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5:45 PM ET, December 30, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Clayton Morris / Fox News:
Exclusive: Apple's January Announcement Confirmed  —  Following a Financial Times report that Apple has scheduled a special media event for January 26th in San Francisco, I've spoken to a source inside Apple who confirmed a “big” event for January.  While nothing official has been handed …
RELATED:
Ben Kunz / Business Week:
Five Ways Apple's Tablet May Change the World  —  The iPad is on the way, and it just might reduce calling costs, cut your commute, and, to the delight of journalists everywhere, pull print media back from the brink  —  Business writers love hyperbole.  The ground will swell.  The paradigm will shift.
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
Google Has Big Plans for Google Voice, Cloud Computing in 2010  —  Google's Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product management at Google, said Google Voice and cloud computing will be huge plays for the search engine giant in 2010.  Expect the Gizmo5 assets to bolster the Google Voice phone management application.
RELATED:
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
An application war is brewing in the cloud
Discussion: SaaS 2.0
Martin Bryant / The Next Web:
Google Voice to go fully VoIP, open to all in 2010?
Thanks:zee
Chip Chick:
DataJack to Launch Unlimited Prepaid Mobile Broadband for $39  —  3G mobile broadband on the go is great, but the costly monthly fees and long term contracts have kept it from becoming adapted by the masses.  This might soon change when DataJack launches at CES next month.
Vladislav Savov / Engadget:
Windows Mobile and Xbox Live coming together, according to Microsoft job ad  —  The hints were already pretty strong on this one, but now Microsoft has come right out and said it, albeit in a job posting — the Xbox Live gaming platform is extending beyond the console and specifically onto WinMo phones.
RELATED:
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Motorola: 2 New Phones At CES?  —  Motorola (MOT) may be planning to announce a pair of new phones at next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.  — In a research note today, Chowdhry asserts that the company “may announce” …
Reuters:
Apple wins appeal over alleged iPod hearing loss  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a class-action lawsuit seeking to hold Apple Inc responsible for possible hearing loss caused by using its popular iPod music player.  —  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals …
David Pogue / New York Times:
The Pogie Awards for the Year's Best Tech Ideas  —  Wow, what an opportunity!  Imagine having a newspaper column published precisely on the last day of the year.  What a chance to step back, look ahead, sum it all up.  —  Or else I could just trot out my usual end-of-year silliness, better known as the Pogie Awards.
Sebastian Anthony / Download Squad:
Get every National Geographic since 1888 on a 160GB hard drive  —  From the massively-nerdy-but-really-quite- cool news department, I bring you the coolest thing I've seen since unwrapping my presents on Christmas Day. 120 years of amazing discoveries, eye-opening editorial and mind-expanding stories form …
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Virtual goods ‘to make billions’  —  Virtual goods such as weapons or digital bottles of champagne traded in the US could be worth up to $5bn in the next five years, experts predict.  —  In Asia, sales are already around the $5bn mark and rapidly growing.  —  For many, virtual goods …
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
AT&T to FCC: Let My Landlines Go!  —  The Federal Communications Commission is delving into the future of communications with a request for comments on an all-IP telephone network.  Last week, AT&T filed its comments, which shows someone at the carrier is reading GigaOM, or at least the writing on the wall when it comes to landlines.
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Now That Everything Is Known, Will The Nexus One Launch Generate a Collective Yawn?  —  The way that the “Google Phone” rumors and later Nexus One blogging played out probably mean that when Google finally announces the device on January 5 (in all likelihood) there won't be much news.
Discussion: Google Watch, Guardian and Gizmodo
RELATED:
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Sprint Overdrive dual-mode WiMAX / EV-DO mobile hotspot leaks into the wild  —  Move over, MiFi — this Sprint Overdrive dual-mode WiMAX / EV-DO mobile hotspot that just hit our inbox has taken over as our new object of broadband desire.  Our tipster says internal training on the Sierra-built device …
W.J. Hennigan / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Facebook and Seppukoo get lawyered up  —  Credit: Russel A. Daniels/Associated Press  —  The battle between social networking giant Facebook and Seppukoo.com may spill into the courtroom over privacy violations, according to a letter written by a Facebook lawyer.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Twilio raises $3.7M to combine phone calls with web apps  —  Twilio, a startup that can add cool phone features to web applications, has raised around $3.7 million in new funding, according to a regulatory filing.  —  The San Francisco startup says it can accept calls from landlines, cell phones, and VoIP phones.
Boy Genius Report:
Verizon Wireless getting Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus?  —  We've heard that Verizon Wireless will be 100% carrying the Palm Pixi in addition to the Palm Pre, and that the official names will be the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus.  We have also been told that the Palm Pre Plus …
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Engadget for iPhone / iPod touch: available now!  —  Good news, everyone!  Our very own iPhone / iPod touch app is finally really available in Apple's much talked about and critically acclaimed App Store!  That's right, all the excitement and info you've come to know and love from Engadget …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Nuance buys voice-to-text company Spinvox for $102.5 million  —  Nuance has confirmed the story VentureBeat broke earlier this morning, that it has acquired voice-to-text company SpinVox for $102 million.  Of that, $66 million will be in cash, the rest in stock.
Matthew Kelch / DroidMuff.in:
Swype keyboard preview for Droid leaked  —  You may have heard about Swype before — it's an innovative input method from the co-inventor of T9, Cliff Kushler.  Currently Swype is only officially available on Windows Mobile.  However, a preview version of Swype for Android has leaked.
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Multitouch Screens Could Enliven New Devices  —  Multitouch screens have been a little slower to enter the electronics marketplace than consumers might have hoped.  Since Jeff Han, a research scientist at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences …
Engadget:
Ten gadgets that defined the decade  —  As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts and show them off in chronological order.
Discussion: Joystiq and Massively
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Groovle Beats Google In Domain Battle With Groovy Defense  —  Back in 2007, we wrote about Groovle, a site that lets you skin Google with your favorite image, and serves results through Google's Custom Search.  It seems that Google wasn't much of a fan though: the search giant sought …
Dave Freeman / CrunchGear:
jWIN licenses Polaroid name, prepares to market  —  So you've got a company without an all-that-recognizable name, and you really want to ramp it up.  What do you do?  Well, if you're jWIN you buy some street cred by striking up a deal with Polaroid, making your products have a connection …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
The Androidification of Everything  —  A few days ago, Antonio Rodriguez, a Boston-based entrepreneur and founder of Tabblo, emailed to let me know that he was leaving Hewlett-Packard to go do something new.  Rodriguez sold Tabblo to HP in 2007 and had been working on some cool stuff at HP …
Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny!:
New Slingbox Goodies Coming to CES  —  Beyond the WiFi-only iPhone Slingbox client ($30), neutered by Apple and AT&T, it's been a very quiet year for Sling.  No new retail products.  Insignificant firmware and software updates to existing products.  And fire sale SlingCatcher pricing.
Discussion: I4U News, SlashGear and Electronista
 
