaku, Joystiq, Blue's News and digg.com
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
DMFail Fails, Twitter To Fix Private Messages Snafu — Say goodbye to the fun of reading private Twitter messages sent improperly and gathered on DMFail. Sometime today, Twitter says in an email, they'll change the way private messages are sent so that you can use either [D + username + message] OR [DM + username + message].
