Top Items:
eBay Inc.:
eBay Inc. Announces Plan for 2010 Initial Public Offering of Skype — eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) today announced that it plans to separate Skype from the company, beginning with an initial public offering that is intended to be completed in the first half of 2010. Specific timing of the IPO will be based on market conditions.
Discussion:
GigaOM, L.A. Times Tech Blog, TechCrunch, Download Squad, Venture Capital Dispatch, Between the Lines, The SiliconANGLE, ReadWriteWeb, Epicenter, Digital Media Wire, Mark Evans, Brier Dudley's blog, Tech Trader Daily, Communications …, VoIP Watch, Search Engine Journal, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, bizjournals, eBay Ink, PE Hub Blog, Techcraver.com and Reuters
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Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
SKYPE IPO! — eBay is finally dumping Skype... on the public market! Specifically, it's planning to spin the company out in an IPO next year. — (In the meantime, by announcing the deal now, it can get investors excited about the separation and try to goad potential acquirers into ponying …
Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:
AT&T Chief Pushes to Keep iPhone — When Randall Stephenson became AT&T Inc.'s chief executive, the company had just started offering the iPhone. The blockbuster device has since reeled in millions of new customers and helped revitalize the telecom giant's brand.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Silicon Alley Insider, Digits, mocoNews, The iPhone Blog, I4U News and dailywireless.org
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Is Said to Plan More Layoffs — SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo is planning a new round of layoffs, the first since Carol Bartz became chief executive in January, according to several people with knowledge of the situation. — The layoffs could affect several hundred employees and may be announced …
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Mattz / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Boston College Campus Police: “Using Prompt Commands” May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity — On Friday, EFF and the law firm of Fish and Richardson filed an emergency motion to quash [pdf] and for the return of seized property on behalf of a Boston College computer science student whose computers …
RELATED:
Rebecca / Electronic Frontier Foundation:Computer Science Student Targeted for Criminal Investigation …
Discussion:
p2pnet
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Apple posts third iPhone OS 3.0 beta with minor API changes — The third beta of the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 is now available to official registered members of Apple's iPhone Developer Program. The biggest change is an improvement to the push notification implementation.
Matt Rosoff / Crave: The gadget blog:
Zune phone ad campaign coming? — I was vacationing last week, so I missed my chance to comment on the Zune HD rumors. Microsoft had already told me that it is planning one more iteration of the Zune hardware, and given the iPhone's success, it wouldn't surprise me if it has a touch screen …
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Noreen O'Leary / Adweek:
Microsoft Plays the Agency Field — McCann suffers as client diversifies its roster in the name of ‘controlled competition’ — NEW YORK McCann Erickson's lead agency status on Microsoft has waned as the marketer has once again asked its growing roster of core agencies to compete …
Discussion:
LiveSide
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Intel: The bottom is in for PC demand — updated: Intel reported a first quarter profit of $647 million, or 11 cents per share, on revenue of $7.1 billion, beating Wall Street's estimates and suggesting that the sluggish PC industry may have finally bottomed out.
Discussion:
Business Wire, Reuters, Tech Beat, TheStreet.com, BetaNews, CNET News, Tech Trader Daily and Silicon Alley Insider
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Jeremy Toeman / LIVEdigitally:
It's Official, Twitter is a Cult — I've been “tweeting” for about a year now. As many of my friends know, I joined fairly reluctantly, but felt it was one of those things I just “had” to do professionally. Over time my use of the service varied, but I tried to stick to using …
SmoothSpan Blog:
AmazonFail Shows Data Matters Too — No software company in their right mind would change code and move it to production without extensive testing to make sure the new code wasn't broken. It's a tried and true business process supported by tools like automated build (gather up all the files …
Discussion:
Digits
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Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
Brill, Crovitz, Hindery Launch E-Commerce Venture For News Business — The news business has problems and entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and cable guy-turned-investor Leo Hindery, Jr. think they have the answers.
