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.
Discussion:
UMBC eBiquity, The Jason Calacanis Weblog, The Blog Herald, Trends in the Living Networks, Webomatica and digg
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Fred / A VC:
That's Not How You Do It Obama — I had high hopes for Barack Obama's net savvy. But today his campaign blew it. I heard that he announced his candidacy for President today in Springfield, IL, where Lincoln did the same thing almost 150 years ago. I decided to go see the video.
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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.
Vikas Bajaj / New York Times:
In India, the Golden Age of Television Is Now — GHANSHYAM P. SHAH, an 82-year-old widower, spends up to eight hours a day in front of his television watching prayer services, soap operas and financial news. But one afternoon last December, he was completely disconnected from his favorite pastime …
Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0:
The Rapid Transformation Of Publishing Economics — The death of print publishing is coming, it's just a matter of whether it happens in 5 years, 10 years, or 15 years. I'm betting it happens sooner than anyone expects. Colin Crawford, the SVP of online for IDG, posted some stunning figures:
Discussion:
Deep Jive Interests
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Conrad Quilty-Harper / Engadget:
Vista successor "Vienna" planned for late 2009 — Now that Microsoft has freed Windows Vista from the shackles of a five year development process, the company is attempting to [the] wow [starts now] us by revealing that it plans to have its next major operating system ready within the next …
Conrad Quilty-Harper / Engadget:
VMWare video hints at full DirectX virtualization in OS X — Mac users, listen up: a video has appeared on YouTube that shows an internal beta version of VMWare running Windows games at full speed from within Mac OS X. Accompanying this intriguing video is a blog post from Regis Duchesne …
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Steve Yegge / Stevey's Blog Rants:
The Next Big Language — There seems to be a long period of initial obscurity for any new language. Then after that comes a long period of semi-obscurity, followed by total obscurity. —Paul Bissex — People are always asking me to comment on their new programming language they're designing.
Discussion:
Scobleizer
Consumerist:
Comcast Customer Uses "Unlimited Service" Excessively, Gets Disconnected For A Year — Comcast asked Frank to cut back his unlimited internet usage. Frank was confused. He thought unlimited meant, well, unlimited. Frank was wrong. Very wrong. — Comcast replaced Frank's faulty cable modem in November.
Discussion:
digg
Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Wikipedia's got 3-4 months to live?!?! (and Wikipedia's technological blocking of consensus) — Very strange stuff going on in the Wikipedia world... first I get beat down by all kinds of Wikipedia folks for suggesting that Wikipedia place an OPT-OUT advertisement on the Wikipedia …
Discussion:
Lunch over IP, Scobleizer, Things That, Via Digitalis, Infothought, Deep Jive Interests, Disruptive Thoughts and ballpark.ch
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Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google Encounters Hurdles in Selling Radio Advertising — When Google acquired dMarc Broadcasting, a company whose software allows marketers to place ads on radio stations, for up to $1.24 billion early last year, it was seen as a clear sign of Google's ambitions to extend its dominance over Internet advertising to other media.
Discussion:
Lost Remote
Conrad Quilty-Harper / Engadget:
RIM applies for triangular keyboard layout patent — Big, tactile, and fast QWERTY keyboards are the Blackberry's defining characteristic: why then is RIM showing signs that it's going to mess with their tried and tested formula? In the second patent application to surface from the United States Patent …
Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Google can I please pay you $20 a month for GMAIL!? — I've been using GMAIL for a couple of years now and for the past year I've been over 90% in my mailbox usage. Every week or two it fills up and I go on a hunt to kill attachments, delete spam, etc. — Adam Curry is having …
Discussion:
Rakesh Agrawal's Blog
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
Walmart in bed with Microsoft? Walmart says NO to Firefox — Last week, Walmart launched their online video download service. Immediately there were posts that the service did not work with the Firefox or Safari browsers. There was a collective, "WTF" when this happened as this is 2007, not 1997.
Ryan Block / Engadget:
Mega hands-on: Virgin America's Airbus A320 with Red in-flight entertainment — Not-yet-airborne Virgin America invited us to check out the way-decked Airbus A320 with Red prototype in-flight entertainment system that's parked at SFO right now. (Naw, we didn't get to take it up …
