Links for Oct 12, 2009

Death of email predicted (yet again)

This time it's the Wall Street Journal that's not thinking straight. Email is still good for what it's good at; what we're seeing is other applications that are better at doing things that email is unsuited for, but previously was the least-worse way of doing. Email was the hammer, so those tasks looked like nails.

• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html
• http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/12/google-wave-and-the-dawn-of-passive-aggressive-communication/

Searchtastic: yet another 'real-time' Twitter search startup

• http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/11/searchtastic-throws-its-hat-into-the-twitter-search-engine-ring/
• http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/10/searchtastic-aims-to-extend-twitter.html

Twitter denies rumors that it's adding video functionality

• http://mashable.com/2009/10/11/twitter-video-tweets-2/
• http://twittercism.com/twitter-rich-media-fail/

Death of Sidekick/Hiptop platform predicted, as Microsoft loses users' data

Microsoft has lost all users' personal information for the T-Mobile Sidekick service (aka Danger Hiptop). Little hope of recovery. Looks like there was a disk failure in its Danger subsidiary, and no working backups.

• http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/?category.id=Sidekick
• http://blogs.computerworld.com/14894/danger_microsoft_loses_t_mobile_sidekick_hiptop_users_data