Top Items:
Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Paying the top DIGG/REDDIT/Flickr/Newsvine users (or "$1,000 a month for doing what you're already doing.") — When Brian and I started Weblogs, Inc. the idea of paying bloggers—heck, even making money from blogging—was considered offensive to many. Blogging was, as the case was stated …
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Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Calacanis offers to buy out digg users — Netscape boss Jason Calacanis has offered to essentially buy out the top users on Digg, Delicious, Flickr, MySpace, and Reddit for $1000 per month: … This offer is open to about a dozen people initially. You've got to hand it to Calacanis …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Huge Red Flag at Netscape — A little known Digg-fact is that a relatively small group of users submit a large percentage of the stories that end up on the Digg home page. Netscape, which recently relaunched as a Digg-clone, wants to pay those top users to switch over to them.
Discussion:
Valleywag
Microsoft:
Nortel and Microsoft Form Strategic Alliance to Accelerate Transformation of Business Communications — Shared vision for unified communications to drive new growth opportunities for both companies. — REDMOND, WASH., and TORONTO—July 18, 2006—The convergence of the communications …
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Bloomberg:
Microsoft, Nortel Partner to Build Phone Software (Update2) — July 18 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks Corp. formed a partnership to strengthen the companies' bids to generate more revenue from Internet phone calls. — Nortel expects more than $1 billion in sales …
Discussion:
DealBook
Sony:
SONY UNVEILS FIRST BLU-RAY DISC DRIVE BURNER — Burns up to 50 GB of Data and Keeps Video in Native HDV 1080i — NEW YORK, July 18, 2006 -Sony Electronics today unveiled its first internal Blu-ray Disc™ (BD) rewritable drive for the computer aftermarket.
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David Kender / camcorderinfo.com:
Sony Introduces High Definition to DVD AVCHD Camcorder HDR-UX1 — Breaking News - Refresh Browser Frequently — July 18, 2006 - Today at a press conference in New York, Sony announced the release of the first camcorder to use the AVCHD format - the HDR-UX1.
Hans Mast / The (not so) Daily Me:
Yahoo! Music to offer unrestricted MP3s? — Everyone who has been following the tech scene knows that the first company to offer mainstream music in unrestricted MP3 format will see a huge spike in their business and may garner lasting dominance. There is widespread dissatisfaction …
Discussion:
Google Blogoscoped
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Scott Beale / Laughing Squid:
OpenDNS — Holy fast connections! Check out OpenDNS, a free client side DNS caching service that does not require any kind of external software. Not only does OpenDNS speed up your internet connection, it has anti-phishing and domain name typo correction features, both of which are opt-in by ip address.
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Paul R. La Monica / CNNMoney.com:
No joy for Yahoo — World's No. 2 search engine reports results and guidance that disappoint investors; stock tumbles after-hours. — NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It looks like Yahoo! investors won't have any reason to yodel following the company's slightly disappointing second-quarter results …
Peggy Mihelich / CNN:
Price of virtual living: Patience, privacy — (CNN) — The virtual worlds depicted in the movies "The Matrix" and "Minority Report" can often seem far too real in today's world of computers, e-mail, instant messaging, MP3 players, cell phones, laptops, Wi-Fi and RFID.
The Consumerist:
AOL Retention Manual Revealed — In August of 2005, America Online settled with the office of NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer over complaints about how arduous AOL made it to cancel service. In addition to a $1.25 million fine, AOL agreed to streamline the cancellation process and submit all calls for third-party review.
Shel Israel / Naked Conversations:
Naked Conversations: A Long Tail Case Study? — Our book is ranked #575 on Amazon.com this morning. This is the highest it has ever been. A closer look at the publisher's retail numbers over the last 90 days, shows the book is doing what our publisher tells us— books do not usually do—come back from an oblivion trendline.
Candace Lombardi / CNET News.com:
Google exec challenges Berners-Lee — A Google executive challenged Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee on his ideas for a Semantic Web during a conference in Boston on artificial intelligence. — On Tuesday, Berners-Lee, the father of the Web and the current director of the World Wide Web Consortium …
Jason Stamper / businessreviewonline.com:
Will SGI Become the Next Data General? — Remember Data General (DG), the server and storage vendor that, despite some great technology, ultimately failed to capitalize on it and was sold off to EMC back in 1999*? Well SGI's new CEO Dennis McKenna was adamant in an interview with me that …
Red Herring:
ShopWiki Scores $6.2 Million — First round of funding will enable DoubleClick founders' shopping site to expand abroad. — ShopWiki received $6.2 million in its first round of funding Tuesday, enabling the shopping search engine created by three DoubleClick executives to expand internationally.
Pete Cashmore / Mashable*:
Tworl Connects Strangers via Instant Messaging — Tworl is an interesting, but potentially risky idea. The service, which is currently in limited beta, connects random users via IM. It's restricted to the AIM client for now, but support for Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk/Jabber and MSN Messenger is in the works - perhaps even Skype.
Fred / A VC:
Where It's At In Music Discovery — People talk about Pandora and Last.fm as if they are the holy grail of music discovery. — Bob Lefsetz moans the loss of FM radio and drives around in his car listening to XM play 20 year old music and thinks XM is where it's at in digital music.
