Top Items:
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Exclusive: BlackBerry Messenger will launch on Android and iOS — BGR has learned from multiple trusted sources that Research In Motion is planning to bring its beloved BlackBerry Messenger app and service to Android, and eventually to iOS as well. According to our sources …
Discussion:
LAPTOP Magazine, iGeneration Blog, Digital Trends, The Toybox Blog, MacRumors iPhone Blog, ReadWriteWeb, SAI, VentureBeat, Engadget, Geek.com, msnbc.com, Redmond Pie, Your Daily Apple, Ubergizmo, IntoMobile, Gearlog, MacStories, Techie Buzz, TechSpot, GizmoFusion, PhoneDog.com, CrackBerry.com blogs, TiPb, Tech Trader Daily, Geekosystem, Gizmodo, Neowin.net, Droid Life, Electronista, Techland, TUAW, SlashGear, Electricpig.co.uk, Android Phone Fans, The Next Web, Erictric, everythingiCafe, Download Squad, Phones Review, Android Community, Pocket-lint, iClarified and Know Your Cell
Nielsen Wire:
Who is Winning the U.S. Smartphone Battle? — The answer depends on whether you're looking at operating systems or manufacturers. — The battle for the hearts and minds of consumer smartphone owners continues to be a heated one according to data just released by The Nielsen Company.
Discussion:
VatorNews, GigaOM, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Engadget, Digital Trends, asymco, GMSV, Electronista, Android Community, Tech Trader Daily, SlashGear, IntoMobile and Android Phone Fans
RELATED:
Jennifer Allan / Electricpig.co.uk:
iPad price drop: Apple will refund the difference — If you recently bought an iPad, only to find that there's now a shiny new iPad 2 and a whopping great £100 reduction on the price tag of the original iPad, do not be alarmed! Apple will refund you the difference, so you could still take advantage of that iPad price drop.
Discussion:
Digital Trends, MacRumors, AppleInsider, Gadget Lab, GigaOM, TiPb, Apple Bitch, Ubergizmo, 9 to 5 Mac, MacNN, The Next Web, CrunchGear, Geek.com, iLounge and TUAW
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Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
iPad 2 will be at Best Buy at launch (Update: Sams Club+Walmart) — In case you want to sit in the parking lot of a Best Buy rather than the parking lot of an Apple Store: Best Buy will have iPad 2 at launch. Wooo! — Will the other usual suspects (Verizon, AT&T, Walmart) as well?
Discussion:
MobileWhack, lalawag, PC World, MacGazette.net, Gearlog, TUAW, MacStories, Edible Apple, App Advice, Electronista and @bestbuy
Bing:
Bing Launches Deals — Calling all bargain hunters, deal lovers, Groupon groupies and Living Social fanatics! Things just got easier. — Today we're launching Bing deals for the desktop and mobile (m.bing.com) - giving you access to more than 200,000 unique offers in over 14,000 cities …
Discussion:
TechFlash, LiveSide.net, Techland and The Next Web
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Matt Rosoff / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft Adds Daily Deals To Bing — Microsoft will incorporate daily deals and discounts into Bing search results through a partnership with The Dealmap.The move gives Microsoft another weapon against Google, who failed to acquire Groupon after bidding a reported $6 billion late last year.
