Top Items:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Is Dell's Phone Called The MePhone? (DELL) — We've received a few tips from someone who claims to be close to Dell (DELL) about the company's entry into the smartphone market. We don't know if they're true, but they're not unreasonable, so we decided to share them for discussion.
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Retail stinks, but Amazon doesn't; E-tailer delivers strong fourth quarter — Amazon managed to get stronger even as retailers across the U.S. struggled amid weak holiday sales. — The company reported fourth quarter earnings of $225 million, or 52 cents a share, on revenue of $6.7 billion, up 18 percent from a year ago.
Discussion:
TechFlash, The Register, Tech Beat, paidContent.org, Andrea on Amazon & …, VentureBeat, tinyComb, Tech Trader Daily and WebProNews
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Business Wire:
Amazon.com Announces Fourth Quarter Sales up 18% to $6.70 Billion; 2008 Free Cash Flow Grows 16% to $1.36 Billion — SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN - News) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2008.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Adam Frucci / Gizmodo:
Google Maps Car Hits a Deer, Records Entire Ordeal on Google Maps — Here's a sad one: the Google Maps car took out a baby deer, and it recorded the entire process for all Google Maps users to see. For shame, Google Maps car! — As you follow the street view scene down Five Points Road in Rush …
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Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Days to 1 million: the smartphone wars — In a fit of editorial sobriety, reader Noel just sent us this handy “1 million devices sold” graphic above. The image demonstrates the speed (in terms of days) at which each competing handset achieved the magic milestone.
Dave Morin / Facebook Developers:
Facebook Connect and Apple's iPhoto '09 — At Facebook, we think that photos are one of the most powerful ways to connect and share with friends. Since 2005, Facebook Photos has given users a chance to share rich experiences with their friends who are on and off Facebook.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:$2.99 Printed PhotoBooks Now Available On Facebook: HotPrints
Discussion:
RotorBlog.com
Christopher Breen / Macworld:
iTunes Plus upgrades go à la carte — If you've been skipping the daily double-wet-cappuccino in order to save enough money to upgrade your iTunes library to the DRM-free iTunes Plus format, you can put coffee back on the menu. Apple has dispensed with the iTunes Store all-or-nothing upgrade policy.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, MacRumors, TUAW, Download Squad, VentureBeat, The Apple Core, The iPhone Blog and TechSpot
Liam Tung / CNET News:
Chrome, Firefox face clickjacking — Security researchers have discovered a flaw affecting Google's Chrome browser that exposes it to “clickjacking”—in which an attacker hijacks a browser's functions by substituting a legitimate link with one of the attacker's choice.
Discussion:
eWeek, Search Engine Land, Google Operating System, ZDNET.com.au, Obsessable, Switched, TechSpot and WebProNews
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Stephen Schenck / Obsessable:Google responds to Chrome clickjacking, seeks group effort to mitigate vulnerability
Thanks:danoh
Matt Rosoff / Digital Noise:
Microsoft: More Zunes coming in 2009 — Remember that teenage trick of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, “I can't hear you”? That's how I felt on Thursday morning when I talked to Adam Sohn, the marketing director for Zune. — I don't mean that Microsoft is oblivious to reality …
Stuart Dredge / Pocket Gamer.biz:
Rumour: Apple planning $19.99 games section on App Store — But only with a restricted number of publishers — Product: — Manufacturer: — Apple is planning to introduce a premium games section to its App Store where it will sell a range of iPhone games for $19.99, sources tell PocketGamer.biz.
Discussion:
MacRumors, PC World, AppleInsider, Touch Arcade, TheAppleBlog, Macworld, Gizmodo, The iPhone Blog, CNET News, Edible Apple, ChannelWeb, GMSV and MacBlogz
Joe Hall / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim:
Twitter is a Cash Cow in the Making — We have been talking a great deal lately about how Twitter should be monetizing their service. Most of this talk comes after news that Twitter secured $20 million in venture capital, to push its total valuation to $250 million.
Thanks:wesmax27
Roi Carthy / TechCrunch:
Pipl.com: People Search Engine So Good, It Will Scare Your Pants Off — Google may be good at many things, but people search is not one of them. For that you'll have to use a more specialized search engine. Spock and Wink (merged with Reunion.com) are the people-search destinations …
Discussion:
Business 2.0 Press
Staska / Unwired View:
Microsoft patents the interface to transform your phone into a PC — The power of modern smartphones in many ways equals and even surpasses the power of a desktop PC of just few years ago. You know, things like CPUs faster then 800 Mhz, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, tens of gygabytes of storage, dedicated graphics accelerators, etc;.
