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. Updated 12:00PM
Discussion:
forums.zune.net, PC World, L.A. Times Tech Blog, VentureBeat, Associated Press, TechFlash, Ed Bott's Windows Expertise, The Microsoft Blog, Official Zune Insider Blog …, TechCrunch, Agence France Presse, p2pnet, Engadget, Silicon Alley Insider, Podcasting News, EW.com, Electronista, CrunchGear, Hardware 2.0, Maximum PC all, Tech Trader Daily, DailyTech, GamePolitics News, Microsoft Pri0, Technologizer, Destructoid, Pulse2, Boy Genius Report, CyberNet, MAKE Magazine, TUAW, Macworld, Medialoper, Tech-Ex, eWeek, Consumerist, TheNextWeb.com, Guardian, All about Microsoft, MacDailyNews, Digital Daily, Appletell and Microsoft News Tracker
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David Chartier / Ars Technica:
30GB Zune apocalypse arrives as devices enter digital coma (Updated 2x) — 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.
Discussion:
Digital Noise, The Register, Digits, NEWSFACTOR, Crave, CrunchGear, TechFlash and Consumerist
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.
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.
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.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
A $3 billion buried treasure found via Google Maps? — Between my computer and my iPhone, I use Google Maps to find just about everything these days. Still, I never thought about using it to find buried treasure — but Nathan Smith did. — The 39-year-old musician supposedly used Google Maps …
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.
Discussion:
Google Watch, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim and WebProNews
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Why the Web Matters in the Viacom/Time Warner Fight — The Viacom/Time Warner Cable faceoff-Viacom is threatening to yank its channels (Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, etc.) off the screens of the cable company's 13.3 million subscribers at midnight tonight-is nothing new.
RELATED:
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Friedman, Billings Sees iPhone Nano in Q2 — While rumors of forthcoming Apple (AAPL) products for at Macworld next week have been relatively muted this month, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey analyst Craig Berger put out a note this morning stating that his “incremental checks into the Apple supply chain” …
AppleInsider:
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to appear at Macworld — While the verdict is out on whether Apple chief executive Steve Jobs will make some form of appearance at next week's Macworld Expo, the ‘other Steve’ that helped co-found the company more than 30 years ago will be on hand to throw his weight behind a third-party product launch.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Scribd Had A Blowout Year, And So Did the Web Document — The biggest surprise fro me in the social media rankings that I posted earlier today was the appearance of document sharing service Scribd in the top 20. According to the comScore numbers, it has more unique visitors worldwide …
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Michael Dell Cans Execs He Handpicked To Save The Company (DELL) — After Dell founder Michael Dell came back as CEO in 2007, he hired former Solectron chief Michael Cannon as president of global operations and former Oracle exec Mark Jarvis as chief marketing officer.
Discussion:
Electronista, Computerworld, Between the Lines, CNET News, Wall Street Journal and BloggingStocks
RELATED:
Lars-Göran Nilsson / Fudzilla:
Microsoft getting ready to lay off 17% of staff — Worldwide cutbacks — The rumor that Microsoft was set to lay off people on January 15th, 2009 is no longer a rumor but a fact. Staff at Microsoft have been informed that the company is readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations and it's not a small cut, either.
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Ubiquity Add-on for Firefox Gets an Update, New Interface — Mozilla's Ubiquity add-on for Firefox, the so-called “command line interface for the web” has been updated. The new release features substantial interface and speed improvements, and it's an essential update for anyone who considers themselves a web power user.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
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:
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Google Street View Captures Prototype Porsches — First Google Street View captures a person peeing on the street, and now they drive right by a bunch of Porsche prototypes in Colorado. — We're not sure how old these photos are, but they're supposedly of updated “Boxters, Caymans and even a 911”.
Susan Straccia / The Official Google Blog:
Google blogging in 2008 — Every year right about now we round up our blogging activity across Google. Ready? Here goes. — This is our 368th post of the year on the main Google blog, which is 23% more than in 2007. In addition to more posts, we are thrilled to know that we have many more readers now — 78% more, to be exact.
Discussion:
WebProNews
Joe Wikert / TeleRead:
Memo to Jeff Bezos — As 2008 comes to a close I find I'm less of a Kindle advocate than I was earlier in the year. My new iPhone is partially to blame. After all, it's one of the reasons I wrote this critical post on my other blog yesterday. It's not just about the iPhone though.
Richard Owen / Times of London:
Fury as Mafia godfathers idolised on Facebook — To the fury and dismay of relatives of Mafia victims, pages posted on the social networking site Facebook idolising notorious Cosa Nostra Godfathers have generated thousands of supporters in Italy. — The fan sites offer tributes not only to Salvatore …
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
A Record Label That Embraces BitTorrent — While the major record labels still insist that BitTorrent and any sort of file sharing is evil and needs to be wiped out, it's great to see some indie record labels fully embracing how BitTorrent is actually a much cheaper and much more efficient distribution and marketing tool.
Discussion:
TorrentFreak
Donald Melanson / Engadget:
DIY external iPhone keyboards get a tad more practical — That 360 Chatpad hack we saw back in November was certainly an impressive enough proof of concept, but if you want to get a bit more typing done with a bit less cluttter, you'll no doubt be quite a bit more impressed with this latest mod by the very same Ralf Ackermann.
Discussion:
O'Grady's PowerPage
Will Park / IntoMobile:
iPhone 3G unlock imminent! iPhone Dev Team says “vtaber” — What is this “vtaber” we speak of? Well, it has to do with the binary code that was posted to the iPhone Dev Team's blog. We've been checking the iPhone Dev Team blog religiously over the past 12 hours in hopes of catching …
AppleInsider:
Quanta to manufacture Apple netbooks in 2009 - report — Apple is in talks with one of its Taiwanese system manufacturers to begin manufacturing netbooks sometime next year, according to a recent report out of the Far East. — An article published by the Taiwanese Government Information Office …
Discussion:
Infinite Loop
Jon Swartz / USA Today:
Bad news for workers is good news for LinkedIn — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Where everyone else sees economic gloom and doom, Reid Hoffman sees opportunity. — As the freshly minted CEO of LinkedIn (and its founder), he is shepherding a moneymaking tech company in battered Silicon Valley.
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 …
