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Amazon Takes on Oracle and IBM With SimpleDB — Companies can now go ahead and fire their expensive database administrators—those engineers who keep the Oracle or IBM databases humming. Amazon has just added an enterprise-class database called SimpleDB to its suite of cloud-based IT infrastructure …
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Economics that are impossible to stop — A few days ago, Jeff Barr, Amazon's Web services (AWS) evangelist visited my class and got a report of what we'd built over the course of the last semester on top of AWS. Each student had built part of a project that eventually used 25-30 independent machines.

Amazon SimpleDB 101 & Why It Matters — Amazon continues to amaze us with its Amazon Web Services series of offerings. The latest is SimpleDB, which will be available in limited beta in a few weeks. And it is bound to have a major impact on web infrastructure. As Amazon says in its email to existing developers:


T-Mobile Turns Off Twitter? — Reports alleging T-Mobile has shut off Twitter for their customers are rolling in. Complaints have surfaced on T-Mobile's user forum on Satisfaction as well as several other personal blogs and forums. A T-Mobile representative replied to a customer's service request with this email:
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T-Mobile blocks Twitter? (updated 12/14/07 9:17 PM CST) — After several days of no Twitter SMS service I contacted T-Mobile customer support. After the standard technical support for my phone (even though ALL phones on my account are denied access to Twitter SMS via 40404) …


Reader and Talk are Friends! … One of my favorite uses for Reader is to share interesting stuff with my friends. I click "Share" whenever I find an interesting item, be it hilarious or serious. This way, all my friends can subscribe to my shared items (and I to theirs) …
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Micro Persuasion, ParisLemon, Google Operating System, Scobleizer, WinExtra, Googlified, Cost Per News, Webomatica, TechCrunch, /Message, John Tokash and Mashable!

Googlepedia — Just to underscore the impetus behind the launch of Googlepedia - er, Knol - I went back to rerun a test I first ran over a year ago to see how high Wikipedia pages rank in a random set of Google searches. Here were the results on August 10, 2006: — World War II: #1 — Israel: #1
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Wikipedia Competitor Being Tested by Google — SAN FRANCISCO — Google is testing a new Web service intended to become a repository of knowledge from experts on various topics, one that could turn into a competitor to Wikipedia and other sites. — If it attracts a following …
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Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check


What's Wrong With Windows Mobile and How WM7 and WM8 Are Going to Fix It — We just got the scoop from Microsoft on Windows Mobile 7 and Windows Mobile 8, the two upcoming platforms that will fix what is undeniably broken about the Windows Mobile platform to date.
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Intel Reveals New Mobile SSD, UMPC Concepts, the Skulltrail Gaming Platform and Penryn and Santa Rosa Updates — At Intel's Pre-CES briefing today, execs discussed a new super-small solid state drive, WiMax-capable devices, and 45nm Penryn chips in everything from UMPCs to television sets …
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FTC chairman won't recuse self in Google-DoubleClick — FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said Friday that she will not recuse herself from hearing the Google-DoubleClick merger case, arguing that the fact her husband's law firm is representing DoubleClick doesn't merit her recusal.
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Majoras Refuses to Recuse Herself in Google-DoubleClick Review
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Search Engine Watch Blog


Sold Out Kindles Going For Up To $1,500 On Ebay — Amazon's new Kindle ebook device sold out almost immediately after going on sale. And there won't be any more available until after Christmas: … The device, which sells for $400, also is unavailable outside of the U.S. So if you want one now …

A sleek introduction of $299 laptops — A little-known Taiwanese firm that makes motherboards for brand-name PCs has put its own moniker on one of the lightest, sleekest, cheapest laptops ever to connect to cyberspace. — Today, Asus Technology will unveil a $299 version of the Eee PC …


Why Lane Hartwell Popped the 'Here Comes Another Bubble' Video — When one of Lane Hartwell's photographs showed up without her permission in a popular viral video, she wasn't flattered. She was frustrated. — Hartwell's frustration quickly morphed into action.

Judge: Man can't be forced to divulge encryption passphrase — A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase. — U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome …