Top Items:
Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter:
Status Update: Facebook Is Letting Users Drop the "Is" — Facebook has caved into popular demand and will make the "is" in status updates optional, effective tonight, according to allfacebook.com. — The much despised "is" has been a mandatory component of the status update …
Discussion:
Berlind's Testbed, Download Squad, Read/WriteWeb, mathewingram.com/work, Todd Watson and Mashable!
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Blogosphere Needs A Vacation — What's the top news story on TechMeme this fine Tuesday afternoon? — It's a story about the sudden disappearance of the word "is" from Facebook's status message yesterday. Then, today, it reappeared. For a brief period of time …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft? — Today I want to ponder the question: what if Microsoft, not Google, had created Gmail? What would be the differences in that web mail client for users today? What if we apply some of the same design rules that brought us Hotmail, for instance?
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
The Google Set-Top Box (Think Android For TV) — Deep in the Googleplex there is an engineering team thinking about how to extend Google's reach into your TV. Its work goes way beyond the Google TV ads currently being tested by EchoStar (and targeted with help from Nielsen).
Beltzner / Mozilla Developer News:
Firefox 3 Beta 1 now available for download — Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 1 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only. — Firefox 3 Beta 1 is now available for download.
Discussion:
Read/WriteWeb, Ars Technica, TECH.BLORGE.com, Wired News, MacDailyNews, Web Worker Daily, Mozilla, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, PaulStamatiou.com, The Tech Report, Ryan Stewart, dailytechrag.com/news …, BetaNews, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Compiler, CyberNet, Lifehacker, Between the Lines, PalmAddicts, Mashable!, Open Source, TechBlog, Boing Boing, The Mozilla Blog, RIApedia and Digg
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Inside CRM:
The 20 Worst Venture Capital Investments of All Time — Catastrophic collapses and classic crashes in the high-tech business world. — Some things were just never meant to be, but that doesn't mean that investors won't pile millions of dollars upon a bad idea — or even a good idea gone bad.
Discussion:
PE HUB, Threat Chaos, Epicenter, HipMojo.com, John Cook's Venture Blog, VentureBeat, Valleywag, Seth Levine's VC Adventure and Digg
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Clickable Raises Another $3 Million, Officially Adds Jonathan Miller to Board — Advertising technology startup Clickable has raised another $3 million from its lead investors Union Square Ventures and Pequot Ventures, in a follow-on round to the $3 million it raised last July, confirms CEO David Kidder.
Discussion:
WebProNews, alarm:clock, VentureBeat, paidContent.org, Silicon Alley Insider and AttentionMax
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Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
MoveOn.org takes on Facebook's 'Beacon' ads — Online activist group MoveOn.org is poised to announce a campaign targeting Facebook's "Beacon" advertisements, which post information about users' activity on partner sites (movie rentals, purchases from online retailers) onto their friends' News Feeds.
Discussion:
Master of 500 Hats, All Facebook, Mashable!, Facebook Observer and Silicon Alley Insider
Doug Sherrets / VentureBeat:
Facebook applications get email option — Facebook has added a new settings option for users to determine whether they want to receive emails from application creators. By default, the checkbox is selected. The change makes it easier for developers to reach their users and get them to return to use their applications on Facebook.
Discussion:
Mashable!
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heise Security:
Apple Mail in Leopard with the same old error — In March 2006 Apple defused a security problem in Apple Mail that made it possible to inject disguised malignant code. In Leopard, the patch was apparently forgotten. This means that you can inadvertently start an executable by double-clicking …
Discussion:
eWEEK.com
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Jaron Lanier / New York Times:
Pay Me for My Content — INTERNET idealists like me have long had an easy answer for creative types — like the striking screenwriters in Hollywood — who feel threatened by the unremunerative nature of our new Eden: stop whining and figure out how to join the party!
P2P Blog:
Mediadefender hack costs company 825,000 USD — Those 6000 Mediadefender emails that leaked onto the web in September cost the anti-piracy outlet dearly: A recent SEC filing of Mediadefender parent ArtistDirect reveals that the company lost at least 825,000 dollars due to the hack …
Ina Fried / CNET News.com:
Targeted e-mail attacks spoof DOJ, business group — Security experts warned this week of two separate e-mail attacks launched Monday that take aim at specific individuals within corporations. — The first attack, detected by MessageLabs at 4:55 p.m. GMT Monday, was sent to more than 400 individuals …
Discussion:
GigaLaw.com Daily News
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ResourceShelf:
Google Transfers A LOT of Domains to Google Name Servers; Is A Google Tax Prep Service in the Works and What Might GoogleSecret Be All About? — All of these domains were transferred to Google name servers in the past week or so. They are also all registered to Google Inc. You'll see lots …
Edward Wyatt / New York Times:
Webisodes of 'Lost': Model Deal for Writers? — On the picket lines, striking television and film writers adamantly claim that studios are refusing to pay for the use of writers' scripts on the Internet. — But ABC Studios is doing just that. Over the next three months fans of the hit show …
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Broken DRM scheme: $45 million; trampling fair use: priceless — Macrovision, the DRM firm perhaps best known recently for creating security holes in Windows with its SafeDisc DRM, has purchased the intellectual property surrounding the BD+ DRM scheme used by Blu-ray to thwart attempts at copying.
Discussion:
Gizmodo
