Gmail Blog:
Updates to Gmail contact manager  —  Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager Engineer, Google Contacts Team  —  We’ve heard from some of you that Gmail’s auto-added contacts can lead to too much address book clutter.  One of the advantages of automatically creating contacts …

AppleInsider:
Apple passes Acer to become third largest U.S. PC vendor  —  Macs garnered an 8.5 percent share of the U.S. PC market during the second quarter of the year, pushing Apple past Acer in the national rankings and into third place overall, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by market research firm Gartner.

Josh / Redeye VC:
Announcing FundingSleuth.com  —  About 10 years ago, I helped create a web service called Company Sleuth.  The basic premise was that as a company conducted its business activities, it would leave a “paper trail” online.  And Company Sleuth tried to find that trail by automatically searching …

Kenneth Li / Reuters:
AOL talks with Microsoft, Yahoo heat up: source  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc’s (NYSE:TWX - News) discussions to merge or sell its AOL Internet division with Microsoft Corp (NasdaqGS:MSFT - News) or Yahoo Inc (NasdaqGS:YHOO - News) have taken on new urgency ahead …

Ijustine / Tasty Blog Snack:
THE LOOPT DEBACLE  —  With the launch of the app store this past week in conjunction with the new iPhone, a little application called loopt has been causing a bit of conflict with the community.  Loopt is a location based social networking site that uses GPS to determine your exact […]

Amit Singhal / The Official Google Blog:
Technologies behind Google ranking  —  In my previous post, I introduced the philosophies behind Google ranking.  As part of our effort to discuss search quality, I want to tell you more about the technologies behind our ranking.  The core technology in our ranking system comes from the academic […]

Om Malik / GigaOM:
What Getting Buzzed Says About Yahoo  —  The battle over Yahoo’s search business as witnessed over the last few days seems both ridiculous and petty.  And it takes the attention away from what is Yahoo’s true value: a media aggregation platform.  Yahoo is the place a lot of people …

Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Lawyer Sues Google For Putting His Ads On Parked Domains  —  from the what-else-can-you-sue-google- over?  dept  —  Every time you think someone has sued Google for every possible sin imaginable, someone pops up with yet another lawsuit.  The latest is that Google is being sued by a lawyer …

Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Google’s Android platform: not so open after all  —  Google vowed that its Linux-based Android mobile platform would empower enthusiasts and amateur developers, but today we have seen compelling evidence that this is an empty promise.  Third-party Android application developers …

Andy Space / 9 to 5 Mac:
BlackBerry busted - iPhone success sees analyst RIM downgrade  —  Demand for the iPhone remains “unabated” since the product launch last week, pitting Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) in a two-horse race for dominance of the smartphone industry, and at least one analyst believes it’s not RIM […]