Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Yahoo to Acquire Xoopit for About $20 Million — Yahoo plans on announcing Thursday that it has bought Xoopit for a price in the $20 million range, according to several sources, one of its first acquisitions in a long while. — Reached late this afternoon by BoomTown, a Yahoo (YHOO) …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, GigaOM, MYBLOG by Ouriel, CNET News, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Dealscape, Digits, Softpedia News, paidContent, Silicon Alley Insider and AppScout
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Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Why Did Google Let Yahoo Run Off With Xoopit? — Yahoo has acquired e-mail startup Xoopit for a reported $20 million according to multiple reports. The deal, which was first reported to be in the final stages of closing earlier this morning by the Wall Street Journal …
Chinmei Sung / Bloomberg:
Hon Hai Suspends Security Official Following Suicide of IPhone Employee — Hon Hai Group, the world's largest contract-manufacturer of electronics, suspended a security official at one of its subsidiaries after the death of an employee who lost a prototype of an Apple Inc. iPhone.
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Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Adknowledge buys Super Rewards, expands to virtual goods advertising — Offer-based advertising company Super Rewards has been bought by advertising conglomerate Adknowledge in one of the largest acquisitions to date among companies that build services on social networking platforms.
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Exclusive: MySpace Mail Slated To Launch This Week — This Thursday, MySpace plans to roll out its own webmail, paidContent has learned from sources familiar with the plans. The News Corp (NYSE: NWS). social network, like competitor Facebook, allows messaging—a much-used service …
Discussion:
Telegraph, Silicon Alley Insider, Techgeist, Neowin.net, TECH.BLORGE.com and Pocket-lint.com
Amy Clancy / KIRO-TV:
Apple Downplays Fiery iPod Incidents — An exclusive KIRO 7 Investigation reveals an alarming number of Apple brand iPod MP3 players have suddenly burst into flames and smoke, injuring people and damaging property. — It's an investigation that Apple has apparently been trying to keep out of the public eye.
Discussion:
MacRumors, Ars Technica, Silicon Alley Insider, blogs.ft.com, Gadget Lab, OSNews and Hardware 2.0
Gillian Reagan / New York Observer:
How The Times' Home Page Gets Made — By most counts, New York Times deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman still considers the front page of the printed newspaper a sacred space, a place where editors and reporters display their best work and uphold the tradition of The Times' quality reporting.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Artists Find Backers as Labels Wane — There was a time when most aspiring musicians had the same dream: to sign a deal with a major record label. — Now, with the structure of the music business shifting radically, some industry iconoclasts are sidestepping the music giants and inventing …
Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:
Video First Look: BlackBerry Storm 9550 in Action! — ** Video Removed as per the Request of the Hockey Lovers in Waterloo. Give Jim a Team Already and Make it Seven! — * update: wow, apologies in the video for flipping around the device so much in my hands. must have had too much green tea this afternoon.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Ning Raises $15 Million More at a-Yes, Really-$750 Million Valuation — In a quiet fund-raising effort, Ning has raised $15 million more, a round that is valuing the social networking start-up at an eye-popping $750 million valuation. — In its last fundraising $60 million round a little …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Venture Capital Dispatch, TechCrunch, 901am, Pulse2, Softpedia News, blogs.ft.com, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, VentureBeat, paidContent and Beet.TV, Thanks:atul
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
AT&T to Power Upcoming E-Reader — AT&T said Wednesday that it will provide the 3G data connectivity for Plastic Logic's e-reader when the device becomes available next year. — All Things D — Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta shows off the company's e-reader at the D conference in May.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Plastic Logic, PC World, Brainstorm Tech, Bits, Inc.com, Electronista, MediaMemo, DSLreports, paidContent, MobileContentToday, TeleRead, Obsessable, Gearlog, DailyFinance and dailywireless.org
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Docs, Slowly Morphing into Google Drive — The new interface of Google Docs, which is slowly rolled out to all users, brings the service one step closer to an online storage service. The “items by type” menu replaced “PDFs” with “Files”, suggesting that Google Docs will allow users to upload any type of files.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Synaptics moves to cell phones with 10-finger touch screens — The Apple iPhone popularized the multitouch screens that you can swipe with your hands, but the underlying technology came from Synaptics, which supplied the touch-based components that made it possible to control a phone's features …
Discussion:
Engadget, Gizmodo, GigaOM, WMPoweruser.com, SlashGear, Technologizer, Liliputing, Electronista and GottaBeMobile.com
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Probably Not The Palm Pre Chart Roger McNamee Wants To See — “You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” Elevation Partners (which owns a huge portion of Palm) co-founder Roger McNamee told Bloomberg in March.
