Top Items:
John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:
Predictions 2009 — In each of the past five years I've written a predictions post - usually at year's end or by the first of January. This one is late, and I'll admit it's because I found it hard to write. The world is showing itself to be predictable in only one way: bad news begets bad news.
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Sources: 17-inch MacBook Pro, NVIDIA Mac mini due shortly — Apple as early as Tuesday will introduce a 17-inch MacBook Pro with a fixed internal battery and a new version of the Mac mini, both of which will feature chipsets from NVIDIA, AppleInsider has been able to independently confirm.
Discussion:
Computerworld Blogs, CNET News, MacRumors, TUAW, Engadget, World of Apple and 9 to 5 Mac
Sarah McBride / Wall Street Journal:
RIAA Drops MediaSentry — In another sign of the music industry's recently announced retreat from a five-year-old antipiracy strategy, the Recording Industry Association of America has dumped the company it used to help it gather evidence for mass lawsuits it filed against people it claimed were illegally uploading copyrighted music.
Sarah Knapton / Telegraph:
Twitter reveals mundane lifestyles of celebrities — Stars using Twitter to post minute-to-minute updates for fans have given an inadvertent insight into their surprisingly mundane lives. — The micro-blogging website offers users the chance to post regular short updates from their computers or mobile phones.
RELATED:
TechRadar.com:
Marissa Mayer on the future of Google — Interview: “It's really important to move beyond just keywords” — Pretty much every product that Google works on has to go through gatekeeper Marissa Mayer, who decides whether it's ready to be released or needs more work.
Paul Buchheit:
Overnight success takes a long time — For some reason, this weekend has seen a lot of talk about what FriendFeed is/isn't/should be doing (see Louis Gray and others). One person even predicted that we will fail. — I considered writing my own list of complaints about FriendFeed.
David Leppard / Times of London:
Police set to step up hacking of home PCs — THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people's personal computers without a warrant. — The move, which follows a decision by the European Union's council of ministers in Brussels …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Trojan Blocks The Pirate Bay and Mininova — The trojan in question (Troj/Qhost-AC) identified by anti-virus company Sophos, is a rather unusual one. It doesn't seem to install spyware or traditional malware, but instead blocks access to the two most popular BitTorrent sites.
Discussion:
digg.com
BIZ / Twitter Blog:
Gone Phishing — If you receive a direct message or a direct message email notification that redirects to what looks like Twitter.com—don't sign in. Look closely at the URL because it could be a scam. — What Is Phishing? — Wikipedia defines phishing as “the criminally fraudulent process …
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Investment fears in venture capital shake-out — The US venture capital industry, which has become an important source of capital for technology start-ups around the world, is facing a severe shake-out that will lead to a contraction in future investments, according to some of Silicon Valley's leading financiers.
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
Exclusive First Look: BeeJiveIM 2.0 for iPhone — If you're a regular IM user with an iPhone, chances are you've heard of BeeJiveIM. Long established as a top choice IM app for BlackBerry, the iPhone release rocketed up to the #2 best selling application in the iTunes Social Networking category for 2008 …
Discussion:
CrunchGear
Patrick Smith / paidContent:
Online Or Bust: Why 2009 May Be The Nail In Newspapers' Coffins — Optimistic newspaper proprietors like Sly Bailey and Tim Bowdler blame the business' current malaise (we've covered over 1,000 newspaper job losses since October alone) on an advertising downturn that's merely “cyclical”.
Joseph Tartakoff / The Microsoft Blog:
Claim: Microsoft earned $1.5B from “Vista Capable” PCs — An expert estimates Microsoft earned more than $1.5 billion through the sale of PCs labeled as “Vista Capable,” according to a court document. — Microsoft allowed PC makers to label some XP-running PCs as “Vista Capable” …
