Top Items:
Matt / WordPress.com News:
WP.com Downtime Summary — Today WordPress.com was down for approximately 110 minutes, our worst downtime in four years. The outage affected 10.2 million blogs, including our VIPs, and appears to have deprived those blogs of about 5.5 million pageviews. — What Happened …
Discussion:
GigaOM, Data Center Knowledge, Technologizer, CenterNetworks, Changing Way and VentureBeat, Thanks:chrismessina
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Zee / The Next Web:Wordpress.com is down, taking over 9.2 million blogs with it.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Mashable!, Podcasting News, Neowin.net and The Huffington Post, Thanks:martinsfp
Yahoo! Search Blog:
News about our Search Alliance with Microsoft — Today we issued a press release announcing that we've received clearance from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for our search agreement with Microsoft. Now that we're full steam ahead, I'd like to share what we at Yahoo! …
Discussion:
Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, Microsoft, BBC, Microsoft Watch, EU Press Room, Guardian, WebProNews, Neowin.net, ReadWriteWeb, eWeek, Search Engine Journal, pluGGd.in, Search Engine Land, VentureBeat, GigaOM, Yahoo! Developer Network Blog, Digital Daily, TechSpot, ResourceShelf and LiveSide.net
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Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home — According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated …
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Dr. Christopher McGinley / Lower Merion School …:
LMSD response to ‘invasion of privacy’ allegation — Last year, our district became one of the first school systems in the United States to provide laptop computers to all high school students. This initiative has been well received and has provided educational benefits to our students.
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
What Steve Jobs Said During His Wall Street Journal iPad Demo — We know that Apple's CEO is no fan of Flash, the Web animation software. But it sounds like Steve Jobs really unleashed on the Adobe system to try and convince the Wall Street Journal to ditch it for the iPad.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, Gizmodo, TG Daily, CNET News, MacRumors, Electronista, EverythingiCafe, GottaBeMobile.com, The Next Web, TiPb, VentureBeat, techblog.dallasnews.com and 9 to 5 Mac
Jesse Stay / Stay N' Alive:
Did Google Reader Just Turn on the Firehose? — Google's big push recently has been on enabling open, real-time technologies to publish, read, and interact with its new service Buzz. Reader, its RSS subscription and website reading service, is one of the biggest tools to integrate with the service.
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google Reader Recommendations Swap Popularity For Personalization — Back in October of last year, Google Reader rolled out a nice little update that added a new “Popular items” feed to the “Explore” area of the service. In here, you would find items from around the web that were gaining popularity fast.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Did Apple Just Ban Sexual Content From The App Store? — Apple may have just made a major change to the App Store that could render many developers' applications worthless. We've just heard from Jon Atherton, the developer behind Wobble iBoobs, who says that he just received an Email …
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Exclusive: TheStreet.com's Tech Exclusives Are a Crapshoot — TheStreet.com's Scott Moritz has an exciting exclusive: Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar has learned that Microsoft is working on a Microsoft-branded phone based on its Windows Phone 7 Series OS.
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New York Times:
Two Chinese Schools Said to Be Tied to Online Attacks — SAN FRANCISCO — A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
Business Wire:
PayPal is Now a Way to Pay for Facebook Ads and Facebook Credits — PALO ALTO, Calif. & SAN JOSE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Facebook and PayPal today announced a strategic relationship to offer PayPal in key parts of Facebook's advertising and developer systems.
Discussion:
The Social, ReadWriteWeb, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Inside Facebook, Mashable!, VatorNews, All Facebook, the Econsultancy blog, Digital Daily, eBay Ink, Digits, SheGeeks.net, Silicon Alley Insider, Inside Social Games, GigaOM, Between the Lines, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Lost Remote, Tech Trader Daily, Daily Patricia and Pulse2
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Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
CBS: We'll Cut iTunes Prices for Some Shows [UPDATE] — Steve Jobs's effort to cut prices on TV shows sold on iTunes has found at least partial backing from CBS. CEO Les Moonves says the broadcaster will mark down the price on some of its shows from $1.99 to 99 cents.
Vladislav Savov / Engadget:
Sony Ericsson CEO: Google asked us to build the Nexus One, we refused — Aw, why don't these CEOs say stuff like this in press conferences? Sony Ericsson's head Bert Nordberg has shared with Swedish publication Sydsvenskan the rather salacious news that his company was asked to build …
Discussion:
MobileCrunch, WebProNews, Android Central, Phone Arena, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Mashable!, AndroidGuys, Android Phone Fans, Erictric and FierceWireless
Raj Dash / All Facebook:
Report: Facebook Served As Primary Distribution Channel For Botnet Army — Internet security company NetWitness has just published a report that reveals an 18-month-long widespread hacker attack on computers worldwide whose topmost method of malware delivery was Facebook.
Discussion:
Krebs on Security, NetWitness, Zero Day, SC Magazine US, internetnews.com and InformationWeek
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Apple conceals iPad freight records - report — Moves to hide ocean shipping data from competitors and prying reporters, according to trade privacy group — In preparation for the scheduled March delivery of Apple's (AAPL) new iPad tablet computer, the company has blocked its bills of lading …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google Voice Launches A Series Of Videos To Explain Its “Awesomeness,” Gibberish — Google Voice is a great service, one of the best things Google has released in a long time. Unfortunately, most casual web users have no idea what it is. Or more specifically, what it's purpose is.
Discussion:
Lifehacker, Android Central, Obsessable, CloudAve, Maximum PC, Computerworld and Beet.TV
foursquare:
On foursquare, location & privacy... Why hello! — A lot of you asking for our thoughts in light of the “People can use foursquare to rob houses!” thesis making the rounds so we figured we'd weigh in with our perspective. Two things: — #1. We take your privacy very seriously.
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Format shifting, low damages put Canada on IP watch list — US copyright industries have declared war on Canada, and they want the US government's help in fighting the battles. Today is the last day to file comments as part of the government's annual “Special 301” process …
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Sponsors of Elliot / Elliot's Blog:
Sex.com For Sale in Foreclosure Auction — In exactly one month from today, we may see a new record set for the price of a domain sale. I just received an email from a friend with a link to a notice stating that SEX.com will be up for auction. The foreclosure auction will be held …
Alexander Vaughn / App Advice:
Huh, Apple Opens The App Store To Lottery Apps — For those of you with compulsive gambling tendencies, owning an iPhone might soon become somewhat of a problem. In what looks like a very strange move, Apple is now allowing lottery-style applications in the App Store.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Google Maps Adds Businesses in 30 African Countries — Google Maps is a great program, but it's always been disappointing to see where in the world it doesn't offer much coverage. Today the Google Africa blog announced that local business data has been added for 30 countries in Africa.
