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Listening to Mr. iPhone

By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology Correspondent, BBC

Rory Cellan-Jones

By any measure, he is among the most important figures in technology of the last decade, a major influence on the way we use and interact with computers and mobile phones, a British designer who ranks with the Conrans and the Dysons. But have you ever heard Jonathan Ive, the Apple designer behind the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone, talk about his work?

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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Susquehanna: Microsoft Bing Success Unclear

By Tiernan Ray
Blogger, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily

Tiernan Ray

Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Marriane Wolk has scoured the Internet for intelligence on Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, and come up with the conclusion that the appeal of the new service, and its staying power, is uncertain.

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Startup Aims to Be the Kayak.Com of Ticketing

By Marisa Taylor
Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Marisa Taylor

About a year ago, Canadian Internet entrepreneur Justin Hartzman was planning to visit Las Vegas with some friends, and was trying to decide which shows and concerts the group should see. “After about 400 or 500 emails back and forth,” he says, he realized he needed a Web site that would aggregate all of the events in a certain area and during a specific set of dates. And thus the idea for TicketFlow was born.

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TiVo Off; Appeals Court Stays Ruling Vs. EchoStar, DISH

By Eric Savitz
Blogger and Columnist, Barron's

Eric Savitz

TiVo shares this morning are heading lower after the company said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has granted a request by EchoStar to stay a contempt order imposed by a lower court pending the outcome of EchoStar’s appeal in the the patent dispute between the two companies.

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Life at Parc: Organic Food, Unix Parties, Coyotes and Geeks

By Lisa Katayama
Contributing Writer, BoingBoing

Lisa Katayama

What’s everyday life like at Silicon Valley’s most famous research center? To find out, I talked to YF Juan, a director of business develpment at PARC, and communications manager Linda Jacobson.

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Keeping the Fizz in the Journalism Biz

By Jack Shafer
Editor, Press Box, Slate

Jack Shafer

Your average journalist usually begins his career with a pop, like a big bottle of champagne. He effervesces about his profession, intoxicating all who encounter him. The party goes on for years as the young journalist conquers deadlines, corrupt politicians, and hidebound editors.

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Crap Detection 101

By Howard Rheingold
Contributing Writer, City Brights, San Francisco Chronicle

Howard Rheingold

The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge–the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part–the part a machine can do.

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How Things Played Out for Some Other File-Sharing Firms That Were Bought

By Joseph Tartakoff
Reporter, ContentNext

Joseph Tartakoff

If the stories of other file-sharing firms that sold out are any indication, Pirate Bay’s move to sell itself and go legit might not play out so well. Here’s what happened to some of its peer-to-peer predecessors that were put up for sale.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Rise and Flaw of Internet’s Election-Fraud Hunters

By Carl Bialik
Blogger, The Numbers Guy, The Wall Street Journal

Carl Bialik

Protesters on the streets of Tehran questioning the recent Iranian presidential election results have gotten support from a new breed of election watchers: Internet-enabled anomaly hounds who say the numbers don’t add up.

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Palm: Kaufman Sets Hold Rating; Many Possible Suitors

By Eric Savitz
Blogger and Columnist, Barron's

Eric Savitz

Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu this morning launched coverage of Palm with a Hold rating and a $16 price target. He writes in a research note that the company is well-positioned in the smart phone sector with its WebOS software, but that the valuation is expensive; he also is concerned about ongoing operating losses and a weak balance sheet.

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YouTwitFace Goes From Late-Night Joke to New Site Idea

By Andrew LaVallee
Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Andrew LaVallee

Remember “YouTwitFace,” the Conan O’Brien joke that took on a life of its own online? It could be a real Web site soon. On June 3, Mr. O’Brien brought back a popular sketch on “The Tonight Show” called “In the Year 2000,” in which he muses on the future. In one premonition, he said, “YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will merge to form one super time-wasting Web site called YouTwitFace.”

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Palm Claimed CFO Is A CPA; But License Expired In 1984

By Eric Savitz
Blogger and Columnist, Barron's

Eric Savitz

Contrary to previous public statements by the company, Palm CFO Douglas C. Jeffries has not been registered as a certified public accountant in the state of California since 1984, records from the California Board of Accountancy show.

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Future of the Web: Location, Location, Location

By Clive Thompson
Contributing Writer, Wired

Clive Thompson

When Sam Altman visits New York, he’s never alone for very long. Altman is the 24-year-old CEO of Loopt, a company that makes a “location-aware” app for mobile phones that tracks where all of your friends are and what they’re doing.

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Twitter-Addled CNN Refers to Tweets as a ‘Source’

By John Cook
Investigations Editor, Gawker

John Cook

Everyone’s coverage of the uprising in Iran has been Twitter-centric, for obvious reasons. But CNN, in an apparent attempt to look like they have real, non-Twitter newsgathering capabilities, has been regurgitating Twitter posts and attributing them to unnamed “sources.”

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Ask’s Next Question

By Michael Smith
Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal

Michael Smith

Ask.com made the call last December to throw nearly all of its marketing resources into NASCAR in the first half of 2009, making it one of the rare brands to invest during the heart of the recession. Up against search-engine titans Google, Yahoo! and MSN, the company’s leaders decided they had to be aggressive, harsh economic times or not. Six months later, a new head of the company is facing a new decision: Whether to stay in the sport.

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The Fantastic Firefox

By Farhad Manjoo
Technology Columnist, Slate.com

Farhad Manjoo

Lately I’ve been worried about Firefox. Ever since its debut in 2004, the open-source Web browser has won acclaim for its speed, stability, and customizability. It eventually captured nearly a quarter of the market, an astonishing achievement for a project run by a nonprofit foundation. But recently Firefox seemed to go soft.

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Michael Jackson and the Zombieconomy

By Umair Haque
Blogger, Edge Economy

Umair Haque

“…Sales of his recordings through Sony’s music unit have generated more than $300 million in royalties for Mr. Jackson since the early 1980’s.”

Want to know why we have a zombieconomy? Because the beancounters killed the incentives to create real value. Let’s use Michael Jackson’s tragic death as a mini case-study. $300 million over, for example, 25 years? That’s $12 million a year.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Obama Administration Launches IT Spending Tracker

By Kimberly Chou
Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Kimberly Chou

President Barack Obama’s Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra announced this morning the launch of an “IT dashboard” that allows people to see how the federal government is spending taxpayer dollars on information technology projects.

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Personal Democracy Forum: Battle over Broadband

By Marisa Taylor
Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Marisa Taylor

The Obama administration has called for a $7.1 billion upgrade of the nation’s broadband Internet system as part of the Recovery Act, but it will be a tall order for the FCC to create a plan that satisfies both telecom companies and broadband advocacy groups.

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Will Airlines Push Travel Sites to Pay Credit-Card Fees?

By Eric Savitz
Blogger and Columnist, Barron's

Eric Savitz

The razor-thin profits the online travel agencies get on airline bookings could get even thinner. As reported last week by the travel research firm PhocusWright, United Airlines is forcing some travel agencies to absorb the 2 percent-3 percent credit-card fees for ticket bookings.

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Tech in Pictures

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... It is a cycle. One of the most important things we forget is it’s a cycle and cycles have endings. This is a classic recession, and there will be a recovery.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the econalypse

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