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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iTnews Australia
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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 …
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.
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 …
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New York Times, Associated Press, Digital Daily, Guardian, L.A. Times Tech Blog, The Register, Tech Beat, Macworld, Bits, The Mac Observer and Reuters
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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 …
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) …
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
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Twist Image, Lockergnome Blog Network, GMSV, MediaFile, paidContent.org and John Battelle's Searchblog
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 …
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InformationWeek, I4U News, Electronista, Digital Daily, PreCentral.net, MobileCrunch, Gizmodo, Crave, Palm WebOS, jkOnTheRun, GottaBeMobile.com, prethinking.com and tinyComb
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:
WebProNews, PR Newswire, Lockergnome Blog Network, MediaPost, Electronista, NewTeeVee, Contentinople, Hollywood Reporter and AppScout
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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Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Facing criticism, Google tries buffing its image — Google, having dealt with two major antitrust issues 2008 and facing the potential of more to come, has begun a program to try to spruce up its image and show that competition is alive and well. — Consumer Watchdog on Friday plans to tout …
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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:
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.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The iPhone Is Accelerating Music Sales For Pandora — Pandora is a company that mainly makes its money through advertising deals on its streaming Internet radio service. But a growing portion of the business is also affiliate downloads of songs that users hear on Pandora and want to buy on either iTunes or Amazon's MP3 service.
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 …
Tim Arango / New York Times:
The President's Name Trips Up a Would-Be Voice of the News — The Amazon Kindle, an electronic reader, has been lavished with praise by hopeful newspaper and book executives who say they believe it has the potential to do for newspapers and books what the iPod did for music.
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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CNET News, Macworld, PC World, Techgeist, CrunchGear, Unwired View, Ars Technica, TheStreet.com, AppleInsider, Mac|Life all, eWeek, SlashGear, Ubergizmo, tinyComb and DSLreports
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
SugarCRM CEO Roberts replaced by board member — John Roberts on Wednesday resigned from his post as CEO of open-source CRM vendor SugarCRM, leaving board member Larry Augustin to assume the role of interim CEO while the company conducts a formal search for his replacement. — John Roberts
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.
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:
BerryReview.com, CrackBerry.com blogs, Unwired View, Electronista, Cell Phone Signal, Engadget Mobile, TmoNews and EverythingBerry
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
MPAA suggests teachers videotape TVs instead of ripping DVDs. Seriously. — So the Copyright Office is currently in the middle reviewing proposed exceptions to the DMCA, and one of the proposals on the table would allow teachers and students to rip DVDs and edit them for use in the classroom.
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 …
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 …
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 …
Discussion:
paidContent.org, Search Engine Land, Microsoft, Virtual Earth …, iTnews Australia and TechCrunch
Aron Trimble / TUAW:
Breaking News: No new app submissions unless they run on OS 3.0 — iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 was only released for general consumption yesterday, and already Apple is rocking our collective faces off with big news. While a cool new feature being uncovered would be great, what Apple has in store …
Discussion:
The Loop Blog, Ed Burnette's Dev Connection, TechCrunch, Engadget Mobile, The iPhone Blog and TheNextWeb.com
Aaron Task / Tech Ticker:
Higher Taxes Mean Making “Compromises” - Including on Jobs, Cisco CFO Says — President Obama sent a shot across the bow of U.S. multinationals Monday when he announced plans to close offshore tax loopholes. — Intentionally or not, Cisco Systems is one of the companies potentially …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Happiness In Slavery: NIN iPhone App Approved With No Changes — Well, apparently if you speak loudly enough on the web with enough swear words, Apple does listen. After initially rejecting an update to Nine Inch Nails' iPhone app, Apple has relented and accepted it back into the store.
Larry Seltzer / Security Watch:
A Single PowerPoint Update in May's Patch Tuesday — Microsoft's Security Bulletin Advance Notification for May 2009 lists only a single update to be issued next Tuesday. The update is rated Critical for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2000 Service Pack 3 and Important for a group of other PowerPoint versions and accessory programs.
