Top Items:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Cloudy day: Google falters; Packets lost in key cities — Updating: We're getting various reports via that Google services are down or at least sucking some serious wind. The service appears to be back as of noon-ish EDT in New York City, but packets are still being lost around the globe.
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Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Reports point to widespread Google outages — Many people found Google's search site was extremely slow or inaccessible Thursday, and other reports pointed to troubles with other properties including YouTube, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Docs, AdSense, and Blogger.
Discussion:
Between the Lines, Technologizer, Bits, SANS Internet Storm Center …, Search Engine Watch, Epicenter and p2pnet
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
It's Down! The Day Google Stood Still (Updated) — We have seen our fair share of failures from web based products, but this morning, for a large number of users (at least in the U.S.), it looks like every Google service has been either wiped off the Internet or is running extremely slow for a large number of users.
Jeremy Liew / Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog:
Apple has made no more than $20-45m in revenue from the app store — About a month ago Apple announced that one billion iphone apps have been downloaded in the first nine months. That's an amazing number. I wondered how much money Apple was making from the app store.
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter's Spectacularly Awful 24 Hours — Twitter just went through an awful 24-hour stretch. It included taking away a feature some people loved, probably being misleading about it, getting a huge amount of backlash, halfway bringing the feature back, and getting railed by the press for it all …
Discussion:
PC World, Telegraph, MYBLOG by Ouriel, Twitter Blog, BeatBlogging.Org, Technologizer, Tech Central, ReadWriteWeb, ChannelWeb, Search Engine Roundtable, TechCrunch Europe, ITworld.com and Guardian, Thanks:brickandclick
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Network Use Not the Only Reason For AT&T to Hate 3G iPhone SlingPlayer — Everyone may think that AT&T threw their fat around and made Apple lock down the SlingPlayer iPhone app because of AT&T's lousy network, but a tipster tells us there's a more nefarious reason at play.
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Troy Wolverton / SiliconBeat:AT&T: “Slinging” barred on all devices, not just iPhone
Discussion:
The Toybox, HotHardware.com News, MobileContentToday, Electricpig.co.uk, Macworld, NEWSFACTOR and TUAW
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Windows Mobile 6.5: the UI was rushed, more on widgets — A TechEd 2009 video gives more information on widgets, talks about how the UI in Windows Mobile 6.5 was rushed, and that Silverlight won't be coming till a later version. — TechEd 2009 already gave us details on Windows 7 …
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Gizmodo, Download Squad, InformationWeek, All about Microsoft, MobileCrunch, ithinkdifferrent, SlashGear, TechVi and Engadget
Gmail Blog:
Import your mail and contacts from other accounts — Gmail users can be a passionate bunch. Many of us have, at one time or another, encouraged or cajoled friends and family to join us @gmail.com. But switching email accounts can be pretty painful. It's like getting out of a relationship.
Discussion:
Between the Lines, LiveSide, CNET News, Lifehacker, PC World, Digital Inspiration, PreCentral.net, Search Engine Journal, The Register, Download Squad, CloudAve, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, AppScout, geeksugar, Mashable!, Search Engine Land, InformationWeek, Google Operating System, The Google Apps Blog and Web Analytics World, Thanks:sinkercat
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Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
4G wireless makes progress with WiMax, LTE developments — Suddenly, there's a light at the end of the 4G tunnel. We keep hearing about the next generation of wireless communications but thanks to two developments this week, it's finally starting to feel like we're getting close.
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Brad Stone / Bits:
RealNetworks Sues Studios on Antitrust Grounds — Escalating its already simmering court battle with Hollywood, RealNetworks has expanded its lawsuit against the six major Hollywood movie studios and the DVD Copy Control Association, a cross-industry consortium, in federal court in northern California.
Discussion:
BetaNews, Ars Technica, TechFlash, p2pnet, Electronista, Between the Lines, GMSV, Engadget and GigaLaw.com Daily News
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Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
ASUS Eee Keyboard to launch by end of June — The dream of owning a keyboard embedded with a full-blown PC running XP on an Atom N270 processor and 5-inch, 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen display/trackpad is nearly upon us. A dream, quite honestly, nobody had prior to seeing the reveal …
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
YouTube arrives on Google News after outage — Update at 7:27 a.m. PDT: Outage is confirmed, and further details have been added. — Google News was inaccessible for many on Thursday morning. But when it re-emerged, it sported news videos hosted at YouTube. — Some news headlines now feature a small YouTube logo.
