Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google In Discussions To Acquire Yelp For A Half Billion Dollars Or More — Google and Yelp are in advanced acquisition negotiations, we've confirmed from multiple sources. And while the deal isn't done, we've heard that it's very likely to close. The price is supposedly at least $500 million.
Discussion:
Digits, CNET News, MediaPost, ReadWriteWeb, MediaMemo, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, Google Watch, GigaOM, Silicon Alley Insider, internetnews.com, Between the Lines, NBC Bay Area, Mobile Marketing Watch, PE Hub Blog, BuzzMachine, Mihmorandum, Pulse2, BayNewser, Traffick, Understanding Google … and Neowin.net
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Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
Google Is in Talks to Buy Yelp — SAN FRANCISCO — In a sign that Google is interested in broadening its reach among local businesses, the search giant is in acquisition talks with Yelp, the review site for local businesses, according to three peoplewith knowledge of the deal.
Spencer E. Ante / Business Week:
Verizon Prepares for the iPhone — Verizon Wireless is buttressing its network in the event Apple drops AT&T as the exclusive carrier of its popular smartphone — There's no telling yet whether or when AT&T (T) might lose its position as the sole U.S. carrier of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.
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Phone Arena:
Verizon to get Palm Pre Plus, LG VS750, and Motorola Devour smartphones — Published on: Today by PhoneArena Team — Thanks to a few of our tipsters, we've learned what new smartphones are lurking to be released by Verizon Wireless over the next couple of months.
Discussion:
DailyTech, InfoWorld, Engadget, AndroidOS.in, EverythingPre, WMExperts, Softpedia News, Android Central, Android Phone Fans, I4U News, AndroidGuys and SlashGear
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:Verizon prepares for iPhone? Don't believe the headlines
Discussion:
Creative Capital
Tnkgrl / tnkgrl Mobile:
Exclusive: Google Nexus One hands on — I just played with the Google Nexus One for a few minutes, Here's my report: — It's extremely thin — It's much nicer looking in person than in pictures — There's a 4 GB micro-SD card installed — The battery capacity is 1400 mAh
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Twitter Hacked, Defaced By “Iranian Cyber Army” — We've received multiple tips right around 10 pm that Twitter was hacked and defaced with the message below. The site is currently offline. We're looking into this and waiting on a response from Twitter. — The message reads: — Iranian Cyber Army
Discussion:
PC World, internetnews.com, BBC, Maximum PC, http://www.techsploder.com …, Graham Cluley's blog, One By One Media, Twitter Status, GigaOM, Mashable!, Boy Genius Report, techPresident, Switched, CNET News, DailyTech, Lifehacker, Digits, Technology Review, Guardian, Between the Lines, Damon Cortesi's Blog, dailywireless.org, dot.life, GMSV, Techland, Fudzilla, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Gear Diary, The Register, Gizmodo, Appfrica and Softpedia News
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Chris Davies / SlashGear:
Notion Ink Tegra Android smartpad uses Pixel Qi display — CES 2010 is likely to see a fair few internet tablets being announced, but SlashGear has heard about one particular model that has more than a little promise. Notion Ink's as-yet unnamed Android “smartpad” is based …
NASDAQ.com:
Mac Clone Computer Maker Psystar To Shutter — SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Psystar Corp. is in the process of closing down its operations, a move that follows a court decision earlier in the week barring it from selling products already found to have violated Apple Inc. (AAPL) copyrights.
Discussion:
CNET News, internetnews.com, Between the Lines, MacRumors, TUAW, AppleInsider, CrunchGear, Ars Technica, Macsimum News and Edible Apple
Steve / The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs:
Some last-minute thoughts — Obviously we will be following Operation Chokehold today and hope to bring you up-to-the-minute coverage of events as they are unfolding around the nation. To do that, we'll need your help. We need you to send in reports, updates, photos — whatever.
