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8:40 PM ET, May 20, 2007

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Iain Dey / Telegraph:
Yahoo may net Bebo owners $1bn  —  Yahoo is rumoured to be working on an attempted takeover of Bebo, Britain's most popular social networking site, which could turn its British-born founder into the next internet billionaire.  —  Michael Birch founded the site with his American wife, Xochi, in 2005.
Discussion: Vecosys, paidContent.org and Valleywag
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo's Rumored $1 billion Talks With Bebo
Discussion: Screenwerk
Froosh / HipMojo.com:   Bebo/YHOO: My Rumor's Bigger Than Yours
Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
Yahoo In Talks To Buy Bebo for $1 Billion (Rumor)
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:   Rumor from across the pond: Yahoo wants Bebo
MG Siegler / parislemon:
Yahoo: When You Can't Buy Facebook, You Buy Bebo
Discussion: TechCrunch and Joe Duck
Ilana DeBare / San Francisco Chronicle:
Narrowing Online Market Focus  —  Keywords are key: Small businesses find pay-per-click ads can be economical tool  —  Howard Mora started buying pay-per-click Internet ads two years ago for his Fremont pet-sitting business, the Animal Nanny.  Today he gets about 40 new clients per year …
RELATED:
Cynthia Brumfield / IP Democracy:
Why Can't Newspapers Get With the Program?  —  In a radical step for a newspaper, radical even in these dire days for the newspaper business, the San Francisco Chronicle announced that it is slashing 25% of its newsroom staff.  Boom.  One-quarter of the staff will be gone by the end of summer.
Mark Potts / Recovering Journalist:
Betting on the Future  —  There's a lot of good reason for gloom …
Discussion: HipMojo.com and Associated Press
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Bright Ideas: Reaping Results: Data-Mining Goes Mainstream  —  RODNEY MONROE, the police chief in Richmond, Va., describes himself as a lifelong cop whose expertise is in fighting street crime, not in software.  His own Web browsing, he says, mostly involves checking golf scores.
Discussion: WebMetricsGuru and Zenrob
RELATED:
Between the Lines:   Putting data mining in perspective
Nick / Rough Type:
Long player  —  I started reading David Weinberger's new book, Everything Is Miscellaneous, this weekend.  I'd been looking forward to it.  Weinberger has a supple, curious mind and an easy way with words.  Even though I rarely agree with his conclusions, he gets the old brain moving - and that's what matters.
Margaret Webb Pressler / Washington Post:
For Texting Teens, an OMG Moment When the Phone Bill Arrives  —  Sofia Rubenstein, 17, got in trouble the way a lot of teens do these days.  —  Her incessant text-messaging racked up a huge phone bill on the family's wireless plan.  —  "It's whatever pops into my head.  There's no stopping it," she said.
Discussion: cruel to be kind and Slashdot
Ryan Block / Engadget:
Optimus Maximus: 113 keys, ready to pre-order  —  Ready to move around some funds in your accounts?  Take out that loan from your mom?  Tell your wife you just don't know why the account's a grand light?  The Optimus Maximus is up for pre-order for $1564.37.
Discussion: Slashdot and digg
Kevin Kelleher / GigaOM:
Did Microsoft go lose its head over aQuantive?  —  I've been trying to find a way to illustrate just how screwy Microsoft's $6 billion bid for aQuantive is, and here it is: For $6 billion in cash, Microsoft could have hired, in a single day, 60,000 engineers and salespeople …
Discussion: U.S. Securities …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
MyMiniLife: Your Embeddable Virtual World  —  MyMiniLife is a Flash based virtual world/social network.  Users create and customize a character and then build out a virtual space, adding walls, floors, doors, windows, etc.  Users can then add customized goods ranging from lamps to cannons to the space …
Michael Fitzgerald / New York Times:
Prototype: Why Work Is Looking More Like a Video Game  —  WORK is not play.  But maybe it should be.  —  In fact, Paul Johnston has remade his company on the idea that business software will work better if it feels like a game.  Mr. Johnston is not some awkward adolescent …
Computerworld:
New and 'improved' Gozi Trojan version on the loose  —  Stealthier Russian Trojan on the loose since April  —  Jaikumar Vijayan Today's Top Stories or Other Security Stories  —  A new, stealthier version of a previously known Russian Trojan horse program called Gozi has been circulating …
Gizmodo:
Gallery: Giz Hearts Maker's Faire  —  That's Lisa and yours truly at the Flickr/Yahoo! booth, where they'd take a polaroid and scan it using some custom ware on a Sharp photocopier directly to Flickr.  —  And here's my photo stream of 90 photos from the amazing and completely overwhelming Maker's Faire.
Discussion: Gadget Lab and I4U News
Mark Helprin / New York Times:
A Great Idea Lives Forever.  Shouldn't Its Copyright?  —  WHAT if, after you had paid the taxes on earnings with which you built a house, sales taxes on the materials, real estate taxes during your life, and inheritance taxes at your death, the government would eventually commandeer it entirely?
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Geni: Earning That $100 million Valuation  —  When genealogy site Geni announced that it had raised a venture round from Charles River Ventures valuing the two month old startup at $100 million, more than a few eyebrows were raised.  For the last couple of months, people have referred to …
Discussion: Feld Thoughts
 
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 More Items: 
Shoemoney:
Adsense Arbitrage - Just The Facts
Charles Duhigg / New York Times:
DATA ON THE ELDERLY, MARKETED TO THIEVES
broadbandreports.com:
Citywide Wi-Fi: Boon or Bust?
 Earlier Items: 
Clay Shirky / Many-to-Many:
The (Bayesian) Advantage of Youth
Discussion: robhyndman.com and A VC
Mark Wallace / 3pointD.com:
Anshe to Launch Inter-World Financial Market
Discussion: The Other Here and Metaversed
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Matthew Keys / The Desk:
DirecTV terminates its Dish acquisition after a group of Dish creditors rejected a modified bond exchange offer

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A growing number of podcasters, including Tim Ferriss, are moving away from interviews to monologues or co-hosts, as some well-known guests can be overexposed

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

 
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