Top Items:
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple's Snow Leopard to include location, multi-touch tools — Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system will include tools borrowed from the iPhone that let developers determine the geographical location of Macs, as well as extend additional support for multi-touch to their apps, AppleInsider has learned.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, TG Daily, Boing Boing Gadgets, Lifehacker, MacRumors, Gizmodo, Gadget Lab, The iPhone Blog, TUAW, SlashGear, Obsessable and Edible Apple
New York Times:
Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios — On the day last July when “The Dark Knight” arrived in theaters, Warner Brothers was ready with an ambitious antipiracy campaign that involved months of planning and steps to monitor each physical copy of the film. — The campaign failed miserably.
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Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Can Apple save Hollywood? — Congress may have postponed the scheduled Feb. 17 transition to digital broadcast television on Wednesday — insuring that millions of rabbit-ear TVs won't go dark for at least another four months — but that doesn't mean that the way Americans get their video entertainment …
Douglas Bowman / Stopdesign:
Recreating the button — Until some future version of HTML gives us new native controls to use in a browser, at Google, we've been playing and experimenting with controls we call “custom buttons” in our apps (among other custom controls). These buttons just launched in Gmail yesterday …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Is Wonderwall Gonna Be the One That Saves MSN? — In an interesting and innovative move compared to what has typically been less-than-hip online programming over the years, Microsoft's MSN service is debuting a slick new celebrity site called Wonderwall today-created, designed and produced …
Discussion:
Zatz Not Funny!, PC World, The Social, The Microsoft Blog, Microsoft Pri0, WebProNews, Silicon Alley Insider and Pocket-lint.co.uk
GadgetGirl / Gaj-It.com:
Shush! Samsung Acme i8910 is Leaked — Be the first to hear it here, as we have exclusive leaked photos sent to Gaj-It showing Samsungs latest addition to their eclectic portfolio of mobile phones. This new, but very ‘hush hush’ arrival is the Samsung Acme i8910, however …
Discussion:
SlashGear, Mobilewhack.com, Unwired View, WMExperts, SlashPhone, Boy Genius Report, MobileCrunch, Gizmodo and Engadget, Thanks:patrickaltoft
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Offline Google Calendar — Some Google Apps users noticed a new option in Google Calendar: read-only offline access to the calendars using Google Gears. Mark Mathson has screenshots for the new feature, but it's surprising to see that Google Apps users, who usually received the updates later …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Google Enterprise Blog, Keenpath, Epicenter, Download Squad and Mashable!, Thanks:markmathson
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Mike Anderiesz / Guardian:
‘We simply have to suffer,’ says Sony — For a man whose employer has just recorded its worst Christmas in years, David Reeves seems surprisingly calm. Indeed, speaking last Thursday, the day Sony announced third-quarter losses of Y18bn (£141m), he sounded more like a corner-man psyching …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, PC World, VG247, Engadget, Kotaku, Joystiq, Edge Online, Joystiq, Digital Daily and GamesIndustry.biz
Nicholas Moline / Nick.pro:
Google Chrome Extensions Coming Out by May! — That's right, I said it, and so far I'm the only one who has. Google has announced that extensions are coming to Google Chrome but have been mum on when. However I saw something today, that indicates the timetable may be short.
Discussion:
Lifehacker
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Wall Street Journal:
A Makeover for Your Google Results — For years, I winced at what popped up when I Googled my name. — The top result of a search on “Julia Angwin” was an article I wrote for The Wall Street Journal in 2005 after I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted for leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Dave Caolo / TUAW:
First Look: Analytics for iPhone — Google Analytics is a popular and quite useful set of tools for monitoring a web site's traffic and performance. Set up is a snap and the reports are easy to read and flexible. You can create goals, monitor traffic and so on. What more could you want?
Engineering Windows 7:
Update on UAC — Hi, Jon DeVaan here to talk to you about the recent UAC feedback we've been receiving. — Most of our work finishing Windows 7 is focused on responding to feedback. The UAC feedback is interesting on a few dimensions of engineering decision making process.
Discussion:
All about Microsoft, Silicon Alley Insider, Neowin.net, Computerworld Blogs and Security Watch
Will Park / IntoMobile:
Is Apple working on a next-gen iPhone with customized multi-core chips? — By now it's an accepted fact that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has loosed a fleet of unannounced iPhones for real-world testing. And, true to Apple's usually secretive ways, the new “iPhone 2,1” feature-set is still a mystery.
