Top Items:
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.
Discussion:
Epicenter, PDA, Between the Lines, Search Engine Land, All Facebook, p2pnet, Todd Watson, BoomTown, paidContent.org, Mark Evans, Facebook Applications … and Inside Facebook
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook - Why Not Let Sleeping Dogs Lie? — Just as the press was getting bored with talking about the problems with Facebook's new advertising platform, Beacon (first mentioned here on November 2), founder Mark Zuckerberg goes on 60 Minutes to stir everything back up again (the show will be on air this Sunday).
Discussion:
Insider Chatter
Charlene Li / Groundswell:
Facebook (and me) on 60 Minutes — In December, I received a call from the producers of 60 Minutes, the longest running news program on broadcast TV. They were doing a segment on Facebook and wanted to know if I could provide background for the story. — Wow.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Business Week:
Steve Jobs' Video Dreams — His magic has not extended to visual entertainment. Hollywood and cable companies aim to keep it that way — At last year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, most of the 140,000 attendees were buzzing about the future of the cell phone—and how Apple Inc. …
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Judie Lipsett / Gear Diary:
Total and Utter Crap: Gizmodo's Stupid CES Prank on Motorola and Us Bloggers — I first found out about Gizmodo's stupidity on ValleyWag a little earlier today; the post read “What's the difference between a blogger and a journalist? … I had no idea what Owen Thomas, the post author …
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Gizmodogate: Get a sense of humor folks — Gizmodo turns off a bunch of TVs at CES to liven the joint up and you'd think that their scribes lit Bill Gates on fire for the page views. — The angst over Gizmodo's hilarious prank is borderline ridiculous: — Judie Lipsett at Gear Diary calls the prank “total and utter crap.”
Discussion:
Global Neighbourhoods
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES
Discussion:
Good Morning Silicon Valley, CrunchGear, Today @ PC World, geeksugar, GottaBeMobile, Valleywag, Mobility Site, 901am, CenterNetworks, GeekBrief.TV, Ewan Spence's All New Musings, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband, Letters From Exile, Technovia, Phil's Blogservations, Crave, PE HUB, Loic Le Meur Blog, The Next Web, Silicon Alley Insider, Gadget Lab, FISTFULAYEN, mathewingram.com/work, Techmamas and Joe Duck
Shel / Global Neighbourhoods:Gizmodo Prank at CES. Victims may be bloggers
Discussion:
blackrimglasses.com
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Yahoo's Core Value Is Falling — The market is taking stock of still more rumors that Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo. (This would be a great deal, if it weren't for management, strategic and cultural differences that would probably sink any combination.)
Discussion:
HipMojo.com
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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!
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:Yahoo: Bernstein Cuts Target; MSFT Deal Unlikely; Equity Stakes …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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 …
Arn / MacRumors:
SlingPlayer for iPhone and iPod Touch? — ElectricPig.tv claims (via 9to5) they have an “extremely senior source” at Sling Media who says that an iPhone/iPod Touch version of their SlingPlayer client software is coming. — Sling Media sells the SlingBox which allows you to stream video …
Discussion:
Infinite Loop
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Thomas Claburn / InformationWeek:
Zero-Day Exploit For Apple's QuickTime Posted — The vulnerability affects both Windows and Mac OS X versions of Apple's QuickTime software. — An Italian security researcher has posted a proof-of-concept exploit for a zero-day vulnerability in the most current version of Apple's QuickTime media software (7.3.1).
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Wall Street Journal:
Showdown Looms Over Pirated-Media Directory — Swedish Prosecutors Target Organizers of Pirate Bay, A Huge File-Sharing Guide — One of Hollywood's biggest foes is about to be called on the carpet. After years of steering Web surfers to free entertainment, the organizers of a massive directory …
Peter Sayer / InfoWorld:
UK gov't report: Don't upgrade to Vista — San Francisco - British schools should not upgrade to Microsoft's Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) said in a report on the software.
Discussion:
Ars Technica
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Why Google, Yahoo and Microsoft should worry about Countrywide's takeover — Update: Countrywide Financial is being acquired by Bank of America and when the deal closes the second largest Web advertiser will disappear. It's highly unlikely that Bank of America will spend so lavishly on online advertising.
Simon Thiel / Bloomberg:
Yell Shares Rise on Renewed Speculation About Bid by Google — Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) — Yell Group Plc, the publisher of the U.K.'s Yellow Pages phone books, had its biggest gain in London trading in a month on speculation about a bid from Google Inc. — Yell rose as much as 4.4 percent, the biggest increase since Dec. 10.
