Top Items:
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Android G2 Photos: Thinner and No Keyboard — Here they are: Alleged spy photos of the second generation Android cellphone, the thinner, shinier, and totally lickable T-Mobile G2 made by HTC. It has no keyboard and its back looks oh-so-soap-bar-smooth: — As you can see, it has a 3.2 megapixel camera.
Michael Pinto / Fanboy.com:
Social Media “Experts” are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped) — Nearly a day goes by on Twitter without yet another social media “expert” choosing to stalk me. At first it started innocently — back in the day (about a year ago) various techie friends started …
Daniel Shen / DigiTimes:
Microsoft expected to deliver Windows Mobile 6.5 OS to handset makers in mid-2009, say sources — Microsoft is expected to start delivering its Windows Mobile 6.5 OS (operating system) to handset makers in mid-2009 following the expected debut of the new mobile OS in the upcoming Mobile World Congress …
Discussion:
Unwired View, Mobile Tech Addicts, IntoMobile, SlashGear, the::unwired, Engadget Mobile, wmpoweruser.com and atmaspheric
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Apple quietly updates $999 white MacBook with unibody specs — Hmmm, what's this? Did Apple just update its lowly, $999 white plastic polycarbonate MacBook to more closely align with its new unibody MacBooks? Why yes, yes it has... sometime in the last 3 days according to Google's cache.
The Official Google Blog:
Search findings from the U.S. presidential inauguration — Today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America. As we observed throughout the presidential campaign, many people in the U.S. turned to Google Search to find information.
RELATED:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:Despite Inauguration, Google & Others Still Think It's President Bush …
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:Google search helps provide inauguration subtext
Discussion:
Technologizer
Jason Kottke / kottke.org:
The country's new robots.txt file — Here's a small and nerdy measure of the huge change in the executive branch of the US government today. Here's the robots.txt file from whitehouse.gov yesterday: … And it goes on like that for almost 2400 lines! Here's the new Obamafied robots.txt file:
Discussion:
The White House, Google Blogoscoped, Ross Mayfield's Weblog, CircleID, Webware.com, Adaptive Path and Ajaxian
Reuters:
Microsoft expected to cut jobs as profit weakens — NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is expected to post a quarterly profit that misses its own target and announce thousands of job cuts this week as the global economic slump hurts even the technology industry's biggest players.
Spencer Spinnell / Traditional Media:
Turning the page on Print Ads — Labels: Announcements, Google Print Ads — In the last few months, we've been taking a long, hard look at all the things we are doing to ensure we are investing our resources in the projects that will have the biggest impact for our users and partners.
Discussion:
The Register, Techdirt, the Econsultancy blog, Tech Beat, Guardian, Google Operating System, MediaMemo, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Romenesko, Local Onliner, /Message, paidContent.org, Search Engine Land, Podcasting News, AppScout, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, Silicon Alley Insider, Gawker, New York Times, VentureBeat, Tech Trader Daily and Search Engine Journal
RELATED:
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Pictures: President Obama's inauguration, as seen from space — The other day I wrote about how the GeoEye-1 satellite would be taking images of President Obama's inauguration from 423 miles up — in space. This could only have worked on a clear day so clouds didn't block the view.
Bloomberg:
Apple's Disclosures About Jobs's Health Said to Face SEC Review — Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — U.S. regulators are examining Apple Inc.'s disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs's health problems to ensure investors weren't misled, a person familiar with the matter said.
Discussion:
The Register, BoomTown, Guardian, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, Business Week and bizjournals
Alex Pham / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Linden Lab acquires Xtreet and OnRez, brokers of virtual goods for Second Life — Is the real economy dragging you down? Hop into Second Life, where the virtual world's gross domestic product jumped 54% in the fourth quarter! — Residents of Second Life traded $100.8 million worth …
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple's iPhone may have outsold Android nearly 6-to-1 — While Apple may not have had the strongest of holiday sales for Macs and iPods, estimates for sales of iPhone 3G versus T-Mobile's G1 may show Apple's device having outsold one of its closest competitors by a ratio of six to one in the US alone.
Discussion:
The iPhone Blog
RELATED:
Heather Dougherty / Hitwise Intelligence:
Twitter catches up to Digg — Twitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activates, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets. Last week, the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time since launch and was ranked #84 …
Discussion:
PC World, Search Engine Watch, CNET News, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, WebProNews, Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch
Matt Pace / Compete Blog:
Amazon Prime Squeezes Already Struggling Rivals — While the 2008 holiday shopping season brought considerable anguish to the retailing industry, Amazon.com was the standout exception. As rivals lick their wounds and look ahead to a challenging 2009, the retailing giant offered them a measure …
Poynter Online:
New York Times' Policy on Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites — This unedited policy was provided by Craig Whitney, The New York Times' assistant managing editor who oversees journalistic standards. — Using “Facebook” in Reporting — Facebook and other social networking sites …
Jack Davis / SiliconBeat:
HP's Mark Hurd made $42.5 million in fiscal 2008 — Hewlett-Packard gave its boss, Mark Hurd, $25.4 million in cash last year, including a $1.45 million salary and $23.9 million in bonus money, according to compensation figures contained in the company's proxy which it filed late on Inauguration Day.
Discussion:
Between the Lines
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Open government — The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products. — The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
All Major Canadian ISPs Slow Down P2P Traffic — Ignited by the Comcast fiasco in the US, the concept of net neutrality has certainly been brought into the mainstream. ISPs are rarely transparent when it comes to their throttling, capping and otherwise interfering behavior …
BIZ / Twitter Blog:
Inauguration Day on Twitter — It was a big day at Twitter HQ today and it's not even noon yet. We saw 5x normal tweets-per-second and about 4x tweets-per-minute as this chart illustrates. Overall, Twitter sailed smoothly through the inauguration but at the peak, some folks did experience a 2-5 minute delay receiving updates.
Discussion:
dot.life blog, CNET News, MSNBC, VentureBeat, blogs.ft.com, CBS News, Obsessable and AppScout
RELATED:
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Real-Time News: PubSub Gets Ready for a Comeback — In 2002, PubSub released an interesting and useful product that provided a real-time search engine for RSS feeds, flight information, Usenet posts, and even earthquake updates. Sadly, PubSub closed its doors in 2007 and its assets were bought by Something Simpler.
Discussion:
broadstuff
Aza Raskin / Mozilla Labs:
Test Pilot: Vision — How many tabs does an average user use at a time? How about novice users? How often is the stop button pressed? How many times do people open a new tab to perform a search? — There are hundreds of questions like these whose answers would help quantitatively inform the design process of Firefox.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Word Cloud Analysis of Obama's Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln's — Barack Obama was just sworn in as President of the US and though he stumbled in repeating his oath, the speech that followed was delivered flawlessly and was widely praised around the web.
Gavin Steacy / Tom's Hardware Guide:
Seagate's Update Bricking Working HDDs — Seagate recently released a preventative firmware update for Barracuda 7200.11 drives affected by a faulty firmware which caused the drive to lock up and fail to be detected by the BIOS. Unfortunately, the updating process has not gone smoothly for many people …
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Online Video of Inauguration Sets Records — Millions of cubicle dwellers across the country helped set records for Internet traffic on Tuesday as they watched online video of the inauguration ceremonies — or at least tried to. The overwhelming demand meant that some Web sites and data networks …
