Top Items:
Peter Lauria / New York Post:
HEAVENLY DEAL — SIRIUS, XM SET TO CONFIRM MERGER PLAN TODAY — Satellite radio operators Sirius and XM are expected to announce their long-awaited merger today, according to a source familiar with the deal. — The two sides were locked in negotiations over the weekend trying to hammer …
Eric Pfanner / International Herald Tribune:
Norwegian newspaper publisher finds the secret to profiting online — After catching up on the latest news flashes on the death of Anna Nicole Smith, visitors to www.vg.no, the online version of the biggest-selling tabloid newspaper in Norway, can get their minds back to business by scrolling …
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Eric Pfanner / New York Times:
While Others Struggle, Norwegian Newspaper Publisher Thrives on the Web — The online version of VG, the biggest-selling tabloid newspaper in Norway, had the latest news flashes on the death of Anna Nicole Smith, of course. But a little down the page was something else — oil company earnings reports.
Discussion:
Screenwerk
John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:
A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL WESCH (THE CREATOR OF THAT WONDERFUL VIDEO...) — Michael Wesch, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. If you've been reading Searchblog, then you know him as the guy behind this amazing video.
Greg Sandoval / CNET News.com:
Top YouTube videographers descend on S.F. — reporter's notebook SAN FRANCISCO—In what may be a harbinger of the future, hardly anyone who attended Saturday's gathering of YouTube's most popular bloggers held a conversation without filming it. — At an event called "As One," …
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Greg Sterling / Screenwerk:
YouTube: Strength and Vulnerability — The question on many people's minds since the recent PR warfare between Google/YouTube and Viacom (and NBC) is: will YouTube retain its dominance or will it be supplanted by another site? That's the same question that circulates around Google itself of course.
David Carr / New York Times:
Do They Still Want Their MTV? — MTV prospered for decades because it looked like what a network might look like if a 16-year-old were doing the programming. But now the music channel is trying to make its way in a multidevice, multiplatform, multichannel world, most of which is being programmed by a 16-year-old.
Discussion:
PaidContent
Andy Beard / Niche Marketing:
Polish Gmail vs Google Gmail - The Poets vs The Court Jester — Google might well have goofed again with Gmail domain registrations. I live in Poland so this is quite comical for me, and thus the comical headline. The Polish court system isn't quite as well organised as the US, but decisions are often made faster and a lot cheaper.
Chris Anderson / The Long Tail:
THE ONE THING EVERYBODY FORGETS ABOUT "WE MEDIA" — The always-smart Anil Dash is composing an essay on the rise and fall of citizen media and approvingly points to this post by Rich Skrenta, the CEO of Topix.net. Excerpt: … Sigh. Anil, please don't fall into the same trap Skrenta did.
AdAge:
Attorneys General of 21 States Lash Out at Bud.tv Age Checks — Anheuser-Busch's Status as 'Media Owner' Cited as a Concern — CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Dealing a blow to the $40 million experiment hailed as ushering in a new era for marketer-generated media, the attorneys general of 21 states …
Catharine P. Taylor / Adweek:
The Ties That Bind: Connection Beats Page Views — Digital media executives watched throughout 2006 as Web 2.0 asserted Internet users' creative independence from the media giants. And by November, it was nearly a fait accompli. That was when comScore Media Metrix showed that …
Daisy Whitney / tvweek.com:
Online Video Biz Moves Into Merger Phase — Anystream Acquisition of Cauldron Signals a New Wave of Consolidation — Online video's consolidation phase has begun. — Anystream, which helps media companies publish content in new media venues, is poised to announce this week …
New York Times:
New Weapon in Web War Over Piracy — As media companies struggle to reclaim control over their movies, television shows and music in a world of online file-sharing software, they have found an ally in software of another kind. — The new technological weapon is content-recognition software …
Ryan Block / Engadget:
Massive Google hard drive survey turns up very interesting things — When your server farm is in the hundreds of thousands and you're using cheap, off-the-shelf hard drives as your primary means of storage, you've probably good a pretty damned good data set for looking at the health and failure patterns of hard drives.
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Jeff Leeds / New York Times:
Music Labels Offer Teasers to Download — For all the disquiet the Internet has fostered in the music business, almost every rock star and record executive is intrigued with the prospect of marketing to music fans directly instead of wrangling for exposure with radio programmers or retailers.
Discussion:
Gizmodo
Tim Ferguson / CNET News.com:
Broadband adoption passes halfway mark in U.S. — U.S. residential broadband penetration is expected to exceed 50 percent in 2007—and the U.K. isn't far behind. By the end of 2007, more than 60 million U.S. households will be connected—around 55 percent—according to market researcher Parks Associates.
Discussion:
Macsimum News
Gizmodo:
Delete: The New Erase — Want to be a total [nerd] badass while gunning through your written computer science exam? Then cop one of these Tersumus delete-key erasers. — The palm-sized eraser will help you fix your sloppy coding mistakes and give you a second chance on your poor formating and syntax errors.
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Adobe enters feed reader race — My coworker Jeremiah Owyang says he's not switching from Google Reader until at least a few other people in his trusted network switch too. In reaction to news that Adobe has entered the feed reader race with "myFeedz". I briefly checked out the Adobe Reader.
Ryan Block / Engadget:
WiiXT, the newest Wii modchip claims to enable DVD playback — Watch out Wiinja, Cyclowiz, and WiiKey, the creators of the WiiXT have dubbed it the "Ultimate Wii Modchip", and with all the features it purports to have, they may well be right. That is, if it's real.
Faultline / The Register:
Vodafone caves in to Microsoft IM — Comment Among all of Microsoft's announcements at the 3GSM show was buried a piece of news that almost certainly means the end for the unification of cellular instant messaging efforts around a GSM Association standard. — Exactly a year ago …