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Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Verizon Responds To FCC Inquiry On ETFs, Erroneous $1.99 Fee — And the excuses are just as lame as you thought they'd be... · fcc · business · wireless — As we've been covering, the FCC recently sent a latter to Verizon asking them to explain why they just doubled …
Discussion:
mocoNews, BetaNews, Post Tech, GigaOM, The Hill, Tech Daily Dose, Wireless Week, Electronista, PC Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Epicenter, FierceWireless and Free Press
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
DRM Fiasco Ruins James Cameron's Avatar 3D Preview — ‘Avatar’ from Titanic director James Cameron is certainly the most anticipated film of the year. — Set on a moon under siege by humans determined to exploit its resources, this science fiction epic has been in the planning for many years …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Where in the world are Apple's 78 million handsets? — Mostly in the U.S., but Japan, France, Australia and China are coming on fast, says AdMob — Click to enlarge. Source: AdMob — By the end of December, according to Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, Apple's (AAPL) will have sold 78 million iPhones and iPod touches worldwide.
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
Twitter App Store Oneforty Gets Funded — Back in June, Twitter app store oneforty became the first TechStars Boston company to get seed funding (just two weeks after presenting). Now it has become the first one to get institutional VC funding, with a small round that was led by Flybridge Capital Partners.
Discussion:
paidContent, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, TechStars, The Next Web Network and Mass High Tech
Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider:
Amazon Won't Be The Only One Selling Kindle Books Next Year (AMZN) — Scribd, the YouTube for print, is working on a new way to get e-books onto your Kindle without buying them from Amazon. — Right now, to get one of the tens of millions of Scribd documents has — books, papers …
Mia / YouTube Blog:
Facebook Feeds Begin Showing Up on YouTube's Homepage — You might have noticed that YouTube's been getting a lot more social lately. We've launched several features in the last few months that let you better connect with the platforms that matter most to you (and discover new videos you're likely to love in the process).
Discussion:
NewTeeVee
Fred / A VC:
Open APIs and Open Standards — As Dave Winer has been pointing out in recent weeks, there is something quite interesting happening in the blogging/microblogging world. — First WordPress allowed posting and reading wordpress blogs via the Twitter API. — Then yesterday our portfolio company Tumblr did the same.
Joab Jackson / PC World:
Mozilla Rolls out Latest Firefox Beta — The Mozilla development community has rolled out the latest beta of its Firefox 3.6 browser. — In addition to the usual round of bug fixes, Firefox 3.6 beta version 5, comes with a number of new features and performance enhancements.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google Grabs Plaxo's CTO To “Turbocharge” The Opening Of The Social Web — Back in June, Google lost Kevin Marks, one of the social web's main proponents within the company. Today, they've gained a new one: Joseph Smarr. — Smarr is joining Google to “help drive a new company-wide focus …
Lance Whitney / CNET News:
Sex, porn, Jacko top kids' searches in 2009 — Sex, porn, and Michael Jackson were among the most popular items kids searched for online in 2009, as tracked by Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton. — Symantec on Thursday revealed the top 100 favorite search terms among children 18 and under found …
Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:
Rdio makes its debut... as an iPhone app — Rdio is set to be one of the more intriguing music startups of 2010 - it's a streaming subscription service set up by Skype/Kazaa founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom. It's still in stealth mode, but has today launched an iPhone app …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, IntoMobile, App Advice, Mashable!, TechCrunch and paidContent, Thanks:beamadelica
Reuters:
Sales of music video games plummet in 2009 — DENVER (Billboard) - What a difference a year makes. — The music-game category raked in $1.4 billion in revenue last year, according to Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, driven largely by sales of “Rock Band 2” and “Guitar Hero World Tour.”
Olga Kharif / Tech Beat:
Skype Talks Cooperation With Avaya — Now that gearmaker Avaya and Web-calling service Skype share a private-equity owner, the two companies are discussing ways they can better work together. “We are having conversations with [Skype],” Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy said in an interview today.
Discussion:
paidContent
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Rackspace Goes Down. Again. Takes The Internet With It. Again. — Another day, another Rackspace outage. The hosting company had a complete and total failure today that took down a number of big sites on the Internet, including ours. This has been happening all too often in recent months, including downtime just last month.
Nick Eaton / The Microsoft Blog:
Anti-COFEE tool DECAF revealed as spoof — Two developers said they created a tool, called DECAF, that compromises Microsoft's COFEE computer-forensics tool by killing its processes, disabling a computer's connection ports and even conjuring up fake MAC addresses. — It's fake.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Facebook readies its Game Dashboard to organize your social gaming life — Facebook is in the midst of redesigning how users find, interact with, and keep track of games on the social network. Called the “Game Dashboard,” the new feature is Facebook's attempt to play nice with social game developers …
