Top Items:
Philip Su / Facebook Blog:
Call Your Friends Right From Facebook — Over the last year, the messages team has been working to make it easier to have one on one conversations with your friends. In November, we launched the new messages, which brings together your chats, texts, emails and messages all in one place.
Discussion:
9to5Mac, Ars Technica, PC World, The Business Insider, GeekWire, Engadget, AppleInsider, Search Engine Land, Wall Street Journal, LiveSide.net, Search Engine Land, msnbc.com, WinRumors, ZDNet, VR-Zone, @maggieshiels, Daily Patricia, 9to5Google, Off On A Tangent, @thepeterha, Gizmodo, Techland, @rhodri, Friending Facebook Blog, The Digital Home, SiliconFilter, @maggieshiels, @dancosta, Mobilized, BGR, @larrymagid, App Advice and LAPTOP Magazine
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Video Chat v. Google Hangouts: It's No Contest — One of the questions I had when I broke the news last week about the Facebook/Skype partnership: Would group video chat be part of the product, and if so would it be free? — The answer is no, there's no group chat.
Discussion:
Reuters, MediaFile, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable! and WebProNews
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Launches Skype-Powered Video Calling — Confirming our report last week, Facebook has just announced a major new feature that it's launching in tandem with Skype: video calling. — It's a feature that's been rumored for quite a while, and it's one that Facebook is putting a lot of weight behind.
Discussion:
AllThingsD, The Big Blog, PC Magazine, Telegraph, Macworld, Guardian, PSFK, WebProNews, Mashable!, IntoMobile, Gadget Lab, mocoNews and The Next Web
Matt Rosoff / The Business Insider:
Next For Facebook And Skype: Calls To Outside Phones
Discussion:
SplatF
Josh Constine / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Launching Ad Hoc Group Chat, New Chat Design, Skype Video Calling
Discussion:
Engadget, Mashable!, The Seattle Times and The Tech Trade
Lorraine Luk / Wall Street Journal:
Apple Preparing For New iPhone in Third Quarter — TAIPEI—Apple Inc. has placed orders for key components used in a next-generation iPhone it is preparing to launch sometime in the third quarter, according to people familiar with the situation. — According to some suppliers of components to Apple …
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Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Sprint iPhone Deal Appears Likely, Says Citadel — Citadel Securities analyst Shing Yin this morning writes that it is increasingly likely that there will be an iPhone from Apple (AAPL) for Sprint-Nextel (S), especially considering that with the inauguration of Verizon Communications (VZ) …
Discussion:
The Toybox Blog, PC World, VentureBeat, The Tech Trade, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, CNET News, Redmond Pie, PhoneDog.com, Neowin.net, Mac Post, TiPb and iPhone Download Blog
Tom Anderson / Google+:
Mark Zuckerberg's first public response to Google+ - — Today at the Facebook news conference, +Ben Parr had the stones to ask Mark what he thought of Google+. (He was polite about it. I approve.) Zuckerberg responded by saying that lots of companies are going to build things like video chat …
Discussion:
TechCrunch
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Ben Parr / Mashable!:
Zuckerberg on Google+: It's a Validation of Facebook's Vision — What does Mark Zuckerberg think of Google+, the search giant's new social network? — We were curious, so we asked Zuckerberg two questions at Facebook's video chat event in Palo Alto, California: Will there be group video chat in the future?
Discussion:
The Business Insider, AllThingsD and Redmond Pie
Chris Van Der Westhuizen / The Official Google Blog:
Google Maps 5.7 for Android introduces Transit Navigation (Beta) and more — (Cross-posted on the Google Lat Long Blog and the Google Mobile Blog) — Today we're releasing Google Maps 5.7 for Android. From Bangkok to Baltimore, we've added Transit Navigation (Beta), updated access to directions …
NielsenWire:
Play Before Work: Games Most Popular Mobile App Category in US — Games continue to be the most popular app category, and according to Nielsen research, 93 percent of app downloaders — those who have downloaded an app within the past 30 days - are willing to pay for the games they play.
Chris Ziegler / This is my next:
Exclusive: redesigned Motorola Droid Bionic looks confirmed in Best Buy leak — “With the ferocious force of Verizon 4G LTE, the Droid Bionic is an all-powerful, unstoppable machine.” Pretty graphic language, isn't it? That's the opening line in this leaked Best Buy Mobile promo material …
Miyoung Kim / Reuters:
Microsoft wants Samsung to pay smartphone license: report — Microsoft Corp has demanded that Samsung Electronics Co Ltd pay $15 for each smartphone handset it makes based on Google Inc's Android operating system as the software giant has a wide range of patents used in the mobile platform, local media reported on Wednesday.