Discussion:
paidContent, GigaOM, Search Engine Land and All about Microsoft Blog
Federico Viticci / MacStories:
Twitter Updates iOS App with Lots Of New Features — An interesting (and rather huge) update to the official Twitter app for iOS was released a few minutes ago, and it includes improvements both for the iPhone and iPad version of the client. New features has been added to this release as well …
Discussion:
TiPb, Shoutpedia and The Next Web, Thanks:viticci
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
With “Quick Bar”, Twitter Has Figured Out How To Cram Ads Into The Stream
Discussion:
Twitter Blog
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
Disney acquires gaming engine startup to build HTML5 games outside of App stores — Disney has acquired an HTML5 gaming engine startup called Rocket Pack, based out of Helsinki, Finalnd. A Disney spokesperson told us today, exclusively: “We can confirm that The Walt Disney Company has acquired Rocketpack …
Discussion:
Mobile Marketing Watch, Fast Company, SAI, Electronista, The Tech Trade, SlashGear and Gamasutra, Thanks:mikebutcher
Nir Ben Yona / Technologer:
Did Apple Just ‘Borrow’ The Smart Cover Idea From Incase? — Apple has really blown our minds away with their latest and greatest Smart Cover revelation, yesterday morning. Designed specifically for iPad 2 devices, the fabulous and colorful covers - soon to be offered in polyurethane or leather flavors …
Discussion:
TUAW, Engadget, NBC Bay Area, Asiajin, SlashGear, blogs.chron.com and GeekSmack, Thanks:niron
Reuters:
Exclusive: Twitter's Stone says no IPO or funding talks — (Reuters) - Biz Stone, the co-founder of popular microblogging site Twitter, denied a report that the firm was in talks to sell a $450 million stake of the company to a JPMorgan fund, reiterating that it was committed to remaining independent.
Discussion:
Associated Press, MediaPost, The Next Web, Hillicon Valley, GMSV, Epicenter, Fast Company, Post Tech, @danprimack, Reuters, SAI, The Tech Trade and PE Hub Blog, Thanks:srikardhanakoti
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
WordPress.com Suffers Largest DDoS Attack In Its History — You have no idea how hard it was to get this post up, as WordPress.com, our blog host, is currently under a denial of service attack. It's been almost impossible to access the TechCrunch backend for the past 10 minutes …
Discussion:
Naked Security, The Register, CNET News, @wordpressdotcom, Financial Post and The Next Web, Thanks:r0unak
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
And Now The True Test For Hot Beta Chat App Yobongo: Going Live — We've written about Yobongo a couple of times now. It's an interesting concept (location-centric realtime mobile chat) with great execution. But that execution has so far only had to withstand 140 or so beta testers.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, SAI, Mashable! and louisgray.com
Francis Tan / The Next Web:
Beijing to track citizens with their cell phones — As if the Great Firewall is not enough, the Chinese government is now looking into monitoring the movement of 17 million cellphone users in Beijing, China by tracking the signal of their mobile devices. — Purportedly to improve Beijing's …
Discussion:
PR Newswire, topics.scmp.com, TechEye, IntoMobile and Gadgetell
Seth Weintraub / Fortune:
Steve Jobs' reality distortion takes its toll on truth — Apple twisted facts (or worse) to try to convince crowds that all other tablets had no shot at de-throning the iPad in 2011. — In what seems like a ritual at this point, I watched Apple's iPad 2 keynote in disbelief …
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
March Madness Comes to the iPad, for Free — Big sports events generally shy away from the Web, because they're still worried-with good reason-about trading analog dollars for digital dimes. — One exception to the rule has been the annual March Madness NCAA college basketball tournament …
Discussion:
MediaPost, SAI, WPCentral.com and Switched, more at Mediagazer »
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Microsoft and Google jointly sue GeoTag Inc. in order to invalidate a patent asserted against more than 300 entities — Google and Microsoft have joined forces to take down a Texas company's geotagging patent that they claim has been used in lawsuits against more than 300 entities, many of which are customers of the two companies.
