Top Items:
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
How Google Went Into “Code Red” And Saved Google Buzz (GOOG) — Here's the story of how panicking just enough may have saved Google's answer to Facebook and Twitter. — A week ago, Google launched an add-on to Gmail called Google Buzz. Almost immediately, the world howled with complaints …
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Peter Nowak / CBC News:
Privacy commissioner probing Google Buzz — Concerns around Google's recently unveiled Buzz feature are deepening with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada looking into the social-networking tool. — Valeria Lawton, a spokesperson for the office, said on Tuesday that Buzz …
Jessica Guynn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:Privacy watchdog files complaint with FTC over Google Buzz [Updated]
Discussion:
epic.org, PC World, paidContent, Digital Daily, InformationWeek, Mashable! and Los Angeles Times, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Peter Parkes / About Skype:
Verizon Wireless and Skype join forces to create a global mobile calling community — New Skype Mobile product for Verizon Wireless smartphones brings more value to US mobile consumers — BARCELONA, Spain; BASKING RIDGE, NJ, United States; and LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg, 16 January 2010 …
Discussion:
MobileCrunch, PC World, Skype Blogs, Crave, Mashable!, Associated Press, ReadWriteWeb, USA Today, IntoMobile, GigaOM, TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE, Latest VoIP, Voice 2.0 …, dailywireless.org, 901am, TidBITS, Digital Trends, BlackBerry Rocks!, Erictric, CrackBerry.com blogs, BerryReview.com, Unwired View, jkOnTheRun, PhoneNews.com, VentureBeat, MobileContentToday, Phone Scoop, GottaBeMobile.com and Between the Lines
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Darren Murph / Engadget:
Verizon to allow unlimited Skype calling over 3G starting next month — We may be way off base here, but we're pretty sure the game just got upended. Days after AT&T appeased the masses by finally enabling 3G streaming over the iPhone's SlingPlayer app, Verizon Wireless has one-upped that gesture in a [big] gargantuan way.
Chris Anderson / Epicenter:
The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration — Last week Jeremy Clark from Adobe and I unveiled the first glimpse of the Wired Reader at TED. Above, you'll see a video, narrated by Jeremy and Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich, who led our tablet team, that shows more.
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Turf War at the New York Times: Who Will Control the iPad? — There's a heated turf war going on inside the New York Times over the iPad, pitting print die-hards against people focused on the Times' digital future. The outcome will determine pricing for some marquee content on Apple's tablet.
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
Google: Android now shipping on 60,000 handsets per day — We're in Barcelona keeping an eye on Eric Schmidt's Mobile World Congress keynote, where the Google CEO just disclosed an interesting fact: Google and their hardware partners are now shipping 60,000 Android handsets each day.
Discussion:
Phone Arena, San Francisco Chronicle, Electronista, TechCrunch, Geek.com, Silicon Alley Insider, CNET News, Digital Daily, The Next Web, eWeek and Lost Remote, Thanks:mikebutcher
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
What Kevin Smith means for the future of PR — On Saturday, the crew of a Southwest Airlines flight between the California cities of Oakland and Burbank asked a passenger to leave the plane before takeoff because they deemed him too overweight to fly. Unfortunately, that passenger happened …
Richard Wray / Guardian:
Google chief extends olive branch to mobile phone groups — Eric Schmidt has stressed that Google's involvement in mobile is designed to make the operators money, not leave them out of pocket — Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has extended an olive branch to the mobile phone industry saying he is …
Discussion:
Reuters
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Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Google Donates $2 Million To Wikimedia Foundation — According to a Tweet just sent from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Google has donated $2 million to the Wikimedia Foundation. Wales says the official announcement will be made tomorrow. — The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Facebook Launches Zero, A Text-Only Mobile Site For Carriers — At the Mobile World Congress 2010, Facebook's Chamath Palihapitiya just finished a 20-minute keynote, outlining the social networking juggernaut's mobile strategy. We'll have a video of the full presentation up soon.
Discussion:
BBC, Inside Facebook, Geek.com, Fast Company, All Facebook, Softpedia News, VentureBeat, The Register, ReadWriteWeb, The Huffington Post, Download Squad, eWeek, Erictric, Pocket-lint, VatorNews, Silicon Alley Insider and The Next Web, Thanks:atul
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Android Who Cried Wolf — Currently, Google has one of the more interesting problems I've ever seen. While I'd never tell anyone to slow down their pace of innovation, with Android, I can't help but wonder if Google might have to do just that — because it's seriously starting to trip over itself.
