Top Items:
Bret Taylor / FriendFeed Blog:
FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request — We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle... The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team.
Discussion:
Mashable!, Search Engine Land, internetnews.com, Between the Lines, Download Squad, ReadWriteWeb, BoomTown, louisgray.com, VentureBeat, Twittercism, Webmonkey, CloudAve, Gear Live, Neowin.net, AppScout, TheNextWeb.com, Dealscape, TechSpot, ClickZ and Pocket-lint.com, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed — Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we've learned. We're gathering details now. — At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it's clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features …
Discussion:
eWeek, BoomTown, CNET News, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Computerworld, VentureBeat, Inside Facebook, paidContent, BetaNews, Search Engine Watch, PE Hub Blog, Silicon Alley Insider, Bits, All Facebook, The SiliconANGLE, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Mashable!, JasonKolb.com, One By One Media, GigaOM, Pulse2, NBC Bay Area, tinyComb, Techgeist, The Steve Rubel Lifestream, Smalltalk Tidbits … and /Message
Facebook:
Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed's four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook's engineering and product teams.
Discussion:
PC World, Digital Media Wire, Web Strategy, Internet Evolution, Search Engine Journal and Switched
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Tr.im Cuts Off Bit.ly's 301works Idea, Wants to Sell — Yesterday, upon hearing that the URL shortening service Tr.im was shutting down, Bit.ly, the largest URL-shortener, stepped in with a proposal. The offer wasn't to buy the service, but rather to propose that Bit.ly host Tr.im's URL …
RELATED:
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:Twitter's platform shortcomings
Discussion:
Christian Science Monitor, I'm Not Actually a Geek, MediaFile, Andrew Baron, InformationWeek, Computerworld, Webmonkey, TECH.BLORGE.com, I4U News, Fast Company and Techgeist, Thanks:atul
Susan Stellin / New York Times:
Bank Will Allow Customers to Deposit Checks by iPhone — The Internet has taken a lot of the paperwork out of banking, but there is no avoiding paper when someone gives you a check. Now one bank wants to let customers deposit checks immediately — through their phones.
Discussion:
eWeek, Macworld, PC World, The Register, PhoneDog.com, Boy Genius Report, MacNN, Smartphones and Cell Phones, mocoNews, Silicon Alley Insider, Gadget Lab, iPhone Buzz, TUAW, VentureBeat, Gadgetell, IntoMobile, HotHardware.com News, TECH.BLORGE.com, DailyFinance, Techgeist, The iPhone Blog, Mashable!, DVICE, GottaBeMobile.com, MacRumors iPhone Blog, Lifehacker, iLounge, MobileContentToday, Local Mobile Search and Gizmodo
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
An Elephant Leaves the Room at Yahoo — Doug Cutting, one of Yahoo's top search and infrastructure software experts, will leave the company later this month and join the Silicon Valley start-up Cloudera. — Mr. Cutting's exit from Yahoo follows on the heels of the company's recent search tie-up with Microsoft.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Source: Dell Mobile Phone Launching In China Within Days — A source with knowledge of the situation tells us that Dell is launching (or at least announcing) a mobile phone in China in the next day or two. We are trying to verify the information and gather more details on the hardware and operating system now.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
King Of The Apple Geeks — John Gruber's Daring Fireball is the homepage for Mac nerds. Even top Apple (AAPL) brass tune in regularly. And it's a real business, too, now in its fourth year as Gruber's full-time gig. — Daring Fireball's influence was in full display last week …
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Sixteen Reasons the Windows Vista Era Never Quite Happened — In a small way, this is a significant post: It's the first one in which I'm going to refer to Windows Vista in the past tense. Which might be premature and/or unreasonable-Windows 7 won't reach consumers until October 22nd …
Jim Dalrymple / CNET News:
Apple working on software fix for MacBook Pro hard drives — Owners of Apple MacBook Pro notebooks with 7200rpm 500GB hard drives have been complaining for months of clicking sounds followed by temporary stalling. According to Apple, a fix is in the works.
John Herrman / Gizmodo:
Is Apple Really Releasing an 8GB iPhone 3GS? (Confirmed: No) — Would Apple really ship something so regressive and line-mudding as that? Yes, according to Canadian carrier Rogers' website. Also, no, according to Canadian carrier Rogers' website, and salespeople. Let's take a gander at the evidence!
