Top Items:
Steve Hamm / Business Week:
First U.S. CTO May Be Indian — President-elect Obama has narrowed his choices for the top technology job to two people, both born in India — Two Indian-born technology executives are the leading candidates for the incoming Obama Administration's newly created position …
Discussion:
Digital Media Wire, VentureBeat, TechFlash, Data Center Knowledge, GigaOM, Beet.TV, The Social Times, The 463 and FierceWireless
www.kogan.com.au:
Kogan Agora to be delayed — I'm disappointed to have to tell you that the Kogan Agora has to be delayed indefinitely. — This delay comes due to potential future interoperability issues. — The Agora did reach a very late stage of development. Manufacturing had commenced and it was a matter of days from being shipped to you.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, IntoMobile, The Register, Search Engine Land, Boy Genius Report, Unwired View, Android Phone Fans, APC and AndroidGuys
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The Age:
Aussie Google phone launch aborted — Ruslan Kogan. Asher Moses — The Melbourne consumer electronics maker who promised to release the first Google phone in Australia by the end of this month has delayed the launch indefinitely, citing “potential future interoperability issues”.
Daniel Lyons / Newsweek:
Rotten Reporting — The media's coverage of Apple bites. Here's why. — For the past six months Steve Jobs has been looking terribly ill. But only this week did Apple finally acknowledge that Jobs isn't doing well, when the company announced that Jobs would take a leave for six months.
Discussion:
All about Microsoft, internetnews.com, HotHardware.com News, WebProNews and Negative Approach
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
The Little App Store That Could... About six weeks ago, after reading the fine print on an Apple Inc. [AAPL Loading... () ] ad for its online applications download store, the App Store, I noticed some pretty stunning numbers: that Apple customers had downloaded 200 million apps since …
Chris Mellor / The Register:
Seagate customers swamped by Barracuda drive failures — Seagate firmware to blame — Seagate 1TB Barracuda drives are failing at an alarming rate, with users complaining of a plague of such failures spreading across the globe. — Barracuda 7200.11 drives made in Thailand (ref …
Discussion:
Storage Soup
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Circuit City To Close All Stores; More Than 35,000 Jobs Lost — So long, Circuit City (CC). — In a bankruptcy court filing, the electronics retailer disclosed that it has reached a deal with liquidators to sell the remaining merchandise in all 567 of its U.S. stores after failing to find …
Discussion:
Technologizer, paidContent.org, CNNMoney.com, Webomatica, Crave, CNBC, Electronista, Engadget, Gearlog, VatorNews, GoNintendo and Boy Genius Report
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
Why Obama's cell phone calls will always go through — After Barack Obama is sworn in next week, he'll be able to enjoy one of the lesser-known benefits of the presidency: phone calls that always go through. — That means no more “all circuits are busy” messages.
Discussion:
Redmond Pie
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Watch The Obama Inauguration From Your iPhone With Ustream — John Ham, the cofounder and CEO of live video streaming site Ustream, stopped by this afternoon to show me their newest stuff - a yet-to-be-released application that lets users watch live streams from the service on their iPhone.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Twitter May Have Found Its Business Model — Twitter...what is it good for? It turns out this little service is good for a whole lot of things, despite the loud objections of people who've never really tried it. Even among true believers, though, it's been hard to figure …
Discussion:
TECH.BLORGE.com, Local Mobile Search, The Blog Herald, WebProNews, TheNextWeb.com, Twitterrati, MediaVidea, Mashable! and digg.com
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Another Twitter App Funded: TweetDeck Raises an Angel Round. Next Up: A Business Plan — Yes, you can still get someone to invest in a Web start-up with zero revenue. It helps if you can insert the word “Twitter” into your pitch, though. — TweetDeck, a one-man company that makes …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, GigaOM, TechCrunch, CNET News, mocoNews.net, Mashable!, Twitterrati and the Econsultancy blog
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
German Government Wants to Start ISP-Based Censoring — Germany will start to hand out blacklists to internet providers, several German news sources, like Spiegel, report. This move is proclaimed to only filter child porn. In about 6-8 weeks the dealings with the ISPs should be finalized …
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Mobile Today:
Sony refuses to allow Sony Ericsson the use of its PlayStation brand — Sony Ericsson was planning a PSP phone but has been refused the brand — Sony is understood to have refused to allow Sony Ericsson the use of its PlayStation brand, after the handset manufacturer presented a pitch to the board late last year.
