Top Items:
Brier Dudley / Seattle Times:
Microsoft debuts Vine in Seattle: Twitter+Facebook on steroids — It's been awhile since Microsoft introduced a game-changing social Web application, but Vine — a service that's debuting today with a beta test in Seattle — could be a contender. — Vine is a hyperlocal, personalized message and alert system.
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:Microsoft Vine To Connect Family, Friends When Crisis Hits
Discussion:
SlashGear, Silicon Alley Insider, VentureBeat, ithinkdifferrent and TechFlash, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:Microsoft Goes Social (& Local) With Vine
Discussion:
Beyond Search
Business Week:
New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless? — The companies are in talks to develop two iPhone-like handhelds that could be unveiled as soon as this year — Verizon Wireless is warming to the idea of an Apple (AAPL) partnership. Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Apple 2.0, DailyTech, ITworld.com, PC World, New York Times, Unwired View, blogs.chron.com, Edible Apple, Switched, Electricpig.co.uk, MacRumors, Liliputing, CrunchGear, Palm WebOS, The Toybox, Mobile Roar, Engadget, GPS Obsessed, SlashGear, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Neowin.net, TechSpot, The Register, Computerworld Blogs, Ars Technica, iPhone Savior, AppleInsider, The Apple Core, 9 to 5 Mac, TUAW, The iPhone Blog and Electronic Pulp, Thanks:atul
Darren Waters / BBC:
Home Office ‘colluded with Phorm’ — The Home Office has been accused of colluding with online ad firm Phorm on “informal guidance” to the public on whether the company's service is legal. — E-mails between the ministry and Phorm show the department asking if the firm would be “comforted” by its position.
Discussion:
The Register, The Open Rights Group, Stop Phoul Play, Softpedia News, dot.life, Boing Boing and broadstuff
RELATED:
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Apple iPhone Owners Don't Use It For Work — Do you treat your iPhone as a guilty pleasure? You're not alone. — A new report from Compete surveying the behavior of smartphone users found that 73 percent of iPhone owners used their mobile devices primarily for personal reasons, such as entertainment.
RELATED:
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Mint Turns Personal Finance Into A Game. It's Not As Bad As It Sounds — Mint, the popular personal finance site that won 2007's TechCrunch40, is launching a new feature called “Financial Fitness” which, strange as it may sound, adds an element of gaming to the service.
Erica Ogg / Crave: The gadget blog:
Adieu to the old-fashioned desktop computer? — Some giants of the PC industry are just beginning to sell tiny and cheap Netbooks and all-in-one desktops, which have the monitor and processor in the same box. — Tae-Hyun “Tiger” Cho — (Credit: Averatec)
Camille Ricketts / VentureBeat:
Coming soon: A new, smarter Google News? — Google may be working on a new, intelligent news distribution system, according to Sharon Waxman, a reporter for Hollywood newsblog TheWrap. She approached chief executive Eric Schmidt at a soiree thrown by Arianna Huffington last week …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Facebook, Firefox, Twitter Lead App, Web Usage — Facebook and Mozilla Firefox are the applications used most across different platforms, according to data collected by Wakoopa, a software-oriented social network. The Amsterdam-based startup offers a small download client that's installed on the desktops of its 75,000 users.
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
With no $10 laptop in sight, India buys 250,000 OLPCs — India has purchased 250,000 XO laptops. This move will boost the One Laptop Per Child project and could help the deflating effort get back on its feet. — The government of India has signed an agreement with the One Laptop Per Child …
Randall C. Kennedy / Randall C. Kennedy's blog:
Windows 7's ‘XP mode’: Right idea, wrong technology — Why Microsoft's decision to implement a VM-based legacy compatibility solution is a dumb move — Well, it finally happened. After years of patching and tweaking the Windows runtime to preserve backward compatibility …
Discussion:
Hardware 2.0
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Zoho preps mobile suite — Zoho on Tuesday rolled out a unified mobile front for its suite of Web applications. — Zoho had offered some basic iPhone and Windows Mobile support previously, but now is unifying applications like Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator into one interface.
