Top Items:
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Android G2 Hands On: Close to Perfection — HTC and Google are getting closer to perfection with the new Android G2, the HTC Magic. Nice finish, great form factor. Check out our video, including the obligatory comparison with Apple's iPhone, and hands-on impressions:
RELATED:
Vodafone:
Vodafone and HTC unveil Android-powered HTC Magic — Vodafone extends world-class range of Internet phones with latest Android™-powered smartphone from HTC — HTC Magic smartphone exclusive to Vodafone customers initially in UK, Spain, Germany and France (SFR) and non-exclusively in Italy.
Jason Palmer / BBC:Second ‘Google phone’ is unveiled
Discussion:
Tech Central, Music Ally, Agence France Presse, MarketingVOX, Gizmodo, TUAW and dot.life blog
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
50% of Charges Against Pirate Bay Dropped — What has been shown in court today is that the prosecutor cannot prove that the .torrent files he is using as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay's tracker. Many of the screenshots being used clearly state there is no connection to the tracker.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Slyck, PC World, Ars Technica, Techdirt, TechSpot, GMSV, NewTeeVee, IFPI, Digits, Technologizer, Obsessable, The Register, the Econsultancy blog, Download Squad and Contentinople, Thanks:salmosri
Yahoo!:
Introducing Yahoo!(R) Mobile - Your Starting Point to the Internet — Improving Consumers' Ability to Use Their Phones to Discover, Stay Connected and Stay Informed — Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced the upcoming launch of its new Yahoo! Mobile service - a highly-personalized mobile starting point to the Internet.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Webware.com, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Profy, Unwired View, Between the Lines and Local Mobile Search, Thanks:profy
RELATED:
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:Yahoo Reorganizes, Rebrands Mobile Offerings As “Yahoo Mobile”
Discussion:
Reuters, InformationWeek, Computerworld, PC World, mocoNews.net, Search Engine Watch, TheAppleBlog, HotHardware.com News, WebProNews and eWeek
Zach Spear / AppleInsider:
Apple absent from universal phone charger push — Although AT&T and several other iPhone partners joined an industry initiative to standardize mobile phone chargers over the next few years, Apple has yet to follow suit and may remain committed to its proprietary dock-connector interface .
Discussion:
Between the Lines, The Register, Reuters, NEWSFACTOR, GSM World, Gadget Lab, BBC, Electronista, Obsessable, TECH.BLORGE.com, The iPhone Blog and Gearlog
RELATED:
Jon Swartz / USA Today:
New tech start-ups can rise from the economy's ashes — SAN FRANCISCO — It's boom — and bust — for Silicon Valley companies these days. Literally. — Facing their worst economic climate since the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, high-tech companies are treating 2009 with dread …
Discussion:
Mercury News
LG:
LG Brings Its Stylish New 3G LG-X120 Netbook to Barcelona — Barcelona, Spain, February, 16, 2009 - LG Electronics, a worldwide technology and design leader in mobile communications, today announced the launch of its smart and stylish new netbook, the LG-X120.
Aaron Wall / Learn. Rank. Dominate.:
Mahalo Caught Spamming Google With PageRank Funneling Link Scheme — Jason “SEO is dead” Calacanas, founder of Mahalo, used “SEO is dead” as a publicity stunt to help launch his made for AdSense scraper website. In the past we have noted how he was caught ranking pages without any original content …
Thanks:atul
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:
SEC Charges Research in Motion and Four Senior Executives With Stock Option Backdating — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — 2009-27 — Washington, D.C., Feb. 17, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Limited (RIM) and four of its senior executives for stock option backdating.
Discussion:
Between the Lines, CNET News, SiliconBeat, Tech Trader Daily, Silicon Alley Insider and Tech Daily Dose
Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:
Anonymous Caller? New Service Says, Not Any More — A new service set for launch Tuesday allows cellphone users to unmask the Caller ID on blocked incoming calls, obtaining the phone number, and in some cases the name and address, of the no-longer-anonymous caller.
Guy Griml / Haaretz:
Microsoft in talks to acquire local startup 3DV Systems — The first Israeli exit of 2009 is hitting the road. Software giant Microsoft is negotiating to acquire the Israeli startup 3DV Systems for about $35 million, despite the alarming condition of the global economy and grim forecasts of more pain to come.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, TechFlash, Ars Technica, CNET News, Between the Lines, paidContent.org and Silicon Alley Insider
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
MySpace's Google Gravy Train Set to Stop Next Year — Midway through next year, Google's $900 million, 3.5-year search advertising deal with News Corp. and MySpace expires. What are the odds that Rupert Murdoch's social network gets anything close to that with a new contract? — Very, very low.
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Analyst: Declines in Mac, iPod sales isn't so bad — When is negative growth a positive thing? In this economy, any growth that stays in-line with Wall Street expectations can be viewed as a good thing - though it's still too early to call. And that's how one analyst is looking at Apple's current quarter.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
SynthaSite Gets A $20 Million Boost For Simple Website Creation Software — There have been simple, browser-based website creation tools available on the market ever since the WWW turned mainstream, but there's clearly still a significant demand for this type of services, especially with the way the web is evolving.
