Top Items:
Brad Stone / Bits:
Amazon Cracks Open the Kindle — As Motoko Rich and I report in Wednesday's Times, Amazon.com is finally opening up the Kindle to developers. This has the potential to turn a popular single-purpose device into a more interesting and versatile gadget, limited only by the imagination …
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Amazon.com:
Amazon Announces Kindle Development Kit—Software Developers Can Now Build Active Content for Kindle — Travel books that suggest activities based on real-time weather and current events, cookbooks that recommend menus based on size of party and allergies, and word games and puzzles …
Discussion:
Fast Company, Digital Daily, Between the Lines, 9 to 5 Mac, GigaOM, Zatz Not Funny!, VentureBeat, Regular Geek, Internet2Go and MobileContentToday
Om Malik / GigaOM:
With New Ovi Maps, Nokia Seeks Location Heaven — In an attempt to ward of competition from the likes of Google, Nokia, the largest maker of mobile phones has released the latest version of its Ovi Maps software and making the app available for free. Nokia, despite an early start …
Discussion:
Bloomberg, Hardware 2.0, eWeek, PC World, mocoNews, Mashable!, Engadget, Guardian, Tech Central, ITworld.com, ReadWriteWeb, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Register, Tech Eye, Reuters, Electronista, Telegraph, CNET News, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, WCCFtech.com, The Nokia Blog, CellPassion, Gadget Lab, GPS Obsessed, I4U News, pluGGd.in, Vector One, Electricpig.co.uk and Gizmodo
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Nokia:
Nokia makes walk and drive navigation free on its smartphones, doubling size of mobile navigation market — Espoo, Finland - Nokia has today announced plans to release a new version of Ovi Maps for its smartphones that includes high-end walk and drive navigation at no extra cost, available for download at www.nokia.com/maps.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Pocket-lint, InformationWeek, Unwired View, Phone Scoop and Ubergizmo
Ginny Mies / PC World:Nokia Delivers Free Navigation Service to Customers
Discussion:
Nokia Conversations, atmaspheric, GottaBeMobile.com, Softpedia News, 901am and SlashGear
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple sees tablet as one device shared by the whole family - WSJ — The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell of tablet and Apple-related information Wednesday evening. Among the new details: Apple sees its tablet as a device that will be shared by multiple family members — and it might even recognize their faces.
Discussion:
Music Ally, Wall Street Journal, TUAW, iLounge, Computerworld, Silicon Alley Insider, Apple Gazette, Brainstorm Tech, Engadget, TechCrunch, Softpedia News, Mobile Entertainment, SlashGear, CNET News, Erictric, VG247, I4U News, louisgray.com, Edible Apple, MacRumors, Electronista, 9 to 5 Mac, EverythingiCafe, Kotaku, MacDailyNews and Gizmodo
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Ryan Tate / Gawker:More Evidence ‘iPad’ Is the Apple Tablet's Name
Discussion:
The Next Web, MacNN, The Jesus Tablet, App Advice, Electricpig.co.uk, Go Rumors, GottaBeMobile.com, AppleInsider and EverythingiCafe
Mia / YouTube Blog:
Introducing YouTube HTML5 Supported Videos — A while ago, YouTube launched a simple demo of an HTML5-based video player. Recently, we published a blog post on our pre-spring cleaning effort and your number one request was that YouTube do more with HTML5.
BBC:
Tim Berners-Lee unveils government data project — Web founder Tim Berners-Lee has unveiled his latest venture for the UK government, which offers the public better access to official data. — A new website, data.gov.uk, will offer reams of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics …
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame
Discussion:
The Register, Tech Eye, ProgrammableWeb, Guardian, TechCrunch Europe, Telegraph, the Econsultancy blog, The Next Web and Show Us a Better Way
Nick Bilton / Bits:
The War Between Apple and Google Has Just Begun — Friends or ‘frenemies’? Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs, left, and Google C.E.O. Eric Schmidt, right, at Macworld in 2007. — Consumers are witnessing the beginning of a new war between computer companies. Instead of the Apple-Microsoft conflict …
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Amazon Promotion Tempts Book Lovers With Free Kindles — Hesitant about ordering an Amazon Kindle? The online retailer is apparently making a very tempting proposition to some of its customers: go ahead and order a Kindle, and if you don't like it, you'll get your money back — and get to keep the device.
