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Loic Lemeur: Betraying 1000 attendees for his own political ambitions? — Last year at Leblogs we had the problem of being promised a high profile event, like *the* major event in this regard and got took by surprise how the audience was not really even. A lot of more geeky people …
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LeWeb3 is political propaganda — No I am not happy to have Mr. Sarkozy here. I don't care if Nicolas Sarkozy changed all his schedule just for you or this conference to be here. He is a politician, he knows his schedule, you surely informed him about the event - hey you two are best friends as it seems.

Why are they here? — "I don't mean to be rude," …
Discussion:
Joho the Blog

FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing — The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships. — In a staff opinion issued yesterday …
Discussion:
Deep Jive Interests, Copyblogger, Technically Speaking, Mathew Ingram, Kotaku, Publishing 2.0, Joystiq and Life On the Wicked Stage


Laser etching coming to a laptop near you — If you can't stand the idea of a cookie cutter laptop and you live in New York, there's a new option: laser etching. — Phil Torrone, an editor at Make magazine, and Limor Fried, a former fellow at the tech-focused art studio Eyebeam R&D …


Yahoo's "Project Fraternity" Docs Leaked — Rumors about the possible acquisition of Facebook, usually with Yahoo as buyer, have been around for most of this year. Not that Yahoo or Facebook have asked for this attention, but the media is getting antsy. Robert Young put it best last week …
Discussion:
Techdirt, Unit Structures, VentureBeat, PE HUB, Mathew Ingram, Blogging Stocks, TechEffect, Valleywag, Search Engine Journal, Joe Duck, ben barren and Technically Speaking

SECOND LIFE: A story too good to check — CLAY SHIRKY — Second Life, the much-hyped virtual world backed by Benchmark Capital, is heading towards two million users. Except it isn't, really. We all know how this game works, and has since the earliest days of the web:

GWT 1.3 Release Candidate is 100% Open Source — Today is quite a milestone for Google Web Toolkit: with the GWT 1.3 Release Candidate, our team is very happy to announce that all of GWT is open source under the Apache 2.0 license. There's a lot to say, but let's start with our mission:

RIM sues Samsung over BlackJack name — Research In Motion is suing Samsung, claiming that the name of the company's new BlackJack smart phone is too similar to that of RIM's own BlackBerry devices. — The suit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

Intalio to Release Entire BPMS Under Open Source License — Intalio/BPMS to Be Released Under Mozilla Public License With Attribution — REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Intalio, Inc., The Open Source BPMS Company, today announced that Intalio/BPMS Community Edition will be released under …


Google Finance Overhaul — As anticipated, Google Finance launched a fairly extensive redesign and feature changes today. There is much more information included on the home page v. the old layout. Comparison charts can now be created for multiple stocks. Top stocks can be sorted by market cap, price, search popularity, etc.

Yoqoo.com Receives US$12 Million in Funding from Sutter Hill, Farallon Capital and Chengwei Ventures — BEIJING, Dec. 12 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ — Yoqoo.com, a leading online video sharing and distribution platform in China, today announced it has completed a US$12 million round of private equity funding …

2 Firms Pay $4.3 Billion for Sabre — Sabre Holdings, the travel reservation company once owned by American Airlines, agreed to be sold late last night for about $4.3 billion to Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group, according to people involved in the negotiations.

Scammers take Web mail hostage — After visiting a cybercafe, a Hotmail user returned to find the Web mail account empty except for a note demanding payment for the return of the messages and address book, a security firm said Monday. — The affected person had accessed the Hotmail e-mail account …

The fate of codename "Casino" — Lately there's been some stir about a project at Microsoft often referred to by codenames like "Casino" and "OneView." The team behind Casino started the project with some clear goals: to bridge the gap between searching local and remote data …
Discussion:
MSTechToday


Microsoft doesn't want Zune lost in the Shuffle — Trying to catch up to the iPod is an expensive proposition. — To tout its Zune, Microsoft launched a marketing campaign on par with that for the original Xbox. But now that the music player has spent a month on the market …

Sony Claims Wii Is "More of a Novelty" Despite Wii Sales Doubling PS3 Sales — The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has an article out that indirectly outlines Nintendo's comeback into the gaming world. Accordingly, U.S. retailers estimate that nearly 1.5 million Wiis will be sold …

Wi-fi: should we be worried? — Concern about the safety of wireless networks is mounting, with people blaming everything from headaches to cancer on the technology — It started as a low murmur, and has now risen to a persistent hum. Thanks partly to a lively correspondence in the pages of The Times …


YouTube, Southwest Launch TV Ad Contest — Just days after partnering with Coke for a greeting cards promotion, YouTube is announcing today a partnership with Southwest Airlines that asks YouTube users to create video ads for the Dallas-based airline. — The contest is called "Wanna Get Away" …

TV prices dropping too fast, Sony says — Television prices are dropping faster than expected, and Sony's not too happy about it. — Prices for liquid crystal display TVs should drop between 25 percent and 30 percent this year. That's between 5 percent and 7 percent more than Sony anticipated …


Google Maps Plus Box : Local Meets Organic Search — Matt Cutts touched upon the addition to Google Maps powered collapsible maps Plus Box integrated within Google's organic search results over the weekend, and I read it over without really thinking too much about it. — That is, not until I saw them in action.


New: Ajax13 rounds out online suite with new Powerpoint app — By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher Hisham El-Emam tells me that his team at Ajax13 has just added ajaxPresents, a Powerpoint-like online application. The company's suite also includes ajaxWrite, ajaxSketch, ajaxXLS, and ajaxTunes.