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:
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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, Boing Boing Gadgets, Not Quite a Blog, TECH.BLORGE.com, VOIP IP Telephony, Obsessable, Silicon Alley Insider and Lifehacker
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, CNET News, Between the Lines, SiliconBeat, Tech Daily Dose, tinyComb, mocoNews.net, Tech Trader Daily and Silicon Alley Insider
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.
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
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
For all the “open” talk, Android Market sure has a lot of rules — Paid applications in the Android Market, the app store for Google's mobile platform, are now live. This should boost development for the platform and in turn create new, interesting applications for consumers.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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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.
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?
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:
Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Reuters, Computerworld, VentureBeat, MediaNama, PrePoint, Wap Review, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Search Engine Watch, Unwired View, Profy and Local Mobile Search, Thanks:profy
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 …
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.
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
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) …
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
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, TechSpot, Techdirt, TechCrunch, GMSV, Ars Technica, Slyck and Digits, Thanks:salmosri
Hiptop3.com:
The Sidekick 2009 in the wild — We knew it was coming. We knew they were visiting and they answered the call. Ladies and gentlemen, it's the photo we've all been waiting for. May we present to you, the Sidekick 2009 aka the Sidekick Blade.
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
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) …
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.
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, Reuters, Between the Lines, CNET News, Kotaku, paidContent.org and Silicon Alley Insider
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, Obsessable, Unwired View, NEWSFACTOR, Between the Lines, The iPhone Blog, Electronista, GottaBeMobile.com, Gadget Lab and GSM World
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.
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.
Mike Snider / USA Today:
eGuiders cuts through clutter of a gazillion videos online — In the golden age of television, TV Guide arrived on newsstands to let viewers know what was being broadcast and when. — Whether this is the golden age of Web videos is debatable. But a new Hollywood-based site, eGuiders.com …
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!
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.
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
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