Discussion:
CNET News, mocoNews, Nicke's shared items …, BetaNews, PC Magazine, ZDNet, The Next Web, The Microsoft Blog, The Business Insider, L.A. Times Tech Blog, AndroidOS.in, Android Phone Fans, The Register, Techland, PhoneDog.com, TechFlash, Appolicious Advisor, Techie Buzz, FierceWireless, Geek.com, Redmond Pie, MobileSyrup.com, Digital Trends, eWeek and GMSV
Todd Haselton / BGR:
Amazon updates Cloud Drive and Cloud Player with unlimited music space, free storage for Amazon MP3s, iPad web player — Moments ago Amazon announced that it has made a number of enhancements to its Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services. First — for a limited time — anyone who signs up will get unlimited space for music.
Discussion:
CNET News, Mashable!, Amazon.com, TechCrunch, Engadget, AllThingsD, eHomeUpgrade, SlashGear, The Next Web and TiPb
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
One Week In, Google+ Users Are Growing Followers, Getting Traffic — Just over a week old, how's Google+ doing? Comprehensive stats are hard to come by. But from our own experience, along with some other stats out there such as a new top Google+ accounts list, it seems to easily be eclipsing its Google Buzz predecessor.
Discussion:
Google Watch and Communications …
Susan Decker / Bloomberg:
Apple Escalates Samsung Fight With ITC Case — Apple Inc. (AAPL) filed a U.S. trade complaint that seeks to block imports of Samsung Electronics Co. smartphones and tablet computers, days after asking a federal court to halt sales of the devices. — The complaint submitted yesterday …
Discussion:
AppleInsider, IntoMobile, BGR, Android Phone Fans, VentureBeat, Phone Scoop, PC Magazine, PhoneDog.com, InfoWorld, SlashGear and Electronista
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Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Who owns your social graph — you or Facebook? — Facebook's control over the information in your social graph is in the news again. The company recently blocked a Google Chrome extension that scraped your contact info so that you could export it somewhere else, such as into Google's new Google+ social network.
Thanks:jasonhiner
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Zillow Prices IPO Between $12 And $14 Per Share With Nearly $400 Million Valuation — Real estate listings site Zillow has just filed additional documents with the SEC indicating the initial range for the company's upcoming IPO. Zillow's price range will start at $12 to $14 per share, giving the company a $378 million valuation.
Discussion:
The Tech Trade, VentureBeat, CNET News, GeekWire and Seattle Times
Courtney Boyd Myers / The Next Web:
Official: Spotify announces it's coming to the US — It's official. Hot off the heels of its $100 million funding round, Spotify, Europe's most popular music service, has just announced it's coming to the U.S.
Discussion:
Technologizer, TechCrunch Europe, Engadget, VentureBeat, The Business Insider, Evolver.fm, Epicenter and AllThingsD
Horace Dediu / asymco:
The Post-PC era will be a multi-platform era — Windows Phone Marketplace has reached 25,000 apps. That's an impressive figure given that so few devices have actually been sold. Compared with Android which is activating half a million devices per day, Windows Phone seems like a rounding error.
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
So was the Twitter Town Hall better than a regular one? — The Obama administration, which has already had a live YouTube Q&A session and a Facebook “town hall,” upped the ante with a Twitter version on Wednesday, an hour-long session hosted by Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey and held at the White House.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, AllThingsD, PC Magazine, Bloomberg, Media Decoder, The Caucus and Guardian
Kevin Murphy / The Register:
Google dumps all 11+ million .co.cc sites from its results — Bigger than .org or .uk - but mostly spam and phish — Google has removed over 11 million .co.cc websites from its search engine results pages on the basis that most of them are far too “spammy”.
Discussion:
Dennis Fisher, Digitizor, The Business Insider and Digital Trends
Jenna Wortham / Gadgetwise:
Is Google's Hangouts Its Killer App? — Last night a chatroom changed my life. — But it wasn't just any chatroom. It was a virtual “hangout,” the group video chat service that is a prominent feature of Google+, Google's new social-networking service that aims to challenge Facebook..
Tom Warren / WinRumors:
Steve Ballmer to deliver Windows 8 packed CES 2012 keynote … Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will once again deliver the pre-show keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show. — Microsoft has been keynoting at CES for a number of years and 2012 will be no different.
Discussion:
Business Wire, TechCrunch, MacNN, The Next Web, SlashGear, BetaNews and @mediaredef
