Top Items:
Wall Street Journal:
In Major Shift, Apple Builds Its Own Team to Design Chips — Apple Inc. is building a significant capability to design its own computer chips, a strategy shift that the company hopes will create exclusive features for its gadgets and shield Apple's work from rivals.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Forget The Pre, Palm's Got A Second Device Coming Out This Year. We're Calling It The Mini-Pre — I came across some very interesting news today. I was mostly minding my own business, hammering away at our various sources in the hardware industry and trying to dig up some sort of information …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, PreCentral.net, Gizmodo, Engadget, prethinking.com, Switched and TechVi
Tony Peric / prethinking.com:
Become a Palm Reviewer and get a Palm Pre for Free! (confirmed) — Palm is is now taking applications for their new “Real Palm Phone Reviewer” promotional campaign. Well, you get to become a “Real Reviewer” and in return you will get a new phone courtesy of Palm and data-plan service for 6 months.
RELATED:
Hugo Miller / Bloomberg:
Palm May Cap Pre Stockpile to Boost Cachet With Brand-Conscious Consumers — Palm Inc. may stockpile fewer than 400,000 Pre models when the touch-screen device goes on sale this year, making the phone scarce to enhance its allure to consumers, analysts said.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, InformationWeek, Electronista, Unwired View, Palm WebOS and PreCentral.net
Bret Taylor / FriendFeed Blog:
A whole new FriendFeed — You might have noticed that FriendFeed looks pretty different today. We've just launched a whole new design, and a host of features and improvements that comes along with it. — We unveiled this look three weeks ago in beta and have been busy gathering feedback and making improvements.
Mike Musgrove / Washington Post:
Time Warner Plan to Spin Off AOL Stirs Hope That Unit Could Rebuild — Nearly a decade ago, the merger between Time Warner and America Online was heralded as a surprising and revolutionary marriage between “old media” and “new media.” By comparison, yesterday's revelation by Time Warner …
Discussion:
New York Times, Agence France Presse, Technologizer, TechSpot, Bloomberg, DSLreports and PC World
RELATED:
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Is It Time To Send Google Maps Back To The Drawing Board? — Google Maps and its Local Business Center continue to be the ugly warts on Google's otherwise smooth surface. But rather than the long-running problems with mapspam and hijacked listings, the latest sore spot appears …
Thanks:atul
Adam Smith / Google Public Policy Blog:
Google Book Search settlement will expand access — Over the last few weeks we've heard a number of questions about the Google Book Search settlement and what it means for readers. Over the coming days, we'll attempt to answer some of those questions on this blog, but first …
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, ITworld.com, InformationWeek, TechCrunch, TECH.BLORGE.com and ReadWriteWeb, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Get Facebook on Your Desktop with New Official App — At the same time as Facebook announced their Open Stream API technology, the company also released a desktop application built with Adobe AIR as a way to demonstrate the sorts of things that the new technology makes possible.
Discussion:
Laughing Squid
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
An Early Peek Under The Palm Pre's Hood — Preliminary analysis by iSuppli suggests Palm will spend about $138 to build the new smartphone, almost half what it's expected to charge Sprint — To say Palm has a lot riding on the Pre smartphone is an understatement.
Discussion:
Reuters, Gearlog, I4U News, GPS Obsessed, IntoMobile, Electronista, Unwired View, Palm WebOS, Boy Genius Report, Pulse2, TechSpot, MobileCrunch, prethinking.com, mocoNews, Gizmodo and Engadget Mobile
RELATED:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Five Things You Can Do With This New Facebook RSS App — Sometimes the low hanging fruit holds the most potential - but it's hidden in plain site. Facebook opened up the activity streams of users' friends this week to outside developers to put into new interfaces.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Exclusive: Platform-A Head Coleman Out at AOL, as Well as CFO and Other Staffers — Greg Coleman, the former Yahoo advertising sales exec who came to AOL only three months ago, is leaving, as new CEO Tim Armstrong remakes his top staff. — Coleman was brought to AOL by former CEO Randy Falco in February, replacing Lynda Clarizio.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Fred / A VC:
The Venture Capital Math Problem — Yesterday Albert and I visited one of the investors in our fund. The good news is they are happy with the job we are doing. The bad news is they are frustrated with the venture capital asset class. — We got to talking about the venture capital asset class …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Phishing Attack Underway At Facebook. Don't Sign In To Fbaction.net — We've received multiple tips of a new phishing attack that has broken out on Facebook. If you get an email message that looks to be from Facebook with the subject, “Hello,” and featuring the text below, don't bother clicking on the link included.
