Top Items:
Tom Neumayr / Apple:
Changes Coming to the iTunes Store — Apple® today announced several changes to the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com). Beginning today, all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels …
Discussion:
CNET News, L.A. Times Tech Blog, TUAW, Financial Times, Podcasting News, Infinite Loop, last100, Network World, iPhone Savior, Macsimum News, iLounge, MediaMemo, CrunchGear, Gizmodo and Hardware 2.0
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Ethan Smith / Wall Street Journal:
ITunes to Change Pricing Strategy — Apple Inc. said it is making changes to its iTunes Store, representing significant shifts in its longstanding approach to the business of selling songs online. — The changes, unveiled during a speech Tuesday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco …
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Confirmed: iTunes Going DRM-Free. Unclear: Does Anyone Care? — In 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicted that half the music offered at his iTunes store would be sold without digital rights management-the lock-and-key system that the music labels wrap their songs-by the end of that year.
Discussion:
USA Today, CNET News, Byte of the Apple, Technologizer, Epicenter, The Register, ZDNet Government, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Associated Press, AppleInsider, Music Ally, Ed Burnette's Dev Connection, Digital Daily, PC World, iLounge, Engadget, Lucas Gonze' blog, Obsessable, the Econsultancy blog, Contentinople and Tech-Ex
AppleInsider:
Apple unveils 17-inch MacBook Pro with 8-hour battery — Presenting at the Macworld Expo on Tuesday, Apple unveiled the new 17-inch MacBook Pro featuring a durable and precision aluminum unibody enclosure, and a revolutionary new built-in battery that delivers up to eight hours of use …
Discussion:
Between the Lines, Infinite Loop, Boy Genius Report, Digital Daily, MacRumors, Gizmodo, Silicon Alley Insider and Gearlog
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Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
MacBook Pro 17-inch first hands-on (update: video added) — Yep — it looks just like its little brothers! Feels like 'em too, except the obvious bit of heft added by that 17-inch display. Of course, they don't have that sweet, gigantic battery inside, or that matte display option (until we torch Curpertino, of course... in love).
Bill Evans / Apple:
Apple Introduces 17-inch MacBook Pro With Revolutionary New Built-in Battery That Delivers Eight Hours of Use & 1,000 Recharges — Apple® today unveiled the new 17-inch MacBook® Pro featuring a durable and beautiful precision aluminum unibody enclosure, and a revolutionary new built …
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Apple Revamps iLife for '09 with iPhoto Facial Recognition and More — Today at Macworld 2009, Apple showed off a new iPhoto with true facial recognition, a better iMovie and other iLife updates—$79 solo, $99 for family, requires Leopard, available late January. — It's a good solid upgrade full of very nice features.
Discussion:
Infinite Loop, Digital Daily, gizmag Emerging …, SlashGear, Gear Live, Obsessable, Lifehacker and TUAW
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Apple:Apple Introduces iLife '09
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Epicenter, MacRumors, The Mac Observer, TheAppleBlog, TUAW, Obsessable, GPS Obsessed and CrunchGear
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Live from the Macworld 2009 keynote — 9:07AM “If you wanna hear some new things today — I have three new things...” — 9:07AM “The last year was our biggest ever, 9.7 mil Macs. We did it by growing twice as fast as the rest of the industry.” “The hardware THE leopard (!)...”
Discussion:
NEWSFACTOR, Industry Standard, CrunchGear, Between the Lines, Techdirt, Tech Trader Daily, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Gizmodo, TUAW, CNET News, Digital Daily, The Tech Report, Macworld, Scobleizer, Bits, MacRumors, Ars Technica, Obsessable, Boy Genius Report, Paul Colligan's … and I4U News
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Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:Live from Apple's last Macworld
Discussion:
AppleInsider, TechFlash, NewTeeVee, Digital Daily, Technologizer, Ars Technica, Boy Genius Report, geeksugar, iPhoneWorld.ca iPhone and p2pnet
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network — The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told. — The quirky site …
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paidContent.org, Webware.com, Silicon Alley Insider, Changing Way, WebProNews, MarketingVOX and Mashable!
Nicholas Deleon / CrunchGear:
Say hello to iWork 09: Like iWork 08, but plus one — Whoever predicted that Apple would introduce iWork '09 today gets a gold star. Keynote, Pages and Numbers all received what I would consider minor updates; no need to run around all willy nilly for these, methinks.
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Jack Shafer / Slate:
How Newspapers Tried to Invent the Web — But failed. — A moment of sympathy, please, for newspapers, whose readers and advertisers have been fleeing at a frightening rate. — It would be easy to accuse editors and publishers of being clueless about the coming Internet disruption …
Discussion:
Scripting News
Karen Jacobs / Reuters:
Best Buy offers used iPhones at lower price — ATLANTA (Reuters) - Retailer Best Buy Co, seeking new ways to appeal to cost-conscious shoppers, said on Tuesday it is selling refurbished versions of Apple Inc's iPhone 3G at its stores that are priced about $50 less than new iPhones.
PC World:
AMD: Creating a New Laptop Category — Netbooks have their appeal—tiny budget machines with just enough oomph to run Windows XP. Ultraportables have horsepower in spades, but they cost too much to suit some people. This year we're going to see a whole new category of notebook take shape …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Report: PC makers to provide free Vista-to Win-7 upgrades starting July 1 — In yet another indicator as to the progress of Windows 7, the Tech ARP site reported that Microsoft plans to allow PC makers to offer customers who buy Windows Vista machines as of July 1 free upgrades to Windows 7 once it ships.
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Hackers hit MacRumors keynote coverage — Some nasty pranksters, likely associated with Web forum 4Chan, have hacked into Apple gossip mainstay MacRumors' live-blog coverage of Tuesday's Macworld keynote. Hosted on a separate domain, MacRumorsLive.com, the site was plagued by offensive messages …
Macky Cruz / TrendLabs:
Bogus LinkedIn Profiles Harbor Malicious Content — The LinkedIn professional networking site connects more than 30 million users from across many different industries. The advantages of maintaining a list of trusted business contacts for career planning purposes is not lost on LinkedIn's users.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Clearspring Lays Off 20%, President And COO Jay Rappaport Leaving — Seems like widget distribution startup Clearspring is another victim of the economic meltdown forced to make some tough decisions. We heard rumors floating that the company laid off about 20% of its staff in early December …
Discussion:
Webware.com
Gavin Clarke / The Register:
Curl taps Adobe RIA infrastructure — The perils of open source — One of the side effects of Adobe Systems releasing code under open-source, the company said last year, has been to let competitors into its Rich Internet Applications (RIA) back yard. — One such competitor is Curl …
Discussion:
InfoWorld
Emil Protalinski / One Microsoft Way:
Microsoft promotes Bob Muglia to president — After working for 21 years for Microsoft, Bob Muglia has been promoted from vice president to president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business (STB), which generated some US$13 billion in FY08, or about 20 percent of the company's total revenue.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Forbes Layoffs Finally Arrive: 19 Fired From Magazine, Web — Like their colleagues at Time Warner's Time Inc. (TWX), the editorial staff at Forbes has known that layoffs were coming to the company's magazine and Web site for quite some time. But at least they're getting it over with in one fell swoop …
Anne Thomas Manes / Application Platform …:
SOA is Dead; Long Live Services — SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession. SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other architectural approaches that depend on “services”.
