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.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Vine To Connect Family, Friends When Crisis Hits — Microsoft is launching a new product into private beta on Tuesday morning with the aim of keeping friends and family in touch during emergencies. The idea for product, called Microsoft Vine, came to Microsoft GM Public Safety …
Discussion:
Channel 10, Pulse2, Silicon Alley Insider, SlashGear, ithinkdifferent, VentureBeat and TechFlash, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Apple iPhone Owners Favor Personal Uses, Not Business — Do you treat your iPhone as a guilty pleasure? You're not alone. — A new report from Compete surveying the behavior of 600 smartphone users found that 73 percent of iPhone owners used their mobile devices primarily for personal reasons, such as entertainment.
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Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
iPhone Owners Don't Use Their Devices For Work? Yeah, Right. — We haven't actually seen the details of it since a first look was given exclusively to the New York Times, but there's a new Compete report coming out supposedly later today that claims only 27% of iPhone owners use …
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)
Discussion:
Datamation, Electronista, techblog.dallasnews.com, Softpedia News, SlashGear, Liliputing and Google Android News …
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.
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:
Digital Daily, VentureBeat, DailyTech, CNET News, PC World, NEWSFACTOR, Silicon Alley Insider, New York Times, TheFeed, blogs.chron.com, Switched, TheAppleBlog, Edible Apple, IntoMobile, GPS Obsessed, Liliputing, FierceWireless, CrunchGear, Unwired View, SlashGear, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, Electricpig.co.uk, Engadget, ITworld.com, Palm WebOS, Mobile Roar, The Toybox and TechSpot, Thanks:atul
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Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Why We Don't Believe Rumors of an Apple/Verizon Love Child — Can he hear Verizon now? — Apple and Verizon are in talks for the carrier to distribute an “iPhone-lite” device and a “media pad,” with one of the devices to be launched sometime this summer, BusinessWeek is reporting.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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.
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Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft, Verizon in Talks to Launch iPhone Rival — Microsoft Corp. is in discussions with Verizon Wireless to launch a touch-screen multimedia cellphone on the carrier's network early next year, in a bid to compete with Apple Inc.'s iPhone, people familiar with the matter say.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, CNET News, MacRumors, Gizmodo, Engadget Mobile and MacDailyNews, Thanks:mrinaldesai
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Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Microsoft and Verizon reportedly cooking up an iPhone competitor — Just what the world needs... Another iPhone killer. If the Wall Street Journal's report is to be believed, it looks like that USA Today story may have omitted a relatively important detail regarding Verizon's “iPhone” offering — it might not be an iPhone at all.
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:
blogs.ft.com, TechCrunch Europe, Guardian, Telegraph, Stop Phoul Play, dot.life, The Open Rights Group, The Register, Boing Boing, Web User and Softpedia News
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 …
Microsoft:
Office Service Pack 2 A Significant Stability, Performance and Interoperability Upgrade — Q&A: Group Program Manager Jane Liles talks about the enhancements now available through Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. — As part of its efforts to continually improve …
Discussion:
eWeek, CNET News, DailyTech, All about Microsoft, Digital Inspiration, Lifehacker and jkOnTheRun
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 …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
The Opera Browser Turns 15 Years Old Today — Opera the Browser may not be a household name in the United States, but around the world it's wildly popular and on the company's 15th birthday things are moving in directions the founders may never have expected.
Discussion:
Download Squad
John Leyden / The Register:
Loudmouth workers leaking data through social networking sites — Twitter ye not — Free whitepaper - WS_FTP Server product demonstration — Almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of sys administrators fear that workers share too much personal information through social networking websites …
Discussion:
Donna's SecurityFlash
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
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 …
Discussion:
Contentinople
Emel Mutlu / Inside AdWords:
New “Google for Advertisers” site has launched — We're excited to announce the launch of Google for Advertisers. Google for Advertisers is a place where we've brought together information about the broad range of our marketing solutions — and where you can explore and discover the combination …
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:
Technologizer, Zoho Blogs, Download Squad, VentureBeat, TechCrunch and All things Indian Startups …
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 …
Electronista:
Nokia to shrink online services, cut 450 jobs — Nokia this morning took extra steps to improve its finances and said it would scale back the development of its online services. Calling it a new “focus,” the Finland-based company plans to draw more heavily on third parties for its image …
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 …
Ina Fried / CNET News:
‘Linux Defenders’ aim at Microsoft patents — A Linux advocacy group on Tuesday said it is publicly seeking invention data that could help overturn three Microsoft patents that the software maker has charged are infringed by some implementations of the Linux kernel.
David Lenoe / PSIRT:
Potential Adobe Reader Issue — Adobe is aware of reports of a potential vulnerability in Adobe Reader 9.1 and 8.1.4, as described in SecurityFocus BID 34736. We are currently investigating, and will have an update once we get more information.
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 …
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.
