Top Items:
Abdur / Twitter Blog:
Top Twitter Trends of 2009 — My name is Abdur and I'm part of the Research team here at Twitter. As Chief Scientist, it's my job to interpret data so we can understand and appreciate how Twitter is constantly evolving. Since it's the end of the year, we thought it would be interesting …
Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
Russians Buy Stake in Web Games — SAN FRANCISCO — The Russian firm that invested more than $200 million in Facebook this year is making another bet on the United States Internet industry. — Digital Sky Technologies, or D.S.T., an investment firm with offices in Moscow and London …
Discussion:
Financial Times, Mashable!, GigaOM, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, paidContent, The Next Web Network, Howard Lindzon, www.pocketgamer.biz and Pulse2
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Eric Eldon / Inside Social Games:
Rumor: Zynga to Introduce Employee Stock Sale Plan as It Waits On IPO [Confirmed] — Zynga is planning to let at least some employees sell a portion of their stock in the hot social gaming company to outside investors, according to two industry sources. Institutional Venture Partners …
Leander Kahney / Cult of Mac:
AT&T Responds to Fake Steve's Operation Chokehold — AT&T has dismissed Fake Steve's Operation Chokehold protest as an attention-getting stunt. — Fake Steve is calling on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T's data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18.
Discussion:
App Advice, DailyTech, Computerworld, Truthdig, The Register, Appletell, Gadget Lab, Gear Live, OhGizmo!, The iPhone Blog, iPhone Savior, ChannelWeb, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, Gizmodo, CloudAve, Neowin.net, Zatz Not Funny!, EverythingiCafe, techeblog.com, blogs.chron.com, GottaBeMobile.com and The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Suggests You Lie, Break Its Own Terms Of Service To Keep Your Privacy — Here's a new one. As Facebook continues to grapple with the negative press over its privacy overhaul, it's now suggesting a new way to protect your personal information: lie about it.
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft's Bing App Debuts on iPhone (So When's the Android Version Coming?) — Microsoft's feisty little search service, Bing, has finally made an iPhone app, which is now up on the Apple iTunes app store tonight. — Bing showed off the free app at a party thrown by its mobile team in San Francisco.
Discussion:
Download Squad, The Register, Computerworld, All about Microsoft, Search Engine Watch, paidContent, Search Engine Land, Softpedia News, Search Blog, Gizmodo, The iPhone Blog, AppScout, BetaNews, PC World, GottaBeMobile.com, CNET News, LiveSide, Search Engine Journal, Tech Trader Daily, Neowin.net, 9 to 5 Mac, ResourceShelf, Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch
Kevin J. O'Brien / New York Times:
Europe Drops Microsoft Antitrust Case Over Browsers — BERLIN — European regulators dropped their antitrust case against Microsoft on Wednesday after the company agreed to offer customers a choice of rival Web browsers. The settlement ends what could have been a second costly legal battle for the American software giant.
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple wins permanent injunction against clone Mac maker Psystar — First on AI: Apple and Psystar concluded 17 months of litigation Tuesday when a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against the unauthorized Mac OS X hardware creator, banning it from selling hardware with Apple's operating system.
Discussion:
CrunchGear, Edible Apple, The Loop, Digital Daily, SlashGear, Softpedia News, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, TUAW, Gizmodo, Pocket-lint.com, MacDailyNews and TG Daily
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Professor claims Square took his credit card reading technology — Square, a new company that makes a small device to let anyone make a credit card payment from their mobile phone, has probably stirred up more excitement than any other startup launching in recent months.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Bing Crushes Yahoo Again In November — Another good month for Microsoft's Bing, and another very bad month for Yahoo, according to comScore's November search stats just delivered via a note from JPMorgan's Imran Khan. — Yahoo search is going down the tubes.
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Is the Google Phone an Unauthorized Replicant? — Motorola tugged at the hearts of science-fiction fans everywhere when it announced that its first smartphone using Google's Android software would be called Droid, the name given to the lovable robots in “Star Wars.”
