Top Items:
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Buys Site for Staging Online Contests — Yahoo is acquiring Bix.com, a site that allows users and advertisers to create, enter into and judge online contests. The deal is an attempt by Yahoo to bolster its offerings in social media, an area where it has struggled to compete with sites like MySpace and YouTube.
Discussion:
Valleywag, Monkey Bites, PaidContent, VC Ratings, VentureBeat, Clickety Clack, Search Engine Journal and CenterNetworks
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
MyBlogLog to be Acquired by Yahoo! — In the second social media acquisition by Yahoo! story in the last 12 hours, news has emerged that Yahoo! has agreed to acquire MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog is a blog community and analytics tool used here on TechCrunch (see sidebar) and many other blogs around the web.
Valleywag:
Yahoo swoops in … Yahoo swoops in — Yahoo's back on the acquisition path. In addition to the acquisition of Bix, the internet corp has agreed to buy MyBlogLog, a social network for weblog visitors, for about $10m. The startup had been seeking venture funding, but attracted the attention …
Bradley Horowitz / Yodel Anecdotal:
Bix joins Yahoo!'s social media mix — The social media phenomenon is fed by human needs for self-expression, feedback, generosity, and, to some degree, good old-fashioned voyeurism. Today, we add more food to Yahoo!'s social media menu: Bix, a budding social media service that almost anyone …
Discussion:
Message, CNNMoney.com, The Technology Chronicles, John Battelle's Searchblog, Things That and Susan Mernit's Blog
Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:
Yahoo goes on a startup shopping binge — First Yahoo says it acquired Bix, then news of MyBlogLog for $10 million, and now Yahoo confims it has acquired Swedish mobile company Kenet Works. A Yahoo spokesperson in London confirmed the purchase of Kenet Works and wrote in an email:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:Yahoo! Acquires Contest Site Bix
Discussion:
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
Blog Entrepreneur Leaves AOL — Jason Calacanis, the outspoken blogger and entrepreneur who ran AOL's Netscape division, resigned on Thursday in the wake of the firing of AOL's chief executive, Jonathan Miller. — Mr. Calacanis sold his company, Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs …
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Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Yes, it's true... I'm leaving AOL. — TechCrunch broke the story (less than two hours after I told everyone here), and the New York Times confirmed it with me by phone this afternoon. — I've got a lot to say, but I'm thinking that I'll just talk about it on the final episode of the Gillmor Gang podcast …
Discussion:
gapingvoid, Things That, The Brian Alvey Weblog, CNNMoney.com, Rex Hammock's weblog, B.L. Ochman's weblog, TechEffect, The Mu Life, Mathew Ingram, CNET News.com, Search Engine Journal, NewAssignment.Net blogs, InfoWorld Tech Watch, Guardian Unlimited, Deep Jive Interests, Joseph Scott's Blog and digg
Tony Dennis / Inquirer:
Skype soft-launches Skype for Symbian — Runs on the Nokia N73 — OBSCURED BY all the razzmatazz surrounding the launch of 3's X-Series handsets, is the fact that on December 1st when 3 goes live with its new service, there will be a version of Skype for Symbian.
Discussion:
Watching, Testing, Digesting, Shiny Shiny, 21talks, jkOnTheRun and The Mobile Technology Weblog
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Carlo Longino / MobHappy:
3, Oh How You Make Me Feel Conflicted — For a long time, it was pretty easy to poke holes in (and fun of) Hutchison's 3G operator, 3. From the way Hutch MD Canning Fok conducted interviews, to its bone-headed insistence that video calls would lead users in droves to 3G …
Discussion:
Dean Bubley's Disruptive …, Skype Journal, 21talks, O'Reilly Emerging Telephony and C. Enrique Ortiz …
Guardian:
Cracked it! — Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes? — Six months ago, with the help of a rather scary computer expert …
Eric Lai / Computerworld:
Ballmer: Linux users owe Microsoft — Microsoft CEO says Linux "uses our intellectual property" — In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property.
Discussion:
Boing Boing, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Monkey Bites, Slashdot, Open Sources and digg
Ryan Naraine / eWEEK.com:
'Pump-and-Dump' Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders — The recent surge in e-mail spam hawking penny stocks and penis enlargement pills is the handiwork of Russian hackers running a botnet powered by tens of thousands of hijacked computers. — Internet security researchers …
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Movie Studios Sue to Stop Loading of DVDs onto iPods — The MPAA studios are at it again, snatching away our fair use rights, so they can sell them back to us for an "additional fee." — In a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York, Paramount Pictures v. Load 'N Go Video …
Marcus Kabel / timesdaily.com:
Edwards acknowledges staff asked Wal-Mart for Playstation 3 — Last Updated:November 16. — Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards acknowledged Thursday that amid his criticism of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a volunteer member of his staff asked the world's largest retailer for help obtaining …
Chris Gilmer / Download Squad:
Google Maps adds click-to-call — Yesterday Google announced the introduction of a new click-to-call feature when searching in Google Maps. This convenient addition lets users enter their phone number in the mapped location results, to have Google instantly connect them via telephone to the business they were looking for.
IEBlog:
IE+JavaScript Performance Recommendations Part 2: JavaScript Code Inefficiencies — Hello again, this is Peter Gurevich, Performance PM for IE. We have gotten a lot of good feedback from our first post on IE + JavaScript Performance Recommendations so I am eager to hear what you think of our second installment.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
Fox Interactive Media President Ross Levinsohn to be Replaced by Peter Levinsohn — Fox announced tonight that Fox Interactive Media President Ross Levinsohn will be replaced effective November 27th. Peter Levinsohn, who is Ross Levinsohn's cousin, has served as President of Digital Media for the Fox Entertainment Group.
Discussion:
GigaOM
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Sam Sethi / TechCrunch UK & Ireland:
Is today the start of the Mobile Web. — It seems rumours of 3's demise yesterday were greatly exaggerated because today in Battersea saw the global launch of the X-Series from 3. Although 3 have been struggling until now to gain a [significant] share of the UK mobile market …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
Fleck Offers Zero Friction Web Annotation — Collaborative annotation of web pages is something many people are working on. The newest entrant in the field, Fleck, is launching tonight at the TechCrunch party in New York. The Fleck team hails from Amsterdam.
Jim Courtney / Skype Journal:
Skype PR WakeUp Call II: The Solution — This is the second of three posts discussing Skype's PR management with the aim of improving the PR relationships associated with the launch of new Skype software and associated services. In the first post I outlined the problem …
Yahoo! Search blog:
Yahoo! Maps releases from Beta — Yahoo! Maps is coming out of Beta today. Check out our more detailed notes on the Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog. Since we released the beta version, we've spent our time optimizing the product and responding to user feedback to make it ready for mainstream use.
Kevin Kelly / Joystiq:
Girl in Austin not sure about PS3, waits in line for fun — This video just sort of makes you stare at the screen with your jaw gaping open and go, "What the?!" A girl in South Austin who knows nothing about gaming at all "heard that this was going to be good," and has decided to wait in line at a Best Buy for a PS3.
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