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.
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.
RELATED:
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.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Web Strategy, WebProNews, NewTeeVee, VentureBeat, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Search Engine Land and AppScout
RELATED:
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:
IntoMobile, Unwired View, SlashGear, the::unwired, Mobile Tech Addicts, GPS Obsessed, Engadget Mobile, wmpoweruser.com and atmaspheric
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.
Reuters:
Microsoft expected to cut jobs — 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.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, paidContent.org, Silicon Alley Insider, Kotaku, Neowin.net, GamesIndustry.biz and videogaming247
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:
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Ericsson Cuts 5,000 Jobs After Strong Quarter — Today Ericsson reported a 31 percent drop in its fourth-quarter profits to 3.9 billion kronor ($465 million), announced 5,000 job cuts and said its core telecommunication equipment business was still unaffected by financial turmoil.
Discussion:
CNET News
RELATED:
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
The top 10 things we hate about the iPhone — Look, we love our iPhones as much as the person, but at this late point in the game, there are some things that are just inexcusable. Here's our top 10 things we hate about the iPhone, and we'll post up our top 10 things we hate about the Bold later on.
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.
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
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 …
Dave Rosenberg / Negative Approach:
Twitter's risk of ubiquity — I continue to marvel at the huge amount of coverage that Twitter gets from mainstream and business press, as well as the huge amount of traffic that the service continues to enjoy. But while Twitter is becoming omnipresent in every layer of the media, the business remains a mystery.
Discussion:
Hitwise Intelligence
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 …
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 …
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: competitive origins — The tech media is working to pit Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 release against Apple's new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but the two products aren't really direct competitors. — The operating system most users end up with will depend upon …
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Paul Miller / Engadget:
Windows 7 install roundup — After resting up and settling into our post-CES golden desk chairs, team Engadget got busy at installing Windows 7 on pretty much anything they could find. Most installs went off without a hitch, and BSoDs were fairly few and far between.
BBC:
Windows worm trickery for Vista — The Conficker virus has opened a new can of worms for security experts. — Drives such as USB sticks infected with the virus trick users into installing the worm, according to researchers. — The “Autoplay” function in Vista and early versions …
Rick Turoczy / ReadWriteWeb:
Whitehouse.gov: Looking Back at 12 Years of the US President's Web Presence — As the eyes of the world were focused on the pomp and circumstance of Barack Obama moving into a new role as President of the United States, Obama's Web team was hard at work - with far less fanfare …
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 …
Jeremy Toeman / LIVEdigitally:
How Blu-Ray Can Avoid Failure — Just read David Carnoy's piece on “9 reasons why Blu-ray will succeed”. I like David, but I couldn't disagree more with his post (though not the individual points, as you'll see below). And since (as of yesterday) it's feeling like we're in a free country …
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.