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John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
PastryKit — One of the recent themes here has been the topic of iPhone OS web apps — apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch that are built with nothing more than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And specifically, the issues of how good an experience iPhone web apps can offer, and how easy they are to develop …
Mia / YouTube Blog:
What You Watched and Searched for on YouTube in 2009 — This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we're sharing our official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. Some moments were big (President Obama's inauguration) …
Google LatLong:
Go beyond just a few stars: See what makes a business shine — Today, we launched a new feature to rank and show distinguishing aspects for businesses on their Place Pages. By taking a look at a Place Page, you can quickly get a better sense of what people are saying about a business …
Discussion:
Softpedia News, WebProNews, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Understanding Google …, Thanks:atul
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Gagan Biyani / MobileCrunch:
Bar-code Scanning RedLaser iPhone App reaches 750K downloads, over $1M in revenue — Yep, it's still happening. You can still become a millionaire on the iPhone without a marketing budget and a brand name. Occipital, the company behind RedLaser [iTunes Link], has struck gold with its barcode-scanning iPhone app.
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Worth Remembering: Evernote App Hits Android Market (Screenshots) — Digital memory aid and note taking service Evernote already has mobile applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry, among others, but so far it wasn't part of the now more than 20,000 applications for the Android platform.
Discussion:
GigaOM, Android Central, AndroidGuys, IntoMobile, GottaBeMobile.com, SlashGear, jkOnTheRun, Mashable! and Pulse2
Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:
Vimeo Sued Over Lip Dubs — Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo. — A few years ago, video-sharing site Vimeo hit the big time with a viral video of its employees lip-syncing along to Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta after work one day.
Sebastian Anthony / Download Squad:
Facebook enables ‘reply via email’ to status updates — Blam! Just like that: you can now reply to Facebook status updates via email. Just hit ‘reply’, type out your response, hit ‘send’, and voila! — I have no idea if it has just been enabled for the entire Facebook userbase …
Discussion:
Pocket-lint.com
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
kaChing Raises $7.5 Million To Turn Mutual Funds On Their Heads — kaChing, a new financial startup that's looking to rethink the way people invest, has closed a $7.5 million funding round led by DAG Ventures. The company had previously raised $3 million from Silicon Valley notables including …
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Apple Gestapo: How Apple Hunts Down Leaks — They call themselves the Worldwide Loyalty Team. Among some employees, they are known as the Apple Gestapo, a group of moles always spying in headquarters and stores, reporting directly to Jobs and Oppenheimer. Here's how they hunt people down.
Darrell Etherington / TheAppleBlog:
Apple Approves Video Recording App for iPhone 2G and 3G — If you've been reconsidering your position as a jailbreaker thanks to recent security threats or Apple's strong disapproval, there's now one more reason to consider going legit. Apple just approved a new app that allows iPhones other than the 3GS to record video.
Discussion:
The Next Web Network, Pocket-lint.com, Gizmodo, T3.com News, Hardware 2.0, TechStartups.com, MobileContentToday, PC World, CrunchGear and MacNN, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Friendster Valued At Just $26.4 Million In Sale — We've got more details on the Friendster acquisition announced last week. Rumors were floating that the buyer, MOL Global, paid as much as $100 million for Friendster. The real price, we've confirmed from multiple sources, was under $30 million.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Biden Convenes ‘Piracy Summit’ That Appears To Be Entirely One-Sided — Vice President Joe Biden has long been known to be a supporter of Hollywood when it comes to making copyright laws more draconian (and, not surprisingly, Hollywood has been a strong monetary supporter of Biden campaigns).
Wendy Koch / USA Today:
Microsoft giving software to curb child porn — Children whose sexual abuse has been circulated in photos online could get some relief from new software that makes it easier to remove child pornography from the Internet. — Microsoft, which developed the PhotoDNA software …
Brenna Ehrlich / Mashable!:
McDonald's Adds Free Wi-Fi to the Menu — In an effort to become more of a “destination” than a grab-n-go eatery, that most iconic of fast food chains — McDonald's — is now serving up free wi-fi. Starting mid-January, the restaurant will nix the $2.95 fee that it had previously charged …
Robert Andrews / mocoNews:
Guardian's iPhone App Sold 9,000 Downloads In First Two Days — Guardian.co.uk's new iPhone app got some favourable reviews upon its release on Sunday night. Even more favourable - it shifted 9,000 in the first two days, Guardian News & Media told us. — At £2.39 a pop in the UK …
