Top Items:
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Oracle Agrees to Acquire Sun Microsystems — The Oracle Corporation, the technology information company, announced Monday that it would acquire a rival, Sun Microsystems, for $9.50 a share, which would value the transition at $7.4 billion. — The deal with Oracle came about two weeks after I.B.M. ended its talks with Sun.
Discussion:
Irregular Enterprise, Web 2.0 Journal, Open Source, MarketWatch, Data Center Strategies, Between the Lines, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Gawker, Service-Oriented Architecture, Dana Gardner's BriefingsDirect, Tech Sanity Check, Silicon Valley Watcher, The SiliconANGLE, eWeek, virtualization.info, Jeremy's Blog and Bb RealTech
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
Our Full Analysis of the $7.4B Oracle-Sun Deal — Updated: Less than a month after it walked away from a $7 billion deal with IBM, Sun Microsystems says that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with database and enterprise software giant Oracle. Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash.
Discussion:
New York Times, Ars Technica, Computerworld Blogs, iTnews Australia, eWeek, TechFlash, SOA Center, Open Source, CNET News, OStatic blogs, The Mac Observer, deal architect, Guardian, Digits and AppleInsider, Thanks:om
Matt Asay / CNET News:
Oracle gets Sun for $7.4 billion, MySQL for $0 — Back in the early days of computing, there was no such thing as a “software vendor.” Companies like IBM sold hardware/software integrated solutions and, really, software was developed simply to sell the value of the hardware.
The Official Google Blog:
Hard at play in Google Labs with Similar Images and Google News Timeline — At Google, we are constantly researching, designing, and brainstorming about the next big idea, and when we think we've found something compelling, we often use our “20-percent time” to build a working version.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Live At The Google Labs Press Event: Real Image Analysis, News Timeline, Labs Reloaded — I'm among a mass of press at Google's San Francisco headquarters for a special Google Labs press event. R.J. Pittman, Director of Product Management, Radhika Malpani, Director of Engineering and software engineer Andy Hertzfeld are presenting.
Discussion:
Digits, Download Squad, BetaNews, eWeek, Google Operating System, Silicon Alley Insider, Beet.TV, Scobleizer and Recovering Journalist
Chris Sherman / Search Engine Land:Google Adds Search By Similarity To Image Search
Discussion:
TechCrunch
Kevin Fitchard / TELEPHONY Magazine:
AT&T doubling 3G capacity — Tweaks to the HSPA network will bring 3G capacity up to 7.2 Mb/s even before AT&T implements next-gen wireless technologies — AT&T is in the process of doubling the capacity of its 3G networks, using software enhancements to squeeze one last boost in bandwidth …
Discussion:
IntoMobile, AppleInsider, DSLreports, Boy Genius Report, Sidecut Reports, MacRumors, FierceWireless, Electronista, jkOnTheRun and SlashGear
Sylvie Barak / Inquirer:
Apple netbooks manufactured by Foxconn rumoured — Apple sliced down to netbook size? — WE'VE PICKED UP ON some Chinese whispering which would have us believe Apple could be about to release its very own netbook, with Foxconn Electronics chosen as the fruity toymaker's main manufacturing partner.
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BBC:
Adobe Flash secures set-top deal — Adobe has secured a deal to put its Flash software into many of the chips that go inside TVs and set-top boxes. — It will enable developers and content providers to create applications to deliver web-based content such as news, weather and share prices to TV screens.
