Top Items:
Business Week:
Click Fraud — The dark side of online advertising — Martin Fleischmann put his faith in online advertising. He used it to build his Atlanta company, MostChoice.com, which offers consumers rate quotes and other information on insurance and mortgages. Last year he paid Yahoo! Inc. …
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Steve Rubel / Micro Persuasion:
BusinessWeek Publishes Big Investigation on Click Fraud — Click Fraud, the practice of generating automatic clicks on search ads, is becoming a significant threat to search engine advertising, according to a BusinessWeek cover story. The article exposes how Google and Yahoo are passively profiting …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Flash In The VoIP Pan — Adobe Systems, the San Jose, California-based software giant, has been the real catalyst for the ongoing online video boom, thanks to the near ubiquitous Flash software that plays back everything from stupid pet tricks to the amazing theatrics of LonelyGirl15.
Richard Siklos / New York Times:
MTV Will Acquire Maker of Music-Oriented Games — MTV, the cable TV channel some critics have accused of straying too far from its musical roots, is to acquire Harmonix Music Systems, a maker of music-oriented video games, for $175 million in cash. — Harmonix's main product, Guitar Hero …
Jim Dalrymple / Macworld:
Apple updates strengthen wireless security — Apple on Thursday released a Security and AirPort update for Mac OS X that fixes vulnerabilities found in the company's wireless drivers. Apple said the issues found were the result of an internal audit of the software drivers …
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Stuart Elliott / New York Times:
Marketing on Google: It's Not Just Text Anymore — Just as Madison Avenue once helped convince consumers that orange juice is "not just for breakfast anymore," Google is turning to Madison Avenue to help convince marketers that Google is not just for text advertisements in tiny type …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Exclusive: Mysterious Paypal Secure Storage — PayPal is preparing a new feature on a select range of users that allows them to securely store files with the payments provider. The new service, called DropBox, creates a secure storage area that is associated with the account.
Daisuke Wakabayashi / Reuters:
Microsoft mulls free Web-based business software — SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it may offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic word processing and spreadsheet software, in an apparent bid to fend off a nascent challenge from Google Inc. in the business software market.
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Amazon working with TiVo for Unbox integration? — There's nothing confirmed yet, but the New York Post is reporting that Amazon and TiVo are currently in talks regarding a feature that would allow the playback of Amazon Unbox videos on TiVo's set-top boxes.
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
Facebook, a social site, has a suitor — Mark Zuckerberg is a member of the Google generation, one too young to remember all the ambitions dashed and fortunes lost when the last dot-com boom ended. — That may be one reason Zuckerberg, the 22-year-old founder of Facebook …
Alan Sipress / Washington Post:
1,100 Laptops Missing From Commerce Dept. — More than 1,100 laptop computers have vanished from the Department of Commerce since 2001, including nearly 250 from the Census Bureau containing such personal information as names, incomes and Social Security numbers, federal officials said yesterday.
Discussion:
The Technology Liberation …
LinuxDevices.com:
Teeny Linux PCs proliferate — A small company has begun building its line of tiny, gumstick-sized single-board computers (SBCs) into miniscule packaged PCs that displace around 68 cc of volume and come with Linux pre-installed. Suggested apps for the teeny "Netstix" Linux PCs include webservers …
Larry Angell / iLounge:
Apple quietly updates U2 iPod, lowers price — Almost lost in last week's new iPod announcements was the iPod U2 Special Edition. In the days following Apple's special event, the company has quietly updated the black-and-red model to bring it in line with the current "enhanced" fifth-generation (5G) iPod.
David Berlind / Between the Lines:
Inconvenience of two-factor security pushes banks to "single factor plus" for online banking — For the nation's banking industry, the clock is ticking. By Dec 31, banks and financial institutions had better move to something more than just user ID and password-level security …
Discussion:
Computerworld Blogs blogs
Guy Kawasaki / Signum sine tinnitu:
The Art of Distribution — One of the important insights that the Startups 2006 panel hammered home was the importance of distribution for consumer-facing startups. (By the way, an astounding 13,000 people watched this video during the first week.) Many people use the word "distribution" …
Paperghost / The SpywareGuide Greynets Blog:
IM Worm Attack Cloaked in Virtual Card Hoax- W32Heartworm.A — The Net has a long history of hoaxes and many of the "best" seem to involve dire warnings of virus attacks that simply don't exist. Whether you're being asked to delete teddy bears or avoiding the gaze of the all seeing eye …
Dean Takahashi / AEI:
Microsoft Dismisses Repair Fees On Early Xbox 360s, Acknowledges Quality Problems — Microsoft issued a statement today acknowledging that its early run of Xbox 360s made in 2005 were buggy and that it would rescind any repair fee on boxes that need service as long as they were manufactured before Jan. 1, 2006.
Discussion:
Kotaku, Xbox 360 Fanboy, InsideMicrosoft, TechBlog, Engadget, Microsoft News Tracker, Joystiq and Neowin.net
