Top Items:
Thai Tran / YouTube Blog:
YouTube Goes Offline — We are always looking for ways to make it easier for you to find, watch, and share videos. Many of you have told us that you wanted to take your favorite videos offline. So we've started working with a few partners who want their videos shared universally and even enjoyed away from an Internet connection.
RELATED:
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Download and Buy Videos from YouTube — YouTube includes a new section for “My Videos”: a list of purchased videos. A YouTube help page has more details about the new feature: … Videos are available to download in the MP4 format and some of them can be downloaded for free and they're …
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, VentureBeat, WebProNews, Macworld, Lifehacker and Obsessable, Thanks:labnol
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Doomed: why Wikipedia will fail — A cyberlaw professor argues that Wikipedia is doomed. The online encyclopedia will need to choose between being “high quality” and “open,” but both choices are fraught with risk. — Law professor Eric Goldman loves Wikipedia, but he's also convinced …
Discussion:
Between the Lines
Gary Allen / ifoAppleStore:
Apple Plans Major Store Space Reorganization — On the heels of an iPhone/iPod display table make-over, Apple plans to entirely reorganize and refocus space within the stores to emphasize customer education, and software over hardware. The change would be the third major interior design for the stores …
RELATED:
Latest Adrian's Rojak Pot Updates:
The Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Program Rev. 2.1 — The Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Program — Microsoft issued a draft of the Windows 7 Technical Guarantee Program to their OEM partners on December 10, giving them exactly one month to provide their feedback before Microsoft finalizes the program details.
Discussion:
Engadget, SlashGear, Lifehacker, Maximum PC all, CrunchGear, Boing Boing Gadgets, Neowin.net, TweakTown News and bit-tech.net
RELATED:
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Garmin-Asus Nuvifone M20: A Surprisingly Cute WinMo 6.1 GPS Phone — Garmin-Asus will launch the M20, a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone, sometime this year. True to the name, this cute touchscreen handset comes with car dock and a full set of GPS maps for deep-country use.
Discussion:
eWeek, Garmin-Asus, NEWSFACTOR, CNET News, Engadget, The Apple Core, MobileCrunch, SlashPhone, Gearlog, Boy Genius Report and Electronista
RELATED:
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Android Vulnerability So Dangerous, Users Warned Not to Use Phone's Web Browser — Over the weekend at the Schmoocon hacker conference in Washington D.C., security researcher Charlie Miller presented a new vulnerability in Google's mobile OS Android which allows hackers to remotely …
Wall Street Journal:
More Tech Start-Ups Call It Quits — As Funding Dries Up, Fledgling Silicon Valley Firms Are Shutting Down; Fears of Chill on Innovation — The deepening recession is speeding up the shakeout in Silicon Valley, forcing droves of start-ups to shut down or sell themselves at fire-sale prices.
Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Facebook appraisal pegs company's value at $3.7B — Facebook Inc. quickly concluded it wasn't worth anywhere near the $15 billion market value implied in a 2007 investment made by Microsoft Corp., according to confidential information obtained Wednesday from court documents.
RELATED:
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:Facebook valuation ‘shocker’ another reason to be skeptical of media hype
Wall Street Journal:
Facebook, Nokia Discuss Alliance — Battle Over Social-Networking Users Extends Into Cellphone Market — Facebook Inc. is stepping up its efforts to integrate its social network into an array of mobile phones, including those made by Nokia Corp., the world's largest handset maker.
Discussion:
Agence France Presse, last100, GigaOM, MediaFile, Mashable!, FierceMobileContent, BoomTown, The Social, SlashGear, paidContent.org, Phone Scoop and Music Ally
Benjamin Grol / Gmail Blog:
Four changes to Gmail contacts — Over the past few days we've made a lot of small changes to Gmail's contact manager which, combined, should make it easier to organize the contacts you want and get rid of some of the cruft. Here's a quick summary: — 1. Contact merge (and an important caveat about auto-complete)
Nokia Beta Labs blog:
Contacts on Ovi beta database failed - my deepest and most sincere apologies — Written by: Kristian Luoma, Product Manager, Contacts on Ovi. — Hey, — Something bad happened yesterday. A cooler broke down in the hosting center that we run the Chat service in.