Discussion:
Download Squad, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Zoho Blogs, GottaBeMobile.com, CenterNetworks and AppScout
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Quub: A Micromessaging Service That Asks “What Are You Doing?” And Means It — At its core, Twitter is supposed to be a micro-presence service that invites users to answer the question, “What are you doing?”. That's all well and good, but most people tend to ignore this question entirely …
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Dell Studio 19 Multitouch All-in-One Arrives in US of A for $699, No Signs of Swine Flu — Six weeks after Dell's multitouch Studio 19 all-in-one hit Japan, it's finally coming to the US. Despite my penchant for mocking Dell's designers, if you're looking for a non-iMac all-in-one, it's worth a shot.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
RapidShare hands over user info in Germany, users panic — File hosting service RapidShare has reportedly handed over user IP data to the record industry, leading to at least one user's home being raided in Germany. This has led to speculation that content owners may start abusing Germany's copyright law …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Socialthing Starts Spreading Across 75 AOL Sites — A couple weeks ago, I spotted the reincarnation of Socialthing on AOL's country-music Website TheBoot and speculated that it would potentially be rolled out across AOL's other MediaGlow properties as well.
Damaster / LiveSide:
Windows Live Profile (April) update is here! — As announced one week ago, the newly updated Windows Live Profile has been rolled out to all users now! A summary of all the changes that were part of this update include: — 20 new Web Activities, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm …
PR Newswire:
EarthLink Announces First Quarter 2009 Results — Beats First Call Consensus EPS Estimates; Raises Full Year Guidance — EarthLink, Inc. (Nasdaq: ELNK - News) today announced financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2009. Highlights for the first quarter include:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Search Marketing Firm, Marin Software, Raises Additional $13 Million — paidContent.org reports Marin Software, a search marketing company, has raised an additional $13 million venture capital. The primary source of the money came from DAG Ventures, adding up to Marin raising a total …
Dan Nosowitz / Gizmodo:
HP ProBook S-Series: Businesspeople Can Have Sassy Red Laptops Too — HP today revealed its new business laptops, the ProBook s-series. The 14.1", 15.6", and 17.3" ProBooks are all about pragmatic performance, affordability, and inoffensive design. They're the Toyota Camry of laptops.
Discussion:
HP, eWeek, PC World, DailyTech, Softpedia News, CrunchGear, jkOnTheRun, iTnews Australia and Engadget
Emily Chung / CBC News:
Who will cash in on Canada's love for online video? — Canadian TV networks still testing online waters as Hulu looks north — Many TV shows and movies available online in the U.S. are blocked to users in Canada, but Canadians are still among the most voracious consumers of online video in the world.
Discussion:
HipMojo.com
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Keep It Simple, Stupid — K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It's a mantra that always pops into my head when I'm looking at new startups. A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past. But that's a bad idea.
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
As Hulu Gets More Mainstream, Long Viewing Sessions Wane — Hulu continues to claw its way up the U.S. video charts, and in March surpassed Yahoo to claim the No. 3 spot by number of video streams (Yahoo still claims No. 3 by number of visitors). Hulu had 380 million streams …
Jason Scott / ASCII:
Geocities: Lessons So Far — The Geocities-is-going-away thing broke wide a short while ago. The “Jason is Saving Geocities” thing is breaking wider by the day, so I guess we need an update. — After my initial call-out, a nice selection of folks showed up to the Archive Team IRC channel …
Discussion:
hughstimson.org
Live Search:
Live Search Is Only a Phone Call Away — We launched Live Search 411 (1-800-CALL-411 or 1-800-225-5411) in October 2007, and since then have been rolling out new features that have helped our users in all kinds of ways. There's Business Search to find that restaurant where your friends are waiting for you.
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, Softpedia News, ResourceShelf, Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land
New York Times:
U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses — When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group's computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights. — When President George W. Bush ordered new ways …
