Top Items:
Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Begins Rolling Out New Home Page Design — Facebook is now fully launching the long-planned redesign, with 80 million users getting it tonight — that's 80 million of the now-400 million people using the site, the company says. The new design is basically what we've been examining …
Discussion:
Telegraph, Facebook Blog, Agence France Presse, Softpedia News, Facebook Developers, All Facebook, VentureBeat and Pocket-lint
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Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
Six Years of Making Connections — Today we're celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we've made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected.
Discussion:
Tech Central, TechCrunch, Geekword, Erictric, pluGGd.in, L.A. Times Tech Blog, All Facebook, Mashable! and Inside Facebook
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook's Project Titan: A Full Featured Webmail Product — Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Internally it's known as Project Titan.
Discussion:
Pocket-lint
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Begins Rolling Out Latest Redesign (Pics) — Facebook has just started rolling out a new homepage design to a small number of users, and will be deploying it on a wide scale in the near future. The design takes the navigational elements that have previously been tucked under the …
Discussion:
Shelly Palmer, VentureBeat, Erictric, L.A. Times Tech Blog and Silicon Alley Insider, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Siri launches an iPhone personal assistant that actually works — The “personal assistant” label gets attached to a lot of websites and applications, but it's always an exaggeration. Usually the service in question can only tackle a small slice of what a human assistant would do, such as organizing your emails.
Discussion:
9 to 5 Mac
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Jenna Wortham / Bits:
A Personal Assistant on Your iPhone — The pop-culture record shows that most artificially intelligent assistants don't work out too well for their human masters. — There's the comically co-dependent — and largely unhelpful — duo from Star Wars, C-3PO and R2-D2.
Discussion:
Mashable!, Engadget, TechCrunch, GigaOM, ProgrammableWeb, ZDNet, louisgray.com, ReadWriteWeb and Gizmodo, Thanks:hisiri
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
The $9.99 Ebook Is Dead: Third Major Publisher Hachette Dumps on Amazon — Amazon's ebook pricing structure has crumbled. Hachette's the third major publisher to push for the agency model, following MacMillan and HarperCollins: They'll set the ebook prices (higher, natch) and the bookseller takes a cut.
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Jason Boog / GalleyCat:Breaking: Hachette Book Group to Transition to Agency Model
Discussion:
9 to 5 Mac, Charlie's Diary, Techdirt, Wall Street Journal, TechFlash, TeleRead and Whatever
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
An Apology To Our Readers — On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.
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Daniel Brusilovsky / Weblog of Daniel Brusilovsky:
The Line Was Crossed — In the nine months that I've worked at TechCrunch, I've enjoyed every single moment of it. I couldn't be more thankful to Michael and Heather for giving me this opportunity to work with an amazing organization, and with an amazing group of individuals.
Frank X.Shaw / The Official Microsoft Blog:
Measuring Our Work by Its Broad Impact — Former Microsoft employee Dick Brass has an op-ed in the NYT arguing that our better days are behind us, ("clumsy, uncompetitive innovator" . . . ouch!) and using examples from his tenure to make the point that the company can no longer compete or innovate.
Discussion:
Engadget, Bits, GottaBeMobile.com, Gizmodo, Electronista, Technologizer and techblog.dallasnews.com
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Dick Brass / New York Times:Microsoft's Creative Destruction
Discussion:
BetaNews, The Register, Gizmodo, PC World, Softpedia News, internetnews.com, TechCrunch, broadstuff, Electronista, Lockergnome Blog Network, The Tech Report, Boing Boing, GigaOM, eWeek, TechFlash, New York Times, deal architect, Voices on All Things Digital, Maximum PC, ChannelWeb, Windows 7 News, Engadget, MacDailyNews, All about Microsoft, Neowin.net, The Microsoft Blog, DailyTech, Edible Apple, GottaBeMobile.com, The Rumpus.net, Brainstorm Tech, The Seattle Times, Silicon Alley Insider, /message, Computerworld, Seattle Times, TomsTechBlog.com, WMExperts and Network World
Avner Ronen / Boxee Blog:
Boxee responds to NBC's Jeff Zucker — Congress held a hearing today examining the proposed acquisition of NBC Universal by Comcast. Speaking before the committee were Brian Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast and Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC. — During the hearing the Chairman …
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Daniel Maurer / New York Magazine:
Steve Jobs in Secret New York Meeting With Top Times Execs — Bonus Buster: Bank of America Execs Acted Out Of Self-interest, Greed, And Hubris — When Apple recently booked the cellar dining room at Pranna for a talk with 50 top executives from the New York Times, even restaurant higher-ups didn't know who their VIP guest would be.
