Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yelp Walks Away From Google Deal, And Half A Billion Dollars — Jeremy Stoppleman, the CEO of Yelp, has walked away from an all-but-signed deal to be acquired by Google for more than half a billion dollars. — The deal was, as we wrote late last week, in the later stages of negotiation.
Discussion:
Bits, Silicon Alley Insider, Search Engine Journal, PC World, Media Decoder, the Econsultancy blog, Search Engine Land, MediaPost, GeekSmack, Dealscape, Venture Capital Dispatch, CNET News, Gizmodo, Rev2.org, TechFlash, Electronista, Screenwerk, Tech Trader Daily, blogs.ft.com, Erictric, Android Phone Fans, SFGate, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Softpedia News, GMSV and Maximum PC
RELATED:
Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:
Netscape, Yelp, and the Tech IPO Boom of 2010 … Yelp may have just turned down a half-billion dollar takeover offer from Google. Zynga does a crazy-big $180m funding. Not long ago, Twitter took another $100-million in financing, and now we learn it's ... profitable.
Lars Backstrom / Facebook Blog:
Facebook Memology: Top Status Trends of 2009 — Status updates on Facebook help people understand their friends and the people around them—how they're feeling, what they're doing and what they're thinking. In the United States alone, people on Facebook are sharing hundreds of millions of words every day …
Discussion:
All Facebook, TechCrunch, Between the Lines, The Next Web, AppScout, Mashable! and Facebook
Boy Genius Report:
Motorola Opus One specifications — When we say we have specifications, boy, do we mean it. One of our connects has sent us the full rundown on Motorla's Opus One (their first iDEN Android handset) that we revealed a little while back. The features on the device are actually pretty reasonable …
Discussion:
Phone Arena, InformationWeek, AndroidGuys, Gizmodo, SlashGear, I4U News, Internet2Go, Techie Buzz, Android Phone Fans, Android Central and Electronista
Mia / YouTube Blog:
Make Way for youtu.be Links — It's all the rage: link shorteners to ensure that those useful URLs you're sharing don't take up too much precious character count while also giving you an inkling of what you're about to click on. Well, we've just launched youtu.be as a shortener for YouTube video links …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Will Intel's Atom overhaul fuel another netbook boom? — Intel is revamping its Atom processor platform in a move that will yield more powerful netbooks, better efficiency and smaller designs. Will Intel set off another netbook boom? — On Monday, Intel made its overhaul of its Atom platform official (statement, Techmeme).
Discussion:
Fast Company, UMPCPortal, Computerworld, The Toybox, TechSpot, Maximum PC, Gizmodo, GMSV, Liliputing, eWeek and Pocket-lint.com
RELATED:
Jon Stokes / Ars Technica:Intel reveals next-generation Atom details
Discussion:
Gizmodo, PC World, GigaOM, Electronista, HotHardware.com News, ITworld.com, Engadget, Softpedia News, dailywireless.org, internetnews.com, Gadgetell, Guardian, MacNN, LAPTOP Mag and VentureBeat
Spencer E. Ante / Business Week:
Content-Search Deals Make Twitter Profitable — Data-mining deals signed in October will bring in $25 million in exchange for rendering Twitter's tweets searchable on Google and Microsoft Bing — Twitter is ending 2009 on a high note. The microblogging site has reached profitability …
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Our 2009 12-City 3G Data Mega Test: AT&T Won — Given carrier reputation and our own iPhone call drops, we were pretty surprised to discover, through careful testing in 12 markets, that AT&T's has pretty consistently the fastest 3G network nationwide, followed closely—in downloads at least—by Verizon Wireless.
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Releases Firmware Update to Address Screen Flickering on 27-Inch iMacs — Apple today released 27-inch iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0, addressing recent complaints of screen flickering on the company's newest iMac models. … Installation instructions for the firmware update …
Discussion:
Hardware 2.0, Apple, AppleInsider, Engadget, Erictric, Macworld, 9 to 5 Mac, Gadget Lab, Ars Technica, Macsimum News and TUAW
Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
10 Things Microsoft did right in 2009 — The year 2009 was pretty good to Microsoft, even as the weak economy ravaged sales. Microsoft actually did a few things right. The did wrong list will come tomorrow. For today, I present the list of 10 things Microsoft did right in 2009 — in no order of importance.
Discussion:
CNET News
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Why the HTML5 ‘Video’ Element Is Effectively Unusable, Even in the Browsers Which Support It — I seldom post video to DF, but when I do, I refuse to embed Flash,1 I want the markup to be sane and standard, I want the video to play in popular standards-compliant web browsers, and I don't want the video to download/buffer automatically.
Google Public Policy Blog:
The meaning of open — Last week I sent an email to Googlers about the meaning of “open” as it relates to the Internet, Google, and our users. In the spirit of openness, I thought it would be appropriate to share these thoughts with those outside of Google as well. — At Google we believe that open systems win.
