Top Items:
The Official Google Blog:
Google's newest venture — Today we're excited to announce Google Ventures, Google's new venture capital fund. This is Google's effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. By borrowing the best practices of top-tier …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, Search Engine Land, CNET News, paidContent.org, StartUpArabia, pluGGd.in, Pocket-lint.com and TheNextWeb.com, Thanks:atul
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Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google to Provide Details on Its New Venture Fund — SAN FRANCISCO — Google, which has invested in many startups over the years, will announce on Tuesday that it is creating a venture capital arm whose main objective will be to turn a profit. — The group, called Google Ventures …
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CNET News
Arn / MacRumors:
Official Skype App is Now Available in the App Store — Skype, Inc. has just released their official Skype application for the iPhone and iPod touch. — Skype is a very popular voice-over-IP (VOIP) and instant messaging application that allows you to make phone calls over the internet.
Discussion:
Engadget, Mashable!, Mobile Tech Addicts, Newsome.Org, Boy Genius Report and Industry Standard
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
Review: Skype for iPhone. Verdict: Awesome. — UPDATED: In a few short hours, you will be able to download the native Skype iPhone client and install it on your iPhones and iPod Touch devices. And when you do, you'll be able to replicate almost all of Skype's functions.
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Interview: Gmail's product manager on Labs, beta, the future — Gmail is turning five soon, and it was given an experimental feature playground called Gmail Labs nearly a year ago. For the anniversary, Ars Technica spoke with Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson about the evolution of communication …
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Spencer Ante / Creative Capital:
It's Official: Twitter Hires Ex-Google Designer Douglas Bowman — Turns out the Web rumors were true for once. In a meeting last Friday afternoon in Twitter's San Francisco office, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told me that the company had hired ex-Google Visual Design Lead Douglas Bowman to be the company's new creative director.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Is a Shorter Web Address Worth Big Money? bit.ly Raises $2 Million — Here's another Web 2.0 riddle that seems particularly hard to solve post-Lehman: What's the value of a service that takes a long Web address and makes it shorter? — One answer: Several million dollars.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, A VC, blogs.telegraph.co.uk …, ReadWriteWeb, The Download Blog, Silicon Alley Insider and /Message, Thanks:mrinaldesai
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
If bit.ly Is Worth $8 Million, TinyURL Is Worth At Least $46 Million — In a world where everything is being jammed into 140 characters or less, shorter is better. That goes double (or is it half?) for lengthy URLs. So-called URL shortening services are increasingly becoming indispensable to anyone who uses Twitter.
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Microsoft to kill Encarta later this year — Microsoft has announced that it is discontinuing its Encarta line of products. The software products will be gone by June 2009 and the website will go down October 31, 2009. — When I first saw this, I had to do a double take.
Discussion:
GMSV, Mashable!, Bits, paidContent.org, CNET News, TechFlash, Computerworld Blogs, All about Microsoft, TechCrunch, Technologizer, Bink.nu, ReadWriteWeb, Andrew Lih, Teching It Easy, CrunchGear, The Register, Neowin.net, ITworld.com, Geek News Central, AppScout, michael parekh on IT and Silicon Alley Insider, Thanks:atul
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
Hacking Google: Retro Links Revives Old Google Feature — Google sometimes turns off features. One such feature that I remember fondly is that at the bottom of Google's search results, we offered nine other search engine suggestions. The idea was if you didn't find what you were searching for on Google …
Biz / Twitter Blog:
Replies Are Now Mentions — We're updating the Replies feature and referring to it instead as Mentions. In your Twitter sidebar you'll now see your own @username tab. When you click that tab, you'll see a list of all tweets referencing your account with the @username convention anywhere in the tweet …
Kontra / counternotions:
What will the next iPhone be called? — Naming any Apple product — much less the iPhone, the most iconic of them all — is no easy task. — Remember all the mindless chatter when Apple risked legal entanglement with Cisco for the right to use the name “iPhone”? Gizmodo:
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Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook, Adobe Partner to Create Facebook Platform Libraries in Flash — Since the Facebook Platform launched, many top Facebook app and game developers have built their products in Flash. A few innovative Facebook Connect implementations have been built in Flash too.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, All Facebook, Contentinople, Tim Anderson's ITWriting and Macworld, Thanks:atul
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Netflix raising rates for Blu-ray subscribers by around 20 percent — Ruh roh. In a move that will undoubtedly cause an incredibly raucous stir, only to fade away as movie renters realize that Netflix is still the best deal going, America's most adored by-mail rental service is hiking the price of Blu-ray rentals once again.
