Top Items:
LeeAnn Prescott / Hitwise US:
Google Blog Search Surpasses Technorati — When Google Blog Search launched last year, I wondered if it would surpass Technorati in market share of visits. This week Hitwise data show that the market share of visits to Google Blog Search surpassed visits to Technorati for the week ending 12/23/06.
Discussion:
Sadagopan's weblog …, Paul Mooney, UMBC eBiquity, GigaOM, Googlified, HipMojo.com, John Battelle's Searchblog and Search Engine Land
RELATED:
LeeAnn Prescott / Hitwise US:
Yahoo! Answers Captures 96% of Q and A Market Share — Search Engine Land had an interesting post about question and answer sites today that linked to a thorough reviewfrom MIT Technology Review of six of these sites. Yahoo! Answers was the clear winner, which is can partly be attributed to its sheer volume of users.
Joel Spolsky / Joel on Software:
Bribing Bloggers — There's an interesting debate going on about whether bloggers should accept gifts from vendors. — Lately Microsoft, working through their PR agency, Edelman, has been getting rather aggressive about trying to buy good coverage from bloggers.
Discussion:
Mathew Ingram, Office Evolution, Geeking with Greg, Tom Hume, Incremental Blogger, Pito's Blog and Slashdot
RELATED:
Darren Rowse / ProBlogger Blog Tips:Microsoft Under Fire Over Laptop Giveaways to Bloggers
Discussion:
Laughing Squid, Global Nerdy, eWEEK.com, Worker Bees Blog, CrunchGear and NevilleHobson.com
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:I think the Microsoft Vista giveaway is an awesome idea
Discussion:
Deep Jive Interests, Web Worker Daily, broadstuff, Monkey Bites, Worker Bees Blog, TechBlog, Jeremy's Blog, J. LeRoy's Evolving Web, CyberNet Technology News, A View from the Isle, Vecosys, Thomas Hawk's Digital …, gapingvoid, LEWIS 360°, Seeking Alpha, Marshall Kirkpatrick, ALLIED, the j. botter weblog and digg
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
News site Digg raises $8.5M more, rejects evidence it has been gamed — Digg, the news site that lets users rank stories by voting, has raised $8.5 million in fresh financing from existing backers, putting to rest for now speculation that it might sell to a bigger media player.
Discussion:
Mercury News, easybourse.com, Valleywag, Deep Jive Interests, Conversion Rater, HipMojo.com, GigaOM, Mashable!, PaidContent, The Next Net, StartupSquad, Lost Remote and digg
RELATED:
Wendy Tanaka / Red Herring:
Digg Raises $8.5 Million — New funding might suggest that the news site will remain independent. — Digg, the San Francisco-based site that lets users rank news stories, raised $8.5 million from two of its existing investors, according to a report from VentureWire.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Gmail Disaster: Reports Of Mass Email Deletions — Just a week after I wrote "Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect" a number of users started complaining that all of their Gmail emails and contacts were auto deleted. — The first message, posted on the Google Groups forum on December 19, stated …
Discussion:
GigaOM, CyberNet Technology News, CenterNetworks, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Googling Google and digg
Scott Leith / Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
BellSouth-AT&T deal may be wrapping up — AT&T appears to be edging closer to completing the company's $86 billion buyout of BellSouth, with Federal Communications Commission approval possible as soon as today. — The timing of the vote still could change, given that the FCC was once expected to sign off on the deal in October.
RELATED:
Mike / Techdirt:
AT&T Agrees To Keep The Net Neutral For 30 Months To Get BellSouth — from the punting-until-later dept — With FCC chair Kevin Martin unable to push through an approval for the AT&T BellSouth merger due to an (no, seriously, don't laugh) ethical stance from a fellow commissioner …
CNET News.com:
Top ten Apple rumours of all time — What do you get when you cross a notoriously tight-lipped computer company with rabidly fanatical users? A whole lot of gossip, speculation and hearsay, that's what. Thirty years of Apple Computer has seen the company rise, fall and rise again like a kind …
RELATED:
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
HD-DVD AACS hacked — A hacker going under the alias "muslix64" has written a utility which is capable of decrypting a AACS (Advanced Access Content System) protected HD-DVD discs. — The decryption tool, called BackupHDDVD, is a Java-based command-line utility which decrypts …
Josh Goldman / CrunchGear:
Amazon.com's Best Of 2006 List Released — Amazon.com released its year-end "Best of" lists, which tallies up not only the best-selling items for the site's various stores, but also the most positively reviewed, most wished-for and most frequently purchased as gifts.
Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing:
Google "disappears" sex blogs? UPDATED — Xeni Jardin: UPDATE (Dec. 28, 12PM ET): Readers have been writing in to say that whatever happened here, the issue appears to be resolved for now — at least for the specific sex blogs cited in this post. I haven't verified this, but if it's true, great.
RELATED:
Tony / Real Talk About Making Real Sex Films:Will Google Kill Comstock Films?
Discussion:
Boing Boing
Gamasutra:
Mars Sucks - Can Games Fly on Google Earth? — As part of an Intel team focused on pushing the limits of PC gaming, we decided to investigate whether Google* Earth could be used as the foundation of a video game. Of course the best way to find out was to try it, which we did with a small prototype we call "Mars Sucks."
Discussion:
Joystiq
Peter Pachal / SCI FI Tech:
The Eclipse: One hot cell phone, hold the extras — If you think cameras, video, and the Internet have no place on a cell phone, designer Rune Larsen is right there with you. His Eclipse slider phone gets rid of any and all features besides calling, keeping the size down to just a couple of inches with the screen retracted.
Gerald Traufetter / Spiegel Online:
The Whole Planet on a Hard Drive — Google and Microsoft are racing to provide computer users with a virtual world tour. Who will be the first to offer its readers a 3-D map of the globe? — Early in his life, John Hanke was fond of running his finger across the pages of his National Geographic atlas …
Artem Boytsov / Official Google Blog:
How we came up with year-end Zeitgeist data — The Zeitgeist is "the spirit of time." This is why when we come up with the lists of top searches on Google.com for 2006, we do not simply retrieve the most frequently-searched terms for the period — the truth is, they don't change that much from year to year.
Discussion:
Technically Speaking
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Korea considering gold farming regulation — A controversial bill proposed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in South Korea aims to control the exchange of virtual currency. Described by the deputy director of the mMinistry's Game Industry Division as an attempt to …
Jeremy Toeman / LIVEdigitally:
How to Survive CES: 10 Practical Tips — The 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is less than two weeks away, and (as always), I'm pretty excited about it. This is my 7th year attending the show, and for the first time in seven years, I don't have massive amounts of responsibilities.
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun
Jim Tharpe / Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Busy travelers snap up iPods from Hartsfield vending machines — Concourse A machine sold $55,000 worth of electronics in a month — Anita Leopold has a little surprise for anyone who thinks vending machines were created to dispense lightly salted snack food and sugar-laced temptations.
