Top Items:
The Official Google Blog:
Hide sites to find more of what you want — Over the years we've experimented with a number of ways to help you personalize the results you find on Google, from SearchWiki to stars in search to location settings. Now there's yet another way to find more of what you want on Google by blocking the sites you don't want to see.
Discussion:
Digital Trends, PC World, Erictric, Hillicon Valley, Mixed Media, paidContent, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, Geek.com, Search Engine Watch, iClarified, Mashable!, BetaNews, Pulse2, Techie Buzz, gHacks Technology News, Marketing Pilgrim, WebProNews, Gizmodo, Computerworld, SAI, Search Engine Land, Between the Lines Blog, The Domains, @mattcutts, The Huffington Post, silicontap.com, NBC Bay Area, GeekSugar and Voices on All Things Digital
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Frederic Lardinois / NewsGrange:
Google Now Lets You Block Sites You Don't Like Directly from Your Search Results
Discussion:
Fortune, AdExchanger.com, L.A. Times Tech Blog, GigaOM, Google Operating System, Post Tech, The Next Web, Epicenter, ReadWriteWeb, Download Squad and WebProNews
Sam Gustin / Epicenter:
Veteran Journos Out as AOL/HuffPo Cuts 900 Jobs — It's a bloodbath. — AOL, the beleaguered internet company, is cutting as many as 900 jobs, CEO Tim Armstrong announced Thursday, including as many as 200 editorial staffers in the United States. The layoffs, which were expected …
Discussion:
paidContent, Epicenter, mediabistro.com, @bobbuch, Mixed Media, CNNMoney.com, SAI, MediaFile, paidContent:UK, @ldignan, Reuters, VatorNews, TechCrunch and VentureBeat, more at Mediagazer »
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Edmund Lee / AdAge:
Amid 900 Layoffs, Just How Are AOL's Media Brands Doing? — Finance and Politics Daily Lead Declines While News and Tech Are Up — AOL laid off 900 employees, or around 15% of its work force today, the fallout from its $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post in February.
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, PE Hub Blog and Mixed Media
Nicholas Carlson / SAI:
THE GORY DETAILS: Tim Armstrong's Layoffs Memo
Discussion:
GigaOM, VentureBeat, BoomTown, Computerworld, ITworld.com, MediaPost, Internet Evolution, TechCrunch, Bits, TechEye, Bloggasm, paidContent and Poynter, more at Mediagazer »
Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
Apple changes purchases policy to protect kids on iPad, iPhone games — Apple said Thursday that it changed its policy for how purchases can be made within applications on the iPhone and iPad, an attempt to protect users, particularly children, from accidentally racking up iTunes charges.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, paidContent, MacRumors, RazorianFly, Pulse2, AppleInsider, GigaOM, TidBITS, App Advice, 9 to 5 Mac, TUAW, Hillicon Valley, iClarified, Know Your Cell, PhoneArena, MobileCrunch, iLounge, SAI, MacStories, TiPb, SlashGear, MobileWhack, CrunchGear, Erictric, Phone Scoop, Gizmodo and everythingiCafe
Nick Bilton / Bits:
If You Bought Apple Stock Instead of Products — Let us pretend for a moment that the year is 1997 and you're in the market for a new laptop computer. You want the top-of-the-line product at the time, so you opt for the newly released Apple Computer PowerBook G3 250 laptop.
Discussion:
CNET News, SAI and NBC Bay Area
Liz Reaves Walker / The LinkedIn Blog:
Introducing LinkedIn Today — Staying on top of industry news is something we think matters for any professional whose success depends on being well informed. With all the news websites, blogs, tweets and newsletters out there, staying in-the-know can be time consuming and it's increasingly hard …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Bloggers Blog, Examiner, eWeek, WebProNews, HubSpot's Inbound …, Pulse2, paidContent, @dannysullivan and The Huffington Post
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Sarah Rotman Epps / Forrester Blogs:
Why iPad 2 Won't Have Much Competition In 2011—Unless It's From Amazon — Forrester published a new report today making the call that the iPad challengers that have been announced so far—Android Honeycomb tablets from Motorola, Toshiba, and others, as well as the BlackBerry PlayBook and HP TouchPad …
Discussion:
Fortune, SAI, GigaOM, FierceWireless, VentureBeat and Geek.com
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
BlackBerry PlayBook hits FCC in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB flavors — No surprises here, just the straight-up news that RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook is one small step closer to retail: it's gotten FCC clearance. Well, at least the WiFi-only version has — no sign of the WiMAX-capable version for Sprint yet …
Discussion:
wirelessgoodness.com, iGeneration Blog, Erictric, MobileWhack, Electronista, Liliputing, Know Your Cell and CrackBerry.com blogs
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
WiMAX throttling lawsuit: Clearwire can't deliver the goods — Wireless operator Clearwire has had a bumpy few months, and now things are getting worse. A lawsuit has been filed by 15 users over the company's throttling practices, accusing Clearwire of not delivering advertised …
Discussion:
DSLreports, SlashGear and Electronista
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Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow resigns
Discussion:
Mobilized, CNET News, Computerworld, paidContent, The Seattle Times, PhoneDog.com, GeekWire and Tech Trader Daily
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
NYTimes: When We Do It, It's Journalism, When HuffPo Does It, It's ‘Piracy’ — We regularly see established newspaper journalists look down on the world of sites that add value to news by assuming that aggregating, commenting on and providing context for news first reported by others is somehow a “lesser” product.
