Top Items:
Amazon.com:
Amazon.com to Acquire Audible.com — Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Audible Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBL). — Audible.com is the leading online provider of premium digital spoken word audio content, specializing in digital audio editions of books …
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Amazon.com buys Audible; March into digital content distribution continues — Amazon.com's march into digital distribution of content continues-this time with plans to acquire Audible for $300 million. — In a statement on Thursday, Amazon said it will acquire Audible …
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Spectrum Auction: C Block Hits Reserve Price — A bid of $4.7 billion this morning for the most valuable group of wireless licenses in the Federal Communications Commission auction for 700Mhz spectrum pushed the price over the minimum price the government set.
Discussion:
Techland, WebProNews, eWeek, Forbes, Wi-Fi Networking News, IP Democracy, InformationWeek Weblog, Washington Post, dailywireless.org and Slashdot
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Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Open access for all: prime 700MHz Block C hits reserve price — After 17 rounds, the 700MHz spectrum auction has finally hit its one of its most closely watched targets: bidding on Block C has surpassed the Federal Communications Commission's mandated $4.638 billion reserve …
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
700MHz auction exceeds $10 Billion, open-access just one bid away — With weeks still to go, your dysfunctional Uncle Sam is briskly rubbing his hands at having raised more than $10 Billion from the 700MHz auction. This, after just 16 rounds of bidding. But we're not happy to say the least.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Admins Charged with Assisting Copyright Infringement — “The operation of The Pirate Bay is financed through advertising revenues. In that way it commercially exploits copyright-protected work and performances,” said prosecutor Hakan Roswall in a statement.
Discussion:
DSLreports, BBC NEWS, Electronista, The Register, BetaNews, The Pirate Bay, p2pnet, Changing Way, Mashable! and Digg
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BBC:
Pirate Bay hit with legal action — Four men who run one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world have been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden. — The Pirate Bay's servers do not store copyrighted material but offer links to the download location of films, TV programmes, albums and software.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:The Pirate Bay Makes $4 Million a Year on Illegal P2P File-Sharing, Says Prosecutor
Discussion:
TorrentFreak
Chris Williams / The Register:
‘Facebook fatigue’ kicks in as people tire of social networks — Shhh! Can you hear a hiss? That's the sound of naughty facts deflating the social networking balloon a tad. — Whisper it, but numbers from web analytics outfit comScore have confirmed what the chatter in bars and cafes …
Discussion:
HipMojo.com, Valleywag, Silicon Alley Insider, The Last Podcast, Mashable! and The Social Times
Bloomberg:
India, Mideast Suffer Internet Disruption — Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) — India and countries across the Middle East experienced slow Internet connections and disruption to international calls to the U.S. and Europe after two submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean Sea were cut.
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Doug Sherrets / VentureBeat:
Google's Marissa Mayer: Social search is the future — At an event in August, Marissa Mayer, Google's leading VP in search, said social search hasn't shown much promise, but if it does, Google would be in a good position to incorporate it. I wrote about that here.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land
Holovaty.com:
In memory of chicagocrime.org — It's with mixed feelings that I announce the end of one of my projects, chicagocrime.org. This site has been serving Chicago residents since May 2005. I hope you'll indulge me in a brief retrospective. — Chicagocrime.org was one of the original map mashups …
Discussion:
Insider Chatter, Telegraph Blogs, rc3.org, Teaching Online Journalism and The Bivings Report
Nicholas Carr / Guardian:
The internet rewards the lazy and punishes the intrepid — As GPS transceivers become common accessories in cars, the benefits have been manifold. Millions of us have been relieved of the nuisance of getting lost or, even worse, the shame of having to ask a passerby for directions.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Meebo Turns Chat Rooms Into A Web Service — Today, Web-based IM and chat room provider Meebo is releasing full-fledged APIs for its Meebo Rooms that will allow Websites to embed chat functionality in an automated fashion. Currently, Meebo Rooms can be embedded on sites or blogs manually …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google, Facebook Battle For Computer Science Grads. Salaries Soar. — Google and Facebook are fighting hard to hire this years crop of computer science graduates, we've heard, and ground zero is Stanford. Most of the class of 2008 already have job offers even though graduation is months away.
Discussion:
The Chronicle
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Gartner: Apple To Double U.S., Europe PC Share By 2011 — Apple (AAPL) will double its share of the U.S. and Western European PC market share by 2011, the research firm Gartner said today. “Apple's gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple's success,” Garner says.