Associated Press:
Swiss police spy marijuana field with Google Earth — ZURICH, Switzerland - Swiss police said Thursday they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software. — Police said the find was part of a bigger investigation …
Frank Caron / Ars Technica:
Pandora open-source handheld console inching closer to debut (updated) — The long-awaited Pandora open-source handheld has inched one step closer to completion, as the OpenPandora team has put on display the nearly finalized case design. We review what we know about Pandora to date, and what the project is hoping to accomplish.
Greg / Pinch Media:
iPhone 2,1 — Recently, one of the users of Pinch Analytics noticed the string “iPhone 2,1″ appearing in their version reporting, and realized that if Apple stuck to its naming conventions, this might be the next version of the iPhone. At Pinch Media, we've seen this for some time now …
Discussion:
MacRumors, AppleInsider, MacBlogz, InformationWeek, TechSpot, Crave, VentureBeat, GPS Obsessed, IntoMobile, Silicon Alley Insider and TheAppleBlog
John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Sony vs. Nintendo: same bad economy, very different results — Sony and Nintendo released their financial reports on the holiday quarter this week, and both are being pummeled by the strength of the Japanese Yen. But Nintendo's focus on gaming and the strength of its console have left it in far better shape than its bigger rival.
Edward J. R. / msmobiles.com:
i-mate to unveil new revolutionary Windows Mobile phone at Mobile World Congress 2009 next month — i-mate is alive and kicking! … Note: we will be at MWC 2009 on location, and we will bring first-hand reports from the i-mate! Since by now i-mate has been releasing several Windows Mobile phones …
Discussion:
PC World, Unwired View, WMExperts, Boy Genius Report, wmpoweruser.com, Phone Arena and Mobile Roar
Yariv Adan / Google Data APIs Blog:
Bringing OpenID and OAuth Together — We are happy to announce an important enhancement to our recently launched OpenID endpoint. Google now supports the “Hybrid Protocol”, combining OpenID federated login together with OAuth access authorization. Websites can now ask Google to sign …
David Pogue / Pogue's Posts:
The Twitter Experiment — A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my bumpy initiation into the world of Twitter. It's sort of a complicated cross between a chat room and private e-mail. And it's both an interrupty time drain and an incredible source of real-time connection and information.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
StatShot: Tech Job Cuts Inching Closer to 200,000 — The technology industry cut close to 186,955 jobs in 2008, up 74.2 percent from the 107,295 job cuts recorded in 2007, according to data collected by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a recruitment company based in Chicago.
David Peterson / SitePoint:
President Obama uses RDFa — The WhiteHouse.gov site is CC licensing all its material, and if you peek behind the covers (view source), you will see some RDFa. Granted it is a small start, but it is a start. Well done to the new administration and I look forward to more openness and more Web mashups!
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Gobbled Up 90 Percent Of All U.S. Search Growth In 2008 — Google ended the year with 63.5 percent market share of all search queries performed in the U.S., estimates comScore. And that market share has inched up steadily from 58.5 percent in January, 2008.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Adding YouTube Annotations Just Got Easy. I've Got A Bad Feeling About This... For better or for worse, YouTube has just made it easier to add annotations to your videos. Annotations, which were introduced to the site last June, consist of little grey popups that can include standard text boxes …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
8 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009, 2010 — Analyst firm Gartner has just released a report that highlights eight up-and-coming mobile technologies which they predict will impact the mobile industry over the course of the next two years. According to Nick Jones, vice president and analyst at the firm …
Mark Gimein / The Big Money:
Leave Steve Jobs Alone — Disclosing more won't help Apple shareholders. — One day you wake up and don't feel quite yourself. The next day is no better, nor is the next week. Eventually you go to the doctor, who tells you that you have cancer. Heroically, you stay on the job …
Thanks:brendanmonaghan
Sumner Lemon / Macworld:
Intel to detail eight-core Xeon processor — Intel plans to detail an eight-core Xeon processor at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco next month, offering an early look at what appears to be the company's first eight-core chip.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
SEAmail: Applying Semantic Technology to Email — A prototype email system being developed at Stanford University is designed to bring the power of semantic technology to our inbox. Called SEAmail, short for “semantic email addressing,” the system will help its users route email …
Thanks:atul
Robert X. Cringely / Notes from the Field:
The Julie Amero case: Injustice for all — The Julie Amero porn pop-up case should be history by now, but some folks just won't let it die. Cringe has the scoop. READ MORE
Thanks:tynan_on_tech
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Google delays stock option exchange program — Googlers who want to revalue their underwater stock options will have to wait until Tuesday for the voluntary employee option exchange program to launch, Google said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday that did not explain why.
