Top Items:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
CNN Acquires CNNbrk Twitter Account With Nearly 1 Million Followers — Hard to believe, but the CNN Twitter account racing Ashton Kutcher to 1 million subscribers wasn't even under CNN's (TWX) control until recently. — CNN confirms that it has has taken control of the @cnnbrk account — and its 944,000 followers.
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Kutcher/CNN Twitter Fight Day 3: EA Ups The Ante — A couple days ago, actor Ashton Kutcher stated his goal to beat CNN to be the first Twitter user with a million followers. He promised to punk CNN founder Ted Turner if the Internet made it happen. Yesterday, CNN anchor Larry King fired …
Discussion:
CNN, CNET News, NEWS.com.au, Technologizer, Silicon Alley Insider, Twittercism, Trends in the Living Networks, TheNextWeb.com, Kotaku, Pulse2, lalawag and Digital Media Wire
Clay Shirky:
The Failure of #amazonfail — In 1987, a teenage girl in suburban New York was discovered dazed and wrapped in a garbage bag, smeared with feces, with racial epithets scrawled on her torso. She had been attacked by half a dozen white men, then left in that state on the grounds of an apartment building.
Microsoft:
Next Wave of Microsoft Office Products Will Redefine How People Work — Q&A: Chris Capossela, senior vice president of Microsoft's Information Worker Product Management Group, discusses what people and businesses can expect from the upcoming release of Microsoft Exchange Server, Office, SharePoint Server, Visio and Project.
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Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Search Prepares for Switching to Ajax — In February, many people noticed that Google tested a new interface for search results. The test didn't include any new feature and Google even loaded the standard search results page to display the results.
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The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
SlingPlayer for iPhone rejected at AT&T's request? — Some feared it might happen, others thought it would pass with flying colors, but unfortunately we've got a tip that tries to shed some light on the situation. This was from an anonymous tipster and we're posting it for information sake.
Michael C / Techdirt:
Want To Know Why Newspapers Are Dying? Maureen Dowd Shows Us — In her recent New York Times op-ed, Maureen Dowd takes aim at Google, blaming it for the sorry state of the newspaper industry. Perhaps in hopes of winning people over to the newspapers' side in the argument over how much Google …
Andrew Lipsman / comScore Voices:
Breaking News (and Making News): Twitter Surges 131% in March to 9.3 Million U.S. Visitors! — Last week, Sarah Radwanick posted to the comScore blog about Twitter's exponential growth curve during the past twelve months, and that the growth appeared to be driven by older Internet users.
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John C Abell / Epicenter:
Wall Street Journal iPhone App Sets Content Free — The Wall Street Journal, one of the few newspapers that charges for content online, released an app for the iPhone Wednesday which sets their content free, poking another hole in one of the internet's oldest pay walls.
John Quinn / Digg the Blog:
(Yet) Another DiggBar Update — Since we launched the DiggBar, we've received valuable feedback from the Digg community, publishers, SEO industry experts and Google. We believe that the DiggBar provides a more seamless way to discover and share content on Digg.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, TECH.BLORGE.com, TheNextWeb.com, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, CNET News, Download Squad and Mashable!, Thanks:atul
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Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft revives Spitfire pub under compromise arrangement — Microsoft has reached an agreement to move forward with a new campus pub — reversing course after having second thoughts and surprising the bar owner with a lease termination last week. Under the compromise plan …
Fortune:
Is Facebook losing its glow? — It's been a busy couple of months for social networking site Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the cover of Fortune (dressed in a tie, no less) and shared with us his plans to turn Facebook into the next digital communications platform.
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Apple near ready with release of Mac OS X 10.5.7 Juno — Apple as early as this week could announce the release of Mac OS X 10.5.7, a seventh maintenance and security update to its Leopard operating system scheduled to deliver over a 100 minor tweaks and bug fixes.
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
TwitPub invents paid Twitter accounts — This was bound to happen: Someone has invented a paid access scheme for Twitter. TwitPub is a marketplace where Twitterers can sell access to their updates, by registering their protected accounts with the service.
