Top Items:
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims — Microsoft filed suit against TomTom today, alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents — including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Microsoft, All about Microsoft, Beyond Binary, Engadget, Pulse2, Gearlog and All Points Blog
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
A peek inside Apple's shareholders meeting? — The press was barred from bringing laptops, iPhones or any other communication devices into the Apple (AAPL) shareholders meeting that began at 1 p.m. EST (10 a.m. PST) Wednesday — much to the chagrin of CNBC's Jim Goldman, who had advertised his plans to live blog it.
Discussion:
AppleInsider, Epicenter, 9 to 5 Mac, VentureBeat, CNET News, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, MacRumors, Silicon Alley Insider, GMSV, World of Apple, Gawker, Gizmodo and CrunchGear
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Bloomberg:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs Remains Deeply Involved at the Company, Director Says — Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs remains deeply involved in strategic decisions and the company will disclose more information about his health if warranted, a director said.
Discussion:
Between the Lines
Roy Blount Jr / New York Times:
The Kindle Swindle? — BEING president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me. But now I am president of the Authors Guild, whose mission is to sustain book-writing as a viable occupation.
Discussion:
Techdirt, Digital Daily, Seth's Blog, MediaFile, TECH.BLORGE.com, Incremental Blogger, ReadWriteWeb, Between the Lines, CrunchGear, Digital Download, dailywireless.org, Engadget, The Culture of Ownership, GottaBeMobile.com, SmoothSpan Blog, p2pnet, TeleRead, The Noisy Channel and Silicon Alley Insider
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Apple:
MobileMe: Service updates as of February 25, 2009 — The MobileMe service has recently been updated with improvements as described below. — Products Affected — MobileMe — Mail — Compose window address selector shows all email addresses for contacts, not just home and work addresses.
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Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
IE8 compatibility and reliability update for Windows 7 beta — Microsoft has released an update for Internext Explorer build 8.0.7000.0, fixing many bugs that were fixed with the release of IE8 RC1 for Vista and XP. — Microsoft has released a patch via Windows Update for Internet Explorer 8 …
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GamesIndustry.biz:
PS3 price cut announcement “in the next couple of days” - Janco — The PlayStation 3 could be about to receive a price cut, with Sony due to make an announcement imminently. — That's according to Janco Partners' Mike Hickey, who has said in his latest note to investors that Sony needs …
Discussion:
Crave, Ars Technica, Silicon Alley Insider, Electronista, Kotaku, I4U News, PC World and Engadget
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Amazon Exposes 1 Terabyte of Public Data to Developers — Amazon.com changed the retail world. In the process the company built up so much surplus computing power that it started a dirt cheap “computing in the cloud” business that changed the computing world.
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Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:
Microsoft May Begin Shipping Windows 7 in September, Compal's Chen Says — Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, may begin shipping its Windows 7 operating system as early as the third quarter, a computer-industry executive said.
Discussion:
PC World, Softpedia News, Microsoft Pri0, Electronista, Homotron.net, Network World and Silicon Alley Insider
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Shared Stuff to Be Discontinued — Google Shared Stuff, the social bookmarking service that has never been officially launched, will no longer be available after the end of March. — Google Shared Stuff was only used to share videos at Google Video and Knol articles, but it was buggy and underdeveloped.
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Apple updates Apple TV software to version 2.3.1 [Ux2] — Apple overnight released a minor software update for owners of its Apple TV set-top media box that has thus far been revealed to include a new Network Test function and improvements when using Apple Remote for iPhone.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Connected Life Head Marco Boerries to Leave Yahoo — Yahoo's top mobile exec, Marco Boerries, is departing Yahoo, according to an internal email obtained by BoomTown that he sent to some staffers on Sunday. — I have also confirmed Boerries's departure with company insiders familiar with the situation.
Ryan Spoon:
Perez Hilton Hits 14,000,000 Pageviews Yesterday. Wow. — You might not be interested in celebrity news and gossip... You might not consider it important or meaningful... But to the web, it is significant and marks a major move in the Digital Media space.
