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
Discussion:
bytes|genes
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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:
CNET News, Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Search Engine Land, paidContent.org, Tech Beat, ZDNet Government, Reuters, Brave New World, TeleRead and Beyond Search
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Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly:Google Deadline Delayed Four Months as Steinbeck Motion Granted
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
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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, CNET News, Wolfram, Search Engine Land, Joho the Blog, AltSearchEngines and Guardian
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, blogs.ft.com, Trends in the Living Networks, paidContent.org, eMarketer and Reuters, Thanks:atul
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
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:
iTnews Australia, Engadget, PMP Today, Agence France Presse, VentureBeat, Technologizer, WMPoweruser.com, Unwired View and Big in Japan
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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 …
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 …
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.
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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 …
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, PC World, Lifehacker, Obsessable, Redmond Pie, eWeek, DailyTech, CNET News, Donna's SecurityFlash, jkOnTheRun, All about Microsoft and GottaBeMobile.com
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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 …
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 …
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, CNET News, The Register, I4U News, Technologizer, Zero Day, Security Watch, Engineering Windows 7 and threatpost
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:
paidContent.org
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple's annual developer conference sells out in record time — Apple said Tuesday that WWDC 2009 has completely sold out, marking the second time in as many years that its annual developers conference will fill to capacity as programmers descend on San Francisco to hear the latest on Mac and iPhone software development.
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 …
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.
Discussion:
CNET News
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 …
