Top Items:
Brier Dudley / Seattle Times:
Consumer Electronics Show comes to Las Vegas this week — At CES, more than 2,500 companies are presenting new electronics and tech products. At least 120,000 attendees from 130 countries are expected to peruse the show floor. — You'd think people would have enough gadgets …
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft Supposedly Showing Off Its Answer To Apple TV And Google TV At CES — Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been a big hit for entertainment and online video, and we've heard that Microsoft is trying to court more media companies to the Xbox. — But it looks like the company is also going to unveil …
Discussion:
Techland, SlashGear, Techie Buzz, Kotaku, All about Microsoft Blog, LiveSide.net, VG247, BlogsDNA, The Next Web and Neowin.net
Steven M. Davidoff / DealBook:
Facebook and the 500-Person Threshold — Goldman Sachs's investment in Facebook once again raises the issue of whether the Securities and Exchange Commission will force the social networking company into an initial public offering. In particular, this issue arises because of the special purpose vehicle …
RELATED:
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
Facebook, Twitter, & startup valuations - The best properties always look too expensive — The best properties always look too expensive. Market leaders command the highest prices. It is only a year or two later that they look like great deals. The experts thought Microsoft was crazy …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, EngageDigital, DealBook, SAI and The Atlantic Online, Thanks:denimsmith
David Kirkpatrick / The Daily Beast:
Facebook's $50 Billion Goldman Goldmine: Don't Expect an IPO
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, Internet Evolution, GigaOM, Mediaite, SAI and DealBook
Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:
New iTunes Features Aim To Outdo DVD — Some of the coolest so-called “extras” embedded only on the iTunes' version of several recent film releases from Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures aren't even mentioned in their promotional materials. That's because Sony Pictures Home Entertainment …
Discussion:
TUAW, ReadWriteWeb, AppleInsider, GigaOM, MacRumors, Techland, TiPb and iClarified
RELATED:
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report Blog:
Who owns your digital downloads? (Hint: it's not you) — Steve Jobs once said, “People want to own their music.” — Someone better tell the folks who run the iTunes Store and its competitors. If you buy a digital music track or album from the iTunes store or one of its competitors, you don't own it.
Thanks:paulfallon
Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:
Honeycomb to Require Powerful Processor, Screen: OEM — Google's new Android Honeycomb tablet OS will require a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor to run properly, said Bobby Cha, managing director of Korean consumer electronics firm Enspert. — That means that many existing Android tablets …
Discussion:
9 to 5 Mac, PhoneArena, Android Phone Fans, DailyTech, Softpedia News, Electronista, Fonehome.co.uk, Androinica, MobileTechWorld, Android Community, DeviceMAG, PhoneDog.com, Android News, Rumours …, GottaBeMobile, pocketnow.com, BGR, Engadget, Phones Review, Geek.com, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, Erictric, PC Magazine and Droid Life, Thanks:saschasegan
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
SCVNGR Raises $15 Million At $100MM Valuation — Location based game SCVNGR has raised another $15 million in a funding round led by European VC firm Balderton Capital, with participation from previous investors Google Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.
Discussion:
paidContent:UK, Guardian, eMoney, SCVNGR Blag, Xconomy, Mass High Tech and SAI
Lydia Dishman / Fast Company:
Q&A Site Quora Builds Buzz With A-List Answerers — It's not just what gets answered here, but who's doing the answering. No matter what your question, Charlie Cheever, Adam D'Angelo, and the Quora team are confident you'll find an expert answer on their site.
Discussion:
Twittercism and TechCrunch
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Donya Blaze / WebNewser:
Marissa Mayer on Google's Failed Groupon Bid — After incessant buzz that Google was looking to buy Groupon, word finally came that the fast-growing “deal of the day” company had turned the tech giant down. So, does that mean Google might launch its own coupon-type service instead?
