Top Items:
Microsoft:
Microsoft Launches New Casual Games Hub — The company today rolled out the Microsoft Game Hub, which helps fans of casual games like Bejeweled play and interact socially across MSN Games, Bing Games and Windows Live Messenger. — Solitaire doesn't have to be so solitary anymore.
Discussion:
LiveSide.net, SelectStart, VentureBeat, Softpedia News and Winrumors
RELATED:
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Not So Casual: Microsoft To Revitalize MSN Games, Live Messenger And Bing Games — Microsoft this morning announced several new efforts to gain some ground in the booming social/casual gaming market. The company will be debuting an all-new version of MSN Games (see preview here) …
Discussion:
Inside Social Games, The Windows Blog, PR Newswire and Gadget Lab
Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Facebook Passes EBay in Value, Becoming No. 3 U.S. Web Company — Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc.'s estimated worth is now bigger than EBay Inc.'s valuation, making it the third- largest U.S. Internet business and underscoring the growing allure of social media for investors.
Discussion:
Venture Capital Dispatch, ReadWriteWeb, Softpedia News, SAI, Rev2.org and Go Rumors
Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:
Path: The Social App That's Not Viral (By Design) — Silicon Valley is in the midst of a mini photo-sharing app boomlet. We have Instagram (which started adding 100,000 users per week as soon as it launched last month), Picplz (which beat out Instagram to get a Series A round with their shared investor …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, Techland, Epicenter, Gizmodo, blogs.chron.com, Ben Metcalfe Blog, TechCrunch, parislemon, Continuations, SAI and SFGate
RELATED:
Path:
Introducing The Personal Network — Today we are proud to launch The Personal Network. Practically all of us carry a camera phone, and our photos tell the stories of our lives. Starting today, we hope that Path is the place you will always feel comfortable being yourself and sharing …
Discussion:
Yahoo! News, Examiner, PC World, Scripting News, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, This Just In, Mashable!, Softpedia News, Social Medium, Xconomy and Pocket-lint
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Path: the social system that will piss social mavens off
Discussion:
New York Times, Fast Company, Mark Evans Tech, The Social, ReadWriteWeb, PhoneArena and The Next Web, Thanks:thekenyeung
Sameer Samat / The Official Google Blog:
Improvements to Product Search for this holiday season — Every year retailers start the holiday shopping season earlier and earlier—and still I procrastinate until late December before getting started. This year I've already made my list and I'm ready to go.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, TechCrunch, CNET News, Google Retail Blog, Softpedia News and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Raid The MiniBar: Meebo Gets Into The Site Check-In Game. But Don't Call It A Game. — With the rise of Foursquare, the “check-in” has become fairly commonplace. With the launch of Places, Facebook will only make it more so. It shouldn't be surprising that we're seeing dozens …
Discussion:
Download Squad, Scobleizer, GigaOM, NetworkEffect, Softpedia News, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat
Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
Pulse, Popular App, Moves to Attract More Users — PALO ALTO, Calif. — Publishers' offices at print newspapers and magazines are tension-filled places these days, as executives watch readers and advertisers flock to the Web and cellphone screens. — Contrast that to the atmosphere …
Discussion:
Marco.org, Softpedia News, mobiputing, iClarified, TUAW and The Next Web
Devin Coldewey / CrunchGear:
More Kinect Craziness: Mind-Blowing 3D Video Effect — The Kinect may be divisive as a gaming peripheral, but I think we can all agree that a $150 off-the-shelf depth-aware camera system is a good thing. And just in the week since the device launched, people have already come up with some crazy applications for it.
Discussion:
Engadget, MSDN Blogs, Digital Society, Geek.com and Beet.TV
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report Blog:
Microsoft vs. McAfee: How free antivirus outperformed paid — How effective is free antivirus software? I had a chance to see a real, in-the-wild example just this month, and the results were, to put it mildly, unexpected. The bottom line? Microsoft's free antivirus solution found …
Discussion:
Hardware 2.0 Blog, Thanks:edbott
Jon Evans / TechCrunch:
Dear Foursquare, Gowalla: Please Let's Stop Pretending This Is Fun — It's a bad month to be Foursquare or Gowalla. Ten days ago, 900-pound gorilla Facebook announced Facebook Deals for Facebook Places (i,e., location-based coupons) and check-ins for third-party apps.
