Top Items:
Abdur / Twitter Blog:
Top Twitter Trends of 2009 — My name is Abdur and I'm part of the Research team here at Twitter. As Chief Scientist, it's my job to interpret data so we can understand and appreciate how Twitter is constantly evolving. Since it's the end of the year, we thought it would be interesting …
Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
Russians Buy Stake in Web Games — SAN FRANCISCO — The Russian firm that invested more than $200 million in Facebook this year is making another bet on the United States Internet industry. — Digital Sky Technologies, or D.S.T., an investment firm with offices in Moscow and London …
Discussion:
GigaOM, Mashable!, TechCrunch, paidContent, VentureBeat, The Next Web Network and Howard Lindzon
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Eric Eldon / Inside Social Games:
Rumor: Zynga to Introduce Employee Stock Sale Plan as It Waits On IPO [Confirmed] — Zynga is planning to let at least some employees sell a portion of their stock in the hot social gaming company to outside investors, according to two industry sources. Institutional Venture Partners …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft's Bing App Debuts on iPhone (So When's the Android Version Coming?) — Microsoft's feisty little search service, Bing, has finally made an iPhone app, which is now up on the Apple iTunes app store tonight. — Bing showed off the free app at a party thrown by its mobile team in San Francisco.
Leander Kahney / Cult of Mac:
AT&T Responds to Fake Steve's Operation Chokehold — AT&T has dismissed Fake Steve's Operation Chokehold protest as an attention-getting stunt. — Fake Steve is calling on disgruntled AT&T customers to bring AT&T's data network “to its knees” at 12 noon PST this Friday, December 18.
Discussion:
App Advice, Computerworld, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Digits, iPhone Savior, Truthdig, The Register, ChannelWeb, Gadget Lab, MacRumors, Gear Live, OhGizmo!, The iPhone Blog, 9 to 5 Mac, Gizmodo, CloudAve, Neowin.net, Zatz Not Funny!, EverythingiCafe, techeblog.com and blogs.chron.com
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Bing Crushes Yahoo Again In November — Another good month for Microsoft's Bing, and another very bad month for Yahoo, according to comScore's November search stats just delivered via a note from JPMorgan's Imran Khan. — Yahoo search is going down the tubes.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Professor claims Square took his credit card reading technology — Square, a new company that makes a small device to let anyone make a credit card payment from their mobile phone, has probably stirred up more excitement than any other startup launching in recent months.
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple wins permanent injunction against clone Mac maker Psystar — First on AI: Apple and Psystar concluded 17 months of litigation Tuesday when a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against the unauthorized Mac OS X hardware creator, banning it from selling hardware with Apple's operating system.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Edible Apple, Softpedia News, The Loop, SlashGear, MacRumors, Pocket-lint.com, TUAW, 9 to 5 Mac, Gizmodo, MacDailyNews and TG Daily
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Suggests You Lie, Break Its Own Terms Of Service To Keep Your Privacy — Here's a new one. As Facebook continues to grapple with the negative press over its privacy overhaul, it's now suggesting a new way to protect your personal information: lie about it.
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Is the Google Phone an Unauthorized Replicant? — Motorola tugged at the hearts of science-fiction fans everywhere when it announced that its first smartphone using Google's Android software would be called Droid, the name given to the lovable robots in “Star Wars.”
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John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
PastryKit — One of the recent themes here has been the topic of iPhone OS web apps — apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch that are built with nothing more than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And specifically, the issues of how good an experience iPhone web apps can offer, and how easy they are to develop …
Mia / YouTube Blog:
What You Watched and Searched for on YouTube in 2009 — This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we're sharing our official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. Some moments were big (President Obama's inauguration) …
Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:
Vimeo Sued Over Lip Dubs — Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo. — A few years ago, video-sharing site Vimeo hit the big time with a viral video of its employees lip-syncing along to Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta after work one day.
Darrell Etherington / TheAppleBlog:
Apple Approves Video Recording App for iPhone 2G and 3G — If you've been reconsidering your position as a jailbreaker thanks to recent security threats or Apple's strong disapproval, there's now one more reason to consider going legit. Apple just approved a new app that allows iPhones other than the 3GS to record video.
