Top Items:
BIZ / Twitter Blog:
Denial of Service Attack — On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users.
Discussion:
New York Times, Macworld, NPR Blogs, Data Center Knowledge, Google Watch, PC Magazine, Epicenter, Forbes, Bits, SafeCentral Blog, eWeek, Time, DSLreports, CircleID, Technologizer, Social Business, TechCrunch, blogs.ft.com, ThreatChaos, GigaOM, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, bub.blicio.us, DailyFinance, AppScout, InformationWeek, Mashable!, Switched, SC Magazine US, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, TUAW, Media Decoder and Twitterrati
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Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Twitter Attack Brings a Day Without Social Media — Noooo: Both Twitter and Facebook are flailing this morning. How will people plan their evening drinking sessions? And are they expected to actually put in an honest day's work in the meantime? It's a Thursday in August, for God's sake.
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal Back Up and Running After Attacks — Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal are back up after being felled earlier this morning by denial-of-service attacks that rendered them inaccessible. It's not yet known if the attacks were related, although …
Discussion:
Arbor Networks Security, Twitter Status, LiveJournal Maintenance and Search Engine Watch
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Phil Schiller Responds Regarding Ninjawords and the App Store — Tuesday's piece on Ninjawords was really about two stories. The small story is that of a clever $2 iPhone dictionary app, the developers of which removed “objectionable” words from its dictionary so as to get it published in the App Store.
Discussion:
Macworld, MacRumors iPhone Blog, TechCrunch, mocoNews, CNET News, Technologizer, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, AppleInsider, Techdirt, Silicon Alley Insider, Life On the Wicked Stage, Pulse2, EverythingiCafe, MobileCrunch, The iPhone Blog, InformationWeek, TheAppleBlog, WebWorkerDaily, TidBITS, Download Squad, Engadget, Gizmodo and Edible Apple, Thanks:mostlyyes
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Apple's Phil Schiller Speaks On Censored iPhone Dictionaries, But Ignores The Bigger Issues — A lone messenger has emerged from the impenetrable fortress that is Apple's App Store, and his name is Phil Schiller. Earlier this week, John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a lengthy column detailing …
Discussion:
Macworld
Erica Alini / Wall Street Journal:
Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptops — They Sit for Hours and Don't Spend Much; Getting the Bum's Rush in the Big Apple — A sign at Naidre's, a small neighborhood coffee shop in Brooklyn, N.Y., begins warmly: “Dear customers, we are absolutely thrilled that you like us so much that you want to spend the day...”
Discussion:
Download Squad, Technologizer, Inc.com, MuniWireless, bub.blicio.us, Electronista, Global Nerdy, CrunchGear, GottaBeMobile.com and Wi-Fi Networking News
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Windows 7 RTM Available Today for MSDN & TechNet Subscribers — As we previously announced, today MSDN & TechNet Subscribers will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English. On October 1st, the remaining languages will be released. — The bits are available now!
Discussion:
All about Microsoft, ChannelWeb, AppScout, Neowin.net, Redmond Pie, geeksmack.net, Lifehacker and I'm Just Being Manan
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Rejected By Apple, iPhone Developers Go Underground — Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will — as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren't taking the rejection lying down: They're turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia …
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Silicon Alley Insider
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Long Zheng / istartedsomething:
Microsoft is now the proud new owner of Office.com — As of two days ago, Microsoft has been indeed confirmed to be the new owners of the Office.com domain that one clever commenter on this blog made a note of almost a month ago (thanks Bob). — The transition of this valuable domain …
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple working on device abuse detection technology — Apple has investigated a system where portable devices like iPods and iPhones would detect and store into memory “consumer abuse events” such as exposure to extreme cold, heat or moisture in void of warranty, a new patent application reveals.
Andrew Clark / Guardian:
Murdoch plans charge for all news websites by next summer — Times and Sun readers to pay as loss-making Murdoch declares end to free-for-all — The billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch suffered the indignity of seeing his global empire make a huge financial loss yesterday and promptly pledged …
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:Rupert Murdoch's grand subscription plan: Much ado over minimal revenue?
Discussion:
GigaOM, Guardian, Seeking Alpha, The Register, Silicon Alley Insider, CloudAve and Contentinople
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
London is the capital of Twitter, says founder @ev — Twitter was featured on the BBC's Newsnight programme last night. There weren't any great revelations about the service, however the confirmation from the CEO that London remains the top Twitter-using city in the world is pretty interesting.
