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 rumor that Digg was up for sale, my friends scoffed: "When isn't Digg up for sale?"
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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.
Discussion:
mathewingram.com/work
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.
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:
Download Squad, The Joy of Sox, Wendy's Blog, paidContent.org, Geek News Central, Mashable! and Digg
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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.
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.
Saul Hansell / Bits:
AOL's New Plan: It's Not Working — Randy Falco is betting the entire AOL franchise on building up its advertising network. The Time Warner results released this morning show that the horse that the head of AOL is betting on is slowing down. — AOL sold $540 million in ads in the third quarter …
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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 …
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.
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.
Discussion:
Dana Gardner's BriefingsDirect, Seeking Alpha, InfoWorld, Open Source, eWEEK.com, Business Wire, blognation, The Register and TechBizMedia
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 …
Brad Stone / Bits:
Log Off and Get to Work — Turns out your bosses don't want you updating your social networking page at the office. — Web security firm Barracuda Networks polled 2,400 of its own customers and found that 50.2 percent block access to social networks MySpace and Facebook.
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David Carnoy / Crave: The gadget blog:
Is Philips clock radio/digital photo frame a potential sleeper hit? — The Philips AJL308 has quietly slipped onto the market. — (Credit: Amazon) — Around this time each year I start trolling the Web, looking for potentially interesting products that we should review for the holiday buying season.
Discussion:
Gizmodo
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Data: U.S. Internet Advertising to Double to $42 Billion Over Next Four Years — The latest forecast for Internet advertising is out from eMarketer, which says that in the U.S. it will rise from $21 billion this year to $42 billion in 2011. During that time period, Web advertising's share …
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 …
