Top Items:
Business Wire:
eBay Inc. Signs Definitive Agreement to Sell Skype in Deal Valuing Communications Business at $2.75 Billion — eBay to Receive Approximately $1.9 Billion in Cash; Retain Approximately 35 Percent Stake — SAN JOSE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY - News) …
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Josh Silverman / Skype Blogs:
A new chapter — Today, Skype begins a new chapter. We're spinning off from eBay to become an independent company once again. This is very exciting news for all of us here at Skype, and I want to give all of you a brief overview of what's happening. — A small group of venture capital funds …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Skype Sale Nears: Why eBay Shareholders Should Be Mad — If you're an eBay shareholder, it's time for you to get mad about the sheer incompetency of the management. First they paid top dollar for Skype back in 2005, making billionaires out of Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.
Stephanie Ferguson / The Windows Blog:
Windows phones are Coming on October 6th! — In just five weeks, you'll have a bunch of new Windows phones to choose from. But before we show you some of the cool, new phones that will be coming out, I want to explain how we're trying to make phones even better with Windows.
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Microsoft:
Microsoft to Deliver New Generation of Windows Phones on Oct. 6 — Leading mobile operators and phone manufacturers worldwide prepare to introduce an array of sleek new Windows phones. — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Windows® phones will be widely available at retail stores worldwide on Oct. 6, 2009.
Discussion:
mocoNews, Beyond Binary, InformationWeek, Mobile Roar, SlashGear, Engadget Mobile and Phone Scoop
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Munster: Steve Jobs will host next week's Apple special event — Steve Jobs, Oct. 2008. Photo: Apple Inc. — Apple hasn't confirmed it — and not every analyst agrees — but Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster seems pretty certain that Steve Jobs himself will introduce a new line of iPods next week.
Discussion:
PC World, Gawker, MacRumors, AppleInsider, GMSV, The Apple Core, 9 to 5 Mac, Softpedia News, TUAW, Gearlog, Silicon Alley Insider and Switched
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Joe / joestump.net:
Pass the lubricant as we're getting f**ked by Apple too — Stories of developers being absolutely bent over the barrel and f**ked hard aren't new, but I've got no other recourse so I'm throwing Blunder Move's story into the ring. What makes our story different? I'm lucky enough to personally know people at the iTunes store.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:Another Popular Developer Lays The Smack Down On Apple's App Store
Discussion:
The Register
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Jim Breyer's Midas Touch. Two Acquisitions in 24 Hours (Marvel And BBN) — Investor Jim Breyer of Accel Partners is having a very good day. In the past 24 hours, two companies where he is an investor and board member have been acquired for big bucks: Marvel Entertainment …
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Chris Mellor / The Register:
EMC co-founder kills himself — Street kid, entrepreneur and ambassador — Obituary Richard Egan, the colourful and vigorous co-founder of EMC, went into a linen cupboard of his home at the Four Seasons condominiums on Boylston Street, Boston, and shot himself in the head with a shotgun on Friday …
Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing:
Did Google Street View spot rapist/kidnapper Garrido? — A followup on this earlier BB post about the wacko blog and gadget hallucinations of kidnapper/rapist (now also a murder suspect) Phillip Garrido. — Weighing in on that post, an astute BB commenter noticed that if you do a Google Maps search …
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
IE tumbles, Firefox regains market share mojo — IE6 numbers take a nose dive; Firefox reaps nearly all the benefit — Computerworld - Last month, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer posted its largest market share loss since November 2008, while Firefox reaped nearly all the benefit, Web metrics company Net Applications said today.
Lionel Laurent / Forbes:
Nokia Delays U.S. Music Launch — The unlimited-download service won't be released this year in the U.S. as planned. — LONDON — After promising earlier this year that a 2009 U.S. launch for the service was in the works, Nokia told Forbes on Monday that it has now been pushed back to 2010.
