Top Items:
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Digg close to a $300 million sale? [Rumormonger] — Digg is close to announcing its sale to a major media player for $300 million to $400 million, according to sources close to the company, I hear. When I floated this Digg rumor past some knowledgeable friends, several scoffed: "When isn't Digg up for sale?"
Discussion:
BoomTown, Deep Jive Interests, CNET News.com, Pulse 2.0, Compete Blog, Mark Evans, Mashable!, ParisLemon and Digg
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Just Sell Digg Already, Jay — One thing that has become a certainly in our little tech world - a few months can't go by without rumors surfacing that a sale of Digg is imminent. CEO Jay Adelson and cofounder Kevin Rose are in a perpetual rumor cycle. The problem is, they seem to be the ones at fault for the rumors.
Tim O'Reilly / O'Reilly Radar:
OpenSocial: It's the data, stupid — While I'm a huge fan of the idea of an open social networking platform, I'm bemused by all the enthusiasm over Google OpenSocial. As I sit with what I learn, the mild skepticism I expressed the other day has turned into full blown disappointment.
Rachel Rosmarin / Forbes:
Fear Among Facebook Developers — LOS ANGELES - — Travel back in time six months to Facebook's last big event, at a warehouse in an artsy part of San Francisco, where scrappy independent developers were the apple of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's eye. — How things have changed.
Elinor Mills / CNET News.com:
Google overhauls Gmail under the hood — Google is making major structural code changes to Gmail and rolling them out slowly. The user interface changes are pretty subtle and you might even notice. But the code modifications likely presage more significant design and function improvements to come.
Discussion:
TeleRead
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
MLB rips off fans who bought DRM videos — Allan Wood (a baseball megafan who has written a book about Babe Ruth) purchased over $280 worth of digital downloads of baseball games from Major League Baseball, who have just turned off their DRM server, leaving him with no way to watch his videos.
Discussion:
TeleRead, The Joy of Sox, paidContent.org, Wendy's Blog, Download Squad, Mashable!, Geek News Central, Smalltalk Tidbits … and Digg
RELATED:
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:Major League Baseball's DRM change strikes out with fans
Discussion:
Digg
Ryan Block / Engadget:
AMD announces FireStream 9170, first dedicated stream processor — The true computing geeks in the house are about to need adult diapers: AMD's launching a dedicated stream processor, the FireStream 9170, and an accompanying SDK today, which will be available in Q108.
Feng / Inside AdWords:
Two updates to site targeting — We'd like to announce two changes to site targeting in Google's content network. First, because site targeting now offers more precise targeting options, we've given it a more appropriate name: placement targeting. Second, we're introducing …
Farhad Manjoo / Salon:
Once and for all, proof that Macs are cheaper than PCs — Let's put to rest the myth that an Apple computer will set you back more than a Windows PC. In fact, it'll cost you less. — It's time to buy an Apple computer. Indeed, it's been that time for the past five years, at least …
Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
AMAZON TO HOST RED HAT LINUX ONLINE — Update: I added a lot more detail about Red Hat's ambitions and other moves. — Red Hat on Wednesday announced a significant departure from its current business plan, saying its flagship Linux product will be available on Amazon.com's Elastic Computing Cloud online service.
Stefanie Olsen / Webware.com:
WANT SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC? PEN A BLOG — LAS VEGAS—Writing the blog iPhoneFreak.com, Stephane Dion has learned at least one lesson, and it's not just that he has a lot of company as an Apple iPhone fanatic. — Rather, it's that blogs are the best way to reap traffic from Google and other search engines.
Discussion:
CNET News.com
Michelle Slatalla / New York Times:
These Naughty Gifts Don't Clutter a Closet — LAST week, I stumbled across a short item at a site called Mashable.com, which described how one of Facebook's most popular programs allows users to give each other virtual Naughty Gifts. — This raised obvious questions like, what sorts of naughty gifts?
Ryan Singel / Threat Level:
Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Spills to Feds — Hushmail, a longtime provider of encrypted web-based email, markets itself by saying that "not even a Hushmail employee with access to our servers can read your encrypted e-mail, since each message is uniquely encoded before it leaves your computer."
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Eisner's advice to striking writers: Blame Steve Jobs, not the studios — NEW YORK—In his keynote speech on Wednesday morning at the Media and Money conference hosted by Dow Jones and Nielsen, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner talked about writers as though they were a minority group that he didn't particularly understand well.
Preston Gralla / Computerworld:
Review: Windows Home Server is a powerful networking tool — For once, Microsoft hasn't 'dumbed down' a software package, says Preston Gralla — The just-released Windows Home Server (WHS) from Microsoft Corp. is a surprisingly powerful networking tool that offers some of the sophisticated …