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 More Items: 
Michael Gartenberg / SlashGear:
The Tragedy of One Laptop Per Child
Discussion: Daring Fireball
The Editorialiste:
To aggregate, or report? On successful online publishing
Thanks:atul
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Top 10 moments in social media in 2009
Jason Kilar / Hulu Blog:
Thank you for a very big 2009  —  As we wrap up the year …
Discussion: TechCrunch and bub.blicio.us
Jolie O'Dell / ReadWriteWeb:
10 Things You Need for Your Social Media Road Trip
J. Peter Bruzzese / J. Peter Bruzzese's blog:
Windows in business: Lots of jewels in an otherwise dismal year
 Earlier Items: 
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
At Microsoft, is age more than just a number?
Om Malik / GigaOM:
How Prices Compare on Different App Stores
Discussion: App Advice and MarketingCharts
Default Site Weblog:
Most Stumbled Sites of 2009  —  As the end of 2009 draws near …
Glyn Moody / Computerworld UK:
Is OpenOffice.org a Threat? Microsoft Thinks So
Discussion: Computerworld and Slashdot
Andrew Adam Newman / New York Times:
With Ads, Music Downloads Sing a New Tune
Discussion: Techdirt
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Apple briefly cuts student price of MacBook to $728
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Twitter 2.0: API Rate Change Could Lead to a World of New Apps & Features
Discussion: The Noisy Channel
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Authentic Brands licenses Sports Illustrated's publishing rights to The Players' Tribune owner Minute Media for 10 years, with plans to keep the print edition

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Ofcom rules that five GB News programs presented by Conservative politicians have broken its due impartiality rules and puts the channel “on notice”

Sam Wolfson / The Guardian:
A look at the rise of celebrity-hosted interview podcasts, whose long running times mean guests delve into deep and personal topics, resembling therapy sessions

 
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