Yahoo! Developer Network Blog:
With YQL Execute, the Internet becomes your database — The Yahoo! Query Language lets you query, filter, and join data across any web data source or service on the web. Using our YQL web service, apps run faster with fewer lines of code and a smaller network footprint.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
SplashCast Figures Out That To Make Online TV Social, It Is All About The Chatter — One of the most social video experiences I've ever had on the Web was watching the Obama Inauguration speech on CNN.com alongside a live chat stream of commentary from all of my Facebook friends.
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Flip Video Ultra HD video review — What better way to give you a look at Flip Video's new Ultra HD camcorder than by reviewing it on video... shot with the Ultra HD. The specs are simple: 720p / 30 FPS, 8GB of storage on-board, HDMI out, and pretty much nothing else.
Gareth Beavis / TechRadar.com:
Vodafone: Android could appear without Google — Plus more Android handsets from Voda in the future — Vodafone has confirmed that it has been looking at other Android phones in order to complement the new HTC Magic, which will be launching in stores from 1 May, and also hinted that Android might appear without Google in the future.
Eric Savitz / Barron's Online:
IACI: Diller Would “Love” To Buy Yahoo Personals — IAC/Interactive (IACI) CEO Barry Diller said on a conference call with analysts today that the company would be interested in acquiring Yahoo (YHOO) Personals, and that the two companies have talked about a possible deal.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Motorola's “IRONMAN” Android handset says hello — Wait, what? Motorola possibly doing a cross-marketing campaign with a blockbuster movie? We kid, we kid, but hey, we wouldn't put it past them... We just got hit with some really interesting information — it's about this Motorola smartphone either called or code-named “IRONMAN”.
The Official Google Blog:
Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico — In November 2008, we launched Google Flu Trends after finding a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Google Flu Trends may be able to detect influenza outbreaks earlier …
Discussion:
Google.org, ITworld.com, Wired Science, TechCrunch, timesonline.typepad.com, Internet Evolution, ReadWriteWeb, InformationWeek, Guardian and Google Maps Mania, Thanks:atul
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
AT&T Slingbox 3G Fine Print Returns... - New TOS language takes aim at place shifting... Earlier this month, AT&T modified their 3G terms of service to seemingly ban Slingbox functionality to “any mobile device” across their HSDPA wireless broadband network.
Arlene Lee / Inside AdSense:
Analytics integration for all — Over the past few months, we've been gradually inviting publishers to integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics, and today we're happy to announce that this feature is now available to all publishers. Integrating your account with Analytics …
Anupreeta Das / MediaFile:
Tech M&A: Going down, down, down — Investment bank Jefferies recently released a report on technology M&A in the first quarter of 2009. As one can imagine, there are few surprises. We may as well give you the highlights here, which point to some signs of recovery compared to the end of last year …
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Former DoubleClick Chief to Leave Google — David Rosenblatt, Google's president of global display advertising, will leave the company on May 15, the latest in a string of top sales execs who have left Google or moved on to new roles in recent weeks. — Analysts said that the departure …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Spock And Intelius? Uh Oh. — People search engine Spock is about to be sold, say multiple sources. Spock was a hot startup back when it launched in 2007, but after an initial spike in traffic, the company has gone sideways and faded into obscurity. People search, it seems …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Why Obama's Flickr Photos Aren't in the Public Domain — The White House is making unprecedented use of consumer web technologies but those technologies aren't always well suited to fit the government's needs. They aren't always well suited to fit anyone's needs - but maybe if Obama leans on them a little bit things will change.
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Google Gets Patent for Data Center Barges — The U.S. Patent Office has awarded Google a patent for its proposal for a floating data center that uses the ocean to provide power and cooling. Google's patent application was filed in Feb. 2007, published in October 2008 and approved on Tuesday (and quickly noted by SEO by the Sea).
Discussion:
SEO by the Sea
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Calgary to be Motorola's first Android phone, more news on Moto — It looks like our ninja took it personally yesterday when we mentioned how eager we were for more info on Motorola's Verizon-bound handsets. That said, consider us shut up. He swooped in with a few big updates …
Discussion:
Forbes, Gizmodo, CNET News, IntoMobile, Google Android News …, MobileCrunch, Engadget, GadgetLab, PMP Today, Android Phone Fans, AndroidGuys, Electronista, SlashGear, Unwired View and Android Community
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Venture capitalists: “Roll over, Goldman, and tell Morgan Stanley the news” — The National Venture Capital Association , the lobby group for venture capitalists, declared a state of emergency for venture-backed startups today and announced a four-pronged plan to revive their chances of going public .
