Top Items:
Fred / A VC:
This News Made Me Smile A Mile Wide — Like I do every morning, I logged into Techmeme to find this news: — That's an image, sorry about that, here's the link to the WSJ story, but I wanted you all to see how I heard the news. — This is so great on so many levels. Let's start with the first reason.
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Wall Street Journal:
Genachowski Picked to Head FCC — WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama intends to nominate his technology adviser Julius Genachowski to head the Federal Communications Commission, a source close to the Obama transition team said. — Mr. Genachowksi, 46, is a former Harvard Law School classmate of Mr. Obama.
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
New FCC Chief Julius Genachowski A Google Net Neutrality Shill? — Former IAC (IACI) counsel and Obama insider Julius Genachowski will be tapped by Barack Obama to run the FCC. Not a surprising pick: Julius had been working on Obama's transition team, and was once rumored to be in the running for federal CTO, only to be ruled out.
Nate Lanxon / CNET News:
iTunes Plus: Everything you need to know — Apple's iTunes Store is almost completely DRM-free, and will be entirely DRM-free from spring. This means files downloaded from iTunes work on heaps of devices that aren't from Apple. What better way to celebrate the final bullet to the living corpse …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Social Networking: Will Facebook Overtake MySpace In The U.S. In 2009? — Year end Comscore numbers for the U.S. audience are out. The first thing we checked? How the major social networks are doing. — Facebook, which became the largest worldwide social network in mid 2008 …
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Reuters:
Sony may suffer first loss in 14 years — Slumping sales, strong yen expected to weigh on electronics giant's annual results. Stock sinks 9%. — TOKYO (Reuters) — Japan's Sony Corp will likely suffer an annual operating loss of about $1.1 billion, its first such loss in 14 years …
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Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:Nope, Sony's Not “Recession-proof”: Set for $1 Billion Loss?
Discussion:
Gizmodo
DigiTimes:
TSMC and UMC likely to receive orders for iPhone nano, says paper — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) will likely land chip orders for Apple's low-cost entry-level iPhone nano, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) reported today.
Discussion:
Electronista, Edible Apple, CrunchGear, Pocket-lint.co.uk, Insanely Great Mac, MobileCrunch and Unwired View
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Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
How to Get, Install and Play With Windows 7, Pain Free — You've been thinking about installing Windows 7 Beta 1 now that it's totally available to anyone. Well, here's our complete guide to grabbing, installing and playing with Windows 7—it's (mostly) painless, so no excuses! — Are You Ready?
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Confirmed: Delicious Founder Joshua Schachter Joins Google — We've confirmed that Joshua Schachter, the founder of Delicious and a Yahoo exec until June 2008, joins a number of ex-Yahoo'ers at cross-town rival Google. In a phone call Schachter says he hasn't been assigned to a specific project yet …
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
Privacy Groups Target Android, Mobile Marketers — In a complaint to federal regulators, activists take on the nascent phone-based ad industry. — Amid the buzz surrounding the launch of Google's Android mobile platform last September, the search giant hasn't spelled out just how it will squeeze revenue from its new product.
Brian Mastenbrook:
Disclosure of information vulnerability in Safari — I have discovered that Apple's Safari browser is vulnerable to an attack that allows a malicious web site to read files on a user's hard drive without user intervention. This can be used to gain access to sensitive information stored …
John Leyden / The Register:
Virus writer signs off in cordial Trojan message to MS — So long, and thanks for all the phish — An unidentified Russian virus writer has reached out to Microsoft with a message buried within a recent variant of the Zlob Trojan. The greeting in the malicious code was friendly and cordial …
Discussion:
Computerworld
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Look Out For Weak Apple Guidance, iPhone Sales — Citi (AAPL) — Apple (AAPL) reports December quarter earnings next Wednesday, so Wall Street's estimate revisions are rolling in. We'll update our models this week, but for now, we'll share some of the reports we see.
Discussion:
Tech Trader Daily
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Why You Have To Jailbreak the iPhone — If you own an iPhone and you're fairly technical, then you've no doubt gone through the steps necessary to “jailbreak” your iPhone - the process that opens up the phone to allow for the installation of unapproved third-party applications.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Mobile Payments Getting Traction On Social Networks, But Fees Are Sky High — Users are increasingly choosing dead simple SMS mobile payments for micro-transactions on social network applications and gaming sites (it fills the void while they wait for more direct options), but super-high transaction fees are limiting growth.
John Leyden / The Register:
AVG snaps up behaviour-based threat detection firm — Sana move in uncertain times — AVG, the net security firm best known for its free-of-charge anti-virus tool, has bought anti-ID theft software firm Sana Security. Financial terms of the deal, announced Tuesday, were undisclosed.
Discussion:
eWeek
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Newsgator Secures $10 Million Sixth Round Funding — RSS feed aggregator Newsgator has raised a $10 million sixth-round funding. The company has lined up past investors, including Masthead Venture Partners, Mobius Venture Capital and Vista Ventures, for this latest funding.
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Lester Haines / The Register:
Danish SWAT team surrounds PlayStation shoot-'em-up — Apartment block ‘gunfire’ incident — A couple of Danish gamers indulging in some light PlayStation shoot-'em-up action were on Saturday night treated to a visit by uniformed blokes carrying real guns after concerned neighbours called in the cops.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Photo Marketplace That Never Launched: Flickr Stock — In late 2007 Flickr was strongly considering creating a marketplace where users could buy and sell photographs hosted on the service. It was to be called Flickr Stock. — Then-employee Sarah Cooper worked on the project and describes …
Google Mac Blog:
Search Without Effort: The Quick Search Box — One of our goals at Google is to make your search experience as fluid as possible. While much of our work is focused on Google.com, we're trying to make it just as easy to search outside your browser. — For the last year, we have been working on a new, open-source quick search box.
Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:
Hardware Hacker Charged With Selling Cable Modems That Get Free Broadband — Update — In the first case of its kind, a Pennsylvania man faces federal criminal charges for allegedly selling hacked cable modems capable of stealing free, anonymous internet service from broadband providers.
Loïc Le Meur / Loic Le Meur Blog:
Just Buy Your Twitter Followers: Here is How.... Google Adsense — Mailplane for loic@seesmic.com.jpg — I wonder what to think about that. Want a high number of Twitter followers? Just buy them in Google ads like this company or individual is doing, probably to sell how to “be good” on Twitter.
