Top Items:
CNET News.com:
FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool — update The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
Timothy Burke / Terra Nova:
The History of Virtual Worlds — I'm going for a first-time event here: a triple cross-post at Easily Distracted, Cliopatria and Terra Nova. I'm at a meeting on law and virtual worlds at the New York Law School, and there's a really interesting panel discussion of methodologies in virtual worlds.
Michael Mahemoff / Ajaxian:
Death of Page View Metrics? — Steve Rubel says page view metrics have four years to live. … The question then becomes: What alternatives will be used? Ryan Stewart suggests more emphasis will be placed on how much time people spend with a website, and also an "interaction rate" …
Discussion:
The Blog Herald, Mad Techie Woman, MYBLOG by Ouriel, Web Strategy and The Ponderings of Woodrow
Rafat Ali / PaidContent:
Yahoo's Deal With Current TV In Jeopardy, Two Months After Launch — This is a surprise, but not really, considering the troubles Yahoo is going through now: Current TV's distribution/joint venture deal with Yahoo is in peril, reports News.com. "Current is exploring better opportunities …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Ok, Now I Get JPG Magazine — JPG Magazine relaunched last month with a new business model: Get users to upload photos to their website, and then have the community vote on and rank photos. The winners are published in a bi-monthly print magazine and get $100 plus a free one-year subscription.
Natali Del Conte / TechCrunch:
Million Dollar Homepage Becomes Multi-Million Dollar Homepage — Alex Tew, the mastermind behind The Million Dollar Homepage is most certainly pressing his luck. Tew sold one million pixels worth of advertisement for $1 per pixel and made $1 million. It worked so well that he thinks …
Discussion:
CyberNet Technology News, Mathew Ingram, Digital Alchemy, software ? what do you mean and digg
Gamasutra:
Question of the Week: Does Size Matter? — Gamasutra's latest Question of the Week asked our esteemed audience of game industry professionals, educators and students for feedback on the importance of a game's play length, particularly in terms of monetary value.
John Gartner / Marketing Blog Bent …:
Podcasting's 15 Minutes Almost Up — Podcasting probably will never become an "impact media" like online video or satellite radio, and deservedly so. — According to the most recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, only 1 percent of Internet users download a podcast on a given day.
Natali Del Conte / TechCrunch:
Shawn Fanning's New Social Network Will Comply With WoW — A representative for Shawn Fanning called TechCrunch today to make it clear that the social networking site that the Napster founder plans to launch next year will indeed be compliant with World of Warcraft's (WoW) terms of use.
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Kotaku:
JPN Wii Launch: The GETs And The GET-Nots — Everything starts moving fast. Showing my ticket, getting a new ticket, putting the old ticket in a yellow basket, and then being escorted to an empty elevator, getting in an empty elevator, which fills up like that and takes us to the 5th floor …
Leo Lewis / Financial Times:
Sony sidelines PS3 mastermind Kutaragi — Ken Kutaragi, the maverick Sony engineer behind all three generations of PlayStation games consoles, will on Friday become chairman and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment in a management reshuffle that underscores Sony's difficulties in the video games market.
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Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com:
Open-source group wants educational patent reversed — A legal center is trying to overturn a patent it says threatens three open-source educational projects, a sign of the tension between patent holders and the collaborative programming community. — The Software Freedom Law Center …
Joe / Techdirt:
Paging William Shatner: Restaurants To Let You Name Your Own Price — from the seen-this-before dept — There have been several attempts at selling things using the "name your own price" model, including many failed experiments at Priceline.com alone. Now a company is hoping to try it again …
Mike / Techdirt:
Google Trying To Pay Off Big Entertainment Companies To Leave YouTube Alone — from the bad-ideas dept — Google is apparently looking to continue the practice of paying off entertainment companies to agree not to sue YouTube, apparently dangling fees of over $100 million to various well-known entertainment companies.
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
On to the next version of Windows — Guess Microsoft really wants to make sure the next version of Windows doesn't take another five years. — The day after releasing the final Windows Vista bits to volume-licensing business customers. Microsoft issued a call to testers asking for input on the next version of Windows.
Peter Rojas / Engadget:
BenQ uses WTC & 9/11 imagery to sell devices — We're not exactly what you'd call sanctimonious — we try not to take ourselves or what we're doing too seriously — but we feel obligated to call BenQ out for using an image of a crumbled World Trade Center in an ad for its new MusiQ campaign.
Discussion:
CrunchGear
Derek / .:UNEASYsilence:.:
Parallels - IE7 & Firefox in "coherence" mode — OS X Parallels Desktop users will rejoice knowing that the latest beta build of Parallels includes a slew of new updates including the ability to resize the virtual machine window (with resolution adjusting automatically) and my personal favorite - "coherence".
Michael / michael parekh on IT:
ON THE WHIMSY OF LINE RIDER — Thanks to David Pogue of the New York Times, I now have a new addiction for the holidays. — It's a web-based application called Line Rider, that can be best thought of as the Web 2.0 version of the venerable Etch-a-Sketch. Here's how David explains it:
Discussion:
GottaBeMobile.com
Rafat Ali / PaidContent:
Traffic Monitoring Firm Hitwise On The Block; Asking $350 Million: Report — So says a report in Telegraph UK: online traffic measurement and analysis firm Hitwise, which has made big strides into the duopoly of NetRatings and Comscore in U.S., is on the block, and is looking to get around $350 million.
Discussion:
Search Marketing Gurus
