Top Items:
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.
Discussion:
Venture Capital Dispatch, Silicon Alley Insider, Electricpig.co.uk, AppScout, Smalltalk Tidbits … and DealBook, Thanks:mrinaldesai
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Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Facebook rejects funding at $4 billion valuation, may not raise more — Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg just had a board-level conversation about possibly accepting money at a $4 billion valuation, but decided against doing so. — Facebook isn't commenting directly …
Discussion:
All Facebook, Silicon Alley Insider, CNET News, Deal Journal, A VC, Wall Street Journal and Pulse2, Thanks:bobcaswell
Om Malik / GigaOM:
For Twitter The Only Way Is Up — Earlier this evening along with a select few journalists, I got a chance to interact with French Minister for Digital Development, Mrs. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who is in town to learn about latest developments in Silicon Valley and learn …
Eyal Sela / ProductiveWise:Has Twitter Reached its peak? Google Insights Suggests it May Have
Discussion:
GMSV
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Researching Movement-Aware Interfaces for iPhones, Depicts Front-Facing Video Camera — Apple has been conducting ongoing research into how to further improve their mobile device interfaces as evidenced by a couple of patent applications published over the past couple of weeks.
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Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Apple exploring motion-adaptive iPhone with video chat — Patent requests from Apple continue to provide clues as to where the company may take its iPhone interface in the coming years, such as a new filing which depicts a version of the handset with a front-facing video camera …
Discussion:
O'Grady's PowerPage
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
Nokia's net profit falls 90 percent — If you were wondering how bad things have gotten for the mobile handset market, just take a look at Nokia, the world's largest maker of cell phones. — The company on Thursday reported a 90 percent fall in first-quarter net profits as the global recession took …
Discussion:
Between the Lines, Reuters, Silicon Alley Insider, MobileCrunch, Boy Genius Report and Engadget
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Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Nokia Sees Handset Demand Stabilizing; Shares Jump — Nokia (NOK) shares are headed sharply higher this morning after the company indicated the worst may be over for the mobile phone business. — For the first quarter, the company posted revenue of 9.276 billion Euros, down 26.7% year over year, and 26.8% sequentially.
Bloomberg:
Sun Said to Be Willing to Resume IBM Talks With Assurances Deal Will Close — Sun Microsystems Inc. would be willing to resume takeover talks with International Business Machines Corp. if IBM makes a stronger commitment to close the acquisition, two people familiar with the matter said.
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Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
Do You Think Bandwidth Grows on Trees? — User-generated content may have changed the Internet, but sites like YouTube are suffocating under the costs of storing it. — Everyone knows that print newspapers are our generation's horse-and-buggy; in the most wired cities, they've been pummeled by competition from the Web.
Scott M. Fulton, III / BetaNews:
One extra week for Microsoft to defend tying IE to Windows — After a Financial Times report this morning cited April 28 as the deadline for Microsoft to comply with a request by the European Commission to respond to its latest Statement of Objections, reporters close to the story wondered why that seemed like one week too many.
Discussion:
Neowin.net
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Kelly Fiveash / The Register:Microsoft gets second extension in IE EU antitrust brouhaha
Discussion:
All about Microsoft
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.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Add Zoho to other sites with Zoho Gadgets — Zoho provides useful and free Web applications for productivity and business, just like Google does. But Zoho has done a particularly impressive job integrating all these applications together. Now it's integrating those apps with non-Zoho websites …
Chris Morris / CNBC.com:
GameStop Wants Cheaper Consoles, Predicts Hot Titles — Consumers hoping for a price cut on video game hardware have a new—and powerful—ally. — While the video game industry has proved relatively resistant to the recession so far, the CEO of GameStop [GME Loading...
Discussion:
Gamasutra, Joystiq, VG247, Kotaku, GameBizBlog, GamesIndustry.biz, GoNintendo and Edge Online
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Twitter Wants Distribution Deals, Not a Buyout — Yes, Twitter is talking to big Internet companies about forming partnerships with them. No, it is not looking to sell itself. — That is the latest from Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures partner who was an early investor in Twitter …
Discussion:
DealBook
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Gannett's Disappearing Ad Revenue Bodes Badly For Newspapers — Yesterday we got a sense of how bad the first quarter was for the magazine business. Today we get a report card from the newspaper industry, and it's equally grim. — If you're one of the few people gambling on Gannett …
Discussion:
Smalltalk Tidbits …
Steve Espinosa / Silicon Alley Insider:
How Twitter Will Win Local Search — (This post was originally published on Local Search News) — Almost everything on Twitter is inherently local. The simple question “What are you doing?” implies that because, unless you are at home watching TV, you are doing something that is local …
Discussion:
Beyond Search
Stephen Lawson / Network World:
Stanford's Cinder OS tightens mobile power control — Researchers are using advanced power and security features to build the ideal mobile OS — Stanford University researchers are designing an operating system from the ground up to handle the power and security requirements of mobile devices.
Discussion:
IntoMobile
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.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Supporters Throw Street Party in Moscow — Pirate Bay supporters can be found everywhere. Aside from tens of millions of ‘regular’ site users, there are other more prominent supporters too. Novelist Paulo Coelho, who wrote the 65 million-selling book “The Alchemist” …
Joseph Menn / Financial Times:
Yahoo ready to sell Hot Jobs — Three months into her stint at the head of Yahoo, Carol Bartz is hastening her drive to streamline operations by disposing of ancillary businesses. — The Silicon Valley company is seeking buyers for the HotJobs employment site, people familiar …
Discussion:
Virtual Economics
Jessie Scanlon / Business Week:
Kiva Robots Invade the Warehouse — Fetching goods and filling orders, little helpers from Kiva Systems are revolutionizing companies' supply-chain and distribution networks — In a warehouse at the headquarters of Kiva Systems in Woburn, Mass., an ottoman-shaped robot slides beneath …
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Open-source ad company OpenX launches platform — OpenX, a software company that makes an open-source ad serving product for online publishers, has launched a platform called OpenX Market to directly connect buyers and sellers. — The model is more or less a standard ad auction format …
Terrence Russell / VentureBeat:
Google's Q1 forecast looks cautiously optimistic — The economy has been chewing up tech companies left and right, but tomorrow (Thursday) will reveal the quarterly fate of one of the industry's biggest — Google. After a Wall Street-beating fourth quarter, the Mountain View …
