Top Items:
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Microsoft To Pay More Than Half A Billion Dollars To Jump-Start Windows Phone 7 — Editor's note: The following guest post is by Kim-Mai Cutler. — Nearly four years after Apple launched the iPhone and two years after Google open-sourced the code for its Android operating system …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
A billion to launch Windows Phone 7? I bet Microsoft is paying a lot more — Combining guesswork with analyst estimates, TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft may spend as much as a billion dollars to launch and develop Windows Phone 7 in its first year. — Microsoft, as you'd expect, isn't commenting on that figure.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider and WMPoweruser.com
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Developer of Tablets Loses Apple as Customer — SAN FRANCISCO — Apple severed ties with a small Silicon Valley design firm that for nearly a decade had helped with the development of some of its products, after the firm showcased its own prototype tablet computer.
Discussion:
CNET News, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, DailyTech, IntoMobile, MacNN, SlashGear, Cult of Mac, Gizmodo and iLounge
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
YouTube Debuts New Movies Section With 400 Free, Full-Length Films (Updated) — YouTube has launched a fresh Movies category on its website, gathering about 400 full-length films for your on-demand viewing pleasure, all free of charge. — The renewed section, which is actually …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Guess Who Is Trying To Trademark The Word “Face”? (And Guess Who Is Trying To Stop It?) — When it comes to trademarks, Facebook is proving to be a bully. It is going after Teachbook in court for using a similar name, and already forced Placebook to change its name. But that is only half the story.
Jeremy Horwitz / iLounge:
Brand New Details On the iPod touch 4G — According to a source who would have reason to know, the fourth-generation iPod touch is changing back shapes—sorry, readers who have been posting with love for the dome-like curved iPod touch 2G/3G back, but that's going away.
Discussion:
App Advice, Cult of Mac, 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors and AppleInsider
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Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Leaked Case Design Suggests iPod Nano May Gain Smaller Square Form Factor
Discussion:
Computerworld, Fortune, Softpedia News, TiPb, iPodNN, iThinkDifferent, Gadget Lab, AppleInsider, Pocket-lint, everythingiCafe, CrunchGear, Engadget, 9 to 5 Mac, iLounge, MacDailyNews and Edible Apple
Peter Kirn / Create Digital Motion:
Apple-Centric Observers Get the Facts Wrong: H.264 Still Ain't Free — Addendum to the previous story: an “end user” and an “application” are not the same thing. Watching comments from some users dumping on Firefox and Opera because they don't understand this is painful.
Discussion:
Open Source Blog, Hardware 2.0 Blog, Engadget, DailyTech, 9 to 5 Mac, The Register, PC World, Geek.com, Ars Technica, gHacks Technology News, AppleInsider, InformationWeek, Neowin.net, TechSpot, CNET News, Webmonkey, MacRumors, TUAW, Computerworld, Softpedia News, The Business Of Online Video, VentureBeat, Electronista, Download Squad, Business Wire and NewTeeVee
Emily Wood / The Official Google Blog:
Find out what's hot on search with the Google Beat — Every day, there are more than a billion searches for information on Google. Have you ever wondered what those searches are about—or whether what you're searching for also happens to be on the minds of millions of others across the country?
Discussion:
Pocket-lint and BlueGlass
Carl Sjogreen / Facebook Developer Blog:
Social From the Ground Up — At Facebook, we are huge believers in what a small dedicated team with a unique perspective can accomplish. We've already seen how a group of startups who built social interactions into the core of their product experience have completely changed how people play games online …
Discussion:
Venture Capital Dispatch, Inside Facebook, ReadWriteWeb and The Next Web
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook To Begin Giving Y Combinator Startups VIP Treatment
Discussion:
VentureBeat and GigaOMGigaOM
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Apple Upgrades iWork, Gives ePub a Boost — It is pretty clear by now that Apple's iWork productivity suite is an acquired taste. But soon, folks who are interested in publishing their content in the ePub format — an open eBook standard — might just develop a taste for it.
