Top Items:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Is Dell's Phone Called The MePhone? (DELL) — We've received a few tips from someone who claims to be close to Dell (DELL) about the company's entry into the smartphone market. We don't know if they're true, but they're not unreasonable, so we decided to share them for discussion.
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Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Dell Builds Prototype Android and Windows Mobile Phones, May Finally Sell Them — Stop me if you've heard this one: Dell might go into the smartphone business. OOOLLLDDD? But today the WSJ reports Dell's closer than ever, with prototypes built in two different styles and two competing platforms.
Discussion:
Electronic Pulp
Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
Google fakes out Hotmail for Chrome support — Google has added a patch to its latest beta and stable versions of Chrome to make the browser work better with Microsoft's Hotmail site. — With the patch, Chrome tells Microsoft's site it's actually Apple's Safari browser …
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Mark Larson / Google Chrome Releases:
Stable, Beta update: Yahoo! Mail and Security Fixes — Google Chrome's Beta and Stable channels have been updated to 1.0.154.46. (Note, we won't have a different release for the Beta channel until we have something Beta-worthy come out of the Dev channel in February.)
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Retail stinks, but Amazon doesn't; E-tailer delivers strong fourth quarter — Amazon managed to get stronger even as retailers across the U.S. struggled amid weak holiday sales. — The company reported fourth quarter earnings of $225 million, or 52 cents a share, on revenue of $6.7 billion, up 18 percent from a year ago.
Discussion:
Business Week, TechFlash, The Register, paidContent.org, VentureBeat, Tech Beat, Andrea on Amazon & … and WebProNews
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MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Google apologizes for killing Bambi's mom — Google recently reported strong earnings despite a weak economy, it continues to gain search market share and its Android platform is set to take the mobile world by storm this year. It doesn't seem so unreasonable to wonder if anything can stop Google.
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Matt Rosoff / Digital Noise:
Microsoft: More Zunes coming in 2009 — Remember that teenage trick of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, “I can't hear you”? That's how I felt on Thursday morning when I talked to Adam Sohn, the marketing director for Zune. — I don't mean that Microsoft is oblivious to reality …
Yariv Adan / Google Data APIs Blog:
Bringing OpenID and OAuth Together — We are happy to announce an important enhancement to our recently launched OpenID endpoint. Google now supports the “Hybrid Protocol”, combining OpenID federated login together with OAuth access authorization. Websites can now ask Google to sign …
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Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Days to 1 million: the smartphone wars — In a fit of editorial sobriety, reader Noel just sent us this handy “1 million devices sold” graphic above. The image demonstrates the speed (in terms of days) at which each competing handset achieved the magic milestone.
Associated Press:
Swiss police spy marijuana field with Google Earth — ZURICH, Switzerland - Swiss police said Thursday they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software. — Police said the find was part of a bigger investigation …
Staska / Unwired View:
Microsoft patents the interface to transform your phone into a PC — The power of modern smartphones in many ways equals and even surpasses the power of a desktop PC of just few years ago. You know, things like CPUs faster then 800 Mhz, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, tens of gygabytes of storage, dedicated graphics accelerators, etc;.
Discussion:
Technologizer, Mobile Tech Addicts, SlashGear, WMExperts, wmpoweruser.com, The Toybox and CrunchGear
MediaShift:
Warning: Dependence on Facebook, Twitter Could Be Hazardous to Your Business — You've probably heard how much the micro-blogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social networking site Facebook can boost your company's profile. But what you might not have considered …
Dave Morin / Facebook Developers:
Facebook Connect and Apple's iPhoto '09 — At Facebook, we think that photos are one of the most powerful ways to connect and share with friends. Since 2005, Facebook Photos has given users a chance to share rich experiences with their friends who are on and off Facebook.
Christopher Breen / Macworld:
iTunes Plus upgrades go à la carte — If you've been skipping the daily double-wet-cappuccino in order to save enough money to upgrade your iTunes library to the DRM-free iTunes Plus format, you can put coffee back on the menu. Apple has dispensed with the iTunes Store all-or-nothing upgrade policy.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, VentureBeat, MacRumors, TUAW, Download Squad, The Apple Core, The iPhone Blog, TechSpot, Insanely Great Mac, AppScout and TidBITS
Roi Carthy / TechCrunch:
Pipl.com: People Search Engine So Good, It Will Scare Your Pants Off — Google may be good at many things, but people search is not one of them. For that you'll have to use a more specialized search engine. Spock and Wink (merged with Reunion.com) are the people-search destinations …
Joe Hall / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim:
Twitter is a Cash Cow in the Making — We have been talking a great deal lately about how Twitter should be monetizing their service. Most of this talk comes after news that Twitter secured $20 million in venture capital, to push its total valuation to $250 million.
