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4:20 PM ET, January 4, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Catherine Holahan / Business Week:
Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM  —  The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare 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 …
RELATED:
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.
Discussion: Podcasting News and MacUser
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Sony-BMG, Big Music Going (Mostly) DRM-Free: Too Late
Discussion: p2pnet, Mashable! and Byte of the Apple
Greg Linden / Geeking with Greg:
The coming 2008 dot-com crash  —  Early January is the time we see many predictions for 2008.  I have not played this game since 2006, but I want to chime in this year.  —  I am only going to make one prediction, but one with broad impact.  We will see a dot-com crash in 2008.
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.
RELATED:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google's User Experience Expert, Kevin Fox, Joins New Start-up Company
Discussion: TechCrunch and WebProNews
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
Monster Acquires Affinity Labs, Developer Of Vertical Career Sites, For $61 Million  —  Online jobs firm Monster Worldwide has acquired SF-based Affinity Labs, a developer of community sites centered around various vocations, for $61 million in cash.  Examples of its portfolio include Policelink.com …
RELATED:
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Monster buys community site, Affinity Labs, for significant $61M  —  Monster, the giant job listing company, has acquired Silicon Valley's Affinity Labs, a company that runs several online community sites — including for police officer, healthcare employees, teachers, government employees and technologists.
Discussion: TechCrunch and GigaOM
Affinity Labs:   Monster Worldwide Expands Reach Through Strategic Acquisition …
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 …
RELATED:
Bill Slawski / Search Engine Land:
Googlebot In Aisle Three: How Google Plans to Index the World?  —  Robots reading cereal boxes in the Supermarket?  Googlebot at the Art Museum?  Street signs and building addresses snatched from Street View images for local search, image search, and product search?
Discussion: Google Blogoscoped and Screenwerk
William Slawski / SEO by the SEA:
Google on Reading Text in Images from Street Views, Store Shelves …
Discussion: Search Engine Guide
Ben Edelman:
Sears Exposes Customer Purchase History in Violation of Its Privacy Policy  —  Want to know what a given customer has purchased from Sears?  It's surprisingly easy to find out.  Here's the procedure:  —  1) Go to the Sears “Manage My Home” site, www.managemyhome.com .  Create an account and sign in.
Discussion: Zero Day and Techdirt
Karl / DSLreports:
HDMI Over Coaxial - Another option for home networking  —  If you're lucky enough to no longer be worrying about the speed of your broadband connection, you may still be concerned about the speed of your home network, particularly when it comes to shoveling HD content around the house.
Discussion: Electronista
RELATED:
Business Wire:
Gefen and Pulse~LINK Introduce the World's First Consumer HDMI …
Discussion: SlashGear
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Will fans pay?  Reznor opens books on 'Net music experiment  —  Radiohead isn't talking numbers, but Trent Reznor is.  After producing Saul Williams' The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust and offering it to fans online, Reznor yesterday laid out the numbers from his experiment.
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.
Discussion: CrunchGear, Coolfer, TechCrunch and Digg
Pudding Media:
PUDDING MEDIA CLOSES $8 MILLION SERIES A LED BY OPUS CAPITAL AND BRM CAPITAL  —  Funding to Expand Company's Global Effort to Monetize All Voice Minutes  —  Pudding Media, the voice monetization company, today announced that it has secured Series A funding of $8 million led by Opus Capital and BRM Capital.
Gizmodo:
Sennheiser Wireless Earphones Utilize Kleer Technology Instead of Bluetooth  —  Sennheiser MX W1: First Wireless Stereo Earphones Using the Kleer Bluetooth Alternative  —  Kleer wireless technology has shown promise in terms of both energy efficiency and sound quality when compared to Bluetooth …
Discussion: Electronista
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
A Little ‘Intel’ on Apple's Next Move  —  Wondering what Steve Jobs will announce in his Macworld keynote on Jan. 15?  The newest chips from Apple's sole supplier offer some intriguing hints  —  With Macworld Expo just days away, the pre-"Stevenote" buzz is building fast.
Discussion: localmobilesearch.net
Tim O'Reilly / O'Reilly Radar:
Human vs. Machine: The Great Challenge of Our Time  —  In an email conversation with Bill Janeway about our upcoming Money:Tech Conference, he said something really profound: … I've written quite a bit about “bionic software,” the idea that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Web 2 …
Discussion: Paul Kedrosky's …
Charlie Demerjian / Inquirer:
Intel's OLPC moves blighted by the old paranoia  —  Comment Stupid, destructive and all together wrong  —  DEAR INTEL,  —  Please stop playing stupid power games with OLPC, you are only hurting those in need.  It is borderline disgusting to see your little tantrums hurt those who can't defend themselves.
Discussion: CNET News.com
 
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 More Items: 
Darren Murph / Engadget:
DXG delivers DXG-566V HD camcorder for $149
Discussion: Electronista
Megan McCarthy / Epicenter:
Kleiner Perkins Adds Facebook-Savvy General Partner
Discussion: VentureBeat
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
The RIAA: Possibly right, still weasels
Discussion: p2pnet and CNET News.com
Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:
Meraki Raises $20M Series B
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
CompactFlash Meets SATA Speeds
Discussion: Engadget
Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins / Mashable!:
Forget Kenya, Let's Talk Scoble-gate!
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
NY Google Vet Hirsch Leaving For Startups
Discussion: WebProNews
 Earlier Items: 
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
BiTMICRO introduces 832GB SSD for CES 2008
Discussion: DailyTech
I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBS:
Always Certain, Sometimes Correct
Discussion: The Mac Observer
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com:
Web Starting to Surpass TV Advertising in Europe: Sweden First, then UK, then...
Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog:
Pre-CES: A glimpse inside a real Microsoft home
Discussion: CNET News.com
Charlie White / Gizmodo:
Fujifilm FinePix Z100fd, So Thin It's Anorexic
Discussion: Engadget and Electronista
Quentin / Rogue Amoeba:
Live Disc  —  Every time we exhibit at Macworld Expo …
Discussion: MacUser and The Apple Blog
Mary Kathleen Flynn / Behind The Money Blog:
Leah Culver, 25, writes the code that powers Pownce
Discussion: CenterNetworks