Discussion:
The Next Web Network, MobileContentToday, TechStartups.com, Gizmodo, Hardware 2.0, PC World and MacNN, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Friendster Valued At Just $26.4 Million In Sale — We've got more details on the Friendster acquisition announced last week. Rumors were floating that the buyer, MOL Global, paid as much as $100 million for Friendster. The real price, we've confirmed from multiple sources, was under $30 million.
Wendy Koch / USA Today:
Microsoft giving software to curb child porn — Children whose sexual abuse has been circulated in photos online could get some relief from new software that makes it easier to remove child pornography from the Internet. — Microsoft, which developed the PhotoDNA software …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
kaChing Raises $7.5 Million To Turn Mutual Funds On Their Heads — kaChing, a new financial startup that's looking to rethink the way people invest, has closed a $7.5 million funding round led by DAG Ventures. The company had previously raised $3 million from Silicon Valley notables including …
Microsoft:
Microsoft Statement Regarding MSN China Joint Venture's Juku Feature — Additional information regarding the Juku beta application. — On Monday, December 14, questions arose over a beta application called Juku developed by a Chinese vendor for our MSN China joint venture.
Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:
Foursquare Launches Location Check-ins for Facebook — Now that Foursquare has money in the bank, the New York-based startup is starting to quickly launch updates to its increasingly popular mobile location-based game. — The service recently released their API, paving the way for nifty apps …
Discussion:
The Next Web Network
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Worth Remembering: Evernote App Hits Android Market (Screenshots) — Digital memory aid and note taking service Evernote already has mobile applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry, among others, but so far it wasn't part of the now more than 20,000 applications for the Android platform.
Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:
YouTube looks at subscriptions, more ad dollars — NEW YORK (Reuters) - YouTube is considering offering users the option to pay for subscriptions in a bid to encourage more media companies to license premium TV shows and movies to the popular online video site, a senior executive said.
Official Google Australia Blog:
Our views on Mandatory ISP Filtering — At Google we are concerned by the Government's plans to introduce a mandatory filtering regime for Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Australia, the first of its kind amongst western democracies. * Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide.
Sebastian Anthony / Download Squad:
Facebook enables ‘reply via email’ to status updates — Blam! Just like that: you can now reply to Facebook status updates via email. Just hit ‘reply’, type out your response, hit ‘send’, and voila! — I have no idea if it has just been enabled for the entire Facebook userbase …
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Bing Tweaks Search History, Dings Google — There's a new post on the Bing Search blog that talks at length about Bing's search history features, introduces a couple new features, and seems to ding Google a couple times along the way over its recent privacy-related stumbles.
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Scammers exploit Google Doodle to spread malware — This Google Doodle featuring the Esperanto flag was exploited by scammers to spread malware, according to Barracuda Networks. — Online scammers are taking advantage of the public's interest in the Google Doodle to spread malware, a security firm warned on Tuesday.
Robert Andrews / mocoNews:
Guardian's iPhone App Sold 9,000 Downloads In First Two Days — Guardian.co.uk's new iPhone app got some favourable reviews upon its release on Sunday night. Even more favourable - it shifted 9,000 in the first two days, Guardian News & Media told us. — At £2.39 a pop in the UK …
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Comcast Launches Its “TV Everywhere” Plan Nationwide, With an Awful Name: Say Hello to “Xfinity” — As promised, Comcast is opening up the trial of its “TV Everywhere” program, which gives its subscribers-but only its subscribers-access to extra TV programming, streamed via the Web.
Donald Bell / CNET News:
Twitter app for Zune HD imminent — Just when we were beginning to lose faith that Microsoft would make good on their plans to release Twitter and Facebook apps for the Zune HD, a tweet from Microsoft's Zune account offers a ray of hope. If the Twitter post turns out to be true …
Brenna Ehrlich / Mashable!:
McDonald's Adds Free Wi-Fi to the Menu — In an effort to become more of a “destination” than a grab-n-go eatery, that most iconic of fast food chains — McDonald's — is now serving up free wi-fi. Starting mid-January, the restaurant will nix the $2.95 fee that it had previously charged …
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
iPhone Users, Get Ready for Flash Games — Photo of Evan “Rabble” Henshaw-Plath by James Duncan Davidson, used with permission — The iPhone has inspired a casual gaming renaissance that's about to go into overdrive. OneAppAtATime, a new startup, allows developers to build iPhone …
