Top Items:
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Google Shutting Down Paid Video — Google today emailed customers who had purchased videos from Google Video to let them know that the company will be discontinuing paid rentals and downloads five days from now. Not only will videos no longer be available for rental or download …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, The Register, paidContent.org, CenterNetworks, Google Operating System and digg
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Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Google to Stop Web Video Rentals, Sales — Google Shutting Down a Service That Sold and Rented Online Video, Ending 19-Month Experiment — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. is shutting down a service that sold and rented online video, ending a 19-month experiment doomed by the proliferation …
John Markoff / New York Times:
Judge Says Unix Copyrights Rightfully Belong to Novell — In a decision that may finally settle one of the most bitter legal battles surrounding software widely used in corporate data centers, a federal district court judge in Utah ruled Friday afternoon that Novell, not the SCO Group …
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Richard Martin / InformationWeek:
Thumbs Surgically Altered For iPhone? Think Again — It's been a long week. More layoffs at Sun, Sprint Nextel's earnings down (again), the wheels finally coming off the municipal wireless bus, AT&T censoring Pearl Jam's anti-Bush lyrics (and then claiming it was unintentional), etc. etc.
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Paul Miller / Engadget:
Man has thumbs altered to improve iPhone dexterity — This story isn't for the faint of heart. In fact, we wouldn't really recommend it for anybody, but we'll soldier on regardless. Thomas Martel hails from Colorado, and after upgrading to an iPhone, he decided his big hands were just too much of a burden to bear.
I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBS:
The $200 Billion Rip-Off — This is part three of my explanation of how America went from having the fastest and cheapest Internet service in the world to what we have today — not very fast, not very cheap Internet service that is hurting our ability to compete economically with the rest of the world.
Discussion:
Smart Mobs
Paul Graham:
The Equity Equation — An investor wants to give you money for a certain percentage of your startup. Should you take it? You're about to hire your first employee. How much stock should you give him? — These are some of the hardest questions founders face. And yet both have the same answer:
Darren Murph / Engadget:
HealthPia's GlucoPhone gets FDA approval — While the idea of a diabetes phone is far from new, a company dubbed HealthPia is well on its way to actually delivering such a product. Reportedly, the firm has "obtained FDA approval for its patent-pending technology that integrates a blood glucose meter with a standard-issue cellphone."
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Fujitsu Siemens Computers bails on PDA / PNA market — Leaving so soon, are we? Turns out Fujitsu Siemens Computers is ditching the PDA / PNA market after 2007, which means that those bulky, albeit fashionable Loox handhelds will soon be available only in closeout bins and on your favorite auction site …
Discussion:
Mobility Site
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Are You Ready To Bar Camp? — Bar Camp, an open multi-day event where people can share ideas and talk about just about anything they like, is a very important event for me. Two years ago I attended the first Bar Camp, which was held at Social Text's offices in Palo alto.
Discussion:
Ross Mayfield's Weblog
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Texty: Dead Simple Content Creation And Editing — Texty is a dead simple but useful new internet service that you can use to quickly create and edit content on a web page with zero HTML or programming skills. — Go to the site, start typing text in a WYSIWYG editor, format it and add images.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Mahalo Follow: Toolbar Gives You Human-Powered Alternatives To Searching, Surfing — Mahalo Follow is a new toolbar that allows you to view Mahalo's human-powered search results next to the results from the major search engine of your choice or have them appear in response to pages you view on the web.
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
Partial Freakonomics feed = bad idea — I'm a huge fan of the Freakonomics guys, and a subscriber to their RSS feed, but I didn't realize until I saw a MediaPost item on Techmeme that they had been "acquired" by the New York Times. I also didn't realize until I read through the item …
John Borland / Threat Level:
Serving hacker camp with porta-data-potties — What does it take to wire an old airfield so it can support 2000 hackers with a voracious, simultaneous appetite for bandwidth? — Answer: Imagination. That and cords enough to make a Radio Shack junkie drool.
Antony Bruno / Billboard.Biz:
UMG Ramps Up DRM-Free Testing — Digital and Mobile — Universal Music Group is testing the non-DRM waters. The label, which has the largest market share of all the major labels at 26%, unveiled a plan to test selling digital music without digital-rights management on a massive scale.
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Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
edgeio Launches Paid Content System — Online classifieds startup edgeio has just launched a new paid content product, which will be of particular interest to online publishers and media producers. They're calling it "transactional classifieds", which is an awkward name for a potentially very useful e-commerce service.
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