Top Items:
Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:
AT&T Chief Presses for iPhone — When Randall Stephenson became AT&T Inc.'s chief executive, the company had just started offering the iPhone. The blockbuster device has since reeled in millions of new customers and helped revitalize the telecom giant's brand.
Discussion:
DSLreports, Between the Lines, FierceMobileContent, Telecompetitor, FierceWireless, DailyTech, CNET News, iLounge, O'Grady's PowerPage, Phone Arena, iPhone Buzz, Digits, Neowin.net, TechCrunch, HotHardware.com News, The iPhone Blog, Computerworld Blogs, TechSpot, AppleInsider, Ars Technica, MacNN, I4U News, Silicon Alley Insider, Gizmodo, Tech Trader Daily, MacRumors, InformationWeek, Edible Apple, Phone Scoop, dailywireless.org, mocoNews and Open IT Strategies
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Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Piper Jaffray sales count: 22 iPhones, 28 Macs a day — One of the things that distinguishes Gene Munster's coverage of Apple (AAPL) from the other analysts who follow the company is that he actually leaves his office, goes into Apple stores, and counts sales.
Ian Paul / PC World:
AT&T Wants to Keep iPhone Exclusivity Until 2011 — AT&T wants to remain the exclusive U.S. iPhone provider until 2011 and is pressuring Apple to extend their business arrangement that is set to expire in 2010, according to reports. Apple is tight-lipped about the talks and only will comment it has …
WMPoweruser.com:
New ZuneHD pictures, details — Some more ZuneHD information has trickled into our inbox, and while we do not, in general, cover PMP's, Zune seems inextricably linked with the future of Windows Mobile, so its probably a valid topic of conversation here. — From our limited information …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Stop Me If You've Heard This One: Yahoo Management and Staff Set on Shuffle Again — Yes, more layoffs are indeed coming to Yahoo, sources confirmed to BoomTown, but perhaps even more than have been reported. — But that's not all, as even more top-level managers are either leaving …
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Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Is Said to Plan More Layoffs — SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo is planning a new round of layoffs, the first since Carol Bartz became chief executive in January, according to several people with knowledge of the situation. — The layoffs could affect several hundred employees and may be announced …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, The Register, Tech Trader Daily, paidContent.org, Search Engine Journal and CNET News
Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Get a Vanity URL for your Google Profile Now — You may read the full article later but first, head over to this page and claim a vanity URL for your Google Profile before someone else snatches your favorite user name. This is available to all Google Accounts that don't use a Gmail address.
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Chris Messina / FactoryCity:
Google Profiles, namespace lock-in & social search — I'd originally intended to respond to Joshua Schacter's post about URL shorteners and how they're merely the tip of the data iceberg, but since I missed that debate, Google has fortuitously plied me with an even better example by releasing custom profile URLs today.
Discussion:
Regular Geek
Phone Arena:
LG Viewty II is on the way — First official information on the Viewty II, now also known as the Viewty Smart, has just been published by LG's official German blog! LG seems to have hired Motorola's newly announced MOTOROKR W6 as a personal trainer for the Viewty Smart …
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Skype IPO Could Range From $1.6-3.1 Billion — Earlier today, online auction giant eBay announced it plans to spin off Skype, its Internet phone company, as a public company next year. How much could it be worth? — In a note, JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan estimates that Skype's 2010 net revenue …
Discussion:
eWeek, Business Week, TECH.BLORGE.com, p2pnet, GMSV, Softpedia News, Tech Check with Jim Goldman and Reuters
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eBay Inc.:eBay Inc. Announces Plan for 2010 Initial Public Offering of Skype
Discussion:
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Darren Waters / BBC:
Amazon blocks Phorm adverts scan — Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads. — Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
When Google Latitude Stalking Isn't Such A Bad Thing — Yesterday, Silicon Valley's local CBS affiliate ran a story (video here) about a woman getting her purse snatched. But what's interesting is the way she got it back: With an assist from Google Latitude.
Discussion:
Digital Inspiration
Maureen Dowd / New York Times:
Dinosaur at the Gate — Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats …
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Apple posts third iPhone OS 3.0 beta with minor API changes — The third beta of the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 is now available to official registered members of Apple's iPhone Developer Program. The biggest change is an improvement to the push notification implementation.
Discussion:
World of Apple, Gear Live, MobileCrunch, MacRumors, Boy Genius Report, Softpedia News, iPhone Buzz, The Apple Core, The iPhone Blog, 9 to 5 Mac, Engadget and IntoMobile
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Peter Rip / Business Week:
What Venture Capital Can Learn from Private Equity — The venture capital game has changed, yet many VCs are still using an old, outdated playbook — Baseball and venture capital always seem to make an effective pairing for analogies. As in baseball, much of the cachet of venture capital …
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
Time Warner Cable tells FCC to shut up about net neutrality — “Now is not the time... to engage in a debate about the need for net neutrality obligations,” Time Warner Cable tells the FCC. But why not, other than the fact that TWC is taking a beating over bandwidth caps?
Gavin O'Malley / MediaPost:
QuadrantOne Lands Ad Deal With The AP — QuadrantOne — the online ad sales network launched last year by Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., The New York Times Co., and Tribune Co. — today is expected to announce a partnership with The Associated Press to handle ad sales across the new service's digital platforms …
Niall Kennedy / Niall Kennedy's Weblog:
Google search referer changes — Google will roll out a change to its search results pages later this week designed to better capture outbound clicks. Google search result pages will link to a gateway URL before delivering the visitor to his final destination.
comScore:
Facebook Ranks as Top Social Networking Site in the Majority of European Countries — Facebook Captures #1 Ranking in Spain for the First Time in February — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released an analysis of Facebook's growth in Europe during the past year.
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Lead-Gen Provider Pontiflex Raises $6.25 Million Second Round — Lead-gen tech company Pontiflex has raised a $6.25 million second round funding. The round was led by RRE Ventures, with returning investors New Atlantic Ventures and Greenhill SAVP also participating.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Amazon: Now One-Third Of All U.S. E-Commerce — One online retailer to rule them all. — Amazon.com (AMZN) could be responsible for close to a third of all U.S. e-commerce transactions, RBC Capital analyst Stephen Ju asserted in a research note this morning.
Richard Pérez-Peña / New York Times:
Newspaper Ad Revenue Could Fall as Much as 30% — NEWSPAPER advertising, already in its worst slump since the Depression, suffered by far the sharpest drop in generations during the first quarter of 2009, down 30 percent for some papers, industry executives and analysts say.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
AT&T launches FamilyMap service, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere — So check this: AT&T just launched a service called FamilyMap. It basically let's you locate any number on your AT&T account for a monthly fee. Here's the thing though... besides the first notification text message alerting …
Discussion:
blogs.chron.com, jkOnTheRun, MobileCrunch, The Equity Kicker, IntoMobile, Unwired View, Engadget Mobile, Gizmodo and GPS Obsessed
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Algorithms everywhere: Can IBM automate business decisions? — IBM outlined a vision—and of course a new services unit to go with it—that takes a little time to grok. Big Blue talked about the “information journey,” fact-based enterprises and nudging out gut calls in everyday management for decisions based on hard, cold facts.
