Top Items:
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES — CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the show, we pretty much couldn't help ourselves. We shut off a TV. And then another. And then a wall of TVs. And we just couldn't stop.
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Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
BLOGGERS BEHAVING BADLY: GIZMODO MESSES WITH CES FLAT SCREENS — The Gizmodo kids pulled a good stunt at CES: they fired TV-B-Gone remotes at walls of shiny new monitors on display and during press conferences, much to the displeasure of booth staffers. — The video is funny.
Discussion:
Ewan Spence's All New Musings
Shel / Global Neighbourhoods:
Gizmodo Prank at CES. Victims may be bloggers — The clever hacks at Gizmodo pulled a prank at CES making all those TV screens go blank all at once, then filming and posting it, I assume very much to their own sophomoric satisfaction. As Webware Rafe Needleman put it:
Discussion:
blackrimglasses.com
CBS News:
Facebook Founder Says “Beacon” Needs Work — Also Tells 60 Minutes It's Unlikely Company Will Go Public in 2008 — (CBS) The controversial advertising device many accused of invading the privacy of Facebook users will eventually be a good tool, says Facebook founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg.
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Amanda Natividad / paidContent.org:
Facebook To Add More Privacy Controls, Mass Messaging; Zuckerberg On ‘60 Minutes’ — Facebook plans to release new features giving users more control over their privacy settings and messaging capabilities, according to its “What's New” page. Recently, Facebook added Friend Lists …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Believe it or not, Mahalo is Growing — Human-built search engine Mahalo appears to be shooting past the traffic numbers it got when it launched, according to Heather Hopkins at traffic analyst firm Hitwise. — Mahalo pages are collections of the most useful links regarding a wide variety of timely topics in popular niches.
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Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Wikia Launch & Mahalo Growth — This week's launch of Wikia Search is the latest example of a human powered search engine. Mahalo and Cha-Cha are two other recent entrants. This week we've seen a spike in daily visits to Wikia Search, as you'd expect. In my digging the thing that stood as interesting to me is Mahalo's growth.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Announces Retirement and Transition Plan for Jeff Raikes, President of the Microsoft Business Division — Company announces it has hired Stephen Elop from Juniper Networks; Raikes will continue at Microsoft through September 2008. — Microsoft Corp. today announced that …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Juniper Networks exec to succeed Microsoft Business Division President Raikes — In what I consider surprising timing, Microsoft announced on January 10 that one of its three corporate presidents, Jeff Raikes, is retiring in September 2008. — Raikes will be succeeded by Stephen Elop …
Discussion:
Business Week, Microsoft Watch, Voices, Forbes, eWeek, New York Times, Tech Trader Daily, The Register, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog and WinBeta
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Bebo's Platform Now Open for All Developers — Almost a month ago to the day, social network Bebo announced its developer platform. Or rather, a clone of Facebook's developer platform. The idea was to copy Facebook's platform so that developers wouldn't have to relearn a new one and rebuild …
Discussion:
Kwiqq Blog, The Social Times, ReadWriteWeb, paidContent, ProgrammableWeb, Lonely CEO Media, All Facebook, Snipperoo, DLD and Mashable!
Tony Ruscoe / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Checkout Trends — Google Trends allows you to enter keywords and phrases to compare what users have been searching for over a specified time period. Now, the Official Google Checkout Blog has just announced that they've launched their own version which lets you see what people have been buying using Google Checkout:
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Amazon Completes DRM-Free Roster With Sony-BMG — For anyone who was bummed about the hoops they were going to have to jump through to get DRM-free songs from Sony-BMG artists, by the end of the month you will be able to download those songs at Amazon's MP3 store.
Discussion:
Amazon.com, Bloomberg, Associated Press, MacMegasite, USA Today, TeleRead, Profy.Com, WebProNews, Gizmodo, mathewingram.com/work, Electronista, paidContent.org and Brier Dudley's blog
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Benchmark Bets on Ruby on Rails With $3.5 Million Investment in Engine Yard — Is Ruby on Rails the next Java? Benchmark Capital thinks so. It just invested $3.5 million in Engine Yard, taking its entire series A round. Ruby on Rails is an increasingly popular Web application programming environment …
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Richard S. Chang / Wheels:
Tata Nano: The World's Cheapest Car — (Photo by Money Sharma/European Pressphoto Association) — Tata Motors today took the covers off the world's cheapest car — the Nano. — Over the past year, Tata has been building hype for a car that would cost a mere 100,000 rupees (roughly $2,500) …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Music Industry's Last Stand Will Be A Music Tax — It is becoming more and more difficult for the music industry to ignore the basic economics of the their industry: unenforceable property rights (you can't sue everyone) and zero marginal production costs (file sharing is ridiculously easy).
Discussion:
CNET News.com, broadstuff, mathewingram.com/work, larry borsato, Dembot, Podcasting News and Digg
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
MicroHoo? YaBay? No Deal! — Look, I love a good takeover rumor as much as the next gossipy reporter. — But all the incessant rumblings of Microsoft sniffing around to buy Yahoo or Yahoo merging with eBay are getting a tad ridiculous. — So, Deal or No Deal? Um, no deal, Howie!
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
CondeNet Reworks Flip.com As Social Net App Starting With Facebook; Site Will Remain — CondeNet is remaking its teen-focused community site Flip.com into an app that will live on other social nets. The first to get the new Flip app is Facebook, with others to follow, CondeNet announced a few minutes ago.
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