Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Spinoff Wallop Launches — Wallop, previously a semi-forgotton Microsoft Research "sandbox" social network and photo sharing project, was spun off into a new, independent, venture backed business earlier this year (details here). Tonight at 9 pm California time, Wallop is launching a semi-public beta.
Discussion:
Don Dodge on The Next …, The Universal Desktop, Search Engine Journal, GigaOM and Ryan Stewart
RELATED ITEMS:
Rafe Needleman / CNET News.com:
Wallop, the social network where you pay for pretty — The "important" social network I mentioned in my post about Piczo is launching at DemoFall on Tuesday, and going into limited beta tonight. It's called Wallop. A lot of Wallop was developed inside Microsoft, but it's been spun out into a separate …
John Cook / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
$10 million in venture capital to help Wallop build social network — Wallop, the social networking startup that was spun out of Microsoft Research Labs earlier this year, has landed $10 million in venture capital that it will use to create a new competitor to MySpace, Friendster and Facebook.
Carlo / Techdirt:
Paid Social-Networking Model Doesn't Pack Much Of A Punch — from the more-of-a-tap-really dept — Social-networking sites seem by now cyclical by nature — everybody's on one, then they lose interest, or something better comes along, leaving the previous one to be taken over by Brazilian drug dealers.
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Wallop Shows Up to Party — At this point, social networks that don't offer something dramatically new are having trouble. Remember TagWorld? It's a MySpace clone but way better designed. It came late to the game, but was rallied on by people like me who were sick of MySpace hurting their eyes.
Associated Press:
Microsoft launches social networking site — Wallop testing premise that you're willing to pay extra to look good — SEATTLE - Wallop, a startup spun out of Microsoft Corp.'s research lab, is launching the test version of an online social networking site with the premise that people will want to pay extra to look good.
Ryan Katz / Think Secret:
Apple iPhone to be Cingular-exclusive at launch — Apple and Cingular have signed an agreement that will make the US' largest cell phone provider the exclusive carrier of Apple's forthcoming phone, sources report. Apple's iPhone remains on track for an early 2007 release.
Discussion:
Engadget, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Gizmodo, The TNL.net weblog, jkOnTheRun, Mark Evans, CrunchGear, Lefsetz Letter and digg
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Watch Blog:
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against AOL Over Search Data Release — TechCrunch reports in Suit filed against AOL; seeks to block search history storage that a class action lawsuit has been filed against AOL seeking $1,000 in damages for each person whose search records were released last month.
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BBC:
Mobile web shake-up gets started — The mobile web is about to receive the biggest shake-up in years with the start of open registration for mobile phone-specific website addresses. — The general public can now register websites ending with .mobi (dotmobi) as the backers of the mobile net hope to overturn consumer apathy.
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Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report:
Microsoft admits WGA failures "coming up more commonly now" — Scrolling through the posts on Microsoft's official WGA Validation Problems forum is like reading accident reports from a multiple-car pileup on Interstate 5. Many of the victims are completely innocent and have no idea what hit them …
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Olga Kharif / Business Week:
Jajah's Mobile Ambitions — The company hopes to become the Skype of the cell-phone world, and has introduced a service allowing users to call overseas on the cheap — You might call Jajah the clunkier Skype. Since February, the Mountain View (Calif.)-based startup has allowed people …
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Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Hoping to Be a Model, I.B.M. Will Put Its Patent Filings Online — I.B.M., the nation's largest patent holder, will publish its patent filings on the Web for public review as part of a new policy that the company hopes will be a model for others. — If widely adopted, the policy could help …
Mike / Techdirt:
Comparing Terrestrial Radio Apples To Satellite Radio Oranges — from the try,-try-again dept — There's been plenty of talk concerning how successful (or not) Howard Stern's move from terrestrial radio to satellite radio has been. However, a former TV exec now working for News.com appears …
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John Markoff / New York Times:
Google to Push for More Electrical Efficiency in PC's — Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard that it says will save billions of kilowatt-hours of energy annually. — In a white paper to be presented Tuesday on the opening …
MobileTracker:
Nokia N75 announced — Nokia Open Studio 2006 — Nokia has announced the N75, the latest of its N-Series of "multimedia computers". The introduction was made at an event this in New York City with several hundred attending press from around the world. The N75 is the first clamshell N-Series handset …
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Introducing ScobleShow — It's 1 a.m. and the engineering team, me, and Valerie, are still working at the office. But the show is slowly coming up. The URL is at http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/ — Stuff is still broken, and probably will be for a little while longer.
Discussion:
Thomas Hawk's Digital …, Podcasting News, Frank Barnako, ScobleShow, Clique Communications, Laughing Squid and digg
Adam Frucci / SCI FI Tech:
Info rings save us from hassle of human interaction — You gotta love technology designed to remove as much human interaction as possible from our days, moving us closer and closer to the dream of everyone existing in private spheres, completely cut off from any legitimate human contact.
Somasegar / Somasegar's WebLog:
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Beta and Visual Studio support for Vista — Today, I'm pleased to announce the availability of the beta of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. — Based on your feedback, Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 addresses issues that were found through a combination of customer reports …
