Top Items:
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg — It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online. — To make this possible …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Jack Dorsey's Square Is (Almost) Open For Business — We've been tracking Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Square since May when we first got the details on the new mobile phone payment service. — Today the company unveiled its website for the first time, and they continue to test the product in private beta.
RELATED:
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Not All Of Square's “Advisors” Are Hollywood Sexpots — Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey today unveiled his new startup, Square, which lets any iPhone-owning merchant accept credit cards. — Square also announced its “advisors.” Among them: Alyssa Milano, of “Who's The Boss?” fame.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Square Worth $40 Million Before Launch — Earlier today we wrote about Square, the new payment service cofounded by Jim McKelvey and Twitter creator Jack Dorsey. We also interviewed Dorsey and used Square to buy a coffee. — We knew Square had closed a hyper-competitive venture round.
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Steve Jobs intervenes, approves Knocking streaming video app — A persuasive e-mail from an iPhone developer to Steve Jobs helped Pointy Heads Software get its Knocking Live Video—the first official iPhone app capable of streaming live video over 3G and WiFi connections—approved for sale in the App Store.
Discussion:
BusinessWeek, TheAppleBlog, 9 to 5 Mac, iLounge, MacNN, Edible Apple, Silicon Alley Insider and EverythingiCafe
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
AT&T Ranked Last in Consumer Reports' Best Cellphone Service Survey — The annual survey of wireless customer satisfaction from Consumer Reports hits the streets this week and it doesn't have much good to say about AT&T. In a canvass of more than 50,000 readers spanning 26 U.S. cities …
Discussion:
Computerworld, Bits, MacRumors iPhone Blog, PC World, 9 to 5 Mac, Mashable!, AppleInsider, PR Newswire, The Atlantic Business Channel, Pulse2, The iPhone Blog, TmoNews, Electronista, Erictric, DailyTech, EverythingiCafe, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Webomatica, FierceWireless, mocoNews, TUAW, Maximum PC, DisplayBlog and DSLreports
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
Huffington To Murdoch: Stop ‘Pointing Fingers’ — Arianna Huffington used her 25 minutes at the FTC's ‘How Will Journalism Survive The Internet Age?’ conference to take News Corp (NYSE: NWS). CEO Rupert Murdoch and his executives to task for their remarks comparing news aggregators to …
Discussion:
Ars Technica, The Huffington Post, Dow Jones Newswires, internetnews.com and Lockergnome Blog Network
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Christopher Soghoian / slight paranoia:
8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight — Disclaimer: The information presented here has been gathered and analyzed in my capacity as a graduate student at Indiana University. This data was gathered and analyzed on my own time, without using federal government resources.
Discussion:
Threat Level, Ars Technica, InformationWeek, Techdirt, WMPoweruser.com and Freedom to Tinker
David Faber / CNBC.com:
GE, Comcast Complete Deal Over NBC Universal: Source — The deal between General Electric and Comcast over a majority stake in NBC Universal is complete, and there is nothing left to do but process paper, a source close to the merger told CNBC Tuesday. — A deal is expected to be completed …
Discussion:
Mashable!, Between the Lines, 24/7 Wall St., Erictric, CNET News, Electronista and Gearlog
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Is YouTube Ready for Primetime? Google Wants to Stream TV, for a Fee. — YouTube, which is already trying out the movie rental business, wants to get into TV too. — Google's video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me.
Discussion:
PC World, VentureBeat, Mashable!, Silicon Alley Insider, AppleInsider, Maximum PC, NBC Bay Area, The Register, EverythingiCafe, Online Media Cultist, fierceonlinevideo.com …, NewTeeVee, The iPhone Blog, bub.blicio.us, CNET News, Erictric, Electronista, Softpedia News, MacRumors and TECH.BLORGE.com
Alex Petcherski / The Official Google Blog:
Show me the pictures: better format for image results — I love when I get images back in my Google search results. There's no better way to quickly understand the difference between an ocelot and a clouded leopard. But sometimes I want to see more images to really make sure I've identified the right jungle cat.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Apple, Psystar strike deal in copyright case — Mac clone maker to pay Apple unspecified damages, but may be able to keep selling systems — Computerworld - Apple and Mac clone maker Psystar agreed Monday to settle a 17-month lawsuit that will effectively stop Psystar from preinstalling Apple's Mac OS X …
Discussion:
internetnews.com, Engadget, 9 to 5 Mac, Digital Daily, AppleInsider, Maximum PC, MacNN, The Register, Between the Lines, NEWSFACTOR, p2pnet news, Erictric, OSNews, TUAW, CNET News, Geeky-Gadgets, Macsimum News, Digital Trends, DailyTech, NBC Bay Area, Gadget Lab, CrunchGear, MacRumors, Lockergnome Blog Network, TheAppleBlog, TechSpot, PlagiarismToday and Pocket-lint.com
Startup diaries:
Don't be evil, Craigslist — Yesterday (Nov 30th 2009), at approximately 2pm PST, Craigslist effectively killed all Yahoo Pipes projects that use Craigslist as a data source. For those unfamiliar with Yahoo Pipes, it's a nifty tool that allows you to take data from anywhere on the net …
Thanks:atul
