Top Items:
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone — Apple's iPhone has wowed most of the globe — but not Japan, where the handset is selling so poorly it's being offered for free. — What's wrong with the iPhone, from a Japanese perspective? Almost everything: the high monthly data plans that go with it …
Discussion:
SiliconAngle, Boing Boing Gadgets, The Register, Smalltalk Tidbits …, Slashdot and digg.com
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook's “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Users' Social Behavior — The famous Dunbar number, or “theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships”, is generally accepted to be about 150. However, in a recent interview with The Economist …
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Economist:
Primates on Facebook — Even online, the neocortex is the limit — THAT Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks will increase the size of human social groups is an obvious hypothesis, given that they reduce a lot of the friction and cost involved in keeping in touch with other people.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
How Much Would You Pay to Read Newsday.com? — Zilch. That's the snap consensus from the Web pundits, who are baffled by Cablevision's plan to start charging for access to the online version of Newsday, the Long Island daily it overpaid for last year. — And it's not as if Cablevision …
Discussion:
CNET News, Silicon Alley Insider, AppScout, Tech-Ex, paidContent.org and techblog.dallasnews.com
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Bret Taylor / Bret Taylor's blog:
How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data — Background — We use MySQL for storing all of the data in FriendFeed. Our database has grown a lot as our user base has grown. We now store over 250 million entries and a bunch of other data, from comments and “likes” to friend lists.
Saul Hansell / Bits:
CBS Beams ‘Star Trek’ Episodes to iPhones — CBS is taking the iPhone where no iPhone has gone before. — Today, it released an iPhone application for its TV.com site that can play full episodes of TV series, ranging from “C.S.I.” to the original “Star Trek.”
Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:
Sony CEO Takes Over Company's Presidency — TOKYO — Sony Corp. said Friday that Howard Stringer, its chief executive officer, would replace Ryoji Chubachi as president in a move to give the CEO a freer hand in restructuring the struggling electronics giant.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, I4U News, Wall Street Journal, paidContent.org, Computerworld, DailyTech, Silicon Alley Insider, Kotaku, Financial Times, VG247, Gizmodo, Engadget and Gearlog, Thanks:mrinaldesai
DigiTimes:
Asustek to launch Eee PC Shell ultra-thin netbook in April, says paper — Asustek Computer plans to launch its second ultra-thin netbook with a 10.1-inch panel, the Eee PC Shell, in April this year. The netbook will have a higher specification than the Eee PC S101, will be easier to carry …
Sachi Izumi / Reuters:
DoCoMo halts BlackBerry Bold sales due to overheating — TOKYO (Reuters) - NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan's biggest mobile phone operator, said on Friday it has halted sales of Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold because the phone can overheat while the battery is being recharged.
Discussion:
CNET News, Digital Daily, Tech Trader Daily, Boy Genius Report, BetaNews and Unwired View
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Downturn could be Microsoft's bonding moment — REDMOND, Wash.—It takes a lot to get different parts of Microsoft to really work together. But the current economic turmoil might just be the thing to do it. — At least that's the working theory for Stephen Elop, the former Macromedia CEO …
Discussion:
CNET News
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Want to waive copyright? Creative Commons has a tool for you — The Creative Commons has launched an official tool to guide content creators through the process of publishing their works under the highly permissive CC0 license, which enables them to waive all rights.
Neil McAllister / Fatal Exception:
Gazelle: The browser that thinks like an OS — A new browser prototype from Microsoft Research offers a glimpse at the next stage of computing's evolution — Without question, Web-based applications are one of the most important developments in modern computing.
