Top Items:
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
A Windows to Help You Forget — In just two weeks, on Oct. 22, Microsoft's long operating-system nightmare will be over. The company will release Windows 7, a faster and much better operating system than the little-loved Windows Vista, which did a lot to harm both the company's reputation …
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Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
What's wrong with Windows 7 — Reading between the lines of Walt Mossberg's review — It's a given that Windows 7, scheduled for release in two weeks, is an improvement over Vista. But how does it stack up against Apple's (AAPL) Snow Leopard? — The definitive word comes …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Ballmer: Testers didn't ring Vista warning bells; Could the same happen with Windows 7? — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has done his best over the past year-plus to try to dampen expectations around Windows 7. He's doing it again this week during his pre-launch European tour, telling press …
Discussion:
Gizmodo
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Twitter Talking Separately to Microsoft and Google About Big Data-Mining Deals — Is there gold in them thar tweets? — Maybe so, because-according to sources familiar with the situation-Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals …
Discussion:
eWeek, MediaPost, ReadWriteWeb, Guardian, internetnews.com, paidContent, Mashable!, Venture Capital Dispatch, Fast Company, Inc.com, Softpedia News, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, GMSV, Lockergnome Blog Network, CNET News, Silicon Alley Insider, TECH.BLORGE.com, The Noisy Channel, Search Engine Journal, TheStreet.com, The Next Web, ParisLemon, WebProNews, Pocket-lint.com and PR News, Thanks:enauzer
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Twitter Status:
Timeline delays this morning — We are currently investigating a problem causing many users' timelines to be delayed. We will update with status here shortly.
Discussion:
CNET News, TechFlash, Mashable!, Silicon Alley Insider, Pocket-lint.com, Twittercism, AppScout and The Huffington Post
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Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Twitter Down, Again, Just Like the Old Days — Unless the 400+ people I follow on Twitter have all gone mute at the same time, I suspect that something's wrong with Twitter, since I haven't seen a new message for the last hour or so. A quick scan of Facebook — and Twitter's own search engine …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Stuck In The Twitter Jam? Try This Hidden Route. — So, I'm a late riser most days (I like to go to bed late, real late). And today when I awoke, I thought it was a Vanilla Sky dream situation — but rather than Tom Cruise being the last person on Earth, I thought I was.
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
IPhone Tethering Still Unavailable, AT&T Says — AT&T subscribers still won't be able to use their iPhones as wireless modems for their computers, despite the carrier's reversed position on Internet-phone applications. … Tethering, the process of using an Internet-enabled mobile device …
Discussion:
InformationWeek, Digital Daily, AppleInsider, iPhone Buzz, IPHONETOUCH.BLORGE, Engadget, MacRumors, iLounge, Softpedia News, The iPhone Blog, MacNN, PR News and The Mac Observer
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunchIT:
Ozzie on the realtime wave — In June, I spent several days on the Microsoft campus talking with Microsoft executives about the impact of realtime and the emerging era of cloud computing. My conversation with Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie began with a discussion of the recently unveiled Google Wave …
Reza Ziaei / Google Mobile Blog:
Introducing Search Options for mobile — Finding the exact information you need sometimes requires filtering and refining your search results. Earlier in the year, we launched a collection of tools called Search Options which enable you to easily and quickly do this from a computer.
Discussion:
MacRumors iPhone Blog, Google Watch, PC World, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, MobileContentToday, WebProNews, AppScout, FierceMobileContent, ReadWriteWeb and Phone Scoop, Thanks:atul
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
BlackBerry Bold 2 to be announced October 21 for T-Mobile, AT&T — We have it on good authority that T-Mobile and AT&T both currently plan on announcing the Bold 2 — also known as the Onyx — on October 21. As a refresher, this would be the touchpad-driven piece with model number 9700 that's …
Discussion:
Boy Genius Report, Gizmodo, BB Geeks, MobileCrunch, Softpedia News, Unwired View, I4U News, IntoMobile, Gadgetell, Engadget Mobile, SoftSailor, PR News, TmoNews, Electricpig.co.uk, Electronista, Gearlog and TechVi
Fred / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
It's My Browser, and I'll Auto-Click if I Want To — Free file hosting provider MediaFire seems to think that, when you follow a link to download a file from its service, it has the right to control your browser. This is yet another example of a web site owner forgetting that it's your computer …
Discussion:
TechLaw, Mozilla Links, freakbits.com, Boing Boing, Jennifer Granick's blog and The Shout
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Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Join the Minimalist Google Homepage Prototype — You might have heard of the new experiment Google is running for its homepage, showing only logo and search box (and apparently search buttons, at times) unless your mouse moves over the page. To join this prototype, you can go to google.com …
Stephen Shankland / Crave:
Intel's Light Peak optical links could arrive in 2010 — In September, Intel showed off Light Peak as if it were the latest the latest hot idea out of the labs. But the fiber-optic communication technology could well be coming to near you next year rather than in some distant sci-fi future.