Plamere / Music Machinery:
Inside the precision hack — There's a scene toward the end of the book Contact by Carl Sagan, where the protagonist Ellie Arroway finds a Message embedded deep in the digits of PI. The Message is perhaps an artifact of an extremely advanced intelligence that apparently manipulated …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Goldman Ups Ests; Piper Upbeat On iPhone Units — Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey this morning upped his estimates on Apple (AAPL) ahead of the company's fiscal second quarter earnings report, which is due after the close next Wednesday. — Bailey is looking for FY Q2 revenues of $8 billion …
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Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:Piper Jaffray sales count: 22 iPhones, 28 Macs a day
Discussion:
AppleInsider, Electricpig.co.uk, The iPhone Blog, Ars Technica, mocoNews, Macsimum News, Epicenter, Silicon Alley Insider and eWeek
comScore:
comScore Releases March 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In March 2009, Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches, a 9-percent gain versus February.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Facebook's New Recruiting Video — Facebook has been putting a lot of effort into its videos lately. — The latest: A beautiful, hi-def video illustrating how the company's engineers elegantly handle almost 2,000 photo uploads per second and manage more than 40 billion photos.
Kim Zetter / Threat Level:
PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security — Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator. The attacks involve both unencrypted PINs …
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Firm Lets Others Choose Start-Ups — Venture-Capital Group Outsources Funding Decisions; $25,000 and a Dream — In the latest example of investors trying new approaches during the downturn, a venture-capital firm that was an early backer of Facebook Inc. is devising a plan …
Thanks:mrinaldesai
John Koblin / New York Observer:
Silicon ‘Valley Girl’ Gets Tough With Times — Sarah Lacy is a freelance business reporter and a fixture on the Silicon Valley scene. Gawker media mini-mogul Nick Denton once called her “the hottest reporter in the tech world—ever.” — So when she conducted a video interview for Yahoo with Elon Musk …
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
A year on, Psystar still defying Apple — One year ago, an otherwise sleepy April in the Apple universe was turned upside down by a tiny company from Southern Florida, kicking off a real-world Clone War between Apple and Psystar. — Today, the essential question regarding Psystar is unchanged …
Discussion:
Linux News from Linux Loop
Efficient Frontier:
Despite Continued Belt Tightening Across U.S. Businesses, ROI Remains Strong for Search Engine Marketing, According to Efficient Frontier Report — Q1 2009 Search Engine Performance Report Provides Leading Economic Indicators as Advertisers and Search Engines Compensate for Changing Consumer Behavior to Increase Profitability
Alexander Haislip / PE Hub Blog:
Is Steve Jobs Moving to Memphis? — I spoke with a well-connected business person in Memphis this morning who says that there is a house in a swank neighborhood there that has been bought for a princely sum and is undergoing minor renovations in preparation for its new resident.
Maija Palmer / Financial Times:
High-tech groups to testify against Microsoft — A group of technology companies led by IBM, Nokia and Oracle, has joined the European Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft and will testify against the company, which is accused of abusing its dominance in the internet browser market.
Discussion:
BetaNews
Erica Ogg / CNET News:
U.S. PC market shows some resilience amid continuing decline — The PC market shrunk during the first part of 2009, but not as badly as expected. — Shipments of PCs during the first quarter were down 7.1 percent from a year ago, to 63.5 million units, according to IDC, which released its Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker on Wednesday.
Discussion:
Digits, TechFlash, AppleInsider, eWeek, Between the Lines, Brier Dudley's blog, Bits, Electronista and OSNews
Brian Krebs / Washington Post:
Organized Crime Behind a Majority of Data Breaches — A string of data breaches orchestrated principally by a handful of organized cyber-crime gangs translated into the loss of hundreds of millions of consumer records last year, security experts say. — The size and scope of the breaches …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Decision Time For Facebook: Term Sheet Received At $2 Billion Valuation — Facebook has been pitching for a new round of funding these last few months to bridge itself to an IPO sometime in the future. We've known that since October, when (former) CFO Gideon Yu was in Dubai.
Thanks:mrinaldesai
