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:
MacRumors, LiveSide, Podcasting News, I4U News, DisplayBlog, Electronista, Gizmodo, CrunchGear, techeblog.com, Switched, Engadget HD, Joystiq and digg.com
RELATED:
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.
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:
Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, PC World, Guardian, Reuters, Bits, Silicon Alley Insider, Electronista, tinyComb, VentureBeat, CNET News, Digital Daily, Between the Lines, Microsoft Pri0, paidContent.org, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, ChannelWeb, Search Engine Land, Tech Trader Daily, TechFlash, ClickZ, Epicenter, Dealscape, WinBeta, Slashdot, Technologizer and Beyond Search
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 …
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 …
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:
Bits, Electronista, The iPhone Blog, ifoAppleStore, Gizmodo, CNET News, VentureBeat and Ars Technica
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, Silicon Alley Insider, Gizmodo, SlashGear, Technologizer, Smalltalk Tidbits … and digg.com, Thanks:mrinaldesai
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.
RELATED:
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 …
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.
Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Inserting images — Well, it's about time. You no longer have to use workarounds to put images into your messages or attach images when you really want to inline them. Just turn on “Inserting images” from the Labs tab under Settings, and you'll see a new toolbar icon like this:
Discussion:
TechPulse 360, CNET News, webmonkey, TechSpot, ChannelWeb, InformationWeek, geeksugar, Lifehacker, Mashable!, TheNextWeb.com, Download Squad, Google Blogoscoped, AppScout, Digital Inspiration, Google Operating System and RotorBlog.com, Thanks:atul
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 …
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.
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 …
Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
Yelp Will Let Businesses Respond to Web Reviews — Small businesses will soon feel a little more love in their love-hate relationship with Yelp, the Web site whose users post reviews of restaurants, dry cleaners and other local businesses. — Starting next week, Yelp will let small-business owners publicly respond to reviews.
Discussion:
Screenwerk, DailyTech, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Search Engine Watch, Gothamist, Traffick, VentureBeat, Bits and digg.com
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
IPhone Needs A New Brain — Will Apple's wonder gadget get more memory? Will it come in different colors? Who cares. A new processor is what it really needs. — Will the iPhone get more flash memory? Will it get new features, like a compass? — Who cares. What the iPhone really needs is a new processor.
VentureBeat:
Ditched by potential parents, Digg grows up on its own — When it comes to web 2.0 startups, the social news site Digg is like an old man. Launched in 2004, it quickly exploded on to the scene and became both a web and media darling in relatively short order.
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.
Discussion:
CNET News
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 …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
About Those New CrunchPad Pictures — A little background for those of you who haven't heard of the CrunchPad: This is the post that kicked off the project. I wanted something I couldn't buy, and found people who said it could be built for a lot less than I imagined.
Discussion:
Crave, Brier Dudley's blog, Gizmodo, Internet Tablet Talk, Electronista, Technologizer, jkOnTheRun, last100, Zatz Not Funny!, GPS Obsessed, Gearlog, CloudAve, GMSV, Liliputing, GottaBeMobile.com, The Toybox, Narcissistic Infarction and Sean Percival's Blog, Thanks:atul
IEBlog:
Prepare for Automatic Update distribution of IE8 — In January we blogged about our plan to distribute IE8 via Automatic Update/Windows Update (for simplicity, we'll refer to this as Automatic Update for the rest of this blog post). This post provides some additional information about how users …
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.
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
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
Wade Roush / Xconomy:
At CHI Meeting, Microsoft Turns Computing Interfaces on Their Head, and Side, and Back — Wade Roush wrote: — I spent a couple of days this week at CHI, the big annual meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI).
Discussion:
WinBeta
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Mike Arrington and I disagree on the future — Last Saturday on the Gillmor Gang Mike Arrington wondered aloud whether Twitter had won a “winners take all” game and whether that meant that friendfeed was toast. He then wrote a blog post titled “FriendFeed is in danger of becoming the coolest app no one uses.”