Jolie O'Dell / ReadWriteWeb:
Ford's Wired Fleet: WiFi Hotspots on Four Wheels — Ford is making a serious bid for geeks' business. Scott Monty, the auto company's Internet-famous social media head, wrote to us tonight with some of the most exciting car-related news an Internet-dependent nerd could wish for.
Discussion:
PR Newswire, eWeek, PC World, CNET News, Mashable!, Pulse2, VentureBeat, Gadgetell, GigaOM, CrunchGear, Gizmodo, Between the Lines, DSLreports, BoomTown and Electronista
Damon Darlin / Bits:
‘Nerd’ and ‘Geek’ Should Be Banned, Professor Says — The Times ran an article Monday suggesting that what America will need in the future are more “cool nerds.” A playful tweak of the nerd stereotype, to be sure, in an effort to alter it. The people described in the piece were ones with hybrid careers …
Laura June / Engadget:
Nook 1.1 update hitting now — Right on schedule, the Barnes and Noble Nook is kicking out a software update (we rebooted to get the download to start). We've heard this will fix some of the issues we had with the unit in our review — but we'll update you once we've had a little time to play around with it.
Discussion:
CrunchGear, The Mobile Gadgeteer, Boy Genius Report, Softpedia News, SlipperyBrick.com, Android Central, Erictric and Electronista
Etsy News:
Etsy's New Old Young CEO — As 2010 begins, I will return to Etsy as CEO, and Maria will leave the company. — Maria joined Etsy in the middle of 2008 and led Etsy through an important foundational phase. We are a profitable company now, and Maria helped us reach this major milestone.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Start Project Launches To Create, Incubate Startups — A group of entrepreneurs and investors have partnered to create a new Silicon Valley based business incubator called The Start Project. — Behind the new company are Polaris Venture Partners, the founders of 83 Degrees (Webshots …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
World Map Of Social Networks Shows Rise Of Facebook — (click through for larger version, interactive widget below) — Italian writer, blogger and photographer Vincenzo Cosenza has for the second time put together a visualization that shows the most popular social networks around the world on a map …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft CEO Ballmer to be bounced in 2010? No way — I don't make a habit of commenting on other pundits' prediction lists. After all, a prediction is just a person's opinion, and who knows what might happen in a year or 10.... But I am going to make an exception and call …
Eugene Wei / Hulu Blog:
Search Captions on Hulu — Today we've added a new beta feature to the site in Hulu Labs: Captions Search. You can now search the captions for thousands of videos across hundreds of shows. — You can initiate a captions search from the Hulu Labs page for the feature …
Discussion:
NewTeeVee, Obsessable, Technologizer, Erictric, Fast Company, Mashable!, Download Squad, TechCrunch, AppScout and ResourceShelf
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter Captures A Nexus One Unboxing And Another Video — A number of pictures have hit the web now showing the Nexus One, aka the Google Phone, in the flesh. But there haven't been too many showing its packaging, and it getting unboxed. Today, some Twitpics shared by one user show those.
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
Who Gets the Highest Ad Rates Online? — With All the Talk of CPMs Going to Zero, Here's a Survey of Who's Commanding Top Dollar — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Online ad rates, we're told, are on an express train to zero, helped along by gagillions of impressions generated by Facebook …
Zee / The Next Web:
Firefox 3.5 is Now the World's Most Popular Browser — Site tracking and analytics tool StatCounter Global Statistics now shows that Firefox 3.5 is the most used browser in the world. — Note this is the version of the browser rather than the browser brand but nevertheless an incredible achievement.
Gabriel Madway / Reuters:
Small iPhone developer Tapulous sees big success — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs for Apple Inc's mobile device.
Discussion:
Technologizer, Ars Technica, TUAW, MacRumors, Mashable!, GeekSmack, Digital Trends, Telegraph, Gadget Lab, SlipperyBrick.com, iLounge, bub.blicio.us, DailyTech, The iPhone Blog, Erictric, App Advice, AppleInsider, Pulse2, TechStartups.com and mocoNews
John Cook / TechFlash:
Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital loses president after 7 months — The head of Paul Allen's multi-billion dollar investment arm, Vulcan Capital, has stepped down just seven months after taking on the role of president, TechFlash has learned. — Chris Temple, who originally joined Vulcan last year …
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Christmas Cards Spreading Like Wildfire On Facebook — If you've spent any time on Facebook over the past week, there's a good chance that you've received or at least seen a christmas card on the wall of one of your friends. There are now countless applications on the Facebook platform …
Discussion:
Inside Facebook
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Location-Based Ads Come to Augmented Reality in the US — Location-based social network Brightkite announced this morning that it has added what it calls the first mobile Augmented Reality advertising for U.S. markets to its AR layer in the Layar augmented reality browser.
