Top Items:
Ola Rosling / The Official Google Blog:
Adding search power to public data — Earthquakes are not the only thing that can shake Silicon Valley. After the dot-com bubble burst back in 2000 the unemployment rate of Santa Clara county went up to 9.1%. During the last couple of months, it has gone up again:
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Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google Launches Public Data Search & Charts During Wolfram Alpha Demo — During the Wolfram Alpha demonstration today, the Google Blog announced the launch of their own structured data search feature that allows you to find and compare public data. — Searches such as [unemployment rate new york] …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Wolfram/Alpha's demo: Search results meet analytics — Updated: Stephen Wolfram, creator of the Wolfram/Alpha search engine, on Tuesday demonstrated his much ballyhooed “computational knowledge engine” at a talk at Harvard University. Wolfram likened his effort to reproducing …
Discussion:
Bits, Search Engine Land, Wolfram, Guardian, CNET News, Joho the Blog and AltSearchEngines
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
After Being Upstaged By Google, Wolfram Alpha Fires Back With A Leaked Screenshot — Today was supposed to be a big coming out party for stealthy search engine Wolfram Alpha. Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram gave the first public demonstration of his knowledge mining search engine at Harvard.
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.
Discussion:
Engadget, Agence France Presse, Technologizer, PMP Today, WMPoweruser.com and Unwired View
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:Microsoft Planning iPhone Rival
Discussion:
PC World, Bits, Wall Street Journal, Between the Lines, Electronista, 9 to 5 Mac, Tech Trader Daily, TechFlash, Gizmodo, All about Microsoft, MarketWatch, CNET News, MacRumors and AppleInsider
Nielsen Wire:
Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth — David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research, Nielsen Online — Oprah embarrassed herself on it with a stuck caps lock. That guy from Punk'd competed with “the most trusted name in news” for audience. A befuddled Jon Stewart shook his fist at it in anger.
Discussion:
Rough Type, Reuters, CNET News, MediaMemo, paidContent.org, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable!, blogs.ft.com and eMarketer, Thanks:atul
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Justice Dept. Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Books Deal — SAN FRANCISCO — The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google's settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service, two people briefed on the matter said Tuesday.
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Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly:Google Deadline Delayed Four Months as Steinbeck Motion Granted
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:
Digital Inspiration, Obsessable, Lifehacker, Redmond Pie, PC World, DailyTech, CNET News, eWeek and jkOnTheRun
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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.
Discussion:
Lockergnome Blog Network, The Download Blog, TechCrunch, paidContent.org and All about Microsoft
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Dieter Bohn / PreCentral.net:
Pre Release Date: June 7th? — Today's release date rumor comes courtesy of Coal over at SprintGurus, who posts the above internal document listing several Sprint handsets. More to the point, Coal writes: … This lines up quite well with the timeline we're building in our head after today's UPS Shipping rumor.
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Security Research & Defense:
AutoRun changes in Windows 7 — As some of our readers are well aware, Conficker and other malware is taking advantage of the AutoRun functionality as a spreading mechanism. Furthermore, over the last couple of months, there has been a significant increase of this threat, as more malware is abusing this functionality.
Discussion:
MSRC, The Register, CNET News, Technologizer, Engineering Windows 7, Security Watch and Zero Day
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
OnlineBootyCall is great for hooking up, but can it be more? — Website OnlineBootycall.com offers no-strings-attached introductions for sexual encounters, tasteless as that might be for some of you. It's not filled with porn. It just gets to the point: It asks you to fill out a form …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
The Pirate Bay verdict goes English, and we dish the dirt — The Pirate Bay ruling has been translated into English, and it's full of little surprises. Ars dives in to answer the big questions: who possessed those Klomifen tablets, how much did the state pay to defend The Pirate Bay admins …
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Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Revenue and Profits Plunge at Sun Microsystems — In what may be its swan song as an independent company, Sun Microsystems reported financial results on Tuesday that pointed to the impact the global recession has had on the already struggling server computer maker.
