Top Items:
Zusha Elinson / LAW.com:
Quinn Spills Value of Facebook Deal — SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook paid the founders of ConnectU $65 million to settle lawsuits accusing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for the wildly successful social-networking Web site, according to a law firm's marketing brochure.
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Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Winklevoss twins made $65 million on Facebook “copycat” settlement — Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss may have had some serious evidence showing that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole ideas like “profile pages” back when he worked at their social-networking startup, ConnectU.
Discussion:
Digital Daily
Fiona Ramsay / Marketing magazine:
Twitter to begin charging brands for commercial use — LONDON - Twitter is planning to charge brands for using the micro-blogging website. — Twitter — Co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing: 'We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, HubSpot's Inbound …, The Blog Herald, broadstuff, socialized, the Econsultancy blog, WebProNews and IntoMobile
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
$99 iPhone Coming This Summer: RBC (AAPL) — Apple will start selling a cheaper, ‘entry-level’ iPhone sometime this summer, for around $99 after subsidy, according to “checks,” RBC analyst Mike Abramsky said in a note this morning. — The main cost reductions would come from fewer features …
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Nick / Rough Type:
The writing is on the paywall — There has been much interesting speculation about the future of the newspaper business in recent weeks. There was Michael Hirschorn's pre-obituary for the print edition of the New York Times in The Atlantic. He foresees the Times shrinking into “a bigger …
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Fast Company:
Forget Kindle 2: Fujitsu's E-Reader Screen is Bigger, and It's in Color — In all the fuss about the new Amazon Kindle 2 yesterday, it was easy to forget that the “upgraded” device still has a relatively small paperback-sized screen and can only cope with greyscale imagery.
Matt Shobe / FeedBurner Status:
Feed serving and FeedBurner application outage — Issue: FeedBurner stopped serving feeds for about 45 minutes today, starting at approximately 9:15am PST. Most feeds are being served again properly, but we are still working to restore full service. feedburner.google.com is not currently available …
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Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Hot Chicks With Douchebags Authors Free to Call Women ‘Hot Chicks,’ Men ‘Douchebags’ — A New Jersey judge has revealed the secret to calling someone a “douchebag”: Make it clear you're just kidding! That's why the Honorable Menelaos Toskos cleared the author of Hot Chicks With Douchebags of defamation.
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Mozilla call for EU intervention in browser war is troubling — Mozilla has voiced support for Opera's effort to convince the European Commission to impose sanctions on Microsoft for bundling Internet Explorer in Windows. But is this a necessary or even a wise move for the open source developer?
Discussion:
BetaNews, The Technology Liberation …, CNET News, OSNews, GMSV, TechSpot and Asa Dotzler
Keith Stuart / Guardian:
How to become an iPhonedeveloper in eight easy steps — You've probably heard all about iShoot. Written by a programmer at Sun Microsystems in his spare time, this Worms-style artillery shooter blasted to the top of the App Store charts earlier this year and stayed there for weeks earning …
Robin Goad / Hitwise Intelligence:
Twitter enters top 100 sites; UK traffic has trebled already in 2009 — Last week (w/e 07/02/09) Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st within All Categories, placing above online heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100) …
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Intel demos first-ever 32nm processors — Intel had a little roadmap event today to shed some light on its massive $7b fab investment, and the focus was mostly on the upcoming transition to 32nm processors — highlighted by the first-ever demo of a working 32nm Nehalem-based Westmere chip.
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
More Sprint details: New Treo Pro target launch, Rumor 2, Instinct Mini, HTC Cedar and more — Ok Sprint people, you had some bad news yesterday as we learned the Treo Pro will not be launching on time this coming Sunday. It's time to regroup and calm down because you know we wouldn't just hit and run with bad news.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Source: Apple asked Google not to use multi-touch in Android, and Google complied — One of the bigger complaints about T-Mobile's G1, the first phone based on Google's Android platform, is that its touch screen doesn't use multi-touch, the technology which allows for a screen to accept multiple points of contact as simultaneous input.
