Top Items:
Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:
Exclusive: First Real Photos of the BlackBerry 9630! — FINALLY!!!!! What you're looking at above are the first real photos of the BlackBerry “Niagara” 9630. As you can see, this CDMA full-QWERTY BlackBerry is looking sweet and very much has the appearance of the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and BlackBerry Bold morphed into one.
Discussion:
Boy Genius Report, BlackBerry Cool, Gizmodo, BB Geeks, Unwired View, SlashGear, IntoMobile, MobileCrunch, BerryReview.com, Ubergizmo and Engadget
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Perhaps if They Think of Their Win Mobile Devices as Broken iPhones... What an uncomfortable moment for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the CIO Summit Wednesday. Fielding questions at Microsoft's annual event for government and education sector IT workers, Ballmer was asked how best …
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Rick Aristotle Munarriz / Motley Fool:
Game Over for GameStop? — GameStop (NYSE: GME) probably doesn't see Toys “R” Us as much of a competitor in video game retailing, but that is about to change. — Toys “R” Us is starting to buy and resell used games in a few test stores, according to Forbes.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
It's Time To Start Thinking Of Twitter As A Search Engine — At a dinner tonight with a friend the conversation turned to Twitter. He just didn't get it, and he's certainly not the first person to tell me that. Specifically, my friend didn't understand the massive valuation …
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, Regular Geek, SiliconAngle, SheGeeks, the Econsultancy blog, Microblink, Mashable! and AdAge
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
When Will Facebook Open Up the Public Timeline? — Facebook announced yesterday that it is merging user profiles and fan profiles starting now and allowing users to make their updates public if they so choose at some point in the (presumably not too distant) future. — One major possible result of these changes?
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Alan Patrick / broadstuff:FACEBOOK BLINKS, COPIES TWITTER, STILL GETS IT WRONG.
Discussion:
Contentinople, Datamation, Search Engine Watch, Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life and The Equity Kicker
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch UK & Europe:
Sky News realises news breaks first on Twitter, not TV - Creates a Twitter Correspondent — TechCrunch has been saying for a long time - at least since November last year - that Twitter is an emerging source of news. Recent tragic events have only served to emphasise this.
Discussion:
Jobwire, Guardian, TheNextWeb.com, Mobile Industry Review, broadstuff and Telegraph, Thanks:mazi
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Juicing the BlackBerry: RIM wants back-end money from new apps — Research In Motion (RIM) is set to launch its application store for the BlackBerry, now dubbed “App World,” at the end of this month. For third-party developers on the outside, it may sounds like a very enticing proposition …
Discussion:
NEWSFACTOR, Electronista, Digital Daily, IntoMobile, FierceMobileContent, jkOnTheRun, eWeek, Boy Genius Report and Gizmodo
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Raju Vegesna / Zoho Blogs:
Zoho Writer 2.0 launches with fresh look — Refreshing changes don't come often. Today, we are launching a new major version of our word processor - Zoho Writer 2.0 - with a fresh and elegant user interface & significant improvements. This important upgrade comes with hundreds of improvements, mostly on the user interface.
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Stephanie Condon / CNET News:
Obama names D.C. official as federal CIO — Updated 5:52 a.m. with details from the official announcement. — President Obama on Thursday named Vivek Kundra, Washington, D.C.'s chief technology officer, to the position of federal chief information officer.
Reuters:
Google letting cash “pile up”: CEO — SANTA BARBARA, California (Reuters) - Google Inc plans to let its cash “pile up” as it weathers an economic recession but doesn't expect to see a fall in revenue, the Web search leader's Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday.
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David Pogue / New York Times:
It Rings, It Shoots, It Stumbles — I'll never forget the time I visited a Riverwalk restaurant in San Antonio and ordered risotto: rice that's been stirred in broth until it's rich, creamy and perfect. — But what the waiter brought to the table wasn't risotto. It was just rice.
Discussion:
Electronic Pulp
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Samsung's Nano-powered Q1EX UMPC loses its QWERTY, gains 4.5-hour battery at the FCC — Meet the latest iteration of the Samsung Q1 handheld: the NP-Q1EX. First spotted at CES in January, Sammy's going back to its UMPC roots by ditching the split QWERTY in favor of a clean …
Discussion:
CrunchGear, NaviGadget, Mobility Site, SlashGear, DisplayBlog, jkOnTheRun, UMPCPortal, GottaBeMobile.com and The Toybox
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
At DEMO, VCs Have Stern Advice for Startups — With less money available to entrepreneurs and with fewer startups being bought, VCs are pushing portfolio companies to focus on frugality — Watch the Video... Venture capital investor Christine Herron has a bit of advice for technology startups …
Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
Amazon's Apple Deal: Kindle Cannibal? — Customers may have less incentive to buy a Kindle, now that they can download e-books onto the iPhones and iPods they already own — A new tool that lets consumers download digital books onto Apple devices could spur demand for some of the 240,000 …
Monica Hesse / Washington Post:
Offbeat Name? Then Facebook's No Friend — What Caitlin wanted did not seem that hard. She had signed up for Facebook after she married, as Caitlin Shaw. Now, to make it easier for old friends to find her, she wanted to add her maiden name. Her maiden name is Batman.
Rebecca Buckman / Forbes:
VC View From The Rockies — Tough sledding for most Colorado venture firms. — AVON, Colo.—Even in this dismal economy, venture capitalist Chris Onan can spot lots of high-quality start-ups he'd like to fund. There's only one problem: Onan's firm, Appian Ventures, doesn't have any cash in its pockets.
Business Week:
Twitter Has Potential Buyers Atwitter — As the microblogging service explodes in popularity, the suitors are lining up. Facebook has already made a play—others will likely follow — The microblogging service Twitter has caught on with everyone from celeb Ashton Kutcher to CEOs.
Colby Ranger / The Official Google Blog:
Tipping points — Ideas are everywhere, but how do we know which ones actually work? At Google, we put a lot of stock in both the wisdom of crowds — the idea that lots of people responding to a given question can collectively find the best answer — and the value of community.
John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:
Seen In the Wild — I was reading a piece on Venturebeat, on Kutano. And this ad was at the bottom. — This is an ad? — Yep. Innaresting. Four years ago (God, yes, I've been writing for more than that, er, ummm....22 years, in fact...) anyway, I wrote this about Google and the need to market its products:
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Paul Biba / TeleRead:
Fictionwise acquired by Barnes & Noble for $15.7 million in cash — Fictionwise has been acquired by Barnes & Noble, said to be the world's largest bookseller, for $15.7 million in a stock deal that TeleRead revealed earlier today. — I spoke with Scott Pendergrast of Fictionwise at 7:20 …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Enthusiasts keep pushing Smule's Ocarina iPhone app to higher numbers — Ge Wang, the quirky Stanford assistant music professor who co-founded iPhone music app maker Smule, delivered an update yesterday on his company's growth since starting out just eight months ago.
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Chrome, Bundled with RealPlayer — If you try to install RealPlayer, a media player available at real.com, you'll notice that the setup downloads Google Chrome. The option to install Google's browser is enabled by default and I assume that most people will not bother to disable it.
