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:
Digital Trends, The Toybox Blog, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, SAI, Engadget, Ubergizmo, IntoMobile, Gearlog, MacStories, Tech Trader Daily, Techie Buzz, TechSpot, GizmoFusion, PhoneDog.com, TiPb, Geekosystem, Neowin.net, Droid Life, Electronista, TUAW, Gizmodo, Android Phone Fans, CrackBerry.com blogs, The Next Web, Techland, SlashGear, msnbc.com, Electricpig.co.uk, Download Squad, Erictric, everythingiCafe, Pocket-lint, Android Community, Phones Review 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:
TechCrunch, GigaOM, Digital Trends, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, asymco, Electronista, Android Community, SlashGear, Android Phone Fans, Tech Trader Daily and IntoMobile
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:
AppleInsider, MacRumors, Digital Trends, Gadget Lab, GigaOM, 9 to 5 Mac, Apple Bitch, Ubergizmo, MacNN, Geek.com, iLounge, CrunchGear, The Next Web and TUAW
RELATED:
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:
PC World, Gearlog, Edible Apple, MacGazette.net, TUAW, MacStories, App Advice, @bestbuy, Electronista and everythingiCafe
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:
LiveSide.net 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, Search Engine Land and All about Microsoft 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, Gamasutra, SlashGear, Electronista and The Tech Trade, 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, Asiajin, NBC Bay Area, SlashGear, GeekSmack and MacStories, more at Mediagazer », 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, Hillicon Valley, The Next Web, Post Tech, Fast Company, Epicenter, @danprimack, Reuters, SAI, The Tech Trade and PE Hub Blog, Thanks:srikardhanakoti
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, TechEye, topics.scmp.com, Gadgetell, IntoMobile and textually.org
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, Mashable! and louisgray.com
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
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, DSLreports, Wall Street Journal, DailyTech, MobileBurn.com, TUAW, PhoneArena, Between the Lines Blog, SlashGear and Phones Review
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, MacRumors, GigaOM, Yahoo! News, App Advice, Softpedia News, Edible Apple and everythingiCafe, Thanks:diggretweets
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:
Mobile Marketing Watch, Vanity Fair, mocoNews, @jack, FierceMobileContent, MacStories, VatorNews, Gizmodo, Erictric, Pulse2, SAI, @fromedome and @josh_smith
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:
Engadget, Gizmodo and MacStories
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, Electronista and Phones Review
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:
SAI, WPCentral.com and Switched, 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, The Register, PC World, Gizmodo, Technically Incorrect, ITProPortal, Gearlog, Twittercism, @aplusk, SAI, @bill_gross and Geekosystem
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, Inquirer, GMSV, The Register, Guardian, PC Pro, Daily Mail, TG Daily and Boing Boing
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:
The Next Web, Thanks:viticci
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:
Mashable!, VentureBeat, VatorNews, paidContent, Business Wire and CNET News, more at Mediagazer »
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, BGR, App Advice and MacGazette.net
Vlad Savov / Engadget:
Opera browser gets an over-17 rating in Mac App Store, reacts in good humor — You might not yet be aware of this, but Apple's policy towards web browsers is to treat the entire internet as their content. As a result, all browsers on the iOS App Store come with a minimum age requirement …
Discussion:
Opera Press Room, Techie Buzz, Softpedia News, Download Squad, The Next Web and SlashGear
Eric Savitz / The Tech Trade:
Tablet Fallout: Gartner Slashes 2011, 2012 PC Growth Forecast — The PC Killer. — Citing a fall-off in demand for notebooks, Gartner this morning chopped its PC growth forecast for both 2011 and 2012. — For this year, the market research firm now projects global sales of 387.8 million PCs, up 10.5% from 2010.
Discussion:
Guardian, Times of India, NewEnterprise and MarketBeat
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
iPad 2 first hands-on! (update: even more video!) — Well there you have it folks — the absurdly thin new iPad 2. We just got our hands all over the next greatest tablet from Apple and it's... very much the same, save for that new body. There's no question that the industrial design is top notch …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Big Pay Day For Big Data. Teradata Buys Aster Data For $263 Million — In the old days, big data used to be called data warehousing. But that was when corporations stored all their own data on their own servers. Today, it's just called big data and it generally refers to the vast reaches of data in the cloud.
Discussion:
The Register, PR Newswire, GigaOM, Between the Lines Blog, alarm:clock, PC World, TechEye and eWeek
Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:
Documents Reveal TSA Research Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers — A sample streetside scan image from American Sciences & Engineering. — Updated with the TSA's response below, which denies implementing airport-style scans in mass transit.
