Top Items:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Steve Jobs Steps Down Temporarily For Health Reasons (AAPL) — Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs will take a medical week of absence until the end of June. Apple COO Tim Cook will take over for Steve Jobs until then. Trading is halted. — More to come. — Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees:
Discussion:
Digits
Globe and Mail:
Nortel to file for bankruptcy protection — Facing $107-million interest on debts, former telecom giant will likely be broken up and sold to foreign rivals — Former technology titan Nortel Networks Corp. is expected to file for bankruptcy protection as early as today, sources say …
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Arn / MacRumors:
Snow Leopard to Bring Unifying ‘Marble’ User Interface? — Last year, Apple announced that they will be releasing the next major revision of Mac OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard) in 2009. The focus of Snow Leopard has been on performance and quality of the underlying codebase rather than introducing new end-user features.
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
The Netbook Hackintosh Video Apple Is Suing Wired For — Gadget Lab writer and Giz friend Brian X. Chen reveals via Twitter that Apple “is suing Wired for my video tutorial on hacking netbooks to run Mac OS X.” — Brian actually loaned his personal MSI Wind Hackintosh for the Giz Gallery.
Discussion:
CNET News, The Toybox, 9 to 5 Mac, MacNN, CrunchGear, Liliputing and Boing Boing Gadgets
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Jason Snell / Macworld:
Hackintosh video: Tired or wired? — Hacking a copy of Mac OS X and installing it on a PC is technically a violation of the OS X license agreement. This is one reason why Apple sued Psystar and why you don't see Dell suddenly selling “Mac-compatible PCs” that bundle a stock Dell system with a retail copy of Leopard.
Stan Schroeder / Mashable!:
YouTube Now Mutes Videos With Unauthorized Copyrighted Music — Perhaps this has been going on for a while, but I've never noticed it before. YouTube users often create an original video using their favorite popular song as the audio. I'm afraid that they won't be able to do that much longer …
Discussion:
CircleID, ReadWriteWeb, Epicenter, Download Squad, MediaFuturist, bub.blicio.us, CrunchGear, NewTeeVee, RotorBlog.com, Obsessable and WebProNews
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:YouTube Full Of Creepy, Soundless Music Videos
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CNET News
Lisa Fernandez / Mercury News:
Casino profile details luxurious lifestyle of former Fry's executive — When “Mr. S” showed up in Las Vegas, bellboys, butlers and blackjack dealers made sure they were prepared for the high-rolling Fry's Electronics executive flying in from San Jose with his long list of demands.
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Allows 3rd Party Web Browsers into App Store — Over the past 24 hours, Apple has begun to approve 3rd party web browsing applications for the iPhone. A number of new web browsing apps have suddenly appeared with original submission dates ranging as far back as October.
Discussion:
InformationWeek, MobileCrunch, TechSpot, Epicenter, Infinite Loop, PC World, Macworld, Technologizer, Royal Pingdom, AppleInsider, mocoNews.net, Download Squad, Silicon Alley Insider, WebMate, Engadget, Unwired View, TUAW, CenterNetworks, CrunchGear, TheAppleBlog, iPhone Buzz, Mobility Site, Mobile Tech Addicts, last100, Webware.com, MarketingVOX, GPS Obsessed, Homotron.net and MacBlogz
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John Herrman / Gizmodo:Apple Approves New Browsers in App Store, As Long As They're Based On Safari
Discussion:
PC World, DailyTech, ChannelWeb, InformationWeek, Mobility Today and Silicon Alley Insider
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
A Text Arrives. Oh, It's Just an ‘Idol’ Ad. — Some AT&T Wireless customers have voted an emphatic no on a promotion for “American Idol” that popped up on their phones this week. — AT&T, a sponsor of the show, said it sent text messages to a “significant number” of its 75 million customers …
Discussion:
Bits, blogs.chron.com, MarketingVOX, The Huffington Post, Gearlog, techblog.dallasnews.com and Phone Scoop
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Ginx: Pierre Omidyar's Stealthy New Social Recommendation Service — eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has joined the executive team of a stealthy new startup called Ginx, according to financial filings unearthed by PEHub. Very little is known about the company but based on passing whispers …
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Nick Farrell / Inquirer:
Windows 7 is enough to kill Linux on the desktop — First INQpressions Should damage Apple too — FOR THE PAST three years I have been a Linux fan-boy using Ubuntu most of the time and Windows XP when I needed to play games or run CS desktop lay out stuff.
