Techmeme: Baidu's Twitter-like Service Gains 1 Million China Users (Michael Kan/PC World)

9:15 PM ET, December 23, 2010

Top Items:

Tony Bates / The Big Blog:

Another update: Skype stabilized — I wanted to continue to update you on the status of the outage. We've been able to successfully stabilize Skype due to the dedicated supernodes deployed by Skype's engineering team. We're at roughly 90 percent of normal user volumes. — Audio, video and IM are running normally.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Computerworld, Erictric, VentureBeat, Skype Journal, USA Today, Pocket-lint and Techi.com

Abby Sewell / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

Skype CEO says company may offer credit vouchers to paying customers — Skype CEO Tony Bates told users in a video message posted on the company's website Thursday that the online calling service is considering giving credit vouchers to paying customers who have been affected by the major service outage that began Wednesday morning.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, Business Wire and Electronista

Dan York / Disruptive Telephony:
Understanding Today's Skype Outage: Explaining Supernodes

Discussion: The Big Blog, GigaOM, Bits, Digits, Guardian, Examiner, New York Times, NewsGrange, eWeek, Computerworld, SAI, Geek.com, Skype Journal, TechEye, TechCrunch, Softpedia News, Light Reading, Faster Forward, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch Europe, VoIP & Gadgets Blog and WebProNews

Facebook:

What's on your mind? — People use status updates to share what's on their minds, to tell others what they're doing, and to gather feedback from friends. The different ways people use status updates form some interesting patterns. In this study, we looked at the usage of words in different “word categories” in status updates.

Discussion: VatorNews

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

On Facebook, Angry People Are More Popular (Plus Other Fascinating Statistical Correlations) — Facebook's data team proved once again today that when you analyze a large set of anonymous user data from the world's biggest social network, you can learn some very interesting things about the state of humanity.

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Apple Trademarks ‘VoicePass’, And I Just Nicknamed My iPhone For Them — In the spirit of my trademark watch this morning: — Earlier this week, Apple filed a U.S. trademark for ‘VOICEPASS’, in the ‘Construction and Repair Services’ category. Bloomberg casually mentioned …

Discussion: Bloomberg, Patently Apple, iSmashPhone, MacNN and TUAW

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Google And NORAD Team Up Once Again To Track Santa — Needed any more sign that Christmas is upon us? The annual Google and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) partnership to track Jolly Saint Nick is back in action, starting tomorrow at 2:00 am EST despite the fact …

Discussion: Google LatLong, PC World, WebProNews, Network World and Erictric

Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:

FCC chair to approve Comcast-NBC merger with conditions for program sharing — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission issued a draft order approving Comcast's proposed merger with NBC Universal on Thursday, putting the deal up for vote before the agency's other members.

Discussion: VentureBeat, AdAge, IEEE Spectrum and Between the Lines Blog, more at Mediagazer »

Karl Bode / DSLreports:
FCC Releases Full Neutrality Rules …

Discussion: NewEnterprise, TechCrunch, Electronista and Gadgetsteria

Adam Lashinsky / Fortune:

New evidence raises questions about how long Mark Hurd knew of Jodie Fisher — Former HP CEO Mark Hurd's assistant has said she alone discovered and hired the former actress as an HP contractor in 2007. But it turns out Hurd asked about Fisher years earlier.

Discussion: SAI

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Google Woos Local Advertisers — Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete in the hot market for local business advertising. — The Internet-search giant this year …

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.”

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:

Discussion: All Facebook, Soshable, Techland and Inside Facebook

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.

Discussion: SAI, MediaPost, Electronista and The Atlantic Online

Joe Mullin / paidContent:

Firefox Designer: New Feature Will Expose Sites With Weak Privacy Policies — Another sign that browser companies are toying with new ideas for beefing up privacy protection: Mozilla has released a set of icons that are intended to communicate to users, in a simple and straightforward way, how their data can be used.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Webmonkey and Aza on Design

Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:

Ex-Google exec's venture firm to raise $100 million: source — (Reuters) - Merus Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by Google Inc's former head of mergers and acquisitions, is preparing to raise a new $100 million fund, according to a limited partner of the fund.

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: MediaPost, Fast Company and TechCrunch

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: ReadWriteWeb and GigaOM

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: Search Engine Land, Examiner, Techie Buzz, CNET News, newsfeed.time.com, Geek.com, Search Engine Roundtable, The Huffington Post, AOL News, Pocket-lint, Switched, Black Web 2.0 and SAI

Rebecca Harper / Hulu Blog:

Introducing Playlists and a New Way to Browse — Just in time for the holidays, we've unwrapped some new goodies to share with our users on Hulu.com: playlists and a new way to browse the site. — We're always looking for new ways to make watching TV on Hulu more fun …

Eric Zeman / InformationWeek:

Samsung Nears 10 Million Galaxy S Sales — Samsung recently announced that sales of its Android-based Galaxy S line of smartphones has reached 9.3 million, putting it just short of Samsung's goal of 10 million. — Earlier this year, Samsung predicted that it would sell 10 million units of its Galaxy S line of Android smartphones.

Discussion: Pulse2, Digital Trends, Techland, Fudzilla, Techie Buzz, The Next Web, VentureBeat, Engadget and PalmAddicts

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: Macworld, TiPb, VentureBeat, eWeek, 9 to 5 Mac, mocoNews, Electronista, IntoMobile, GMSV, Fudzilla, ITworld.com, MacRumors, Digital Trends, AppleInsider, Faster Forward, Post Tech, Fortune, 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.

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