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Nortel to Cut 3,200 More Workers — Nortel, the bankrupt telecommunications gear maker, said today it will lay off an additional 3,200 workers worldwide over the coming months — bringing its total workforce down to 25,000. The Canadian company, which filed for bankruptcy in January …
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Jon Fortt / Fortune:
What Margaret Mead could teach techs — Big tech firms are hiring social scientists to help them figure out the changing landscape. — (Fortune) — While traveling in China, Genevieve Bell figured she'd have no trouble getting a cell phone. With cash, a passport and official documents from her employer …
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Announcing the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 RC — This week we are announcing that Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 has hit an important milestone in development: Release Candidate (RC). — Starting today, the RC of SP2 for Windows Vista …
Zach Spear / AppleInsider:
SoftBank now giving away iPhones in Japan — In a bid to possibly clear inventory, combat slumping sales, or both, SoftBank Mobile's new “iPhone for Everybody Campaign” is offering customers in Japan a free iPhone 3G with a two-year contract through May. — Announced on the Japanese carrier's website …
Scott Morrison / Wall Street Journal:
Online Ad Spending Seen Shrinking — Internet advertising could fall by 5% in the first quarter of 2009, the first contraction in online ad spending since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, market research group IDC said Wednesday. — IDC analyst Karsten Weide also said the U.S. Internet ad market …
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life blog:
Who profits from the App Store? — You will struggle to find a happy shopkeeper right now - but I've just met one. His name is Eric, and he has good reason to be contented. After all his store only opened in July last year, but has already sold 500 million products, and its deal with its suppliers means it gets 30% of the revenues.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Yahoo CFO Gives Mixed Signals On Possible Search Deal — Yahoo (YHOO) CFO Blake Jorgensen told investors at the Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco today that the Internet company is not opposed to cutting a deal to sell or outsource its search business to Microsoft (MSFT) …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Y Combinator Startup Fliggo Lets You Build Your Own YouTube — First we had Ning, which lets you build your own niche social network. Now we have Fliggo, which lets you build your own YouTube. Fliggo is the latest startup to come out of Y Combinator. It has been in private beta for a while, but is now open to the public.
Discussion:
NewTeeVee
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Penn State Study: Search Ad Click Through Rate — Penn State's Jim Jansen announced a recent study they just finished that looked at the click through rate of search ads. They studied hundreds of thousands of users, as they interacted with DogPile, the popular meta search engine.
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz — Today's first witness is Tobias Andersson from Piratbyrån and later on the IFPI's CEO John Kennedy will testify, although it's not expected that he will respond to the open letter and peace offering issued yesterday by the ‘Kopimists’.
Sue Zeidler / Reuters:
Netflix to offer “streaming only” plans in future — LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Netflix Inc Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy said on Wednesday it plans to offer its online streaming service on a stand-alone basis. — “We're likely to do that in the foreseeable future,” …
Discussion:
paidContent.org
Fëdor Karpelevitch / Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Browser title bar tweaks — I'm often doing something on my computer and want to know if I have new mail without having to keep my Gmail window open. But if you keep Gmail minimized or in an inactive tab sometimes all you see in the browser title bar is something like “Gmail - Inbo...”
Chris O'Brien / Mercury News:
How Twitter could be a threat to Google — Google's search engine is so dominant that it's hard to imagine how anyone could knock the Mountain View company from its pedestal. And yet if history is any guide, such reigns never last. IBM gave way to Microsoft, which now has been usurped by Google.
Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
A Tale of 140 Characters, Plus the Ones in Congress — It's a case of Twittering while Rome burns. — President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans …
Discussion:
PE Hub Blog
Andrew Nusca / Between the Lines:
U.S. Supreme Court rules for AT&T in antitrust suit — The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday for a subsidiary of AT&T in an antitrust lawsuit accusing it of anti-competitive practices over high-speed Internet access. — The justices unanimously rejected a claim …
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Amazon's E-Book Strategy Re-Kindles Debate on Open Standards — While many salivated over this week's arrival of “the iPod of the book world,” supporters of open e-book standards are opining anew that the Kindle's proprietary format is not only bad for readers but, in the long run, probably for Amazon as well.
