Top Items:
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
AT&T offers $100K reward in fiber optic vandalism; notes second incident — updated below: — No matter all of the advancements in wireless and mobile technology, at the end of the day, we're all still connected to a big wire somewhere. Early this morning, we discovered that one of those big wires …
RELATED:
Mercury News:
San Jose police: Sabotage caused phone outage in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz counties — Police say someone intentionally cut an underground fiber optic cable in south San Jose, causing a widespread phone service outage in southern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties today that included disruption to 911 emergency phone service.
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
AT&T uses Twitter during service outage — Want to find out why you suddenly don't have Internet access or cell phone service? You might want to check out the social-networking site Twitter. — It seems that Twitter was one of the main ways that phone company AT&T has been communicating …
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent.org:
Microsoft Breaks Up Its Live Labs Group — Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is downsizing its high-profile Live Labs group, which was created three years ago to speed up innovation in the company's online business, paidContent.org has learned. — The group, whose mission has been to hatch new ideas …
Discussion:
Microsoft Watch, Industry Standard, The Register, Brier Dudley's blog, All about Microsoft, CNET News and TechFlash
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Time Warner's Unlimited Bandwidth Plan: $150 a Month — Time Warner Cable has modestly softened its proposal to impose bandwidth limits on all of its broadband data customers. Landel Hobbs, the company's chief operating officer, has just published a post with the new price tiers for a test of the plan it will conduct in four cities.
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Narcissistic Infarction:
Did Arrington actually pull off the CrunchPad WiFi tablet? — When he announced it a few months ago, I thought there was a slim chance that Arrington's CrunchPad would come to fruition. A $200 12" touchscreen with WiFi and Firefox seemed pretty difficult to imagine.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Who Will Be Twitter's Bestest Search Friend? Google and Microsoft Engage in Yet Another Pick-Me Face-Off. — [UPDATED: With added information about range of product discussions.] — In this digital era's version of “Spy Vs. Spy,” Microsoft and Google find themselves in yet another sharp-elbowed battle …
Discussion:
Industry Standard, eWeek, Search Engine Land, CNET News, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable! and TechSpot
Kaspersky Lab Weblog:
The neverending story — Last night the Kido (aka Conficker/ Downadup) botnet kicked into action - what everyone's been on the lookout for since 1st April. — The computers infected with Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Kido (aka Conficker.c) contacted each other over P2P, telling infected machines to download new malicious files.
Discussion:
blogs.ft.com, ReadWriteWeb, CyberCrime & Doing Time, eWeek, ITworld.com and Threat Level
RELATED:
Elinor Mills / CNET News:Researchers say Conficker is all about the money
Discussion:
TECH.BLORGE.com, Zero Day, Ed Burnette's Dev Connection, F-Secure Antivirus … and Lifehacker
Tricia Duryee / mocoNews:
Research In Motion Quietly Hires A Key iPhone Designer — BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has scooped up Don Lindsay, who according to one report played a big role in the iPhone user interface. In his new role, he will be charged with “creating” the VP of user experience, according to his updated LinkedIn profile.
Discussion:
BlackBerryNews.com, AppleInsider, ITworld.com, CNET News, Engadget and Silicon Alley Insider
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Avoid the Apple Tax - Cash in on the value of Windows — With the ailing global economy, I am looking at ways I get better value for my money. One way I can do this if I need to replace a computer is by avoiding the “Apple Tax.” — Microsoft sponsored a new whitepaper (PDF) …
Discussion:
Technologizer, AppleInsider, All about Microsoft, Bob Caswell, Apple Watch, Ars Technica and Computerworld Blogs
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Ina Fried / CNET News:
Time for an audit of Microsoft's ‘Apple Tax’ — Microsoft puts forth a ‘tax return’ showing the cost difference between a Windows PC or Mac purchase. However, CNET News' Ina Fried suggests auditors take a close look at the itemized deductions. — Microsoft is back touting the “Apple Tax” …
Tim Conneally / BetaNews:
You're a Mac, you're a PC...Now it's our turn, says Linux — The Linux Foundation has announced its own ads that extol the virtues of open source. — The Mac vs. PC viral video and advertising war continues to rage, but now Linux has gotten involved. The nonprofit Linux Foundation began …
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Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:Linux Foundation CEO: Linux is “fastest growing platform”
Discussion:
ithinkdifferrent
Miguel Helft / Bits:
YouTube in Music Video Deal With Universal — YouTube and Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, said on Thursday that they had reached an agreement to create a new online hub for music videos called Vevo. It will be the latest of many efforts by YouTube, which is owned by Google …
Eric M. Zeman / Phone Scoop:
Bluetooth 3.0 Is Ready for Prime Time — The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is set to announce the Bluetooth 3.0 specification later this month. Bluetooth 3.0 will feature dramatically increased speeds, allowing for the transfer of large video files, music collections and photo libraries wirelessly ‘within seconds’.
