Top Items:
Cecilia Kang / Washington Post:
Federal Antitrust Probe Targets Tech Giants, Sources Say — The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review.
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Feds to probe tech hiring practices; Good luck with that one — The Justice Department is reportedly investigating whether tech titans such as Yahoo, Apple and Google are in cahoots on recruiting and hiring practices. If true, these companies could be in violation of antitrust laws.
Marvin Ma / DigiTimes:
Microsoft to use a new term for netbook — Microsoft plans to redefine mini-notebooks that Intel has categorized as netbooks with a new term - low cost small notebook PC, according to Steven Guggenheimer, general manager of the Application Platform & Development Marketing Division at Microsoft.
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John Herrman / Gizmodo:
Microsoft Wants to Rebrand Netbooks ‘Low-Cost Small Notebook PCs’
Microsoft Wants to Rebrand Netbooks ‘Low-Cost Small Notebook PCs’
Discussion:
GottaBeMobile.com
Arn / MacRumors:
WWDC 2009 Banners: ‘One Year Later, Light-Years Ahead’ — Adam Jackson has posted the first photos (flickr) from WWDC 2009. Apple has started putting up banners 6 days prior to the event. The theme of this year's WWDC appears centered around the App Store. The main banner in Moscone West reads:
Discussion:
CNET News, Digital Daily, Gizmodo, The iPhone Blog, IntoMobile, AppleInsider, Ars Technica, TUAW, 9 to 5 Mac, bijan sabet and The Apple Core
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
Apple, Google Consider App-Sharing Tools — Smartphone software makers weigh features that will make it easier to share downloadable apps, upending the way we acquire and use wireless games and tools — These days, downloading software applications for a smartphone is a breeze.
Discussion:
AppleInsider, MacRumors, Macworld, Apple iPhone Apps, 9 to 5 Mac, www.pocketgamer.biz, I4U News, TheAppleBlog, The iPhone Blog, Electronista and iLounge
Alice / Danwei:
Chinese websites “under maintenance” — The administrators of Chinese websites are putting in a period of inaccessibility on their sites for a period of two to three days starting with the Tnanmen anniversary tomorrow. — Fanfou.com, China's knock-off version of Twitter.com …
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Martyn Williams / LinuxWorld.com:
Microsoft won't offer Windows for smartbooks — The OS maker doesn't plan to offer Windows versions for the machines leaving the market to Linux and Android — Microsoft doesn't plan to offer a version of Windows for so-called “smartbooks,” leaving the space open to Linux, Google's Android and other operating systems.
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Ina Fried / CNET News:
Adobe service puts browsers side by side — Adobe on Tuesday said it is offering a free preview of its BrowserLab service, which allows Web developers to quickly see what their site looks like on a number of browsers. — The technology, previously code-named Meer Meer, was shown last year at the company's Max developer conference.
Discussion:
BetaNews, Google Operating System, Between the Lines, Softpedia News and the Econsultancy blog
William Hurley / Business Week:
Palm: Likely to Stumble with Pre — Adoption of Palm's new Pre smartphone will be hampered by its lousy applications, high price, and marketing missteps — On June 6, Palm (PALM) will release the Pre, a smartphone many hope will fuel a resurgence of a company long since fallen from grace.
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Sony Ericsson X2 spotted? — A tipster tells us that the device you're looking at here is Sony Ericsson's codename “Vulcan” — better known as the X2 — which would presumably replace the X1 at some point in the next few days, weeks, months, or years. Though the picture's small …
Discussion:
GigaOM, Engadget Mobile, Electronista, Gearlog, IntoMobile, WMPoweruser.com, Unwired View, SlashGear and WMExperts
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Opera passes iPhone to lead mobile-browser market — HELSINKI (Reuters) - Norway's Opera Software overtook Apple's iPhone browser in May as the most popular mobile browser in the world, Web analytics firm StatCounter said on Tuesday. — Of all Internet pages that were downloaded …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun, Download Squad, Apple 2.0, IntoMobile, TECH.BLORGE.com, InformationWeek, Unwired View, Lifehacker, iTWire, Techgeist and Mashable!
