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:
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.
Discussion:
Gizmodo, TECH.BLORGE.com, Boing Boing Gadgets, Not Quite a Blog, Silicon Alley Insider, VOIP IP Telephony and Obsessable
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Confusion reigns on Time's best blogs list — I'm a huge list nerd, so I had check out Time Magazine's list of the best and most overrated blogs of 2009. I was desperately hoping Time could clue me in to the State of the Blogosphere, and boy, did it ever.
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
Discussion:
TechFlash, Industry Standard, The Enterprise System …, Computerworld Blogs and The Open Road, 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:
Digital Daily, Between the Lines, CNET News, SiliconBeat, Tech Daily Dose, tinyComb, mocoNews.net, Tech Trader Daily and Silicon Alley Insider
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:
Obsessable, Ars Technica, PC World, TechCrunch, GMSV, TechSpot, Techdirt, Slyck and Digits, Thanks:salmosri
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
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:
Reuters, Search Engine Land, ReadWriteWeb, MediaNama, TechCrunch, Computerworld, PC World, VentureBeat, Search Engine Watch, Unwired View, Local Mobile Search, WebProNews and Profy, Thanks:profy
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?
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.
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple execs rethinking iPhone pricing strategy for 2009 — While the likelihood of Apple releasing new iPhones this year is all but certain, a discussion between analysts and Apple's top brass has also dropped clues that the iPhone's pricing may not be static this year.
Discussion:
Macsimum News
Jessica Vascellaro / Digits:
Startup Sues Google Using Microsoft's (Outside) Lawyers — By Jessica E. Vascellaro — TradeComet.com LLC, which operates a small search engine for industrial products, has sued Google, alleging that the search giant tried to put it out of business by increasing its advertising prices.
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.
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?
Discussion:
Electronic Frontier Foundation, iPhone Savior, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, VentureBeat and Pulse2
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.
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:
The Register, Between the Lines, NEWSFACTOR, GSM World, Obsessable, Unwired View, The iPhone Blog, Electronista, GottaBeMobile.com and Gadget Lab
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:
Ars Technica, VentureBeat, TechFlash, Kotaku, Reuters, CNET News, Between the Lines, paidContent.org and Silicon Alley Insider
Nina Kang / Google LatLong:
1000 is the new 10 — Ever wish you could see more than just ten local search results at once? Us too. — So we've added a search layer for local search results that activates when there are more relevant results than we can show on one page. Instead of just plotting the first page …
Thanks:atul
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
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.
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 …
Latest Adrian's Rojak Pot Updates:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 RTM Details — Although Microsoft has consistently asserted in public that Windows 7 will probably only be launched in 2010, the truth is they are rushing for a December 2009 release. How close are they? Well, one of Windows 7's key components, Internet Explorer 8 is almost ready for launch!
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.
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.
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Still No Royalty Deal for Streaming Music Sites — The fate of Internet radio is still up in the air. — Web sites that stream music have been fighting with the recording industry for two years over the royalties that the sites must pay for each song they play.
Ubergizmo:
Samsung SWD-M100 MID Hands-On (WiMax) — Now, there's a MID (mobile internet device) that we could use to blog on the go. The Samsung SWD-M100D is a WiMax + WiFi device that has both a touch display and a sliding QWERTY keyboard. The most important feature (for live blogging) …
PC World:
Facebook Privacy Change Sparks Federal Complaint — JR Raphael, PC World — facebook faces privacy backlash over change in terms of use of network — The backlash against Facebook's updated privacy policies is about to expand. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) …
Mike Hendrickson / O'Reilly Radar:
State of the Computer Book Market 2008, Part 1: The Market — As described in Computer Book Sales as a Technology Trend Indicator, and our other posts on the State of the Computer Book Market we have an updated series of posts that show the whole market's final 2008 numbers.
Thanks:atul
Glassdoor.com:
Mobile Company Employees Report What It's Like on the Inside — The Mobile World Congress kicked off Monday in Barcelona, bringing together nearly 50,000 attendees for the largest exhibition in the mobile industry. Not only is this a great opportunity for those in the mobile world to network …
Discussion:
GigaOM
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!
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.
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.
