Top Items:
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.
RELATED:
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:Google Demands Time Warner Buy Back AOL Stake (GOOG)
Discussion:
Bits
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:
Ars Technica, Download Squad, Tech Beat, TechCrunch, Search Engine Watch, BetaNews and WebProNews
RELATED:
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.
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:
MacRumors, Boy Genius Report, GMSV, Search Engine Land, ReadWriteWeb, Bloomberg, O'Reilly Radar, Mobile Industry Review, Computerworld, PC World, Associated Press, Gmail Blog, Google Operating System, CNET News, Epicenter, VentureBeat, Google Maps Mania, All About Symbian, Wap Review, PhoneReport v2.0, InformationWeek, Kelsey Group Blogs, Technology Live, Scobleizer, Gadgetell, jkOnTheRun, SlashGear, CrackBerry.com blogs, Obsessable, Phone Arena, techno.blog, Ubergizmo, IntoMobile, BerryReview.com, blogs.chron.com, dailywireless.org, ChannelWeb, Phone Scoop, FierceWireless, Wall Street Journal and AppleInsider
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 …
RELATED:
Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:AT&T Seeks Verizon Wireless Assets
Discussion:
CNET News, IntoMobile, Silicon Alley Insider, Electronista, Boy Genius Report and FierceWireless
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.
RELATED:
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, PalmInfocenter, CrunchGear, Gadgetell, techblog.dallasnews.com, tinyComb, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, SlashGear, Gadget Lab and GPS Obsessed
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 …
Discussion:
CNET News, Podcasting News, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, NewTeeVee, Obsessable and Beet.TV
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.
Discussion:
CrunchGear
John Eggerton / Broadcasting & Cable:
Congress Changes DTV ‘Hard’ Date to June 12 — Bill also allows households with expired coupons to reapply — After heated debate by legislators Wednesday and a year and a half of broadcasters, cable operators and the government drilling the Feb. 17 ‘hard’ date into the hearts and minds of viewers …
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 …
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.
Discussion:
AppScout
Richard Whitt / Google Public Policy Blog:
Introducing the White Spaces Database Group — Since November's big vote at the FCC, some have begun asking when we'll start seeing consumer mobile devices take advantage of TV white spaces spectrum. — As the Commission made clear in its ruling, a working white spaces database must …
RELATED:
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 …
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.
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Cisco Q2 Sales $9.1B, $.32 EPS Beat, Shares Rising — Computer networking titan Cisco Systems (CSCO) this evening reported sales and profit for its fiscal Q2 ending in January that beat analysts' expectations on both counts. Sales of $9.1 billion fell 7.5%, year-over-year …
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
LIVE: Akamai Beats Q4, Guidance In Line (AKAM) — Big fourth quarter for content delivery network Akamai: The company reported Q4 sales of $212.6 million, beating the Street's $205.46 consensus. EPS came in at $0.44, beating the Street's $0.40 consensus. — Akamai got a boost from its acquisition of ad targeting firm Acerno.
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 …
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.
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
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquitoes On Rich TED Conference Crowd — Bill Gates seems to be enjoying his semi-retirement. — At the TED technology conference in California, Microsoft's (MSFT) Chairman just let a bunch of live mosquitoes go into the audience. — From Twitter, we gather …
Discussion:
Gawker
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 …
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.
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 …
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:
Obsessable, MobileCrunch, Crave, IntoMobile, PhoneReport v2.0, Android Phone Fans, Gizmodo, I4U News and Boing Boing Gadgets
Lenny Zeltser / SANS Internet Storm Center, InfoCON:
Malware infection that began with windshield fliers — I had the opportunity to examine malware whose initial infection vector was a car windshield flier with a website address. The malicious programs were run-of-the-mill; however, the use of fliers was an innovative way of social-engineering …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
The great iPod migration — How will Apple (AAPL) persuade 100 million iPod users to trade up to an iPhone? That's the problem Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi tackles in a report to clients Wednesday. — His answer: Make an iPhone that comes without a data plan — currently $30 a month in the United States.
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).
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 …
Howard Lindzon:
Twitter Files for an IPO....'TWEET' as the Ticker Symbol? — I am starting this rumor if only for the reason to get some smart people talking about moving f**king forward with our public and private markets already. — Who cares that Twitter is not making money. Now is the perfect time for their IPO.
