Techmeme: Clues About the Next PlayStation Portable (Hiroko Tabuchi/Bits)

1:01 PM ET, December 23, 2010

Top Items:

Peter Parkes / The Big Blog:

Significant increase in the number of people online — In the last hour, we've seen evidence of a significant increase in the number of people online. Because of the way the Skype software works, it's not possible for anyone to obtain an exact figure, but we now estimate it to be over 10 million.

Discussion: GigaOM, Guardian, Digital Trends, CNET News, TechCrunch, Computerworld, NBC Bay Area, SiliconANGLE, I4U News, Download Squad, SlashGear, Faster Forward, USA Today, TechCrunch Europe and The Digital Home

Dan York / Disruptive Telephony:

Understanding Today's Skype Outage: Explaining Supernodes — For the first time in 3 years, Skype was down today - and as I write this is still in the process of slowly coming back online. A ton of articles were written today, mostly all pointing back to Skype's blog post or status update …

Discussion: The Big Blog, PC World, Computerworld, Geek.com, Guardian, TechEye, Skype Journal, ReadWriteWeb, BBC, Softpedia News, Skype Blogs and SAI

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Skype CEO Tony Bates: Here is an Update — Tony Bates, the former Cisco Systems executive, has had better days. For the past 24 hours, he has been coordinating the efforts to bring back up one of the world's largest communication networks — Skype. Bates, who recently took over as Skype's CEO …

Discussion: Electronista and ReadWriteWeb, Thanks:om

Josh Ong / AppleInsider:

Apple's next-gen iPad to get iPod touch-like back, wide-range speaker - rumor — The second-generation iPad may have a smaller bezel, a flat back panel and a wide-range speaker, a new unverified report claims. — Japanese Mac blog MacOtakara published the rumor Thursday, citing an “anonymous Chinese source.”

Katherine Rosman / Wall Street Journal:

A Holiday Card From Google — Five Artists, 250 Hours, Six Months to Create the Search Engine's ‘Doodle’ — Set to be unveiled at 9 a.m. eastern time Thursday, Google's 2010 holiday doodle has 17 interactive images that approximate the logo's letters and colors.

Discussion: CNET News, Search Engine Land, SAI, Geek.com, Search Engine Roundtable, AOL News, newsfeed.time.com, Pocket-lint, Black Web 2.0 and Switched

Brooke Crothers / CNET News:

Obama cites Steve Jobs' wealth, product success — President Obama today cited Apple CEO Steve Jobs' product success as an example of a person who Americans should “expect to be rich” as an incentive for others. — Responding to a reporter's question, the president prefaced his comments …

Discussion: mocoNews, TiPb, Digital Trends, IntoMobile, Electronista, ITworld.com, Fudzilla, Fortune, AppleInsider, 9 to 5 Mac, PhoneArena and Techi.com

Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:

Oh Look, Here's Samsung's 4G LTE Android Phone for Verizon — Looks like Verizon'll have plenty of Android phones running around on 4G LTE soon enough. Here's a first look at Samsung's, running Froyo and TouchWiz (but according to our tipster, not Bing!). Aaaand a front-facing camera, Verizon's first.

Sam Gustin / Epicenter:

Google Buys Giant New York Building for $1.9 Billion — Google is down with New York City. — So down, in fact, that the web search titan just dropped $1.9 billion to acquire one of the largest and most historic buildings in all of the Big Apple. At nearly 3 million square feet …

Discussion: New York Post, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Softpedia News, Search Engine Roundtable, Googling Google Blog, VentureBeat, PC Magazine, Neowin.net, Engadget, Erictric, Gawker, bit-tech.net, The Business Insider, Data Center Knowledge, TechCrunch and The Official Google Blog

Christian Kaiser / The Netflix Tech Blog:

HTML5 and Video Streaming — This is Christian Kaiser, VP of Engineering here at Netflix. — My colleague John Ciancutti recently posted about our use of HTML5 for user interfaces; I thought I'd add a perspective on HTML5 and video streaming. — Since HTML5 includes a facility to embed video playback …

Discussion: GigaOM

Hiroko Tabuchi / Bits:

Clues About the Next PlayStation Portable — TOKYO —Sony's gaming chief, Kazuo Hirai, expected by some analysts to be Sony's next president, gave hints on Wednesday to burning questions that have fascinated the blogosphere for months: Is there a new Sony handheld gaming device in the works to succeed its PlayStation Portable?

