Top Items:
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook's “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Users' Social Behavior — The famous Dunbar number, or “theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships”, is generally accepted to be about 150. However, in a recent interview with The Economist …
RELATED:
Economist:
Primates on Facebook — Even online, the neocortex is the limit — THAT Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks will increase the size of human social groups is an obvious hypothesis, given that they reduce a lot of the friction and cost involved in keeping in touch with other people.
Discussion:
Obsessable
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone — Apple's iPhone has wowed most of the globe — but not Japan, where the handset is selling so poorly it's being offered for free. — What's wrong with the iPhone, from a Japanese perspective? Almost everything: the high monthly data plans that go with it …
Saul Hansell / Bits:
CBS Beams ‘Star Trek’ Episodes to iPhones — CBS is taking the iPhone where no iPhone has gone before. — Today, it released an iPhone application for its TV.com site that can play full episodes of TV series, ranging from “C.S.I.” to the original “Star Trek.”
DigiTimes:
Asustek to launch Eee PC Shell ultra-thin netbook in April, says paper — Asustek Computer plans to launch its second ultra-thin netbook with a 10.1-inch panel, the Eee PC Shell, in April this year. The netbook will have a higher specification than the Eee PC S101, will be easier to carry …
Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:
Sony CEO Takes Over Company's Presidency — TOKYO — Sony Corp. said Friday that Howard Stringer, its chief executive officer, would replace Ryoji Chubachi as president in a move to give the CEO a freer hand in restructuring the struggling electronics giant.
Discussion:
I4U News, Computerworld, Wall Street Journal, Silicon Alley Insider, paidContent.org, VG247, Financial Times, Gizmodo, Engadget, Kotaku and Gearlog, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Downturn could be Microsoft's bonding moment — REDMOND, Wash.—It takes a lot to get different parts of Microsoft to really work together. But the current economic turmoil might just be the thing to do it. — At least that's the working theory for Stephen Elop, the former Macromedia CEO …
Neil McAllister / Fatal Exception:
Gazelle: The browser that thinks like an OS — A new browser prototype from Microsoft Research offers a glimpse at the next stage of computing's evolution — Without question, Web-based applications are one of the most important developments in modern computing.
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
The Shakeout Begins! Video Startups in Play — It didn't take long after the credit crunch last fall for waves of layoffs to hit online video startups. But surely all those tweaks and cuts didn't successfully revive every single company's fate. And now, we're seeing the ensuing wave …
Discussion:
Dealscape
Jim Zemlin:
Note on Microsoft TomTom Suit: Calm Down, Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst — Calm Down — Right now the Microsoft claim against Tom Tom is a private dispute between those two entities concerning GPS mapping software. We do not feel assumptions should be made about the scope or facts …
Discussion:
Open Source, Computerworld, GPS Obsessed, The Register, CNN, 451 CAOS Theory, TechFlash, Bloomberg, Epicenter, OStatic blogs and BetaNews
RELATED:
Robert D. Hof / Business Week:
Yahoo's Bartz Shows Who's Boss — Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz unveils a streamlined management structure for the Web portal, including the departure of CFO Blake Jorgensen — Just six weeks after taking over as chief executive of Yahoo! (YHOO) from co-founder Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz …
Bret Taylor / Bret Taylor's blog:
How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data — Background — We use MySQL for storing all of the data in FriendFeed. Our database has grown a lot as our user base has grown. We now store over 250 million entries and a bunch of other data, from comments and “likes” to friend lists.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Pages Redesign Coming — Facebook launched Facebook Ads in November 2007 to give brands and businesses a way to create a presence on Facebook and interact with users. Starting next week, says a source with knowledge of the new product, those pages will be substantially redesigned.
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Larry Dignan / CNET News:
Novell chief rues first-quarter Linux performance — Novell's fiscal first-quarter results were a mixed bag, and Linux invoices fell sharply as the company failed to sign big deals. — For the first quarter, ended Jan. 31, Novell reported non-GAAP earnings of $24 million, or 7 cents a share, on revenue of $215 million.
