Top Items:
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
The Alternative to the iPhone Pro — Knowing that it is very hard that Apple would ever release an iPhone Pro with physical keyboard, Mat Brady from planetmat has sent me another image of a potential accessory. It looks great. — Mat says that he created the accessory answering readers' feedback on sliding keyboards.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Spotify, An Alternative to Music Piracy — Spotify is a music service that gives users access to a huge library of music, through a lightweight application that looks like a mashup of the best parts of iTunes and Last.fm. Music is streamed, partly supported by P2P technology, but it plays instantly, like we've never seen before.
Discussion:
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Chris Messina / FactoryCity:
Twitter and the Password Anti-Pattern — I've written about the password anti-pattern before, and have, with regards to Twitter, advocated for the adoption of some form of delegated authentication solution for some while. — It's not as if Twitter or lead developer Alex Payne aren't aware …
Sarah Lacy:
Now for My Next Trick, I'll Turn Brand into Cash — Back in May 2008, I was on top of the world. Viewers were soaring for my newly launched Yahoo show, TechTicker, my book was about to come out and was boasting a beautifully low three-digit Amazon rank, several of my BusinessWeek columns …
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
The Secret Origins of Clippy: Microsoft's Bizarre Animated Character Patents — Of all the peculiar ideas that Microsoft has pursued over its almost 34 years in business, I can't think of many that are more inexplicable than its long-standing interest in using animated characters to provide help …
Matthaus Krzykowski / VentureBeat:
An FAQ about those Android netbooks — Since our post yesterday about Google's Android platform running on netbooks, we've been asked a lot of questions. Here are the most frequent questions, along with our answers. — Do you think Android could run on laptops or PCs?
Louis Gray:
What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users — That I like FriendFeed and so does Robert Scoble and so do a few thousand other Web-addicted Silicon Valley-centric people doesn't matter very much. That thousands more have signed up to the service and imported their data doesn't matter very much either.
Mike Schramm / TUAW:
Craigsphone brings Craigslist to the iPhone — Craigslist is one of my absolute favorite sites on the 'net — it's been around for years, but kept the same simple look and feel, perfectly fulfilling the service of classifieds without ever once going off that course.
Discussion:
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Chris Dannen / Fast Company:
Google's “Product Ideas” Campaign Isn't Crowdsourcing. It's A PR Stunt — Google [GOOG] has just launched a “Product Ideas” site where users can submit suggestions for innovation. The Web is abuzz: is almighty Google resorting to crowdsourcing? No, they're not. They're just looking for a little good press.
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Will economy dent Amazon's hiring spree? — Will Amazon.com prove immune to the layoffs gripping the rest of the tech industry? A lot of the speculation at the moment is focused on the Seattle area's other tech giant, Microsoft, which is rumored to be planning layoffs this month …
Iljitsch van Beijnum / Ars Technica:
The year in IPv4 addresses: almost 200 million served — One of the first things I do every year on the first of January is have a look at what happened with the IP address stockpile during the previous year. We started 2008 with 1,122.85 million unused addresses left and we ended it with 925.58 million.
Chris Walters / Consumerist:
Fisher-Price Kiddie Camera Comes With Fun And A Computer Virus — Jeff says his kid's new toy, a working camera from Fisher-Price, tried to give his computer a virus when he plugged it in! … Well you wouldn't take the leaded paint or the melamine, Jeff. China has to export something...