Discussion:
TechSpot
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Android Backward Compatibility Talk Begins. This Is Starting To Sound Complicated. — Love the iPhone or hate the iPhone, at least you know what you're getting out of the box is a device that will work with all the apps in the App Store. That's been the case so far with Google's Android platform …
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Not Smart: Warner Music Issues DMCA Takedown On Larry Lessig Presentation — If there were anyone out there to whom you would not want to send a random takedown notice for an online video, it would probably be Larry Lessig. Given that Lessig has become the public face for those who feel …
Thanks:atul
Rajen Sheth / Google Enterprise Blog:
What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing — Recently, McKinsey & Company published a study on cloud computing as part of a symposium for The Uptime Institute, an organization dedicated to supporting the enterprise data center industry. We share McKinsey's interest in helping …
Ross Miller / Engadget:
iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4, iTunes 8.2 pre-release now live — Just two weeks after the last revision went up, Apple's released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 to the developer community alongside an iTunes 8.2 pre-release. No word yet on what has / hasn't been updated, but we do know the new iTunes is required to activate beta 4.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
BlackBerry Tour hitting Verizon Wireless in July? — BlackBerry Tour? Oh yeah. Now that that's been confirmed, we're on to bigger and better things — release dates! The latest information we've heard is that the BlackBerry Tour is shaping up to be released on Verizon in the month of July.
comScore:
Hulu Continues Ascent in U.S. Online Video Market, Breaking Into Top 3 Properties by Videos Viewed for First Time in March — Average U.S. Viewer Watched 5.5 Hours of Online Video During the Month, — According to comScore Video Metrix — comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring …
Discussion:
CenterNetworks, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch, MediaFile, Mashable!, BetaNews and NewTeeVee
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
MPAA: RealNetworks could strip DVD copy limits — Updated at 12:56 p.m. PDT to clarify MPAA's arguments. — The film industry in court Tuesday tried to show a federal judge that the software known as RealDVD entrusts its creator, Real Networks, with the job of protecting digital film copies from piracy.
Mats Lewan / CNET News:
Swedish ISPs vow to erase users' traffic data — Having apparently been scared off illegal file sharing in large numbers by a new Swedish law that went into effect April 1, pirates in that country now have a new safe harbor to escape law enforcement. — Three Swedish Internet service providers …
VentureBeat:
Verizon flirts with Apple, but Android is already girlfriend material — There's been lots of speculation that Verizon, the largest U.S. phone network, is flirting with Apple, with the idea of introducing an iPhone on Verizon's network next year. — Verizon is building out a new fourth …
Discussion:
DSLreports, FierceWireless, PMP Today, GigaOM, DailyTech, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, CNET News, Macworld, paidContent.org and TechCrunch
Matt Holliday / Inside Facebook:
Shaq Jumps Into the Facebook Game After Conquering Twitter — Already among the most popular Twitter users with more than 820,000 followers, NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal has started sharing content on his Facebook public profile and added more than 150,000 fans in just the last two weeks.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Associated Content Raises $6 Million For Publishing Platform — Online publishing platform Associated Content has closed a $6 million, Series C financing round funded by SoftBank Capital, Canaan Partners and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. Associated Content secured $10 million in Series B Financing from SoftBank …
Discussion:
Beet.TV
Softpedia News:
Windows 7 Pirates Will Be Kept Safe and Cozy by Microsoft — Just as pirates of previous Windows releases — Pirated copies of Windows 7 will be kept just as safe as non-genuine variants of previous Windows releases, by Microsoft via security updates. Responding to questions related …
Discussion:
The Windows Blog
Kevin Drawbaugh / Reuters:
Online gambling bill coming: Frank — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said on Tuesday he would introduce a bill next week to overturn a three-year-old U.S. ban on Internet gambling.
