Top Items:
Gmail Blog:
Millions of Buzz users, and improvements based on your feedback — Posted by Todd Jackson, Product Manager, Gmail and Google Buzz — It's been just two days since we first launched Google Buzz. Since then, tens of millions of people have checked Buzz out, creating over 9 million posts and comments.
Discussion:
blogs.telegraph.co.uk, A VC, Silicon Alley Insider, eWeek, CNET News, Computerworld, Mashable!, Between the Lines, VatorNews, Boy Genius Report, The Register, Search Engine Journal, Softpedia News, AccMan, thinq.co.uk, ResearchBuzz, Scripting News, Shelly Palmer, Erictric, GigaOM, Security Watch, ZDNET.com.au, TechCrunch, Geekword, Pocket-lint, Electricpig, The Progress & …, Lifehacker, The Next Web, Download Squad and VentureBeat, Thanks:chrismessina
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Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Google Buzz Privacy Issues Have Real Life Implications — Merging something designed for public broadcasting (Buzz) with something inherently private (Gmail) was just looking for trouble. — Google is -deservedly - getting a lot of heat for the fact that its latest social product has a number …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
5 Reasons Why Gmail Buzz Privacy Isn't All That Bad — Google released Buzz for Gmail and there are issues if you're not careful with your settings as well as possibly unwanted group overlaps (I wouldn't be too surprised if in the future, a less tech savvy family member posts a meant …
Discussion:
AppScout
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:Watch Out Who You Reply To On Google Buzz, You Might Be Exposing Their Email Address
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
New: Google Maps Labs — When Google wants to test new features, they call them Lab experiments, and make them opt-in. Now, following many other services, Google Maps received a Lab icon. Click the green flask at the top of Google Maps and you get a chance to enable features like the following:
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Stan Schroeder / Mashable!:
Google Maps Get Labs With 9 Cool New Features — Here's a nice surprise from Google's Maps team: Just like Gmail, Google Maps now also has the Labs feature (it's the little green vial in the top right menu), which introduces experimental new features for you to try out.
Discussion:
All Points Blog
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Amazon Wants To Give A Free Kindle To All Amazon Prime Subscribers — In January Amazon offered select customers a free Kindle of sorts - they had to pay for it, but if they didn't like it they could get a full refund and keep the device. It turns out that was just a test run for a much more ambitious program.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Geek.com, 9 to 5 Mac, Technologizer, Gadgetell, GottaBeMobile.com, Engadget, Seeking Alpha and Gizmodo
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
The iPad that launched a thousand apps — Data gathered in January show a rush of new projects on the iPhone operating system — Click to enlarge. Source: Flurry Analytics — Measured by the number of applications available for each type of device, Google's (GOOG) …
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Peter Farago / blog.flurry.com:
Flurry Smartphone Industry Pulse, January 2010 — Each month, Flurry leverages its data set collected from iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and J2ME applications to identify, study and share industry trends. Flurry tracks over 20,000 live applications and over 2 billion user sessions each month.
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Bing Demos StreetSide With Flickr Photos, Live Video & “Bing Sky” — Today at the TED conference in Southern California, Microsoft demonstrated its enhanced, Silverlight version of Bing Maps, with StreetSide imagery, Photosynth and Map Apps, which allow third party data and content to be placed within the map.
Discussion:
Bing Maps Blog, Search Engine Watch, Softpedia News, Screenwerk, LiveSide.net, Epicenter, Geek In Disguise and The Microsoft Blog
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Dmitry Shapiro / Chief Disruptor:
Veoh Letter — Veoh launched in September of 2005 with a bold goal: To make it possible for anyone with a video camera and a computer to broadcast video to the world. While others were working on helping people share short video clips, Veoh created technologies that made it possible …
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Google Code Blog:
Announcing Google Chart Tools — A good chart can tell a story, such as depicting when you get home on Saturday night by plotting your tweet patterns along the week. — A good chart can take an elusive concept and clarify it in a visually appealing manner.
Richard Lai / Engadget:
Dell Mini 5: we have it (update: new pics and video!) — That's right! After all those quick and dirty appearances, we've finally got our own Dell Mini 5 (aka “Streak” or “M01M") prototype for a more in-depth look. Got a question about this mysterious beast?
Discussion:
Android Central, MobileContentToday, These are the Droids, AndroidGuys, Ubergizmo, AndroidSPIN and Pocketables
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Meet the guys behind Pocket God — Their pygmy-killing iPhone game is the unlikely winner of this year's “Best App Ever” award — Dave Castelnuovo and Allan Dye. Photo: Spencer Brown — It started as a week-long “sprint project” — a bit of bare-bones entertainment for Apple's (AAPL) …
Discussion:
TUAW
Abbey Klaassen / AdAge:
Microsoft Reorganizes Marketing Team, Appoints Chief Creative Officer — Taps Gayle Troberman for Post; Several Execs Also Gain New Roles — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Microsoft has reorganized its central marketing group and among the changes is the naming of a chief creative officer.
9 to 5 Mac:
Wanna hear what the cops are saying? There's an App for that.... Imagine the fun. Juicy Development has introduced a police scanner app for the iPhone and iPod touch, Police Scanner 2. — This ingenious little app lets users alert others about emergency broadcast streams as they happen using text messages.
Nicholas Kolakowski / eWeek:
Microsoft Acquiring RIM May Be Bad Idea, Says Analyst — Microsoft is reportedly interested in purchasing BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, but such an acquisition could have negative consequences for Microsoft, an analyst says. Both Microsoft and RIM saw their share …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft halts Windows Update distribution of security fix after blue-screen reports — Microsoft has removed one group of patches it released as part of this week's Patch Tuesday — MS10-015 (KB977165) - from its Windows Update service until it can investigate reports by some users that it is causing havoc with their PCs.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Microsoft And Partners Are About To Add A Big Fat Social Layer To Outlook — In November 2009, when Microsoft announced the release of the public beta of Microsoft Office 2010, the company also introduced an entirely new add-on for its Outlook product that we haven't heard a peep about since.
Roman Loyola / Macworld:
Macworld Expo 2010 Best of Show winners — When it comes to Macworld Expo, there's one question that Macworld editors are asked without fail: What are the most interesting products at the show? And that's the idea behind the Macworld Expo Best of Show awards—to highlight the products that stand out at the show.
Discussion:
Computerworld, I4U News, Macsimum News, Brainstorm Tech, TUAW, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Mashable!, Between the Lines, Gadget Lab, CrunchGear, MacRumors Page 2 and Gearlog
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Google Tweaks Mobile Search, Adds Olympics Onebox, Yahoo Offers Dedicated Mobile Olympics Site — Google has made some subtle changes to its mobile homepage and searchbox. As the Google Mobile Blog explains: … These relatively minor changes make Google mobile search more user-friendly and somewhat more visually appealing.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Aviary Now Free As A Bird — Aviary is easily one of the best online image editors out there — maybe the best. But to take full advantage of all it offers, you had to pay for its full suite, which cost you $24.99 a year. Well, that is until now. Starting today, the full service is now available for free to all users.
IWB / Irving Wladawsky-Berger:
Extreme Scale Computing — Supercomputing has been a major part of my education and career, from the late 1960s when I was doing atomic and molecular calculations as a physics doctorate student at the University of Chicago, to the early 1990s when I was general manager of IBM's SP family of parallel supercomputers.
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Chip-and-PIN is broken — Noted security researcher Ross Anderson and colleagues have published a paper showing how “Chip-and-PIN” (the European system for verifying credit- and debit-card transactions) has been thoroughly broken and cannot be considered secure any longer.
