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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Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Dell Builds Prototype Android and Windows Mobile Phones, May Finally Sell Them — Stop me if you've heard this one: Dell might go into the smartphone business. OOOLLLDDD? But today the WSJ reports Dell's closer than ever, with prototypes built in two different styles and two competing platforms.
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, VentureBeat, Andrea on Amazon & … 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.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Google apologizes for killing Bambi's mom — Google recently reported strong earnings despite a weak economy, it continues to gain search market share and its Android platform is set to take the mobile world by storm this year. It doesn't seem so unreasonable to wonder if anything can stop Google.
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Mark Larson / Google Chrome Releases:
Stable, Beta update: Yahoo! Mail and Security Fixes — Google Chrome's Beta and Stable channels have been updated to 1.0.154.46. (Note, we won't have a different release for the Beta channel until we have something Beta-worthy come out of the Dev channel in February.)
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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 …
Fred / A VC:
Goodbye Martin — I saw this tweet today and my heart sank — Terrible news from @HLMorgan @martin killed in plane crash at Santa Monica airport yesterday. — Martin Schaedel was someone I met on the internet and got to know a bit over the past few years. He was a funny and mysterious guy.
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.
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, VentureBeat, Download Squad, The Apple Core, The iPhone Blog, TechSpot, Insanely Great Mac, TidBITS and AppScout
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.
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Rumor: Sony PS4 Plans Leaked, And It Targets Casual Gamers (SNE) — Take this one with a massive dose of skepticism, folks: A site we're not familiar with called gamingfront.net claims to have a leaked report from inside Sony (SNE) explaining the technical specs and thinking behind the so-called PS4, successor console to the PS3.
Thanks:anjrued
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 …
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
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 …
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;.
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.
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, Obsessable, ZDNET.com.au, TechSpot, Google Operating System, Switched and WebProNews
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Stephen Schenck / Obsessable:Google responds to Chrome clickjacking, seeks group effort to mitigate vulnerability
Thanks:danoh
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, AppleInsider, TheAppleBlog, Macworld, Touch Arcade, PC World, Gizmodo, The iPhone Blog, CNET News, Edible Apple, GMSV, ChannelWeb and MacBlogz
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 …
QuickPWN:
Jailbreak Firmware 2.2.1 (Windows QuickPWN) — I just QuickPWN'd my iPod Touch 1st Generation with the firmware 2.2.1 update thanks to Vortex, a Russian hacker for creating the bundles for the firmware 2.2.1 update and the iPhone Dev Team, poorlad, and planetbeing for creating the QuickPWN software.
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
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
$2.99 Printed PhotoBooks Now Available On Facebook: HotPrints — Anyone who has turned digital photos into a printed photo book via Apple iPhoto or any of a variety of competitors knows how great they are. They make a perfect gift, if you can afford the $20 - $30 they generally cost to create, plus shipping.
Discussion:
RotorBlog.com
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.
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!
Beatrice Oltean / MSDN Blogs:
Live Search autosuggestions come to Firefox — We're happy to report that we've officially integrated Live Search into Firefox by popular demand. — The Live Search add-on for Firefox gives you auto-suggestions from Live Search right in the browser while you're typing your query.
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.
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, InformationWeek, MacBlogz, TechSpot, IntoMobile, GPS Obsessed, Crave, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider and TheAppleBlog
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
