Top Items:
Jesse / A foot and a half:
Finally, A Use for Twitter — Sean informed me a few days ago that he had been following “The Real Shaq” on twitter. — “You realize that ‘The Real Shaq’ is probably a 5'4 White, 14 year old emo kid who's getting his jolly's from the attention, right?” I asked him. — “I don't know.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
“Hurricane Carol” Bartz Could Announce a Major Yahoo Management Reorg Next Week — Several sources inside and outside Yahoo told BoomTown that new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz could be ready to announce a major reorganization of its management structure as early as next week, most likely on Wednesday.
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
FBI Tracks Down Oscars BitTorrent Uploaders — Two Californian men have been charged with uploading leaked copies of Oscar-nominated Hollywood movies to the Internet. — According to the U.S. attorney's office, yesterday a federal grand jury indicted Derek Hawthorne of Moorpark and Owen Moody …
Discussion:
Fort Mill Times
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Sources confirm Microsoft is buying 3DV Systems — A report surfaced last week that Microsoft was buying 3DV Systems for $35 million. My sources confirm that this is true. — It's not quite as big a deal as buying Yahoo would have been. But I consider it a very important tea leaf in the future direction of Microsoft.
Jay Hathaway / Download Squad:
Last.fm not really sharing data with RIAA — Have you torrented the new U2 album? We won't tell, and neither will Last.fm, if those unreleased tracks show up on your listening profile. That's not what TechCrunch is saying, though. Earlier today, they reported that Last.fm turned …
Discussion:
digg.com
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?
Discussion:
digg.com
Stuart Foster / The Lost Jacket:
OUT WITH A WHIMPER, NOT A BANG — Way back in August - that's like 8 years for those using the site — Digg went on a banning spree, kicking off users left and right for using scripts that, for the most part, enhanced the Digg experience rather than cheating it. — Many of the users left and never came back.
Discussion:
Invoke
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Amazon posts Kindle 2 user manual — We know, you can't wait to cuddle up with your Kindle 2 and have Tom read you a bedtime story while you turn pages 20 percent faster than before — and it looks like Amazon wants to alleviate your pain, because it's just posted the entire user manual online for you.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Cable Guys Plan Their Own Hulus: Anyone Interested in “Authentication” or “Entitlement”? — What's better than Hulu, the video service that lets you watch your favorite TV shows on your laptop? A service that lets you watch even more TV shows on your laptop-if you're a cable TV subscriber.
RELATED:
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Twitter's ‘suggested users’ get mammoth boost from new feature [UPDATED] — A sampling of Twitter's “suggested users.” — Some high-profile Twitter accounts have been seeing astronomical jumps in the number of users subscribing to their profile updates — tens of thousands of new followers, in some cases.
Brandon Bailey / Mercury News:
Tech companies turning to pay cuts to lower costs — While the tech industry has announced thousands of layoffs in recent months, as the global recession spread through Silicon Valley, some local companies are also starting to trim employee pay and benefits to reduce costs.
Discussion:
louisgray.com
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Baby Boomers, Luddites? Not So Fast. — It's probably safe to say that Whopper Sacrifice, Burger King's impish Facebook campaign that offered users free burgers in exchange for dropping 10 friends, wasn't aimed at retirees. But maybe it should have been.
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
Sketching Obama's Cyberplans — The transition team's former cyberguru talks about how Obama will handle the $30 billion Cyber Initiative. — President Obama may be focused on implementing the massive $787 billion stimulus plan he signed earlier this week.
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Video of claimed next-gen Mac Mini surfaces online — After being challenged over a still image, the source for what seems a leaked future Mac mini has now posted a video that shows the device from all sides. — While its authenticity has been disputed, the mystery system has gained …
John Boitnott / NBC Bay Area:
250 DVDs in a Quarter-Sized Device — Coming Soon? — A new technique developed by scientists at UC Berkeley and University of Massachusetts Amherst may drastically increase the ability of devices to store things. — Cal officials called the technique “innovative and easily implemented,” on Thursday.
Brad Stone / Bits:
EBay Founder Tweets About an Unusual Lawsuit — Leave it to Twitter, the microblogging service, to persuade a stubbornly private billionaire to chronicle his daily activities in short, 140-character bursts. — That is what has happened to Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder, philanthropist and start-up investor.
John Cook / TechFlash:
Microsoft's workforce grew in January ... before layoffs — Microsoft's headcount grew during the month of January — that is before layoffs were factored in. The company employed 95,943 employees worldwide in January, meaning it added a net total of 115 workers when compared to December, according to figures released today.
Fred / A VC:
Welcome To The “Dark Side” Marc and Ben — I think this is big news although I have not seen anyone pick up on it yet. Last night on Charlie Rose, Marc Andreessen told Charlie that he and his longtime business partner (and CEO of Opsware/Loudcloud) Ben Horowitz are getting into the venture capital business on a full-time basis.
RELATED:
Alexander Haislip / PE Hub Blog:Andreessen Launches VC Fund
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, CNET News, Charlie Rose, dailywireless.org, ecpm blog, VentureBeat and Under the Radar Blog
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Twitter slowly turning back on the SMS spigot — Back in November of last year, Canadian Twitter users were outraged when the service had to end its support for inbound SMS (text messages) updates due to rising costs. Today brings good news for some of these users: SMS support is back if you happen to be a Bell Mobility subscriber.
Sean Michael Kerner:
Ubuntu's next release: Karmic Koala — From the ‘wacky names r us’ files: — From the great minds that brought us the Hoary Hedgehog, Intrepid Ibex,Dapper Drake and Jaunty Jackalope comes the next wacky name for an Ubuntu Linux release: Karmic Koala. — Ubuntu has always had wacky names and Karmic Koala continues the tradition.
Discussion:
Ars Technica
Ryan Junee / YouTube Blog:
Introducing Collaborative Annotations — When we launched annotations last June, we had a hunch you'd find creative ways to use them and, sure enough, you put them vigorously to work, pushing the limits of information sharing, interactive games and storytelling.