Discussion:
NEWSFACTOR, CNET News, Silicon Alley Insider, Engadget, SlashGear, Mobile Roar, Gizmodo and PSP Fanboy
DigiTimes:
HP to add more members to its Mini-note family — Hewlett-Packard (HP) plans to launch new members in its Mini-note family including the Mini-note 2150 with built-in a 3G module at the beginning of June this year, according to sources at notebook makers — Before the Mini-note 2150 …
Discussion:
CrunchGear, Electronista, Liliputing, SlashGear, GPS Obsessed, Boing Boing Gadgets and Engadget
Chris Williams / The Register:
UK.gov ‘to create anti-net piracy agency’ — ‘Rights Agency’ and new regulations to hit P2P infringement — Following its failure to foster voluntary solution between ISPs and rights holders, the government will create a new agency and regulations to clamp down on copyright infringement via peer …
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
How Microsoft blew the keyword business; And how you still can't count Redmond out — Microsoft had its Google killer in 2000, but killed the project before it got rolling. Why? Worries about cannibalization. — The Wall Street Journal has an interesting tale of Microsoft's miscues on the search front.
Daily Mail:
Poor eyesight ‘makes HDTV a waste of money’ … It's a revolutionary technology that enhances television images so effectively viewers can pick up the tiniest detail in stunning clarity. — But many consumers are wasting hundreds of pounds on high-definition equipment because their eyes …
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
AMD to trim 1,100 jobs, initiate temporary pay cuts — Updated at 10:12 a.m. PST, with more information about AMD's financial performance. — Advanced Micro Devices announced Friday it would slash its workforce by 9 percent and institute temporary salary cuts, from its executive chairman on down to hourly workers.
Economist:
One tough Yahoo! — Life has tested Carol Bartz far more than even running Yahoo! will — WHO is Carol Bartz? This week Yahoo!, a huge but floundering internet company, appointed her as its new boss. Ms Bartz is one of only a few women at the top in Silicon Valley …
Justin Berka / Infinite Loop:
Profits from iShoot iPhone game cause developer to quit job — Software developers have been releasing applications on the App Store for a while now, but there's still a good bit of tinkering and learning going on when it comes to things like application pricing.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Worst Microsoft Video Promo Ever, Take 2. Just Cover Up The Mac With Stickers. — Earlier this month, Microsoft Research released Songsmith, a song-making app that works only on Windows. To promote the app it released what might very well be the worst promo video ever …
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Want Proof OpenID Can Succeed? Just Scroll Down — Whatever hurdles OpenID has to clear to become a widely-adopted de facto standard, its blueprint for success lies at the bottom of millions of blog posts. — OpenID and its companion technologies — along with similar systems like Facebook Connect …
Discussion:
Identity Woman, OpenID, The Real McCrea, Six Apart News & Events, WebProNews and ReadWriteWeb
Gerald Magpily / Dealscape:
Martin to step down from FCC chair on inauguration day — Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin announced Thursday that he will step down from his post Jan. 20, inauguration day for President-elect Barack Obama. Appointed to the FCC by President George Bush in 2001 …
Roger A. Grimes / Security Adviser:
Conficker malware ups the ante — Roger A. Grimes explains why keeping up to date with patches can mean the difference between a functional system and a playground for hackers — I'm finding many Windows servers without the MS08-067 patch and no specific mitigations applied.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Statshot: More Than 10 Million Wiis Sold in 2008 — Despite my addiction to The Age of Empires (and the rest of the franchise), I'm not much of a gamer. Nevertheless, last year a friend of mine let me borrow his Nintendo Wii and after a couple of hours spent playing some of its simpler games, I was hooked.
Discussion:
VatorNews
Kwang-Tae Kim / Associated Press:
SKorean court denies bail to jailed blogger — SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A popular South Korean blogger arrested on accusations of posting false economic information on the Internet has been denied bail, his lawyer said Friday. — The 31-year-old blogger, who went by the handle “Minerva” …
