Top Items:
Vic Gundotra / The Official Google Blog:
See where your friends are with Google Latitude — How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to? It's a pretty central question to our daily social lives, and it's precisely the question you can now answer using Google Latitude.
Discussion:
O'Reilly Radar, ReadWriteWeb, Search Engine Land, Bloomberg, Google Operating System, PC World, Epicenter, GMSV, Associated Press, VentureBeat, CNET News, Gmail Blog, InformationWeek, PhoneReport v2.0, Kelsey Group Blogs, Wall Street Journal, techno.blog, Google Maps Mania, All About Symbian, Wap Review, Scobleizer, Technology Live, AppleInsider, Phone Scoop, Gadgetell, IntoMobile, jkOnTheRun, SlashGear, BerryReview.com, blogs.chron.com, CrackBerry.com blogs, Obsessable, dailywireless.org, Phone Arena, Ubergizmo, ChannelWeb, Lifehacker, FierceWireless, eWeek, Google Mobile Blog, The Register and FierceMobileContent
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Google Asks Time Warner for a $250 Million AOL Refund-Or Something Else? — Here's another eye-poke delivered to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes (pictured) from Google CEO Eric Schmidt: The search company has asked the media giant to refund the money it invested in AOL three years ago.
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Yahoo! Search Blog:
Search Pad: Making Online Research Easier — If you've ever used a search engine as a tool to help plan a vacation, research a purchase, or find health information on an illness, you know how difficult it is to keep track of the relevant websites and notes you find.
Discussion:
Download Squad, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, Tech Beat, BetaNews, Search Engine Watch and WebProNews
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Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo Starting To Roll Out “Search Pad” Feature — Formerly known as “Research Assistant” Yahoo is starting to introduce (to selected users) what it's now calling “Search Pad,” an application that automatically collects sites and content as users conduct online research.
Ed Oswald / Technologizer:
AT&T Eyes Verizon Wireless Assets — On one hand, AT&T is fighting paying its employees more. On the other, its hoping to snag up assets that Verizon Wireless must divest as part of its merger agreement with Alltel Wireless. — The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T is likely …
Discussion:
Gearlog
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Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Sprint EOL list reveals target Palm Pre launch, plenty more — Sprint customers, have you found yourself wondering what Hesse & Co. have in store for you this year beyond the illustrious Palm Pre? Don't worry, you're not alone. While we can't post the list itself, one of our ninjas came through …
Discussion:
PC World, VentureBeat, Crave, tinyComb, Gadget Lab, CrunchGear, techblog.dallasnews.com, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, SlashGear, GPS Obsessed and Electronista
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
How Harvard Law threw down the gauntlet to the RIAA — Inside one Harvard Law professor's bid to turn his students into cyberactivists and to force the music industry to face the future in the process. — In retrospect, Harvard's eventual involvement was obvious.
Rafael / Within Windows:
Windows 7 auto-elevation mistake lets malware elevate freely, easily — As you probably know by now, Windows 7 introduces some new in-between modes for User Account Control (UAC). By default, Windows 7 (beta thus far) ships with UAC configured at the “Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer.” level.
Discussion:
Technologizer, istartedsomething, Obsessable, Silicon Alley Insider, InformationWeek, Hardware 2.0 and Neowin.net
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:Microsoft's worst nightmare: Windows 7 deemed less secure than Vista
Discussion:
Gizmodo
comScore:
U.S. Online Video Viewing Surges 13 Percent in Record-Setting December — Americans View 14.3 Billion Videos during the Month as YouTube Paces Growth — comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released December 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Google & The Big Ideas — Sometimes, a tweet is just a tweet. Occasionally it is just a start of a healthy debate! — Earlier today, when I read about Google launching a mobile version of Tasks, I was amazed by the attention being focused on what is essentially a to-do list web site.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Did AOL Just Write Down Its Bebo Acquisition? — As part of Time Warner's $24 billion writedown of goodwill that it detailed in this morning's fourth quarter earnings announcement, AOL accounted for $2.2 billion. That charge swung the business from a $2. billion operating profit last year …
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Tech Trader Daily
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Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
The ‘Twitter Effect’: Possibilities and limits — Is there a “Twitter Effect,” by which the rapid spread of information through the microblogging service can crush a Web site with traffic? As I see it, the answer is yes, but it's not as simple as it might appear at first blush.
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Christians Bailing on GoDaddy Due to ‘Immoral’ Advertising — GoDaddy's famously risque Super Bowl ads always pull lots of eyeballs, but the company's latest spots may have resulted in a little too much attention of the wrong kind. — Entrepreneur Brian Harrell, who manages hosting services …
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
One of Acer's Mobile World Congress' handsets gets pictured — So, here's the deal... One of our infamous ninjas just sent us a shot of an unreleased and unseen Acer handset. They told us it would be announced by Acer at MWC in a couple weeks, and that it is “pretty awkward.” We agreed.