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, Screenwerk, SAI, Softpedia News, Fortune, New York Magazine, paidContent and Deal Journal
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
In the Works: A Google Mobile Payment Service? — “You'll be able to walk in a store and do commerce,” says Google's Eric Schmidt. “You'd bump for everything and eventually replace credit cards” — Google (GOOG) is considering building a payment and advertising service that would let users buy milk …
Discussion:
SAI
StatCounter Global Stats:
Firefox overtakes Internet Explorer in Europe in browser wars — Internet Explorer loses crown in major market for first time — Boston, USA and Dublin, Ireland; Tuesday 4th January, 2011: Firefox overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to become the number one browser in Europe …
Discussion:
The Register and The Next Web
News Office:
The surprising usefulness of sloppy arithmetic — Ask a computer to add 100 and 100, and its answer will be 200. But what if it sometimes answered 202, and sometimes 199, or any other number within about 1 percent of the correct answer? — Arithmetic circuits that returned such imprecise answers …
Discussion:
Softpedia News
Andrew Munchbach / BGR:
Best Buy's new ‘Buy Back’ program to launch January 5th for phones, laptops, tablets, and TVs — One of our trusted Best Buy sources has come through with several documents that provide additional details on the retailer's new Buy Back program. The new protection plan …
Discussion:
ITworld.com, Thoughts from the Sidelines, Electronista, Examiner, Gizmodo, SlashGear, VatorNews, Technologizer, Engadget, Pulse2, PhoneDog.com, IntoMobile, Techland and iClarified
Jessi Hempel / Fortune:
What the hell is going on with TV? — Google TV. Xbox. Apple TV. Roku. All these gadgets promise to make television more like the web. There's just one hitch: None of them are ready for primetime. — By Jessi Hempel, senior writer — You don't have to wait for Thursday nights to watch The Office these days.
Discussion:
Stage Two and VentureBeat, more at Mediagazer »
Bill Slawski / SEO by the Sea:
A Google Like Button: Adsense for Social Network Sharers? — A Google patent application published last week describes how Google might enable visitors to websites to share information that they've found with others on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites.
Paul Buchheit:
Angel investing, my first three years — I started investing in startups with the assumption that I don't know what I'm doing (which is always true), but that the only way to actually learn anything is through experience. Therefore, my goal was to invest in a variety of startups …
Discussion:
VentureBeat and TechCrunch, Thanks:louisgray
Electronista:
Study: 40% of iPad owners have Kindles too — Despite stereotypes, almost half of iPad owners also have a Kindle at the same time, JPMorgan found in a new study. About 40 percent have Amazon's e-reader, and another 23 percent still plan to buy one in the next year.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, ThinkMobile and SAI
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
HTC EVO Shift 4G in the wild! — QWERTY fans, rejoice: at this point, we're pretty sure this thing's getting announced this week, seeing how it's out and about in retail packaging. Here's Sprint's EVO Shift 4G in all its in-the-wild glory — and yes, it turns out it's definitely called the EVO Shift 4G …
Discussion:
BGR, SlashGear, Gadgetell, Android News, Rumours …, Android Community, MobileCrunch, SlashPhone, Softpedia News, MobileWhack.com, PhoneDog.com, Go Rumors, PhoneArena and GeekSugar
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Windows 7 breaks 20% share barrier — But XP projected to still account for 13% when it's retired in 2014 — Computerworld - Windows 7 cracked the 20% share mark last month, a milestone the problem-plagued Vista never reached, a Web measurement vendor said over the weekend.
Discussion:
Fast Company, Electronista, TechEye and Computerworld
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Reddit Has Banner Year, Boasts 232% Traffic Growth — Social news site Reddit has just posted some interesting statistics on a remarkable 2010 filled with traffic spikes and user engagement growth. Most notable? The jump in pageviews from 250 million in January of 2010 to 829 million in December of 2010, a 232% growth.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Mashable!, Lost Remote, VentureBeat and NewsGrange, more at Mediagazer »
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
With Fusion, AMD plans to stop being the underdog in chips — Making good on plans it laid in 2006, Advanced Micro Devices is finally announcing that its Fusion family of computer chips, which combine graphics functions with general computing power, are ready for prime time.
Discussion:
Computerworld, New York Times, The Windows Blog, eWeek, Digits, Inquirer, The Register, V3.co.uk, New York Times, Guardian and Softpedia News
Hugo Miller / Bloomberg:
Motorola's Jha Seeks to Defy History After Phone-Unit Spinoff — Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) — Motorola Mobility Inc., the mobile- phone maker that's being spun off from Motorola Inc. today, won't just need to challenge Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. to succeed. It also needs to defy history.
Discussion:
BetaNews
Charles Ying / satine.org:
The Care and Feeding of the Android GPU — Android has two major technical UX problems: animation performance and touch responsiveness. — Android's UX architecture needs work. UI compositing and the view system are both primarily done in software. Garbage collection and async operations frequently block UI rendering.
Horace Dediu / asymco:
How sticky is Android? — There is an assumption floating around the debates in this and other forums that the “battle” between mobile platforms is a land grab. The unspoken implication of this assumption is that once a user is captured she is permanently locked into the chosen platform never …
