Top Items:
Wall Street Journal:
The Wizards of Buzz — A new kind of Web site is turning ordinary people into hidden influencers, shaping what we read, watch and buy. — This winter, many parents across the country are sitting on the floor with slabs of cardboard, box cutters and special rivets, and building pirate ships for their kids.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Digg Rock Stars — A Wall Street Journal article called "The Wizards of Buzz" focuses on the power of the top users on Digg, Netscape and other "social bookmarking" sites. The article highlights 16 or so of these users, along with their real name, screen name, areas of interest and other information.
Ccoc / Colin's Corner:
The transformation of IDG — For over four decades we've had print blood running through the veins of the corporate body. But over the last few years we've seen dramatic change. Today the absolute dollar growth of our online revenues now exceeds the decline in our print revenues.
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
Is Wikipedia really in danger? — Florence Devouard, chairwoman of the Wikimedia Foundation, caused a bit of a stir at the recent Lift conference in Geneva by suggesting that Wikipedia is running out of money and could "disappear" — a comment I first saw at Nick Carr's blog …
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Seth Godin / Seth's Blog:
Please don't buy this book — Anders wrote me a note and wondered about this email in his inbox, from Amazon. — I didn't authorize this book to be published, I have no idea who the publisher is and I certainly didn't ask Amazon to email anyone. — You can get the ebook right here for free.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Second Life Census — Second Life has done a good job being transparent with their statistics. Key metrics are available on the home page, and additional information was released last December. Today the company got even more granular, releasing detailed information on the Second Life population …
Andy Abramson / VoIP Watch:
Sprint Is Getting It Right — As many readers know Martin Geddes and I both have had our share of issues with T-Mobile on different sides of the Atlantic, so it's somewhat ironic that the exact opposite type of customer service experience occurred with his former employers, Sprint in my life.
Robert McMillan / InfoWorld:
Microsoft: Vista follow-up likely in 2009 — VP of development hints at possible features, code name for Microsoft's next client OS — With Vista just out the door, Microsoft is now drawing up plans to deliver its follow-up client operating system by the end of 2009 …
Steve O'Hear / The Social Web:
Barack Obama launches social network — Barack Obama, the Democrat presidential hopeful, has launched his own social network which he's calling MyBarackObama.com. The site invites supporters to create a profile, blog their campaign experiences, plan and attend events, find other supporters, and help raise funds for the campaign.
Joe McKendrick / The FASTForward Blog:
Will Search Replace Relational Databases? — At least two of the end-user customer presentations at the FASTforward conference involved deployments that invoked search-based querying that got around what would have been more onerous structured database projects.
Discussion:
Enterprise Web 2.0
SacredFacts:
We Media - Groundhog Day? — In 2005 I went to the We Media Conference in New York and thought it was pretty interesting, made some good contacts and formed some new ideas. So in 2006 the BBC, with Reuters, hosted the We Media conference in London. This was less good - although not as bad as some fulminating bloggers alleged.
Ryan Block / Engadget:
Debunk: Microsoft files for Zune phone with FCC — probably not — There's some buzz going around right now about a "Zune phone" filed with the FCC — we did a little extra digging, and we're not really convinced that's what's at hand. We know a Zune phone is in the works …
Ryan Singel / Wired:
Government Seeks To Halt Telecom Spying Suits — Attorneys targeting the nation's largest telecommunications for their alleged participation in the government's warrantless wiretapping program argued today that their cases should also be subject to a landmark ruling in a related case against AT&T …
Scott Gu / ScottGu's Blog:
My "First Look at Orcas" Presentation — One of the highlights of my recent trip to Europe was getting the chance to publicly show off some of the new features in our next release of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework (codename: "Orcas") for the first time publicly. — You can download the deck I presented here.
Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
Pimp My YouTube - Vidavee Heralds the Start of a YouTube Ecosystem — YouTube add-ons are great in principle, but finding something unique that YouTube won't copy in a few months is a real challenge. One idea that could work is cloning applications like Zingfu, RockYou or Slide.com, but for video.
Steve Gordon / The Register:
The slow death of DRM — Column The DRM walls are crumbling. Earlier this week, Steve Jobs called on the major record labels to allow online music sales unfettered by digital rights management restrictions. — Today, the Wall Street Journal disclosed that EMI is in negotiations …
Discussion:
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Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
MySpace Makes $25 Million a Month in Ads — As is often the case, the media is trying to extract the "interesting bits" from Rupert Murdoch's keynote interview at the McGraw-Hill Digital Media Summit in New York yesterday. The best tidbit seems to be that MySpace is pulling …
Discussion:
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