Top Items:
Nate Lanxon / CNET News:
iTunes Plus: Everything you need to know — Apple's iTunes Store is almost completely DRM-free, and will be entirely DRM-free from spring. This means files downloaded from iTunes work on heaps of devices that aren't from Apple. What better way to celebrate the final bullet to the living corpse …
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David Rothman / TeleRead:
iTunes already using a form of social DRM — Social DRM, an approach repeatedly talked up here for publishers who don't want to release e-book files without anti-copying measures, is already in use in iTunes. — Check out a Slashdot item and CNET article for more on iTune's use of social DRM.
Wall Street Journal:
Genachowski Picked to Head FCC — WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama intends to nominate his technology adviser Julius Genachowski to head the Federal Communications Commission, a source close to the Obama transition team said. — Mr. Genachowksi, 46, is a former Harvard Law School classmate of Mr. Obama.
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Fred / A VC:
This News Made Me Smile A Mile Wide — Like I do every morning, I logged into Techmeme to find this news: — That's an image, sorry about that, here's the link to the WSJ story, but I wanted you all to see how I heard the news. — This is so great on so many levels. Let's start with the first reason.
Discussion:
Marc's Voice
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
How to Get, Install and Play With Windows 7, Pain Free — You've been thinking about installing Windows 7 Beta 1 now that it's totally available to anyone. Well, here's our complete guide to grabbing, installing and playing with Windows 7—it's (mostly) painless, so no excuses! — Are You Ready?
Discussion:
Beyond Binary, The Microsoft Blog, InfoWorld, Coffeestops!, I4U News, Ars Technica and Lifehacker
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Newsgator Secures $10 Million Sixth Round Funding — RSS feed aggregator Newsgator has raised a $10 million sixth-round funding. The company has lined up past investors, including Masthead Venture Partners, Mobius Venture Capital and Vista Ventures, for this latest funding.
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Revealed: The Times Made Up That Stuff About Google And The Tea Kettles — Yesterday an article in The Times of London set the web abuzz over new findings that every Google search contributed 7 grams of CO2 to the atmosphere - half the amount produced when heating a tea kettle (heaven forbid!).
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
Major Shake-up At Sling Media: Krikorian Brothers, Hirschhorn, White, Wilkes Leaving — Little more than a year after Sling Media's sale to EchoStar (NSDQ: SATS), the co-founders and the top team at Sling Entertainment are leaving the company, paidContent.org has learned.
Google Mac Blog:
Search Without Effort: The Quick Search Box — One of our goals at Google is to make your search experience as fluid as possible. While much of our work is focused on Google.com, we're trying to make it just as easy to search outside your browser. — For the last year, we have been working on a new, open-source quick search box.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Why You Have To Jailbreak the iPhone — If you own an iPhone and you're fairly technical, then you've no doubt gone through the steps necessary to “jailbreak” your iPhone - the process that opens up the phone to allow for the installation of unapproved third-party applications.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
CES attendance figures are grim at 110,000, down 22 percent — The International Consumer Electronics Show drew only 110,000 visitors — down 22 percent from last year — over its five-day run in Las Vegas, the lowest turnout in a long time. — The Consumer Electronics Association …
Discussion:
Ars Technica, Strategic heading, PC World, mocoNews.net, IntoMobile, Silicon Valley Watcher, AdAge, Obsessable and Technologizer
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Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:Are trade shows dead? My answer might surprise you
Discussion:
Oatmeal Stout
Gerrymoth / nokiAAddict.com:
Nokia E71 firmware updated to v200.21.118 — Nokia E71 Euro firmware updated to v200.21.118 — UPDATE: Thanks MMAS for the changelog — New functionalities in MCU SW version 200.21.118: — Internet Radio application — My Nokia application — 3G power reduction for applications using keep-alive style messaging
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Nope, Sony's Not “Recession-proof”: Set for $1 Billion Loss? — No wonder Howard Stringer couldn't promise he was “recession-proof” when the Sony CEO spoke at CES last week: The company is set to record a $1.1 billion loss, according to the Japanese newspaper Nikkei.
