Top Items:
Alexander Wolfe / InformationWeek:
Apple Planning Video-Call iPhone — Recent stories on Apple's iPhone patent have focused on Cupertino's threatened legal action against Palm, which is launching the iPhone-like Pre smartphone. But a closer examination of the Apple patent yields much more interesting news.
Bobbie Johnson / Guardian:
Google Earth, Google Ocean: mysteries of the seafloor are mapped for the first time — Since Google Earth launched in 2006 millions of people have used its virtual globe to “travel” around the planet without leaving home, climbing a digital version of Mount Everest and even flying into space thanks to the website.
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Passport RFIDs cloned wholesale by $250 eBay auction spree — Video demo shows you how — Using inexpensive off-the-shelf components, an information security expert has built a mobile platform that can clone large numbers of the unique electronic identifiers used in US passport cards and next generation drivers licenses.
Discussion:
Gadget Lab
RELATED:
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:Video: Hacker war drives San Francisco cloning RFID passports
Discussion:
The Technology Liberation …
Royal Pingdom:
Revver and Pageflakes go dark for days — Both the video-sharing site Revver and the personalized start page service Pageflakes have been down since last Thursday, January 29. As of this writing, that is more than three-and-a-half days of straight downtime.
RELATED:
Tim Arango / New York Times:
Despite iTunes Accord, Music Labels Still Fret — Last month the music industry and Apple, long uneasy partners, seemed a picture of harmony when they agreed on new terms for pricing on iTunes, Apple's online music store. — Behind the scenes, however, the relationship remains as tense and antagonistic as ever.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Google's flub: Do we have a Web monoculture too? — Google had a rough weekend and a human error caused the search giant to list the entire Web as malware for an hour or so. The screw-up is likely to raise questions about the risks of having a monoculture dependent on any one technology supplier.
Discussion:
Notes from the Field, Search Engine Watch, The Open Road, eWeek, BetaNews, Computerworld Blogs, Silicon Republic and Network World
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Analyst now says iMacs likely in both dual- and quad-core — A Wall Street analyst who recently reported that Apple was torn between using dual-core processors and quad-core processors in its next-generation iMac line now believes the company will adopt both.
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
E3 Expo attempting return to former glory with 2009 show — The Entertainment Software Association is getting the word out: E3 2009 is going to be big. With Activision confirmed for booth space, press attendance no longer invitation-only, and nearly every large publisher or developer attending, it seems like E3 is back.
Alex Dalenberg / Arizona Daily Star:
Porn interrupts Super Bowl broadcast in Tucson — Tucsonans watching the Super Bowl got more action than they bargained for when a short clip from an adult movie channel interrupted Comcast's feed with full male nudity during the final moments of the game. — Officials at Comcast …
Ilinca Nita / Unwired View:
Samsung to present the world's first 12MP phone at MWC 2009 — Samsung was the first manufacturer to release an 8MP camera phone (the Innov8, outed one month before Sony Ericsson's C905), and it looks like it will also be the first to announce and launch a 12MP handset.
Discussion:
Engadget, SlashGear, Electricpig.co.uk, Newlaunches.com, Gizmodo, Gadget Lab, Engadget Mobile, Boy Genius Report, Pocket-lint.co.uk, SlashPhone, Gearlog and Obsessable
Pete Carey / Mercury News:
Layoffs mean more than lost wages for H-1B visa holders — For the two out-of-work engineers, it's a race against time. They've lost their Silicon Valley jobs and need to quickly find others at a time when companies everywhere are tightening their belts. — Both are Indians whose advanced degrees …
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Google: “We're Not Doing a Good Job with Structured Data” — During a talk at the New England Database Day conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google's Alon Halevy admitted that the search giant has “not been doing a good job” presenting the structured data found on the web to its users.
Discussion:
Data Methods
John Leyden / The Register:
Black hats poison Google video search — Game for a hack — Miscreants have poisoned Google Video search results in a bid to trick the unwary into getting infected with malware. — Instead of video clips, researchers at Trend Micro discovered that around 400,000 queries returning malicious results …
Jonathanhstrauss / SnowBlog:
Suggest to Techmeme Button — Techmeme is an essential news discovery tool for me. It replaced my RSS reader and the totally unmanageable list of blog feeds that came with it years ago, and now I'd estimate that at least 95% of the news I consume is discovered via Techmeme or Twitter.
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Applied Materials Cuts Q1 Outlook, Warns of Shutdowns — The chip equipment industry keeps groping for the bottom of a very bad business cycle. Top chip equipment vendor Applied Materials (AMAT) this morning announced preliminary sales figures for the fiscal first quarter ended January 25 …
Discussion:
CNET News
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
Here We Go Again: Congress Expected to Delay Digital Television — Last week, the House of Representatives decided against delaying America's transition from analog to digital over-the-air broadcasts because switching the date from February 17 to June 12 would confuse consumers while costing broadcasters …
Aaron Ricadela / Business Week:
Want a Wireless Plan with Your Netbook? — PC makers and telcos are pairing up to offer discounted devices with wireless data plans, but success could come at the expense of feature-laden phones — Stripped-down computers known as netbooks have been taking a bite out of laptop sales for the better part of a year.
Discussion:
The Toybox
Vanessa Fox / Search Engine Land:
Scoring The Superbowl Ads & Search: Do Broadcast Marketers Get Online Acquisition? — Way back in 2007, an iProspect/Jupiter Research study found that two-thirds of those online are motivated to search online due to an offline channel such as a TV ad. Since 2007 was an eternity ago in internet …
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:Hulu's Super Bowl Ad Comes With An Ad
Discussion:
Industry Standard, Bits, Lifehacker, Podcasting News, Silicon Alley Insider, Jon Burg's Future Visions, Gizmodo, Techmamas, Nine By Blue, geeksugar and I4U News
Bloomberg:
Apple May Use ‘Nuclear Arsenal’ of Patents to Delay Palm's IPhone Rival — Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc., usually on the defensive when it comes to intellectual-property lawsuits, is threatening to use its hoard of patents to quash iPhone competitors. — Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer …
Fareastgizmos.com:
While in Korea download a 120-minute film in just 12 seconds! — Korea is to acquire the world's fastest wired and wireless Internet service at 10 times the speed of the current service by 2012. The government and the communications industry plan to invest some W34 trillion over the next five years in the project.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Windows XP still powering 71 percent of business PCs — More than two years after the Windows Vista launch, XP is still the dominant business PC operating system in North America and Europe. — Windows Vista “finally appears ready to dethrone XP” as the operating-system choice for enterprise PCs …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Robin Goad / Hitwise Intelligence:
Searches for e-books double — Over the last year UK interest in e-books has grown significantly, with searches for ‘ebooks’ doubling between January 2008 and 2009. There are four main e-book readers currently available: the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader, the Borders iLiad, and the Bookeen Cybook V3.
Discussion:
WebProNews
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
ASUS Eee PC 1000HE Atom N280 netbook up for preorder — ASUS have announced their latest netbook, the Eee PC 1000HE complete with Intel's Atom N280 processor. As well as the 1.66GHz CPU and HD-capable Intel GD40 chipset, the 1000HE has a 10-inch LED-backlit display, 160GB hard-drive and WiFi b/g/n.
