Top Items:
Jason / Signal vs. Noise:
Don't believe BusinessWeek's bubble-math — This week's BusinessWeek cover story features a beaming Kevin Rose from Digg. Across his chest it says "How this kid made $60 million in 18 months." Wow, now that sounds like a great success story. — Too bad it's a blatent lie. BusinessWeek knows it.
Discussion:
Valleywag, GigaOM, Download Squad, J. LeRoy's Evolving Web, Elliott Back, Techdirt, CNNMoney.com, Micro Persuasion, Tech Beat, Business Logs, Slashdot, the j. botter weblog and digg
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Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Kevin Rose: The Users shouldn't be paid... but I'll take $60M* — You gotta love it: Kevin Rose says users shouldn't be paid even though 30% of the front page stories come from the top 10 users on DIGG. Congrats on the cover of BusinessWeek Kevin, but be careful counting those chickens before they hatch …
Scott Rosenberg / Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard:
Business Week on Digg: Smells like bubble spirit — Late last night I clicked on a link to the new Business Week cover story about Digg and its founder, Kevin Rose, and read the cover's headline: "How this kid made $60 million in 18 months." … This morning I started reading the piece …
Rafat / paidContent.org:
BW: OMG, Like, Totally, Digg — Updated below: In what has to be the most fisk-worthy Web 2.0 story ever written, BW does a cover story about Digg's founder and other young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The problem is not the subject, Digg, and the founder/team, who deserve credit …
Consumerist:
Circuit City Flouts The DMCA For A Tenner — Well, well, well! Look who's violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act! For only a couple of fins, Circuit City will take your DVD and an iPod and flagrantly breach copyright at your behest. — How does this violate the DMCA?
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Ken Fisher / Ars Technica:
Circuit City invites wrath of the MPAA by copying DVDs — Fair Use advocates, take notice. Circuit City is apparently putting its neck on the line to provide customers with DVD transfer services. The company is offering a "DVD video transfer service" that for all intents and purposes is illegal.
David Weinberger / Joho the Blog:
[wikimedia] Jimmy Wales — I'm at Wikimania, the Wikipedian convention/conference. Wikipedians are the core group of somehwere under 1,000 people who put in enormous amounts of time writing and editing. The conference is being held at Harvard Law (thank you, Berkman Center!)
Discussion:
...My heart's in Accra, John Palfrey, Gear Live, Big in Japan, Dembot, Public Knowledge and Scripting News
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Steve Dowling / Apple:
Apple Announces Update Regarding Stock Option Grants — As Apple® previously announced, an internal investigation discovered irregularities related to the issuance of certain stock option grants made between 1997 and 2001. A special committee of Apple's outside directors …
Discussion:
Good Morning Silicon Valley
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Associated Press:
French iTunes law goes into effect — PARIS (AP) — A closely watched French law that allows regulators to force Apple (AAPL) to make its iPod player and iTunes online store compatible with rival offerings went into effect Thursday. — The Internet copyright law passed France's parliament June 30 …
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Ethan Smith / Wall Street Journal:
Music You Can See: Warner Plans to Sell Albums on DVDs — The music industry has for years struggled to develop a new physical format that could spark increased sales by replacing the CD. Now Warner Music Group Corp. is planning an aggressive attempt to address the issue by pushing consumers …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Dazzle Us Again, Del.icio.us — It's been nearly eight months since Del.icio.us was acquired by Yahoo, and it is still the reigning champion of social bookmarking. — But the recent numbers aren't looking so good. In fact, by some measures they've tanked completely.
Associated Press:
Microsoft to hackers: Take your best shot — LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) — After suffering embarrassing security exploits over the past several years, Microsoft Corp. is trying a new tactic: inviting some of the world's best-known computer experts to try to poke holes in Vista, the next generation of its Windows operating system.
tedlee.net:
When bad customer service turns good — If you read my previous post, you know that my 4 month old Macbook Pro had an issue last week, and had to be sent in for repair. I explained to the tech on the phone that I needed the notebook returned to me by Friday Aug 4 so I would have it for WWDC.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / DesktopLinux.com:
Desktop Linux breakthrough: Lenovo preloads SUSE on ThinkPad — Analysis — Finally. For years, the holy grail of the Linux desktop has been to get a major computer vendor to commit to preloading a Linux desktop. It finally happened. — On August 4th, we found out that Lenovo Group …
Gavin O'Malley / AdAge:
Google Hires Former 'Time' President Eileen Naughton — Search Giant Looks to Strengthen Ties With Madison Avenue — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Google has named Eileen Naughton, the former president of Time magazine, as head of ad sales for the web giant's New York offices.
Tim / O'Reilly Radar:
First Ubuntu Billboard Spotted — Wildbill (who I believe is Bill Childers, one of the authors of just-released Ubuntu Hacks) just snapped a picture of the first Ubuntu billboard. Its location right near Oracle headquarters led to a a snarky notice on the Oracle blog, wondering why they were being targeted.
Sara Kehaulani Goo / Washington Post:
AOL Plans to Cut 5,000 Jobs, Some in Virginia — AOL said yesterday it planned to lay off more than a quarter of its workforce — including hundreds of employees in Northern Virginia — over the next six months as the company restructures its business to focus on online advertising instead of dial-up subscriptions.