Discussion:
Ryan Stewart
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Tweetie For Mac: A Powerful, Native Twitter Client For The Masses — Today sees the public launch of Tweetie for Mac, the desktop-based big brother of what many (myself included) consider to be the iPhone's best Twitter client. I've been playing around with a beta version of the app …
Discussion:
Ars Technica, Download Squad, Epicenter, PC World, WebWorkerDaily, Microblink and TidBITS, Thanks:efors_eu
Tim Elliott / The Age:
How the man in a van outsmarted Microsoft — Ric Richardson ... money not that important. — Picture: Steve Holland — He has been called a “born creative thinker” and “a man of extraordinarily high principle”. Others consider his inventions frivolous and derivative.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple jumps 32 spots into Fortune 100 — Reflecting a strong 2008 in which its sales — if not its stock price — jumped sharply, Apple (AAPL) this week made its first appearance in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 since Steve Jobs' return. — Apple became a Fortune 500 company in 1983 …
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
More Microsoft layoffs looming? Seattle analyst cites possibility — Tough business conditions may force Microsoft to make further reductions in its work force, beyond the up to 5,000 job cuts announced in January, a Seattle-based analyst said this morning in a preview of the company's Thursday afternoon earnings report.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Susan Boyle Videos To Pass 100 Million Views — Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle continues to pass crazy milestones as a viral Web sensation. — According to Web video metrics company Visible Measures, Boyle's performance had generated more than 650 total “placements” by Sunday night …
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple's Mac Business To Shrink For First Time Since 2003 — With the PC market in the toilet, it's no surprise that Wall Street expects Apple (AAPL) to report lousy March quarter Mac sales growth this Wednesday. (Join us for LIVE coverage and analysis.) But it's still stunning to see how fast the Mac growth engine has stalled.
Jason Hiner / Between the Lines:
Have we arrived in the post-Windows era? — Microsoft knew this day was coming. This was the reason it desperately wanted — no, needed — to take down Netscape in 1996. Netscape wasn't just trying to build a program for reading text and photos across a network of connected computers.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
How Many New Twitter Users Post-Oprah? A Lot. Maybe Over A Million. — Late last night, former Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block tweeted out that he had done some research to attempt to quantify the “Oprah Effect” — that is, the number of users who signed up for Twitter after Oprah featured the service on her show on Friday.
Darren Murph / Engadget:
MSI's Wind Top AE1900 all-in-one PC comes to US at $529 — MSI's eco-friendly Wind Top AE1900 has already been formally introduced and spotted over in Hanover earlier this year, but the outfit notorious for withholding price and availability information until the last possible moment has finally let loose those very details.
FairSpin Blog:
FairSpin: breaking through the bias — We've just opened FairSpin to the public. Check it out at http://fairspin.org and let us know what you think! — What's FairSpin? — Following politics in our country is not easy. It's getting harder to tell “news” from opinion, fact from spin …
Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:
KnowEm searches 120 sites for open user names — KnowEm is the latest in services that check for unclaimed user names at multiple social sites. This is helpful if you're interested in retaining the same user name at sites you haven't yet signed up for, or if you're on the verge of launching …
Discussion:
Search Engine Journal
Edward J. Delaney / Nieman Journalism Lab:
22% of Pulitzer entries had online content, including 7 winners — Since the Pulitzer Prizes announced in 2006 it would begin allowing online content in all journalism categories, the growing skill with which newspapers are producing online content are notable, says Sid Gissler, Pulitzer Prize Administrator.
Ben Lorica / O'Reilly Radar:
Active Facebook Users By Country — Since I last posted numbers on Facebook's user base six week ago, the company has added close to 20 million active users. — I've had a few requests for detailed numbers by country so I quickly assembled an update for each of the regions shown above.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
Robert Wood / US Department of State:
First State Department “New Media Technology” Delegation Travels to Iraq — Acting Department Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman — Washington, DC — The Department of State is facilitating the travel to Baghdad, Iraq of a delegation of nine senior high-technology company representatives Sunday, April 19 to April 23.
Discussion:
TechCrunch
Stephanie Clifford / New York Times:
Tweeting Becomes a Summer Job Opportunity — JOB TITLE, TRANSLATED A summer intern who uses Twitter. — JOB CATEGORY Hot pizza/social media — SALARY Competitive (with other Twitterers). — JOB PURPOSE To attend advertising shoots, product meetings and other corporate events.
Tameka Kee / paidContent.org:
Fox News Gets Its Own Citizen Journalism Arm: uReport On MySpace — Social media platforms have quickly become sources of breaking news, and mainstream news outlets are trying to plug into them to stay relevant. Fox News is the latest organization willing to test the newsgathering skills …