John Leyden / The Register:
MS puts up $250K bounty for Conficker author — Zombie masterminds wanted undead or alive — Microsoft is offering a $250,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the virus writers behind the infamous Conficker (Downadup) worm.
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Broadband Tax Credit Cut From Stimulus Bill — It looks like the tax credit for companies that install new broadband service was cut from the latest version of the economic stimulus bill. The bill still would award more than $6 billion in grants to help build high-speed Internet service, mainly in rural areas.
RELATED:
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Innovative iPhone Developer Smule Raises $3.9 Million — Smule is one of our favorite iPhone developers - besides putting together ridiculously addictive apps like Ocarina (iTunes Link), the team is also especially adept at tapping into the iPhone's network effect, even on something as basic as a virtual lighter.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Google plans data centre at old Finnish paper mill — * Stora sells old paper plant to Google — * Google says plans to open data centre at site (Releads, adds Google comments) — Google (GOOG.O) said on Thursday it aimed to build a data centre at an old paper mill in southeastern Finland …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, paidContent, Search Engine Land, Data Center Knowledge, Stora Enso, Computerworld, Beyond Search and BuzzMachine
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Qualcomm, HP, MySpace to join Symbian camp — HELSINKI (Reuters) - Qualcomm (QCOM.O), MySpace (NWSA.O) and 12 more companies joined the Symbian camp on Thursday, giving the mobile operating system larger scale than Google's (GOOG.O) Android in the handset software battleground.
Robin Goad / Hitwise Intelligence:
The Telegraph: how to pick up traffic from Digg — The Telegraph recently ran an excellent story that included our recent Twitter data. While reading the article I noticed the Digg widget illustrated in the picture below on the newspaper's homepage. Launched last October it lists …
Discussion:
WebProNews
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Skyfire integrates an activity stream with Twitter, Facebook and feed support — Skyfire, the mobile browser which touts itself as translating the desktop web browsing experience to mobile phones, has a useful new feature today: Activity streams. The browser now has a default area which allows …
PC World:
Skype Growing by 380,000 Users a Day — Ross O. Storey, CIO Asia — The number of its users is growing by the population of Singapore (more than four million) every 12 days and nearly a third of its registered subscribers now use it for business purposes.
Discussion:
Maximum PC all
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Don't Click! No Really! Don't Even Think About it! — Twitter is falling prey to a major security flaw right now. The service is getting swamped with messages that say: “Don't Click” and a URL. Apparently, this hack has been around for over two weeks, but it only really took off today.
Dancho Danchev / Zero Day:
Massive comment spam attack on Digg.com leads to malware — According to PandaSecurity, the social news site Digg.com is among the very latest Web 2.0 services to be targeted by cybecriminals on their way to acquire legitimate traffic to their malware serving domains.
PR Newswire:
Netflix Passes 10 Million Subscribers, With 600,000 Net Additions Since the First of the Year — Netflix, Inc. , the world's largest online movie rental service, today announced it has surpassed 10 million subscribers, a milestone that reflects the widespread and growing appeal of the company's service.
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Nightlife Application Breaks Away From Facebook, Tries To Stand On Its Own Two Feet — The Scene, a new social network geared towards improving your nightlife, is making its public debut at the Twiistup 5 event in Santa Monica, CA today. After three months in beta, the company is announcing …
Esteban Israel / Reuters:
Cuba launches own Linux variant to counter U.S. — HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba launched its own variant of the Linux computer operating system this week in the latest front of the communist island's battle against what it views as U.S. hegemony. — The Cuban variant, called Nova …
New York Times:
DirecTV Owner Said to Seek Deal for Sirius XM — Sirius XM Radio, the satellite radio giant that is on the brink of bankruptcy, is in preliminary talks with Liberty Media, the conglomerate controlled by John C. Malone, people briefed on the negotiations said on Wednesday.
