Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
Twitter Launches Verified Accounts  —  Twitter launched the first phase of its Verified Accounts program moments ago, meaning that celebrities, musicians, athletes, actors, public officials and public agencies on the service can now display a “verified account” button on their Twitter pages.

Frank Ohlhorst / PC World:
Will Microsoft’s Free Antivirus App be Worth the Price?  —  Microsoft is getting ready to offer Windows users a free antivirus product (code name Morro), something it should have built into one of its operating systems a long time ago.  But, of course, Microsoft never makes things simple.

Julie Ziegler / Bloomberg:
Zipcar Seeks IPO as Once ‘Wacky’ Car-Sharing Gains  —  Zipcar Inc., the world’s largest car-sharing company, is gearing up to publicly sell shares in 2010 as it fends off rivals such as Hertz Global Holdings Inc.  —  The company, which has grown from a single lime-green VW Bug to a fleet […]

The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
T-Mobile’s Samsung Bigfoot  —  One of our trusty ninjas just hit us up with the above photo of Samsung’s Bigfoot Android device slated to hit T-Mobile USA this summer.  We’ve been told it will rock a 3 megapixel camera, be a UMTS/HSDPA device, and sport a 3.0″ capacitive […]

Mscorp / Microsoft On The Issues:
Working to Fulfill our Legal Obligations in Europe for Windows 7  —  Vice President and Deputy General Counsel  —  Earlier today CNET reported that Microsoft had sent a memo to computer manufacturers and retailers about our plans for Windows 7 in Europe.  We’re getting quite a few calls on […]

MediaPost:
‘Twitter’ Makes AP Stylebook  —  Grammarians and journos take note: Twitter has made it as an entry in the 2009 edition the Associated Press Stylebook, which is, of course, the gold standard for many newspapers and online publications (such as the one you are reading — telling us to do such things …

Ina Fried / CNET News:
Europe to get Windows 7 sans browser  —  Microsoft plans to remove Internet Explorer from the versions of Windows 7 that it ships in Europe, CNET News has learned.  —  Reacting to antitrust concerns expressed by European regulators, Microsoft plans to offer a version in Europe that has the browser […]

Jay Hathaway / Download Squad:
SquareSpace isn’t giving away new iPhones, exactly  —  Web publishing providers SquareSpace are giving away 30 new iPhone 3GSs over a period of 30 days on Twitter … or are they?  If you read the fine print — and SquareSpace’s FAQ for the contest, you’ll see that what they’re actually […]

Ina Fried / CNET News:
How Intuit managed to hold off Microsoft  —  The defeat of Microsoft Money at the hands of Intuit’s Quicken marks a rare chapter in the annals of software history.  —  Intuit is one of the few companies to take Microsoft head-on on its home turf—packaged software—and come out on top.

Tom Vanderbilt / New York Times:
Data Center Overload  —  It began with an Xbox game.  —  On a recent rainy evening in Brooklyn, I was at a friend’s house playing (a bit sheepishly, given my incipient middle age) Call of Duty: World at War.  Scrolling through the game’s menus, I noticed a screen for […]