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Battery, RAM, and HD access on new 17-inch Macbook Pro — Apple's new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro began shipping earlier this week and a new tear-down of the high-end notebook reveals the steps needed to access the system's internal memory, hard drive, and battery components.
InfoWorld:
Spammers break Live Hotmail's CAPTCHA yet again — The battle by Microsoft to secure its Live Hotmail system from spammers appears to have failed yet again with the news that the latest version of its CAPTCHA authentication system has been broken. — According to a detailed analysis …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
With a King's Ransom in Cash, Why Is There Still No Buying Spree in the Tech Space Yet? — Even in the midst of the economic meltdown, consider these mega-billion-dollar cash hordes of big tech companies: — Microsoft (MSFT): $20.7 billion — Cisco (CSCO): $29.5 billion — Apple (AAPL): $25.6 billion
LAW.com:
Yahoo Fights In-House Bias Claim — A discrimination complaint threw a harsh light on Yahoo's legal department, and two years later, the case remains one of the Internet giant's ongoing struggles. — One of its own lawyers — a black woman named Eulonda Skyles — claims her bosses discriminated …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Get Satisfaction gets new CEO and funding, amid growth — [Disclosure: Get Satisfaction was founded by Thor Muller, who is an advisor to VentureBeat.] — Get Satisfaction, a company that aims to improve online customer service by letting the customers take over much of the process, has raised an additional $1.25 million in funding.
Discussion:
Demand Satisfaction!
Jessi Hempel / Fortune:
How Facebook is taking over our lives — President Obama used it to get elected. Dell will recruit new hires with it. Microsoft's new operating system borrows from it. No question, Facebook has friends in high places. Can CEO Mark Zuckerberg make those connections pay off?
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Google: The Case Against A Second Half Recovery — Time to take profits in Google (GOOG), advises ThinkEquity analyst William Morrison. — Morrison this morning cut his rating on the stock to “Source of Funds,” from Accumulate, and reduced his price target to $300 from $350.
Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing Gadgets:
South Park iPhone App a No-Show in Apps Store; Cartman Blames Kyle's Mom. — Remember back in October when I blogged about a new iPhone app from the South Park guys? Not sure what the whole story is on this one, but our friends at South Park tell us the app has long been completed — so, well, where is it?
John Markoff / New York Times:
The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives — The cellphone is the world's most ubiquitous computer. The four billion cellphones in use around the globe carry personal information, provide access to the Web and are being used more and more to navigate the real world.
Discussion:
Local Mobile Search
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Tech Layoffs Surge to 300,000 — Layoffs in the tech sector are accelerating. It took exactly three weeks for tech layoffs to surge to 300,000, according to our Layoff Tracker. Since late January, when the tracker hit 200,000 layoffs, another 100,000 job eliminations have been announced or completed.
Martin Peers / Wall Street Journal:
Future Shock for Internet Ads? — What does the Internet display-ad market have in common with Zimbabwe? — Both are printing nearly-limitless amounts of their main currency, vastly diminishing its value and undermining their future. The currency, for Web sites, is their ad inventory.
Alan Patrick / broadstuff:
DO FACEBOOK'S LATEST TERMS OF SERVICE CONTRAVENE THE EUROPEAN DATA PROTECTION ACTS? — Looking at the brouhaha surrounding Facebook's latest TOS changes, I wondered if they contravened the EU laws on Data Protection. At first blush they probably do in a number of areas.
Thord Daniel Hedengren / The Blog Herald:
The New b5media Revealed — The times are changing and so are the blog networks, something that appeared to be a solid business model a couple of years back, but now deemed a rough one if you want to succeed. One company above others are being mentioned whenever blog networks are branded as a failed idea, and that's b5media.
Thanks:tdhse
Andrew Kameka / Google Android Blog:
Important notes on Android Market — Google's Android Market is now a pay-to-play venture for U.S. and U.K. cell phone owners. Android enthusiasts will have to deal with paying for new applications and even some of the once-free apps that made the T-Mobile G1 such an attractive product.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Gizmodo, MacRumors iPhone Blog, CrunchGear, IntoMobile and Neowin.net
internetnews.com:
What Caused the Tech Sales Crash? — It wasn't consumers that slammed on the brakes, they just tapped them a little. — Earnings season for the past month has been more painful than a root canal with no Novocain. On earnings calls, one hardware supplier after another recounted sales …
Monica Hesse / Washington Post:
A Virtual Unknown — So, the Internet walks into a bar. — The bar is in New York's Chinatown. It's a recent Saturday afternoon. It looks beer-stained and sweaty with the lights on, packed with plastic folding chairs and power cords. A giant disco ball hangs above an audience of 425 who are all on their MacBooks.
Discussion:
Nieman Journalism Lab
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
How HP Mastered The Pain Game — CEO Mark Hurd's skill at making tough choices could comfort investors Wednesday. — BURLINGAME, Calif. - Wednesday would be a really bad day for Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd to break his winning streak. Central bankers around the globe are sweatily trying to revive faltering banks.
