News Byte

Still Waiting on Office for iPad? OnLive’s New Subscription Service Has Office, Flash and More.

For those of you still holding your breath while you wait for an official Microsoft Office app to come to iPad, here’s something that might help in the interim: OnLive Desktop Plus, a premium, $4.99-a-month version of the OnLive Desktop app for iPad and other tablet devices. The newest version of the app offers a cloud-based Internet Explorer 9, Adobe Flash, and PDF capabilities, in addition to the full Office suite and the “accelerated browsing experience” that OnLive created for fast pushing and pulling of data on a remote-access desktop.

AOL Beats Low Expectations, Increasing Ad Revenue and Slowing Total Decline in Q4 (Plus Charts!)

At AOL, down is the new up. No. Really.
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Microsoft Teams With Former President Clinton on Education

The software giant wants to get one million low-income students using the Internet, and is teaming with the former president’s philanthropic organization to do it.
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History Repeats Itself at Hewlett-Packard webOS Unit

Leaked internal memos elucidate Hewlett-Packard’s plans for the future — such as it is — for the different pieces of its webOS business.
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CrunchFund? Unethical Ventures? Pig Pile Partners? No Matter What You Call It, It’s Business as Usual in Silicon Valley.

It’s a giant, filthy mud puddle of conflicts of interest in Silicon Valley, but everybody’s in the cesspool, it seems.
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You've Got Arianna: AOL Buys Huffington Post for $315 Million in Cash and Stock, Appoints Huffington Editor in Chief

In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news and opinion sites. As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington–who was derided by some when she co-founded the left-leaning site in 2005 with investor and well-known communications exec Kenneth Lerer–will become editor in chief of a new unit that has purview over all of AOL content properties. The deal was signed just this afternoon.

Twitter Offers Metered Pricing for Firehose of Tweets

Gnip, Twitter’s only official data reseller, will give customers access to a keyword-filtered set of all tweets at a cost of 10 cents per thousand tweets.

News Byte

Internet Service Disrupted in Egypt Before Planned Protests

In Egypt, many forms of Internet access–as well as other forms of communication, such as text messaging–have reportedly been disrupted in advance of anti-government rallies on Friday. While it’s understandably hard to get details out of a country where citizens are being prevented from organizing and talking to each other online, some tweets and updates through mobile apps are getting out, and Facebook has confirmed a drop in traffic from Egypt. Other sites, such as Twitter, have been blocked in Egypt since earlier this week, when protests broke out calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

Facebook Steps Up Security After Tunisian Hacks

Facebook is rolling out to all its users the security features it added to stop the Tunisian government from accessing citizens’ passwords.

Internet Access in Hotel Rooms

Walt answers readers’ questions on Internet access in hotel rooms, getting more hard-drive space and what to do with duplicate digital photos.

Pulse News App for iPad Gets Social

RIM Denies Deal With India Over Access

No BlackBerry Blackout in UAE