Top Items:
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 …
Discussion:
Engadget, Digits, Digital Daily, Technologizer, Byte of the Apple, TechSpot, Crave, MacDailyNews, Electronista and ParisLemon
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 …
Discussion:
Byte of the Apple, Technologizer, DailyTech, Gadget Lab, Gizmodo, techblog.dallasnews.com, VentureBeat, CrunchGear, The Technology Chronicles, SlashGear, GPS Obsessed, Mobility Site, Boy Genius Report, ChannelWeb, The Apple Core, Between the Lines, Boing Boing Gadgets, Electronista, ZDNet Government, Pre Community, PalmAddicts, iPhone Buzz, Engadget, 9 to 5 Mac and Pocket-lint.co.uk
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Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
General availability for the Windows 7 Beta to end — First off: thank you for your interest in beta testing Windows 7! As we near January 24th, we wanted to update everyone again on the next steps for the Windows 7 Beta. The amount of feedback we have received has been amazing and continues to pour in.
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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, FierceVoIP, Boy Genius Report, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, Gizmodo, Engadget, PhoneNews.com and Gadget Lab
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Slow It Down — Four firms that ranked among the top 10 most active U.S. venture firms in each of the first three quarters of 2008 didn't make the top 10 list in the fourth quarter of last year, according to new Thomson Reuters' data.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
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.
Discussion:
Data Center Knowledge
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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:
Boy Genius Report, DSLreports, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, Electronista, Silicon Alley Insider, techblog.dallasnews.com and The Toybox
Benjamin J. Romano / Microsoft Pri0:
Senator wants Microsoft to preserve American jobs over those of foreign guest workers — Update after the jump. — U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday expressing concern over how the company may go about its layoffs.
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:
CNET News, Search Engine Journal, dailywireless.org, Obsessable, internetnews.com, Profy, SitePoint and Digital Daily
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.
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:
Macworld, Technologizer, CNET News, iLounge, The Toybox, TheAppleBlog, Obsessable, AppleInsider, Infinite Loop, 9 to 5 Mac and MacRumors
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 …
Discussion:
Kotaku, Technologizer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, AppScout, Switched, Obsessable, Guardian, TechFlash, GMSV, The Microsoft Blog, Gizmodo, All about Microsoft, Microsoft Pri0, Xbox 360 Fanboy, CNET News and Joystiq
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Skype Sees a Bright Future; Will It Be Spun Off? — When asked by Wall Street analysts if eBay was going to spin out Skype, CEO John Donahue answered with something that resembled a maybe. In a comment worthy of a former consultant, Donahue said, “I think we are now confident …
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 …
CircleID:
Network Solutions Under Large Scale DDoS Attack, Millions of Websites Potentially Unreachable — “DNS queries for web sites should be responding normally. Thank you all for your understanding. As always, we will continue to work to take measures to prevent these and other types …
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 …
Discussion:
Electronista, Technologizer, ChannelWeb, Obsessable, CrunchGear, BUZZ NEWSROOM and Tynan on Tech
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?
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 …
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.
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.
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.
Discussion:
Reuters
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 …
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
10-inch Acer Aspire One officially launches — Acer have officially announced the 10-inch Aspire One netbook, complete with a WSVGA 1024 x 600 LED-backlit display, standard WiFi b/g and Bluetooth, and up to 2GB of RAM. As with its 8.9-inch predecessor, the new Aspire One uses an Intel Atom CPU …
Nancy Gohring / PC World:
Monster.com Reports Theft of User Data — Monster.com is advising its users to change their passwords after data including e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers were stolen from its database. — The break-in comes just as the swelling ranks of the unemployed are turning to sites like Monster.com to look for work.
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.
