A curated selection of the day’s most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter in your inbox every morning.
“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.” — Jeopardy contender Ken Jennings during last night’s competition.
- President Obama will dine with Steve Jobs, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, and Cisco CEO John Chambers at a private dinner in San Francisco this evening.
- Jobs was also reportedly spotted leaving Stanford University’s cancer center yesterday, the same place actor Patrick Swayze sought chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. Despite this, and what some publications describe as Jobs’ “skeletal” appearance, he will apparently make tonight’s event. (Business Insider and Radar Online)
- Google announced its One Pass publishing tool, a new payment system that enables publishers to charge consumers for news, articles and other content, one day after Apple released info on its own controversial App Store subscription service. Unlike Apple, which will take a 30% cut of all iOS subscription sales, Google will only take 10%, as well as offer more flexible pricing terms for publishers. (Fortune and The Next Web)
- Apple’s future plans for MobileMe could involve a unified profile page that would merge social networks with media services. Among the plans caught by Cult of Mac would be status updates, including Foursquare-style location check-ins. Also, the revamped service would not only host photos and videos, but even offer live video streaming like Ustream or Qik. (Cult of Mac and Electronista)
- Motorola mobile chief Sanjay Jha defended the Motorola Xoom’s high price tag at this week’s Mobile World Congress, pointing to the tablet’s 4G ability as worth the extra money. “We felt that our ability to deliver 50Mb/s would justify the $799 price point,” he said. “It is 32GB with 3G and a free upgrade to 4G. Being competitive with iPad is important. We feel that from the hardware and capabilities we deliver we are at least competitive and in a number of ways better [than the iPad].” Jha also let slip that a proper Google music service is in the works, though did not elaborate. (Wall Street Journal)
- IBM supercomputer Watson won the third and final evening of the Jeopardy competition. “What have I learned over the past two days? One, Watson is fast, knows a lot of stuff and can really dominate a match,” host Alex Trebek said at the beginning of the game.The final score was $44,131 for Watson, $19,200 for Ken Jennings and $11,200 for Brad Rutter. Next Media Animation whipped out their computer animation skills and “recreated” the week’s events in this video. (eWeek)
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHrKowCBZZA]
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