Top Items:
Charles Starrett / iLounge:
Apple bans protective screen film from Apple Store — Apple has banned protective screen film from its retail and online stores, iLounge has confirmed with several separate companies, a policy that will affect both cases and individual film packages beginning in May.
Nick Bilton / New York Times:
Google and Partners Seek a Television Foothold — Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes. — The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance …
Discussion:
Associated Press, Relevant Results, NewTeeVee, Silicon Alley Insider, Electronista, SlashGear, Gearlog, Gizmodo, Android and Me and Engadget, Thanks:myoung
Sprint:
Nexus One from Google Coming to Sprint; Availability Date Announced Soon — Nexus One(TM) is planned for the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network with twice the network coverage of AT&T and ten times the network coverage of T-Mobile, both by square miles; Expands Sprint's Android(TM) portfolio
Grant Gross / PC World:
FTC Member Rips Into Google's Privacy Efforts — Several major U.S. Internet companies, including Google and Facebook, need to “step up” and better protect consumer privacy or face tougher penalties from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, a commissioner said Wednesday.
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, Digital Daily, Search Engine Land, Silicon Alley Insider, Main Justice and ZDNet Government
RELATED:
Emily Steel / Digits:
Google Buzz Exemplifies Privacy Problems, FTC Commissioner Says — Citing the recent launch of Google's social-networking service, Google Buzz, outgoing Federal Trade Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour said technology companies are setting a dangerous precedent of publicly exposing consumer data …
Discussion:
Mashable!
Vladislav Savov / Engadget:
New MacBook Pro, Air and Mac Pro pricing potentially leaked by Apple ads and online store (updated) — Could this be another example of online advertising presaging the onset of a hardware upgrade from Cupertino? Apple's ads on Australian tech pub PC Authority have been spotted displaying …
Discussion:
PC Authority, MacRumors, TUAW, TheAppleBlog, Mashable!, Macsimum News, Electronista, DVICE, SlashGear, Ubergizmo and 9 to 5 Mac
Agence France Presse:
Mobile ‘apps’ a $17.5 bln market by 2012: study — SAN FRANCISCO — A study released on Wednesday indicated that the market for mobile device software programs should rocket to 17.5 billion dollars (US) within three years. — Downloads of mobile applications to handsets will leap from slightly …
Discussion:
PC World, ReadWriteWeb, paidContent, Mashable!, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, TechSpot, GigaOM, BBC, Neowin.net, Phones Review, Pulse2 and dailywireless.org
RELATED:
Abhishek Bapna / Google Enterprise Blog:
Now it's easy to switch to Google Apps from Microsoft® Exchange — Today we're making it a lot easier for customers of Microsoft Exchange to go Google with Apps. Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange is a new server-side tool that migrates your company's email …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
URL Shorteners Slow Down The Web - Especially Facebook's FB.me — It's hard to imagine a Web sans URL shortening services nowadays but you can rest assured that they're here to stay - for better or worse. Question is: how do the likes of bit.ly, TinyURL and Goo.gl score in terms of speed and availability?
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
AOL Sets Up $10 Million Venture Fund To Back Local Startups — AOL (NYSE: AOL)—which is doubling down on its own local efforts—is now setting up a $10 million venture capital fund to invest in the local space. The company cites the “increasing number of startups” in the market as driving …
Yang Li / Google Mobile Blog:
Gesture Search now available for Android 1.6 — Since we launched Gesture Search on Android Market two weeks ago, I've seen quite a bit of feedback. For example, some of you have requested Gesture Search for earlier versions of Android, as well as access to it outside the US.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Blockbuster Brings New Releases to Android, Windows Mobile Phones — Blockbuster is bringing its OnDemand service to both Windows Mobile and Google Android phones, starting March 24th with the launch of the T-Mobile HTC HD2 smartphone. On that device, Blockbuster customers will be able …
Discussion:
PhoneNews.com, Tech Trader Daily, Electronista, bub.blicio.us, Mashable!, InformationWeek, Softpedia News, SlashGear, Gadgetell and eWeek
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
How Privacy Vanishes Online — If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address? — Probably not. — Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Complaints Against Yelp's “Extortion” Practices Grow Louder — Yelp has been hit with another lawsuit, the third in a matter of a few weeks. Similar to the previous complaints, this lawsuit filed by Boris Levitt, the owner of Renaissance Furniture Restoration in San Francisco, claims that Yelp's …
Nick Bilton / Bits:
G.M. Tinkers With Augmented Reality System for Cars — The navigation element of General Motors' enhanced vision system could help drivers find their destination by pointing to an exact building. — In foggy or dark conditions, the system helps define the edges of the road and points to upcoming road signs.
Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider:
Foursquare Notches 100,000 New Users In 10 Days — Foursquare's SXSW push has paid off. The company just tweeted that it gained 100,000 new users in the last ten days. — That suggests that Foursquare has around 600,000 users now. (The NYT reported Foursquare has 500,000 users on Monday.)
Ryan Singel / Epicenter:
Google's Traffic Is Giant, Which Is Why It Should be Your ISP — Everybody knows Google is one of the net's big kids, but how big is it exactly? — Well, as Arbor Networks measures it, if Google were an ISP, it would be the third largest in the world and the fastest growing …
Discussion:
DSLreports, Arbor Networks Security, Silicon Valley Watcher, The Register, ClipperHouse, GigaOM, IT PRO, Techworld.com and Hillicon Valley
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Latest Version of Google Chrome Adds Auto-Translation and New Privacy Features — Google just launched a new stable version of Google Chrome, the company's increasingly popular browser, which introduces a number of new features and more advanced privacy controls.
Chris Pendleton / Bing:
new bing maps application: worldwide telescope — About 2 years ago, I posted the announcement of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope (WWT) - a project to map out the stars, planets, solar systems and anything not on the Earth (see WorldWide Telescope Now Available!).
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple adds social networking, iPhone features to iWork.com — Apple on Wednesday added a few new features to its iWork.com Web site, including the ability to share documents on social networking Web sites. — With the enhancements, users of iWork.com can now share their documents on Web sites and social networking sites.
Discussion:
Apple iWork.com News, 9 to 5 Mac, AppleInsider, TUAW, The Next Web, Distorted-Loop.com and Macworld
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Palm Grasps at Relevance Ahead of Earnings — The news Thursday from Palm will be bad. — We know that because the company pre-announced its earnings a few weeks ago. The company's credibility problem from both a marketplace and managerial perspective is serious; and investors who enjoyed …
Yahoo!:
Yahoo! to Acquire Citizen Sports — Strengthens Social Strategy by Combining the Power of the No. 1 Online Sports Destination with the Web's Most Popular Social Sports Company — As part of its ongoing commitment to be the center of people's online lives, Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) …
Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:
Free wiki hosting company Wikia to let you create your own question and answer sites — Wikia, a site which allows anyone to create their own free wiki page, has announced a new service, Answers from Wikia, that will enable anyone to create their own question and answer sites as well.
Discussion:
VatorNews
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Firefox 3.0 reaching end of the line — A few months later than expected, Mozilla is calling it quits for version 3.0 of its Firefox browser. — “There will be no more updates for Firefox 3.0.x,” Mozilla said Tuesday in a meeting planning document. The last update will be Firefox 3.0.19 …
Jon Brodkin / InfoWorld:
Linus Torvalds named most influential open source blogger — O'Reilly media founder Tim O'Reilly is ‘the most powerful voice,’ according to a new ranking of influential open source personalities — O'Reilly media founder Tim O'Reilly is “the most powerful voice” in open source …
Discussion:
MindTouch
Phil Nickinson / Android Central:
Motorola Droid's Android 2.1 update to be rolled out OTA starting Thursday — Update 3/17: And we got even better details on the roll-out. Head here. — And just like that, we now have the date for the official Motorola Droid's Android 2.1 update. It was just approved today …
Ryan Calo / cyberlaw.stanford.edu:
Google Italy & Privacy: Not What You Might Think — Reading through Italian news coverage of the Google Italy case, another picture emerges. User privacy may well be at issue, but not in the way you probably think. I grew up in Italy and now research and teach Internet law in the United States.
Mariam Ua / Speaking of Security …:
AS-Troyak Exposes a Large Cybercrime Infrastructure — Last week, RSA and other security professionals noticed a sudden halt in the activity of an upstream Internet connectivity provider named “AS-Troyak”, thus causing several major malware-hosting networks to disconnect from the Internet.
