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:
Gadget Lab, App Advice, The iPhone Blog, TUAW, Erictric, Gizmodo, Brainstorm Tech, Edible Apple, Mashable!, 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:
Computerworld, Macworld, The iPhone Blog, IntoMobile, VatorNews, iTWire, CrackBerry.com blogs, NewTeeVee, 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
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 …
Discussion:
VentureBeat
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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 …
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
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:
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
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 …
Georgina Prodhan / Reuters:
Memory chip shortage seen in H2 2010: DRAMeXchange — LONDON (Reuters) - Memory chips for computers are likely to be in short supply by the second half of next year as consumers demand more capacity and companies embark on a delayed drive to replace PCs, industry tracker DRAMeXchange believes.
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.
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.
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
Managing the Wireless Data Deluge — Smartphones are forcing wireless carriers to meet surging demand for data, creating a huge opportunity for the many companies that help them — It wasn't so many years ago that U.S. wireless carriers wanted nothing more than to convince their customers to use their phones for more than talking.
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 …