MacNN:
Apple prohibits App Store devs from using location-based ads — Apple has notified App Store developers that they will be prohibited from using location-based information for mobile advertising. The company claims the GPS data can only be used to provide “beneficial information.”
Discussion:
Apple Developer Connection, The Register, Softpedia News, TG Daily, 9 to 5 Mac, CenterNetworks, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable!, mocoNews, Gizmodo, www.pocketgamer.biz and iLounge
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google Maps To Add “Google Store Views” — I received a tip from a New York retailer named Oh Nuts, that Google came to their store to take pictures for a new Google Maps product named “Google Store Views.” I was told that they took pictures of the inside of the store, every 6 feet, in all directions.
Jolie O'Dell / ReadWriteWeb:
Google Rolls Out Ocean Showcase: It's a Multimedia, Underwater Street View — Ah, the sea. The big blue. From sharks to shipwrecks, from the perfectly formed pipes of Hawaii's waves to the dark and chilly depths of the deepest sea trenches, it's one of Earth's most fascinating habitats - one that people love watching and exploring.
Discussion:
Google LatLong
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Buy Office 2007, get 2010 free? Microsoft posts, pulls deal — Microsoft has accidentally posted details about a promotion it will be running for those who buy Office 2007 a few months before and after the release of Office 2010 in June 2010. It is called the “Microsoft Office 2010 …
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
Apple Paying Out 15% On Broken 27-Inch iMacs — Still think that widespread iMac problems don't exist? After we reported Apple giving UK customers 15% refund bonuses with 27-inch iMac returns, we've heard from quite a few readers that Apple is doing the same thing in the US. UPDATE — 15%.
Discussion:
Tech Eye, The Register, SlashGear, Erictric, Ars Technica, The Next Web, SlipperyBrick.com, Macsimum News, AppleInsider, CNET News, Digital Trends, TUAW and Softpedia News
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Location Based Social Networking & Video Calling Coming to iPhone — There's an old adage concerning the finding of a location for your brick and mortar retail business: Location, location, location. While that may still hold water today, that saying is going to be hijacked by the next wave …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Seesmic's Latest Android Build Is Dare I Say, iPhone-Like — Perhaps the main problem I have with Android is that the apps (aside from the excellent Google-built ones) are simply not as good as the apps on the iPhone. Nowhere is this more apparent then with Twitter apps, since there are so many for both platforms.
Discussion:
Mashable!, Seesmic Blog, Pocket-lint, AndroidGuys, VentureBeat, Geekword and ReadWriteWeb
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Department of Justice objects to revised Google Books settlement — In a brief filed late Thursday, the Department of Justice said it still had objections to the lawsuit settlement between Google and a group of authors and publishers, despite changes made to the settlement by the parties.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Citing Lousy Market Conditions, FriendFinder Networks Cancels IPO … With this short statement, FriendFinder Networks has canceled its IPO plans, following a widely reported delay in trading earlier this week. — Investors are analysts were wary of the company's plans to go public …
Ross Miller / Engadget:
Samsung E61 e-book reader outed, brings physical QWERTY keyboard to lineup — The pair of Samsung-borne e-book readers we espied at CES just became a trio. E6 and E101, please give a round of applause your new on-screen brother, the E61 (pictured next to Kindle).
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Microsoft warns of IE flaw, turns PC into public file server — Microsoft has issued Security Advisory (980088) to address a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer that may allow information disclosure for Windows XP users or for users who have disabled Internet Explorer Protected Mode.
Discussion:
Softpedia News, Maximum PC, Zero Day, Bink.nu, internetnews.com, Microsoft, Neowin.net and The Register
Jesse Stay / Stay N' Alive:
Twitter Testing “OAuth Delegation” With Select Partners - Genius — A common complaint amongst Twitter developers has been that Twitter's OAuth, the authentication process you see when you click the Twitter login button on a 3rd party website and go to a Twitter-looking page with a “Allow” or “Deny” button, is too complicated.
