Top Items:
Apple:
Apple Media Advisory — Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees: — Team, — I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues …
Discussion:
The Ponderings of Woodrow, PC World, Tech Sanity Check, I4U News, Industry Standard, TUAW, Computerworld, Silicon Alley Insider, InfoWorld, Macworld, mobilesyrup.com, Gadget Lab, Tech Beat, geeksugar, Gizmodo, Digits, mocoNews.net, RCR Wireless News, Creative Capital, iLounge, Homotron.net, Forbes, Open Sources, AppleInsider, InformationWeek, TidBITS, Between the Lines, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Apple 2.0, TechFlash, Contentinople, VatorNews and Digital Daily
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Steve Jobs Takes Leave (AAPL) — Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs will take a medical leave of absence until the end of June. Apple COO Tim Cook will take over for Steve until then. Apple shares are down about 7% in after-hours trading. — The Latest: — Apple Without Jobs: Fine For Now, But...
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Gizmodo, CNBC.com, Associated Press, Guardian, AppleInsider, Agence France Presse, Bits, Tech Broiler, Chuqui 3.0, ChasNote, Reuters, Ars Technica, Gawker, louisgray.com, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Boy Genius Report, Bloomberg, InformationWeek, Digital Daily, Coolest Gadgets, The iPhone Blog, Beyond Binary, TechCrunch UK, Computerworld, Epicenter, Apple 2.0, WinExtra, MediaFile, The Toybox, The Register, GigaOM, Digits, eWeek and Engadget
Yukari Iwatani Kane / Wall Street Journal:
Apple's Steve Jobs Takes Medical Leave — Just a week after reassuring investors and employees about his health, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs disclosed he has a “more complex” medical condition and would take a leave of absence until the end of June.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
The cost of a “complex” Jobs health issue: About $6 billion (so far) — It should come as no shock that Apple's stock is tanking following chief executive Steve Jobs' announcement that he was taking a medical leave of absence until June to get to the bottom of his “complex” health issue.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku — Google's announced they're closing or ceasing development of a variety of products as part of an already continuing move to keep efforts focused on other products with greater usage.
Discussion:
loose wire blog, TechCrunch, Googling Google, John Battelle's Searchblog, CenterNetworks and Micro Persuasion
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Raj Krishnan / Notebook Blog:
Stopping development on Google Notebook — At Google, we're constantly working to innovate and improve our products so people can easily find and manage information. At times though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users in the long run.
Vic Gundotra / Google Code Blog:
Changes for Jaiku and Farewell to Dodgeball and Mashup Editor — Google has long believed that thoughtful iteration is the best way to build useful products for our users. As part of that process, we are always looking for ways to better focus our teams on the products that can have the most impact.
Laszlo Bock / The Official Google Blog:
Changes to recruiting — As we made clear during our last quarterly earnings call in October, Google is still hiring but at a reduced rate. Given the state of the economy, we recognized that we needed fewer people focused on hiring. — Our first step to address this was to wind down almost …
Discussion:
TechFlash, Silicon Alley Insider, Tech Beat, Bits, CNET News, VentureBeat, John Battelle's Searchblog and Domain Name News
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Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Google's Loss of Innocence: 100 Jobs Cut — The Magical Kingdom of Larry and Sergey has laid off 100 full-time recruiters, a tipster tells us. Inevitable, given the economy. But a crushing blow to Google's self-image as a kinder-than-thou employer. — In the last dotcom bust …
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog
The Official Google Blog:
Changes to engineering — At Google we recognized early on that branching out beyond Mountain View was key to building innovative products for users everywhere. That's why we put so much effort into hiring outstanding engineers in a wide mix of countries.
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Fake Steve Jobs Rips Real Jim Goldman A New One (VIDEO) — We've already poked Jim Goldman, the CNBC reporter who has spectacularly blown the Steve Jobs story over the past few weeks (and insulted the writers and readers who got it right all along the way).
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Fake Steve Jobs Banned From CNBC For Life — Newsweek's Dan Lyons — “Fake Steve Jobs” — is banned from CNBC for life because of his appearance on the cable network earlier this evening, we have learned. — In a special report about Steve Jobs' stepping down from day-to-day operations at Apple …
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Whopper Sacrifice Forced to Disable Behavior by Facebook (Updated) — A week after the Whopper Sacrifice application made waves for its creative (and aggressive) use of Facebook friend removals as a way to spread the application, Facebook has forced it to disable the app's functionality, according to the developer.
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Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Is Exploring Job Cuts — Microsoft Corp. is seriously exploring significant work force reductions that could be announced as early as next week, in a sign that the weak economy is prompting tough decisions even at one of the steadiest ships in the technology industry.
Jeff Widman / TechCrunchIT:
Salesforce.com Launches The Service Cloud, A Customer Service SaaS Application — These days, when I have technical question, I reach for Google long before reaching for customer service. What if customer service could reach for Google? — Salesforce.com just launched a new customer service application called Service Cloud.
Brent Frei / Smartsheet:
Value Investing? Answer: Invest in Yourself — The last 8 months I've gone few days without an investment-related question from a friend, colleague or distant relative. Should I stay in? Should I get out? Where should I invest? Should I maintain a cash position? What about T-bills?
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.
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch UK:
As raw as it gets - Skype legend Morten Lund bankrupt — Morten Lund, an entrepreneur from Copenhagen, Denmark, might just be the real Rock-'n Roll entrepreneur. Yesterday he was declared personally bankrupt by the Copenhagen Maritime and Commercial Court after losing 10M Krona in an investment …
Discussion:
TheNextWeb.com
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, AppleInsider, Technologizer, The Toybox, Pulse2, PC World, Boing Boing Gadgets, Liliputing and MacNN
Bob Walsh / Webware.com:
GoDaddy.com outage takes sites offline — A distributed denial-of-service attack turned dark at least several thousand Web sites hosted by GoDaddy.com Wednesday morning. The outage was intermittent over several hours, according to Nick Fuller, GoDaddy.com communications manager.
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 …
Discussion:
The Toybox
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.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Stephanie Condon / CNET News:
Democrats' 2009 legislative plan: Net neutrality, copyright rewrite — WASHINGTON—It may seem as though Congress has completely forgotten about Net neutrality, a topic that has languished in legislative purgatory since mid-2006. But a Democratic aide said Wednesday that it's likely to come back this year …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Sprout Builder Kills Its Free Publishing Service — Web 2.0 Called; It Says It's Just An Ad Platform Now — When we saw drag and drop widget creation service Sprout Builder launch at the DEMO conference a year ago this month, we called it far and away our favorite company that launched there.
Discussion:
The Universal Desktop
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.
Po Bronson / Fast Company:
What Should I Do with My Life, Now? — Author Po Bronson addresses the current economic crisis, in this follow-up to his book and Fast Company article, “What Should I Do With My Life?” — Six years ago, the tech economy had crashed, the economy was stalled, and 9-11 had radically altered the nation's mood.
Daimaou / Akihabaranews.com:
Sony Vaio P Unboxing... Do You Think I'm Sexy? — What you're seeing in this picture (below) is my gorgeous... bottom... Apparently even the Vaio P's box could fit in your back pocket... Seriously, Sony sent us over a Vaio P70 to test for a week, and before we go and write a review on the beast, here's our little unboxing...
