Top Items:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Impressive: The Wolfram Alpha “Fact Engine” — Much attention has been focused on the forthcoming Wolfram Alpha search service. Will it be as important as Google has become? Perhaps! A new search paradigm? Yes! Or at least a new way of gathering information. A Google-killer? Nope!
Vishesh Kumar / Digits:
Verizon to Offer Free Wi-Fi to Broadband Subscribers — Verizon Communications Inc. is preparing to offer free Wi-Fi access at hotspots to subscribers to its home broadband services, according to people familiar with the matter. The phone giant will partner with Boingo …
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Pogue's Posts, DSLreports, Communications …, Silicon Alley Insider, TechSpot, dailywireless.org and PC Magazine
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Ashlee Vance / Bits:
A Silver Ooze That Could Shrink the iPod — Bill Watkins, the outspoken former chief executive of Seagate, wants to make a thinner iPod. — The Silicon Valley veteran has joined the board of Vertical Circuits, a start-up that has come up with a technique for cramming large amounts of flash memory into a tight space.
Wladimir Palant / Adblock Plus and (a little) more:
Attention NoScript users — Recently I wrote about how not giving extension developers a good way to earn money might lead to very undesirable effects. The recent events give an impression of the kind of effects we should expect here. This is going to be about the popular NoScript extension which happens to make its money from ads.
Discussion:
Slashdot
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
A Valleywag Out. Owen Thomas Leaving Gawker. — Owen Thomas, who has run the Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag for the past couple years, is leaving Gawker, the site's parent company, we've learned. This move is a bad blow for the site which significantly cut its workforce a few months ago …
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Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent.org:
Microsoft's Ozzie On His Company's Web Strategy — Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who famously zinged his company back in 2006 for not moving aggressively enough to the Web, was much kinder to the company during the annual State of Technology luncheon in Seattle Friday.
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Why Did the White House Delete Bush's Tweets? — Barack Obama's Webheads are getting ready to launch a new Twitter feed for President Change. But the White House already had a Twitter account. It has disappeared down the memory hole. — Given the widespread belief that Obama invented the Internet …
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Shows Off The Power Of Facebook's New APIs — Earlier this week Facebook made the landmark (and long-awaited) announcement that it was going to enable the “Open Stream”, granting developers far more access and flexibility to Facebook data than they had before.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Regarding the Verizon and ‘iPhone Lite’ Rumors — There's been much speculation this week regarding reports in BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal of talks between Apple and Verizon. To wit: that Apple is considering Verizon for a future iPhone and/or its mythical forthcoming tablet.
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Apple's Interest In Gaming Isn't Casual — Developers say the computer and gizmo maker is in gaming for the long haul. — Apple appears to be preparing an all-out assault on the handheld gaming market, moving to snap up gaming industry insiders from Microsoft to go with its growing team of graphics-chip specialists.
John Cox / Macworld:
Is it time to cut the Ethernet access cable? — A range of companies with wireless LANs are discovering that 50 percent to 90 percent or more of Ethernet ports now go unused, because Wi-Fi has become so prevalent. — They look at racks of unused switches, ports, Ethernet wall jacks …
Discussion:
Wi-Fi Networking News
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Another Day, Another Entrepreneur Starts A Venture Fund: The University Funds — It's like its own (non-life threatening) epidemic, entrepreneurs creating new, early-stage venture capital firms as the overall industry contracts. — In addition to the handful of new, Bay Area teams establishing …
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Sorry, Tom Curley: Don't Expect A Google Ranking Boost For The AP — Apparently talks between Google and the Associated Press aren't going well, or so says Forbes today, with AP chief executive Tom Curley threatening to take his content and play elsewhere. — Where that will be is hard to say.
Thanks:atul
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Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Palm: Will Foleo Be Revived As A Netbook? — Is Palm (PALM) working on a netbook? — Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, asserts in a note to clients today that Palm is doing exactly that: he says they intend to produce a $399 netbook that will run the Palm Web OS …
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Xbox 360 to get motion-sensing add-on with full body game control? — Here's a wild one. We just got a tip from someone who purports to be in the know on Microsoft's efforts to beat the Wii at its own motion-sensing game, with some of the details lining up with what we were hearing last year along these lines.
Discussion:
I4U News, Kotaku, Gizmodo, Electronista, SlashGear, GoNintendo, DigitalBattle.com, DVICE, Joystiq and The Cut Scene
Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:
First Live Photos of the Gemini - BlackBerry Curve 8520! — If you saw this forum post the other week or listened to our last podcast, you'll know that we've been starting to get a better idea of what the “Gemini” is all about. And thanks to these first live photos, now you can see it for yourself!!!
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Twitter Is Giving Facebook an Inferiority Complex — I'm not sure why, but Facebook seems to be completely thrown off its game by Twitter and all the attention being lavished on San Francisco-based start-up. First Facebook added Twitter-styled status updates, much to the chagrin of its users.
Humberto Saabedra / PhoneNews.com:
Palm Eos Coming to Sprint After Pre Launch — Following the confirmation of the Palm Eos for AT&T, sources within Sprint have confirmed to PhoneNews.com the existence of the CDMA version of the forthcoming smart device for the carrier. — The device is currently testing within Sprint …
Discussion:
InformationWeek, IntoMobile, I4U News, SlashGear, Engadget Mobile, MobileCrunch, PreCentral.net and prethinking.com
Saul Hansell / Bits:
The Problem With Cable Is Television — I've been looking closely at the recently announced first-quarter financial results of Comcast and Time Warner, the country's two largest cable systems. — Overall, these companies are doing quite well, making more money than ever, with lower capital investment.
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Dave Rosenberg / CNET News:
iPhone's killer app: E-books? — O'Reilly's Ben Lorica took a look (slides below) at the developers behind the most successful applications on the iPhone and found that electronic books may be the killer app, simply because there is a such of wealth of offerings.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
Cliff Edwards / Business Week:
What Disney-Hulu Means for Apple — The growing popularity of free video-viewing site Hulu could test the viability of Apple's pay-as-you-go iTunes download business — When Walt Disney (DIS) said it would start streaming shows via online video site Hulu, attention immediately turned …
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Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:Why It Took More Than Four Months, and Millions of Dollars, to Get “Lost” on Hulu
Discussion:
Maximum PC all
Andrew Webster / Ars Technica:
The Sims 3 gets social network, microtransactions — The online features for The Sims 3 have been detailed, and it will include a new in-game store for purchasing items as well as a heap of social networking features. — The release of the next main entry in The Sims franchise …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Dell Should Buy Acer, Bernstein Says — There has been speculation for months now that Dell (DELL) at some point will make a big acquisition. Most of thinking has been about diversifation moves. But Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi proposes an idea that would boost Dell's stake in the PC business: consider buying Acer.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
The Online Ad Recession Is Officially Here: First Quarterly Decline In Revenues — It was the last part of the advertising sector to fall and may be the first to recover, but online advertising is now in a recession. With the four largest Web advertising companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft …
Thanks:atul
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Will ‘Wolverine’ benefit from (Bit)Torrent of publicity? — Outfitted with a skeleton forged from a super alloy, the comic book hero Wolverine is supposed to be indestructible. — After a raw version of the movie, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” leaked to the Web last month …
Matt Peckham / PC World:
Exclusive: Sony PSP Go! Storage Tech Revealed — Sources close to Sony PSP development have hinted to Game On what Sony's planning to stick in its rumored smaller, sleeker PSP Go!. Remember this CES 2009 press release back in January? The one where SanDisk revealed a panoply of tinier, higher-speed memory products?
