Top Items:
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Possible Apple tablet multi-touch tactile keyboard detailed — Apple's forthcoming tablet could employ a dynamic surface that gives users tactile feedback when typing in order to identify individual keys, according to a new patent application revealed this week.
Discussion:
App Advice, Gadget Lab, The iPhone Blog, TUAW, Erictric, Edible Apple, Mashable!, Brainstorm Tech, EverythingiCafe, Electronista and GottaBeMobile.com
RELATED:
Reuters:
Apple shares hit new high on tablet excitement — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc shares reached their all-time high on Thursday as excitement builds over the expected release of its tablet computer. — Although Apple has never acknowledged that a device exists, anticipation is peaking as the company enters the new year.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Voice Is Coming Back To The iPhone Via The Browser, Thanks To VoiceCentral — Last summer, when Apple pulled third-party Google Voice applications from the App Store, one of them was VoiceCentral. Apple's subsequent rejection of the official Google Voice app spurred an FCC investigation …
Google Watch:
Tracking Santa's Global Traversal The Google Way — It's that time of year when people love to track Santa, trying to figure out his route to deliver gifts across the world. Google is all over it, picking up a tradition started by NORAD in 1955, which you can read about here.
Discussion:
Macworld, The iPhone Blog, NewTeeVee, CrackBerry.com blogs, IntoMobile, VatorNews, iTWire, Pocket-lint.com, Search Engine Land and Gizmodo
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Early Holiday Gift For Googlers: $2.3 Billion — Like many companies, Google has a tradition of giving holiday presents to its employees — an Android phone last year, $1000 in cash net of taxes the year before. This year, they got Google's soon-to-be-released phone.
Discussion:
SFGate
ABCNEWS:
Pepsi's Big Gamble: Ditching Super Bowl for Social Media — Why Pepsi Is Pulling Out of the Big Game and What It Stands to Gain — This year for the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not have ads in the Super Bowl telecast. No Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake.
Sherri / philosecurity:
Our Google Government — Recently I saw an ad which read: — Google and State Gov — “Over 60% of the U.S. state governments have gone Google.” — Does this mean that we've now handed the majority of our state governments' operational data to a single privately-controlled company …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
SCVNGR Raises $4 Million From Google Ventures — SCVNGR, the platform that lets you build location-based games compatible with any mobile phone, is on a roll. The company has just raised $4 million from Google Ventures, with participation from existing investor Highland Capital.
Martin Bryant / The Next Web:
Footprint: real-time web stats, for free — While Google Analytics is a great product, one of the most frustrating aspects of it is the lack of any data about what's happening right now with your site's traffic. — In these days of the real-time web, shouldn't we have real-time web stats too?
David Talbot / Technology Review:
Security in the Ether — Information technology's next grand challenge will be to secure the cloud—and prove we can trust it. — In 2006, when Amazon introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), it was a watershed event in the quest to transform computing into a ubiquitous utility, like electricity.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
The Flixster/Rotten Tomatoes/MySpace Mystery Solved: A Christmas Miracle! — About 10 days ago, there was a post in this column about interest by News Corp. and its MySpace unit in Flixster, the popular social networking site for movies. — Titled “MySpace and News Corp. Eye Flixster (But for What?), I wrote:
Discussion:
Crave
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
IsoHunt Loses Big; Court Says: You Induce, You Lose — One of the many lawsuits against file sharing sites/search engines around the world is the IsoHunt lawsuit — yet another case where the entertainment industry decided a marginal player in the space didn't have enough attention and sued.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010 — It's been a long drought for IPOs, but venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain. Earlier this year, a handful of IPOs trickled out, such as OpenTable, Rackspace, and A123Systems.
Thanks:atul
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
DNS Issues Cause Downtime for Major Sites — Some of the web's most prominent sites experienced downtime and sluggishness Wednesday night due to problems with DNS services. The issues were most pronounced at UltraDNS, which reported that its performance problems were caused by an electronic attack.
Discussion:
InfoWorld, Computerworld, The Register, Erictric, Technologizer, ChannelWeb, CNET News, The Tech Herald … and TechCrunch
RELATED:
Adam Pash / Lifehacker:
XBMC Updates to 9.11 Camelot, Brings Awesome New Look, Improved Features — Windows/Mac/Linux/and more: XBMC is a killer open-source, cross-platform media center, and today they've released XBMC 9.11, introducing a whole new default look and feel, and it's very friendly on the eyes.
Discussion:
XBMC
Paul Carton / ChangeWave HotWire Blog:
Windows 7 Accelerating Corporate PC Purchasing — By Andy Golub — ChangeWave's November corporate IT spending survey points to an uptick in IT spending for 1st Quarter 2010 - midst the strongest growth rate in 2 years. — Regarding PCs, the release of the Windows 7 operating system is the key factor driving growth.
RELATED:
Sharon Noguchi / Mercury News:
San Jose police test head-mounted cameras for officers — San Jose police, under fire for interactions with the public that have turned violent, on Friday launched a pilot project equipping officers with head-mounted cameras to record contacts with civilians.
Discussion:
Newlaunches.com, Coolest Gadgets, Gizmodo Australia, Gizmodo, SlipperyBrick.com, Erictric and CrunchGear
John Cox / Network World:
Forrester: Google Android smartphones to take 10% of market in 2010 — Forrester outlines 7 enterprise wireless and mobility trends for next year — Android phones will make significant headway in the smartphone market and 4G service providers will zero in on apps in 2010.
bizjournals:
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff Named 2009 Executive of the Year by the San Francisco Business Times — The San Francisco Business Times has named Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com Inc., its 2009 Executive of the Year. — Benioff is being recognized as the executive …
Venture Capital Dispatch:
With IPOs Popping And LPs Hopping, VCs Look Toward China — With what looks to be the world's second largest market for initial public offerings and a burgeoning limited partner base, China is going to command an increasing amount of attention from some of the world's largest venture capital firms.
Robert McMillan / PC World:
Texas County to Name Drunk Drivers on Twitter — If you get busted for drunk driving in Montgomery County, Texas, this holiday season, your neighbors may hear about it on Twitter. — That's because the local district attorney's office has decided to publish the names of those charged …
Anupreeta Das / Reuters:
Qualcomm COO resigns to take CEO job elsewhere — NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief operating officer of U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc, Len Lauer, has resigned to become a chief executive of another company, Qualcomm said on Thursday. — Lauer, a telecommunications industry veteran …
Tom Spring / PC World:
E-Book Piracy: The Publishing Industry's Next Epic Saga? — With the rise of e-book readers like the Kindle, Sony Reader, and Nook comes the scourge of the digital world: pirates. — Recommends — As e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle continue to rise, so follows the publishing industry's worst nightmare: e-book piracy.
