Top Items:
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.
Discussion:
Guardian, CNET News, Search Engine Land, Computerworld Blogs, Tech Beat, paidContent.org, TeleRead, Brave New World and TG Daily
RELATED:
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:Reports: Google, DOJ talked about Book Search
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Ars Technica, L.A. Times Tech Blog, ZDNet Government and Beyond Search
Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly:Google Deadline Delayed Four Months as Steinbeck Motion Granted
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.
RELATED:
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 4 and iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release to Developers [Blu-Ray Evidence?] — Continuing a pattern of biweekly releases, Apple tonight seeded the fourth beta version of iPhone OS 3.0 to developers. Apple also issued a developer pre-release version of iTunes 8.2, which is required to activate the new beta.
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:
Mashable!, MediaMemo, Rough Type, Silicon Alley Insider, CNET News, Trends in the Living Networks, paidContent.org, blogs.ft.com, Reuters, The Blog Herald and eMarketer, Thanks:atul
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:
RELATED:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:Google Launches Public Data Search & Charts During Wolfram Alpha Demo
Discussion:
bytes|genes
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.
Discussion:
Beyond Search
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:Wolfram/Alpha's demo: Search results meet analytics
Discussion:
Bits, CNET News, Search Engine Land, Wolfram, Joho the Blog, AltSearchEngines and Guardian
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
MG Siegler / MobileCrunch:
Is Palm Rolling Out The Pre The Day Before Apple's WWDC Keynote? — It's now just about May and there's still been no official word from Palm when it comes to an official launch date or pricing for the Pre. All we know is what we've known for a long time — it'll launch the first half of 2009; a window that is quickly closing.
Discussion:
Palm WebOS, IntoMobile, Gizmodo, Electronista, PreCentral.net, Business Week, 9 to 5 Mac and Technologizer, Thanks:mrinaldesai
RELATED:
Jessica Dolcourt / CNET News:
Tellme voice app to search Windows Mobile — Everybody chuckled when Tellme, a mobile voice company snapped up by Microsoft almost two years ago, released its smartphone voice search application for BlackBerry, instead of for Windows Mobile. Thanks to a new native application that will be released …
Discussion:
LiveSide, MobileContentToday, The Technology Chronicles, TechCrunch, blogs.ft.com and Gizmodo
Harrison Hoffman / CNET News:
Facebook maps the swine flu hysteria — There have been a lot of resources that have surfaced to help track the newly spreading swine flu. On Monday, we covered some of these online resources to help you stay on top of it. Tuesday night, Facebook released some interesting data …
David Ellis / 1UP.com:
New PSP Named And Coming This Fall — Sources confirm the next PSP will gain an internal flash drive, ditch UMD, and nix the rumored second analog nub. — (Not an Actual PSP Go! Photo) — Rumors of a major PSP hardware redesign have repeatedly bubbled to the surface over the last several months …
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Windows Vista SP2 RTM + Windows Vista SP1 Blocker Tool Removed — Today we are announcing the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. SP2 represents the latest step in Microsoft's commitment to continuous improvement.
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 …
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
14 brand new Palm Pre webOS emulator screenshots leak out — As more and more people are getting their hands on the Pre, it looks like a few more developers have been given access to the SDK emulator. Well, either that or someone who has had access for a while got a little antsy and finally caved …
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 …
John Cook / TechFlash:
Browsing the neighborhood on Zillow's new iPhone app — Home buyers, real estate agents and nosy neighbors now can get the power of Zillow.com in the palm of their hands. The Seattle online real estate upstart today is unveiling a free iPhone application that allows users to browse property information …
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Four years and two lawsuits later, RIAA settles for $7,000 — One of the longest-running battles in the recording industry's war against file-sharing appears to have finally come to an end. Michelle (age 22) and Robert (age 18) Santangelo have settled a lawsuit filed against them by the RIAA …
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:
The Register, MSRC, I4U News, CNET News, Technologizer, Security Watch, Zero Day and Engineering Windows 7
Jonathan Bailey / PlagiarismToday:
Twitter and the DMCA: A Fine Mess — Over the past few weeks, I've been getting a lot of requests for information about Twitter and their DMCA procedure. Most of these issues stem from avatar or backgrounds that are infringing, not the tweets themselves. It seems the exponential increase …
Ryan Naraine / Zero Day:
Adobe: Turn off JavaScript in PDF Reader — In response to confirmed reports of a zero-day vulnerability in its PDF Reader software, Adobe today urged users on all platforms to disable JavaScript as a temporary measure to avoid code execution attacks. — In sharp contrast to previous problems …
Discussion:
PSIRT, The Register, Softpedia News, F-Secure Antivirus … and SANS Internet Storm Center …
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.
LinuxDevices.com:
Microsoft's TomTom patents posted for patent review — Open Invention Network (OIN) announced that three of the eight patents cited in Microsoft's lawsuit against TomTom have been posted for prior art review by the Linux community. The evidence is being compiled to convince the U.S. Patent …
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
As Sarkozy Pushes Three Strikes, He Pays Up For His Own Copyright Violations — We found it rather ironic that, just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy was so adamant about passing a three strikes law to kick file sharers off the internet, he was being accused of copyright infringement himself …
Discussion:
Reuters
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.
