Top Items:
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Why It Makes Sense That a Hacker's Behind Amazon's Big Gay Outrage — Twitter had a big tizzy yesterday over Amazon.com's supposed censorship of gay and lesbian titles, did you hear? Just one problem: A well-known hacker has come forward and claimed the whole thing was his prank.
RELATED:
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
Blogs and Twitter Coin “AmazonFail” — This weekend's news that Amazon.com removed sales rankings for gay and lesbian books has coined a new term, already in heavy rotation on Twitter and the blogosphere: AmazonFail. — Twitter posts tagged “AmazonFail” are flooding the microblogging site.
Discussion:
BetaNews, Publishers Weekly, Epicenter, CRAIG'S POP LIFE, Wall Street Journal, The SiliconANGLE and Ubergizmo, Thanks:mrinaldesai
PC World:
Google Disables Uploads, Comments on YouTube Korea — Google has disabled user uploads and comments on the Korean version of its YouTube video portal in reaction to a new law that requires the real name of a contributor be listed along each contribution they make.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, paidContent.org, Network World, ReadWriteWeb, Google Blogoscoped and AppScout
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Let's Go Crazy: New Prince iPod Costs $150 Per Song — The newest special-edition iPod to hit the market comes from Prince. It is purple, it is produced in a limited batch of 950, and it will cost you $2,100. — But at least it contains every Prince song ever recorded, right? Nope.
Discussion:
PC World, PC Magazine, Gadget Lab, Engadget, CrunchGear, Pulse2, Obsessable, Gizmodo, iLounge, Switched and hypebot
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Palm Pre gets caught taking a walk in the park — If you're looking for rhyme or reason, unfortunately we can't offer either for the time being. All we know is this: It looks like Sprint and Palm may be loosening the reigns a bit when it comes to allowing the Palm Pre out into the wild.
RELATED:
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Top Facebook Applications See 25 Percent Drop In Traffic Since Redesign — If you thought the last redesign spelled the death of the Facebook platform, you ain't seen nothing yet! Last July Facebook released their new design and within a matter of months, widget applications had become a thing of the past.
Arn / MacRumors:
All-Time Top iPhone App Sales Figures and Estimates — As part of Apple's one billion app countdown for their iTunes App Store, they have also compiled a list of the all-time top 20 apps [App Store] for both Paid and Free apps. — Perhaps most interesting is what the potential market for a very successful paid iPhone app might be.
RELATED:
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
Q1 VC Fundraising: Down & Up — Forty U.S.-based venture capital firms raised just $4.3 billion in the first quarter of 2009, according to data released this morning by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. The downside is that this represents the lowest number of funds to raise capital since Q3 2003.
RELATED:
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
Deconstructing Apple's Tiny iPod Shuffle — A teardown by researchers shows the device's components cost a mere 28% of its retail price—a fat profit margin. Biggest supplier: Samsung — When the first iPod graced store shelves almost eight years ago, it could pack about 1,000 songs …
Discussion:
Ars Technica, TG Daily, Gizmodo, Engadget, Gadget Lab, Silicon Alley Insider, CrunchGear, The Toybox, MacRumors, Softpedia News, PMP Today, 9 to 5 Mac, Gearlog, Macsimum News and iLounge, Thanks:dmac1
Louis Gray:
Twazzup Takes On Twitter Search to Make Sense of Real-Time Web — Twitter's acquisition of Summize in 2008 gained the red-hot status update service arguably the most impactful new entrant into the Web 2.0 space last year, as the company looked to harness the millions of daily tweets flowing through its system and make sense of it all.
Paul McDougall / InformationWeek:
Windows 7: 83% Of Businesses Won't Deploy Next Year — New data shows that the vast majority of corporate IT departments won't touch Microsoft's next OS until at least 2011. — Microsoft may need to keep its Windows XP operating system around a little longer—at least for its deep-pocketed corporate customers.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Computerworld Blogs, LinuxWorld.com, TechSpot, DailyTech, Macsimum News, Electronista and The Tech Report
Mark Walsh / MediaPost:
What iPhone Apps Are Used Most? Hint: Not Games — When it comes to the type of applications iPhone owners use most, ones for checking the weather trump games, music, news and everything else. — According to an upcoming report on smartphone usage by online market research firm Compete …
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Analyst: Apple placed chip order for 32GB iPhones — Apple has reportedly ordered 100 million units of 8-gigabit and 16-gigabit NAND flash chips, with the bulk of its order coming from its main iPhone chip supplier, Samsung, according to a research report released Monday by a Lazard Capital Markets analyst.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Don't Buy A Smartphone Until June! — In the market for a smartphone? Unless you desperately need one today, it's a smart idea to wait — at least until early June. Apple, Palm, and other companies are readying new phones for summer launches. And there's a good chance you'll want to try out one or more of them.
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Buy.com offering Apple official unlocked iPhones for $799 — Buy.com is offering an official Apple Unlocked iPhones now for $799. This is an official Apple iPhone which isn't jailbroken. You can do iTunes updates and not have to worry about locking your iPhone up again. Apple warranty also applies.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, MobileCrunch, TheAppleBlog, IntoMobile, Technologizer, Softpedia News, SlashGear, The iPhone Blog and Mobility Site
Peter Burrows / BusinessWeek:
A One-Time Raging Bull on Apple Rages Again. — Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu is out with a report this morning, advising investors that Apple's stock could rise from its current $119 to $152. That would be a 26% gain in the shares, which have already risen 45% in recent weeks despite concerns …
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
New Sony PSP trend? Retail Patapon 2 rumored to be UMD-free — Our inside source has given us word that Sony will release its upcoming title Patapon 2 purely through digital means, even though empty cases with the download code will be available at retailers.
Brier Dudley / Brier Dudley's blog:
HP upgrades home server, adds video streaming to iPhones — With serious competitors for its MediaSmart home server finally coming to the U.S., Hewlett-Packard today is announcing a big software update of the Windows Home Server-based system. — Highlight include new software …
Discussion:
MediaSmartServer.net, jkOnTheRun, 9 to 5 Mac, Engadget, Ed Bott's Windows Expertise, CrunchGear, TUAW and Gizmodo
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
Vista/7 more secure than Linux and Mac OS X — Operating system security is always a hotly contended subject, and last week Microsoft amped up the hype by claiming that Windows Vista and the soon-to-be-released 7 is the world's most secure OS, beating both Linux and Mac OS X.
Chris Albrecht / NewTeeVee:
Hulu: More Vids to Fewer Uniques in March — Monthly viewer stats used to be pretty boring to write. To paraphrase Jan Brady, it was always “YouTube, YouTube, YouTube!” Then along came Hulu and things got more interesting as the premium content site started to take off.
Discussion:
Beet.TV
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
StumbleUpon Stumbles Out of eBay's Arms to be Reborn as a Start-Up: The Entire Memo — The content discovery service StumbleUpon has gotten itself back to start-up status, after being bought by eBay two years ago, announcing today that was being backed by a roster of well-known Silicon Valley investors.
Kim Poh Liaw / SlashPhone:
Rumor: Apple Expect 4 Million New iPhones Shipment by end Q2 — Together with the rumors on the new iPhone in the past few months, here is yet another rumor from chinatimes according to its source from iPhone component suppliers. According to its insider news, Apple has already ordered 4 million units …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Jim Breyer Joins Dell Board Of Directors, Fast Becoming Most Powerful Man In Silicon Valley — Jim Breyer, a partner at Accel Partners, joined the board of directors of Dell today. That's interesting in itself, but the man also sits on the board of Facebook, Walmart and Marvel, as well as a number of younger startups.
