Top Items:
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Spotify, An Alternative to Music Piracy — Spotify is a music service that gives users access to a huge library of music, through a lightweight application that looks like a mashup of the best parts of iTunes and Last.fm. Music is streamed, partly supported by P2P technology, but it plays instantly, like we've never seen before.
Discussion:
digg.com
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
The Secret Origins of Clippy: Microsoft's Bizarre Animated Character Patents — Of all the peculiar ideas that Microsoft has pursued over its almost 34 years in business, I can't think of many that are more inexplicable than its long-standing interest in using animated characters to provide help …
Louis Gray:
What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users — That I like FriendFeed and so does Robert Scoble and so do a few thousand other Web-addicted Silicon Valley-centric people doesn't matter very much. That thousands more have signed up to the service and imported their data doesn't matter very much either.
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
The Alternative to the iPhone Pro — Knowing that it is very hard that Apple would ever release an iPhone Pro with physical keyboard, Mat Brady from planetmat has sent me another image of a potential accessory. It looks great. — Mat says that he created the accessory answering readers' feedback on sliding keyboards.
Matthaus Krzykowski / VentureBeat:
An FAQ about those Android netbooks — Since our post yesterday about Google's Android platform running on netbooks, we've been asked a lot of questions. Here are the most frequent questions, along with our answers. — Do you think Android could run on laptops or PCs?
Chris Messina / FactoryCity:
Twitter and the Password Anti-Pattern — I've written about the password anti-pattern before, and have, with regards to Twitter, advocated for the adoption of some form of delegated authentication solution for some while. — It's not as if Twitter or lead developer Alex Payne aren't aware …
Chris Dannen / Fast Company:
Google's “Product Ideas” Campaign Isn't Crowdsourcing. It's A PR Stunt — Google [GOOG] has just launched a “Product Ideas” site where users can submit suggestions for innovation. The Web is abuzz: is almighty Google resorting to crowdsourcing? No, they're not. They're just looking for a little good press.
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Will economy dent Amazon's hiring spree? — Will Amazon.com prove immune to the layoffs gripping the rest of the tech industry? A lot of the speculation at the moment is focused on the Seattle area's other tech giant, Microsoft, which is rumored to be planning layoffs this month …
Chippy / UMPCPortal:
New Sony UMPC info includes specs and a sub $1000 price. — Our podcast partner, Sascha, from EeePCNews.de (which has just relaunched as netbooknews.de) reports that he's secured some new info on the Sony UMPC. … The Sony Vaio P will run on an Atom Z250 (1.33 as we've tested on the WiBrain i1 …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun, Gizmodo, Engadget, GPS Obsessed, CrunchGear, I4U News, DisplayBlog, Tech-Ex, Liliputing, GottaBeMobile.com and SlashGear
Chris Ziegler / Engadget Mobile:
Fun rumor du jour: BlackBerry Bold coming to Sprint this quarter — We're hearing from a source — a source who's pegged big stuff before, we'd like to add — that Sprint will be replacing its BlackBerry 8830 this quarter with a CDMA version of the Bold. The move would certainly make sense …
Iljitsch van Beijnum / Ars Technica:
The year in IPv4 addresses: almost 200 million served — One of the first things I do every year on the first of January is have a look at what happened with the IP address stockpile during the previous year. We started 2008 with 1,122.85 million unused addresses left and we ended it with 925.58 million.
Chris Walters / Consumerist:
Fisher-Price Kiddie Camera Comes With Fun And A Computer Virus — Jeff says his kid's new toy, a working camera from Fisher-Price, tried to give his computer a virus when he plugged it in! … Well you wouldn't take the leaded paint or the melamine, Jeff. China has to export something...
