Top Items:
Sergey Brin / The Official Google Blog:
The 2008 Founders' Letter — Every year our founders take turns writing a letter that is included in our annual report. We originally published the 2008 Founders' Letter on our Investor Relations site. Since today is the annual Stockholders' Meeting at our Mountain View headquarters, we wanted to make it more widely available.
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Google: Looking over shoulder at Wolfram|Alpha? — Google's Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of the search giant, on Thursday delivered the company's annual “Founders' Letter” and apparently is keeping a watchful eye on Wolfram|Alpha. — If you recall, Wolfram|Alpha …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Google: Schmidt Hasn't Considered Quitting AAPL Board — Speaking to reporters at a press briefing ahead of the company's annual meeting taking place this afternoon, Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt said he hadn't considered resigning from the Apple (AAPL) board in response …
Discussion:
Guardian, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Associated Press, The Register, Macworld, Digital Daily, Bits, Tech Beat, The Mac Observer and Reuters
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Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
AT&T Considering $10 Drop in iPhone Monthly Plan Rates? — TheStreet.com reports on comments from analyst Michael Cote suggesting that AT&T is considering reducing the basic monthly iPhone plan from $69 to $59 alongside an announcement of the next-generation iPhone at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference.
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Scott Moritz / TheStreet.com:Tech Rumor of the Day: Apple
Discussion:
PC World, CNET News, Unwired View, Gadgetell, Ars Technica, AppleInsider, Mac|Life all, 9 to 5 Mac, MacDailyNews, MobileCrunch, SlashGear, TheAppleBlog, Ubergizmo, DSLreports, TUAW, Gearlog, World of Apple and The Apple Core
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Internal Palm memo may reveal Pre launch timing — We're prefacing this by saying we're definitely not 100%, but it looks like Palm could be gearing up for a round of meetings that will lead up to the day we've all been waiting for — Palm Pre launch day. We just received what an anonymous …
Discussion:
Crave, InformationWeek, Engadget Mobile, Electronista, PreCentral.net, I4U News, MobileCrunch, Gizmodo, Digital Daily, Palm WebOS, jkOnTheRun, prethinking.com, GottaBeMobile.com and tinyComb
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
David Simon: Dead-Wrong Dinosaur — The creator of the brilliant television series The Wire today asked Congress to legalize monopolistic collusion by newspapers. Only they can really cover City Hall, he said. Apparently he hasn't been there in a while.
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Greg Sandoval / CNET News:Execs reveal why newspapers don't block Google
Discussion:
Twist Image, GMSV, Lockergnome Blog Network, MediaFile, paidContent.org and John Battelle's Searchblog
Matthew Garrahan / Financial Times:
Hulu agrees international TV deals — Hulu, the US online video service owned by NBC Universal, Fox and Walt Disney, has signed its first batch of content deals with international television producers, the first step towards a full global launch of the service.
Discussion:
PR Newswire, MediaPost, Electronista, NewTeeVee, Contentinople, Hollywood Reporter and AppScout
Percy Cabello / Mozilla Links:
Multi-processor support coming for Firefox — Mozilla has started a new project to make Firefox split in several processes at a time: one running the main user interface (chrome), and another or several others running the web content in each tab. Like Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Microsoft buys game developer BigPark to beef up Xbox 360 offering — Microsoft has been scaling back its internal staff across the board and in games. But the software giant showed today that it's still willing to invest in the game business by buying BigPark, a game development studio in Vancouver, Canada.
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Andrew Clark / Guardian:
Free web news era over, says Murdoch — Current days of free internet will soon be over, says media mogul — Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a "malfunctioning" business model.
Adam Pash / Lifehacker:
Mozilla Weave to Integrate Auto-Login with Firefox — We've shown you how Mozilla Weave syncs your browsing experience—including bookmarks and passwords—in the past, but the folks at Mozilla are hoping to improve this experience with integration for automatic web site logins.
