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3:45 PM ET, December 19, 2006

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Opera:
The Opera browser for Wii launches just in time for the holidays  —  Opera Software today announces that a trial version of its Web browser for Nintendo's new game console, Wii, will be available on December 22, 2006.  The trial version of the Opera browser for Wii is available for download …
RELATED:
Opera:
Opera Introduces Fraud Protection, Powered by GeoTrust and PhishTank …
Discussion: Gadgetell and digg
Susan Stellin / New York Times:
Offline Involuntarily  —  Five years ago, the main challenge for data-hungry business travelers was finding a hotel that offered high-speed Internet access.  Then came a shift to wireless and even free connections.  —  But these days, the top priority for many is simply getting consistent …
Greg Jarboe / Search Engine Watch Blog:
Top news searches differ from top web searches  —  When is a search term not a search term?  That's a question worth asking after looking at a year's worth of search results on Google, Yahoo and AOL.  —  Google has just released its 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist.
RELATED:
Nick / Rough Type:
Dweebs, horndogs and geezers  —  Now this is mind-boggling.  Check out how radically different the top ten search terms of 2006 were for Google, Yahoo and AOL.  —  Here's Google:  —  1. Bebo  —  2. Myspace  —  3. World Cup  —  4. Metacafe  —  5. Radioblog  —  6. Wikipedia  —  7. Video
Time:
5 Things That Went From Buzz to Bust  —  The message of this page is, Beware all hype.  Here are five phenomena that captivated the media for a spell, then turned out to be less than huge.  Our bad  —  SNAKES ON A PLANE, AUDIENCE DISEMBARKS  —  When the words Snakes on a Plane hit the Internet …
Discussion: Kotaku
RELATED:
Blake Snow / Joystiq:
TIME magazine deems PS3 a bust
Discussion: CrunchGear, Go Nintendo and digg
Richard Siklos / New York Times:
AOL Chief Has a View, a Long One  —  If AOL were being dressed up for a sale, as has been rumored on and off for several years, Randy Falco is an odd choice to be the new chief executive.  —  As Mr. Falco notes, he is hardly a short-term guy.  Before starting at Time Warner's AOL unit this month …
Zune Insider:
Zune Compatible with Vista: Today  —  Today (Tuesday the 19th of December) we're issuing a 22 MB update to make Zune compatible with Windows Vista.  The update also improves the Zune software installation process, addressing the issues that some of the known issues users reported.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Polar Rose: Europe's Entrant Into Facial Recognition  —  Malmö, Sweden based Polar Rose is having its coming out party today and pre-announcing a product release slated for early next year.  CEO Nikolaj Nyholm gave me demo of what's coming last weekend.
Gizmodo:
SlingPlayer Mobile Now Works With the Dash and BlackJack  —  With the latest update to the SlingMobile software, users of the HTC (T-Mobile) Dash and the Samsung (Cingular) BlackJack can now sling their media to and fro while on-the-go.  The Dash has been out for around two months …
Discussion: Zatz Not Funny! and Digital World
Kim / Weatherall's Law:
Reactions to the Cooper decision  —  Various reactions to the 'linking is authorisation' Cooper decision handed down yesterday by the Full Federal Court:  — I commented yesterday (summary? 'troubling'.  'Have we, or have we not just had a very extended debate about copyright law in Australia?
Nick / Rough Type:
Sharecropping the long tail  —  A while back I wrote that Web 2., by putting the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership over the product of their work, provides an incredibly efficient mechanism to harvest the economic value …
Discussion: Compete Blog and TeleRead
Randfish / SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog:
Everything in the Digg, Reddit & Netscape Algorithms  —  At work today, Matt noted that he found Digg's algorithm far more interesting than Google's.  I was shocked - after all, Digg isn't nearly as complex or widely used as Google, but with its rising popularity in the tech space, I could …
Tropicaljantie / Watching, Testing, Digesting:
As predicted here is the first Skype worm on the loose...  My eagle eyes all over the world just reported this.  I was waiting for stuff like this to happen and this is only the beginning of a probably very serious problem.  I think the worst thing that could happen is that some worm …
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Coming in January: "Month of Apple Bugs"  —  A pair of security researchers has picked January 2007 as the starting point for a month-long project in which each passing day will feature a previously undocumented security hole in Apple's OS X operating system or in Apple applications that run on top of it.
Discussion: Donna's SecurityFlash and Slashdot
Greg Sandoval / CNET News.com:
Digg continues to battle phony stories  —  Digg continues to crack down on users who plant phony stories on behalf of marketers, recently deleting a user who posted a story about a company that offered to compensate him.  —  The news aggregate site, which allows users to play editor and decide …
Jason McMaster / GigaGamez:
Double Fusion Receives New Round of Venture Capital  —  Breaking News  —  Double Fusion, an in-game advertising company, has received an infusion of 26 million dollars from a group of venture capitalists, including Norwest Venture Partners, Time Warner, Hearst Corporation and others.
Discussion: alarm:clock and PaidContent
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Ask X - New UI for Ask.com Secretly Launched  —  Tonight I stumbled upon what appears to be a brand new User Interface for Ask.com.  I was doing some searches on Ask.com for a local kiwi band, when I noticed a link in the top right asking me to try out something called Ask X. Screenshot below:
Bruce Houghton / hypebot:
Amazon To Enter Crowded Download Market With MP3 Only Store  —  Late last week Amazon began circulating contracts to labels aiming for a late 1st Q '07 music download store launch.  Rumors of an Amazon entry have been circulating all year, but died down as attention shifted first to the URGE launch and then to Microsoft's ZUNE.
Google Blogoscoped:
Google Maps With Multiple Destinations  —  Google added a feature that lets you add multiple destinations to your driving directions.  For example, I'm searching Google Maps for [from stuttgart, germany, to cologne, germany].  Then there's a link titled "Add destination..." …
Discussion: Zoli's Blog and Search Engine Land
 
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 More Items: 
Lifehacker:
Edit images online
Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
LinkedIn Hits a Tipping Point: Annoying distraction turns essential business tool
Discussion: Conversion Rater
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
YouTube myth debunked, Google phone, Endoxon, iPhone, Perkins' memoir & more
Discussion: Valleywag
Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:
Clearwire Files for an IPO, Again
Discussion: Reuters and Techdirt
Carlo / Techdirt:
FCC Chairman Only Able To Help Telcos Halfway This Week
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Peerflix Swaps One Problem For Another
Davis / Davis Freeberg's Digital Connection:
TiVo Quietly Settles Gift Certificate Class Action
Discussion: PVR Wire
Associated Press:
Matsushita to offer new lithium battery
 Earlier Items: 
Riva Richmond / Wall Street Journal:
Software to Spot 'Phishers' Irks Small Concerns
Discussion: Kevin Maney
Alice Z. Cuneo / AdAge:
Ford Denies Connection to Web-Concert Porno Promo
Discussion: PaidContent and AdJab
Erick Schonfeld / The Next Net:
Second Life Adds Its Second Millionth Resident
Samuel Cohen / The Apple Blog:
Top 10 Apps for Laptop-Toting Mac Users
Samsung:
SAMSUNG Launches the World's First 'Optical Joystick' Phone
Discussion: CrunchGear and Engadget Mobile
EE Times:
Verizon joins Asian consortium to build $500-million U.S.-China network
Discussion: GigaOM and dailywireless.org
Anick Jesdanun / Associated Press:
Imbalance in Net speeds impedes sharing
Rcade / Workbench:
My Battle with MGM Over Wargames.Com
Discussion: Techdirt and Digital Life