Top Items:
New York Times:
Amazon Is Said to Buy Touch-Screen Company — In a sign that Amazon wants to upgrade its Kindle e-reader to compete head-on with the Apple iPad, Amazon has acquired Touchco, a New York-based start-up specializing in touch-screen technology, a person briefed on the deal said Wednesday.
Discussion:
ITworld.com, Mashable!, Engadget, GigaOM, AppleInsider, VentureBeat, Gadgetell, TeleRead, GeekSmack, Gear Diary, Gizmodo, TechFlash, paidContent, 9 to 5 Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, Digital Trends, Techland, SlashGear, CrunchGear, The Next Web, Electronista, Obsessable, Between the Lines, Edible Apple, Gizmodo Australia, Reuters, DisplayBlog, Gearlog, GeekSugar and techeblog.com
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Nick Bilton / Bits:
Is Amazon Building a Superkindle? — If you were Amazon, and Apple released the iPad, what would you do? Scurry away into the corner, or buy a small company in New York and use its technology to build a Superkindle, with a multitouch color screen and built-in applications? If you guessed the latter, you're right.
Discussion:
Boing Boing
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Verizon Drops ‘Droid’ Brand For Newest Android Phone (VZ, MOT, GOOG) — More Android phones are coming to Verizon Wireless, but the latest one won't get the carrier's memorable “Droid” branding. — The Motorola Devour, announced today, is scheduled to launch in March.
Discussion:
Verizon, Gizmodo, internetnews.com, MobileCrunch, Engadget, blogs.ft.com, Boy Genius Report, Android Central, Android and Me, Gearlog, eWeek, Obsessable, Digital Trends, 901am, The Toybox, I4U News, BetaNews, PhoneNews.com, Unwired View, SlashGear, AndroidGuys, Softpedia News and Electronista
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Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Is Android buzz starting to tarnish the iPhone's luster? — I pinched and zoomed the Google Maps images on my Nexus One smartphone this morning, the same pinch-and-zoom feature that iPhone (and iPod Touch) owners have been using for some time. — The pinch-and-zoom experience on the Nexus One …
Jennadawn / Twitter Blog:
Flying Around With Hovercards — Because many of you use twitter.com to read and write tweets, we've been spending some time focusing on ways to improve your experience on the site. Today, we're introducing a feature called Hovercards that will be a handy way to interact with the folks behind each tweet.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
ICanHasLawsuit? Pet Holdings Sues Other Site For Framing Failbooking With Better Domain Name — A few weeks ago, when I attended Public Knowledge's World Fair Use Day, I had been excited to meet the guy behind ICanHasCheezburger, Ben Huh, who was supposed to be on my panel …
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Monster Buys Yahoo HotJobs For $225 Million In Cash (YHOO, MWW) — Monster (MWW) will buy Yahoo (YHOO) HotJobs for $225 million in cash, the companies announced today. — Details from the release: — “Monster and Yahoo! have also entered into a three year commercial traffic agreement …
Markcuban / blog maverick:
Why Google is Bad for the Newspaper Business — One of the key core competencies of a publication is the process of selecting “all the news thats fit to print”. — No one can read every news story. Instead of even trying to consume everything, we all have a process we go through for discovery of news …
Thanks:atul
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Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple's iPad May Gain an Intelligent Bezel in the Future — Today, the US Patent and Trademark Office officially published two major granted patents of Apple's covering tablets and advanced touch technologies. The first patent may provide us with a glimpse of a future implementation of an intelligent tablet bezel.
Discussion:
App Advice, Technologizer, MacRumors, iLounge, CrunchGear, VentureBeat, Appletell, Gizmodo Australia, TUAW, Gizmodo, SlashGear and eHomeUpgrade
David Watson / Comcast Voices:
Comcast Launches XFINITY — Today on Comcast's earnings call Brian Roberts and Steve Burke talked about XFINITY, the new brand for our technology platform and products. Simply put, XFINITY is about offering our customers more — more HD, more speed, more choice and more control over their services.
Discussion:
internetnews.com, BetaNews, TechFlash, The Seattle Times, Dow Jones Newswires, Gizmodo and Gizmodo Australia
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Factual Raises $1 Million Seed Round From Andreessen Horowitz, Idealab, And Angels — If you co-founded the company that became Google AdSense, as Gil Elbaz did with Applied Semantics, you don't have any problem finding investors when you want to start a new venture.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, paidContent, ReadWriteStart, Factual Blog, Silicon Alley Insider, Silicon Valley Watcher and socalTECH.com
Lisa Barone / Outspoken Media:
Content is not King. Self Promotion Is. — While I was at the airport last week, Dr. Pete sent me a link to his post on SEOmoz about SEO cliques and asked for my thoughts. The post talked about the various groups that exist in SEO, how not friendly the industry can be sometimes …
Discussion:
Bruce Clay Blog
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Windows veteran Mike Nash to leave Microsoft — A couple of weeks after Windows Senior Vice President Bill Veghte decided to leave Microsoft, another Windows marketing veteran is doing the same. — Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Platform Strategy, will be leaving the company in February.
