Spreezio makes it easier for shoppers to make deals with local merchants online

TechCrunch

• Winter Weather Storm Watch Gets Streamlined On New Accuweather Site
  With the East Coast and Midwest awaiting a monster snowstorm, popular weather forecasting site Accuweather, is rolling out a timely relaunch of its site. The site, which provides up-to-date local information on weather in the U.S., is launching a beta version of the site that includes a complete redesign and a few extra user-friendly features. The new ver […]
• Apple Surveying iPhone Developers’ Happiness With The App Store
  Last year, there was no shortage of developers who were complaining about Apple's App Store. The situation got so heated that no less than Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phil Schiller, got personally involved with a number of developers having issues. Since then, the complaints seem to have died down quite a bit, but Apple i […]

Mashable

• Foursquare Inks Deals With Major Media and Entertainment Brands
  Hello, Hollywood. On the heels of the Foursquare-Bravo TV deal, news of several additional major media partnerships involving the location-based social networking app have dropped this evening.According to various reports, Zagat, Warner Bros., HBO, the History Channel and ExploreChicago have all been added to Foursquare’s media and entertainment mix. Here a […]
• Music Ownership Beats Music Subscription in Reader Poll
  In last week’s Faceoff Series we asked about music consumption models: Do Mashable readers prefer to own their entire music collections or do some of you gravitate toward subscription services?One week later and the results are in: Ownership wins the day at a full 50% of the vote. Of all our past Faceoffs, though, this edition had one of the highest “tie” vo […]

O’Reilly Radar

• Google Book Settlement Round 2
  The US government filed its Statement of Interest regarding the revised Google settlement yesterday with the District Court in New York. While the statement was signed by an attorney from the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, several agencies including the Copyright Office reportedly contributed to it. As you may recall, the judge has only 2 cho […]
• Feedback and analysis: the missing ingredients in local's recipe
  There's plenty of enthusiasm for local / hyperlocal projects, but the sweepstakes has yet to be won. So many of these local efforts rely on traditional information delivery through news articles or databases. That material has use, no doubt. Yet few projects take the extra step and put that data into context. […]

VentureBeat

• Zeus Research and STi let you use phone cards to buy virtual goods
  STi Prepaid has created a huge empire with prepaid phone cards, selling over 200 million cards a year in 200,000 stores. In a smart move, Zeus Research is teaming up with STi to create a way to use those cards to pay for virtual goods inside online games. San Francisco-based Zeus research is announcing today that STi will provide a massive increase in distri […]
• Foursquare patches its content gap with Zagat, HBO partnerships
  As competitors with rich content offerings like Yelp close in on its core market, Foursquare is rallying to fight back with a series of big media partnerships. The New York Times reported today that the company will unveil a partnership with Zagat tomorrow where users can earn a ‘Foodie’ badge if they check into the right restaurants. It comes on top of a d […]

ReadWriteWeb

• The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul
  Youth social networking researcher dana boyd has observed that many people presume the way they use social networks is the way everyone uses them. "I interviewed gay men who thought Friendster was a gay dating site because all they saw were other gay men," she says. "I interviewed teens who believed that everyone on MySpace was Christian beca […]

All Things D

• Turning the Tables: Carol Bartz Grills BoomTown in the Yahoo Cafeteria (Over Easy With a Side of Disclosure) [BoomTown]
  Today, BoomTown motored down to the Sunnyvale HQ of Yahoo, this time with a tiny bit of trepidation. Ok, not that much, but some! Why? Because CEO Carol Bartz had invited me to be the first in a new speaker series for employees at the Internet giant, called "Yahoo from the 'Outside In,'" due to my intense--some might say obsessive- […]

Webware

• TweetDeck gets a few tweaks
  The latest version of TweetDeck is out, and although it's a minor update it also introduces some useful changes worth noting. Originally posted at The Download Blog […]

Building 43

• The Anti-Bullet Test
  I’m sick of generic feature/benefit bullet points. They’re just too easy to make fun of. Here’s a sampling from a website that will remain… […]

Techmeme

• Netflix to get 1080p streaming later this year (Josh Lowensohn/CNET News)
• Job Postings Hint at Amazon's Plans for the Kindle (Nick Bilton/Bits)
• Motorola: Droid update to Android 2.1 'will start to roll out this week' (Chris Ziegler/Engadget)
• iPhone 4G Parts are Here... (Brian/iPod Repair, iPhone Repair ...)
• Google Launching Twitter-Killer For Gmail! (GOOG) (Nicholas Carlson/Silicon Alley Insider)

Silicon Alley

• Google Forced To Cut Nexus One Termination Fee From Astronomical $350 To Outrageous $150
• Google Goes For The Kill (GOOG)
• New iPhone Could Be 1/4-Inch Taller (AAPL)
• Yahoo's New "Network Distribution" Search-Ad Tool Off To Okay Start, But Advertisers Not Yet Switching From Google
• 3 Reasons Pay-With-Facebook Won't Squash All The Other Payments Providers

SocalTech

Killer Startups

• FastMall.com - An iPhone App For Shopping Adepts
• CarryoutText.com - Rendering Texts As Audio Files
• StopTweet.com - Keeping Spam Out Of The Picture
• ThePrayerEngine.com - Handle Prayer Requests Smoothly
• TripShock.com - Get The Most Out Of Your Vacation