Discussion:
Techgeist
Guardian:
Cyberkids quit social networking sites — • Datablog: get the numbers behind this story — From uncles wearing skinny jeans to mothers investing in ra-ra skirts and fathers nodding awkwardly along to the latest grime record, the older generation has long known that the surest way to kill a youth trend is to adopt it as its own.
Cade Metz / The Register:
Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec? — The price of web standards — After acquiring On2's video compression codecs in a deal valued at approximately $106.5 million in stock, will Google simply turn around and open source them? — It certainly looks that way.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Meet Sherpa, the Hottest Android App — Sherpa, a location-based services application developed by Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup Geodelic, is among the fastest-growing applications for Google's Android. In the past week, the company claims that it has seen 50,000 downloads from the Android market.
Michael S. Lasky / LAPTOP Magazine:
Tech Support Showdown 2009 — Hardware isn't the only thing you should consider before buying a notebook. — Contents: — “Your call is important to us. Please hold.” — If your eyes just rolled toward the back of your head, you're not alone. Just check out the tsunami …
Bing / Search Blog:
The Bing Jingle Winner is... We want to thank everyone who submitted their Bing jingles to our Bing YouTube site. We were amazed at the creativity and variety of all the entrants. After much anticipation, a multitude of voting and discussion, we are very pleased to announce that the winner …
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Sascha Segan / AppScout:
Opera Mobile for Android in the Works — Opera Mobile 9.7 is a great alternative browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian, but so far it hasn't been available on other smart phone platforms. In an interview with PCMag.com today, Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner said the browser might come …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun, BetaNews, PhoneDog.com, I4U News, Softpedia News, Android Phone Fans, Android Central, AndroidGuys and Pocket-lint.com
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
For Today's Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where artifacts were found.
Thanks:atul
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Putting lipstick on Microsoft's pigs — Windows Mobile. Logo: Microsoft — At the end of a long report on the Apple Stores — and the corner he believes they have turned — Needham analyst Charles Wolf turned his attention this week to Microsoft (MSFT) and its plans to launch a fleet …
Tomio Geron / Venture Capital Dispatch:
Turning Out The Lights: SplashCast — (Note: We're keeping an ongoing tally of venture-backed company shutdowns this year as VentureWire reports on them. See the list below. Look for these postings under the title, “Turning Out The Lights.") — SplashCast Corp.,, which lets people …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
What's The Google Brand Worth These Days? $100 Billion. Probably Less. — WPP subsidiary Millward Brown Optimor released its highly regarded annual brand ranking BrandZ Top 100 (PDF) back in April. It identifies the world's most valuable global brands as measured by their dollar value.
Discussion:
Google Watch
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Team Apart Joins The Startup Crusade Against WebEx (Invites) — It's no secret that group collaboration services like WebEx can be a major pain, particularly when they require proprietary browser plugins (some of them don't even support Macs at all). Team Apart, a new startup launching …
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Adobe kills low-end Photoshop, urges users online — Photoshop Album Starter Edition, the lowest rung on Adobe Systems' ladder of image-editing software products, and the company is nudging its users toward the online Photoshop.com site. — Adobe launched Photoshop Album Starter Edition in 2003 as a free …
PC World:
New Intel Core I5 Chip Surfaces on Retailer's Web Site — Details of an upcoming Core i5 processor from Intel have surfaced on a retailer's Web site. — The Core i5-570 processor will run at 2.66GHz and include 8MB of cache, according to FadFusion. The chip, targeted at mainstream desktops, is priced at US$233.
David / TmoNews:
More 3G Launches — With the launch of their 2009 flagship phone, it's a safe bet to say that T-mobile wants as much 3G rolled out as possible. With that in mind, more launch announcements are available today and while it may not satisfy everyone, certainly someone in each of these cities will be happy.
Richard Wray / Guardian:
T-Mobile to unveil turnaround plan — Richard Moat, the new boss of T-Mobile UK, will unveil his plan to reverse the fortunes of Britain's struggling fourth-placed mobile phone network in the next few weeks. — News that Moat, who joined only in June, is poised to reveal his turnaround plan came …
Alexander Sliwinski / Joystiq:
Xbox 360 ‘Games on Demand’ priced between $20-$30 — Microsoft informed us this afternoon that its initial offerings of Games on Demand, the company's selection of downloadable Xbox 360 titles, will be priced between 1600-2400 — that's $20-30 in American credit card currency.
