Top Items:
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Researchers attack my iPhone via SMS — LAS VEGAS—Researchers have discovered a way to take complete control over an iPhone merely by sending special SMS messages and demonstrated it on my iPhone at the Black Hat security conference on Wednesday. — Although an attacker could exploit …
Discussion:
Guardian, Reuters, PC World, Mashable!, TUAW, Neowin.net, TG Daily, iPhone Buzz, InformationWeek, Mobile Messaging 2.0, Fudzilla and Etan on Tech
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Dwight / blogs.chron.com:
Calm down: It's not doomsday for your iPhone — When the word came down Wednesday that researchers were planning to demonstrate how an iPhone could be remotely controlled by sending it a series of text messages, you'd think the world had ended. — The story, which [broke] …
Andrew Brandt / Technologizer:
Your GSM Phone is (Probably) Vulnerable to Malicious Text Messages — Virtually all GSM phones (such as Apple's iPhone) and GSM wireless operators (such as AT&T and T-Mobile) on the planet appear to be vulnerable to attacks using specially crafted SMS text messages discovered by security researchers Zane Lackey and Luis Miras.
The Official Google Blog:
I now pronounce you monetized: a YouTube video case study — (Cross-posted from the YouTube Biz Blog) — Last week the world watched in wonder as Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz's wedding party transformed a familiar and predictable tradition into something spontaneous and just flat-out fun.
Discussion:
Techdirt, Pulse2, Fast Company, Podcasting News, Bits, Epicenter, CNET News, Network World, TechCrunch, Beet.TV, Techgeist, Seeking Alpha, Mashable! and Gadgetopia
David Pogue / Pogue's Posts:
‘Take Back the Beep’ Campaign — Over the past week, in The Times and on my blog, I've been ranting about one particularly blatant money-grab by U.S. cellphone carriers: the mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions. — Suppose you call my cell to leave me a message.
Discussion:
Engadget, Technologizer, Macworld, DVICE, The Toybox, ChannelWeb, PreCentral.net, I4U News, Gizmodo, GottaBeMobile.com and rc3.org
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Showing Our Thanks to Windows 7 Beta Testers.... Last week, I blogged that members of the Windows Technical Beta Program would not be receiving a complimentary copy of Windows 7. Normally I hate to be wrong but in this case, I'm stoked that I am. — To show our appreciation …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:Microsoft does a 180: Tech testers to get a copy of Windows 7 for free
Discussion:
PC World
Ryan Block / Engadget:
WSJ: Apple going to CES 2010. Reality: Nope. — This week Gary Shapiro, chief exec of of the CEA (the trade group which puts on CES, and, full disclosure, for which I sometimes consult) held a private dinner with journalists in San Francisco. According to Dow Jones / WSJ reporter Ben Charny …
Discussion:
CNET News, PC World, SFGate, AppleInsider, Technologizer, Boing Boing Gadgets, Neowin.net, TheAppleBlog, Ars Technica, MacRumors, Gear Diary, DailyTech, Edible Apple, MacNN, techblog.dallasnews.com, Digits, PC Magazine, 9 to 5 Mac, Imaging Insider, TUAW, Tech Trader Daily, ChannelWeb, The Mac Observer, IDG News Service, Gizmodo, Crave, blogs.chron.com, Silicon Alley Insider, Softpedia News and The iPhone Blog
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Chris Nuttall / blogs.ft.com:
What the CEA really said about Steve Jobs — The Applesphere has been abuzz this morning about the possibility of Steve Jobs giving a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. — This emanates from a Wall Street Journal report of a dinner hosted by Gary Shapiro …
Discussion:
PC World, ChannelWeb, Digits, I4U News, Internetnews Blog, VentureBeat, The iPhone Blog, Switched, IDG News Service and GottaBeMobile.com
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Ordered To Close In The Netherlands — In an Amsterdam court last week, BREIN's lawyer argued that The Pirate Bay is responsible for millions of copyright infringements every day, and that the site should therefore be blocked to visitors from The Netherlands.
Discussion:
The Register, Associated Press, CNET News, Digits, Techdirt, CrunchGear, NewTeeVee, Electronista, Threat Level, Engadget, ZDNet Government and Download Squad
Jon Fortt / Brainstorm Tech:
Bartz and Ballmer on the Yahoo/Microsoft search pact — Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pose for the cameras after doing a search deal. Image: Yahoo — Soon after Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) announced their search deal on July 29, I spoke with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz …
Discussion:
paidContent, eWeek, Economist, BusinessWeek, AdAge, AdExchanger.com, TechFlash and Softpedia News
Joseph L. Flatley / Engadget:
Motorola Sholes Android phone headed for Verizon? — On the lookout for the Motorola / Android / Verizon trifecta, we dug up some handset renders over at motofan.ru that seem to fit the bill quite well, thank you. According to the site, “Sholes” is a 3.7-inch (480 x 854) …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun, Big in Japan, Phone Arena, AndroidGuys, Boy Genius Report, Electronista, CNET News, Silicon Alley Insider and PhoneDog.com
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Newsgator Shuts Down Its Online Feed Reader — NewsGator, the company behind the popular FeedDemon and NetNewsWire feed readers, just announced that it will shut down the NewsGator Online Reader on August 31, 2009. The company will provide users with instructions on how to migrate to Google Reader.
