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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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 …
Discussion:
Monkey Bites, Mathew Ingram, Mashable!, Social Degree, Rex Hammock's weblog and VC Ratings
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.
Bradley Horowitz / Yodel Anecdotal:Bix joins Yahoo!'s social media mix
Discussion:
CNNMoney.com, Message, The Technology Chronicles, John Battelle's Searchblog, Things That and Susan Mernit's Blog
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:Yahoo! Acquires Contest Site Bix
Discussion:
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim
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:
Between the Lines, The Brian Alvey Weblog, Things That, media landscaping, CNNMoney.com, Beet.TV, PaidContent, Rex Hammock's weblog, B.L. Ochman's weblog, TechEffect, The Mu Life, Mathew Ingram, CNET News.com, Search Engine Journal, InfoWorld Tech Watch, NewAssignment.Net blogs, Deep Jive Interests, Guardian Unlimited, Joseph Scott's Blog and digg
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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 …
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:
Techdirt, The Tech Report, Boing Boing, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Monkey Bites, Slashdot, Open Sources and digg
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 …
Business Wire:
Hearst, The McGraw-Hill Companies and Pilot House Invest $10 Million in Gather.com, the Leader in Social Media for Grown-Ups — Traditional Media Companies Move to Leverage Power of Social Media — BOSTON, Mass.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Gather.com™, the place for engaged …
Discussion:
VentureBeat Wire
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Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Gather Brings in Bushels of Money — Gather, a Boston-based social news/networking startup, announced $10 million in funding today from Pilot Hill Ventures, McGraw-Hill and Hearst. The company had previously raised $9 million from Jim Manzi, Allen & Company, Southern California Public Radio …
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 …
Discussion:
Good Morning Silicon Valley, IP Democracy, Techdirt, Joho the Blog, Boing Boing and Slashdot
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
Discussion:
Dean Bubley's Disruptive …, Skype Journal, 21talks, O'Reilly Emerging Telephony and C. Enrique Ortiz …
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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.
