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.
RELATED:
About Skype:
Skype Announces New Skype Unlimited Calling Plan — Offers 12 Months of Unlimited Skype Calls to Any Phone Within the US and Canada for a Flat Annual Rate — Skype, the global Internet communications company, is now offering U.S. and Canadian consumers the new Skype Unlimited Calling plan …
BBC:
Apple denies download sales fall — Apple has denied a report which claims US sales at its iTunes Music Store fell by 65% in the first half of 2006. — Research group Forrester said it was too soon to say whether its findings showed that buyers were "reaching their saturation level for digital music".
Discussion:
Engadget, Techdirt, Blackfriars' Marketing, Seeking Alpha, MacUser, Gizmodo and Macsimum News
RELATED:
Connie Guglielmo / Bloomberg:
Apple May Be Carrier for IPod Phone, Analyst Says (Update1) — Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Apple Computer Inc. may serve as its own wireless carrier if it delivers an iPod-based cell phone next year and rely on the company's network of retail stores to sell service contracts for the device, UBS AG said.
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.
RELATED:
Anick Jesdanun / Associated Press:ComScore: MySpace tops Yahoo in November
Discussion:
Search Engine Land
CIO.com:
IBM, Yahoo Launch Free Enterprise Search Tool — IBM and Yahoo have developed a free, entry-level, enterprise search application that at least one analyst believes will seriously disrupt the low-end segment of this market where Google has been selling many of its Mini search devices.
RELATED:
Microsoft:
Microsoft Robotics Studio Now Available to Provide Common Development Platform — More than 30 vendors offer support for creating broad range of innovative robotics applications. — Among the many remarkable innovations emerging out of the robotics industry, from surveillance robots …
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Robert McLaws / Windows-Now.com:
Shameless Post: I need more storage so that... Seagate is having a contest where someone could win a 750GB external hard drive. All they have to do is describe their digital lifestyle, and explain what they'll do with more hard drive space. So here it goes... My Digital Lifestyle
Chris Anderson / The Long Tail:
WHAT WOULD RADICAL TRANSPARENCY MEAN FOR WIRED? (PART 2) — In the previous post, I described how the media landscape is changing, starting with reader expectations. In this post I'll describe what that might imply for a media organization like ours. If the key word is "participation", how could we encourage that to the fullest?
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
A first look at Firefox 3.0 — Mozilla has officially released the first public alpha build of Firefox 3.0. Codenamed Gran Paradiso, Firefox 3 includes the new Gecko 1.9 rendering engine which leverages the open-source Cairo rendering framework and features heavily refactored reflow algorithms …
Ewan / The All New Ewan's Musings:
LeWeb3 Fallout. As A Speaker, I'm Not Happy — I was a speaker at LeWeb3, from which I have just returned. As the conference opened, I was on a panel with three others, for a 30 minute session, where I would talk about Combat Cards (the collectible card game for Second Life) …
Discussion:
One Man & His Blog, Peer Pressure, NevilleHobson.com, Naked Conversations and Open (finds, minds …
Heather Champ / FlickrBlog:
Ho ho ho! Flickr Gifts and Upload Limit Changes — It's now easier than ever to spread joy this holiday season by giving the Gift of Flickr. You can purchase a special activation code that you can give to anyone, whether or not they have an existing Flickr account.
Yahoo!:
Yahoo! Search Marketing Platform Opens Online Sign-up for New Customers — U.S. Businesses Can Now Sign Up Online To Take Advantage of Yahoo!'s Powerful New Search Marketing System — BURBANK, Calif., Dec 12, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company …
Katharine Q. Seelye / New York Times:
More Journalists Join Political News Venture — Mike Allen, a reporter who covers the White House for Time magazine, and Roger Simon, the chief political correspondent for Bloomberg News, are joining the new multimedia political news venture being overseen by two former Washington Post journalists.
Discussion:
PaidContent
Chris Pirillo:
A Tablet PC Wedding — A few weeks ago, Ponzi suggested that we could read our marriage vows from our respective laptops during the ceremony. I was amazed that she would suggest such a thing, but it just goes to show you that she really understands me (and respects my unhealthy fascination with technology).