Thanks:wesmax27
Frank Caron / Ars Technica:
Pandora open-source handheld console inching closer to debut (updated) — The long-awaited Pandora open-source handheld has inched one step closer to completion, as the OpenPandora team has put on display the nearly finalized case design. We review what we know about Pandora to date, and what the project is hoping to accomplish.
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Rumor: Sony PS4 Plans Leaked, And It Targets Casual Gamers (SNE) — Take this one with a massive dose of skepticism, folks: A site we're not familiar with called gamingfront.net claims to have a leaked report from inside Sony (SNE) explaining the technical specs and thinking behind the so-called PS4, successor console to the PS3.
Thanks:anjrued
Beatrice Oltean / MSDN Blogs:
Live Search autosuggestions come to Firefox — We're happy to report that we've officially integrated Live Search into Firefox by popular demand. — The Live Search add-on for Firefox gives you auto-suggestions from Live Search right in the browser while you're typing your query.
Fred / A VC:
Goodbye Martin — I saw this tweet today and my heart sank — Terrible news from @HLMorgan @martin killed in plane crash at Santa Monica airport yesterday. — Martin Schaedel was someone I met on the internet and got to know a bit over the past few years. He was a funny and mysterious guy.
Stuart Dredge / Pocket Gamer.biz:
Rumour: Apple planning $19.99 games section on App Store — But only with a restricted number of publishers — Product: — Manufacturer: — Apple is planning to introduce a premium games section to its App Store where it will sell a range of iPhone games for $19.99, sources tell PocketGamer.biz.
Discussion:
MacRumors, AppleInsider, Macworld, Touch Arcade, PC World, Gizmodo, TheAppleBlog, The iPhone Blog, CNET News, Edible Apple, GMSV, ChannelWeb, MacBlogz and iLounge
QuickPWN:
Jailbreak Firmware 2.2.1 (Windows QuickPWN) — I just QuickPWN'd my iPod Touch 1st Generation with the firmware 2.2.1 update thanks to Vortex, a Russian hacker for creating the bundles for the firmware 2.2.1 update and the iPhone Dev Team, poorlad, and planetbeing for creating the QuickPWN software.
David Pogue / Pogue's Posts:
The Twitter Experiment — A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my bumpy initiation into the world of Twitter. It's sort of a complicated cross between a chat room and private e-mail. And it's both an interrupty time drain and an incredible source of real-time connection and information.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Adding YouTube Annotations Just Got Easy. I've Got A Bad Feeling About This... For better or for worse, YouTube has just made it easier to add annotations to your videos. Annotations, which were introduced to the site last June, consist of little grey popups that can include standard text boxes …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
Colin Barras / New Scientist:
Cheap, super-efficient LED lights on the horizon — Incandescent tungsten-filament light bulbs face a global switch-off as governments push for energy efficient fluorescent lamps to become the standard. But the light could soon go out on those lamps too, now that UK materials scientists …
John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Sony vs. Nintendo: same bad economy, very different results — Sony and Nintendo released their financial reports on the holiday quarter this week, and both are being pummeled by the strength of the Japanese Yen. But Nintendo's focus on gaming and the strength of its console have left it in far better shape than its bigger rival.
Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny!:
Comcast's Crossed Wires — I'm somewhat concerned to learn that the RIAA may be enlisting broadband providers, such as AT&T and Comcast, to police their networks for content theft. While I don't condone software and media piracy, I'm uncomfortable with Comcast tracking my every move online.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
$2.99 Printed PhotoBooks Now Available On Facebook: HotPrints — Anyone who has turned digital photos into a printed photo book via Apple iPhoto or any of a variety of competitors knows how great they are. They make a perfect gift, if you can afford the $20 - $30 they generally cost to create, plus shipping.
Discussion:
RotorBlog.com
David Peterson / SitePoint:
President Obama uses RDFa — The WhiteHouse.gov site is CC licensing all its material, and if you peek behind the covers (view source), you will see some RDFa. Granted it is a small start, but it is a start. Well done to the new administration and I look forward to more openness and more Web mashups!
