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4:40 PM ET, December 26, 2006

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Verizon to Allow Ads on Its Mobile Phones  —  VERIZON WIRELESS, among the nation's most widely advertised brands, is poised to become the advertising medium itself.  —  Beginning early next year, Verizon Wireless will allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather …
Julie Jacobson / The CE Pro Weblog:
Exclusive Details: Best Buy, Exceptional Innovation and ConnectedLife.Home  —  NOTE: This is a long story.  If you're an integrator wondering why I spent so much time on it, skip to the bottom.  Well, not the VERY bottom.  -JJ  —  Best Buy is going to sell a packaged solution of Media Center plus home automation.
Discussion: Techdirt, PVR Wire and Slashdot
RELATED:
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Best Buy's $15,000 ConnectedLife.Home in a box  —  Sure, a fully connected house with the ability to control things like the TV, lights and thermostat remotely sounds great, but at the end of the day someone's got to hook all of that stuff up, and it's not going to be us.
Discussion: SCI FI Tech
Michael Hickins / internetnews.com:
Google to Write an 'Integrated Story'?  —  Internetnews.com editors provide an early roadmap for tech's direction in 2007.  —  Google (Quote) says its mission is to organize all the world's information and make it accessible and useful to everyone.  —  Now well on its way to accomplishing …
Wired News:
Biblio Tech … The new library at Chicago State University has one ironclad rule: No students allowed in these stacks - only robots.  Every book, CD, and DVD in the school's $38 million facility is tagged with a radio-frequency ID chip.  When a borrowed item slides through the return slot, the system identifies and sorts it.
Discussion: digg and Slashdot
Valleywag:
NAMING NAMES: The tech reporters who flack for Second Life  —  CLAY SHIRKY — "Here at KingsRUs.com, we call our website our Kingdom, and any time our webservers serve up a copy of the home page, we record that as a Loyal Subject.  We're very pleased to announce that in the last two months …
Mark Ward / BBC:
Spam surge drives net crime spree  —  Technology Correspondent, BBC News website  —  The tussle between computer security companies trying to protect your PC and the bad guys that try to compromise it is often characterised as an arms race.  —  Sometimes the security companies have the upper hand …
Gizmodo:
Wiimote Controlled Smarthome  —  I've been getting scads of CES pitches from smarthome software and gear makers, and not a single one is as interesting as LiquidIce's Wii-home hack.  It uses the Wii browser, a Flash interface and some PHP script to control the lights, thermostat, security camera, cable DVR, and stereo system.
Discussion: eHomeUpgrade and digg
Bob Tedeschi / New York Times:
Ad Costs on the Web Are Rising, but Perhaps a Bit Irrationally  —  MEDIA executives and investors get a pleasant neck ache from watching the skyward path of online advertising revenues.  But for those who have to pay for advertising, the trend is bringing some anxiety.
Discussion: Techdirt and Seeking Alpha
Blake Snow / Joystiq:
Zelda, Gears, and others for $39 this week at Target  —  Black Friday and holiday shopping deals don't end post Christmas; they're alive and well all this week starting tomorrow.  And Target has some killer $39 buys on big games starting 7 AM Tuesday.  Like arguably two of the biggest games of the year …
Discussion: You NEWB, Xbox 360 Fanboy and digg
Dawn C. Chmielewski / Los Angeles Times:
'Alpha Moms' pitch Nintendo Wii  —  The game company takes an innovative viral approach to drum up support for its new console.  —  Mother knows best.  —  As it geared up to promote its new Wii video game console, Nintendo of America Inc. looked to a group better known for nagging kids to stop playing video games: moms.
Discussion: Joystiq, Wii Have A Problem and digg
Damon Darlin / New York Times:
Hewlett-Packard, Recasting Itself, Is Looking Beyond PCs and Printers  —  Hewlett-Packard is looking for a second act.  Several of them, actually.  —  Its turnaround was confirmed this year when profits from PCs and corporate servers and storage devices nearly doubled from a year earlier.
Discussion: Blogging Stocks
Mike / Techdirt:
Latest Attempt To Catch Phishers May Make Life Difficult For Small Web Vendors  —  from the no-fun-at-all dept  —  It's no secret that there are a lot of scammers out there online, and trying to come up with ways to weed out who's legit and who's not has certainly been a growth industry lately.
Discussion: Associated Press
RELATED:
Associated Press:   'Safe' Web Seal Requires Rigorous Checks
Michael Gartenberg:
Lessons in Analyst Relations  —  I've had the fortune of working as an Industry Analyst for more than a decade now.  One of the interesting aspects of the job is dealing with the various analyst relations folks at different vendors over the years.  Most are great and hardworking professionals.
Eric A. Taub / New York Times:
Forget L.C.D.; Go for Plasma, Says Maker of Both  —  What kind of company takes out ads in daily newspapers attacking one of its own type of products?  In the case of Panasonic, the answer is a company that has significant investments in a rival technology.
Discussion: Seeking Alpha and digg
level3.com:
LEVEL 3 TO ACQUIRE SAVVIS CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK  —  Transaction Combines Industry Leading Network Scale and Video Capabilities with Pioneering Content Distribution Capabilities  —  Company Will Be Well Positioned to Target Growth of Rich Media Services over the Internet
Discussion: GigaOM and NewTeeVee
Darren Murph / Engadget:
How to permanently activate Windows Vista, at least for now  —  While Microsoft's Vista hasn't quite had time to make it out to us normal folk just yet, there's certainly versions floating around thanks to the November 30th corporate release, and we've already found a way to circumvent Redmond's …
Discussion: Microsoft News Tracker and digg
RELATED:
Mike Yamamoto / Crave RSS:
Phones that can power themselves  —  It's only a matter of time before phones join the alternative-energy trend in earnest, and some companies are already trying to get out front with designs before the onslaught begins.  ModeLabs, for one, has released three concept designs for mobile phones …
Discussion: Gizmodo, Tech Digest and Gear Factor
Michael Rose / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
A decade of NeXT and Apple  —  In the summer of 1989, I had a really, really tough assignment: I had to evaluate the NeXT Cube for a publishing company.  What a hardship to have that black box on my desk, along with that 400-dpi laser printer!  I don't know how I ever managed.
Discussion: digg
 
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 More Items: 
Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:
SF MuniFi - maybe in 2007?
Frank Barnako:
Video bloggers head for World Econmic Forum
Discussion: Scobleizer
Frank Barnako:
Amazon reviews holiday sales
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Updated Playstation emulator for Windows Mobile
Discussion: InsideMicrosoft
 Earlier Items: 
Forbes:
Google, China Mobile to launch mobile search service - report
Discussion: Search Engine Land
Michal Birecki / ps3center.net:
PS3center.net Makes The First White PS3
Elise Ackerman / Mercury News:
EBay's China lesson: Go local
Catherine Holahan / Business Week:
Why Yahoo's Panama Won't Be Enough
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

 
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