Dirk Dougherty / Android Developers Blog:

More Payment Options in Android Market — A key to a great purchasing experience is providing users with simple and fast payment methods. The Android Market team has been working hard to deliver more forms of payment to further reduce purchase friction. Today, I am pleased to announce …

Stefan Constantinescu / IntoMobile: Android users can now bill app purchases straight to their AT&T account

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:

HTC Incredible HD teased for January 6th reveal? — See that? No, not all the ambiguous 4G talk, we mean the veiled phone. If we had to guess we'd say that we're looking at a January 6th reveal of the HTC Incredible HD / Mecha — a device rumored to be headed to Verizon's new LTE network.

Discussion: Thoughts from the Sidelines, Android Phone Fans, SlashPhone, Softpedia News, Gizmodo, Electronista, Gadgetell, FierceWireless and SlashGear

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Facebook Appears To Be Blocking All (Bit.ly Operated) j.mp Links — William Albano checks in to tell us that Facebook is blocking all j.mp links in status and page updates (but not profiles). Sure enough, I tried to post a j.mp link in a status update just now, and I got an error notice saying:

Jackie Cohen / All Facebook:

Facebook Drives More Video Traffic Than All But Google — Facebook has surpassed Yahoo in the amount of traffic sent to video destinations, although Google still has the lead in this regard. — This comes from a report by Brightcove and TubeMogul based on data what the two call aggregate media sites …

Discussion: TechCrunch

TubeMogul:
Brightcove and TubeMogul Q3 Research: Facebook Surpasses Yahoo …

Discussion: Brightcove Blog, Between the Lines Blog, MediaPost and SAI, more at Mediagazer »

Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:

What Tech Companies Are Spending in Washington — It's no big surprise that big companies spend a lot of money in Washington to try to influence the outcome of pending legislation and to try to talk lawmakers and agency officials out of regulating one thing or another.

Monica Chen / DigiTimes:

ECS, Asustek, MSI to showcase tablet PCs at CES 2011 — Elitegroup Computer System (ECS), Asustek Computer and Micro-Star International (MSI) are all preparing to showcase their latest tablet PCs at CES 2011. — In addition to ECS' already introduced Marvell chip-based 9.7-inch e-book reader …

Discussion: BGR, Engadget, The Next Web, Erictric, Android Phone Fans, THINQ.co.uk, Softpedia News, SlashGear, PhoneArena and GottaBeMobile

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

Rovi To Buy Sonic Solutions, Forming New Force In Digital Distribution — Rovi Corp. declared its intent to acquire Sonic Solutions late Wednesday in a deal worth $720 million. The combined company could have the clout to accelerate the adoption of digital distribution in video entertainment.

Discussion: IBD Click, Tech Trader Daily, CNET News, SlashGear, Tech Musings, VentureBeat, Investor's Business Daily, Bloomberg, Electronista, Reuters, silicontap.com and GigaOM

Bruce Sterling / Webstock:

The Blast Shack — We asked Bruce Sterling (who spoke at Webstock '09) for his take on Wikileaks. — The Wikileaks Cablegate scandal is the most exciting and interesting hacker scandal ever. I rather commonly write about such things, and I'm surrounded by online acquaintances …

Discussion: Infocult and The Atlantic Online

BBC:

Kodaks' patent spat threatens photo web sites — The fallout from a patent dispute between Kodak and web photo site Shutterfly could embroil many online image sites, says patent experts. — Kodak claimed it owns patents regarding the display of online images that is being infringed by Shutterfly.

Discussion: All Headline News and THE DRUM

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Kinect-Like Gesture System for iPad to Be Demoed at CES — Mobile Magazine reports that Norwegian company Elliptic Labs is set to offer demonstrations of its new “touchless gesture” user interface for the iPad at CES 2011 early next month. The interface, which utilizes ultrasound to generate …

Discussion: Evolver.fm, SAI, Newlaunches.com, 9 to 5 Mac, Engadget, Go Rumors, TUAW and Electronista

Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:

Gawkergate Collateral Damage Now Includes the New York Times — It's now been at least 10 days since the Gawker group of Web sites was hacked by a group calling itself Gnosis in one of the side threads to the WikiLeaks controversy. — Within two days, sites like LinkedIn …

Discussion: FierceCIO News, Fast Company and InformationWeek

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