Top Items:
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Is this the Zune HD? — Uh. Looks like something is happening — big time — in Zune land. We present what might possibly be your first look at, yes... the Zune HD. In the gallery below, you can see images from what appears to be a forthcoming marketing campaign for Microsoft's new PMP.
Discussion:
AppleInsider, PC World, 9 to 5 Mac, LiveSide, TechFlash, MacRumors, Gizmodo, Redmond Pie, Electronista, CrunchGear, DisplayBlog, Electronic Pulp, I4U News, The iPhone Blog, Engadget HD, Switched, techeblog.com and Joystiq
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Ed Oswald / Technologizer:
Confirmed: Zune HD is Fourth Generation Model — Technologizer has learned that rumors surrounding the fourth generation Zune model are indeed true, and Microsoft's music player would be getting a high-definition upgrade sometime in the fall, most likely in September or October.
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Skype Founders Seek to Buy Service Back — SAN FRANCISCO — The European duo who created Skype and sold it to eBay for billions may have another trick up their sleeve: buying it back. — Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the original founders of Skype, have approached several private equity firms …
Discussion:
paidContent.org, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, HipMojo.com, AuctionBytes Blog and The SiliconANGLE, Thanks:atul
Joshua Topolsky:
Why Engadget is blocking the DiggBar — Some of you may be wondering why you're not seeing the latest piece of Digg's news-puzzle — the DiggBar — on Engadget. Let me explain. — If you've seen the tool in action, then you know that it appears to offer an easy way to read an article …
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Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
The Growth Of Framebars & Kevin Rose On The DiggBar — The DiggBar has been out for about a week now. Since then, there continues to be concerns over twin issues of whether it robs sites of link love and frames their contents in a way that's unfair to publishers.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Bye, MG Siegler, we'll miss you — especially your headlines — It's with a heavy heart that I write this post. Reporter MG Siegler is leaving VentureBeat to begin work at competing blog TechCrunch. We always viewed MG as one of our better writers, and he fit really well with our team.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Exclusive: Yahoo's Bartz and Microsoft's Ballmer Finally Talking About Search and Advertising Partnership — In early discussions that began in the last several weeks that apparently included a face-to-face meeting last week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are finally talking …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Business Week, tinyComb, VentureBeat, PC World, Microsoft Pri0, paidContent.org, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Between the Lines, ChannelWeb, Search Engine Land, CNET News, ClickZ, TechFlash, Electronista, Digital Daily, Guardian, Tech Trader Daily, Silicon Alley Insider, Epicenter, Dealscape, Slashdot and Technologizer
Philip Lam / PreThinking:
Sprint Employees now training on the Palm Pre, Pre's Launch is Near — All the rumors and speculations of a mid-April/late April/May launch of the Palm Pre doesn't appear to be too far of a stretch. Stated in an email from Sprint, “Employees can expect training to start in April …
Discussion:
Engadget, Gadget Lab, Palm WebOS, Boy Genius Report, Gearlog, Unwired View, MobileCrunch, IntoMobile, SlashGear, I4U News, PreCentral.net, Phone Arena and Gizmodo
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Humberto Saabedra / PhoneNews.com:
Sprint Sets Two Launch Dates for Palm Pre, Employee Training Underway
Sprint Sets Two Launch Dates for Palm Pre, Employee Training Underway
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Apple stores to ditch Windows EasyPay systems for iPhone tech — Apple retail stores are looking to move away from Windows Mobile-based handheld checkout devices in favor of iPod touches with custom accessory add-ons, with a transition expected to follow the release of iPhone 3.0 later this year.
Discussion:
Electronista, Bits, The iPhone Blog, ifoAppleStore, AppScout, Gizmodo, CNET News and VentureBeat
John Cook / TechFlash:
Microsoft cancels campus pub — Beer and wine won't be flowing at a Microsoft campus bar after all. Just three days before the Spitfire pub was to open there, the company has pulled the plug on the project. The decision has left pub owner Jonathan Sposato mystified.
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Against Realtime — The future is now, more so than ever. Silicon Valley, filled with worshipers of the new, has embraced “realtime” as the latest trend. If it didn't happen in the last 10 minutes, it doesn't matter. — It's why blogs are supposedly killing sluggish print media.
Mark Gomez / Mercury News:
AT&T boosts reward to $250K in phone service sabotage — AT&T has increased its reward to $250,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for cutting fiber-optics lines at four locations early Thursday morning in South San Jose and San Carlos.
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Chad Berndtson / ChannelWeb:
Report: Amazon At Work On Larger-Screen Kindle — The second version of Amazon's Kindle e-reader hasn't been out two months, but Kindle 2 may already have a big brother on the way. According to a late Friday The Wall Street Journal report, Amazon is working on a new larger-screen version …
Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:
TweetStack: Get Your TweetDeck Columns on Your iPhone [Free Copies] — Even at $2.99, Tweetie has managed to claim the hearts and minds of iPhone Twitterers who are willing to pay to get features like multiple accounts, retweeting, following, and search in a fast and flexible Twitter app.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
AP Exec: “To the Untrained Eye It Looks Like We're Stupid” — Rough week for the Associated Press, at least if you measure it by headlines: First, the venerable news organization/aggregator confused the likes of me by announcing a vague plan to fight the Internet.
Glenn Peoples / Billboard.Biz:
iTunes Price Changes Hurt Some Rankings — Two days after the Apple iTunes Music Store raised prices on some individual tracks, there was evidence the increases have hurt the sales rankings of songs given the higher $1.29 price. — While it is difficult to say with certainty whether …
PE Hub Blog:
Current TV Cans IPO — Current Media Inc. (a.k.a. Current TV), a San Francisco-based television news and information network for young adults, has withdrawn registration for a $100 million IPO. It cited “current market conditions.” — The company had planned to trade on the Nasdaq …
Chris Shiflett:
Save the Internet with rev="canonical" — There's a new proposal ("URL shortening that doesn't hurt the Internet") floating around for using rev="canonical" to help put a stop to the URL-shortening madness. It sounds like a pretty good idea, and based on some discussions on IRC this morning …
Joseph L. Flatley / Engadget:
Apple releases iPod Shuffle VoiceOver Kit 1.0.1 upgrade — You know what really gets on our nerves? When we're listening to Van der Graaf Generator (look it up!) on our newfangled iPod Shuffle and it pronounces the band's name wrong. Seriously, this is an important function.
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Time Warner tries again, fails to justify caps and charges — Time Warner Cable has increased all of its Internet data caps, added some new ones, and generously offered to limit overage charges to $65/month. Perhaps that's because the company's broadband operations are actually earning …
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
CompUSA Comes Back From the Dead — About three months ago, Loretta Alkalay, a retired Florida resident, wanted to get a new HDTV. So she decided to give the CompUSA near her home a try. — Yes, CompUSA. The once-bankrupt electronics retailer is making a comeback …
Discussion:
CNET News, PC World, Electronista, Technologizer, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Silicon Alley Insider, Smalltalk Tidbits … and digg.com, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Chris O'Brien / Mercury News:
Dwindling public companies means big changes in the valley — Tucked into the annual Mercury News data-palooza known as the Silicon Valley 150, there's one nugget of information that I think tells us more than all the other lists and numbers about the profound changes in store for this region:
Thanks:atul
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Should Colleges Continue to Host Email for Their Students? — In the earliest days of the Internet, getting an .edu email address and signing in to Pine for the first time was a rite of passage for many college freshmen. Now, however, virtually every new college student got an email address before even graduating from primary school.
Discussion:
Chronicle of Higher Education