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John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Palm to Apple: Bring It … Though Apple COO Tim Cook didn't mention any companies by name in his recent warning to those who would take liberties with Apple's intellectual property, it was clear to whom he was referring: Palm. — Palm, whose new Pre handset, though built around …
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Elisabeth Lewin / Podcasting News:
Zune Death Watch: Microsoft Zune Revenues Plummet — Microsoft has revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing that the company's Zune revenue in the 4th quarter of 2008 was less than half of what it was the previous year. — According to the filing, “Zune platform revenue decreased $100 million …
Verizon:
February 1: Verizon Wireless Reimagines The Home Phone — Innovative Verizon Hub Helps Manage Busy Lives and Helps Users Stay Connected to Family and Community — BASKING RIDGE, NJ — In a dynamic move sure to rattle devotees of plain old home phones, Verizon Wireless will introduce the new Verizon Hub on Feb. 1.
Discussion:
CrunchGear, Between the Lines, Phone Scoop, Gizmodo, FierceVoIP, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, Boy Genius Report, Engadget, PhoneNews.com and Gadget Lab
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Microsoft's game studios take a beating in layoffs; flight sim studio closure confirmed — Amid the news that Microsoft is laying off 5,000 people over the next 18 months, sources report that the game division has taken its share of the beating. — Gamasutra reports that the Flight Simulator studio …
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Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Apple nano Owners Gettin' A Little Extra ‘Scratch’ — Four years in the making, it looks like those early adopters of the Apple [AAPL Loading... () ] iPod nano will be getting a little relief, in the form of a $22 million class-action suit filed against the company because the devices scratched too easily.
Discussion:
Technologizer, CNET News, AppleInsider, iLounge, The Toybox, 9 to 5 Mac, Infinite Loop, Engadget, MacDailyNews and MacRumors
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ms datacenters:
Building a Better Mousetrap a.k.a. Optimizing for Maximum Efficiency in an Economic Downturn — By Arne Josefsberg and Mike Manos, January 23, 2009 — As you might have read in Microsoft's Q2 FY09 earnings release yesterday, the company has announced cost management initiatives due to the global economic downturn.
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Data Center Knowledge
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Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:Microsoft delays plans for Iowa data center
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The Microsoft Blog
Chris Ziegler / Engadget Mobile:
AT&T dropping unlimited data and messaging to $30 — Info's flowing fast and furious on this whole MEdia Net thing now, and it turns out that there's more than just a name change involved. MEdia Basic, MEdia Works, MEdia Max 200, and MEdia Net 1MB are all going away (one megabyte, seriously? …
Discussion:
DSLreports, Boy Genius Report, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, Electronista and Silicon Alley Insider
Toby Padilla / Last.fm:
Last.fm on Android — For the past 6 months we've been on a mission to let you experience Last.fm where you want, when you want. We realize that not everyone has a web browser plugged into their home stereo and very few of us want to take our laptops on the morning jog.
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
ComScore: Internet Population Passes One Billion; Top 15 Countries — The number of people on the Internet surpassed one billion in December, according to comScore. The actual number is probably higher than that (Internet World Stats counted nearly 1.5 billion Web surfers worldwide as of June 30, 2008).
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, Obsessable, internetnews.com, dailywireless.org, TheNextWeb.com, Digital Daily and Profy
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Al Gore headlining Google event: Google Ocean? — Layoffs and other expense controls show that Google isn't immune to mundane economic realities. But the company's cool factor is still intact, judging by the fact that it signed up former Vice President Al Gore to speak at a Google Earth event next month.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google Puts The Squeeze On Free Apps (Updated) — Google says the vast majority of the 1 million businesses that use Google Apps opt for the free advertising supported version. To make the free option less attractive they've been quietly lowering the number of user accounts that can be associated with a free account.
Google Watch:
Google CEO Hints at Semantic, Contextual Search — With financial analysts, online ad-focused press and pundits bowing to Google's fourth quarter success, a jaw-dropping feat considering the recession and woes of rivals Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussed …
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
Radically Reinventing Venture Capital — Last month, I moderated a panel discussion about reinventing the venture capital model. I'll be doing the same next Friday in New York. In both cases, the underlying thesis was that the venture capital model is broken at worst, and dysfunctional at best.
Pete Carey / Mercury News:
Silicon Valley region unemployment jumps to 7.8 percent; California rate up to 9.3 percent — The Silicon Valley region shed 6,100 jobs in December and the unemployment rate jumped to 7.8 percent — the highest in six years — with part of the damage taking place in the retail trade sector, state employment officials reported today.
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Reuters
Workspace Team Blog:
Looking ahead and bringing you even more — I love working on Live services here at Microsoft. It's an area of the business that I'm very passionate about, and it's a lot of fun to take the products built by the Office team and extend them to the Web. — Today, I wanted to share …
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
Obama's Black-Ops BlackBerry — It appears that President Barack Obama gets to keep his BlackBerry after all, but some experts are questioning whether the Research In Motion device will provide enough security for the president. — At a press conference Thursday, a White House spokesman …
Elizabeth Woyke / Forbes:
America's Most Wired Cities — Seattle takes the lead in our annual list of the most broadband-connected U.S. cities. — Move over, Atlanta. Seattle, Microsoft and Amazon.com's home base, is now the country's most wired city. — While these marquee names have long lent the Emerald City tech-y cachet …
Discussion:
PC World, CrunchGear, CNET News, DSLreports, TechFlash, MarketingShift, Wi-Fi Networking News, Lifehacker and Switched
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
In The Valley, Even Stanford GSB Feels The Pinch — Stanford University's Graduate School of Business earlier this month laid off 49 employees, or 12% of its staff, due to a $15 million revenue shortfall, or about 10% of its annual budget, according to Palo Alto Online, which is published by the Palo Alto Weekly.
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Palo Alto Online
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Conn. AG to MySpace: Turn over sex offender data — The Connecticut attorney general's office on Friday served MySpace a subpoena demanding that MySpace hand over the identities of registered sex offenders it claims the social-networking site discovered and subsequently removed from its roster of members.
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News:
Are today's Macs related to the Mac Daddy? — The MacBook Air seems a long way off from the original Macintosh. But according to some, there remains some hereditary DNA from its 1984-era ancestor. — (Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News) — What is a Macintosh?
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
‘Vista Capable’ case could cost Microsoft $8.5B — Expert estimates damages based on 19.4 million Vista Capable PCs — Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. would have to come up with as much as $8.5 billion to settle accounts with the customers affected by its 2006 “Vista Capable” marketing program …
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Technologizer, ChannelWeb, Electronista, BUZZ NEWSROOM, Obsessable, CrunchGear and Tynan on Tech
Reuters:
Microsoft leaves many sleepless in Seattle — SEATTLE/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For affluent Seattle, Microsoft is just the tip of the iceberg. — Microsoft's announcement it will lay off 5,000 in its biggest-ever job-cut rippled through the Seattle area on Thursday, further unnerving residents …
Laurent Pirot / Associated Press:
Sarkozy offers new help for French print media — PARIS (AP) — The French state will help provide free newspaper subscriptions to teenagers for their 18th birthdays, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday. But the bigger gift is for France's ailing print media.