Chris Williams / The Register:
Phorm unleashes legal attack on critics — Beware the wounded beast — Free whitepaper - Utilizing IT to put data to work — News articles based on a survey indicating public opposition to Phorm's web snooping and advertising system have been withdrawn after the firm made legal threats to their publishers.
Discussion:
paidContent
Jens Roland / TorrentFreak:
How To Kill The Music Industry — According to Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music, the decline in music revenues in the past 8 years can be fully attributed to (read: blamed on) illegal file sharing. If this were actually true, many of us might even respect his decision to go after pirates …
Discussion:
digg.com
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
How Much Would You Pay To Read Newsday.com? — Zilch. That's the snap consensus from the Web pundits, who are baffled by Cablevision's plan to start charging for access to the online version of Newsday, the Long Island daily it overpaid for last year. — And it's not as if Cablevision …
Robert Weisman / Boston Globe:
TripAdvisor adds flight, fare search — TripAdvisor LLC went live last night with a search engine that will pull together flight and fare data from multiple airlines and online travel agencies, a move that will put the Newton website in competition with Kayak.com and others in the lucrative fare search space.
Rafael Ruffolo / IT World Canada:
Android narrowly trails iPhone in open source app race — A new report from Black Duck Software finds that while Google's Android platform is flying under the radar for most mainstream smart phone users, developers are certainly answering the search giant's call to arms
Discussion:
Slashdot
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Google: Stalled Data Centers Will Be Built — Google (GOOG) isn't abandoning the data center projects where it has slowed or halted construction due to the slowing economy, the company said this week. In a presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco …
Reuters:
Japanese Carrier Claims BlackBerry Bold Overheats — A Japanese telecom carrier has stopped selling RIM's BlackBerry Bold smart phone due to issues of overheating. The Japanese company claims the BlackBerry bold is overheating when the battery recharges. — TOKYO (Reuters) - NTT DoCoMo Inc …
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
Computer Shopper Is Going All Digital; April Is Last Print Issue — You're reading it here first ... paidContent has learned that Computer Shopper will cease print publication with its April issue, due off the press next week, and become online only at ComputerShopper.com.
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
AdSense Outage Is Another Google Misstep — It hardly got the attention that Tuesday's Gmail outage or ViddyHo/Google Talk phishing incident saw, but Google's advertising system, AdSense, had a hiccup of its own Wednesday. … The service was down for about 90 minutes, a spokeswoman confirmed, and did not affect many Web publishers.
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, TechSpot, Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal, Lifehacker, InfoWorld and InformationWeek, Thanks:atul
Times of India:
Yahoo! India R&D head quits — Text: — NEW DELHI: Search engine major Yahoo! India on Friday said that its research & development (R&D) unit Chief Executive Officer Sharad Sharma has decided to quit the company and Shoubick Mukherjee has been named as the company's new R&D head.
Thanks:sampad
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2009 Cancelled — A message on the German O'Reilly community blog indicates that the Web 2.0 Expo Europe, an annual event held in Berlin, Germany, has been suspended for this year in the face of the worst economic downturn in decades. (translated version here) The event …
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Andrew Nusca / Between the Lines:
VOD chief: Comcast will survive in face of TV.com, Hulu — This week, Comcast announced its OnDemand Online service, promising anywhere online access to Comcast programming (broadcast, basic and premium channels, etc.) for its customers. — I sat down with Doug Sylvester …
Greg Sterling / Local Mobile Search:
Google Analytics iPhone Traffic View Will Help Accelerate Mobile Ads — I like to say that Google usually has multiple objectives for any of its new products. Name a product and I'll speculate about the multiple goals it seeks to accomplish. Some of those may be altruistic or market-making …
Discussion:
ClickZ
Ryan Singel / Threat Level:
Rogue Archivist Campaigns to Be Obama's Printer — For more than a decade, Carl Malamud of public.resource.org has been angering government bureaucrats by setting government documents free using his online pirate printing press. — But now, Malamud is campaigning to be The Man.
Thanks:atul