Discussion:
SlashGear, IntoMobile, Obsessable, TechSpot, pocketnow.com, Engadget, Unwired View, dailywireless.org and Crave
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Telegraph:
Pete Waterman: ‘I was exploited by Google’ — Pete Waterman, the force behind dozens of multi-million selling chart hits, claims he is being “exploited” by internet giant Google. — The 62-year-old said the Rick Astley classic Never Gonna Give You Up, which he co-wrote and which was the subject …
Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:
Domain Pigeon now finds open Twitter names — Domain Pigeon, the domain finding service that lets you search and browse unclaimed domains, now does the same thing for Twitter usernames. It shows you which names are unclaimed, and puts some of the most recent or popular additions on the front page …
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo Loses Toolbar Deals; Search Share To Drop? — The Wall Street Journal reports that the loss of two agreements with computer makers could cost Yahoo as much as 15% of its search traffic in the next 12-18 months. — Early this year, HP made Live Search the default search toolbar on its computers.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
iPhone To Get Qualcomm's ‘FLO TV’ Mobile TV — One reason that Qualcomm's FLO TV mobile television division has had a slow start: It's only available on select phones that have a special chip inside them. That's currently about 9 phones of roughly 100-plus in the U.S. market …
Daniel Burka / Digg the Blog:
Digg Search: Now With 99.987% Less Suck — An apology is due - until today, Digg's search has been pretty terrible. I'm really excited to announce that our search no longer sucks. In fact, I think it's awfully good but you should try it out and judge for yourself.
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple to disable .Mac website tools in July — MobileMe subscribers using legacy .Mac website tools have been warned by Apple that the .Mac Groups and HomePage features will be discontinued in July, leaving existing pages live but taking away the ability to edit or update them.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for April 2009 — Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification issued: April 9, 2009 — Microsoft Security Bulletins to be issued: April 14, 2009 — This is an advance notification of security bulletins that Microsoft is intending to release on April 14, 2009.
Discussion:
MSRC, Ars Technica, InformationWeek, ITworld.com, Zero Day, Bink.nu, eWeek, CNET News and SC Magazine US
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Yelp Gives Small Businesses a Louder Voice — Small businesses will soon feel a little more love in their love-hate relationship with Yelp, the review site. — Yelp will begin allowing small business owners to respond publicly to reviews they think are incorrect.
Yahoo! Search Blog:
BOSS Update: Delicious, Advanced Language, and News Capabilities — Today we're adding several new tools to the Yahoo! Search BOSS developer war chest: Delicious content, advanced language capabilities, and news sorting functionality to the BOSS news service.
Fortune:
‘Entrepreneur’ means little in France — Start-up hopefuls find a friendlier business environment in the U.S. than in their homeland, which favors larger employers. — NEW YORK (Fortune) — An e-mail message with the provocative subject line, “Entrepreneurs: France's Newest Export,” …
Benjamin Wayne / Silicon Alley Insider:
YouTube Is Doomed — YouTube, that incandescent tower of video Babel; monument to the sloughed-off detritus of our exponentially-exploding digital culture; a Technicolor cataract of skateboarding dogs, lip-synching college students, political punditry, and porn; has reached the zenith of its meteoric rise …
Discussion:
Linux News from Linux Loop, Search Engine Land, HipMojo.com, Online Video Watch, Glass House and MediaPost
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Twitter has real business partners — and fake ones — Like a lot of people, I read the story about Twitter backing its first UK ad partner yesterday and thought it was a pretty big deal. Names like Universal Pictures, Virgin Media and Gorillaz were all mentioned as using the service known …
Discussion:
Twitter Blog
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Nortel Won't Be Coming Back from Bankruptcy — Nokia Siemens Networks has offered to buy several business units of bankrupt telecommunications gear provider Nortel, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that Nokia Siemens has bid on Nortel's Long Term Evolution (LTE) …
