Top Items:
John Herrman / Gizmodo:
30GB Zunes Failing Everywhere, All At Once — Right, so this is a weird one: we're getting tons of reports—tons—about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Engadget, Technologizer, L.A. Times Tech Blog, eWeek, jkOnTheRun, Ed Bott's Windows Expertise, Macworld, CrunchGear, Digital Daily, Microsoft Pri0, Guardian, All about Microsoft, TUAW, Boy Genius Report, Anything But iPod, Destructoid, SecurityFocus, Tech-Ex, DailyTech, iLounge, MacDailyNews and p2pnet
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David Chartier / Ars Technica:
30GB Zune apocalypse arrives as devices enter digital coma — Around midnight Pacific time last night, 30GB Zunes began restarting and locking up at their boot screens. Reports have swamped official forums and fan sites, and Microsoft has yet to officially comment on the reason for this pre-New-Year's Zune apocalypse.
Paul Davidson / Official Zune Insider Blog and Podcast:
30 gb zune issue update — We were made aware of a widespread issue facing owners of Zune 30 devices this morning. We have a technical team working hard to isolate the issue right now and will update everyone as much as possible. Thanks for your patience while we get to the bottom of this.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Memo to All Crepe-Hangers: It Still Ain't Nobody's Business If Jobs Is or Isn't — Now, it's getting flat-out macabre. — That would be the continuing swirl of attention the health of Apple icon Steve Jobs has been getting. — Rumors of his impending demise have been popping …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Large Form iPod Touch To Launch in Fall '09 — We've got this from three independent sources close to Apple: expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of '09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production.
Discussion:
Tech Trader Daily, Digital Daily, Apple 2.0, PC World, A VC, TeleRead, Infinite Loop, TheAppleBlog, Gadget Lab, Engadget, timesonline.typepad.com, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, Newlaunches.com, Core77, Sevenmac.net, I4U News, Boy Genius Report, The iPhone Blog, SlipperyBrick.com, Mark Evans, CNET News, Gizmodo, Electronista, Silicon Alley Insider, HighTouch, O'Grady's PowerPage, VentureBeat, MacBlogz, MacRumors, AppleInsider, TUAW, GottaBeMobile.com and mathewingram.com/work
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Dell shuffles management deck; Focuses on global units — Dell ended 2008 with a management shakeup. — The company said Wednesday that it has realigned its business to focus on four global groups: Large enterprise, public, small and medium sized business and consumer, which is already set up as a global unit.
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Om Malik / NewTeeVee:
Viacom to Take Jon Stewart, MTV & SpongeBob Off The Air on Time Warner Cable Networks — What would happen to New York if The Daily Show went off the air? Where would hipsters get their daily Moment of Zen? No Spongebob Squarepants either - which means the Upper East side mommies would actually have to talk to their kids.
Discussion:
The Register, MediaMemo, DSLreports, New York Times, Entertainment News & Buzz, Electronista, MediaFile and Techmamas
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Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Marissa Mayer's 2009 Resolution: Leave Google — What will Google be like without Marissa Mayer, the glamour nerd whose goofy laugh so neatly captures the search engine's adolescent awkwardness? We'll know soon. We hear the company's 19th employee is planning her goodbye.
Steven Sande / TUAW:
Rumor Watch: New Mac mini go for launch — When it comes to the Mac mini, there are people out there who know everything there is to know... and now, those savvy sources are telling TUAW that they are confident a new Mac mini is set to be announced at Macworld Expo 2009 next week.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google's Top Ten Products (More Or Less) — Can you name Google's top ten products? If you look at how Quantcast ranks Google's subdomains, you can get a sense of which Google products are the most popular, since they each have their own subdomain. Google's main search engine tops the list …
Discussion:
Search Engine Land
Joey deVilla / Global Nerdy:
The Air Force's Rules of Engagement for Blogging — You've probably seen many articles on companies and organizations saying that they take social media seriously. Here's one such organization that you might not expect: the United States Air Force. Take a look at the Air Force Blog Assessment chart, reproduced below:
9 to 5 Mac:
Macworld 2009 Announcemnt: iWork '09 goes Cloud — We just got a truckload of Macworld information dumped on us from our best source. As we piece it together we'll trickle it out. The first big piece of information is that iWork is going into the Cloud. Not just storage, either.
Discussion:
MacRumors
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Hulu: Turns Out We Didn't Miss Sarah Palin So Much, After All — File under “interesting and a bit surprising”: Earlier this month I cited comScore data that showed that traffic to red-hot Hulu had fallen off from October to November. That made sense, because the site had shown a huge spike due …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
BBC:
UK housewives rule in online time — A survey of more than 27,000 web users in 16 countries has shown that the Chinese spend the largest fraction of their leisure time online. — However, UK housewives spend even more than China's average - 47%. — Germans are the most likely to meet someone …
Discussion:
Neowin.net
Guardian:
Private firm may track all email and calls — The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Turns Out You Can't Sue SexSearch.com If The Girl You Met Via It Is Underage — Another day, another case where someone tried to blame a website for the actions of its users. In this case, a guy used the website SexSearch (seriously) to find someone to have sex with (ah, the internet...).
David Cancel:
Announcing Ghostery — Ghostery is a FireFox Add-on that analyzes the page you're on and shows you if it contains any web bugs. — Ghostery originally started out as GreaseMonkey script I created last year called Invisible Web. Turning it into a Firefox extension made it a bit …
Ylan Q. Mui / Washington Post:
A Few Popular Presents Rise Above Recession — The presents have been unwrapped, the tree taken down. And Santa still hasn't brought you that Wii. — Don't worry. You are not alone. — Despite the economic gloom and doom that saddled this Christmas shopping season …
Discussion:
/Message
Ben Robinson / IntoMobile:
Spatial View Introduces New Wazabee 3DeeShell for Vivid Stereoscopic 3D Graphics on the iPhone — Spatial View, a leader in manufacturing products for creating 3D effects, introduces its latest product, Wazabee 3DeeShell, a special protective skin with an integrated removable lens …
Damian Koh / CNET News:
The Storm is a Netbook, says RIM's founder — WATERLOO, Canada—Even as the weather drop to sub-zero temperatures and snow powders Research In Motion's campus in Waterloo, Mike Lazaridis certainly didn't feel it. The company's founder and co-CEO carries into a meeting room a little black box …
