Top Items:
Merissa Marr / Wall Street Journal:
Disney to Buy Club Penguin — Seeking to bolster its online presence among kids, Walt Disney Co. said it is buying the popular Club Penguin virtual community for $350 million in cash. — Disney said it had agreed to pay up to another $350 million to Club Penguin's founders …
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Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
Disney Acquires Club Penguin In Deal Valued At $700 Million; To Be Branded 'Disney's Club Penguin' — On a call with Disney CEO Bob Iger now while he announces the company's acquisition of Club Penguin, which he describes as a perfect fit. It's a cash payment of $350 million and an opportunity …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, GigaOM, Epicenter, Brier Dudley's blog, Virtual Worlds News, Paul Kedrosky's …, Technology News Daily and Web Strategy
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Extremely Happy Feet: Disney Acquires Club Penguin For Up To $700 million
Dylan Tweney / Epicenter:Stanford Summit: The Killer App for Virtual Reality Is Civility
Discussion:
VC Ratings
PR Newswire:
American Airlines Selects AirCell to Launch In-Flight Wi-Fi Service Over U.S. — American Airlines Becomes First Airline to Launch AirCell's High-Speed Broadband Internet Service on Aircraft Flying Over U.S.; Conquering the Last Frontier for Internet Access
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Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Lufthansa to add in-flight broadband by 2008 for long-hauls — Lufthansa is apparently continuing the airborne scramble to get customers connected, announcing that with the help of T-Mobile it will be reinstating its broadband service (formerly from Connexion) to its long-haul flights by 2008.
Peter Lauria / New York Post:
DISCOVERY BUYS GREEN — Discovery Communications has scooped up a companion Web site to its upcoming Planet Green cable network, agreeing to buy Treehugger.com for about $10 million, The Post has learned. — The deal, expected to be announced today, marks the first acquisition for Discovery under …
Discussion:
CNET News.com, The Browser, Valleywag, Earth2Tech, Tech Confidential Blog and Geek Speaker
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
Have Skype SMS your Voicemail text: By Late 2007 — Thanks to a deal between Skype and SpinVox, Skype customers can [now] soon get their voicemail messages converted to text and sent to their mobile phones via SMS. The service launches soon [today], and will be available in English, Spanish, French and German.
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Ethan Smith / Wall Street Journal:
Digital-Music Holdout AC/DC Spurns iTunes, Signs With Verizon — AC/DC, one of the last high-profile holdouts in the digital-music era, is finally making its 17-album catalog available to online music buyers. But in a twist that highlights shifting power dynamics in the world of digital music retailing …
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Wall Street Journal:
Murdoch Wins His Bid for Dow Jones — Bancroft Family Agrees — To $5 Billion Offer — After Deal on Fees — A New Owner for Journal — A century of Bancroft-family ownership at Dow Jones & Co. is over. — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sealed a $5 billion agreement to purchase …
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Erin McMahon-Lyman / eMediaWire:
Canaan Partners Expands its Digital Media Portfolio and Leads $10M Investment in Associated Content — Firm to Drive Growth of Innovative, Online Content Publishing Company — Menlo Park, CA (PRWEB) August 1, 2007 — Canaan Partners, a $2.4 billion global venture capital firm …
Discussion:
Epicenter, VentureBeat, WebProNews, paidContent.org, HipMojo.com, alarm:clock and Technology News Daily
Tom Krazit / CNET News.com:
Apple unloads torrent of patches, plus the first iPhone update — If you own a Mac or an iPhone, chances are you'll need to download at least one of the security updates issued by Apple late Tuesday. — Dozens of vulnerabilities and bugs were covered by a total of six downloads for Mac OS 10.3.9 …
Discussion:
Computerworld, BetaNews, Brandon Live!, CyberNet Technology News, Compiler, The Mac Observer, Tech Shout! and Torres Talking
Vidya Lakshmipathy / Forrester Research:
The Mobile Web Versus The Web On An iPhone: iPhone Wins In A Blowout — EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — On June 29, 2007, Apple released the highly anticipated iPhone to the public. Forrester evaluated the iPhone's capabilities, and we believe that the iPhone signals the beginning of the end …
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Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
FTC complaint flags NFL, MLB, studios for overstating copyright claims — Any fan of the NFL can almost recite the warning by memory: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions …
Discussion:
The Register, Salon: Machinist, Wendy Seltzer's Home Page, Life On the Wicked Stage, Boing Boing, Slashdot and digg
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Amazon To Launch Payments Services; Will Compete With PayPal and Google Checkout — Look for a launch announcement by Amazon this week or next of a new web service around payments, adding to their S3 (storage), EC2 (virtual server) and other services. They've been quietly testing the service …
Discussion:
Read/WriteWeb, Today @ PC World, Download Squad, eBay Strategies, Valleywag, 24/7 Wall St. and The Utility Belt
PC Advisor:
Improved Xbox 360 processor planned — Chartered hints at 45nm Xbox chip — Sumner Lemon — Singaporean contract chip maker Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing will produce a 45-nanometre (nm) processor designed for video-game consoles, probably an upcoming version of the processor used in Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Discussion:
Joystiq, Engadget, Kotaku, TechSpot News, Gizmodo, GamesIndustry.biz, DigitalBattle and Xbox 360 Fanboy
Serdar Yegulalp Mitch Wagner / InformationWeek:
Linux Vs. Mac: Which Is The Better Alternative To Microsoft Windows? — If you're a Vista-wary Windows user who would rather switch than fight, should you move to a Linux distro or Apple's OS X? We asked a Mac fan and a Linux advocate to lead a guided tour of each OS.
Bluetooth.com:
BLUETOOTH SIG ADOPTS NEW CORE VERSION 2.1 + EDR — New Spec Makes Device Set-Up Faster, Easier and Increases Battery Life — The Board of Directors of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the more than 8,000-member strong trade association responsible for advancing Bluetooth wireless technology …
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Console mod-chippers busted in nationwide raids — Federal agents have carried out a series of raids against individuals and businesses in 16 states as part of an investigation into the distribution and sale of mod chips. Dubbed "Operation Tangled Web", the 32 search warrants were executed …
Discussion:
TechSpot News
Sir Elton John / The Sun:
Why we must close the net — Web rant ... Sir Elton says the internet is destroying music — POP legend Sir Elton John wants the internet CLOSED DOWN. — Never one to keep his opinions to himself, the Rocket Man has waded into cyberspace with all guns blazing.
Discussion:
CNET News.com
Reuters:
Google wary of behavioral targeting in online ads — MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - Google Inc. is looking to find more links between the searches its users do in order to better target advertising, but the company is reluctant to go much further than that in tracking their behavior.
Discussion:
Insider Chatter, Download Squad, Google Blogoscoped, Search Engine Land and UMBC eBiquity