Discussion:
Daring Fireball, MobileCrunch, NEWSFACTOR, Macworld, DailyTech, Electronista, TechSpot, Contentinople, ChannelWeb, IntoMobile, PC World, Android Phone Fans, CrunchGear, Network World, AppleInsider, SlashGear, Pulse2, Gearlog, Gizmodo, iLounge, The iPhone Blog, Neowin.net, 9 to 5 Mac, Google Android News …, Edible Apple, MacRumors and Macsimum News, Thanks:sampad
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
The Secret to Start-Up Success: Save Customers Money — These days, venture capitalists are ever more cautious with their money. The way to catch their eye? Pitch a company whose mission is to save customers money. — That is the advice from three venture capitalists who invest …
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Twitter Fast Growing Beyond Its Messaging Roots — Thanks to its open-ended design and a thriving user community, Twitter is fast outgrowing its roots as a simple, easy-to-use messaging service. Enterprising hackers are creating apps for sharing music and videos, to help you quit smoking and lose weight …
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
How Microsoft is trying to make its $1.3b Fast Search deal work — Microsoft today will unveil plans to start incorporating Fast Search's technology into its products, rolling out a blueprint for capitalizing on one of the largest acquisitions in its history. — It still remains to be seen if the $1.3 billion deal will pay off.
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Open source video player, aggregator Miro goes 2.0 — The team behind open source internet video player Miro have pushed out version 2.0. The new player features a new interface, improved speed and performance, and the ability for users to add links to online streaming video portals like Hulu and CBS.com to the sidebar.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Dell uses Zink Imaging to create an ink-free mobile printer — Zink Imaging is steadily expanding its reach for its inkless printing technology as it announces that licensee Dell has released its Dell Wasabi PZ310 Ink-free Mobile printer. — Bedford, Mass-based Zink Imaging figured …
Yury Pinsky / Google Mobile Blog:
Calling all Carriers — Introducing AdSense for mobile search — In September 2007, we launched Adsense for mobile content so that publishers could join our mobile content network and monetize their sites with Google text ads. — Today, we're happy to announce a new AdSense product …
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, Unwired View, IntoMobile, WebProNews and InformationWeek, Thanks:atul
Techdirt:
According To Author's Guild, You Cannot Read Books Out Loud — from the player-pianos-anyone? dept — As you may know, when player pianos were first introduced, there was a massive fear among musicians that it would be the death of the live music industry.
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple's “sticky” iPhone — When Barclays' Ben Reitzes refers to the “stickiness” of Apple's iPhone, he's not talking about adhesives on the product's surface. (Indeed, the iPhone seems to us as slippery as ever, which may be why there's such a lively market in protective cases.)
Discussion:
Tech Trader Daily
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Verizon Can't Use Number Ports To Win Back Landline Customers - Telco fails appeal effort of last year's FCC ruling... Last year, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Brighthouse accused Verizon of sleazy tactics in the war over voice customers. According to the cable companies …
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Reminder: General Availability for Windows 7 Beta Ending This Week — I wanted to quickly remind everyone that this week general availability for the Windows 7 Beta will be ending: — February 10th: Starting at 12am Pacific Time, no new downloads will be available.
Discussion:
Beyond Binary, Gizmodo, Maximum PC all, Obsessable, TechSpot, Download Squad and AppScout
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Google wants to tap into your electric meter; Enters smart grid fray — Google is developing home electricity dashboards for the future smart grid. — The effort, which dubbed the Google PowerMeter, is being tested by Google employees. Google is just the latest player interested in part of the smart grid pie.
Discussion:
The Official Google Blog, Ars Technica, CNET News, Electronista, GMSV, Bits, DVICE, Obsessable and VentureBeat
PC Pro:
Mozilla reveals plans for Firefox 3.2 — Mozilla is planning to include simple-text commands and desktop web apps in the next version of Firefox. — Firefox 3.2 will see the company build the Mozilla Labs project, Ubiquity, into the browser. Ubiquity allows users to type natural language phrases …
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Cisco's Cash Hoard Swells Along With Acquisition Rumors — With $30 billion, Cisco Systems likes to point out it has more cash on hand than any other technology company. So why did it just sell $4 billion worth of debt on Monday? — Cisco has been rather upfront about plans to make acquisitions.
John C. Dvorak / PC Magazine:
SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization — Long URLs are bogus! Tags like “nude” and “naked” are counterfeits! SEO is a big business, and from what I can tell its proponents are modern snake-oil salesmen. — Search engine optimization (SEO) has turned into a big business …