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Jia Lynn Yang / Fortune:
Google: A ‘natural monopoly’? — The search giant says competition is “a click away.” So what if it hasn't materialized? — NEW YORK (Fortune) — For the second week in a row, reports have surfaced that government regulators are closely eyeing Google. — The Justice Department is taking …
Discussion:
Economist
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Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Snow Leopard to support native 3G Wireless WAN hardware — Building on evidence that Apple is seeking to hire engineers to test new Macs with 3G Wireless WAN support, people familiar with the company's plans say Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will incorporate new support for native WWAN hardware.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
iPhone App Store: 40,000 and counting — Noah's rain lasted 40 days and 40 nights, but the flood of submissions to the iPhone App Store — which hit the 40,000 mark in late April — continues unabated. — The current numbers, as of Thursday afternoon are as follows:
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Microsoft tweaks antipiracy tech for Windows 7 — With Windows 7, Microsoft is making some subtle changes to the ways it tries to thwart piracy. — As has been the case for some time, Microsoft's strategy hinges on requiring a user to electronically verify their copy of the software …
Discussion:
Agence France Presse, Gizmodo, The Register, Techgeist, iTnews Australia and Technologizer
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Nick Mediati / PC World:
Speed Test: Windows 7 May Not Be Much Faster Than Vista — Though Windows 7 edged out Vista in our lab tests, you may not notice much of a difference. — Recommends — Improving performance is one of Microsoft's design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) …
Jessica Dolcourt / CNET News:
Facebook's official Windows Mobile debut (at last!) — Back in March, Microsoft promised the world, and especially Windows Mobile 6 owners, a native Facebook application for Windows Mobile phones. On Thursday, Redmond delivered. OK, so Facebook for Windows Mobile 6 was forecast for April instead of May …
Discussion:
Unwired View
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
BlackBerry 8520's hitting T-Mobile in Q4 — We just got some hands on time with the now infamous BlackBerry 8520 (code-named Gemini). Optical trackball? Ooooh yeah. While there hasn't been too much time to play with them, early impressions are definitely fitting in with what CrackBerry reported …
Discussion:
CrackBerry.com blogs, Unwired View, Electronista, Cell Phone Signal, TmoNews, Engadget Mobile and EverythingBerry
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Magnetometer in next iPhone confirmed? — We just got a couple images from one of our Apple ninjas and it appears to show a compass option in one of the debugging menus. Our source says this is obviously for a built-in magnetometer in the upcoming iPhone hardware revision and with what's already been reported, we'd have to agree.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Warner Music Group Walks Away From Digital Start-Ups Lala and Imeem, Loses $33 Million — It's par for the course for big music labels to boast about their digital music sales as their CD sales tank. And that's just what Warner Music Group (WMG) did that this morning …
John Herrman / Gizmodo:
iPhone Beta 5 Odds and Ends: No More MMS, Better YouTube? — The official script may have minimized it as a maintenance release, but some users are finding out that iPhone Beta 5 contains more than bugfixes. So far: YouTube's improved, and hacked MMS is no more.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, winandmac.com, Macworld, The iPhone Blog, TUAW, Rev2.org, Mobile Roar and Neowin.net
Elizabeth Woyke / Forbes:
Nokia's Gigantic App Store — Nokia is preparing an app store second in size only to Apple's. — Nokia is about to shake up the app store world. — The Finnish company is planning to roll out an online store for mobile applications later this month. Though Apple ( AAPL - news …
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Microsoft Photosynth Goes to Work: Integrates With Virtual Earth — Microsoft announced today that it will now give its commerical partners the option to mash up Virtual Earth and Photosynth to create immersive 3D photo experiences. In order to facilitate this, Microsoft also announced …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
The background-check scams: Is WhitePages really better than Intelius? — WhitePages has released a mobile application on the BlackBerry Bold that, among other things, lets you screen incoming callers to see who they are before you answer. For example, it lets you see if a caller …
PE Hub Blog:
Amazon Backs Foodista — Foodista.com, a Seattle-based online online cooking encyclopedia that can be edited by users, has raised Series A funding led by Amazon.com. No financial terms were disclosed, but a recent regulatory filing suggests that the round was for approximately $600,000.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
J-School Identifies Apple-Friendly Financial Aid Loophole — Congress is debating whether journalists should be subsidized. But hey, did anyone know that we're already coddling J-school students by letting them take federal loans for iPhones? — The Missouri University School of Journalism …