Discussion:
9 to 5 Mac
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Netflix movie downloads are a success on Xbox 360 — Microsoft said today that more than a million Xbox 360 users have downloaded the Netflix application via Xbox Live since the alliance was launched in November. — In less than three months, Xbox Live gold members (who pay $50 a year) …
Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
Need for speed spurs Opera JavaScript overhaul — With Web applications imposing new demands on Web browsers, a previously behind-the-scenes programming technology called JavaScript is getting new visibility, and Opera is the latest case in point. — The Norwegian browser maker announced …
Discussion:
InfoWorld
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Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
China's Lenovo Fires American CEO — Chinese computer-maker Lenovo will replace its American CEO William J. Amelio as his three-year contract expires. Chairman Yang Yuanqing will take the CEO seat and Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi will re-take the chairmanship. — Lenovo hired Amelio in 2005.
Discussion:
eWeek, Reuters, Computerworld, Digital Daily, CNET News, Tech Trader Daily, New York Times and Gearlog
Daniel Shen / DigiTimes:
HTC to launch Qualcomm Snapdragon-based mobile devices in 2Q09 — High Tech Computer (HTC) is expected to launch Qualcomm Snapdragon-based mobile devices in the second quarter of 2009, according to market sources in Taiwan. — HTC's Snapdragon device will hit the market one quarter later …
Monty says:
Time to move on — I have now departed from Sun and joined my own company, Monty Program Ab. — There were a lot of rumors around me resigning in August/September last year. I didn't back then want to comment on the rumors, because I was still trying to work something out with Sun.
Dancho Danchev / Zero Day:
Commercial Twitter spamming tool hits the market — Last week, a commercial Twitter spamming tool (tweettornado.com) pitching itself as a “fully automated advertising software for Twitter” hit the market, potentially empowering phishers, spammers, malware authors and everyone in between …
Discussion:
PC World, TechCrunch, WebProNews, TechCrunchIT, The Constant Observer and The Equity Kicker
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
On YouTube, ‘popular’ no longer means the thing everyone's watching [UPDATED] — In the latest in a series of moves away from its early, freewheeling roots, YouTube has quietly changed the default filter on its highly trafficked main video page from “most viewed” to something called “popular.”
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Ars Technica's tech policy “People to Watch” 2009 — With a new, tech-savvy US administration in power, Ars Technica and Tech Policy Central team up to profile the top names in tech policy for 2009. — With Barack Obama in the White House, the US has a president who understands—and cares directly about—technology policy.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Mobile Restaurant Ordering (Finally) Hits The App Store — In the last week, a pair of new iPhone applications have appeared on the App Store that put the menus of hundreds of restaurants at users' fingertips. Dubbed GrubHub and CityMint, both applications allow users to order food …
Digits:
Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf Invest in Online Ticketing — By Ty McMahan — VentureWire — Online ticket reseller Viagogo Ltd. hopes two tennis icons can assist in swatting a recession that is driving down prices for hard-to-find tickets to live events.
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft offers to just ‘Fix it’ — When people encounter a problem with their PC, they often go to the Web and do a search to see if others have had the problem. If they are lucky, someone has found a fix and listed the steps on either a support document or within a user forum.
Discussion:
techblog.dallasnews.com
Bill Snyder / Tech's Bottom Line:
IBM's Palmisano: Tech's slumdog millionaire — IBM's cruel layoff options: Take a job in the Third World and lose your severance, move within the United States at your expense, or lose both your job and severance — Meet Sam Palmisano, bozo of the month.
Rick Grehan / InfoWorld:
Test Center: Amazon eases cloud control — With its intuitive interface, the highly capable AWS Management Console is an ideal for users new to cloud computing — When Amazon's Elastic Cloud was in its infancy, the only management tools available were a set of Java-based command-line applications.
David Pogue / New York Times:
Video Chats Overcome Clunkiness — When AT&T demonstrated its video telephone at the 1964 World's Fair, everyone — including AT&T — pretty much figured that it would be the future. People wouldn't just hear each other over the phone — they would see each other, too.
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Scott Guthrie: currently no plans for a 64-bit Silverlight — Microsoft currently has no plans for a 64-bit version of Silverlight 3. The company is considering 64-bit support for the future though. — On February 1, 2009, Microsoft was showcasing 444 Silverlight applications on Silverlight.net.
