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Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
FCC approves AT&T-BellSouth merger — update The Federal Communications Commission approved the roughly $86 billion megamerger between AT&T and BellSouth on Friday, ending a partisan standoff. — The commission, which had been split between Democrats and Republicans for months on what …
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Susan Crawford blog:
The day the internet became cable television: Dec. 29, 2006 — As part of the AT&T/BellSouth merger that is expected to be approved today, AT&T is now pledging to keep its "wireline broadband Internet access service" neutral. — AT&T joins the trickster pantheon with this move.
Associated Press:
NASA's vision lost on Web generation — CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA's new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show. — Concerned about this lack of interest …
May Wong / Associated Press:
Apple Says Options Probe Clears Execs — Apple Says Options Probe Finds No Misconduct by Managers, Has 'Complete Confidence' in Jobs — SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Apple Computer Inc. cleared Chief Executive Steve Jobs and the rest of its current management of misconduct involving stock option grants …
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Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
Scoble and John Edwards in New Hampshire — Robert Scoble was with presidential candidate John Edwards in Portsmouth, New Hampshire today. Robert is shooting lots of video for PodTech, his employer who is paying his expenses. — The Edwards campaign invited Scoble to travel with them around …
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Wired News:
Wild Predictions for a Wired 2007 — Here are some predictions for 2007: — Google Stock Hits $1,000 per Share — Internet Traffic Doubles ... to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent.
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Meet your shiny new 2007 HTCs — If the X7500 "Athena" somehow managed to fail to attract your attention and you found the Vox, Libra, Love, and Cavailer positively forgettable, first verify that you have a pulse (because we really don't think that's normal) then check this out …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
The Ferrari Vista Question — My doorman just brought a package of blogger kryptonite, aka the Acer Ferrari laptop tricked out with Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. Before the recent brouhaha broke out, I was going to do a simple review, and then send the machine back to Microsoft.
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The Jason Calacanis Weblog
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Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
My thoughts on recent Google tips — I wanted to talk about Blake Ross' post entitled "Trust is hard to gain, easy to lose". I agree with much of what he says. There's a continuum to showing tips. Toward the "hawk" side of the spectrum is the notion that a company can show whatever reasonable content …
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Pete Mortensen / Cult of Mac:
Ten Questions Apple Must Answer in 2007 — We're down to the last two-and-a-half days of 2006, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs is 11 days from taking the wraps off a shiny new product line at MacWorld San Francisco. Other former Apple figures might be a few weeks from being indicted.
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Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
YouTube hosts New Year's Eve Bash — Forget Dick Clark and the Rockin' New Year's Eve party on ABC. YouTube wants you ringing in 2007 with them online. — The video sharing Web site now owned by Google is teaming up with Warner Music Group to produce the first-ever YouTube New Year's Eve Countdown.
Gregg Keizer / TechWeb:
Can-Spam Law 'Big Disappointment' — As the federal Can-Spam Act nears its third anniversary, a spam researcher calls it a "big disappointment" and says it hasn't been a deterrent to junk e-mailers, who have stepped up their efforts in the last few months to flood inboxes with an unprecedented volume of spam.
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yelvington.com:
Throw the bums out — Here's a New Year's resolution every news site should make: Throw the bums out! There is no reason to allow a small number of bullies to corrupt a community discussion forum. If your message boards, story comments, or blogspace has turned into the kind of place …
Reuters:
Typo takes tourist 13,000 km out … BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) — A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles) away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Q&A With Jimmy Wales On Search Wikia — News came out earlier this week that Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales had a new project in mind, to build a community-driven "Google-killer" search engine. I've just finished talking with Jimmy about his plans. Here's a rundown on his vision …
Marc Canter / Marc's Voice:
Original thinking — Hugh MacLeod accused me of being an Original Thinker when we were in Cork, Ireland recently. — I was struck w th how boring all the speakers were and how much fun it was to listen to Hugh. Both of us also spoke at LeWeb3 - so I was running into Hugh quite a lot.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Of Disappearing Sex Blogs & Google Updates — Last week, Barry Schwartz reported there seemed to be a Google update going, based on forum activity he was seeing. Google's Matt Cutts quickly followed up with a short refresher on the difference between algorithm updates, data refreshes and index updates.
Owen Gibson / Guardian:
Oldies but goldies benefit in digital revamp of charts — A shakeup of the singles chart will mean downloads of album tracks, older songs and digital-only releases will count toward the top 75 rundown compiled by the Official Charts Company. — The change is the most radical in a series …
Daniel Jalkut / Red Sweater Blog:
Macintendo Family Values … Nintendo and Apple Announce Strategic Partnership — Nintendo Co. Ltd. and Apple Computer Inc. today announced a multi-year, strategic partnership had commenced earlier this year and will culminate in the January 9, 2007 launch of the partnership's first product: Podfondo.
Reuters:
Ford in Sync with Microsoft's technology? — Ford Motor plans to unveil a deal with Microsoft in January that will put the software company's technology into some of the automaker's cars, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Donald Melanson / Engadget:
Linux claimed to be running on Zune — With Linux running on iPods for a few years now, it would seem that it was only a matter of time before someone got a version of the operating system up and running on Microsoft's Zune, especially given the fact that the player's Freescale iMX31L processor can already handle the OS.
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