Discussion:
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life, All About Symbian and Appolicious Advisor
Kevin J. O'Brien / New York Times:
Smartphone Sales Taking Toll on G.P.S. Devices — BERLIN — The auto navigation device, a fixture of dashboards around the world for the past seven years, may soon begin to disappear, industry experts say, as satellite-tracking technology is absorbed into smartphones and automobiles.
Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:
Ebooks Winners & Losers — Let's come back to the ebook with more questions. There is no doubt: the digital book will find its place under the sun; its prospects look much better than those of the online press. In the first place, there isn't an ingrained, now decade-old, habit of reading news for free on the internet.
Federico Viticci / MacStories:
“Exciting Announcement from iTunes” Coming Tomorrow, What Is It? — Oh, look what we have here. Apple just updated its homepage on apple.com to include this banner, which states an “exciting announcement” from iTunes is coming tomorrow at 7 AM PST. “Tomorrow is just another day.
Discussion:
GigaOM, Digital Daily, BGR, Macworld, 9 to 5 Mac, AppleInsider, MacRumors, SAI, Engadget, Gizmodo, CrunchGear and The Next Web, Thanks:viticci
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Mark Papermaster should be happier at Cisco than he was at Apple — In many ways, the networking giant is a better fit for the 26-year IBM veteran — Papermaster. Photo: Apple Inc. — Last week wasn't a total disaster for Cisco (CSCO) — which got a $29 billion market cap haircut Tuesday …
Discussion:
Gizmodo, The Register, Softpedia News, Inquirer and Network World
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Amazon Web Services takes GPU servers to the cloud — Amazon Web Services on Monday launched graphical processing unit instances for its high performance computing workloads. — In a statement and blog post, Amazon said graphical processing unit (GPU) servers have become popular enough to bring to AWS.
Discussion:
Amazon Web Services Blog, Amazon.com, Tim Anderson's ITWriting, CNET News, Softpedia News, The Register, GigaOM and TechEye
Leena Rao / TechCrunchIT:
EMC Buys Enterprise Data Storage Company Isilon For $2.25 Billion In Cash — Enterprise software giant EMC has just acquired Isilon Systems for $2.25 billion in cash or appoximately $33.85 per share. The deal was rumored to be in the works but now it's official.
Discussion:
Between the Lines Blog, TechEye, Digital Daily, Tech Trader Daily, Computerworld, PR Newswire and DealBook
Riva Richmond / New York Times:
Attacker That Sharpened Facebook's Defenses — A friend on Facebook suggests that you watch an amazing or funny or sexy video. The link may seem innocuous enough. But with a few simple clicks, you could end up infecting your PC with the Koobface worm. — Koobface, whose name is an anagram …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Let a Zillion Users Blab: Yahoo Debuts “Contributor Network” — Yahoo is debuting a new offering for its hundreds of million of users, which takes the Demand Media model and notches up the volume by presumably allowing a thousand flowers to bloom. — Or, more to the point, blab.
Discussion:
AdAge and Yodel Anecdotal
Kat Hannaford / Gizmodo:
Rumor: Google Taking On eBay With Boutiques.com Site Launch — Fashion bloggers are squealing that Google's going into the fashion business, following an invitation for a swanky NYC launch event this Wednesday, where “high tech fuses with high fashion.” Supposedly, they'll …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, frockwriter, SAI, Go Rumors and BuzzFeed, Thanks:gizmodo
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Did Tumblr Just Reverse Take Down 4Chan? — Today was supposed to be the day that 4Chan took down Tumblr. Instead, it looks like 4Chan itself is down. Could Tumblr be behind it? — As you can see, 4Chan is down for everyone, not just me. And it has been that way for at least the past 15 minutes.
Discussion:
THINQ.co.uk, Pulse2, Urlesque and Techie Buzz
RELATED:
Adrian Chen / Gawker:
4chan vs. Tumblr: Whoever Wins, We All Lose
Discussion:
Urlesque and msnbc.com, more at Mediagazer »
