Top Items:
Engineering Windows 7:
Our Next Engineering Milestone — Many posts start with a thank you and I want to start this post with an extra special thank you on behalf of the entire Windows team for all the installs and usage we are seeing of the Windows 7 Beta. We've had millions of installations of Windows 7 …
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Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Next Windows 7 Milestone: Release Candidate — Can you say Windows is shipping sooner than later? Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, broke the news in a blog post time-stamped Midnight EST that popped up in my RSS feeds at noon. He writes:
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Tech espionage? Microsoft claims former employee spied for startup — Microsoft says a startup founder took a job at the Redmond company under false pretenses, then used his inside access to download confidential documents for a patent complaint his company has since filed against major computer makers.
Discussion:
CNET News
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Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple warns of reduced iMac availability in near term — Apple this week is advising members of its reseller channels that supply of iMacs will be constrained in the immediate future, a move that may signal new models are nearing production. — In particular, people familiar with the matter …
Times of India:
Rs 500 laptop display on Feb 3 — Text: — NEW DELHI: A $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, would be on display in Tirupati on February 3 when the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Techology is launched.
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Sergey Ryazanov / The Official Google Blog:
Google Toolbar in Firefox: a personalized new tab page — Those of you who use Google Toolbar on Firefox are probably pretty familiar with the many features Toolbar 5 (beta) has to offer — from bookmarks to buttons and search box to “send to.” We've added a couple more features to the Firefox Toolbar …
Long Zheng / istartedsomething:
Sacrificing security for usability: UAC security flaw in Windows 7 beta (with proof of concept code) — This is dedicated to every ignorant “tech journalist” who cried wolf about UAC in Windows Vista. A change to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows 7 (beta) to make it “less annoying” …
Discussion:
The Register, Download Squad, Within Windows, Gizmodo, OSNews, GottaBeMobile.com, blogs.chron.com, BetaNews, Neowin.net, Windows Connected, Electronic Pulp, The Toybox, CrunchGear, Hardware 2.0 and Channel 10, Thanks:longzheng
BBC:
Gates predicts four-year downturn — Microsoft founder Bill Gates has told the BBC that it could take as much as four years for economies in trouble to return to positive growth. — He said the upturn would be driven by innovations in science and technology.
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
ABC Says Web Viewers Will Tolerate Twice the Ads — How Long Before an Online TiVo? — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The web is about to get a little more like TV — minus the ad-skipping. ABC.com has started to peddle research that shows online viewers will tolerate shows such as “Grey's Anatomy” …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Steve Jobs a music visionary? Judge for yourself — Steve Jobs is a Bob Dylan fan because the folk singer is, in the words of Apple's CEO, a “clear thinker.” — Jobs' own lucid and careful contemplation of the music industry is apparent in a 2003 interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine's Jeff Goodell.
TechCrunch:
The Economy According To Mint — Aaron Patzer is the CEO and founder of Mint.com, a personal finance site that helps 900,000 consumers keep track of their spending. Mint's data is a snapshot of the consumer economy. In the guest post below, Aaron parses the data to tell us what the economy looks like from consumer's eyes.
Christopher Rhoads / Wall Street Journal:
GOP's Atwitter About the Net — Republican Hopefuls Ponder a ‘Tech Gap’; Chuck DeVore's ‘Tweets’ Raise Campaign Cash — At a recent debate, the candidates to become chairman of the Republican National Committee were asked — after rattling off how many guns they own — whether they have any …
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Verizon Could Get $1.6 Billion in Senate Stimulus Plan — Four words buried in a provision to help subsidize high-speed Internet service contained the latest Senate's version of the economic stimulus legislation could mean hundreds of millions of dollars a year in tax credits for Verizon Communications …
Scobleizer:
Zuckerberg: Facebook's “intense” year — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, in a tie? Oh my. — If you know Mark you know he's a pretty casual dresser. Usually seen in T-shirt, jeans, and sandals. — But not here at the World Economic Forum where we walked around downtown Davos …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, All Facebook, The Social and Alexander van Elsas's Weblog …, Thanks:louisgray
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
Gears of War DRM screwup makes PC version unplayable — It seems that the DRM on Gears of War came with a built-in shut off date: the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now that the game fails to work unless you adjust your system's clock, what's Epic's response?
