Top Items:
Maria Aspan / New York Times:
Costly gift from Microsoft becomes invite to blog — In Microsoft's latest attempt to reach out to bloggers, the company recently gave away expensive laptops loaded with its new Windows Vista operating system. — But the gifts generated controversy as well as goodwill …
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Looking for the Next Google — SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29 — In brand-new offices with a still-empty game room and enough space to triple their staff of nearly 30, a trio of entrepreneurs is leading an Internet start-up with an improbable mission: to out- Google Google.
Discussion:
Digital Markets, Mark Evans, Don Dodge on The Next …, CenterNetworks, Search Engine Watch Blog and digg
Wall Street Journal:
Jobs Helped Pick 'Favorable' Dates For Option Grants — Apple Report Clears the CEO — Of Wrongdoing, Blames — Ex-Executives in Backdating — Apple Computer Inc. acknowledged that it backdated stock options and that Steve Jobs recommended "favorable" dates for some options awards.
Skrentablog:
Winner-Take-All: Google and the Third Age of Computing … Google has won both the online search and advertising markets. They hold a considerable technological lead, both with algorithms as well as their astonishing web-scale computing platform. Beyond this, however …
Discussion:
John Battelle's Searchblog
Laura M. Holson / New York Times:
Disney Plans to Introduce a Sleek Makeover of Disney.com Site — LOS ANGELES, Dec. 31 — When the Walt Disney Company's chief executive, Robert A. Iger, takes the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 8, he is expected to introduce the new Disney.com Web site that has taken more than a year to redesign.
Discussion:
PaidContent
Michael Rose / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
Apple web site features teaser shot — Is it a sunrise? A monolith? The light from an oncoming train? Whatever it is, it's now decorating the website of everyone's favorite fruit-flavored company. — Presumably we may expect big things this year from AAPL. — [via MacRumors]
Charlie Demerjian / Inquirer:
Windows screwup forces Ubuntu shift — A match made in hell — YOU NEVER QUITE wrap your head around how anti-consumer Microsoft's policies are until they bite you in the bum. Add in the customer antagonistic policies of its patsies, HP in this case, and vendors like Promise, and you have quite a recipe for pain.
John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:
PREDICTIONS 2007 — Yes, I'm at it again, but this year I promise to be a bit more pared down, a bit more to the point. I had nearly 20 predictions last year, I'm hoping that by the time I lift my fingers from the keyboard I'll have a few less. So Happy New Year, and to business:
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Gmail bug exposes your mail account to spammers — Like your Gmail account? Consider it a sacred place which must be protected from spammers at all cost? Yeah, us too. Well, we hate to break the bad news at the dawn of the new year but there's a weakness in Gmail which exposes …
Lev Grossman / Time:
VIDEO GAMES — WII SPORTS (for Wii) — There is no possible way to say this enough times: great graphics don't make great games. Perfect Dark Zero looked like a Titian, but it was a snooze. Wii Sports—a mini-sports anthology that includes golf, boxing, tennis, baseball and bowling—looks like Colecovision.
Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog:
THE BEST WEB 2.0 SOFTWARE OF 2006 — Looking back over 2006 it's clear that we've experienced one of the most remarkable growth surges in Web application history. Literally hundreds of Web sites and applications were launched this year and brought to our attention via the popular review sites …
Discussion:
Web Worker Daily
Google Blogoscoped:
Google Calculator Gone? — Google way back (with a working calculator) — This isn't a good start for Google in 2007: the Google Calculator and currency converter doesn't work anymore, as Ionut Alex. Chitu notes... at least I can reproduce this when I try from here.
Discussion:
Boing Boing
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
EroShare - User Generated Porn — What better way to ring in the new year than with a site that is most definitely not work safe. Eroshare is to Flickr what PornoTube is to YouTube - user generated porn. The site, which launched an hour ago, encourages users to upload their home made erotic photos …
Discussion:
Scobleizer
Paul / Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus:
We call it "The Hurd Defense" — I'm not sure what's funnier, what Apple actually did this week or the way Mac-friendly bloggers and Web sites lapped it up and declared that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had been "cleared" of wrongdoing. I'm pretty sure that Apple actually announced that Jobs knew …
Jeremy Zawodny / Jeremy Zawodny's blog:
2007: Reduce, Focus, and Filtering My Inputs — This is the first in a short series of things I'll likely write about the coming year (2007). The end of the year is often a good time to look back and think about what has happened and why, not to mention how they compared to my expectations and goals (assuming I had any).
