Top Items:
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Microsoft launches private beta of Internet Explorer 8 — Microsoft has sent out a letter to a select group of beta testers offering a chance to participate in a technical preview of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1. — There's not a whole heck of a lot of information about what IE8 will look like, what features it has, or anything else.
Discussion:
Bb's RealTech
RELATED:
John Quigley / ActiveWin.com:
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 — Greetings from the Internet Explorer Team! We are nearing the launch of Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and we will be making it available for the general public to download and test. IE8 Beta 1 is focused on the developer community …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:Private IE 8 beta 1 test build coming soon
Discussion:
Mashable!
Howard Rheingold / Smart Mobs:
Why I'm hooked on Twitter — 21st Century Literacies - Technologies of Cooperation … On a message board, a student asked me why I said I was hooked on Twitter. I replied off the top of my head. Sometimes, that's better than taking longer to compose something more elaborately thought out.
Randall Stross / New York Times:
Maybe Microsoft Should Stalk Different Prey — OVER the years, Microsoft has pummeled countless rivals, including the superheavyweight I.B.M. But it has never faced a smaller foe as formidable as Google. The tale of the tape gives Microsoft a $100 billion advantage in market capitalization …
RELATED:
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:Microsoft Should Buy SAP Instead of Yahoo
Discussion:
CNET News.com
Jason Mick / DailyTech:
After HD DVD Drop, Toshiba Spends $835M to Back PS3 — Sony gives Toshiba something in return for its troubles — Japanese Cell chip plants for $835M — A new twist has emerged with the death of HD DVD. After Warner, Best Buy, Walmart and Netflix jumped on the Blu bandwagon, the fate of HD DVD was already sealed.
RELATED:
Gamerscore Blog:HD DVD Statement Issued
Discussion:
Digital Trends, CrunchGear, Xbox 360 Fanboy, I4U News, Microsoft News Tracker, DailyTech, Gadgetell, thegadgetsite, Newspond.com, Engadget, Gizmodo and Digg
Rafat Ali / paidContent.org:
Electronic Arts Makes a $2 Billion Cash Bid For Take-Two — Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) has made a $2 billion cash bid for Take-Two Interactive, best known for “Grand Theft Auto”, “Madden” and “Need for Speed”. — Offer details (full offer release here as well at the offer's special website Eatake2.com):
Discussion:
Reuters
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Will There Be A (Successful) iPhone-Only Social Network? — iPhone owners, like users of most Apple products, are a fairly passionate, elitist group of people. — I think an iPhone-only social network, if it had the right features, would be a huge hit with these users.
Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily:
Shared feed mania - What's in it for YOU? — I started using Google's Shared Reader about 8 months ago, when it appeared that the entire tech (SEM?) community was using it (and yes, Twitter) to stay abreast of what was going on around them. — About two months ago, I inserted a subscribe link …
Slorker:
A Haunting Live Soap Opera: A Surveillance ScreenSaver — SurveillanceSaver is a screensaver which shows live images of over 400 network surveillance cameras worldwide. Yep, when your computer is idle you'll get to see a live feed of what's going on in other parts of the world.
Discussion:
Mashable!
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Palm Emulator for iPhone and Touch Looks Good, Bad — StyleTap's proof-of-concept Palm OS emulator for iPhone and iPod touch makes us scratch our heads asking ourselves “why?”, but we are sure it would make all Palm users very happy. All the five of them, including Rob from accounts.
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Wii Tetris: homebrew edition — If that unplayable version of Pong we saw for the Wii wasn't quite doing it for you, you 'll be happy to know that homebrewer Christian Auby (aka DesktopMan) has just hit the next stage in evolution: Tetris. That's right, you can now get a fully functioning version …
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Comment of the Day: “Google Docs is Chock Full of Fail” — In his post Why Google Apps is a Serious Threat to Microsoft Office, Bernard Lunn argued that the collaboration features in Google Apps are good enough to take on Microsoft. Commenter Karim took him on, with a well-written defense of MS Office.
