Top Items:
Charlene Li / Groundswell:
Close encounter with Facebook Beacon — I put a lot of trust in sites like Facebook to do the right thing when it comes to privacy. After all, the only stuff that gets out into the public is the stuff that I actually put in. — Until now. — Earlier this week, I bought a coffee table on Overstock.com.
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civ.moveon.org:
JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP: — When you buy a book or movie online—or make a political contribution—do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook? — Most people would call that a huge invasion of privacy. But this week, Facebook began doing just that.
Josh Catone / Read/WriteWeb:
Is Facebook Really Ruining Christmas? — Political action and consumer advocacy organization MoveOn this week launched a public campaign against Facebook's new Project Beacon advertising system (our coverage). MoveOn characterizes the ad system as "a huge invasion of privacy" …
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Facebook responds to MoveOn criticism of ad program — Facebook issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon in response to online activist group MoveOn.org's charge that its "Beacon" advertising program is a violation of users' privacy. — "We encourage feedback from our users on new products …
Discussion:
TECH.BLORGE.com, The Gong Show, Valleywag, The Open Road, Search Engine Watch Blog and VentureBeat
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Facebook's "Beacon" Infuriate Users, MoveOn
Facebook's "Beacon" Infuriate Users, MoveOn
Discussion:
Inside Facebook, broadstuff, Travel Technology, robhyndman.com, Are You Paying Attention?, CNET News.com and The Register
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Kindle sells out in 5.5 hours — Amazon isn't disclosing how many Kindles it actually had ready to go, but apparently the idea of a tiny e-book reader with free EV-DO and the visual flair of an Apple IIc hit home for quite a few people, because they sold out in just five and a half hours.
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David Pogue / New York Times:
An E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On — You've got to have a lot of nerve to introduce an electronic book reader in 2007. — Sure, the idea has appeal: an e-reader lets you carry hundreds of books, search or jump to any spot in the text and bump up the type size when your eyes get tired.
Discussion:
TeleRead
Nick Gonzalez / TechCrunch:
Facebook Stealing Googlers At An Alarming Rate — Facebook and Google have been competing with each over more than just social networking. Facebook is growing from 300ish employees today to 700 next year. And the best place to get good engineers and others is Google …
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
Songs included in Guitar Hero 3 see a dramatic leap in digital sales — Playing music on plastic guitars is big business. Guitar Hero 3 has become quite the runaway hit at retail, and with Rock Band now released, we have two big-name rhythm games on the market.
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Jennifer Steinhauer / New York Times:
YouTube, MySpace and California's D.M.V. — As YouTube videos go, Kyle's driving test has nothing on Gizmo, the toilet-flushing cat. — But the California Department of Motor Vehicles remains convinced that its 55 videos running on the Web site will make roads a better place to travel …
Discussion:
Mashable!
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Feedster Quietly Dies... So Which Blog Search Engine Do You Use? — Blog search engine Feedster has had the following notice on its frontpage for at least a few weeks now: — There is no sign of life on the site and the Feedster blog has already been killed off (the big 404 in the sky).
Discussion:
Mike Rowehl
Computerworld:
One year later: Did Vista's focus on security pay off? — Consumers don't seem to care so much — Microsoft's emphasis on improvements to security features in Windows Vista may have undermined business adoption of the OS, as many business and enterprise customers are still holding off …
Dan Farber / Between the Lines:
Where in the world is Ray Ozzie? — Ray Ozzie is Microsoft's chief software architect-that's Bill Gates' old job. He is charged with building a bidirectional bridge between Microsoft's lucrative rich-client past and its cloud-computing future. — Ozzie, who joined Microsoft in March of 2005, is keeping a low profile lately.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
PickyPirate: Metacritic Meets BitTorrent — This is exactly the gap PickyPirate is trying to fill. PickyPirate fetches the most popular movies, games and music albums from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, two well known review aggregators, and lists them on the frontpage.
Discussion:
Mashable!
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple on track to sell 25 million iPods this quarter — After analyzing October sales data from market research firm NPD, investment bank Piper Jaffray said Wednesday it expects Apple will sell a record 25 million iPods during the three-month period ending December.
Reuters:
Google U.S. Web search share jumps to 58.5 percent — Google enjoyed one of its biggest monthly gains in U.S. Web search market share in October, building on consistent gains over the past two years, according to industry data out on Wednesday. — Market research firm ComScore …
Discussion:
WebProNews