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
Hands-on with Wave: Weird and quite wonderful — Google just opened up to a limited audience its very interesting communications experiment called Wave (news stories). Our hands-on evaluation: There's a lot to like. It really is a more contemporary take on communications.
Seth Rosenblatt / CNET News:
Speedy Opera 10 beta reconfigures as Web suite — Opera 10 has entered beta with the unstated goal of becoming more than a mere browser. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, the Norwegian program hopes to become a speedy utility—Turbo-charged, in their words—that handles browsing, e-mail, RSS, and torrents with robust features.
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten / TheNextWeb.com:
The Web will be the Death of Google — There is a famous story about a meeting between Yahoo and Microsoft which took place when Yahoo was still a small start-up. Yahoo was growing at neck-breaking speed and David Filo and Jerry Yang were invited to Redmond to talk about working together.
Thanks:therealneville
Joe Weisenthal / Silicon Alley Insider:
Yahoo's Bartz Says ‘No’ To Microsoft Deal, Trashes Bing — Yesterday we heard that shares of Yahoo (YHOO) still had a call option on the possibility of Microsoft (MSFT) takeout in them. — Well, if you're buying Yahoo, don't do it because of some fantasy about a seach deal …
James Falconer / IntoMobile:
Microsoft Introduces Bing Mobile — In case you haven't heard about it yet, ‘Bing’ is Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s new search engine. I know... I hadn't really heard much about it either. The first I heard about it was via TWiT's podcast last week... and most of the folks there had heard about it, but hadn't used it at all!
Discussion:
All about Microsoft, ReadWriteWeb, Fast Company, Download Squad, Boy Genius Report, SlipperyBrick.com and Ubergizmo
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Microsoft games executive describes origins of Project Natal game controls — Microsoft threw one of the biggest curve balls at the E3 video game conference on Monday as it announced a new way to control games through your speech, gestures, and your full body.
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
PS3 Motion Controller May Be Best Game Motion Capture Yet — After Xbox 360's Project Natal, Sony is also adding their own motion controller to the PS3, aptly named The PlayStation Motion Controller. It's the best motion control demo that we have ever seen, but it may be arriving a little too late.
Discussion:
Agence France Presse, Ars Technica, Associated Press, Engadget, tinyComb, Crave, Pulse2, NEWSFACTOR, GottaBeMobile.com, VentureBeat, DVICE, Obsessable, Electronista, The Register and Joystiq
Jonathan B. Cox / The Charlotte Observer:
Apple to build computer data center in North Carolina — Apple will come to North Carolina, investing $1 billion in a computer data center over nine years. — Gov. Beverly Perdue announced the expansion this afternoon after signing legislation that will cut the California company's tax bill …
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
The Emerging World of Real-Time Cellphone Data — At ReadWriteWeb we've been following with interest the projects of the MIT SENSEeable City Lab, which is producing some excellent analysis and visualizations of cellphone data in urban centers. MIT refers to this data as “digital footprints …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
beeTV Raises $8 Million For Stunning Personal TV Recommendation System — The TV guide doesn't know who you are, what your favorite movie genre is, what you've watched in the past, what your mood is, and so on. Because of that, it is incapable of providing you with any recommendations …
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Bing! Here Come the TV Ads — Steve Ballmer says he “gulped” when he approved the marketing budget for Microsoft's new Bing search engine — it's reportedly in the $100 million range. Here's where some of that money is going — Microsoft's new TV ads, which begin running today.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting — Imagine that you fired up your computer and found that a bunch of your programs no longer worked, because behind the scenes, the operating system had been upgraded without any backwards compatibility.
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, Outspoken Media, SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Traffick, SEOgadget, Search Engine Roundtable and Search Marketing Sage, Thanks:atul