Top Items:
Catherine Holahan / Business Week:
Sony BMG Lets the Music Play — The last of the major labels finally throws in the towel on DRM, and prepares to fight Apple for valuable download revenues — In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without …
Discussion:
CrunchGear, Download Squad, Engadget, Podcasting News, TechCrunch, MacRumors, Mashable!, bit-tech.net, Silicon Alley Insider, WebProNews and Blackfriars' Marketing
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Ken Fisher / Ars Technica:
Lone holdout in DRMed music recommends DRM circumvention — With three of the big four music labels abandoning DRM, that leaves Sony as the big holdout. That's right, the same company that brought you the Sony rootkit scandal is also the last of the major labels to repent and abandon their DRMed ways.
Thomas Claburn / InformationWeek:
Google Patent Imagines Robots Indexing The Grocery Aisle — The two computer scientists behind “recognizing text in images” search technology also worked on Google Street View and Google Book Search. — A patent application filed by Google with the World Intellectual Property Organization …
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wipo.int:
(WO/2008/003095) RECOGNIZING TEXT IN IMAGES — Publication Number: — WO/2008/003095 — International Application No.: — PCT/US2007/072578 — Publication Date: — International Filing Date: — Int. Class.: — G06F 17/30 (2006.01) — Applicants:
Fury.com:
Today is My Last Day at Google — After a life-changing four and a half years of working with the most talented group of people I have ever met, I've decided to take the plunge and do it all over again, working for a very small start-up. Today is my last day at the Big G.
Paul Buchheit:
Should Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail block Facebook? — Apparently Facebook will ban you (or at least Robert Scoble) if you attempt to extract your friend's email addresses from the service. — Automated access is a difficult issue for any web service, so I won't argue with their decision — it's their service and they own you.
Discussion:
Virtual Economics, mathewingram.com/work, WebProNews, bub.blicio.us, Get Engagd, Todd Watson, Valleywag, Like It Matters, MediaVidea, VentureBeat and Marc's Voice
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John Markoff / New York Times:
Intel Leaves Group Backing Education PCs — SAN FRANCISCO — Intel said Thursday that it had chosen to withdraw from the One Laptop Per Child educational computer organization, which it joined in July after years of public squabbling between Intel's chairman, Craig R. Barrett, and the group's founder, Nicholas P. Negroponte.
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Dean Takahashi / Tech Talk with Dean Takahashi:Intel pulls out of One Laptop Per Child group
Discussion:
CrunchGear, PC World, Hardware 2.0, TeleRead, The Register, Electronista, Digital Trends, Bloomberg, Between the Lines, CNET News.com, Gizmodo, Wall Street Journal, Ars Technica, Engadget and Slashdot
Mary Kathleen Flynn / Behind The Money Blog:
Leah Culver, 25, writes the code that powers Pownce — Technorati — Facebook — Digg — How does a 25-year-old computer science major from the University of Minnesota wind up as a co-founder of one of Silicon Valley's most closely watched startups?
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CenterNetworks
Xbox.com:
An Open Letter from Marc Whitten about Xbox LIVE this Holiday — Dear Xbox LIVE Members: — During this past holiday season you helped us break a number of Xbox LIVE records. This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke …
Discussion:
Kotaku, Engadget, Primotech, Windows Connected, Xbox 360 Fanboy, Joystiq and Xbox Live's Major Nelson
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Associated Press:
U.S. Album Sales Fell 9.5% in 2007 — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Album sales in the United States plunged 9.5 percent last year from 2006, as the recording industry had another weak year despite a 45 percent surge in the sale of digital tracks, according to figures released Thursday.
Quentin / Rogue Amoeba:
Live Disc — Every time we exhibit at Macworld Expo, we hand out CDs with trial copies of all our software on them. And every time, we face the same problem, of how best to create these discs such that the software on them is up to date with the latest we have.
Chris Williams / The Register:
Apple targeted in DRM monopoly suit (again) — ‘I want WMA on my iPod’, squeals Hogmanay bellyacher — Steve Jobs has received a New Year nastygram from a woman who is upset that iPods won't play Microsoft DRM-crippled songs as well as Apple DRM-crippled songs.
Ryan Kim / San Francisco Chronicle:
Mountain View's Meraki proposes free Wi-Fi network for S.F. — San Francisco's plan to provide citywide wireless Internet access, which foundered last summer when EarthLink pulled out, is being revived by a Mountain View company that wants to turn the city into a test site for its vision of a low-cost, community-powered system.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
A Heart-to-Heart with GigaOM Readers — Happy New Year. As you may have noticed, my byline hasn't been up on the site for a few days. That's because the holidays weren't exactly my most jolly. — I had a heart attack on Dec. 28. I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment …
Discussion:
PDA, Screenwerk, VoIP Watch, THE BLOGGING JOURNALIST, ComparisonEngines.com, TechCrunch, Loic Le Meur Blog, LucaFiligheddu.com, WebMetricsGuru, Between the Lines, Master of 500 Hats, WebProNews, Geek Speaker, FoundRead, atmaspheric, Marketing.fm, VentureBeat, IP Democracy, Silicon Alley Insider, The Crunchies, Epicenter, The Jason Calacanis Weblog, BoomTown, bub.blicio.us, Digital Common Sense, The Stalwart, Venture Chronicles, Valleywag, Furrier.org, Kevin Burton's NEW FeedBlog, Scripting News and Paul Kedrosky's …