Nick Wingfield / Digits:
Microsoft Needs Smarter Phones — Now that Microsoft has finally cleaned up its act in Internet search and Windows, there's one critical consumer market where the company is still visibly stumbling: mobile phones. — Microsoft — Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, PC World, Wall Street Journal, Electronista, BoomTown and WMPoweruser.com
John Letzing / MarketWatch:
What's to become of Microsoft's answer to the iPod? — The Zune faces steep sales declines, low market share ahead of update — SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Microsoft Corp.'s quarterly earnings report last week featured a number of grim statistics, including a relatively overlooked …
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Podcasting News, Electronista, The Mac Observer, MacDailyNews and Macsimum News
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:
Lawsuit: Amazon Ate My Homework — An Orwellian gaffe involving the Kindle e-book reader just won't go down the memory hole for Amazon.com. — On Thursday, a Chicago-based law firm filed a suit in federal court in Seattle against Amazon on behalf of Justin D. Gawronski, a 17-year-old Michigan high school senior.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Firefox Approaches 1 Billion Downloads, Could Hit It Tomorrow — Mozilla's Firefox browser is about to hit a major milestone: 1 billion total downloads. As you can see on this Twitter account set up to monitor the download numbers, it just crossed the 999,000,000 threshold earlier today.
Discussion:
BetaNews, VentureBeat, The Microsoft Blog, Internetnews Blog, ChannelWeb, TechSpot and Pocket-lint.com
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Finally Discontinues Shake? [Updated] — Alongside today's introduction of updated Time Capsule models, Apple appears to have finally discontinued Shake, its long-standing high-end digital compositing and visual effects software package. While Shake's product pages remain available on Apple's site …
Ty McMahan / Venture Capital Dispatch:
Film Company Blowtorch Burned By Hedge Fund Flame-Out — (The following was originally published in VentureWire, a daily publication covering start-ups and venture capital that, like this blog, is owned by Dow Jones & Co.) — Blowtorch Entertainment Corp., the start-up that gathered $50 million …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The New MySpace Mail Quietly Emerges As A Big-Time Email Competitor — We've been covering the new web email project MySpace has been working on in stealth mode for the past several month. Now it's ready to begin a quiet rollout today, in beta, for users around the globe.
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
AT&T sees big increase in Wi-Fi connections following iPhone 3.0 — AT&T saw nearly 15 million users connect to its Wi-Fi network last quarter — a 41 percent increase over the previous quarter — thanks, in part, to the release of iPhone 3.0, which allowed auto-authentication on the wireless carrier's 20,000 hotspots.
Joseph Galante / Bloomberg:
EBay Building Software to Replace Skype Technology — EBay Inc. is building new software to run its Skype Internet-calling service, a bid to sidestep a licensing dispute with Skype's founders, who have threatened to take back the underlying technology. — The new software will be expensive …
Nick Farrell / Inquirer:
Security experts mock Mac security — You can't protect your computer with spin — FOR AGES Apple has been peddling its Macs as being more secure than PCs simply because hackers could not be bothered targeting them. — However according to MSNBC the recent Black Hat security conference …
Robert McMillan / PC World:
Meter Hackers Find Free Parking in San Francisco — San Francisco's ambitious plans to roll out computerized smart parking meters have hit a snag: They can be hacked for free parking. — Security researchers say that it is easy for a technically savvy hacker to make a fake payment card that gives them unlimited free parking.
Victor Keegan / Guardian:
Virtual worlds are getting a second life — We haven't heard much recently about so-called virtual worlds such as Second Life, in which you move around with your own avatar. Critics must be hoping they have disappeared up their own ether. Actually, they are booming.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Motorola: Android device launches get us back in the smartphone game — Updated: Motorola's Sanjay Jha, co-CEO and head of the company's mobile device unit, says that new Android-based smartphones are on track for the holidays. Jha added that Motorola is planning a barrage of Android-based devices …
Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:
Developers beware: Apple undermines my6sense app launch — Developing apps for the iPhone can be a profitable business, but Apple's review and approval process is still a black box. Apple's intractable system can foil an app's launch, as happened today for Israeli company my6sense.
Jeremy Mullman / AdAge:
Southern Comfort Pours Entire Media Budget Into Digital — Move Allows Brand to Buy Popular Network Shows Online Instead of Overcrowded Cable Fare — CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Brown-Forman's Southern Comfort brand — weary of jostling for notice with other spirits brands during …
Hiawatha Bray / Boston Globe:
Android system extends grip on smartphone market — In the movies, androids are always taking over the world. In real life, not so much. — The invasion began last October, when T-Mobile USA launched its G1 cellphone. It was the first to feature Android, Google Inc.'s operating system …
Discussion:
Computerworld
Mconnor / Mozilla Labs:
Weave 0.5 Released — Weave Sync is a prototype that encrypts and securely synchronizes the Firefox experience across multiple browsers, so that your desktop, laptop and mobile phone can all work together. It is part of the Weave project, which aims to integrate services more closely with the browser.
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
Andreessen Horowitz Adds Ex-Opsware Execs — Newbie venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is a bit of an enigma, when it comes to its public profile. — On the one hand, it's impossible to say the firm is in stealth mode, given that Andreessen has done more interviews in the past month than Barack Obama.
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Robert Vamosi / PC World:
Former Google VP Suggests User-Based Security at Black Hat — At the Black Hat security conference on Wednesday, former Google VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill gave the opening keynote presentation, and it wasn't a traditional security industry talk. The takeaway: Let users dictate enterprise security needs.