Discussion:
Techdirt, AppScout, Neowin.net, Electricpig.co.uk, Joystiq, TorrentFreak, Game|Life, TeleRead, Kotaku and Slashdot
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
First Official Description of GDrive — Brian Ussery noticed an interesting reference to GDrive in a file used by Google Pack. The file includes “localized information which is sent to translators”. — The product category for GDrive is “online file backup and storage” and there are two lines that describe the application:
Discussion:
GigaOM, The Register, Between the Lines, ReadWriteWeb, PC World, 9 to 5 Mac, beu blog, VentureBeat, CrunchGear, InformationWeek, Google Blogoscoped, Pulse2, Obsessable, Gizmodo, Boy Genius Report, Webware.com, Electronista, tinyComb, Gadgetell, Download Squad, webpronews.com, SlashGear, Mark Evans, Tech Fragments, AppScout, Smalltalk Tidbits …, Digital Inspiration, Lifehacker, Pocket-lint.co.uk and TheNextWeb.com, Thanks:atul
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Sexy Nerve.Com Kicks Parenting Site Out of the Nest — Rufus Griscom, founder of racy Web publication Nerve.com, is the first to admit it may defy logic that a Web site containing detailed essays about bondage and the effects of the recession on the sex industry spawned Babble, a parenting Web site aimed at urban hipsters.
Discussion:
Gawker
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
LimeWire Creator Brings Open-Source Approach to Urban Planning — Entrepreneur Mark Gorton wants to do for people what he already helped do for files: move them from here to there in the most efficient way possible using open-source tools. — Gorton, whose LimeWire file sharing software …
Kim Dixon / Reuters:
Broadband link to U.S. jobs exaggerated: experts — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A co-author of a widely cited forecast that nearly 300,000 U.S. jobs would be created for every percentage point rise in high-speed Internet use said on Friday these and similar estimates are “a gross overestimate.”
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Losing Hope With Yahoo, After Watching The Paid Search Division Stumble — Come and get us, Microsoft. That might as well be what Yahoo's search ad division — Yahoo Search Marketing — is doing with its action of changing advertiser accounts without asking first.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Who's Online and What Are They Doing There? — Generation Y, aka the “Net Generation,” does not dominate every aspect of online life. That revealing statistic and many others like it come from Pew Internet and American Life's recent “Generations Online” report which takes a look …
Discussion:
Obsessable
John Boudreau / SiliconValley.com:
Some Silicon Valley companies having second thoughts on outsourcing — The global recession — combined with the Satyam Computer Services scandal and the terror attacks in Mumbai — is changing the once rosy portrayal of endless good days for the growing outsourcing industry.
Thanks:atul
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Comcast Engaged in Free Wi-Fi Trial - Working with Cablevision on Wi-Fi trial in New Jersey — Broadband Reports has learned that Comcast is engaged in trials that may (or may not) result in the company offering Comcast customers free Wi-Fi. According to sources within Comcast …
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Intel files $50 million suit against insurance firm — Intel has filed a $50 million lawsuit against insurance carrier American Guarantee and Liability Insurance, alleging breach of contract. — The alleged breach involves the insurance firm's failure to pay for Intel's legal defense related …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
What will Nathan Myhrvold do with microprocessor patents? — Intellectual Ventures, the patent-licensing firm created by technologist Nathan Myhrvold, has purchased the patent portfolio of microprocessor maker Transmeta, according to an announcement yesterday.
Discussion:
CNET News
Tim Weber / BBC:
How companies tackle the interweb thingy — It is not that the internet is a particularly recent invention. It has even had its very own economic crisis. So why are companies still struggling to engage with it? — Of course, every company worth its salt has a website …
Discussion:
Collaboration 2.0
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:
Top Secret Speech-to-Text Phone No Longer a Secret — Frank, one of our readers, noticed that lately I've been thinking about replacing my first-generation iPhone. He shot me a link to the BBC site, where they've uncovered a top-secret phone project. My curiosity got the better of me …
