Top Items:
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.
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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.
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:Amazon surprises with Q4 results, beating estimates
Discussion:
CNET News
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, VentureBeat, TUAW, MacRumors, The iPhone Blog, The Apple Core and TechSpot
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.
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.
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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 …
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:
PC World, MacRumors, AppleInsider, Gizmodo, The iPhone Blog, TheAppleBlog, ChannelWeb, CNET News, Edible Apple, Touch Arcade, MacBlogz and iLounge
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 …
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!
Thanks:catone
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 …
Leo Lewis / Times of London:
Nintendo cuts profit forecast by 33 per cent — Nintendo, the maker of the Wii games console and the favourite safe-haven share on the Tokyo stock exchange, has stunned the market with a 33 per cent cut to its full-year profit forecasts. — Analysts described Nintendo's guidance as a …
Discussion:
The Microsoft Blog, Electronista, Bloomberg, InformationWeek, CrunchGear, Edge Online, PC World, Silicon Alley Insider, Digital Daily and GMSV
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.
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, Google Blogoscoped, Switched, TechSpot and WebProNews
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
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, wmpoweruser.com, Phone Arena, Boy Genius Report and Mobile Roar
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;.
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:
AppleInsider, MacRumors, VentureBeat, Crave, TechSpot, GPS Obsessed, TheAppleBlog, IntoMobile, Technologizer, Silicon Alley Insider and The Toybox
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
The Eye of the (BlackBerry) Storm — iSuppli took apart Research In Motion's BlackBerry Storm to determine the cost of its components. Guess what? The iPhone parts are cheaper — As the battle for the smartphone market heats up, comparisons abound between Research In Motion's BlackBerry Storm …
Stephen Wildstrom / Tech Beat:
Windows 7: A Clarification on XP Upgrades — A number of commenters on my column on Windows 7 expressed dismay that Microsoft does not plan to provide an upgrade path from XP. I want to clarify just what that means, since I seem to have caused a bit of confusion.
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
5 Problems of Recommender Systems — Earlier this week we posted a Guide to Recommender Systems, as part of our series on recommendation technologies. In this post we look at some of the challenges in building or deploying a recommender system. And yes, Napoleon Dynamite is one of them.
Discussion:
StyleHop Blog
USA Today:
Data scams have kicked into high gear as markets tumble — Cybercriminals have launched a massive new wave of Internet-based schemes to steal personal data and carry out financial scams in an effort to take advantage of the fear and confusion created by tumbling financial markets, security specialists say.
Stephen Fry:
Twitter — The original gently rising path that marked the growth of my Twitter followers has recently taken a sharp upward path, due in part no doubt to my (cut short) discussion of Twitter on the Jonathan Ross show on BBC television, broadcast in the UK in the third week of January.
Discussion:
Telegraph
David Meyer / ZDNet:
Acer plans Linux, SSD version of 10-inch netbook — Acer has confirmed it plans to release a Linux version of its 10-inch Aspire One netbook, even though its initial announcement of the upcoming machine said it would be Windows XP-only. — Acer announced details of the 10-inch Aspire One on Friday …
Discussion:
CrunchGear, GPS Obsessed, SlashGear, Electronista, jkOnTheRun, Engadget, TechSpot and Liliputing
Economist:
Paved with good intentions — Is “broadband for all” a recipe for recovery, or a boondoggle? — BEGGING for government help would have made you a pariah in most parts of the high-tech industry a few months ago. But these days state aid, and how to dole it out, are nearly as hotly debated …
Rodney Rumford / FaceReviews:
Facebook and DAVOS Partner to Poll Users on Several Topics — The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, brings together the world's political, business, and thought leaders to discuss the most pressing issues of our time. Of course, conversations such as those that are happening …
Discussion:
Mashable!
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.
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 …
Discussion:
Ars Technica
Zach Spear / AppleInsider:
Apple pulls NVIDIA graphics update, reasons unclear — Apple has yanked a software update that was intended to fix graphics-related issues with its latest notebooks just two days after pushing the patch to users via its Software Update mechanism. — It's unclear what prompted the removal of the patch …
Adrian Holovaty:
Looking toward EveryBlock's future — It's been a year and a half now since I've started working on EveryBlock, and I'm still having the time of my life. Starting from scratch in July 2007, our team of six has built a one-of-a-kind local news site that now serves 11 cities and makes …
Yaroslav Volovich / Traditional Media:
Google TV Ads Offers Time-Shifted Viewership Reports — TV viewers are increasingly watching what they want when they want it. About 25% of television households in the United States have digital video recorders or DVRs installed. Today, the Google TV Ads team is excited to announce …