Discussion:
New York Times, New York Times, All Things Digital, SAI and @gaberivera, more at Mediagazer »
Brian Caulfield / Shiny Objects:
In A Post-PC Era, Apple Wants To Be Your IT Department — A decade ago if a computer vendor didn't have a strong relationship with corporate information technology departments they didn't get anywhere. No longer. Smart phones don't need a link to a corporate network to appeal to office workers.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Amazon.com Slammed With Lawsuit Over Instant Search Patent — When you go to Amazon.com and start typing in the top search box, you will automatically see a number of search suggestions for items on sale before you finish typing your query. The company also offers such enhanced search …
Discussion:
GeekWire, Marketing Pilgrim, TechFlash, Pulse2 and Electronista, Thanks:robinwauters
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Need Advice on What to Read? Ask the Internet — Netflix uses a software algorithm to recommend movies and Zappos uses one to recommend shoes. Now Goodreads, the social network for book lovers, is introducing an algorithm to recommend books. — Goodreads was started in 2006 for people who wanted to talk about books online.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Thanks:blogfisher
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
Why we need to get rid of anonymous comments. — Once or twice a week, I get a letter taking me to task for Slate's commenting policy. The reader wants to tell me that I suck, but he doesn't want to log in to Slate's comment system using his credentials for Facebook, Google, Yahoo, or Twitter.
Parmy Olson / Forbes:
The Billionaire Who Friended the Web — Tech's titans used to wonder about Yuri Milner. Now he's the guy everyone wants to copy. — It's 8 p.m. on a winter's night in Moscow. Yuri Milner steps into an elevator for the quick, quiet ride to his penthouse apartment.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
New XML Standard for Super-Fast, Lightweight Applications Announced by W3C — From embedded sensors to high-frequency stock trading to everyday mobile web applications, the race is on for technologists to build the most efficient systems for quickly streaming large sets of data from one device to another.
Evelyn M. Rusli / DealBook:
Beyond Facebook, SecondMarket Opens Its Doors to Thousands — The marketplace for private Internet companies is about to get a bit more crowded. — SecondMarket, an exchange for alternative investments, will introduce a new trading platform on Friday that will integrate social media …
Brad McCarty / The Next Web:
Google fires a shot at Foursquare with check-in rewards and titles [Updated] — It wasn't long ago that Google pulled the trigger by offering check-ins with the Latitude service. Now, the company is stepping up the game one more notch by offering rewards for those check-ins, starting in Austin for SXSW.
Discussion:
Google LatLong, Screenwerk, Search Engine Land, Google Maps Mania and NBC Bay Area
Electronista:
News Corp surpasses 200k paid subscribers on tablets — Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton has highlighted the strong performance of paid subscriptions for News Corp's tablet editions. The number of paid subscribers is said to have quadrupled from last year, reaching a current level of 200,000 …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Reuters, 9 to 5 Mac, CrunchGear and MacStories, more at Mediagazer »
Robert X. Cringely / InfoWorld:
Hackers unleash fake Google Android update — Symantec says the malware, which purports to be Google's latest security update for Android, sends SMS messages to a command-and-control server — Google's latest update for its Android mobile OS appears to already have been subverted by hackers …
Discussion:
CNET News, VentureBeat, Yahoo! News, SiliconANGLE, internetnews.com, Security Watch and Android Phone Fans
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Dispatch from SXSW: Have Startups Become a Fetish? — Preparing for South by Southwest Interactive every year, I'm inundated with pitches for services (now they're apps when they used to be social or merely web-based products) that are fun, sometimes useful and generally something I wouldn't pay money for.
Discussion:
Software Rants & …
Emily Banks / Mashable!:
YouTube To Expand Staff by 30% — YouTube expects to have its biggest hiring year in 2011, with plans to grow its staff by 30%. — The Google-owned video site has dozens of open positions in all areas — although an especially high number in advertising sales and customer support — and all around the world.
Discussion:
YouTube Blog
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
Social Analytics Platform BackType Raises a Cool Million in Funding — Today, San Francisco-based marketing intelligence company, BackType, announced that it has closed a seed funding round of just over $1 million, led by a group of Silicon Valley investors, including lead investor True Ventures …
Discussion:
TechFlash
Andy Ihnatko / Chicago Sun Times:
iPad 2 release spells a bleak 2011 for other tablet makers — The 2011 baseball season doesn't even start for another few weeks. Even so, I'll go out on a limb and say that this isn't going to be the San Diego Padres' year. — That's fine. They're working hard.
Discussion:
SAI
Cade Metz / The Register:
Google contradicts own counsel in face of antitrust probe — Admits existence of search algorithm whitelists — Google has admitted that it uses whitelists to manually override its search algorithms, more than a year after its European corporate counsel denied the existence of whitelists …
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land
