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:
Engadget, Softpedia News, PC World, Tech Eye, Mashable!, bit-tech.net, Network World, GigaOM, TeleRead, Xconomy, GeekSmack, AppleInsider, Gear Diary, Digits, Gadgetell, VentureBeat, Electronista, MacRumors, Obsessable, Tech Trader Daily, SlashGear, CrunchGear, TechFlash, Techland, Edible Apple, Gizmodo, Digital Trends, Silicon Alley Insider, Between the Lines, paidContent, The Next Web, GeekSugar, Gearlog, 9 to 5 Mac, DisplayBlog 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.
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free — The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation.
Discussion:
Mashable!, PC World, Associated Press, BBC, Geeky-Gadgets, PC Pro, GigaOM, Phone Arena, Latest VoIP, Voice 2.0 …, Neowin.net, Network World, SlashGear, IntoMobile, Tech Beat, Gizmodo, Engadget Mobile and Electronista
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Sun's Chief Executive Tweets His Resignation — Jonathan Schwartz, the last chief executive of Sun Microsystems, has become the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation. — Late Wednesday night, Mr. Schwartz used Twitter to publish a haiku about his exit from Oracle, which just completed its purchase of Sun last week.
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.
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.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, All Facebook, Daily Patricia, Silicon Valley Watcher, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Thanks:atul
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 …
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Rafat Ali / paidContent:
More Details On HotJobs-Monster: Three Year Non Compete For Yahoo; First Talks Started Oct 2008 — Some more sale details of Yahoo's jobs service HotJobs to Monster, announced earlier today, have come out in an SEC filing. The companies have already announced a three-year “commercial traffic agreement …
Discussion:
MONSTER WORLDWIDE INC …
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks — The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity. — Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Kwedit Launches: The First Completely Unreliable Payment Network — Something tells me Kwedit, which launches today, is going to be a hit. It's a new payment service that absolutely doesn't guarantee payments. In fact, its unreliability is what makes it so attractive to social game publishers and other people selling virtual goods.
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 …
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Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:Verizon Drops ‘Droid’ Brand For Newest Android Phone (VZ, MOT, GOOG)
Discussion:
Verizon, MobileCrunch, MobileContentToday, internetnews.com, Engadget, Obsessable, Gizmodo, blogs.ft.com, 901am, Android and Me, Digital Trends, eWeek, I4U News, The Toybox, PhoneNews.com, Unwired View, SlashGear, AndroidGuys, Gearlog, Boy Genius Report, BetaNews, Softpedia News, Android Central, lalawag and Electronista
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.
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:
Changing Way, VentureBeat, alarm:clock, ReadWriteStart, paidContent, socalTECH.com and Silicon Alley Insider
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
H.264 Will Stay Royalty-Free for Free Internet Video Through 2016 (But Don't Clap Yet) — Appropriately following our explainer on why HTML5 won't save the internet (yet) and the embedded discussion about video codecs and the future of internet video, MPEG LA—who licenses the h.264 codec …
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 …
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 …
Discussion:
Geekword
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Apple Now Lets You Preview iPhone Apps In Your Browser — In November 2009, Apple launched a feature dubbed iTunes Preview, which essentially enabled people to see what music is available on iTunes from their Web browser without the need to fire up - or install - the desktop software program.
John Leyden / The Register:
Wikileaks finds cash to continue — Don't (whistle)blow it all at once — Whistle-blowing site Wikileaks has secured enough money in donations to resume operations. — The site stopped publishing leaked documents in December in order to concentrate on a pledge drive …
Clay Dillow / Popular Science:
New Digital Protocol Lets You Sign Secure, Legally Binding Contracts Over the Phone — Alexander Graham Bell He helped replace the telegraph. He never knew he might replace the fountain pen as well. — Bringing a new connotation to the term “verbal contract,” researchers …
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, The Register, ChannelWeb, Digital Daily, CNET News, TechFlash, The Microsoft Blog and Gizmodo
Joel Hruska / HotHardware.com News:
Intel Details Upcoming Mobile and Six-Core Processors — With the International Solid-State Circuits Conference less than a week away, Intel has released additional details on its hexa-core desktop, next generation mobile and dual-core Westmere processors. Much of the dual-core data …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
The Sims celebrates 125 million games sold across 10 years — When Electronic Arts launched The Sims on Feb. 4, 2000, nobody knew if it would sell. But on its tenth anniversary, The Sims has become a blockbuster franchise in video games, with more than 125 million copies sold worldwide.
Discussion:
VG247
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 …
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.
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 …
Jaikumar Vijayan / Computerworld:
Facebook comes out swinging at critics of settlement offer in Beacon lawsuit — Offer to spend $9.5 million on privacy foundation fair and adequate, company says — Computerworld - Facebook has come out swinging at those opposing a settlement offer it made last year in a privacy lawsuit involving …
Anthony Ha / MobileBeat:
Remote wipe, other new features make Google's mobile apps more business friendly — Google has been working over the past year to make Google Apps, its bundle of productivity applications like Gmail, work better with smartphones. Now it's announcing several new features that may be crucial …
