Top Items:
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google to Offer Ads Based on Interests — SAN FRANCISCO — Google will begin showing ads on Wednesday to people based on their previous online activities in a form of advertising known as behavioral targeting, which has been embraced by most of its competitors but has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and some members of Congress.
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Susan Wojcicki / The Official Google Blog:
Making ads more interesting — At Google, we believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google Gets Into Behavioral Targeting, Launches “Interest-Based Advertising” Beta — Google today is launching a form of behavioral targeting advertising named Interest-Based Advertising. Interest-Based Advertising allows advertisers to deliver ads based on hundreds of interest categories and previous interactions with those users.
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal
Aitan Weinberg / Inside AdSense:
Driving monetization with ads that reach the right audience — Advertisers spend more money on campaigns that reach the right audience; helping them do that should drive more revenue to your websites. This week we're announcing plans to provide interest-based advertising across AdSense publisher sites to help achieve that goal.
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Store Down, 4GB iPod Shuffle in the Wings? — As many readers have noticed, Apple's online stores have gone down for updates. At this time of day, that typically means that Apple is adding new products to the store. — According to one source who previously relayed accurate information …
Discussion:
CNET News, Hardware 2.0, AppleInsider, Computerworld, Music Ally, Softpedia News, Gizmodo, SlashGear, TUAW, Engadget, Switched, The iPhone Blog and Obsessable
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Christine Monaghan / Apple:
Apple Announces Incredible New iPod shuffle — World's Smallest Music Player Now Talks to You — Apple® today introduced the all-new iPod® shuffle, the world's smallest music player at nearly half of the size of the previous model, and the first music player that talks to you.
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft details app store plans — Microsoft on Wednesday is offering up more details on its would-be rival to the iPhone's app store. — The software maker said it will charge developers $99 a year, plus $99 for each application they submit to get an app into the Windows Marketplace store.
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Christian Zibreg / TG Daily:
Apple's App Store analysis: This Titanic is actually unsinkable
Apple's App Store analysis: This Titanic is actually unsinkable
Discussion:
Macsimum News
Nokia:
Nokia latest releases set to hit the top of the charts — Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced the arrival of new Nokia Music Stores, more Comes With Music launches and three new music devices. The Nokia 5730 XpressMusic, Nokia 5330 XpressMusic and Nokia 5030 bring people's music to life …
Discussion:
Phone Scoop, Boy Genius Report, Music Ally, CrunchGear, Smartphones and Cell Phones, SlashGear and Engadget
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InfoWorld:
How Vista mistakes guided changes to Windows development — About a year ago on its Redmond, Washington, campus, a member of Microsoft's Windows Vista team met with a group of journalists to face some tough questions about the OS. — At the time, it was clear Vista was not going to be the …
Heather Dougherty / Hitwise Intelligence:
Visits to Gmail surpass YouTube — For the past two weeks, the market share of US Internet visits to Gmail has been higher than visits to YouTube. Previously, YouTube consistently ranked 10th among all websites by market share of visits until the week ending Jan. 10, 2009, where Gmail moved up one rank to reach #10.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Search Engine Land, SiliconBeat, E-Commerce Times, Web Analytics World and SitePoint, Thanks:atul
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Share on Ovi: Qik strengthens its ties with Nokia — It's easy to write off Nokia in the United States, because no one seems to have a mobile device made by the company. But it is still the largest handset maker in the world, and as such, it's a company that mobile startups want to be close to.
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
In case you missed ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’ last night — If you didn't get to see Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night, here's your second chance! Up above is NBC's edited segment, and after the break we've got our own video (for completists and international readers).
Discussion:
Screenwerk, AppleInsider, jkOnTheRun, NewTeeVee, PalmInfocenter, L.A. Times Tech Blog, PhoneDog.com Cell …, IntoMobile and WebOS Arena
innerfence:
Google to Shut Down Infinite SMS — Got an email from Google. They say they're going to start blocking sometime tomorrow, 11 March 2009. — Google will soon block Infinite SMS and all other non-Google software from sending free text messages. — For now, Infinite SMS will continue to work …
Discussion:
The Register, iPhone Buzz, ITworld.com, mocoNews, CNET News, The iPhone Blog, VentureBeat, TechFlash and TechSpot
Stephanie Clifford / New York Times:
Advertisers Get a Trove of Clues in Smartphones — The millions of people who use their cellphones daily to play games, download applications and browse the Web may not realize that they have an unseen companion: advertisers that can track their interests, their habits and even their location.
Jeff P Howe / Epicenter:
Is Crowdsourcing Evil? The Design Community Weighs In — Crowdsourcing, by its very name, encourages a comparison to outsourcing. But when Wired first published the article that entered the term into the popular lexicon, it was far from clear whether the phenomenon would realize its disruptive potential.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Unveils Its Developer Strategy for the Next Generation of Windows® Phones — Familiar tools, large worldwide customer base and transparent policies allow mobile developers to innovate and generate new revenue opportunities with Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
Brad Stone / Bits:
MySpace Upgrades Its Music Offerings — It's been six months since MySpace and the four major music labels unveiled their joint venture, MySpace Music, touting it as the premier Web destination to stream nearly every major-label song, free, at any time. — In that span, MySpace Music …
Discussion:
Music Think Tank …
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
MeeHive wants to deliver smarter news aggregation — Kosmix, the company that automatically generates informational pages about any topic, is using its technology to improve the news-reading experience with a new product called MeeHive. — Okay, so I've probably got many of you rolling your eyes already.
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
How Low Can PC Prices Go? — As consumers cut back and the popularity of low-cost netbooks grows, the computer industry could see a sharp drop in prices — When Jim Wahl bought his first computer back in 1995, it cost $2,500. In December, when the Dallas acquisitions manager bought a Hewlett-Packard …
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
Nokia fights to hold on to smartphone dominance — Nokia is still by far the No. 1 mobile handset maker in the world, but as competition heats up in the smartphone market, Nokia has become increasingly vulnerable to smaller players such as Apple and Research In Motion, which are increasing market share.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Developers Getting Antsy Over Verified Apps Program — Facebook's Verified Apps program, first announced in Summer 2008, is a way for trusted application developers to be separated from the pack. But the program is yet to launch, and perceived delays and a lack of communication …
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner:
Q&A: California lawmaker wants to blur Google Earth — OK, it's California. So we are quite used to the rest of the country rolling their eyes in knowing exasperation at our fads. But often, they turn out to be harbingers of national trends. And so the question: Will AB-255 number among them as well?
Patrick Thibodeau / Computerworld:
Budget cuts may be bigger threat to IT reliability than Y2k ever was — Odds of service disruptions increase as budget cutting grows, says AFCOM; finding talent is also a problem — The economic downturn may accomplish what Y2k never did, and that's to disrupt data center operations.
Discussion:
Data Center Knowledge
Glenn Fleishman / Ars Technica:
Ready for take-off: the state of in-flight internet — Internet access at 35,000 feet is no longer next year's technology. Several dozen planes over the US have broadband over WiFi backed by satellite or ground cell stations, and hundreds more are coming this year.