Top Items:

High-tech industry on hiring binge in California; Google, Facebook and Zynga lead the pack — It's the Silicon Valley hiring boom being felt all over California. — California added nearly 100,000 new jobs in February, and the state's unemployment rate dropped by two-tenths of a percentage point …
Discussion:
SiliconValley.com
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Silicon Valley Hiring Perks: Meals, iPads and a Cubicle for Spot — By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and JENNA WORTHAM — SAN FRANCISCO — Eric Firestone began a new job at a Web start-up here three weeks ago, and he's already thinking about what he might do next. But that's just fine with his new employer.

Meet ‘Disco’, The Group Texting App Built Secretly Inside Google — It seems like Google has made a foray into the group messaging space today with Disco, a new iPhone app and website. Well, they sort of have. — The service utilizes the Disco.com domain that Google bought at Domainfest last year for $255K.
Discussion:
Digital Trends, VentureBeat, @alexia, IntoMobile, Reuters, mobiputing, WebProNews, Mashable!, SAI, The Domains, Softpedia News, Engadget and textually.org
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
First Look: With Disco, Google Also Joins The Group Messaging Dance (Care Of Slide)
First Look: With Disco, Google Also Joins The Group Messaging Dance (Care Of Slide)
Discussion:
Examiner, Techie Buzz, Geekosystem and LAPTOP Magazine

Cellphones Track Your Every Move, and You May Not Even Know — A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.
Discussion:
Examiner, Yahoo! News, Gawker and @timoreilly

Lukewarm Reaction To Playbook Could Force Drastic Measures For RIM — Is Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) turning into Palm (NSDQ: PALM), the next big prize in the mobile industry's consolidation? — Two of the most important companies in the prehistoric era of the mobile computer …
Discussion:
parislemon, raganwald's posterous and Apple Outsider
Kevin Murphy / DomainIncite:
ICANN asks the US to cut it loose — ICANN has officially requested the loosening of its contractual ties to the US government. — In a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (pdf), ICANN president Rod Beckstrom said the US should finally make good on its promise …

Swoopo Quietly Files for Bankruptcy — The site that put the concept of pay-per-bid auctions on the map is now apparently in financial trouble, Technologizer has learned. Although the company's front page claims “technical issues,” documents from a Munich, Germany bankruptcy court indicate …
Thanks:edoswald
Jillian C. York:
Microsoft Fixes Bug; Re-enables HTTPS for All Users — Yesterday, I blogged that users in Iran, all Arab countries, Burma, Nigeria, and the Central Asian nations had been blocked from turning on HTTPS encryption within Hotmail. This was true. — According to Microsoft …
Discussion:
ZDNet, The Register, @timoreilly, The Next Web, Security Watch and Electronic Frontier Foundation

Amazon may soon launch film, music locker service — Amazon has spoken with some of the major record companies and Hollywood film studios about creating a digital locker service and could announce the plans as early as next week, sources told CNET. — Sources from both the film …
Discussion:
TechFlash, PC Magazine, Electronista, GigaOM and Media Maverick

U.S. develops “panic button” for democracy activists — (Reuters) - Some day soon, when pro-democracy campaigners have their cellphones confiscated by police, they'll be able to hit the “panic button” — a special app that will both wipe out the phone's address book and emit emergency alerts to other activists.
Discussion:
Fast Company and Memex 1.1

Zuckerberg In Zion: Speaks To Senator Hatch, Students At BYU — You might wonder what in the world could bring the Harvard dropout and under-30 founder of Facebook together with the 77-year-old conservative Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to talk to students and attendees at Brigham Young University earlier today.
Discussion:
Inside Facebook, BYU News, @elisabethos, Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune

THE SEEDY SIDE OF REDDIT: Porn, Racism, And Nazi Memorabilia — Reddit is an amazing creation. — The news aggregator is a great startup success story. It's also a great community site that often bands together in support of worthy causes. It's also a live interview site …