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
The 10 Sites Benefiting The Most From Twitter's Traffic Explosion — US unique visitors to Twitter grew 83% between March and April, according to ComScore. Since one of the main uses of Twitter is sharing links, we wondered: Who is feeling the Twitter love? We asked Hitwise.
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
Why isn't Zillow dead? — “Things are very good at Zillow,” Rich Barton, CEO of the online real estate company, was telling me. We're in the thick of the worst economic crisis of a generation and a depressed real estate market, so this means that Barton is either a very clever CEO or an audacious liar.
Discussion:
All Points Blog
Ian Paul / PC World:
Amazon Puts Any Blog on the Kindle, for a Price — Amazon yesterday introduced Kindle Publishing for Blogs Beta, a new program that lets anyone sell blog subscriptions to Kindle users through Amazon's Kindle store. All you have to do is sign up for a blog vendor account …
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:Kindle Publishing Now Open To All Blogs
Discussion:
paidContent.org, Gadget Lab, Fast Company, Digits, Electricpig.co.uk, WebWorkerDaily, MobileContentToday, Mashable!, TechFlash, Gizmodo and Silicon Alley Insider
Alan Duke / CNN:
Official: Craigslist to replace ‘blatant Internet brothel’ — (CNN) — Craigslist will replace its controversial online “erotic services” listings with a section where ads are individually checked by Craigslist employees before they are posted, according to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
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BBC:
Pirated pop keeps stars popular — File-sharing sites help make popular acts more popular, finds a study. — The research, by industry body PRS for Music, showed the most pirated pop songs tend to be those at the top of the music charts. — There was little evidence …
Toshiba:
World's First PC Integrating 512GB SSD — Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502), reinforcing its “dynabook SS RX2 series” of notebook PCs offering light weight, slim lines, and long-lasting battery operation, today announced the introduction of the top-of-the-range “dynabook SS RX2/WAJ,” …
Discussion:
Gizmodo, Between the Lines, Newlaunches.com, Softpedia News, Engadget, Maximum PC all, T3.com News and Electricpig.co.uk
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
April Video Winners: Hulu, of Course. And... MTV? — Here's an online video story you haven't seen before: Viacom's MTV sites had a really good month last month. — This news comes from Nielsen Online, which just released its video traffic numbers for April. The top line is more or less unchanged.
Discussion:
Contentinople
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Don't Drink The 151.im — The Latest Facebook Phishing Scam — Facebook phishing attacks seem to be a dime a dozen these days. The latest is oddly simple but people are still falling victim to it. The subject line will be “Hello” and the body of the Facebook email will simply be a the domain 151.im.
Aaron Ricadela / Business Week:
What's Holding Back Google Apps? — The search giant aims to compete in business software with Google Apps. But some clients fret over storing data on its servers—and its rivals are big — When Google (GOOG) announced a foray into business software two years ago, it touted General Electric (GE) as one of its trophy accounts.
Discussion:
Software, Interrupted
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
College Journalists Want To Erase Their Past From Google — While many professional journalists fondly remember the work they did in college — covering townie news for the university paper or radio station — some are trying to erase their past work from the Internet because it shows …
Schneier on Security:
Software Problems with a Breath Alcohol Detector — This is an excellent lesson in the security problems inherent in trusting proprietary software: … Draeger, the manufacturer maintained that the system was perfect, and that revealing the source code would be damaging to its business.
Discussion:
Boing Boing
Brian Ashcraft / Kotaku:
These The First Pics Of The PS3 Slim? — While rumors have been swirling that Sony will be announcing a PS3 Slim, the company has stated earlier that it “currently has no plans” for a redesign. That was then, this is now. — Today, pictures of what appears to be a redesigned PS3 have appeared on Chinese message boards.
Discussion:
SlashGear, CrunchGear, Gizmodo, Destructoid, Crave, Joystiq, Electricpig.co.uk, ComputerAndVideoGames.com and techeblog.com
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
MacSpeech Dictate gets 20% more accurate with paid upgrade — MacSpeech Dictate has always had good accuracy when it comes to transcribing blocks of speech, but the voice recognition software's toolset remained weak. Even after several minor upgrades, basic tasks like managing custom vocabulary words …
