Top Items:
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple iTV availability to escape Macworld Expo — Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs should have more to say about the company's forthcoming iTV set-top media hub at next week's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, but the launch party may have to wait a few more weeks.
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Jason D. O'Grady / The Apple Core:
Crystal ball: Macworld Expo 2007 — Another January means another round of fortune telling. The week leading up to Macworld Expo is when pundits predict what Apple has in store for us in the new year. With that let's dive into what Steve Jobs could announce at the Moscone Center in San Francisco one week from today.
Discussion:
The Test Bed, O'Grady's PowerPage, Mickeleh's Take, VoIP & Gadgets Blog and Laughing Squid
Christopher Elliott / New York Times:
Wi-Fi Is Hitting the Road in Cars From Avis, but Technical and Legal Bumps Lie Ahead — Try connecting to a high-speed wireless network from a car, and you are pretty much limited to one method: rigging your laptop computer with a special modem and subscribing to a costly, and sometimes temperamental, wireless service.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Techdirt, Gizmodo, Wi-Fi Networking News, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, dailywireless.org and Uber-Review
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Mike / Techdirt:
Kevin Martin To AT&T: Okay, Now Feel Free To Ignore Those Concessions You Just Promised — from the say-what? dept — There was a lot of controversy on Friday after the late Thursday agreement by AT&T to offer some concessions in order to get its merger with BellSouth approved.
Discussion:
broadbandreports.com
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Carlo / Techdirt:
AT&T Says Let The Post-Merger Innovation Commence: Bring On The Bundles — from the dead-horse dept — While the real value of the concessions AT&T and BellSouth made to the FCC to get their merger approved is debated, the company's discussing its post-merger strategy.
Discussion:
Reuters
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
14 "Is Google Evil?" Tipping Points Since 2001 — Earlier I wrote how Google seems to have had a bad week, with some recent negative publicity making it seem like the tipping point of Google becoming the big bad company they don't want to be happening — at least perhaps in the eyes of many opinion makers on the web.
Discussion:
digg
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Om Malik / GigaOM:Google, the King & the King Maker
Discussion:
Digital Markets, Traffick, Rational rants, Search Engine Journal, Global Nerdy and Six Kids and a Full Time Job
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
2007: Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn't Live Without — A year ago I wrote a post called "Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn't Live Without" and listed thirteen startups who's products made a real impact in my life. Those were the products that I loved, and used every day.
Ethan Smith / Wall Street Journal:
Music Industry Changes Its Tune on Podcasting — After two years of hesitancy, the music industry is finally taking its first steps toward embracing podcasting. — When podcasts attained prominence in 2004, amateurs and advertisers alike heralded the downloadable audio programs as the next step in the evolution of broadcasting.
Damon Darlin / New York Times:
Is it a bargain or obsolete? — It's getting harder to know when to buy — The day after Christmas, prices on big-screen TVs went down and Raul Axtle pounced. — Axtle and his 16-year-old son, Shaheen, headed to a Best Buy electronics store in Emeryville, Calif., to buy the TV that Shaheen …
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Mike / Techdirt:Product Improvements Outpacing Even Planned Obsolescence?
Discussion:
robhyndman.com
Ellie Gibson / GamesIndustry.biz:
Xbox 360 topped US hardware sales chart over Xmas - NPD — But Nintendo Wii close behind with 1.8m units sold — Market analysts NPD have suggested that the Xbox 360 was the best-selling console in the US over Christmas - with the Nintendo Wii trailing by just 200,000 units.
Discussion:
InterActive Home, GigaGamez, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, Microsoft News Tracker, Neowin.net, I4U News and Guardian Unlimited
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Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Bad PR for Dell but not for Apple? — I totally forgot about the amount of mainstream press that Jeff Jarvis' generated against Dell when Dell's customer service told him to "pound sand." — Duncan Riley reminded me again that the press treats Apple differently than it treats Dell and other companies.
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Antony Bruno / Reuters:
Ailing music biz set to relax digital restrictions — LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - The anti-digital rights management (DRM) bandwagon is getting more crowded by the day. Even some major-label executives are pushing for the right to sell digital downloads as unprotected MP3s.
USA Today:
'Gears of War' breaks out for Xbox — In what is expected to be another record-breaking year for the more than $10-billion-a-year video game industry, the breakout hit is a science-fiction action game called Gears of War. — The game didn't sneak up on anyone — developer Epic Games …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Video retrenchment begins, Juice Wireless going for broke — Juice Wireless, the New York mobile video-sharing start-up, is still on hunt for financing, raising questions about its prospects amid a retrenchment hitting the video sharing industry in the new year.
Dave Winer / Scripting News:
RSS wasn't invented — In the dustup over Microsoft's RSS patents, some of the mainstream press brought up, once again, the issue of Who Invented RSS. But RSS doesn't have an inventor. It wasn't invented. Something else happened, something harder than invention, imho …
Joyce Park / VentureBeat:
The hidden engineering gender gap — (Editor's note: This essay comes in two parts. Here is the first part.) — Anyone who has met John Doerr knows that he is genuinely passionate about encouraging the participation of women in the venture-creation system: as VCs, as entrepreneurs, and especially as engineers.