Discussion:
internetnews.com, Digital Daily, The Register, ChannelWeb, CNET News, The Microsoft Blog and TechFlash
Schneier on Security:
Anonymity and the Internet — Universal identification is portrayed by some as the holy grail of Internet security. Anonymity is bad, the argument goes; and if we abolish it, we can ensure only the proper people have access to their own information. We'll know who is sending us spam …
Discussion:
broadstuff
Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Facebook Largest News Reader? — Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web had an interesting piece suggesting that Facebook could become the world's leading news reader. A recent Facebook company blog entry encouraged members to set up a news feed on Facebook.
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Skype says new 3G iPhone app coming ‘really soon,’ will have CD-quality sound — After the news last week that Apple and AT&T are now allowing VoIP apps to make phone calls over the 3G network, Skype said it's still waiting to release a new 3G-ready version of its software for the iPhone.
Discussion:
Download Squad, Mashable!, Skype Blogs, GigaOM, Techland, VentureBeat, App Advice, TUAW, Epicenter, ReadWriteWeb, Voice on the Web, I4U News and EverythingiCafe
Suzanne Bearne / nma.co.uk:
Apple recruits key talent to lead drive into mobile ad sales — Apple has made its first concerted move into the UK mobile advertising market as it seeks to take advantage of the burgeoning sector. — The iPhone manufacturer has recruited two mobile ad industry heavyweights as it plans goes head to head with Google.
Casey Chan / Android Central:
Firefox on Android Progressing Nicely, Loads First Page — Like we said before, it's going to take some time before Fennec aka Firefox Mobile actually gets on Android. But at least it looks like porting Fennec over to Android is progressing rather nicely—they actually got their first page load.
Discussion:
Android Phone Fans, ReadWriteWeb, Geekword, jkOnTheRun, ARMdevices.net, Phone Arena, ithinkdifferent, Gizmodo, Vladimir Vukievi and Download Squad
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Salesforce Simplifies The Creation Of Business Applications With Visual Process Manager — 2009 was a banner year for Salesforce.com. The enterprise cloud computing company made significant enhancements to its product lineup, reported overall strong earnings, and even launched their own …
Discussion:
internetnews.com, ReadWriteWeb, THINK IT Services, Computerworld, The Register and Linux.com
Kim Zetter / Threat Level:
Report Details Hacks Targeting Google, Others — It's been three weeks since Google announced that a sophisticated and coordinated hack attack dubbed Operation Aurora recently targeted it and numerous other U.S. companies. — Until now we've only known that the attackers got in through …
Discussion:
NBC Bay Area
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Nehalem Mac Pros take 20% performance hit when playing audio — Apple's latest Mac Pro, jammed with multicore Nehalem-based Xeon processors, is designed to be a computing beast with power to spare for the most demanding tasks. Since the current Mac Pros became available in October of 2009 …
Discussion:
HardMac.com, MacNN, AppleInsider, MacRumors, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac, Macsimum News and TUAW
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
From MSFT evangelist to Mac enthusiast - the other side of the road — For five years I was a Microsoft evangelist to the startup and venture capital community. That ended a couple months ago. I am now a Developer Advocate at Google and I love it. After years of defending Microsoft …
Reuters:
Microsoft's Bing will make money: executive — SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp's 10-month-old search engine Bing, which has struggled to make headway against Google, can be a viable runner-up and make money online eventually, according to one of its top executives.
Discussion:
paidContent, The Register, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web, Silicon Alley Insider and LiveSide.net
Jordy Yager / Hillicon Valley:
iPad-inspired vending machine woos Hill staffers — T echnology has changed how we communicate, watch television and travel the globe. This morning, Capitol Hill staffers got to enjoy how technology has upgraded their Snickers bar experience. — The National Automatic Merchandising …
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Two Little Laptops With a Lot to Offer Their Core Users — For all the talk about new tablet computers like Apple's iPad, laptops remain the computer industry's bread and butter, and smaller laptops are especially popular with consumers. — So, I've been testing two diminutive laptops …
Scott Moritz / TheStreet.com:
RIM Coiled for Spring Surprise: Rumor — Stock quotes in this article: RIMM , MOT , AAPL , GOOG — WATERLOO, Ont. (TheStreet) — Finally, some signs that the creative sap is running again at Research In Motion(RIMM Quote). — RIM has been fairly criticized for losing a step …
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Mobile App or Browser-Based Site? Report Says The Browser Will Win on Mobile — Mobile search company Taptu has released a detailed report showing that the future of the Mobile Web is likely to be dominated by cross-platform browser-based mobile web sites - rather than apps built specifically for iPhone …
Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Puts Email Addresses on User Profiles Back Into Plain Text — Facebook has been investing in tools to detect and block automated systems and scripts created by spammers heavily in recent years. When it comes to user email addresses on Facebook profiles, Facebook for years has taken …