Discussion:
Open Source
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Gmail Grew 43 Percent Last Year. AOL Mail And Hotmail Need To Start Worrying. — Google launched Gmail only four years ago, and it is now the fourth most popular e-mail service on the Web after Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and Windows Live Hotmail. In 2008, it saw some serious growth …
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
Dell Plans Its Own Smartphone, Analysts Say — The new Palm Pre may be the most-anticipated new phone since the iPhone 3G, but there's yet another new player on the way: PC maker Dell may be readying its own smartphone, to arrive as early as next month. — Dell could make an announcement …
Discussion:
Local Mobile Search, CrunchGear, The Toybox, InformationWeek, Mobility Site, Boy Genius Report, Phone Arena and Unwired View
Pal Takacsi / Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Send & Archive — In addition to having two cappuccinos, my morning routine includes processing new mail that's arrived in my inbox overnight. More often than not, as I reply to a message I also want to archive it so I can enjoy the satisfaction of a pristine inbox.
Steven Musil / CNET News:
Blockbuster to offer video downloads — In an effort to keep pace with rival Netflix, Blockbuster announced a partnership Wednesday to offer instant access to its video library through various home and portable devices. — The movie rental company has partnered with Sonic Solutions to offer …
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, last100, Ars Technica, Technologizer, paidContent.org, NewTeeVee, Electronista and Lifehacker
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MG Siegler / VentureBeat:Blockbuster claims to open the distribution floodgates …
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SlipperyBrick.com
Don Reisinger / The Digital Home:
Want to eliminate Psystar? License Mac OS X — Psystar, the homegrown computer vendor selling its brand of Open Computers with Mac OS X installed, is back in the news this week, thanks to another court filing claiming it can do whatever it wants, courtesy of the first-sale doctrine.
Cade Metz / The Register:
Brit porn filter censors 13 years of net history — Demon blacklist muzzles Wayback Machine — Four weeks after birthing a nationwide Wikipedia edit ban, Britain's child porn blacklist has led at least one ISP to muzzle the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine - an 85-billion-page web history dating back to 1996.
Nathan Eddy / eWeek:
United Airlines to Offer In-Flight Wi-Fi — Resource Library: — United Airlines follows Delta and American Airlines in announcing in-flight Wi-Fi, through AirCell's Gogo Inflight Internet service, on select transcontinental flights. — Many small business owners regard flying as lost time …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, DSLreports, GigaOM, United Airlines, Mashable!, Gearlog, Electronista and WebProNews
Google Webmaster Central Blog:
A new Google Sitemap Generator for your website — It's been well over three years since we initially announced the Python Sitemap generator in June 2005. In this time, we've seen lots of people create great third-party Sitemap generators to help webmasters create better Sitemap files.
Matt Casamassina / IGN:
Rumor: DSi U.S. Launch Date, Price Revealed — Nintendo's next-generation handheld may be coming to America sooner than you think. — Multiple sources close to Nintendo tell IGN that the company is gearing up to debut the anticipated successor to its DS Lite handheld during the first half of this year in America.
Discussion:
Boy Genius Report, Gizmodo, SlashGear, DS Fanboy, CrunchGear, Electronista, Engadget, Kotaku and Opposable Thumbs
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
Kleiner Perkins Re-Raising Multiple Funds — Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is very concerned about the lack of liquidity options for current portfolio companies, and peHUB has learned that it is taking steps to ensure an abundance of dry powder. — The landmark VC firm …
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Why Do We Still Let Webmail Services Get Away With Deleting Our Data? — It's 2009. Storage is so cheap that Email providers like Yahoo are literally giving you as much space as you want. Yet we still have to deal with archaic policies that allow these Email providers to delete everything …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
How Apple could sell 77 million iPhones in 2013 — Two very different iPhone reports — with very different perspectives — were published this week. — One, from Citigroup's Richard Gardner, focused on the short-term. He looked at inventory levels in Apple's supplier channels …
John P. Falcone / Crave: The gadget blog:
Control your TiVo via text message with Kwiry — We already knew that text messaging service Kwiry could do some cool tricks via text messaging—things like adding products to your Amazon wish list or adding movies to your Netflix queue. But now the service is adding rudimentary TiVo control to the list.
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Gannett: All Non-Union Employees Must Take One Week Off Without Pay (GCI) — Recent layoffs at newspaper chain Gannett (GCI) haven't been enough to fix a failing business model getting hammered in a miserable economy. Next cost-cutting measure: All non-union employees will have to take …
Tim Carroll / PalmInfocenter:
Interview with Pandora About Developing for WebOS — Tom Conrad has a long history in engineering and product design: he's led teams that have worked on everything from operating systems to video games, including the fondly-remembered PC classic You Don't Know Jack.
Discussion:
Engadget
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Investment firm believes Apple's building 4GB iPhones — A 4GB version of the iPhone once rumored to play a major role at Wal-Mart discount chains was a no-show in 2008, though one Wall Street analyst now says there's evidence the device may turn up this year.
