Top Items:
Steven Levy / Newsweek:
Finally, Vista Makes Its Debut. Now What? — Bill Gates explains why you should buy his new operating system, what he's doing next and why John Hodgeman bugs him. — Vista View: Gates at the launch of his new operating system — On the morning of the launch of the Vista operating system earlier …
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kNox / Our Picks:
Bill Gates: Vista is so secure it could run life support systems. — While on a visit in Romania, where Bill Gates participated in the celebration of 10 years since the Microsoft branch has been running there, and the launch of Vista, Microsoft's president declared that …
Mike / Techdirt:
Romanian President Tells Bill Gates How Awesome Pirated Software Is For His Country — from the keep-sending-it,-please dept — Back in the old days, even Bill Gates would admit that piracy actually helped Microsoft, as it helped get people "addicted" to the software and built …
Discussion:
The Register
Kevin Rose / Digg the Blog:
A couple updates... Hey everyone - — It's been awhile since I've posted and I wanted to get the New Year underway by clearing up a couple of perceptions that have arisen around attempts to manipulate (game) the listing of home page stories on Digg. — Since the early days of the site …
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Muhammad Saleem / Pronet Advertising:
Latest Digg Payola Exposed! — Thanks to my friend and top Digg user #6 Karim Yergaliyev (supernova17), we bring to you the latest edition of 'Digg Payola Exposed!' — Note: I replaced the email addresses to reflect the Digg user names of the individuals that received the email.
Harry McCracken / PC World: Techlog:
Zoho's Cool Web-Based Note Taker — One of the most impressive things I saw here at the DEMO conference (which wrapped up this evening) is a Web service that's still in a private alpha version. As such, it has every right to be rough around the edges, and it is—but it's also …
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Staci D. Kramer / PaidContent:
Viacom Demands That Google Pull More Than 100,000 Clips From YouTube — You're reading it here first ... (Ed. note: The WSJ posted as mine was posting; others are following quickly.) Exasperated by the failure to reach an agreement with Google and YouTube after months of negotiations …
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Reuters:
Viacom demands YouTube pull down videos — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Viacom Inc. has demanded that Google Inc.'s online video service YouTube pull down all of its video clips after they failed to reach an agreement, the company said. — About 100,000 video clips from Viacom-owned properties …
Gregg Keizer / InformationWeek:
Microsoft Exec Wanted To Mask Linux Report Sponsorship, E-Mails Reveal — Kevin Johnson worried adding Microsoft's moniker to IDC analysis for its "Get the Facts" publicity campaign would only fuel the fire from Linux supporters. — Microsoft executives pondered whether to remove …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:Microsoft tried to muck with anti-Linux 'facts'
Discussion:
O'Reilly ONLamp Blog
Matthew Garrahan / Financial Times:
Disney sells 1.3m films on iTunes — Downloads of Walt Disney films on the iTunes platform have risen sharply to more than 1.3m after only three months on sale, putting pressure on other Hollywood studios to join Apple's digital service. — Disney began selling its new movies on iTunes in October.
Discussion:
Business 2.0 Beta, IP Democracy, Reel Pop, Paul Colligan's … and The Unofficial Apple Weblog
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Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:
Updated: Adventures in Amazon Margins — Since first (!) achieving profitability back in 2002 online retailer Amazon's gross margins have mostly gone one direction: down. It's been a bumpy and unpleasant ride, with just-announced margins the lowest full-year figures since the company's fiscal 2001.
Discussion:
Business 2.0 Beta
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:Amazon: 220,000 developers signed up for Amazon Web Services
Discussion:
Read/WriteWeb
MacNN:
Apple files iPhone/iTMS transactions patent — Apple Files Patent Relating to iPhone/iTMS Transactions — On February 1, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple's patent application titled Configuration of a computing device in a secure manner .
CNET News.com:
Gawker Media mystery ads appear on YouTube — A YouTube subscriber with an affinity for Web sites owned by Gawker Media has for the past three months been posting copyright videos sandwiched between ads for Gawker-owned properties such as Valleywag and Gizmodo.
New York Times:
It's 'Squawk Box' Meets 'Saturday Night Live' — A few years ago, a video on the stock performance of Jack in the Box might have involved a sit-down interview with the fast-food restaurant's chief executive, dryly discussing its fundamentals. — Today, it is just as likely to be a music video …
Discussion:
Kevin Maney
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Interarchy Interview: Peter N Lewis and Matthew Drayton — It's not every day that one of the most popular indie Mac apps in history changes hands, but that's what happened today, when Matthew Drayton and his new company, Nolobe, acquired the rights to Interarchy from Peter N Lewis's Stairways Software.
Jenstar / JenSense:
AdSense increases publisher earnings to $250 for new AdSense referrals — Have you noticed many $5 AdSense or AdWords referral popping up on your AdSense reports yesterday? Don't worry, you aren't losing out on the potential $100 you could earn when that referred publisher earns …
Ken Schachter / Red Herring:
YouTimes? — New York Times to post user-generated content. — The New York Times, the gray lady of establishment journalism, plans to begin posting user-generated video in March, an executive said Wednesday. — Speaking in a panel discussion at the SIIA Information Industry Summit in New York City …