Meg Kinnard / Associated Press:
AG in SC asks judge to drop Craigslist lawsuit — COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina attorney general who has threatened to prosecute Craigslist for prostitution-related ads wants a federal judge to dismiss the company's complaint against him, according to court papers filed this week.
Michael Fleming / Variety:
Sam Raimi plays ‘Warcraft’ — Director signs on for live-action adaptation of vidgame — Sam Raimi has signed on to direct “Warcraft,” the live-action film adaptation of the fantasy videogame franchise “World of Warcraft.” — Legendary Pictures and vidgame publisher Blizzard Entertainment …
Discussion:
paidContent, PC World, Softpedia News, WoW.com, Mashable!, /Film, AppScout, Tech Central, The Register, Kotaku, bit-tech.net and MTV Multiplayer
Leon Erlanger / Computerworld:
The tech jobs that the cloud will eliminate — InfoWorld - As if outsourcing, virtualization, utility computing, automation, hosted applications, and a recession weren't enough to stress out the average IT professional, there's the emerging threat of cloud computing to take away even more IT jobs.
Peter Cohen / Macworld:
Navigon launches MobileNavigator for iPhone, for North America — Navigon AG on Wednesday announced the launch of its MobileNavigator software for North America, for the iPhone. It costs $70 until August 15, when the price rises to $100. — MobileNavigator doesn't require …
Discussion:
AppScout, MacRumors, Technologizer, My Philly Network, iLounge, dailywireless.org, Mashable!, PE Hub News and Gizmodo
Daniel Shen / DigiTimes:
HTC to offer Qualcomm BMP-based handsets, hike adoption of Android — Taiwan-based High Computer Tech (HTC) will launch a high-profile 3G handset based on Qualcomm's Brew Mobile Platform (BMP) in September or October targeting the consumer segment, according to industry sources in Taiwan.
Discussion:
last100, IntoMobile, The Register, Boy Genius Report, InformationWeek, SlashGear, Phone Arena, Android Phone Fans, I4U News and Gizmodo
Om Malik / GigaOM:
The State of Wireless Broadband: 225M Subscribers & Growing — We all know that in a few years, Long Term Evolution (LTE), the 4G wireless broadband technology being embraced by mobile carriers across the world, is going to rule the airwaves, becoming an important way for us to connect to the Internet.
Mark Prigg / This Is London:
There's a free music revolution sweeping the capital thanks to a Swedish website. We listened in — AS the world woke up to the news of Michael Jackson's death, across London millions of office workers unwittingly triggered what could be the biggest revolution the music industry has ever seen.
Hans Wu / DigiTimes:
Aptina to be sloe supplier of 1.3-megapixel CIS for new Xbox 360, say sources — Aptina has won exclusive rights to supply 1.3-megapixel CMOS image sensors (CIS) for a new version of the Xbox 360 console under Microsoft's Project Natal technology, and shipments of the new Xbox 360 are slated …
Peter Ha / MobileCrunch:
Samsung one ups LG, announces the world's thinnest watchphone, S9110 — As much as Samsung loves to claim a “world's first” every single day of the week, I know they love to beat LG more than anything. Today is no different, folks. Samsung has unveiled an 11.98mm watchphone by the name of S9110.
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Dell Drops Adamo Price to Compete with MacBook Air — Dell has dropped the prices of their Adamo ultraportables, matching the low-end MacBook Air. The higher-end Adamo, however, is still more expensive than Apple's top of the line model. Apocalypse is, no doubt, very near.
David Lieberman / USA Today:
‘Billboard’ aims to be one-stop shop for listening, shopping — Competition to create the digital world's leading destination for music fans intensifies as Billboard joins the fray Wednesday with a revamped website for pop music enthusiasts. — The effort pits the 115-year-old trade publication …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Video: Now Serving 1 Billion Views A Month, Including This Amazing Zuck Impression — For the last few months Facebook has been regularly posting promotional videos to its Career site, introducing prospective applicants to all the neat things that go on behind the scenes.
David Talbot / Technology Review:
Cuil Tries to Rise Again — Last year's “Google-killer” plans a comeback with social search. — One year ago, the search engine Cuil exploded on the launchpad. Hyped as a “Google-killer,” the site stumbled as its servers crashed and its algorithms spat out irrelevant search results.
Digital Photography Review:
Canon develops Hybrid image stabilization system — Canon has developed a ‘Hybrid Image Stabilizer’ that corrects for both linear and rotational shake. The system, which the company claims is a world's first for SLR lenses, will be incorporated into a lens that will be released before the end of 2009.
