Top Items:
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Skype's Free Phone Call Plan Will Soon Have Annual Fee — Skype, the Internet calling service owned by eBay, said Tuesday that as of Jan. 1 it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones within the United States and Canada. Those calls had been free since last spring.
Discussion:
Wi-Fi Networking News, TechCrunch, Alec Saunders .LOG, 21talks, VoIP Blog, Technically Speaking and New Media Musings
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Andy Abramson / VoIP Watch:
Skype 3.0 Goes Live, New Cheaper Disruptive Calling Plans Announced for USA — Skype users received an early holiday present, at least those in the USA and Canada, with a new year long pricing scheme that provides twelve months of unlimited calls from the USA and Canada to numbers in the USA …
Discussion:
Roam4free
Annys Shin / Washington Post:
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 …
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Mike / Techdirt:
Just Because You Get Others To Do Your Deceptive Advertising For You, It Doesn't Change That It's Deceptive — from the so-sayeth-the-FTC dept — As the WOMMA Summit went on today, a lot of people were talking about the FTC's ruling on word of mouth marketing efforts.
Discussion:
ChasNote
Brian / Copyblogger:Affiliate Marketing Disclosure Now Required By Law?
Discussion:
ProBlogger Blog Tips
Clay Shirky / Many-to-Many:
Second Life: What are the real numbers? — Second Life 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: — Member of the Business Press: "How many users do you have?"
RELATED:
Valleywag:
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:
Nicole Simon / cruel to be kind:
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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David Weinberger / Joho the Blog:[leweb] Sarkozy - Conservative candidate lectures us
Discussion:
Oliver Thylmann's Thoughts
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Apple ITunes Sales Slid in First Half, Forrester Says (Update4) — Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music store suffered a 65 percent slump in sales during the first six months of the year, reversing almost two years of gains, according to a Forrester Research Inc. report.
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Scott Martin / Red Herring:
Yahoo Dethroned By MySpace — Fox Interactive Media, largely thanks to MySpace, has edged into No. 1 for Internet page views. — Yahoo is getting good at being No. 2. News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media has now edged the search giant out of its long-held perch at the top position for Internet page views.
Discussion:
Technically Speaking
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Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta to drop this friday — Exclusive: Adobe Systems Inc. on friday will make available for download an early public beta of its next-generation graphics editor, Photoshop CS3, but will otherwise abstain from delivering pre-release copies of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications.
Annie Sullivan / Official Google Blog:
Nifty Toolbar upgrades for Firefox — Ever since the latest version of the Google Toolbar for IE came out, Firefox users have been asking when they'll see the same new features in their favorite browser. Well, we've been hard at work on a new version of the Toolbar for Firefox …
Sprint:
Sprint Powers Up Faster Mobile Broadband Network in 10 More Markets, Upgraded Coverage Reaches 60 Million People — Users in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Detroit, Denver, Baltimore, Providence and New Jersey now have the power of significantly faster upload speeds …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
The Iniquities of the Selfish — On Monday, MacHeist1 released the software bundle at the heart of their promotion, under the guise of "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer": … First, there's something silly about calling these apps "hidden gems" in one paragraph …
Official Google Blog:
About Transferable Stock Options — We work hard to attract and retain the world's best talent in a number of ways, and a part of that is offering competitive compensation packages. We offer standard things such as competitive salary, cash incentives, restricted stock units and stock options.
Discussion:
Infothought, Don Dodge on The Next …, Venture Chronicles, Paul Kedrosky's …, InsideGoogle, ben barren and Googlified
newsroom.ucla.edu:
UCLA Warns of Unauthorized Access to Restricted Database — UCLA is alerting approximately 800,000 people that their names and certain personal information are contained in a restricted database that was illegally and fraudulently accessed by a sophisticated computer hacker.
