Top Items:
Chris Ziegler / Engadget Mobile:
Microsoft's SkyBox site live, branded My Phone? — It appears that Microsoft may have its SkyBox beta sign-up site up and running in preparation for a Mobile World Congress unveiling — except that it's not called SkyBox, it's called “My Phone” (even though the domain is getskybox.com — go figure).
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
A Microsoft smartphone: No. A Microsoft phone chassis: Yes — Microsoft is not going to introduce a Microsoft-branded phone at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona later this month. Not a Microsoft-branded Zune phone. Not any kind of Microsoft-branded phone. Period.
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Facebook Opens Status API, Say Goodbye to Twitter — Tonight Facebook has made a number of updates to the Facebok platform one of which is the opening of status updates. In order to get Facebook statuses, you no longer need to use a session ID to access statuses.
RELATED:
Chris Putnam / Facebook Developers:
Opening Up Core Facebook Application Features to Platform — We're launching several new features for Facebook Platform today. These features open up access to the content and methods for sharing through several Facebook applications — including status, Notes, Links (what we used to call Posted Items) …
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones — SAN FRANCISCO — More electronic books are coming to mobile phones. — In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free …
RELATED:
The Official Google Blog:
Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye — Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie. So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box. Which of these results would you choose? — Where did your eyes go first when you saw the results page?
Discussion:
Webware.com, Industry Standard, PC World, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, WebProNews and InformationWeek, Thanks:atul
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
Marten Mickos to leave Sun in reorg — Marten Mickos, former MySQL chief executive and current senior vice president of Sun Microsystems' database group, is transitioning out of the company in a planned reorganization. — I reached Mickos this morning for confirmation: he is definitely leaving.
Discussion:
GigaOM, The Register, 451 CAOS Theory, Open Sources, eWeek, CNET News, Simon's Blog, LinuxWorld.com, Computerworld and Jeremy's Blog
Kim Zetter / Epicenter:
TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense — Video — LONG BEACH, California — Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will …
Darryl K. Taft / eWeek:
Trouble at Salesforce.com? — Resource Library: — Steve Cakebread, president and chief strategy officer at Salesforce.com, has resigned, and reports say two top vice presidents have also left the company. — Is there trouble in the house that Benioff built?
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Job Losses: The Silicon Valley Perspective — Today's headlines trumpet the loss of 598,000 jobs last month — the worst in 34 years — but what does that mean for Silicon Valley, the home of technology? In order to get a sense of what's happening with venture-backed startups …
Microsoft On The Issues:
Steve Ballmer's Comments at Democratic Caucus Retreat — U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Caucus Retreat — Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer — STEVE BALLMER: Well, I want to thank Jay, I want to thank the speaker and all of you for the opportunity to be here today and chat with you.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
StumbleUpon Hits 7 Million Users, Quietly 50% Bigger Than Twitter — What's got a button to push, knows how to make money while changing the world and is read all over? StumbleUpon! The social discovery network, like Pandora for webpages and videos, just passed 7 million users according to the site.
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
ESPN to ISPs: Pay for Your Customers to Play Video — For some sports fans, ESPN360, the online version of ESPN's television channel, is a cornucopia of more than 3,500 sporting events each year, viewable from the convenience of a computer. For others, it's a total bust. The only difference: their ISP.
Discussion:
Techdirt, the Econsultancy blog, Obsessable, WebProNews, techblog.dallasnews.com, BlawgIT and Slashdot
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple has NOT banned Facebook — How do these rumors get started? Or, more to the point, how do they get perpetuated? — Late Thursday, a site called tinycomb ("Hand-Picked Tech News") reported that Facebook had been banned “for life” from every Apple (AAPL) store in the United States …
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Official-looking Kindle 2 pictures and pricing leak out — We're not going to call it official yet, but a bunch of very real-looking Kindle 2 press images just hit the tubes, and we've got to say we're pretty convinced. Although the device itself looks basically the same …
Discussion:
Gizmodo
Mark Hachman / Gearlog:
Report: Pioneer Exiting TV Business, Spinning Off DVD — Tags: — HDTV, Pioneer — A report in the Nikkei Japanese business journal Friday claims that “Pioneer Corp. will pull the plug on its loss-ridden television business and shift its DVD player operations to a new venture with Sharp Corp …
Dean Jackson / Surfin' Safari:
CSS Animation — WebKit now supports explicit animations in CSS. As a counterpart to transitions, animations provide a way to declare repeating animated effects, with keyframes, completely in CSS. — With a recent nightly build, you can see the above animation in action.
Benjamin J. Romano / Microsoft Pri0:
Microsoft digital ad shop Razorfish lays off 70 in Seattle, Portland, SF and LA — Razorfish, the digital advertising agency that Microsoft gained when it acquired aQuantive in 2007, is going through another round of layoffs. A spokeswoman confirmed that the company laid off about 70 people …
Discussion:
AdAge
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
Obama names Doerr, Phillips to economic board — Two Silicon Valley leaders have been appointed by President Obama to a 16-person committee that's charged with offering economic advice during what has become an unusually sharp and deep recession. — John Doerr, the billionaire venture capitalist …
Chris Albrecht / GigaOM:
Why Does Everyone Heart Boxee? — The buzz has been building for Boxee lately. Mainstream news outlets like The New York Times, BusinessWeek and NPR are getting hip to the little open-source media center that could quite possibly change the way you experience TV.
Reed Hastings / New York Times:
Please Raise My Taxes — I'M the chief executive of a publicly traded company and, like my peers, I'm very highly paid. The difference between salaries like mine and those of average Americans creates a lot of tension, and I'd like to offer a suggestion. President Obama should celebrate our success …
Venture Capital Dispatch:
Vinod Khosla Moves Beyond Personal Wealth — It just might be official: Vinod Khosla isn't heading back to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers after all. — When Khosla started up his own venture capital firm in 2004 to invest his personal wealth in information technology and clean technology companies …
Thanks:atul
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
News Corp: We Spent $2.8 Billion Too Much on Dow Jones — A little more detail, via a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, on the $8.4 billion write-down announced by News Corp. yesterday: $2.8 billion of that charge is getting assigned to the company's $5.7 billion purchase of Dow Jones …
dailymobile.se:
Pictures: Samsung M7600 - With Bang & Olufsen Powered Audio — As promised, Here are some pictures of the Samsung M7600 that haven't yet been announced. — Samsung M7600 Specifications: GSP, HDSPA, 3mpix camera, 2,8″ amoled screen, Bang olufsen amp, Divx, Full touch screen.
Don Reisinger / Webware.com:
Webware Radar: Magnolia founder blames self — Social-bookmarking service Magnolia is in deep trouble. Founder Larry Halff, who has been keeping users up-to-date on progress being made on restoring the company's database server, which suffered from file system corruption last week …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Seagate: Ex-CEO Watkins Gets $5 Million Severance Deal — Seagate (STX) disclosed in an SEC filing this afternoon that former CEO Bill Watkins has resigned as a director as of February 4. The company also said it has reached a separation agreement with Watkins that will pay him $5,000,008 in cash …
Jeremy Laird / bit-tech.net:
The Dark Side of Overdrive — Faster is always better. Thanks to that simple philosophy, LCD pixel response times have been driven down to puny proportions in recent years. — Today, even the slowest panels are rated at 16ms or better and deliver adequate response for all but the most fanatical PC gamers.
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Why Microsoft, labels cling to music subscriptions — LOS ANGELES—For anybody wondering why Microsoft and the top music labels continue to promote subscription music services, the answer was revealed Thursday. — David Ring, executive vice president of business development …