Discussion:
Apple, MacRumors, CNET News, Daring Fireball, SlashGear, Macworld, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac and PadGadget
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Index Ventures Buys Into Etsy, Triples Valuation To Nearly $300 Million — Crafty commerce site Etsy just raised another $20 million in its fifth venture round (that would be the Series E). Index Ventures is the new investor leading the round, with partner Danny Rimer getting an observer's seat on the board.
Discussion:
A VC, BoomTown, VentureBeat, Venture Capital Dispatch, VatorNews, Silicon Alley Insider and paidContent
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
SCVNGR Launches Support For Facebook Places — Tweet — Location-based game SCVNGR has had a big week of news, first with its partnership with AT&T and then the release of its secret social mechanics playdeck. Today the company has announced that it now sports full integration …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb and BoomTown
Pete Warden / HubSpot:
The March Of Twitter: Analysis of How And Where Twitter Spread — To answer that question I created a visual history of Twitter's growth, feeding data from Dharmesh Shah (developer of TwitterGrader.com) into OpenHeatMap to produce an animated visualization of the service's growth …
Discussion:
Guardian and PeteSearch, Thanks:atul
Suzanne Choney / Technolog:
Gmail calling takes off, but not without bumps — Google's Gmail “Call phone” link in the e-mail program makes it easy to place free calls — for now — within the United States and Canada. — More than 1 million calls were placed from Gmail's free calling service in its first 24 hours …
Discussion:
Google Operating System, Telegraph, Techdows and calliflower.com
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Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Gmail users place 1M calls in 24 hours
Discussion:
PC World, DSLreports, PC Magazine, Ubergizmo, Telegraph, Softpedia News, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Erictric, Lockergnome Blog Network, eWeek, Pulse2, TechFlash and Crave
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Charges Settled Over Fake Reviews on iTunes — SAN FRANCISCO — Savvy Internet users know that glowing online reviews of things like books or restaurants can't always be trusted. But federal regulators are giving notice that if you stand to gain financially from the review you are writing, you should be up front about it.
Discussion:
Techdirt, Inc.com, Cult of Mac, Andy Beard, 9 to 5 Mac, MacNN, GamesIndustry.biz, WebProNews and Electricpig.co.uk, more at Mediagazer »
Join Diaspora Blog:
An Overdue Update — Since August is nearly over, it is time for an update and answers to some questions. We have been coding. We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th. — We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing.
Discussion:
VatorNews, Download Squad, Epicenter, VentureBeat, Mashable! and ReadWriteWeb
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Ina Fried / CNET News:
Exchange ActiveSync to arrive on Hotmail on Monday — REDMOND, Wash.—One of the features promised as part of the latest update to Hotmail will arrive next week, CNET has learned. — In an interview here on Thursday, Microsoft's Dharmesh Mehta told CNET that Exchange ActiveSync …
Scott Austin / Venture Capital Dispatch:
Kleiner Perkins Sitting Pretty In Event Of ArcSight Sale — ArcSight Inc. may be the next publicly traded technology company to give its venture capital backer a big reward for sticking with it. — The Wall Street Journal reports the security software company is quietly shopping itself …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal and DealBook
foursquare:
Am I mayor yet? — We made a quick yet long-awaited tweak to our apps today. When you're getting close to winning a Mayorship (within 10 check-ins), you'll now see how far away you are from ousting the current Mayor. You'll see the count in the post check-in screen when you check into a place.
Discussion:
msnbc.com, GeekSugar, The Next Web, About Foursquare, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and Electricpig.co.uk
Kelvin Soh / Reuters:
Lenovo to develop game consoles in China: report — (Reuters) - Lenovo, the world's No. 4 PC maker, has set up a unit to develop a video game console for the China market, a newspaper reported on Friday, pitting it against rivals such as Microsoft and Sony.
Discussion:
PC World, Tech Trader Daily, Electronista, Obsessable, SlashGear, Geek.com and Gearlog
Paul Lamkin / Pocket-lint:
ViewSonic Android tablet: Pictures emerge — Earlier this week, we at Pocket-lint brought you the news that ViewSonic is planning a big (well, little in size but big in attitude) tablet launch at IFA. — And now we've been sent these pics from our inside man, showing off a ViewSonic tablet in all of its glossy glory.
Discussion:
I4U News, Softpedia News, Engadget, SlashGear, Electronista and Liliputing
