Top Items:
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Dell's Mystery ‘Adamo’ Could Be Thinner Than Air — When Apple released the MacBook Air, someone viewed the sleek notebook as an opportunity to make fun of clunky, old Dell on YouTube with a parody ad. But what if Dell is about to have the last laugh in the ultra-light laptop race?
Discussion:
Electronista, I4U News, Engadget, The Toybox, Gizmodo, CrunchGear and Boing Boing Gadgets
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Now Growing by Over 600,000 Users a Day - And New Engagement Stats — It was just at the beginning of December when Facebook crossed the 130 million monthly active user mark. Today, that number is up to 140 million. — While Facebook has been growing at around 300,000 …
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Apple buys stake in mobile graphics chip designer — Future versions of Imagination Technologies' graphics cores could mean iPhone games far more sophisticated than ‘Super Monkey Ball.’ — Apple has taken a small stake in a British chip designer, revealing how the company plans to power …
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Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Apple finally outed as mysterious PowerVR licensee — New evidence that Apple is the mysterious licensee of Imagination Technologies Group's PowerVR mobile graphics technology broke today, when the company publicly announced that Apple has subscribed to 8 million new shares of IMG, giving the iPhone maker a 3% stake in the firm.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Verizon: BlackBerry Storm Return Rates ‘Lowest’ Of Any Smartphone (RIMM) — Good news for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) and Verizon Wireless: People buying their latest smartphone, the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm, are not ditching them as much as we'd heard.
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James Lewin / Podcasting News:
Free iPhone Audio Recorder — Rockifone's Easy Recorder (App Store link) is a free iPhone app that turns your iPhone into a dictaphone-style audio recorder. — Easy Recorder doesn't have a lot of features, but it lets you record audio at three quality levels and the price is hard to beat.
Discussion:
Mashable!
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
What Is Steve Jobs Worth to Apple? About $20 Billion — Jeff Segal of BreakingViews tries to calculate the value of Steve Jobs to Apple. — Apple Mac Line at twice the industry average multiple (1.3 times revenue) is worth about $19 billion. — iPod business at five times EBITDA is worth about $14 billion.
Discussion:
SmoothSpan Blog, Changing Way, CNET News, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Coop's Corner and MacBlogz
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Google Earth Blog:
New York City in Photo-Realistic 3D Now in Google Earth — Google has updated the 3D buildings in Google Earth for New York City! This is a HUGE update with at least hundreds (if not thousands) of new 3D buildings with photo textures applied. Basically, Google has completed nearly every building …
Discussion:
Maximum PC all, Lifehacker, ReadWriteWeb, CrunchGear, Google Blogoscoped, InformationWeek, PalmAddicts, Mashable! and SEO and Tech Daily
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Jesse Johnson / The Bivings Report:
The Use of the Internet by America's Largest Newspapers (2008 Edition) — Every year, The Bivings Group conducts a study of the web features of America's largest newspapers as a way to gauge how papers are dealing with the threat and opportunity presented by the rise of the Internet as a news source.
BBC:
BBC iPlayer now available on Mac — The BBC has created a version of the iPlayer that works with both Mac and Linux computers. — The two systems, which have been able to stream BBC programmes via the iPlayer for a year, will now be able to handle downloads.
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:
Toshiba Offers “Industry's First” 512GB SSD Flash Drive — Each year I that attend CES, I can't help but swing by the huge HDTVs and see the new “world's biggest” set. It's a status symbol of course, but this year might be the first time I focus more on the “world's biggest” Solid State Disk capacity.
Brett Terpstra / TUAW:
iPhone thief thwarted by MobileMe sync — To say that MobileMe hasn't made everyone happy may be a bit of an understatement. We don't generally hear from the satisfied customers, but we have received a fair amount of email from dissatisfied users of Apple's “cloud computing” solution.
Rob Beschizza / Boing Boing Gadgets:
Mac OS X Netbook Compatibility Chart (updated) — Who needs Psystar? — Apple says it's had “pretty interesting ideas” for a Mac netbook, but it's everyday users who've already taken action. Due to their similar technical underpinnings, most of the popular netbooks can run OS X …
Discussion:
MobileDevicesToday, Gadget Lab, LAPTOP Magazine, Gear Diary, Gadgetell, Liliputing, Gearlog, Obsessable, UMPCPortal and Gizmodo
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
2009 is the year of the Moto for Verizon; more upcoming handsets revealed — When our ninjas get going they don't stop until the job is done. Yesterday your pals here at BGR gave you an exclusive preview of four tasty upcoming Motorola handsets - codenamed FLASH, RUSH 2, CALGARY and INFERNO.
Discussion:
Unwired View, Electronista, Fast Company, SlashPhone, PhoneReport v2.0, CrunchGear and Gizmodo
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Sirius Shareholders Approve Reverse Stock Split To Ease Debt — Sirius (NSDQ: SIRI) Satellite Radio shareholders have approved the issuance of up to 3.5 billion more shares for a reverse stock split, as the company tries to gain flexibility to pay down its crushing debt, according to a report that aired on CNBC (see the clip here).
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Number of landline-free households up 10% in US — It's that time of year again, when the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) publishes its biannual study of US consumers' new penchant for cutting landlines in favor of cell phone service. The latest news echoes the trend we've seen …
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Demand For Music Down In Q3; Paid Downloads Grow A Mere 2 Percent — The percentage of internet users who bought a CD in Q3 fell to 22 percent from 25 percent last year, according to an online survey by market researcher NPD. Oddly enough, that's still better than the 15 percent of web users …
AppleInsider:
Wal-Mart stores already advertising iPhone 3G availability — Adding a bit more confirmation to what is widely presumed, a few Wal-Malt stores have jumped the gun and are starting to advertise availability of Apple's iPhone 3G ahead of an official roll-out planned for later this month.
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Can a Deflated Adobe Remain Independent? — Shares of Adobe performed so well over the past ten years that the company's value soared to the point of putting off many potential suitors. But a recession, troubled financial markets and slowing economic growth have helped erase more than half …
Stephen DiMarco / Compete Blog:
Amazon.com is Fueling a Strong December for Online Retailers — Whether you're an analyst, economist or a just a red-blooded American consumer, your eyes are probably fixed right now on the retail industry. We're all looking for a glimmer of hope that consumer spending during the holidays …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Universal Music seeing ‘tens of millions’ from YouTube — YouTube's traffic machine may finally be turning into a cash machine. — For the first time, there are signs that YouTube is driving significant revenue for itself and some of the video site's partners.
Discussion:
TechSpot
Freddie Laker / AdAge:
Eek! How to React When You've Been Slammed on Twitter — And How I Saved Myself From Looking Like a Clown — At best, people have ambivalent feeling about clowns. — On one end of the spectrum, there's the relatively benign Bozo the Clown, a historic television favorite whose name implied entertaining, well-meaning buffoonery.
Don Reisinger / Webware.com:
Daily Tidbits: TomTom takes aim at Google Maps — GPS vendor TomTom announced Thursday that it has launched an online mapping solution to compete with MapQuest and Google Maps. Dubbed TomTom Route Planner, the free service provides door-to-door route planning options to any address in the U.S. or Canada.
