Top Items:
Red Herring:
Friendster Wins Patent — After emerging from debt, Friendster wins a patent on social networking. — Friendster said Thursday that it has received a patent that covers online social networks, one the company had applied for long before its decline and recent recapitalization.
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
Friendster awarded patent on social networking — Sagging social network Friendster was awarded a patent on some pretty fundamental qualities of online social networking late last month. The patent covers the determining and display of relationships between individuals who have entered personal information …
Kevin J. Delaney / Wall Street Journal:
Lawsuits Fly Over Google Founders' Big Private Plane — Even billionaires have disputes with their contractors. — Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the low-key co-founders of Google Inc., set tongues wagging last year when they bought a used Boeing 767 widebody as an unusually large private jet.
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Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Watch Blog:Lawsuits Over The Google Party Jet; Arguments Over Bed Sizes On Board
Discussion:
The Browser, Good Morning Silicon Valley, SearchViews, Internet Stocks and Threadwatch.org
MediaPost Publications:
ABC Looks Beyond Upfront To DVR, Commercial Ratings Issues — ABC HAS HELD DISCUSSIONS ON the use of technology that would disable the fast-forward button on DVRs, according to ABC President of Advertising Sales Mike Shaw, with the primary goal to allow TV commercials to run as intended.
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Stephanie Mehta / CNNMoney.com:
AOL as Yahoo wannabe — If AOL greenlights a plan to give away e-mail, it will be taking yet another page from the Yahoo playbook. — NEW YORK (FORTUNE) — AOL has a serious case of Yahoo envy. — First, AOL last year built a Yahoo-like Internet portal, putting all its content …
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Sara Kehaulani Goo / Washington Post:AOL May Speed Shift Away From Subscribers
Discussion:
paidContent.org
Michael / MWGblog:
PodShow And Copyright, I'm Non-Plussed — After much promotion and delay PodShow finally launched a revamped directory today. All kinds of stuff going on that I assume is aimed at the new podcaster. Not really sure of the target demographic, but my guess is the My Space crowd.
Discussion:
Mashable*, croncast.com, FuzzyBlog, loadedpun, Podcasting News, Scripting News and TinyScreenfuls.com
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CURRY.COM:
Unleash day 2 — Just returned to the Cottage from Rotterdam. Pretty tired from the week's events, but there's stuff to do and things to patch/fix/glue on PodShow.com. The most obvious being that external feeds should of course link to the original external feed
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
Microsoft announces ODF support — Microsoft has announced support for an open source document format called ODF, Open Document Format. Microsoft will also offer its own Open XML document format with the release of Office 2007. This announcement follows an announcement of support for the popular PDF format as well.
Discussion:
Ed Brill
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Ross Miller / Joystiq:
Apple cameos on PS3 website ... wtf? [update 4] — Load up the US PlayStation 3 website, and watch carefully on the PS3 unit just above the controller. [You will see a quick, subliminal blip.] It has been fixed. You can view the original page here. — Did you catch what it was?
huffingtonpost.com:
BREAKING: New Rocketboom Girl Chosen, Looks Strangely Like Old One — HuffPo's "Eat The Press" has learned that Rocketboom executive producer Andrew Baron has tapped former MTV Europe VJ Joanna Colan to take the anchor chair vacated by Amanda Congdon earlier this week.
Discussion:
Robert Sanzalone …, Scobleizer, MediaShift | PBS, Blogebrity, Valleywag, Mark Evans and iBloggedThis
Joshua Jaffe / VC Ratings:
Google preparing health portal; pitching WebMD and Intuit as partners — Google is planning a product that it hopes will overhaul the way patients, doctors, vendors and pharmaceutical companies manage their medical information online. Dubbed the Google Health Scrapbook …
Nwhite / Windows Vista Team Blog:
New Windows Standard Theme in Windows Vista — How does Sidebar Geek do it? I was just putting the finishing touches on a post about the new theme when I found out that Brandon beat me to it. Well great job picking that up! I had a chance to chat with Don Lindsay on the User Experience Team …
heise-security.co.uk:
Copy protection hole in Blu-ray and HD DVD movies — The Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD are new data carriers for high-resolution motion pictures. For fear of piracy, Hollywood had the developers install a cornucopia of copy prevention mechanisms on them. For instance, the film data on the disks …
Business Week:
The Plot To Hijack Your Computer — They watch you surf the Web. They plague you with pop-up ads. Then they cripple your hard drive — Consumers have strong opinions about Direct Revenue's software. "If I ever meet anyone from your company, I will kill you," a person who identified himself …
BBC:
Video game legend criticises Sony — UK video gaming stalwart Jeff Minter has criticised Sony for being "smug" about its PlayStation 3 console. — Mr Minter, who founded Llamasoft in 1982 and developed a light synthesiser for the Xbox 360, said the machine was "expensive" and lacked launch games.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
NBC will buy Tribe.net — Rumors are being confirmed (by Rafat Ali and Susan Mernit) that NBC is in fact buying social networking site Tribe.net. Ali estimates the sale at $50 million or less and says that the media company will use Tribe to power the low-tech women's networking site iVillage …
Michael Sciannamea / The Wireless Report:
A wireless network in NYC's future? — It's about time! New York City's Economic Development Corporation announced it will be conducting a feasibility study to determine whether a citywide wireless network can be effectively developed and deployed within the city.
