Top Items:
Jeff Leeds / New York Times:
Squeezing Money From the Music — "Konvicted," a new CD from Akon, promised to be one of the year's big sellers when it appeared in record stores last month. Buoyed by two of the hottest singles in the country, Akon, a silky-voiced R&B singer, even had the most-viewed page among major label acts on MySpace.com.
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Andy Beal / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim:
Exclusive: Google's Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2% — Back in November, Google's business product manager for trust and safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, declared that click fraud at Google was "on average is in the single digits, quarter over quarter." I recently sat down with Ghosemajumder …
Discussion:
Digital Markets, Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog, Google Blogoscoped, shmula, Search Engine Journal and digg
Peter Edmonston / New York Times:
In Web Traffic Tallies, Intruders Can Say You Visited Them — In late May, more than five million Web users vanished. — The disappearing act came when Nielsen/NetRatings, a leading company in measuring Internet traffic, sharply cut its previously reported statistics for the financial Web …
Discussion:
PaidContent, GigaOM, Valleywag, ContentBlogger, HipMojo.com, John Furrier, CenterNetworks and Slashdot
John Cook / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
New York Times adds sharing tool — The New York Times unveiled a new service today that allows readers to quickly post stories that they find on the newspaper's Web site to Digg, Facebook and Newsvine. — It marks the first time that the country's third-largest newspaper has added …
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Jeremy Zawodny / Jeremy Zawodny's blog:
Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!? — I'm not sure if this is stupidity, laziness, or a mix of both, but check this out. — Back when IE7 launched, Yahoo! created a customized version and began to market it to our existing IE users. The "splash page" looked like this:
Ina Fried / CNET News.com:
Desperately seeking Zune — reporter's notebook SAN FRANCISCO—Welcome to the social. — That's the promise Microsoft makes with its new Zune. Unlike the solitary iPods, the digital music player lets you make new friends and discover new music. Using its built-in Wi-Fi …
Discussion:
Digital World, TechEffect, Blogging Stocks, Business 2.0 Beta Blogs, Webware.com and Wi-Fi Networking News
wikia.com:
WIKIA UNVEILS OPENSERVING - THE MOTHER OF ALL FREEBIES — New Web Business Model: Get Rich Using Wikia's Services for Free! — Wikia, Inc., the leading provider of community resources for building free content on every topic, today announced OpenServing (http://www.OpenServing.com) …
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Thomas Claburn / InformationWeek:
Socialtext Introducing Wiki Software That Lets You Work Offline — Socialtext Unplugged aims to serve the occasionally disconnected. Users can visit a Socialtext Unplugged page, edit it, and save it only using a Web browser. Changes can be synced to the server-based wiki later.
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Donald Melanson / Engadget:
Goodbye flash memory, hello "phase-change" memory? — If IBM, Macronix, and Qimond have their way, the now ubiquitous flash memory could soon be on its way out, replaced by the new-and-improved "phase-change" memory developed by the trio of companies. While complete details on this catchily-named …
Discussion:
Business 2.0 Beta Blogs
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New York Times:
Times Sq. Ads Spread Via Tourists' Cameras — Advertisers have long been drawn to Times Square as a valuable place to reach consumers, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for space on billboards and blazing video screens. — But recently they have discovered that down on the ground …
Maria Aspan / New York Times:
YouTube Adds a Layer of Filtering to Be a Little Nicer — When the video-sharing site YouTube.com was sold to Google, many of its users worried that corporate ownership would restrict the content of its videos. But now one of YouTube's corporate partners is changing the ways that users comment on those videos instead.
Discussion:
Techdirt, Reel Pop, Mashable!, The Blogging Times, PaidContent, Lost Remote, IP Democracy, David Card and NewTeeVee
Jason Clarke / Download Squad:
Why digg is destined for failure — If you've ever had the good fortune of having one of your websites or blog posts dugg to the point of showing up on digg's homepage, you've enjoyed a huge traffic boost to your site. This is wonderful for web publishers, and I'm not going to lie …
Hitwise US:
Heelys: Hot Trend or IPO Interest — Tomorrow we'll be releasing our hot searched-for-products of this holiday season. As a little taste of whats coming, over the last several weeks, we've noticed a steady increase in searches for Heelys (the tennis shoes with wheels responsible for many mall near-collisions).
Wii Have A Problem:
Attack on Girlfriend Proves Fatal to Boyfriend's Wii Privileges — Words... I need more words... My grasp of the English language is simply not sufficient to describe how incredibly amazing this picture is. Rocky Balboa wouldn't have a black eye that is this painful looking even after a dozen …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Metacafe Traffic Dips, Acquisition May Have Stalled — The rumors around a possible Metacafe acquisition continue to swirl around silicon valley, with Yahoo or Microsoft being considered the most likely acquiror, at a $300 millionish acquisition price. Another potential acquiror …
Alex Mindlin / New York Times:
Sales of iPods and iTunes Not Much in Sync — Apple's ubiquitous iPod and its iTunes music store were intended to be a kind of perpetual motion machine, with iPods helping to sell iTunes and iTunes helping to sell iPods. — Although both are successful, the relationship may not have worked out exactly as expected.
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Federal judge: Making files available for download = distribution — The RIAA's argument that making files available for download constitutes copyright infringement received an important boost from a federal judge. In an decision delivered in October and first reported over the weekend …
Discussion:
digg
Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:
Early (non)users of free Wi-Fi pay the price: frustration — Portland network - In some areas it works extremely well, but MetroFi clearly says an amplifier is needed indoors — Free. What's not to like about that? — A lot, it turns out, for some Portlanders.
