Top Items:
Ina Fried / CNET News:
T-Mobile halts sales of Sidekick — Wireless carrier T-Mobile USA has, at least temporarily, stopped selling all models of the Sidekick in the wake of a massive hardware failure that resulted in many customers losing their e-mail, contacts, and other data. — As of Sunday, all models …
Discussion:
Technologizer, The Toybox, Mashable!, Data Center Knowledge, Maximum PC, dailywireless.org, TECH.BLORGE.com, The Tech Herald …, TechVi and AppleInsider
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John Herrman / Gizmodo:
T-Mobile Lets Furious Sidekick Users Ditch Their Contracts for Free — T-Mobile's initial apologia to Sidekick users grieving their lost data was a joke. A month of free data service? To access what? Now they've manned up, giving affected customers something they might actually want: A way out of their contracts.
Discussion:
Hiptop3.com, BetaNews, CNET News, Technologizer, NEWSFACTOR, Wall Street Journal, I4U News, Switched and TechCrunch
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Genentech's (And Apple Board Member) Arthur Levinson Leaves Google Board — Genentech chairman Arthur D. Levinson is resigning from Google's Board of Directors, the Mountain View company announced earlier this morning. His departure comes shortly after Google Chairman and CEOEricSchmidt resigned …
Discussion:
Macworld, Search Engine Land, Reuters, BusinessWeek, 9 to 5 Mac, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Ars Technica, The Register, Between the Lines, Softpedia News, CNET News, Digital Daily, The Big Money, Silicon Alley Insider, Search Engine Journal, GigaOM, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, MacNN, Google, GMSV, Mashable! and Pocket-lint.com
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Jason Hiner / Between the Lines:
Ellison rips IBM, shows off Sun-Oracle benchmarks, offers $10M prize — On Sunday night Larry Ellison took the stage at his annual event, Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, and came out swinging like a samurai warrior with a newly-sharpened sword. His main target: IBM.
Discussion:
istockanalyst.com, The Register, GigaOM, eWeek, InfoWorld, Dealscape, Softpedia News, Agence France Presse, TG Daily, San Francisco Chronicle and Mercury News
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch Europe:
Spotify competitor Deezer raises €6.5 million Series B round — [France] - Music search and discovery engine Deezer has raised €6.5 million in a second round of financing, bringing the total amount invested in the French upstart to approx. €12.2 million.
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Why Email No Longer Rules... And what that means for the way we communicate — Services like Twitter, Facebook and Google Wave create a constant stream of interaction among users—for better or worse. — Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.
Discussion:
Rough Type, MediaPost, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Lockergnome Blog Network, Screenwerk, Houston Chronicle TechBlog, Inc.com, CloudAve and Venture Capital Dispatch, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Windows Vista: A Review Recap — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't so sure about how folks are going to respond to Windows 7. As Mary-Jo Foley says in a ZDNet blog post, Ballmer told Bloomberg that “The test feedback (on Windows 7) has been good, but the test feedback on Vista was good.
Mike / Understanding Google Maps & Local Search:
Google Replaces Tele Atlas Data in US with Google StreetView Data — There has been a lot of activity of late in Google Maps with rollout of Places and its attendant controversy, tests of the new Local Listing Ads, Ads in the iPhone, Streetview in Canada & the Czech Republic and lots, lots more.
China.org.cn:
China bans foreign investment in online gaming — China's press and copyright authorities have banned foreign investors from operating online games “in any form” in the country. — A circular jointly released by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Only 17 venture capital firms raise money in Q3 — fewest in 15 years — Venture capitalists are a breed in decline. — Just 17 venture capital firms raised new funds in the third quarter of 2009, the smallest number of number of firms in any quarter since the third quarter of 1994 …
Nicola Clark / New York Times:
Lufthansa Bringing Back Onboard Wi-Fi — PARIS — Three years after unplugging its in-flight Internet service because of insufficient demand, Lufthansa said Monday that it would reintroduce a new and improved version of the service on most of its long-haul flights by the first half of 2010.
Discussion:
CrunchGear
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Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
The $1.5 billion scramble for Vente Privee by Gilt, eBay and Amazon — [France] On stage at last year's Le Web an argument broke out between co-founder Loic Le Meur and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington over whether Europe was capable of producing a ‘big win’ Web company or whether Skype was, perhaps, just a one-hit wonder.
Discussion:
Quintura blog
The Steve Rubel Lifestream:
Posterous Catches Friendfeed — Since it was acquired, I have basically abandoned Friendfeed. I love the service, but I am waiting to see how the team integrates it into Facebook. — Unsurprisingly, traffic to the Friendfeed site has plummeted since the acquisition in August.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Glam steals Yahoo's head of display advertising, Josh Jacobs — Glam, the fast growing content and ad network for women, has hired away Josh Jacobs, a top advertising executive from Yahoo. — The move is significant because Jacobs was Yahoo's top executive for online display advertising.
Erik Kirschbaum / Reuters:
Merkel criticizes Google for copyright infringement — BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday criticized the efforts of Google Inc to build a massive digital library, saying the Internet should not be exempt from copyright laws. — In her weekly video podcast …
Jason Notte / TheStreet.com:
Microsoft's Ad Blitz Targets Wrong Enemy — REDMOND, Wash. (TheStreet) — Within the last year, Microsoft(MSFT Quote) has been Jerry Seinfeld's pal, a PC, a party planner and a four-year-old girl. It has been a costly identity crisis. — It has also been a long 18 months of ad wars that's …
Amanda Andrews / Telegraph:
Sky Songs service ‘will rival iTunes’ — BSKYB will next week launch its digital music service, Sky Songs, in a move designed to challenge the domination of iTunes and Spotify in the music downloads business. — After lengthy delays, the satellite broadcaster has signed deals with music suppliers EMI …
Discussion:
BBC, Fast Company, Financial Times, TechCrunch Europe, Tech Central, 9 to 5 Mac, The Register and Music Ally
Mike Chino / INHABITAT:
LG Unveils Solar Powered E-Book Reader — If we were stuck on a desert island with only one book, this recently unveiled solar e-book would be at the top of our list! Designed by LG Display, the sleek reader features a wafer-fin photovoltaic cell that provides it with a steady stream of solar energy.
Discussion:
lgdisplay.com, OLED TV Display Lighting …, CrunchGear, Newlaunches.com, DailyTech, Gearlog, dailywireless.org, I4U News, Gadgetell, TeleRead, Engadget, Maximum PC and Slashdot
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words — It's almost a truism in the tech world that copyright owners reflexively oppose new inventions that do (or might) disrupt existing business models. But how many techies actually know what rightsholders have said and written for the last hundred years on the subject?
Joe Fay / The Register:
‘Amateur’ IBM brings down Air New Zealand — Mainframe power failure strands thousands — The boss of Air New Zealand has launched an astonishing attack on IBM after a catastrophic system crash crippled the airline and left passengers stranded. — The massive IBM letdown …
