Top Items:
Gary Rivlin / New York Times:
Wallflower at the Web Party — JONATHAN ABRAMS was in a spot. He could take the safe bet and accept the $30 million that Google was offering him for Friendster, the social networking Web start-up he began only a year earlier, in 2002. Saying yes to Google would provide a quick …
Discussion:
Mark Evans, IP Democracy, Mathew Ingram, Screenwerk, Texas Startup Blog, Clickety Clack, TikiRobot!, Listics, i-boy and ben barren
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Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
The woeful story of Friendster, and lessons — Gary Rivlin, of the New York Times, has just written the best overview yet of the terrific bungle of social networking company, Friendster. — Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, had a great initial vision, and sparked the social networking revolution …
Steven Levy / Newsweek:
'Good for the Soul' — With iPod's fifth birthday around the corner, Steve Jobs discusses the MP3 player's design, the cool factor and the impact on how we listen to music. — Paul Sakuma / AP — Holistic: Jobs at an Apple media event last month — Oct. 23 marks the fifth anniversary of Apple's iPod.
Fred / A VC:
Who Should Buy Yahoo! — I got this comment on my Buying YHOO post last week: … My first thought was that I had sold too soon. My second thought was "no, not a carrier". And the next thing I did was send the comment around to some of my friends who are active in the market.
Richard Menta / mp3newswire.net:
iPod Killers for Christmas 2006 — We have run the iPod Killers for Christmas/Summer series since 2004. In that time we reported on 149 portable players and NOT one iPod killer from the bunch. That said, we may actually have a couple of genuine challengers to Apple.
Discussion:
The Unofficial Apple Weblog, I4U News, Gizmodo, details of a global brain, Slashdot and digg
Business Week:
AT&T: Waiting for the FCC's Call — The biggest U.S. phone company may need to make hefty concessions to win approval for the BellSouth takeover. So, what's on the table? — If only the feds had waited a day. It was Oct. 11, one day before the Federal Communications Commission was set …
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News.com:
'Second Life' to begin selling real names — For anyone who has used the virtual world "Second Life," the last names Gjellerup, Godel or Stapovic probably mean a lot more than their real last names. — That's because historically, "Second Life" users have had to choose names from an ever-changing …
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Newlaunches.com:
McDonalds gives MP3 players infected with spyware as prizes — If it is not lawsuits then there is virus infected MP3 players, the fast food giant is always in the news. It all started in August when McDonalds Japan in association with Coca Cola announced a contest, where a MP3 player …
blog.holtz.com:
Edelman and the one-sided conversation — The first inkling I had that Edelman PR had stumbled again in its social media efforts on behalf of client WalMart came early yesterday when Laurel English emailed me a copy of the MediaPost story. Shortly after that, Donna Simmons …
Discussion:
Scobleizer, Mathew Ingram, NevilleHobson.com, Deep Jive Interests, JD on EP, Smalltalk Tidbits …, WebMetricsGuru, i-boy, PR Squared and raving lunacy
Haydn / What Will You See Next?:
Well Said is Not Always Well Written — Dave Winer has been the focal point of a discussion on blogs and journalism these past few days. — Dave's point is that the reader is now the writer and in ten years time all news will be blog based. — On mediangler I've been trying to work some of this out too.
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Is Windows Near End of Its Run? — Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, has his hands full. The next version of the Windows operating system, Vista, is finally about to arrive — years late and clouded by doubts that it might violate antitrust rules in Europe.
Jim Courtney / Skype Journal:
Sony Mylo — First Impressions... Thursday I received, as an evaluation unit, a Sony Mylo via the folks at Trinity Convergence whose voice engine software is embedded in the device. The Mylo has turned out to be an interesting personal companion and nothing has changed my opinion …
Jonathan Riddell / KDE Dot News:
KDE Celebrates 10 Years of the Free Desktop — Yesterday at 10:00 AM the president of the KDE e.V. Eva Brucherseifer welcomed the audience of the presentation track at the KDE anniversary event at the Technische Akademie Esslingen (TAE) in Ostfildern near Stuttgart, Germany.
Discussion:
Slashdot
Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
Paid popularity — Inspired by the success of blogging journalist and former staffer Om Malik, Business 2.0 is paying staffers to blog, rewarding them on the basis of traffic. My newfound friend Dan Shanoff objects at HuffingtonPost, arguing, with merit, that this may cause writers to …
Discussion:
Smalltalk Tidbits …, Good Morning Silicon Valley, iwantmedia.com and What Will You See Next?
Gizmodo:
Old Nintendo Toys: Wii Controller Prototype? — In a gallery of old Nintendo toys (translation: sucky, useless and not videogames), we came across this image of a remote controlled car from 1972 and what appears to be a very, very early prototype of the Wiimote. Does this mean Nintendo will release Wiis in powder blue?
Niall Kennedy / Niall Kennedy's Weblog:
The current state of image search — A picture is worth a thousand words, especially to search engines trying to match a brief search query to a set of appropriate visual results. How can a web search engine collect enough data about a particular image to provide a user with relevant results?
Richard Siklos / New York Times:
A Loopy Deal That Actually Makes Sense — IS Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of the video Web site YouTube another milestone in the annals of the Internet? Or is it evidence of a second silly season? The answer to both questions: Yep, you'd better believe it.
Discussion:
BuzzMachine
