Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
A Well-Deserved Court Loss For Facebook — It should come as no surprise, of course, given it was essentially a legal temper tantrum on the part of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. — But a judge in Massachusetts wisely denied an inane request by the Palo Alto, Ca.-based social networking startup …
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Dan Farber / Between the Lines:
Facebook: The canary in the social networking coal mine — Facebook has stirred up a great deal of controversy and now harsh criticism with its Beacon advertising program. Three weeks after launching Beacon Facebook, the company did a 180-degree turn to make it more palatable for users rather than advertisers.
Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC:
Game giants in $18bn merger — The companies behind Call of Duty and World of Warcraft are merging in a deal which could shake up the global video games industry. — Activision and Blizzard have said they will form "the world's most profitable games business" in a deal worth $18.8bn (£9.15bn).
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Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Vivendi to Acquire Control of Activision — In a deal that creates the biggest independent video game publisher in the world, Vivendi announced Sunday it plans to acquire a controlling stake in Activision. — Under the arrangement, the companies said Vivendi would pay $1.7 billion in cash …
Andrew Miller / Your Search Advisor:
Google Apps Presentation in Ann Arbor — I had the privilege to attend a Google Apps presentation in Ann Arbor last night. The event was hosted by Google in coordination with The Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce at the Boardwalk Creative Center. The presentation was basically an intro …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google Reveals 2008 Plans For Google Apps — Google is usually fairly tight lipped about future product releases. But they were surprisingly revealing about upcoming plans for Google Apps at an event in Ann Arbor earlier this week. Blogger Andrew Miller took some great notes from a presentation …
Hiawatha Bray / Boston Globe:
One Laptop Per Child orders surge — Peru wants 260,000 machines; Mexican billionaire signs up — Despite slower-than-expected sales and tough competition from commercial rivals, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation of Cambridge is enjoying a surge of new orders.
Scott Shuey / Gulf News:
Gritty AMD's chips are still down — Dubai: When Abu Dhabi investment company Mubadala announced that it had purchased an equity stake in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for $622 million, it looked like silicon and oil really could mix. — Since the announcement, things have not improved …
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
Selling links that pass PageRank — I've talked quite a lot before about buying or selling links that pass PageRank. Today I wanted to walk through a concrete example of paid posts and show why the major search engines don't want to be affected by links within paid posts.
bijansabet.com:
Getting rid of the non-compete clause everywhere — I have always been against the non-compete clause for employees. — Conventional wisdom says we need them to protect employers and companies. But in California they are demmed illegal and against public policy.
Alex Wright / New York Times:
Friending, Ancient or Otherwise — THE growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Second Life has thrust many of us into a new world where we make "friends" with people we barely know, scrawl messages on each other's walls and project our identities using totem-like visual symbols.
Randall Stross / New York Times:
For the 2008 Race, Google Is a Crucial Constituency — LAST century, General Motors assembly plants were a regular stop on the itineraries of presidential candidates. This election cycle, Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., has become a favorite destination.
Lessig Blog:
Some important news from Wikipedia to understand clearly — As you'll see in this video, there has been important progress in making Wikipedia compatible with the world of Creative Commons licensed work. But we should be very precise about this extremely good news: As Jimmy announces …
Triston McIntyre / TECH.BLORGE.com:
Comcast - heading the way of the dinosaurs — Comcast has been one of the most successful cable companies in the world; in many parts of the U.S., Comcast sits pretty on huge user bases that don't have many viable high-speed internet alternatives. However, poor customer service …
