Top Items:
Elise Ackerman / siliconvalley.com:
Hooked on Google — Microsoft may have been willing to spend years developing Vista, the long-delayed upgrade of its Windows operating system, but when Bill Gates was presented with a plan for finally beating Google in Internet search technology, he gave the engineers just 100 days.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Game search engine Wazap raises $7.9M, to launch in U.S. — Wazap is a search engine start-up focused exclusive on games, and is growing quickly — as you may expect, given the popularity of games. — It's another of those ideas that seems so obvious in hindsight, you're left wondering why it hasn't been done before.
New York Times:
Anywhere the Eye Can See, It's Likely to See an Ad — Add this to the endangered list: blank spaces. — Advertisers seem determined to fill every last one of them. Supermarket eggs have been stamped with the names of CBS television shows. Subway turnstiles bear messages from Geico auto insurance.
Discussion:
Texas Startup Blog
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
Newspapers should own local search results — Newspapers have the best local content for local restaurants, movie reviews, local business, school sports, and should be the first search result for any local search. They are not. Greg Linden says Newspapers should own local I think they don't because they don't think globally.
Kevin Kelly / Joystiq:
Seriously impressive Ghostbusters game in the works? — We don't know whether this is a game in development, a mod, or just some fan's incredibly sick handiwork ... but there are some really slick looking videos on YouTube showing off what looks like a new Ghostbusters game.
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Pentium M-based Intel chip at heart of Apple TV — Exclusive: Pop the lid off an Apple TV, the new wireless streaming media device from Apple, Inc., and you'll find that it's built around an aging Pentium M-based Intel processor and other yesteryear notebook technologies.
Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog:
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs: Keynote text analysis — Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates both gave big keynote addresses last week. So how did their messages compare? At the suggestion of a reader, we ran the text of both speeches through the tag-cloud generator …
Discussion:
Between the Lines
Elizabeth Williamson / Washington Post:
Freedom of Information, the Wiki Way — Site to Allow Anonymous Posts of Government Documents — You're a government worker in China, and you've just gotten a memo showing the true face of the regime. Without any independent media around, how do you share what you have without landing in jail or worse?
Discussion:
Techdirt
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Will dirty talk boost VoIP start-ups? — It all began with an anonymous tip, about a new service called Shadow Number that allows you to make private calls from your mobile phone, while still retaining your privacy. Their sales pitch: ShadowNumber keeps your play life private.
Tom Abate / San Francisco Chronicle:
Printing gets new dimension — Getting it together: Redwood City startup can build 3-D objects by adding layers of materials — Find a need and fill it. That's the time-honored formula for success in business. — In Silicon Valley, however, sometimes the formula gets reversed.
Ben Fritz / Variety:
Yahoo! moves into online animation — Company signs deal for new content — Yahoo! has signed a first-look deal with management/production firm Gotham Group for original animated content to be distributed online. — Netcos have been cautious as they began moving into original content in the past year.
sponsoredreviews.com:
SponsoredReviews is Launching Soon. — Corporate News — I'm not going to give a date yet, but beta testing is going very well. Look for updates real soon. — It looks like the word is out. The blog herald just mentioned us. — Our official launch and press release wont …
Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:
Sprint WiMAX Spending Creeps Up — After we crawled out from under the CES/iPhone news pile last week, we took another look at Sprint Nextel's update on WiMAX and its new guidance. We knew the news wasn't too good, projecting that the company will cut 5,000 jobs, but we thought …
Jon Udell:
Ambient video awareness and visible conversations — A few years ago Marc Eisenstadt, chief scientist with the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute, wrote to tell me about a system called BuddySpace. We've been in touch on and off since then, and when he heard I'd be in Cambridge for the Technology …
Discussion:
Smalltalk Tidbits …
John Markoff / New York Times:
Sun's Chief Doesn't Fear the Snarky — When Jonathan I. Schwartz was named chief executive of the struggling Sun Microsystems last April, succeeding Scott G. McNealy, there was a great deal of skepticism about whether he could bring the company back. Perhaps more than any other computer maker Sun …
Discussion:
Open Sources