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
The Shakeout Begins! Video Startups in Play — It didn't take long after the credit crunch last fall for waves of layoffs to hit online video startups. But surely all those tweaks and cuts didn't successfully revive every single company's fate. And now, we're seeing the ensuing wave …
Discussion:
Dealscape
Jens Roland / TorrentFreak:
How To Kill The Music Industry — According to Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music, the decline in music revenues in the past 8 years can be fully attributed to (read: blamed on) illegal file sharing. If this were actually true, many of us might even respect his decision to go after pirates …
Discussion:
digg.com
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Cell Phones: Demand Is Even Worse Than You Think — How bad is the market for cell phones? Really bad. Worse than really bad. — RBC Capital's Mark Sue this morning cut his Q1 forecast for global handset unit demand to 230 million, from 248 million, which would mean a sequential drop of 25%.
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Nokia Comes With Music phones confirmed for US this year — Following the reasonably successful UK debut of its unique Comes With Music subscription plan for cell phones, Nokia is now bringing the innovative model to other countries. Comes With Music offers a unique (and slightly more favorable) …
Discussion:
Phone Scoop
Chris Williams / The Register:
Phorm unleashes legal attack on critics — Beware the wounded beast — Free whitepaper - Utilizing IT to put data to work — News articles based on a survey indicating public opposition to Phorm's web snooping and advertising system have been withdrawn after the firm made legal threats to their publishers.
Discussion:
paidContent
Robert D. Hof / Business Week:
Yahoo's Bartz Shows Who's Boss — Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz unveils a streamlined management structure for the Web portal, including the departure of CFO Blake Jorgensen — Just six weeks after taking over as chief executive of Yahoo! (YHOO) from co-founder Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Witness' Wife Overwhelmed With Flowers — Professor and media researcher Roger Wallis appeared as an expert witness at the Pirate Bay trial yesterday. He was questioned on the link between the decline of album sales and filesharing. Wallis told the court that his research …
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Google: Stalled Data Centers Will Be Built — Google (GOOG) isn't abandoning the data center projects where it has slowed or halted construction due to the slowing economy, the company said this week. In a presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco …
Jim Zemlin:
Note on Microsoft TomTom Suit: Calm Down, Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst — Calm Down — Right now the Microsoft claim against Tom Tom is a private dispute between those two entities concerning GPS mapping software. We do not feel assumptions should be made about the scope or facts …
Discussion:
Open Source, GPS Obsessed, CNN, The Register, TechFlash, 451 CAOS Theory, Bloomberg, Epicenter, OStatic blogs and BetaNews
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Robert Weisman / Boston Globe:
TripAdvisor adds flight, fare search — TripAdvisor LLC went live last night with a search engine that will pull together flight and fare data from multiple airlines and online travel agencies, a move that will put the Newton website in competition with Kayak.com and others in the lucrative fare search space.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Pages Redesign Coming — Facebook launched Facebook Ads in November 2007 to give brands and businesses a way to create a presence on Facebook and interact with users. Starting next week, says a source with knowledge of the new product, those pages will be substantially redesigned.
Thanks:mrinaldesai
Andrew Nusca / Between the Lines:
VOD chief: Comcast will survive in face of TV.com, Hulu — This week, Comcast announced its OnDemand Online service, promising anywhere online access to Comcast programming (broadcast, basic and premium channels, etc.) for its customers. — I sat down with Doug Sylvester …
Rafael Ruffolo / IT World Canada:
Android narrowly trails iPhone in open source app race — A new report from Black Duck Software finds that while Google's Android platform is flying under the radar for most mainstream smart phone users, developers are certainly answering the search giant's call to arms
Discussion:
Slashdot
Cory Doctorow / Guardian:
You shouldn't have to sell your souljust to download some music — The activities that are restricted by download licence agreements range from the ridiculous to the dubious — Here's the world's shortest, fairest, and simplest licence agreement: “Don't violate copyright law.”
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
Judge orders defendant to decrypt PGP-protected laptop — A federal judge has ordered a criminal defendant to decrypt his hard drive by typing in his PGP passphrase so prosecutors can view the unencrypted files, a ruling that raises serious concerns about self-incrimination in an electronic age.