Jennifer Vilaga / Fast Company:
FTC Responds to Blogger Fears: “That $11,000 Fine is Not True” — As you've likely heard by now, the Federal Trade Commission is trying to reign in freebie-grabbing bloggers and graft-happy social media users masquerading as unbiased critics. The agency announced an update to the FTC Act of 1980 …
Matt Asay / CNET News:
Cisco becomes a major Linux server vendor overnight — In the battle for supremacy among the software industry's Big Four, Cisco may be placing the biggest bets and angling for the biggest returns. Some still think of Cisco as a networking hardware vendor, but hardware is simply Cisco's beachhead …
John Poirier / Reuters:
Lawmakers seek FCC probe into Google Voice — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives called on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Google Inc's ability to block calls to rural telephone exchanges.
Discussion:
DSLreports
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
Yes, Rock Band is coming to iPhone. Here's proof. — A few weeks back, we got a press release from EA's PR company. It was tucked within an attachment titled “Rock Band Verizon iPhone Fact Sheet_V3.docx”. As if seeing “iPhone” behind “Verizon” wasn't strange enough …
Venture Capital Dispatch:
VC Fund-Raising Drops, Marketing Not Worth ‘Brain Damage’ — Just like their portfolio companies, venture capital firms continue to find it difficult to raise funding compared with last year. — Through the end of the third quarter, 83 venture funds raised $8 billion …
Joanna Stern / Gizmodo:
Sony Vaio X: World's Lightest Laptop $1300 (Actually Affordable, For a Vaio) — Sony's X comes out from its dark hiding spot. Not only is the 11-inch carbon fiber notebook super slim, but it's actually affordable on the Sony scale of economy, starting at $1,300. (Update: It's got netbook guts.)
Discussion:
GottaBeMobile.com, Engadget, Softpedia News, The Toybox, Liliputing, Sony Insider and Electronista
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunchIT:
Ozzie FUSEs social media teams in Microsoft reorg — For months now we've been wondering when Microsoft was going to start making moves in the social media space. Rumors of talks with Twitter have been swirling at all levels of the company, but now a subtle re-org may shed light …
Discussion:
eWeek, blog.seattlepi.com, TechFlash, Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, CNET News and All about Microsoft
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
End of the line for NVIDIA chipsets, and that's official — GPU giant NVIDIA has confirmed that the company is putting the brakes on the Nforce chipset line because of legal wranglings with Intel. — According to an spokesman, NVIDIA will “postpone further chipset investments”.
Emma Barnett / Telegraph:
YouTube to sign landmark content deal with Channel 4 — YouTube and Channel 4 are on the brink of signing a landmark content deal which will see the majority of the broadcaster's content hosted in full on the video sharing site. — YouTube and Channel 4 have been in talks for at least …
Ppk / QuirksBlog:
There is no WebKit on Mobile — Last week I spent a lot of time on WebKit in order to produce a comprehensive comparison of all WebKits. My purpose was to prove there is no “WebKit on Mobile,” and to gain some more insight in the complicated relations between the various WebKits.
Rosa Golijan / Gizmodo:
Iomega's StorCenter ix2-200 NAS Has Bluetooth, Time Machine, Chubby Exterior — Iomega's on to something with the StorCenter ix2-200: built-in torrent and Time Machine support, Bluetooth-based uploads from phones, remote access, and lotsa spiffy features wrapped up in an earth-friendly green gadget.
Discussion:
Macworld, Digital Trends, TUAW, Softpedia News, Electronista, internetnews.com, Engadget, The Mac Observer and Crave
Google Webmaster Central Blog:
A proposal for making AJAX crawlable — Today we're excited to propose a new standard for making AJAX-based websites crawlable. This will benefit webmasters and users by making content from rich and interactive AJAX-based websites universally accessible through search results on any search engine that chooses to take part.
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Google Apps: A Long Road Ahead — Google's efforts to cater to corporate and government customers — the enterprise market — have long been seen as half-hearted. Google is a consumer company, after all, so the enterprise side of the business looked to be the poor relation.