Discussion:
PC World, Softpedia News, Reuters, DailyTech, Mobile Roar, AppScout, Electronista, mocoNews, FierceMobileContent and Phone Scoop
Harry McCracken / PC World:
Opera 10: It's Final. And Worth Trying — Opera 10 Web browser packs new features including Turbo mode that spees up browsing on sluggish Net connections. — Recommends — Opera 10, the newest version of the browser that's arguably the most venerable one going, is now available in its final version.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, eWeek, internetnews.com, TechCrunch, CNET News, Download Squad, BetaNews and The Register
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Chrome Is Gaining Desktop Notifications — Things are really starting to get busy in the world of Chromium. Yesterday, we noted how the latest developer builds of Chrome were now Snow Leopard-ready. Today brings some other interesting news. — It looks like Chrome is about to gain …
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
iriver Story ebook reader revealed — Images of iriver's new ebook reader, the Story, have emerged, together with partial specifications for the 6-inch E Ink device. As well as having a full QWERTY keyboard and a memory card slot content with up to 32GBs, the Story is compatible with PDF …
Darren Murph / Engadget:
WD ships 7200RPM 2TB desktop hard drives: Caviar Black and RE4 — Surely you recall Western Digital's earlier 2TB effort, the Caviar Green — right? While said drive was just perfect for the casual storage junkie, performance gurus know that it left something to be desired on the speed front.
PE Hub Blog:
Khosla Ventures Announces New Funds, Partners — Khosla Ventures has closed two new funds with more than $1 billion in capital commitments. Khosla Ventures III was targeted at $750 million, and will focus on early and mid-stage venture investments in the cleantech and IT spaces.
Discussion:
paidContent
AWS Evangelist / Amazon Web Services Blog:
Amazon Multi-Factor Authentication for AWS Accounts — An additional layer of protection, once reserved for banks and large enterprises, is now available to protect your AWS account from unauthorized use. This should be especially attractive to our enterprise-level customers …
Discussion:
CrunchGear
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Serial Entrepreneur Al Warms Debuts Appolicious, Hoping iPhone Apps Fans Will Find It Delicious — Longtime Internet entrepreneur Al Warms paid a visit to BoomTown HQ today to show off a new company he has founded called Appolicious. — That is the unusual name Warms-who sold his Participate Media …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Google Chrome OS to Feature Single Sign-On for Chrome Browser — ...but What About the Other Web Browsers? — We don't know much about the upcoming OS from Google, Chrome OS, so most of the news we read about it involves speculation or, sometimes, rather terrible attempts at faking some supposedly official screenshots.
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Sony to distribute Google browser — Google has forged a distribution alliance with Sony's PC division and is in talks with other computer makers as it looks to promote its well-regarded but little-used Chrome browser. — The renewed efforts to expand the reach of Chrome come a year …
Discussion:
CNET News, eWeek, Ars Technica, Microsoft Watch, Between the Lines, Download Squad, DailyTech, Mashable!, Digits, Sony Insider, Dow Jones Newswires, ChannelWeb, jkOnTheRun, SlashGear, The Huffington Post, DailyFinance, paidContent, OStatic blogs, Pocket-lint.com, Engadget, industry.bnet.com and Web Browsers
AT&T:
AT&T Strengthens 3G Wireless Coverage in New York and New Jersey Areas — Deployment of 850 MHz Spectrum for 3G in the Metro NY, NJ Areas Substantially Improves In-Building Wireless Coverage, Adds Capacity to Support Surging Demand for Mobile Broadband
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Testing New Direct Response Home Page Ad Unit — While Facebook has created a variety of home page “engagement ad” units for big brands, Facebook is now testing a new kind of home page ad unit that doesn't drive users to a brand's Facebook Page, but rather prompts users to complete a direct response form.
Softpedia News:
Bing Maps Gets 101,486 Kilometers of New Imagery — Microsoft has made it a tradition to extend the new content available to end users via Bing Maps from month to month. In this context, August makes no exception to this rule, with the month bringing with it yet another refresh …
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
An author's guide to the Google Books flap — The issues surrounding Google's Book Search settlement are among the most complex surrounding the company this year: what do authors need to know about their rights and responsibilities? — Google has scanned over 10 million books since 2004 …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Oracle 11g Release 2 available — Oracle said Tuesday that the second release of its 11g database is generally available. The update comes two years after the launch of 11g. — Oracle Database 11g Release 2 is heavily focused on consolidating hardware and virtualization …
Discussion:
eWeek
Sam Gustin / DailyFinance:
Louis Vuitton wins $32.4 million in damages from Web host over knock-offs — In a startling legal verdict that could send chills through the American Internet service provider industry, a California jury has awarded Louis Vuitton, the signature division of worldwide luxury titan LVMH …
