Top Items:
Jeff Leeds / New York Times:
Microsoft Strikes Deal for Music — In a rare move, Microsoft said yesterday that it had agreed to pay a percentage of the sales of its new portable media player to the Universal Music Group. — Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi, will receive a royalty on the Zune player in exchange …
Discussion:
IP Democracy, Don Dodge on The Next …, PaidContent, The Digital Music Weblog, J. LeRoy's Evolving Web, A VC, Blackfriars' Marketing, Digital Music News, CrunchGear, StartupSquad, Techdirt, Blogging Stocks, Paul Colligan's …, JD on EP, Life On the Wicked Stage, Coolfer, Smalltalk Tidbits …, Promocharger.com and Slashdot
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David Pogue / New York Times:
Trying Out the Zune: IPod It's Not — Microsoft is probably the greenest company in all of high tech. Not green in the environmental sense — green with envy. — Microsoft is so jealous of the iPod's success that Tuesday it will unveil a new music system — pocket player …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Microsoft, Zune & The Music Mafia — The New York Times reports that Microsoft has cut a deal with Universal Music Group which will allow the music giant to get a percentage of the sale of its upcoming digital music player, Zune. The report says that the amount being paid to UMG is going to be at least $1 per $250 device.
Lore Sjöberg / Wired News:
EULA La Vista, Baby — There have been a lot of concerns about the end-user license agreement for Windows Vista. For instance, once you agree to the license you are not allowed to publish benchmark results without Microsoft's permission, and you can't install Vista on a virtual machine unless you shell out for the pricier version.
Discussion:
Urlocker On Disruption
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Network World:
Dell customer gets Windows refund — Thanks to Dell, one UK Linux user has succeeded in the perennial quest to buy and use a laptop without paying for an unused bundled OS. — Dell today gave freelance programmer and sysadmin Dave Mitchell, of Sheffield, UK, a refund of 47 pounds ($89) …
David Kushner / Rolling Stone:
The Baby Billionaires of Silicon Valley — The Internet's new boom kids are poised to take over the world — if they don't crash first — >> Think you've got the chops to make it big? Get your brag on and see what other readers are saying about the Web 2.0 elite. — Did someone order a lap dance?
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Miguel Helft / New York Times:
For Start-Ups, Web Success on the Cheap — When Seth J. Sternberg and two colleagues started Meebo, a Web-based instant-messaging service, they didn't go looking for venture capitalists. Using their credit cards, they financed the company themselves to the tune of $2,000 apiece.
Discussion:
Soaring on Ridgelift
Duncan / Skype Blogs:
A new face for 3.0 — Firstly, a quick introduction. My name is Duncan and I'm an interaction designer here at Skype. I get to work with all kinds of interesting people, dreaming up new ways to make Skype useful, fun and usable. Making Skype easy to use is something we take very seriously.
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Jeffrey M. O'Brien / Fortune:
A factory of one's own — According to MIT's Neil Gershenfeld, the digital revolution is over, and the good guys won. The next big change will be about manufacturing. Anyone with a PC will be able to build anything just by hitting 'print.' — (Fortune Magazine) — Imagine a machine with the ability to manufacture anything.
Discussion:
MIT Advertising Lab, reBang weblog, The Business Innovation …, MAKE Magazine and Promocharger.com
Jenstar / JenSense:
AdSense launches new channel targeting feature for advertisers — If you log into your AdSense account today and go through the process of adding a new custom channel, you will now see a checkbox underneath the field you enter your channel name into, stating "Targeting: Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement".
John R. Quain / New York Times:
A Wi-Fi Express Lane — IT'S axiomatic in the computer world that nothing is ever fast enough. And so it goes with popular wireless Wi-Fi networks, which already seem overcrowded and slow. The growing interest in video sites like YouTube and streaming TV programs online has served to underscore the problem.
Newlaunches.com:
Sharp MP-E200 / MP-E300 DAP — Sharp Japan has announced the MP-E200 / E300 MP3 players which are an upgrade to the B-200 and 300 announced in May this year. Except for the onboard memory 512MB and 1GB both the models share the same features. The players support MP3, AAC, WMA and WMA DRM10 formats.
Nicholas Petreley / Linux Journal:
A five year deal with Micosoft to dump Novell/SUSE — Wake up little SUSE, Wake up. No, that's not good enough. Wake up SUSE customers, wake up. Novell is jeopardizing the future of Linux for its own short-term rewards. If you want to see Linux flourish, let alone survive …
Tim Smalley / bit-tech.net:
G80: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX — DirectX 10 and Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system have been looming on the technological horizon for some time now. Although the two aren't going to be available until next year, many hardware enthusiasts have decided to save up in readiness …
Juan Carlos Perez / Network World:
WEB 2.0: Google CEO: Take your data and run — Google wants to make the information it stores for its users easily portable so they can export it to a competing service if they are dissatisfied, the company's CEO said Tuesday. — Making it simple for users to walk away from a Google service …
Thomas Hawk / Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection:
Boing Boing and Slashdot Pick up on Flickr's Attempt to Patent Interestingness — [I am the Evangelist and CEO for Zooomr] — Boing Boing: Flickr files a patent for "interestingness" Well a few weeks back I posted on Yahoo's attempt to patent interestingness after reading a notice …
Scott Kessler / Business Week:
Old Media and New Media: Friends, Not Foes — Search and advertising services from Google and Yahoo! are helping traditional media companies extend their content online and generate revenue — If content is king, then its queen is making money. This marriage of substance and sales …
Rustybrick / Search Engine Roundtable:
Google Launches AdWords Diagnostic Tool With Magnifying Glass — Google began testing the Magnifying Glass Feature in the Diagnostic Tool in mid October, but it appears to now be live in all AdWords accounts now. Here is a screen shot on one of my sample campaigns, of the tool in action.
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch Blog
Allison Randal / O'Reilly Radar:
Stikkit - Sticky Notes Reborn — At the Web 2.0 Summit Launch Pad, Rael Dornfest and Michael Buffington launched Stikkit, a slick new site for organizing your life. The basic concept is simple: take notes in your browser instead of scrawling them on sticky notes and tacking them to your computer monitor …
