Top Items:
John Dunbar / Associated Press:
AT&T compromise may get merger approved — WASHINGTON - AT&T Inc. has offered a new set of concessions that are expected to satisfy the two Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission and lead to approval of the company's $85 billion buyout of BellSouth Corp. Approval by the full commission could happen as soon as Friday.
Discussion:
IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband, Michael Geist's Blog, RSS, Kelsey Group Blogs and PaidContent
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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 …
Mike / Techdirt:
And By The Time Anyone Reads The Sneaky Fine Print On AT&T's Concessions, The Merger Will Be Done — from the fooled-ya dept — A few hours ago, we wrote about the concessions AT&T agreed to in order to get their merger with BellSouth approved — possibly today.
Discussion:
broadbandreports.com
Bloomberg:
AT&T Offers New Concessions to FCC in BellSouth Deal (Update2) — Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) — AT&T Inc., the largest U.S. phone company, agreed to new concessions including some price controls to win regulatory approval for its $86 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp.
Discussion:
SeekingAlpha Telecom Stocks
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.
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.
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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.
Ben Charny / MarketWatch:
Google's blog search engine takes over top slot — SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Given Google Inc.'s dominance of the Internet search and advertising market, it's difficult to think of the company ever needing to pull off an underdog, "Rocky"-style comeback.
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.
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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 …
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New York Times:
Apple Filing to Tell All on Options — Apple Computer and its charismatic chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, are expected to make a big announcement about a new product at the Macworld conference next month. Before that, however, the company has some other highly anticipated information to share.
Discussion:
The Unofficial Apple Weblog
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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.
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Scott Beale / Laughing Squid:Windows Vista Laptop on eBay, Proceeds Going To EFF
Discussion:
John Chow dot Com, Technically Speaking, the j. botter weblog, PR 2.0, The Blogging Journalist, Slashdot and digg
Walter S. Mossberg / Wall Street Journal:
The HDTV Dilemma: Pay for TiVo's Recorder Or Settle for Cable's? — If you just got a high-definition television, one of the best things you can buy to complement it is a digital video recorder, or DVR, the tapeless gadgets that save programs so you can watch them when you choose.
Discussion:
digg
The Bad Astronomer / Bad Astronomy Blog:
The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006 — This past year has been — like most are — up and down for science in general and astronomy in particular. We've had stunning successes and heartbreaking setbacks, all of which seem huge when dealing with them at the time.
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."
