Top Items:
John Herrman / Gizmodo:
30GB Zunes Failing Everywhere, All At Once — Right, so this is a weird one: we're getting tons of reports—tons—about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless.
Discussion:
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Large Form iPod Touch To Launch in Fall '09 — We've got this from three independent sources close to Apple: expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of '09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production.
Discussion:
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MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Local yogurt store tells blogger that Steve Jobs is “in great health” — Amid a flurry of (disputed) reports and rumors about Apple chief executive Steve Jobs' “rapidly declining health,” blogger Robert Scoble did some field work to dig for the truth today.
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Memo to All Crepe-Hangers: It Still Ain't Nobody's Business If Jobs Is or Isn't — Now, it's getting flat-out macabre. — That would be the continuing swirl of attention the health of Apple icon Steve Jobs has been getting. — Rumors of his impending demise have been popping …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Dell shuffles management deck; Focuses on global units — Dell ended 2008 with a management shakeup. — The company said Wednesday that it has realigned its business to focus on four global groups: Large enterprise, public, small and medium sized business and consumer, which is already set up as a global unit.
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Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Marissa Mayer's 2009 Resolution: Leave Google — What will Google be like without Marissa Mayer, the glamour nerd whose goofy laugh so neatly captures the search engine's adolescent awkwardness? We'll know soon. We hear the company's 19th employee is planning her goodbye.
Staci D. Kramer / Washington Post:
paidContent.org - Viacom And Time Warner Cable Play Chicken; Programmer To Pull Networks Over Fee Dispute — Subscribe to Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Cable and have a kid with a Dora addiction? Get ready to pop in DVDs. Need your daily fix of The Daily Show?
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google's Top Ten Products (More Or Less) — Can you name Google's top ten products? If you look at how Quantcast ranks Google's subdomains, you can get a sense of which Google products are the most popular, since they each have their own subdomain. Google's main search engine tops the list …
Discussion:
Search Engine Land
Steven Sande / TUAW:
Rumor Watch: New Mac mini go for launch — When it comes to the Mac mini, there are people out there who know everything there is to know... and now, those savvy sources are telling TUAW that they are confident a new Mac mini is set to be announced at Macworld Expo 2009 next week.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Hulu: Turns Out We Didn't Miss Sarah Palin So Much, After All — File under “interesting and a bit surprising”: Earlier this month I cited Comscore data which showed that traffic to red-hot Hulu had fallen off from October to November. That made sense, because the site had shown a huge spike due …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Associated Press:
Sex offenders must hand over passwords — Privacy advocates are questioning the aggressive new Georgia law — ATLANTA - Privacy advocates are questioning an aggressive Georgia law set to take effect Thursday that would require sex offenders to hand over Internet passwords, screen names and e-mail addresses.
Guardian:
Private firm may track all email and calls — The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.
David Cancel:
Announcing Ghostery — Ghostery is a FireFox Add-on that analyzes the page you're on and shows you if it contains any web bugs. — Ghostery originally started out as GreaseMonkey script I created last year called Invisible Web. Turning it into a Firefox extension made it a bit …
Joey deVilla / Global Nerdy:
The Air Force's Rules of Engagement for Blogging — You've probably seen many articles on companies and organizations saying that they take social media seriously. Here's one such organization that you might not expect: the United States Air Force. Take a look at the Air Force Blog Assessment chart, reproduced below:
Discussion:
Web Strategy
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Turns Out You Can't Sue SexSearch.com If The Girl You Met Via It Is Underage — Another day, another case where someone tried to blame a website for the actions of its users. In this case, a guy used the website SexSearch (seriously) to find someone to have sex with (ah, the internet...).
Damian Koh / CNET News:
The Storm is a Netbook, says RIM's founder — WATERLOO, Canada—Even as the weather drop to sub-zero temperatures and snow powders Research In Motion's campus in Waterloo, Mike Lazaridis certainly didn't feel it. The company's founder and co-CEO carries into a meeting room a little black box …
Ylan Q. Mui / Washington Post:
A Few Popular Presents Rise Above Recession — The presents have been unwrapped, the tree taken down. And Santa still hasn't brought you that Wii. — Don't worry. You are not alone. — Despite the economic gloom and doom that saddled this Christmas shopping season …
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Ben Robinson / IntoMobile:
Spatial View Introduces New Wazabee 3DeeShell for Vivid Stereoscopic 3D Graphics on the iPhone — Spatial View, a leader in manufacturing products for creating 3D effects, introduces its latest product, Wazabee 3DeeShell, a special protective skin with an integrated removable lens …
Discussion:
iPhone Buzz
Rob Bushway / GottaBeMobile.com:
OQO To Debut Model 2+ With 1.86 Intel Atom, Touch At CES, Digital Experience — As an attendee of Digital Experience, I just got a list of vendors planning to present at Digital Experience emailed to me; and, what do I find but this little nugget of info listing OQO as a presenter …
James Falconer / IntoMobile:
‘Curse of Silence’ Bug Does Nasty Things to Nokia S60 Devices — The ‘Curse of Silence’. You read it right... No, not the ‘Cone of Silence’... The ‘Curse of Silence’! — My pal John over at MobileSyrup shot this over to me in my email this morning, and I was quite intrigued.
Alana Semuels / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Texting while driving: everything you need to know about the new law — On New Year's Day, it will become illegal to text message while driving in California. You probably have a lot of questions about what precisely that means: Can you still use your BlackBerry to get directions while driving?
