Top Items:
Saul Hansell / Bits:
The Kindle Lets Amazon Make a Lot From the Few — If you can make something and sell it to the masses, that can be a great business. But sometimes selling something to a much smaller group can also be quite lucrative, if you pick the right product for the right customers.
Discussion:
Venture Chronicles
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Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Kindle Books Now A Shocking 35% Of Sales When Kindle Version Available — Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos dropped a bomb on the book industry while rolling out the big-screen Kindle this morning, Dan Frommer reports: — Kindle sales are now 35% of book sales when Kindle editions are available.
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:Kindle DX Offers 9.7 Inches of E-Ink for $489
Discussion:
Business Week, CNET News, Download Squad, Fast Company, eWeek, Gearlog, jkOnTheRun, Gawker, Ars Technica, BetaNews, InformationWeek, GottaBeMobile.com and Engadget
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Ballmer: We need to be more disruptive in search — PALO ALTO, Calif.—While trailing Google badly in search has lots of disadvantages, it also opens some doors, says Steve Ballmer. And, he said, it's time Microsoft starts walking through more of those doors.
Bill Bulkeley / Digits:
Xerox Launches Revolutionary Color Printer — Many companies restrict the use of color printers because of high costs — up to eight cents a page, compared to a penny a page for black and white. Xerox hopes to loosen up the color pursestrings with a new $20,000 printer that is says will sharply cut those costs.
*Shacknews* Games:
Duke Nukem Developer 3D Realms Shuts Down (Update 3) — Update 3: 3D Realms webmaster Joe Siegler has commented on the shut down, stating: “It's not a marketing thing. It's true. I have nothing further to say at this time.” — Siegler's post also reflects the unexpected nature of the situation …
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Google: We're good for journalism — Google is under attack for profiting from content produced by newspaper executives, magazine publishers, and The Associated Press, but the company's Marissa Mayer on Wednesday sought to convince the U.S. Senate that Google adds to journalism, too.
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Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
10 Reasons Apple Will Sell iPhone Via More U.S. Telcos — Sooner or later, Apple (APPL) is almost certain to offer versions of the iPhone through more U.S. carriers. While the relationship with AT&T (T) has served both sides well, the exclusive distribution arrangement is nearing an end …
David Pogue / New York Times:
Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed — Someday, we'll tell our grandchildren how we had to drive around town looking for a coffee shop when we needed to get online, and they'll laugh their heads off. Every building in America has running water, electricity and ventilation; what's the holdup on universal wireless Internet?
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Releases iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 5 and New iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release to Developers — Apple tonight seeded the fifth beta version of iPhone OS 3.0 (Build 7A312g) and a new version of the iTunes 8.2 pre-release to developers. As with the previous beta, iTunes 8.2 is required to install the latest iPhone 3.0 beta software.
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
Cool changes coming to Twitter Search — Twitter Search is going to get a lot more interesting soon, I learned tonight from Twitter's new VP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram. Until recently, Jayaram was VP of Search Quality for Google. — Speaking (with LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue) …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Control Freaks: Hulu Now Blocks Anonymous Proxies Too — There are few web services hotter than Hulu these days. It's about to surge into the number two web video position (behind only YouTube) and it just signed a deal with Disney to give it even more great content. It's all great — if you live in the U.S.
Genevieve Carbery / The Irish Times:
Student's Wikipedia hoax quote used worldwide in newspaper obituaries — A WIKIPEDIA hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world. — The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March.
Discussion:
Agence France Presse
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
RIAA: “we have no choice” but to file more named lawsuits — The RIAA said it would file no more “new” lawsuits against individual file-swappers, but it filed more such lawsuits in April. How to explain the apparent contradiction? By defining “new” in a particular way.
Jonathan Matus / Google Mobile Blog:
YouTube uploads and more now available on Android — If there is one thing I've always wanted, that is to be able to record and share special moments in my life, anytime, anywhere. Needless to say, I am quite excited that I can now pick up my Android-powered phone, start recording videos left …
Sharon Gaudin / Computerworld:
Sorry Apple, Biz Stone says Twitter's not for sale — Making a TV appearance today, Twitter co-founder tries to dispel buyout rumors — Computerworld) Twitter Inc. co-founder Biz Stone said today the company is not for sale despite reports that Apple Inc. is in late-stage negotiations to buy the microblogging site.
Discussion:
Reuters, Technologizer, paidContent.org, TECH.BLORGE.com, I4U News, Epicenter, BoomTown and The SiliconANGLE
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
YouTube River Diverted Into The Google Social Ocean As Well — It's pretty obvious that Google is getting ready to fully cast its social net over its web properties. It's been doing things like tweaking the developer's side of iGoogle to be much more social, separating your contacts …
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
FBController allows for hijacking of Facebook accounts — A computer security enthusiast in India has released a tool designed to allow people to take complete control of strangers' Facebook accounts if they can get hold of the targets' session cookies. It also could be used to manage large quantities of hijacked accounts.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
No Mob Wars Here: WonderHill Nabs $7 Million To Build Wholesome Casual Games — It's quickly becoming clear that social gaming is a goldmine. Zynga is reportedly making as much as nine figures in revenues, and as users become more accustomed to microtransactions, these figures are poised to grow even more.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Jeffrey Burt / eWeek:
AMD Merges Chip and Graphics Businesses — Three years after buying ATI for $5.4 billion, AMD is finally merging its processor and graphics businesses in a reorganization that will create four operating units. The goal is to not only help internal development of products and platforms …
Rebecca / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Government Still Blocking Information on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty — Washington, D.C. - Two public interest groups today called on the government to stop blocking the release of information about a secret intellectual property trade agreement with broad implications for privacy and innovation around the world.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
UK Looks To Increase Fines For Copyright Infringement By 10X — Just as many in the US are arguing that ridiculously high statutory fines for copyright infringement are at odds with any sense of fairness, it looks like the UK may be going in the other direction.
Ryan Singel / Epicenter:
Facebook's E-mail Censorship is Legally Dubious, Experts Say — When The Pirate Bay released new Facebook features last month, the popular social networking site took evasive action, blocking its members from distributing file-sharing links through its service.
Thanks:atul
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
News Corp: The Economy is Rough, but “The Worst Is Over” — For the past year or so, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has been a consistent voice of pessimism, and he forecast an ugly economy before his big-media peers did. — And now he's more upbeat than his fellow media CEOs. Here's his opening salvo:
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
URL Shortening Wars: Twitter Ditches TinyURL For bit.ly — Sharing links on Twitter can be quite a pain when you need to input a web address that consumes most of the space you have at your disposal for your micro-message. The startup realized that quickly and automatically started shortening long URLs …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Hitwise Intelligence, Shooting at Bubbles, ReadWriteWeb, The Blog Herald and Silicon Alley Insider
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Netbook phenomenon caught Intel by surprise — SANTA CLARA, Calif.—The popularity of the Netbook caught Intel by surprise—more than once. — Shipments of this category of inexpensive, ultra-light, handy laptops are set to hit at least 20 million units this year, about twice the number shipped in 2008, according to IDC.
Dan Goodin / The Register:
US air traffic faces ‘serious harm’ from cyber attackers — When. Not if — Free whitepaper - Seven tips for profiting from lean times with CRM — The United States' air traffic control system is vulnerable to serious cyber attack, according to a watchdog report that detailed several …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Virgin Media Trials 200 Mbps Service — It's only a pilot program, but UK broadband provider Virgin Media said today it's begun testing a 200 Mbps broadband service with 100 lucky people in Ashford in Kent, a town in Southeast England. Virgin will use DOCSIS 3.0 technology to offer the speeds …
