Top Items:
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.
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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 …
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:
CNN, Digital Daily, Inside Facebook, Royal Pingdom, Tech Central, Softpedia News and pluGGd.in
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.
Discussion:
Loic Le Meur Blog, Silicon Valley Watcher, Technology Liberation Front and Gawker, Thanks:bobcaswell
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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.
Discussion:
Michael Gray, VentureBeat, The Jason Calacanis Weblog, Geek News Central, SiliconANGLE and Silicon Alley Insider
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Sling: We didn't ‘work’ with AT&T for 3G streaming to iPhone (Updated) — AT&T made headlines Thursday by announcing that it had decided to allow SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone to stream video from a Slingbox over its 3G network. AT&T's CEO claimed in the announcement that Sling Media modified …
Discussion:
App Advice, Macworld, DSLreports, AppleInsider, MacRumors, The iPhone Blog, AT&T, Gizmodo, MobileCrunch, 9 to 5 Mac, InformationWeek, SlashGear, Electronista and Engadget
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.
Discussion:
TechFlash, eWeek, The Register, Between the Lines, GMSV, The Apple Core, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable!, GalleyCat and Engadget, Thanks:bobcaswell
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Jason Boog / GalleyCat:Breaking: Hachette Book Group to Transition to Agency Model
Discussion:
eWeek, Time, Macworld, Ars Technica, Epicenter, Media Decoder, Engadget, Electronista, AppleInsider, TheAppleBlog, Charlie's Diary, DailyTech, MacRumors, Techdirt, MediaMemo and EverythingiCafe
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:
Technologizer, Download Squad, 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors iPhone Blog, GPS Review, TUAW, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, O'Grady's PowerPage, the Econsultancy blog, yardley.ca, Softpedia News, TG Daily, The iPhone Blog, The Equity Kicker, ReadWriteWeb, The Register, Silicon Alley Insider, FierceMobileContent, CenterNetworks and Erictric
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:
Google Watch, eWeek, Macworld, blogs.ft.com, Engadget, Screenwerk, blogs.chron.com, App Advice, TUAW, Gadget Lab and CloudAve
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Jenna Wortham / Bits:A Personal Assistant on Your iPhone
Discussion:
Mashable!, ZDNet, building43, Search Engine Land, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, Computerworld, louisgray.com and ProgrammableWeb, Thanks:hisiri
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
Full Details on the New Nook 1.2 Firmware Going Out Now — A B&N employee (who'd just updated their store's Nooks) sent us all the details of the new Nook firmware 1.2 update that, according to the date on this memo, should hit later today. UPDATE — • Enhanced in-store seamless connectivity …
David Drummond / Guardian:
Google: We will bring books back to life — We at Google could make that wealth of knowledge available at a click. And authors would earn too — If you love books and care about the knowledge they contain, there is a problem that needs to be solved. Somewhere in the region of 175m books exist in the world today.
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Xbox Press:
A Letter From Marc Whitten: Discontinuation Of Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games — On April 15 we will discontinue the Xbox LIVE service for original Xbox consoles and games, including Xbox v1 games playable on Xbox 360 and Xbox Originals. I want to start by saying this isn't a decision we made lightly …
Discussion:
Xbox Live's Major Nelson, The Microsoft Blog, BetaNews, VentureBeat, PC World, DigitalBattle.com, CNET News, Gearlog, Techland, GeekSmack, Tech Eye, Engadget, Neowin.net, VG247, DailyTech, Erictric, The Toybox, GameLife, Geeky-Gadgets, Boy Genius Report, Digital Trends, Pocket-lint, ITworld.com, Electricpig.co.uk, TechFlash, eWeek, SlashGear, SlipperyBrick.com, Kotaku, Joystiq and Electronista
Amy-Mae Elliott / Pocket-lint:
iTablet launches from UK company — Like the iPad but with USB ports, Flash, multi-tasking, choice of OS, HDMI... In its own words “hot on the heels of Apple's latest product launch”, UK company X2 Computing has launched the “iTablet” range of Windows- or Linux-based tablet PCs.
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited — The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
Dana Blankenhorn / Open Source:
Matt Asay's big break is a big one for open source — I have a confession to make. — I'm a huge Matt Asay fan (right). Always have been. — Matt is the Anthony Bourdain (below) of open source. By that I mean he cooks better than most cooks, writes better than most writers, and he has made himself a big time brand.
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Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:
Apple's A4 chip: Engineers correct stupid journalist — I have no clue about computer chip design and manufacturing. So I trolled VentureBeat's readers with a challenge: Explain to me how Apple's switch from third-party chip manufacturers to its own in-house design for the A4 chip that powers …
Thanks:paulboutin
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Microsoft, Facebook expand search partnership; Facebook to sell own ads — Microsoft and Facebook have revised their search pact into a global deal where the social networking giant will sell its own ads and get all the features Bing has to offer. — In a blog post, Microsoft outlined the changes:
Handset Operating System / Mobile Advertising:
Android moves ahead of iPhone in new Smaato Mobile Advertising Metrics - Symbian still on top — Google Nexus One and Motorola Droid effect? Smaato Metrics for January suggest that new Android devices are revolutionizing mobile advertising performance measured by CTR (click-through-rate).
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
New York City Names Winners of Apps Contest — The winners of the first NYC BigApps competition, which invited the public to develop applications using raw sets of municipal data, were announced at an event in New York on Thursday evening. — The competition, which the city's Economic …
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Mozilla confirms infected Firefox add-ons slipped through security — Malware hidden in two extensions threatens Windows users — Computerworld - Mozilla confirmed late Thursday that it failed to detect malware in a pair of Firefox add-ons, which may have infected up to 4,600 users.
Discussion:
Download Squad, Help Net Security, The Register, Zero Day, eWeek Security Watch and Mozilla Add-ons Blog
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 …
Discussion:
The Register, DailyTech, Computerworld, All about Microsoft, Gadgetell, AppScout and Softpedia News
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
PayPal Halts Personal Payment Transactions From And To India — PayPal isn't working properly in India. eBay's electronic payment juggernaut appears to be blocking personal transactions to or from accounts of India-based users. It is reversing personal transactions; transactions involving businesses are still allowed.
Discussion:
pluGGd.in
AT&T:
AT&T FamilyMap App Launches on App Store — App Brings Peace of Mind to Families On-the-Go; Keeps Schedules, Events and Whereabouts Accessible, Centralized on iPhone
