Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Twitter Raising New Cash At $250 Million Valuation — Twitter, which just recently turned down a half billion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook (albeit to be paid mostly with Facebook stock), is dipping back into the venture capital market, we've heard from a source with knowledge of the deal.
Leslie Berlin / New York Times:
Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait — A wave of a cellphone replaces the swipe of a credit card in a pilot program involving MasterCard PayPass, right. At left, a phone is used to pay for items at a Tokyo candy stand. Account information can be embedded in the phone.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Stories From The Tell-All MySpace Book — Wall Street Journal editor Julia Angwin's tell-all book about MySpace is set for official publication on March 17, 2009. We've got our hands on a draft of the 268 page book. Some of the more interesting stories are below (you can pre-order it here).
Discussion:
All Facebook
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Facebook screws iFart author — You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. — OK, I'm on the phone with Joel Comm right now. He's been doing business online since 1995. He's the co-creator of Yahoo Games. He wrote the Adsense Code, which got onto New York Times best selling list.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Microsoft's Chris Early, head of Games for Windows Live, among the layoffs — The fallout from the layoffs announced by Microsoft on Thursday continues: Among the casualties is Chris Early, general manager of Games for Windows Live, the online gaming service for gamers who play on personal computers.
Rich Karpinski / TELEPHONY Magazine:
Comcast's Congestion Catch-22 — A deeper look at what Comcast is doing with the latest version of its congestion management system uncovers little ill intent, despite yet another FCC slam. But a Pandora's Box of implications has been opened that in an increasingly IP-centric world may be hard to close up again.
Discussion:
Slashdot
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
What A Nigerian Facebook Scam Looks Like — Facebook is arguably one of the safer corners of the Internet, with fairly complex security and privacy controls. But when passwords get busted, even on Facebook, not everyone is whom they're pretending to be. Like a Nigerian scammer …
Discussion:
louisgray.com
Bobbie Johnson / Guardian:
30 seconds that changed the world: how Apple's Macintosh changed computer screens forever — Even by Apple's standards, the past few weeks have been turbulent. The company delivered its final address, after 24 years, to the crowd at the annual Macworld conference, and then faced the news …
Loïc Le Meur / Loic Le Meur Blog:
The New Twhirl (preview release) for Team Seesmic-Twhirl — We are as excited as you are about Twhirl and are happy to announce a new version today which we will be circulating as a preview to get your help and feedback. We are gathering a “circle of friends” for Twhirl and Seesmic …
Discussion:
Ben Metcalfe Blog, Investor Relations Blog, Mashable!, AccMan Pro, Joi Ito's Web, gapingvoid, Zef.me, MYBLOG by Ouriel, Scobleizer and Live Crunch
Justin Gardner / Donklephant:
Obama To Launch Recovery.gov — Most the following video is about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, but the big idea here is that along with the passage of the stimulus plan comes a new website (just a landing page so far) that will keep track of where and how tax dollars are being spent.
Discussion:
Mashable!
John Resig:
OCR and Neural Nets in JavaScript — A pretty amazing piece of JavaScript dropped yesterday and it's going to take a little bit to digest it all. It's a GreaseMonkey script, written by ‘Shaun Friedle’, that automatically solves captchas provided by the site Megaupload.
Discussion:
Ajaxian
Jeff Jedras / PC World:
IBM Confirms Layoffs — Despite releasing stronger than expected earnings on Tuesday and at the time expressing optimism for 2009, a round of job cuts is underway at IBM Corp. — The week has already seen heavy layoffs in the IT sector, including 5,000 at Microsoft and another 5,000 to 6,000 at Intel.
Discussion:
Computerworld