Discussion:
NEWSFACTOR, AppleInsider, Ars Technica, CrunchGear, MacRumors, Engadget, Boy Genius Report, I4U News, Softpedia News, IntoMobile and The iPhone Blog
Brandon Miniman / pocketnow.com:
Windows Mobile 6.5 Build 23022: What is Microsoft Up To? — The latest build of Windows Mobile 6.5 from XDA (and by this point, the version we'll see on phones this fall has already been completed) adds several mysterious new features that may imply that an interim build of Windows Mobile …
Discussion:
SlashGear, Engadget Mobile, The iPhone Blog, WMPoweruser.com, WMExperts, IntoMobile, Phone Arena and Gizmodo
Darrell Etherington / TheAppleBlog:
Textbooks Now On iPhone, iPod Touch — It appears that rumors of the death of the e-book on the iPhone platform were greatly exaggerated, at least that's what Apple has said in a recent statement. Backing up Apple's official denial of plans to discontinue that side of app store business …
Discussion:
MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, Wall Street Journal, ReadWriteWeb, iLounge, Gizmodo, AppleInsider, GottaBeMobile.com, Contentinople, AppScout, Macsimum News and DailyFinance
Taylor Wimberly / Android and Me:
Motorola Morrison specs - Next T-Mobile Android phone — Motorola will have two Android phones on sale this holiday season; Sholes on Verizon and Morrison on T-Mobile. We gave you the Sholes specs yesterday and today we present Morrison(via a trusted tipster).
Michael Sanserino / Wall Street Journal:
Lawsuits Question After-Hours Demands of Email and Cellphones — Two recent lawsuits raise a question that many employees and employers have deliberated: Should hourly workers be paid for time spent responding to work calls or emails while off the clock? — The federal suits highlight …
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Breakfast Can Wait. The Day's First Stop Is Online. — Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.
Discussion:
Tech Central, the nytpicker, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Gadgetell, CrunchGear, Lifehacker and Mashable!
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Sex-predator iPhone app is back in business — Of all the applications that Apple (AAPL) has pulled from the iPhone App Store — and there have been quite a few — none were as creepy, sad or profitable as Offender Locator. — Launched in early June by ThinAir Wireless …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft sheds 2,000-employee ad agency in $530 million deal — The rumors of the past few weeks were true: Microsoft has sold Razorfish — the digital ad agency it purchased when it bought its parent company aQuantive in 2007 — to Publicis Groupe for $530 million.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, Ars Technica, The Microsoft Blog, internetnews.com, TechFlash and The Register
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News:
Guitar Hero 5 gets ready to rock — In the newest version of the Guitar Hero franchise, Guitar Hero 5, as many as four players can all play guitar at the same time, instead of just two. Further, any combination of instruments is now possible. — SAN FRANCISCO—The first couple of weeks …
Discussion:
Softpedia News
Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:
Revenge of the South Bay: VMware acquires SpringSource for $420M to enhance cloud capabilities — The boring business back end of technology is still a lucrative market. Virtualization company VMware, whose software aims to let datacenter managers do more with less hardware …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Bloglines On Life Support. This Story Needs An Ending — If you were a Bloglines user, consider yourself old school. Most people moved on to Google Reader long ago, and then bailed on RSS entirely for the Real Time Gang (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc.).
Discussion:
CloudAve
Andrew Allemann / Domain Name Wire:
Yahoo Buys OMG.com Domain Name for $80,000 — Yahoo buys popular texting term. — Yahoo (YHOO) has purchased the domain name OMG.com for $80,000. — Domain Name Wire reported the sale last week on its weekly Sedo sales wrap, but we didn't know the buyer at the time.
Timothy / Slashdot:
AT&T Makes Its Terms of Service Even Worse, To Discourage Lawsuits — techmuse writes “AT&T has changed its terms of service (including for existing contracts) to prevent class action suits. Note that you are already required to submit your case to arbitration, a forum in which consumers are often at a substantial disadvantage.
G. Pascal Zachary / Technology Review:
An Operating System for the Cloud — Google is developing a new computing platform equal to the Internet era. Should Microsoft be worried? — From early in their company's history, Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, wanted to develop a computer operating system and browser.
Ross Miller / Engadget:
Zune HD hits FCC in prolific photo shoot, 16GB and 32GB capacities — Well, would you look at that. Microsoft's Zune HD's overexposed — both in quantity of pics and in quality of photography — camera shoot with the FCC has been made public, showing off quite a bit of the device, its internals, and its dock.
Agence France Presse:
Pirate Bay to challenge Dutch ban — THE HAGUE — The owners of Swedish filesharing website The Pirate Bay will seek a retrial after a Dutch court temporarily banned its activities in the Netherlands, their lawyer said on Monday. — “We will file a summons by August 25” …