Every Day I'm Tumblin':
TUMBLR STOLE MY DOMAIN AT THE BEHEST OF A CORPORATION — I've run pitchfork.tumblr.com for almost a year now. I had several posts up and I followed 28 people with the account. All my posts are now gone and my address has been changed to pitchfork1.tumblr.com.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Tumblr Finally Rolls Out Comments. Sort Of. Trolls Not Welcome. — Just about a week ago, we noted how the blogging service Tumblr was testing out a new feature: photo replies. Apparently, the test worked so well that they decided to make it a permanent feature.
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Inside Google's Hot Topics, a real-time heat map of news and chatter — For a couple of years, Google has offered its real-time Hot Trends list, which shows curious users a list of the most active search terms — a kind of heat map of the news and cultural developments everyone is trying to find out about.
Nielsen Wire:
Facebook Users Average 7 hrs a Month in January as Digital Universe Expands — In a monthly view of U.S. Internet activity for top parent companies and web brands, The Nielsen Company found that the average time users spend using Facebook per month grew nearly 10%, topping seven hours.
Discussion:
Inside Facebook, All Facebook, Silicon Valley Watcher, Mashable!, VatorNews, The Next Web, Telecompetitor and ResourceShelf
Electronista:
FCC calls for 100Mbps across most of US — FCC chairman Julius Genachowski at a conference today launched (PDF) an effort to boost the speed of Internet access in the US to 100Mbps and higher. Dubbed 100 Squared, it would provide at least 100Mbps access to 100 million homes in the US.
Discussion:
Reuters, Ars Technica, DSLreports, PC World, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, BetaNews, dailywireless.org, CNET News, GigaOM, Shooting at Bubbles, DVICE, Gizmodo and MacDailyNews
Royal Pingdom:
Study: Ages of social network users — How old is the average Twitter or Facebook user? What about all the other social network sites out there, like MySpace, LinkedIn, and so on? How is age distributed across the millions and millions of social network users out there?
Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
New Facebook Statistics Show Big Increase in Content Sharing, Local Business Pages — How much traffic does Facebook now send to other web sites? Analytics firm Compete tells the San Francisco Chronicle that 13 percent of US traffic to big web portals — Yahoo, MSN, AOL …
Discussion:
PC World, eSarcasm, Perceptric Forum, Screenwerk, Lost Remote, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable
Kim-Mai Cutler / VentureBeat:
Twitter's hiring binge brings it to 140 employees — Twitter has been on a hiring spree as of late, grabbing employees left and right for its engineering and business development teams. — The company just crossed the symbolic 140-employee mark, mirroring its famous character limit for tweets, according to co-founder Biz Stone.
Discussion:
Stay N' Alive
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Sony Dash given ability to stream TVs and movies from Netflix, new lease on life — We were filled with excitement the moment Sony took the wraps off of its Dash personal internet viewer back at CES, but after learning that this was less of a tablet and more a sophisticated widget machine for in-home use …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Redbox Cuts Deal With Warner; Agrees To 28-Day Window — Coinstar (CSTR) unit Redbox this afternoon said it signed a new multi-year distribution deal with the Warner Bros. Home Entertainment unit of Time Warner (TWX) that will allow Redbox to rent new Warner DVD and Blu-Ray titles after a 28-day window.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Between the Lines, CNET News, NewTeeVee, MediaMemo, paidContent, Silicon Alley Insider and Hacking NetFlix
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
YouTube Turns Five Years Old, But Without Google, It Would Be Bankrupt — Anyone who has read my blog before knows that I think YouTube gets way too much credit in the industry that they don't deserve. While I don't disagree that YouTube deserves credit for creating a platform that has allowed …
Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:
HBO Prepares Site That Will Offer Shows and Movies — HBO looks to be on the verge of unveiling its Internet streaming service in a wider way. — A Web site called HBO GO, subtitled “It's HBO on your computer,” appeared online weeks ago, promising access to scores of TV episodes and films.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Facebook Drives 44 Percent Of Social Sharing On The Web — If you are still wondering why Google is pushing so hard with its new product Buzz, it is because it wants in on social traffic. For many sites on the Web, social traffic coming through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is beginning to rival …