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Web-based toy maker Smith & Tinker lays off 30 percent of staff — Smith & Tinker had a high-profile launch of its Nanovor toy and accompanying game web site this fall. It was billed as a marriage of toys and online games. — But yesterday the company laid off about 30 percent of its staff …
Boy Genius Report:
Apple's iDVD getting refreshed with iTunes LP creation support? — That's what one of our connects are telling us. We've been informed that Apple plans to completely redo their iDVD application (in addition to others in iLife 2010), and besides iDVD not being refreshed in a pretty long time …
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft exec: Quitting Google as tough as stopping smoking — There were some great insights at last night's Xconomy Forum on the Future of Search and Information Discovery, and we'll get to those in a moment. But first, the primary challenge facing any company thinking about getting …
Discussion:
Xconomy
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
One of Google Chrome OS's hardest tasks? Printing — Many challenges will have to be solved before Google is ready to release Chrome OS, it's browser-based operating system for Netbooks. One of the biggest ones could be something as far offline as it gets.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Charlie Wolf: How the Mac roared back — Needham & Co.'s senior analyst explains how Apple outgrew the PC market seven fold — Click to enlarge. — Needham's Charlie Wolf was as surprised as anyone when Apple (AAPL) reported that it had sold a record 3.05 million Macintosh computers …
Discussion:
The Register
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Comcast keeps promise, launches data usage meter — Nearly a year ago, Comcast first announced that it would establish a data usage tracking meter to help its broadband customers determine the amount of data being used on their accounts, especially since the company imposed a 250 GB cap on usage last year.
Discussion:
Gizmodo, Comcast Voices, Telecompetitor, GigaOM, Network World, CloudAve, DSLreports, Electronista, Erictric and TECH.BLORGE.com
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
Under Threat, Nielsen Accelerates Plan to Measure Online Video — Tells Networks, Agencies It Will Link TV and Web Watching to Offer ‘Single Source’ Viewer Data by Late 2010 — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Facing a client insurgency that could threaten its TV-ratings franchise …
Katherine Boehret / Wall Street Journal:
Videos on TV With a Flip of a Channel — Remember when families used to gather around the television to watch home videos? The process sounds old fashioned now that we spend so much time watching videos on our computer screens. The company that introduced the popular Flip hand-held video cameras …
Marissa Mayer / The Official Google Blog:
Zeitgeist 2009: the collective consciousness — Curiosity — it's why we search the web. Whether searching for the latest news, a popular holiday gift, a website you've heard about, the latest singing sensation, or the trailer to a blockbuster film, you come to Google with something on your mind.
Discussion:
SortiPreneur, Google, PC World, internetnews.com, ReadWriteWeb, Technologizer, Forbes, TechCrunch, eWeek, Search Engine Journal, matthewbuckland.com, Softpedia News, Switched, Google Operating System, ChannelWeb, GigaOM, Pocket-lint.com, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Seeking Alpha, CNET News, InformationWeek, Search Engine Watch, ResourceShelf and Lifehacker
Nathania Johnson / Search Engine Watch:
Ask.com's Top Questions of 2009: Refreshing, Existential and Disturbing — Ask.com gets a lot of their search queries in the form of a question - more so than any other search engine. So, it makes sense that their end-of-the-year list features questions instead of keywords.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
XP's usage share down, Win 7, Firefox & IE8 up — Data released by web metrics company Net Applications indicates that the release of Windows 7 to the general public has put a significant dent into Windows XP's usage share. — For the November period, web usage of XP dropped by 1.45%, while Vista's usage share only dropped by 0.2%.
Zee / The Next Web:
Introducing twitter's first augmented reality iPhone app with geo-tagging built in. — Twitter 360 is an iPhone app that lets you visually see the flow of tweets from locations nearby, layered on top of your natural “real” environment. — Thanks to to the iPhone's video camera and Twitter's …
Discussion:
9 to 5 Mac, AppsFire.com ★ …, Mobile Entertainment, IntoMobile, I4U News and Google Maps Mania
Nick Eaton / The Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft says black screens not caused by security updates — Updated 3:09 p.m.: Prevx posts response to Microsoft's statement. — Contrary to reports earlier this week, Microsoft said Tuesday the “black screens of death” some people have attributed to recent Windows security patches are not caused by those updates.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Ex-BizWeek Editor John Byrne's New Company Has a Name, but No Product — In the wake of Bloomberg's purchase of BusinessWeek, longtime BW veteran John Byrne is leaving his job running the company's Web site and will start his own thing instead. — What is that thing?
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Office Web Apps access comes to Windows Mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry and more (with some caveats) — For the past year, Microsoft officials have said repeatedly — without offering any specifics — that Office Web Apps will work on mobile phones. But now that the public beta of Office Web Apps is available …