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Jessie / The Official Netflix Blog:Price update for access to Blu-ray movies
Discussion:
Ars Technica, VentureBeat, PC World, DVICE, PC Magazine, CNET News and Tech Trader Daily
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Tinker Gives Twitter Its Long Awaited Events Firehose — Over a year ago Fred Wilson wrote about the need for a Twitter events firehose - a place where users could input a handful of keywords collectively referred to as an ‘event’, which could be used to monitor current news as it happens in near real-time.
Ben Parr / Mashable!:
MySpace and Microsoft Team Up: What Does it Mean for Facebook and Google? — The world's second largest social network, MySpace, has found a new partner that may make the relationship between MySpace and Google a little more rocky: Microsoft. — Specifically, MySpace and Microsoft announced today …
IAB:
Internet Advertising Revenues Surpass $23 Billion in '08, Reaching Record High — Q4 '08 Revenues Total $6.1 Billion; Growth Continues Despite Difficult Economy — Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. remain strong, topping $23 billion, according to the 2008 Internet Advertising Revenue Report …
Phone Arena:
Verizon's MiFi 2200 is your own personal Hotspot — We've received information that Verizon is preparing to launch a device known as the MiFi 2200. Based on the info and pictures, it appears that the device is a personal Hotspot with built-in rechargeable battery.
Elizabeth Holmes / Digits:
EHarmony's Same-Sex Dating Site Launches — In response to discrimination litigation, online dating site eHarmony will launch Tuesday the gay version of its heterosexual match-making service. The site, Compatible Partners, was developed as part of a settlement last fall with the New Jersey attorney general.
Thanks:atul
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Microsoft drops plan to charge for WinMo updates — Microsoft has backed off plans to charge Windows Mobile developers $99 for submitting even minor updates to their applications. — Last week, Microsoft said that unless developers submitted updates to their applications within 7 days of their release …
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Microsoft announces Windows Marketplace partners, tweaked policies, designer WinMo 6.5 themes — Details are starting to come into focus on some of the finer points of Windows Mobile 6.5's launch later this year after February's announcement at MWC, and if you had to boil the news down to just two words …
Department of Homeland Security:
DHS Releases Conficker/Downadup Computer Worm Detection Tool — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today the release of a DHS-developed detection tool that can be used by the federal government, commercial vendors, state and local governments, and critical infrastructure owners …
Discussion:
Sydney Morning Herald, InformationWeek, TG Daily, Slate, Government News in IT and GottaBeMobile.com, Thanks:atul
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Trolling for Patents to Fight Patent Trolls — At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco on Friday, there was an auction with many of the trappings of the regular parades of fine art and celebrity memorabilia. Some people cagily represented bidders in person and many more bid by phone.
Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:
Cable operators, networks brace for an online world — NEW YORK (Reuters) - When U.S. cable operators and networks gather at their biggest annual industry event this week, both sides will seek to preserve and enhance a long-term partnership now under threat as more and more consumers choose to watch their favorite shows online.
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Microsoft Acquires Yahoo...VP of Ops — Add another name to the list of Yahoo employees defecting to Microsoft. Dayne Sampson, Yahoo's VP of operations for search and advertising, has fled the company for its former suitor, Microsoft confirmed to Digital Daily.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Intel launches Nehalem server chips to improve data center efficiency — Intel introduced its Xeon 5500 Series family of server chips today — chips it hopes will be the standard for data centers of the future. — The chips (formerly code-named Nehalem) are the server variant …
Discussion:
Intel, The Register, iTnews Australia, Engadget, eetasia.com, Virtualization.com, eWeek and Electronista, Thanks:atul
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Couple sues Acer over sluggish Vista performance — Home Premium crashes, freezes, runs slowly with 1GB of memory and integrated graphics, lawsuit claims — Computerworld) An Ohio couple has sued Acer America Corp., accusing the computer maker of deceiving customers by claiming that laptops …