Discussion:
TechFlash, TechCrunch, Network World, Inquirer, TechEye and silicontap.com
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Square Now Processing $1 Million In Mobile Payments Per Day — Mobile payments startup Square has reached a new milestone this week—the company is now processing $1 million in payments per day, co-founder Jack Dorsey just Tweeted. — Square was processing a few million in mobile transactions per week …
Discussion:
Vanity Fair, Mobile Marketing Watch, Vanity Fair, MediaPost, @jack, mocoNews, FierceMobileContent, MacStories, VatorNews, Gizmodo, Erictric, SAI, Pulse2, @fromedome and @josh_smith
Zach Epstein / BGR:
AT&T says iPhone users aren't fleeing to Verizon faster than expected — Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, AT&T Mobility boss Ralph de la Vega said that iPhone users aren't defecting to Verizon Wireless any faster than the carrier expected. “We haven't seen any surprises …
Discussion:
CNET News, Wall Street Journal, DSLreports, TUAW, DailyTech, SlashGear, MobileBurn.com, Phones Review, Between the Lines Blog and PhoneArena
Electronista:
AT&T to get iPhone Personal Hotspot with iOS 4.3 on March 11 — AT&T on Wednesday night confirmed with Electronista that it would start supporting the Personal Hotspot feature in sync with the launch of iOS 4.3. Subscribers will have the same support as Verizon customers when the update pushes out to the GSM iPhone 4 on March 11.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, GigaOM, MacRumors, Yahoo! News, App Advice, Softpedia News, TiPb, GottaBeMobile, SlashGear and Edible Apple, Thanks:diggretweets
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Demand Media Buys Liveblogging Tool CoverItLive — On the heels of its entry to the public market, content farm Demand Media has just acquired CoverItLive, a liveblogging tool. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. — CoverItLive provides an extensive tool one can use …
Discussion:
GigaOM, VentureBeat, VatorNews, paidContent, Mashable!, MediaMemo, Business Wire, CNET News and Adweek, more at Mediagazer »
Nathan Olivarez-Giles / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Gmail service fully restored, Google says — Gmail should be back up and fully restored for the thousands of users who lost messages or were unable to log in to their accounts over the last four days, Google said late Wednesday night. — At 10:51 p.m., Google posted an update to its App Status Dashboard:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Ashton Kutcher's Twitter Account Hacked at TED — TV star Ashton Kutcher may have more followers than all but 5 other people on Twitter (6,393,559) but he apparently has at least one snarky and politically minded adversary at the prestigious TED conference this week.
Discussion:
Zero Day Blog, @aplusk, PC World, The Register, Technically Incorrect, Gizmodo, Gearlog, Twittercism, @aplusk, ITProPortal, SAI and @bill_gross
Desire Athow / ITProPortal:
Exclusive : Nvidia Confirms Samsung Tegra 2 Design Win — Semiconductor giant Nvidia has confirmed to ITProPortal that Samsung will use the Nvidia Tegra 2 system on chip on some of its smartphones but, strangely enough, will not apparently differentiate between the two variants.
Discussion:
GigaOM, Engadget, SlashGear, Android Community, Fonehome, Android Phone Fans, IntoMobile, Softpedia News, PhoneArena and Electronista
Sydney Morning Herald:
The anti-social network: boys jailed for $26m ‘Crimebook’ scam — Nick Webber pictured on a Facebook page. — Two British schoolboys have been jailed for up to five years for running a $26 million Facebook-style website for criminals dubbed “Crimebook”. — Nick Webber, 19, and Ryan Thomas …
Discussion:
BBC, The Register, GMSV, Guardian, Inquirer, PC Pro, Daily Mail, TG Daily and Boing Boing
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
AT&T Introduces Postpaid Subscription Plans for Tablet Data Access — Fresh on the heels of confirmation that AT&T will support personal hotspot functionality for the iPhone 4 when the feature debuts with iOS 4.3 next week, the carrier today also announced the launch of new postpaid subscription data plans …
Discussion:
AT&T, Engadget, Gizmodo and MacStories
Horace Dediu / asymco:
Apps are 15 times more popular than ebooks … The Passion of Steve Jobs - NYTimes.com — It was almost exactly three years ago that Steve Jobs dismissed the Kindle reader as a futile attempt to change user behavior. — Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced that the iBooks store served 100 million ebooks …
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
SkyFire 3.0 Comes To iOS, Brings Over Features From The Android Port — Back in November of last year, SkyFire (the company behind the Flash-video-friendly smartphone browser of the same name) launched version 3.0 of their app to the Android Market. The big new features?
Discussion:
IntoMobile, Gadgetell, MacGazette.net, App Advice and BGR
