Top Items:
Gina Keating / Reuters:
Wal-Mart cancels movie download service — LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc quietly canceled its online video download service less than a year after the site went live, a company spokeswoman said on Thursday. — Wal-Mart shut down the download site after Hewlett Packard Co discontinued …
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Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Wal-Mart Kills Video Download Store Before Christmas, No One Notices — Honestly, if we hadn't been tipped to this, we probably would've been none the wiser—same as pretty much everybody else on the planet apparently—but it looks like Wal-Mart's video download store caught pneumonia and died on Dec. 21.
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
Wal-Mart Cancels Video Download Service; HP Says Wasn't Worth Powering — Yet another example of bricks-and-mortar scale not translating to online sales power and of grand online video plans deflating ... Reuters reports that Wal-Mart, (NYSE: WMT) one of the largest sellers of DVDs …
Karl Ribas / Karl Ribas.com Blog:NEW at Wal-Mart: SEM Services
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, Mashable!, WebMetricsGuru, Insider Chatter, HipMojo.com, Search Engine Journal and Jim Kukral
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
FlickrFan: Dave Winer's New Photo Viewing Software — Long-time inventor Dave Winer has released an early version of his new Mac software called FlickrFan tonight. Though there are some kinks in it at launch, the service leverages a number of APIs to do some very cool things.
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Dave Winer / Scripting News:
New product release today — Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... It's with much anticipation that I say this. — I have a new product that may be familiar to those of you who used Radio 8, and in other ways may be completely new. — The idea is simple.
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
A Flickr-powered screensaver? Incredible — I don't want to turn this into a Dave Winer *thing,* but I have to say that the release of his newest software tool — a Mac-only screensaver/RSS widget called FlickrFan — fills me with, well... a sense of underwhelmingness.
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The MacMini HDTV revolution — Yesterday I was over talking with the team behind Retrevo, the consumer electronics search engine. — We all agreed that Apple TV sucks. More on that in a minute. — But we all notice a trend: hooking MacMinis up to your HTDV. I think it's a revolution.
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
A Post-Google Fraternity of Investors — SAN FRANCISCO — Chris Sacca had a plum job as the Wi-Fi guru at Google. But with his stock options fully vested, he left the Internet search company this month for a new career as a venture capitalist. — Mr. Sacca, 32, joins a growing number …
Discussion:
The Open Road
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
3 down, 1 to go: Warner Music Group drops DRM — Warner Music has bent beneath the force of the anti-DRM winds sweeping the globe. The label will now offer its complete catalog, DRM-free, through Amazon's new MP3 store. — The announcement means that EMI, Universal …
Discussion:
Hardware 2.0, Boing Boing, The Technology Chronicles, last100, Slashdot, Bit Player, Gizmodo, Engadget, Mashable! and Digg
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Jeff Leeds / New York Times:
Amazon to Sell Warner Music Minus Copy Protection — LOS ANGELES — In the recording industry's latest move away from its reliance on digital locks to reduce piracy, the Warner Music Group said on Thursday that it would sell songs and albums without anticopying software through Amazon's fledgling digital music service.
Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0:
What Is The ROI Of Requiring User Registration To Access Online Content? — I somehow got logged out of my NYTimes.com registration and just hit the registration wall when I tried to read an article — I almost forgot it was there. Which made me wonder, now that the TimesSelect pay wall is gone …
Discussion:
The Software Abstractions Blog, Geek Speaker, Recovering Journalist and Smalltalk Tidbits …
Antone Gonsalves / EE Times:
Apple seeks patent for wireless order processing for cafes — Apple is seeking to patent a system that would make it possible for a person to use a wireless gadget to place an order at a cafe or fast-food restaurant and pickup the order without waiting in line.
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Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
NTV Predictions: Video Advertising — Among the questions we've asked our panel of experts was this one: Which online video ad format will become dominant in 2008? — Selections from their responses are below. We'd love to hear your take on the question or on our panelists' predictions in the comments.
Discussion:
Social Media
Jon Stokes / Ars Technica:
$40K to fill an iPod? One third of PCs use LimeWire instead — Pop quiz: what music and movie downloading app is installed on over one third of the world's computers, according to a new report from Digital Music News and media tracking specialist BigChampagne?
