Techmeme: The Music Bay: Pirate Bay Crew Instill More Fear Into The Music Industry (Ernesto/TorrentFreak)

11:10 AM ET, January 23, 2011

Top Items:

Vlad Savov / Engadget:

Motorola Xoom launching February 17th at Best Buy — When we stumbled upon an $800 price for the Motorola Xoom yesterday, our instinctive reaction was to leap forward to the next obvious question: when? Well, that call has now been answered by an internal Best Buy document that's just dropped …

Discussion: AndroidOS.in, MAGGadget, Droid Life, Techie Buzz, Androinica, Electronista, PhoneNews.com, The Next Web, Android Central and Phones Review

Leander Kahney / Cult of Mac:

$10K iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple, Thought It Was a Prank [Exclusive] — Gail Davis of Orpington Kent hung up the phone when Apple called to say she'd won a $10,000 iTunes gift card. She thought it was a prank call. — The winner of the Apple's 10 billionth App download sweepstakes nearly …

Discussion: Guardian and IntoMobile

Trudy Muller / Apple:
Apple's App Store Downloads Top 10 Billion

Josh Ong / AppleInsider:

Apple's new ‘two is better than one’ iPhone ad promotes Verizon, AT&T — Just days after Verizon launched its first iPhone ad, a new TV spot from Apple for the iPhone 4 highlights both Verizon and AT&T with the pitch “two is better than one.” — Set to the iconic Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss …

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, MacRumors, TechCrunch, Engadget, Erictric and Electronista

Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:

Verizon iPhone 4 costs $50 more than AT&T iPhone 4 off contract — While both AT&T and Verizon sell the iPhone 4 for $199 or $299 depending on storage capacity, both cellular providers sell them for different off-contract prices. This important difference can be seen on the bottom …

Discussion: Examiner, Phones Review, Apple Headlines, Life On My Mobile, iClarified and Internet Evolution

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

The Music Bay: Pirate Bay Crew Instill More Fear Into The Music Industry — For years The Pirate Bay has been a thorn in the side of the music industry, but things could be about to take a turn for the worse. Over the past days rumors of a new project titled “The Music Bay” have been circling …

Discussion: PC Magazine, The Next Web, THINQ.co.uk, Erictric and p2pnet

Martin Bryant / The Next Web:

How much traffic can a Google Doodle drive to your site? Nearly 1/4 million uniques in a day. — Google's Doodles - the fun pieces of art that Google replaces its logo with for special occasions - are immensely popular with the public, but how much traffic do they actually drive?

Discussion: msnbc.com

Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:

Apple Taps Former Navy Information Warrior for Global Director of Security — Apple has tapped security expert and author David Rice to be its director of global security, three sources who know Rice have confirmed to me. He's expected to start at Apple in March. Apple hasn't returned calls seeking comment.

Discussion: TiPb, TUAW, Apple Headlines, Electronista and iClarified

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Google May Let You Blacklist Domains To Fight Spam — Ready for do-it-yourself spam fighting? Google has discussed giving searchers the ability to remove domains from its search results. That's according to Matt Cutts, Google's top spam fighter, who's been posting frequently …

Discussion: eWeek, The Atlantic Online and Between the Lines Blog

Fred / A VC:

CEO Transitions — This past week was a remarkable one in the technology business. At the start of the week, Steve Jobs passed the leadership of Apple to Tim Cook and at the end of the week, Eric Schmidt passed the leadership of Google to founder Larry Page.

Discussion: SAI

Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:

Is Larry Page the Consummate Anti-Social CEO? — Google's new CEO isn't much for the social Web. If he has a presence on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, it was created with deep privacy settings or a fake name. I couldn't even find a fleshed-out Google profile for Larry Page.

Discussion: TechCrunch

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Google Turns to Co-Founder to Step Up Attack on Facebook

Discussion: NASDAQ.com, Reuters and Wall Street Journal

AppleInsider:

Hacker finds evidence of Qualcomm baseband for Apple's next iPhone, iPad — A hacker claims to have discovered evidence pointing to an upcoming Qualcomm cellular baseband inside the code for Apple's iTunes software, possibly indicating that the iPhone maker plans to incorporate …

Discussion: Online Social Media, TUAW, TiPb, Engadget, Zibri's Blog, SlashGear, Forbes and Electronista

Frederic Lardinois / NewsGrange:

Hacker Shows It Doesn't Take $8 Million to Clone Qwiki - Just 321 Lines of HTML Will do the Trick — Qwiki is an app that creates pretty slideshows based on Wikipedia entries. The service won the top award at the last Techcrunch Disrupt conference and just received $8 million in new funding …

Discussion: ABCNEWS and TechCrunch

Spiegel Online:

Facebook Agrees to Change ‘Friend Finder’ Feature — Under pressure from the German government, the social networking site Facebook has agreed to make a major concession due to privacy concerns. The company says it will no longer automatically e-mail invitations to join the site through services …

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