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Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Confirmed: Office 2010 will come in 32-bit, 64-bit flavors (Updated) — Microsoft has confirmed that Office 2010 will indeed be shipping in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. — Last month, a very believable rumor started flying around in regard to Office 2010 shipping in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
Jacqueline Emigh / BetaNews:
EMC launches cloud storage for VMware first, Microsoft's Hyper-V later — Built on an entirely new architecture known as the Symmetrix Virtual Matrix Architecture, EMC's new VMax departs from more customary data center storage arrays such as its own DMX-4 through its unprecedented scalability …
Steven Grady / SlashGear:
First non-Apple monitors to feature Mini Display Port announced — Want to play with Apple's new video connection standard, but don't want to shell out $800? Collins America has announced the first new line of LCD monitors to utilize Apple's new Mini Display Port standard.
Pete Carey / Mercury News:
Silicon Valley CEOs braced for tough year — The normally upbeat chief executives of Silicon Valley are worrying about the economic damage and job loss this year could bring, according to a survey by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. — The advocacy group's annual business climate survey …
Discussion:
Open IT Strategies
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Google.org exec leaves to tackle urgent threats — Updated 5:38 p.m. PDT to clarify relationship between the Skoll Foundation and the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund. — Dr. Larry Brilliant, who in February stepped down as leader of the search giant's Google.org nonprofit arm to become …
Tameka Kee / paidContent.org:
Dominos Pranksters Done In By Crowdsourcing — Teens have long used YouTube to post videos of themselves doing gags, but in the case of some Dominos employees from North Carolina, uploading clips cost them their jobs in less than a day thanks to the viral power of social media.
TechNet Blogs:
Service Pack 2 for 2007 Microsoft Office System due April 28th — Our friends over in the Office Sustained Engineering team asked us to post this info. You should be sure to check out their blog for updated information on service releases for our supported versions of Office.
Darren Waters / BBC:
EC starts legal action over Phorm — The European Commission has started legal action against Britain over the online advertising technology Phorm. — It follows complaints to the EC over how the behavioural advertising service was tested on BT's broadband network without the consent of users.
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Next Exchange features e-mail ‘mute’ button — The next version of Microsoft's corporate e-mail server will not only offer the ability to view e-mail by conversations, but also the option of “muting” any thread that a user would rather not take part in. — Conversation threading …
Discussion:
eWeek
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
AT&T launches FamilyMap service, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere — So check this: AT&T just launched a service called FamilyMap. It basically let's you locate any number on your AT&T account for a monthly fee. Here's the thing though... besides the first notification text message alerting …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Late to the iPhone, Trip Hawkins' Digital Chocolate falls in love with it — We've written about how new developers are enamored with the iPhone. But Trip Hawkins (founder of Electronic Arts) admits that his mobile game company, Digital Chocolate, was late to the iPhone.
Discussion:
mocoNews
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Yahoo Could Save $1+ Billion Per Year Outsourcing Search To Microsoft — Jefferies analyst Youssef Squali runs the numbers on Yahoo's (YHOO) potential search/display ad deal with Microsoft (MSFT) in a report today. His notes: — Outsourcing search infrastructure to Microsoft could save Yahoo $1 billion to $1.3 billion per year.
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
How to take screenshots on the Palm Pre — Sure, none of us have the Palm Pre yet - but once you get it, won't you want to take a ton of screenshots to show off to your friends document the experience? — On the iPhone, taking a screenshot requires no wonky software or hackery - just hold two buttons.
Discussion:
PreCentral.net
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Symantec: Security holes, malware spike in 2008 — If you worry that the Internet is a scary place full of digital pickpockets and online identity thieves, your fears will be bolstered by the latest Symantec Internet Security Threat Report released on Tuesday.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Fully functional Office 2008 for Mac trial is now available — Those who want to try out Office 2008 for Mac but don't want to fork over hundreds of dollars just yet can now use a 30-day trial of the software. Microsoft's Mac BU made the fully-functional trial available on its website today …
Eric Lai / Computerworld:
Researchers: Databases still beat Google's MapReduce — Speed, efficiency of parallel SQL databases superior, paper shows — Computerworld) A team of researchers will release on Tuesday a paper showing that parallel SQL databases perform up to 6.5 times faster than Google Inc.'s MapReduce data-crunching technology.
Discussion:
GigaOM