Discussion:
Crave, IntoMobile, MobileDevicesToday, MobileCrunch, PhoneReport v2.0, Android Phone Fans, I4U News, Boing Boing Gadgets, Gizmodo, Gadgetell, SlashGear and wmpoweruser.com
Derek Gottfrid / Open:
Announcing the Article Search API — Finally! We are pleased to announce the initial release of the New York Times Article Search API. Articles are the basic building blocks of The New York Times. As a child, I was often reprimanded for (among other things) not sharing my blocks — well, today, I am happy to share.
Thanks:atul
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Maps Out its Tracker Connections — In the past few weeks The Pirate Bay has been struggling with an increase in visitors, and a corresponding load on their servers. Luckily, with a recent upgrade of the site's tracker servers, there is some room to breathe again.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Facebook at 5: Remembering the Early Years, and Measuring Up Against Google — Happy Birthday, Facebook! You're 5 years old today, and that's pretty cool. But the party you're throwing yourself? Not much fun. — How about this instead: Some brief reminiscing, via …
Agence France Presse:
Mobile phone sales down 12.6 pct in 4th qtr: IDC — WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mobile phone sales fell by 12.6 percent to 289 million units in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the same quarter a year ago, market research firm IDC said Wednesday. — For the full year, mobile phone vendors shipped …
Discussion:
CNET News
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
iLife suite quietly going Intel-only, PowerPC owners cry — iLife '09 contains plenty of new features to convince current Mac owners to upgrade from iLife '08, but there is one unfortunate deterrent for those still on PowerPC-based machines. GarageBand '09 is the first iLife component …
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Pandora Sees iPhone Gold in the Palm Pre — Pandora founder Tim Westergren thinks being broad isn't necessarily the best strategy for development in the smartphone industry and that betting on a single (what he calls a “hero") platform could be the way to go. Hint: it's not a Blackberry or Google's Android.
Chris Pendleton / Virtual Earth, An Evangelist's Blog:
Virtual Earth Imagery Release, January 2009 — The engine has been churning for a few months and we've finally pumped out another imagery release - a massive 37TB of data [100TB worth of data ](initial calculations have been corrected, but seriously who cares? The coverage is expansive, regardless).
Staska / Unwired View:
T-Mobile Samsung Memoir detailed specifications and press pic — Samsung leak week continues. — It seems that information about no less than 10 new unannounced Samsung handsets has leaked out to the web this week. — Well, today we've got a tip of our own with additional info …
Scott Duke Harris / Mercury News:
Sons of migrant farmworkers co-found promising Silicon Valley tech startup — His parents were migrant farmworkers who worked the harvests of California and Washington state before wintering in their small hometown in rural Mexico. Bismarck Lepe, now 29, remembers how at age 5 he helped out in the strawberry fields.
Thanks:wesmax27
Ryan Kairer / PalmInfocenter:
Donna Dubinsky Resigning from Palm's Board — Donna Dubinsky, former Palm CEO and one of the original founders, is planning to resign from her seat on Palm's board of directors. Elevations recent additional $100 million equity deal also included the right for the investment group to appoint …
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Report: Most Spam Sites Tied to Just 10 Registrars — Nearly 83 percent of all Web sites advertised through spam can be traced back to just 10 domain name registrars, according to a study to be released this week. — The data come from millions of junk messages collected over the past year by Knujon …
PC Magazine:
Want a 240-Gbyte iPod? Here's How to Get It — I'm a music junkie, I admit it. But honestly, I thought that I would have appeased all of my pocket music library needs when I upgraded my iPod from 20 to 80GB. It helped for a while, but every so often I find myself deleting yet another …
Times of India:
$10-laptop proves to be a damp squib — Text: — TIRUPATI: The much-touted laptop for the masses said to have been built by students of Vellore Institute of Technology that would cost a mere Rs 500 actually turned out to be only a computing device. — Making this clear at the inauguration …
Discussion:
CNET News, The Hindu, pluGGd.in, MediaNama, Gizmodo, Obsessable, CrunchGear and SlashGear
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
HP releases netbook interface for Ubuntu — Hewlett Packard has released a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed for netbooks. For the HP Mini 1000 Mi Edition, to be exact. Under the hood, the operating system is based on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. That means it can run pretty …
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Electronic Arts: We're Focusing On The Wii (ERTS) — Electronic Arts' (ERTS) earnings yesterday disappointed again: The company posted earnings of only 56 cents a share against an analyst consensus estimate of $0.88 EPS. — So what's the plan to recover? For one, cut expenses, to the tune of 12 studio closings and 1100 layoffs.
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Mag:
ASUS Eee PC 1000HE Arrives Boasting a New Keyboard and Intel Atom N280 Processor — ASUS announced yesterday the upcoming availability of its its new $399 Eee PC 1000HE, and lo and behold this morning the netbook stork dropped off the newest addition to the Eee family.
