Top Items:
Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
Could Facebook Become The Next Microsoft? — Amongst all the noise today over Facebook's acquisition of Parakey, little has been said on what the acquisition means for Facebook in the broader sense. Robert Scoble says that Facebook is the new data black hole, noting that many of his favorite apps are now appearing on Facebook.
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Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats:
Kottke is wrong — Facebook isn't AOL; it's Visual Basic. — For about a year or two, i've been meaning to do a followup piece on how Google, Microsoft, & Yahoo all screwed the pooch by not building out a REAL web application OS worth developing apps for, but i'm too late. — GYM is Old & Busted.
Blake Ross:
Facebook Goes Public (withnewsaboutitsrecentacquisitionofPar akey, Inc.) — Facebook has acquired my fledgling startup, Parakey, Inc. The project remains very much alive, and since we will be working to port the concepts and technology to Facebook, it will remain stealthy.
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Breaking: Facebook Acquires Parakey — Just received word from Facebook that the company has made its first acquisition: Parakey, a startup founded by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, co-founders of Mozilla Firefox. Ross and Hewitt will join Facebook immediately to work on the Facebook Platform.
Discussion:
WebProNews, Digital Trends, VentureBeat, Wikinomics, Valleywag, Between the Lines, GigaOM, Mashable!, FaceReviews.com, BloggingStocks, All Facebook, InfoWorld, franticindustries, CNET News.com, WinBeta, Brij Singh's One More Idea, TECH.BLORGE.com, Profy.Com, The Universal Desktop, Insider Chatter, alarm:clock, Cloudy Thinking, Compiler, HipMojo.com and paidContent.org
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:FaceBook's First Acquisition: Parakey
Discussion:
JoeHewitt.com, A VC, All Facebook, The Next Net, MarketingVOX, Susan Mernit's Blog, Read/WriteWeb, CostPerNews, Neomeme and Rev2.org
Aoife White / Associated Press:
EU OKs German online search-engine grant — BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union on Thursday authorized Germany to give $165 million for research on Internet search-engine technologies that could someday challenge U.S. search giant Google Inc. — The Theseus research project …
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Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
YouTube: Now With Customizable Player — YouTube has launched a new "custom player" feature that allows users to customize embedded YouTube videos. — Users are able to customize player features including the name of the player, color theme, layout (a standard layout or one with related videos to the right), and content.
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San Francisco Chronicle:
Google exec's past returns with a demand for payment — A top Google executive, David Drummond, has agreed to pay $700,000 to settle a complaint by federal regulators that accused him of helping to misstate the financial results of his previous employer, SmartForce.
Discussion:
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim
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David A. Utter / WebProNews:
Google Lawyer Settles With SEC — David Drummond will pay the Securities and Exchange Commission almost $700,000 to settle their claims against him stemming from his work with a technology training firm. … We used to call this "no blood, no foul" when we played basketball on the playground.
Discussion:
PC World
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Ask.com To Launch AskEraser To Erase Search History & New Data Retention Policy — Ask.com announced that they will be launching "AskEraser" in the near future, a feature to allow you to erase your search history. Ask also said it will be implementing a new 18 month data retention policy …
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Brian Ashcraft / Kotaku:
Busted: Unreal Engine 3, Half-Baked, Broken and Late? — At Sony's E307 presser, Jack Tretton stood on stage, announced Epic's Unreal Tournament III as a PS3 exclusive and said that Sony was working closely with Epic to "adjust" the Unreal Engine for the PS3 so that it reaches the "best of its potential."
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Google dangles $4.6 billion in front of the FCC — Google said Friday that it would bid a minimum of $4.6 billion for the federal government's upcoming wireless spectrum auction-if the Federal Communications Commission creates an open wireless platform. — The wireless spectrum auction …
Jack Ewing / Business Week:
Why Nokia Is Leaving Moto in the Dust — Phones for high- and low-end consumers, a great supply chain, and lots of cash—the Finnish company has it all (except the iPhone) — Pop singer Alicia Keys and Ramkishen Pyarelal, proprieter of a Mumbai tea stall, may not have a lot in common.
Chris Taylor / Business 2.0:
The Google backlash begins — The Internet search giant is having a rough week — and not just because it missed Wall Street earnings forecast. Business 2.0's Chris Taylor suggests four steps the company should take now to stem the fallout. — (Business 2.0 Magazine) …
Linda Haugsted / Multichannel News:
CBS Aims to Spread Web Content — Broadcast Network Targets 400 Sites by Fall — CBS television content will be available through 400 sites on the Internet by the fall, according to executives from the broadcast network's interactive division. — "CBS is al about open, nonexclusive partnerships …
Paul Miller / Engadget:
iPhone says "Hello World," here come the 3rd party apps — If there wasn't a vast, cold expanse of internet in the way, we could just hug those iPhone Dev Wiki folks. Apparently a particularly dedicated hacker who goes by "Nightwatch" has compiled and launched the iPhone's very first independent …
Discussion:
digg
Ryan Singel / Threat Level:
Nearly Ten Percent of Companies Have Fired Bloggers, Survey Claims — Nearly ten percent of companies have fired an employee for violating corporate blogging or message board policies, and 19 percent have disciplined an employee for the same infractions, according to a new survey from Proofpoint, a messaging security company.