Discussion:
Reuters
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Tech giants team on education push — Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco plan to announce Tuesday that they are working together to help ensure that proper standards are created for measuring digital literacy. — The three companies aren't coming up with the assessment criteria themselves …
Discussion:
Microsoft Pri0
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Social Networking: Will Facebook Overtake MySpace In The U.S. In 2009? — Year end Comscore numbers for the U.S. audience are out. The first thing we checked? How the major social networks are doing. — Facebook, which became the largest worldwide social network in mid 2008 …
Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:
Hardware Hacker Charged With Selling Cable Modems That Get Free Broadband — Update — In the first case of its kind, a Pennsylvania man faces federal criminal charges for allegedly selling hacked cable modems capable of stealing free, anonymous internet service from broadband providers.
Discussion:
digg.com
Foundry Group:
What We Learned at CES — Foundry Group attended the latest incarnation of CES this past week and thought we'd give some of our thoughts on the show. In no particular order, here is “What We Learned at CES.” — Don't buy a television for the next 6 months.
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Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Smartphone competition: It's too late for Nokia and Microsoft, but not too late for Palm in USA — Everyone is still talking cell phones. Just visit TechMeme today and you'll see lots of news from HTC, I've already seen some claims that it has a “Palm killer.”
Pascal Meunier / SANS Institute:
CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors — Experts Announce Agreement on the 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors - And How to Fix Them — Agreement Will Change How Organizations Buy Software. — Project Manager: Bob Martin, MITRE — Questions: top25@sans.org
Discussion:
internetnews.com, The Register, eWeek, InformationWeek, Computerworld, PC World, ZDNet Government, Slashdot and Tech Beat
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Photo Marketplace That Never Launched: Flickr Stock — In late 2007 Flickr was strongly considering creating a marketplace where users could buy and sell photographs hosted on the service. It was to be called Flickr Stock. — Then-employee Sarah Cooper worked on the project and describes …
Discussion:
SitePoint
David / TmoNews:
HTC 2009 lineup leaked, G2 included — A few moments ago a story leaked through engadget to the gadget freaks of the world and inside that information is something you guys have ALL been clamoring for...possible sighting of the G2. Not this G2. I'm talking about code-name Sapphire …
Ben Worthen / Digits:
Tech Spending to Decline in '09 — Finally, the prognosticators are proclaiming the bad news is official: The recession will extend to the tech sector in 2009. — Tracy O via Flickr — Spending on information-technology goods and services this year will contract 3% compared with 2008 to $1.66 trillion …
Discussion:
Reuters
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Intel's Dilemma — The chip giant is too big to hide from the economy's woes, and this could crimp innovation for years to come. — Let's face it. The folks at Intel are smarter than the rest of us. The problem: The smarter you are—and you've got to be smart to dominate …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Google Again Gains U.S. Search Share — Google's (GOOG) share of the U.S. search market increased to 72.07% in December, from 71.97% in November and 65.98% a year ago, according to research firm Hitwise.com. — Yahoo's (YHOO) share was 17.79%, up a tad from 17.70% in November, but down from 20.88% a year ago.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Industry Standard, WebProNews, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim and Beyond Search
Channel Insider:
Dire Predictions: Tech Vendors That May Not Survive 2009 — In the Channel Insider 2009 Market Pulse Survey, e asked solution providers which vendors they thought would go out of business or be acquired in 2009. The results may shock you. Based on their perceptions and predictions …
David Goldman / CNNMoney.com:
Obama's big idea: Digital health records — President-elect wants to computerize the nation's health care records in five years. But the plan comes with a hefty price tag, and specialized labor is scarce. — NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort …
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News:
IBM microscope 100 million times stronger than MRI — IBM Research on Monday announced that it has built a new nanoscale microscope (link to YouTube video) capable of creating images with 100 million times finer resolution than existing MRI technology. — The project was made possible through …