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Man Buried in Haiti Rubble Uses iPhone to Treat Wounds, Survive — U.S. filmmaker Dan Woolley was shooting a documentary about the impact of poverty in Haiti when the earthquake struck. He could have died, but he ultimately survived with the help of an iPhone first-aid app that taught him to treat his wounds.
Discussion:
Mashable!, Newlaunches.com, Phone Arena, Wired Science, Crave, Gizmodo and The Huffington Post
Michael Mace / Mobile Opportunity:
Google shoots itself in the foot in mobile — I wish I knew the inside story on Google's recent confrontation with the Chinese government. At first Google's announcement looked like a principled, well thought-out stand in a long behind-the-scenes dispute (link).
Discussion:
thebigmoney.com
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Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Palm Pre Plus (and Pixi Plus) review — It's been about a year since Palm pulled itself back from the brink of imminent destruction with the announcement of webOS and the Palm Pre, and even less time since the products announced actually hit the market. In that time span …
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Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:Hands On With Palm's Mobile HotSpot For Pre Plus and Pixi Plus
Discussion:
Gizmodo
Gmail Blog:
Serving better ads in Gmail — Ever since we launched Gmail, we've tried to show relevant and unobtrusive ads. We're always trying to improve our algorithms to show better, more useful ads. — When you open a message in Gmail, you often see ads related to that email.
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Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe — Back at the dawn of the Web, the most popular account password was “12345.” — Today, it's one digit longer but hardly safer: “123456.” — Despite all the reports of Internet security breaches over the years, including the recent attacks …
Discussion:
Guardian, Tech Eye, Help Net Security, TechCrunch, Telegraph, PRWIRE and Wi-Fi Networking News
Boy Genius Report:
AT&T prepping network to handle “unannounced” devices? — We've been told by one of our connects that AT&T has apparently been meeting individually with regional executives to inform them of some changes to the AT&T network. What have we heard? Well, for starters, they seem to be focused …
Alex Williams / ReadWriteWeb:
Box.net: New Features and a New Phrase for the Cloud — Box.net acquired a young company last October called Increo Solutions. The features that this young company provided allow for viewing content of most any file and the ability to share and embed files across the Web.
Josh Silverman / GigaOM:
How Video Changes Everything — Whether it's a clip of “Tajik Jimmy” putting Bollywood soundtracks to shame, catching a friend's wedding eight time zones away or working “side by side” with coworkers in another country, it's all video. And it's changing the way we communicate with one another.
Camille Ricketts / VentureBeat:
AdMob: Apple may break its tie with Nokia for world domination — It's almost like Apple and Nokia are locked in a neck-and-neck game of Risk. The former, with its iPhone OS, is the dominant force in North America, Western Europe, Latin America and Oceania, while the latter, running the Symbian OS …
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Facebook to Build Its Own Data Centers — A look at the fully-packed racks inside a Facebook data center facility. — Facebook has decided to begin building its own data centers, and may announce its first facility as soon as tomorrow. The fast-growing social network has previously leased server space …
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Digital File Cabinet You Can Bring With You Anywhere — What if you could collect, in one well-organized, searchable, private digital repository, all the notes you create, clips from Web pages and emails you want to recall, dictated audio memos, photos, key documents, and more?
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay's Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public — In the last year, pressure from the entertainment industries on ISPs and governments to crack down on copyright infringers has steadily increased, resulting in ISPs sending out mass copyright warnings. This, of course, is coupled …
Emma Barnett / Telegraph:
Spotify now makes record labels money — Spotify now offers the music industry a sustainable revenue model according to a UK record label executive. — Revealing for the first time today how the commercial relationship works between the streaming service and the record labels, Rob Wells …
Discussion:
The Next Web
Gus Sentementes / BaltTech:
Apple working on parking app for mobile devices — One of the Apple patent applications made public today details the company's efforts to create a useful parking application that mashes up a user's geo-location data with information about parking garages and parking regulations.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Amazon Backs Down On Demanding Publisher Use Only Its Own Print-On-Demand Solution — Back in 2008, we wrote about Amazon's questionable demand to book publishers that if they wanted to offer print-on-demand books, they had to use Amazon's own POD solution.
Discussion:
Amazon BookSurge …
