Top Items:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Rumor: Is Google About to Buy Bebo For $1 Billion To $1.5 Billion? Or Will it Be MySpace? — An unconfirmed rumor has surfaced that either Google or MySpace is about to announce a big $1 billion to $1.5 billion acquisition in the social space. After checking around with multiple industry sources …
Discussion:
PDA, Silicon Alley Insider, ParisLemon, VoIP Blog, broadstuff, The Social Times, Mark Evans, Valleywag, Seeking Alpha, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable!
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Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Bebo For a Billion? A 100 Percent Chance of Wrongness! — First, Google and News Corp. are not about to buy Bebo for $1 billion to $1.5 billion. — Second, Bebo-as has been reported and is easy to find out about by anyone who can pick up a phone and ask around like a reporter is supposed …
Official Google Docs Blog:
Stop sharing spreadsheets, start collecting information — Posted by: Andrew Bonventre, Spreadsheets engineer and Michelle Lee, Spreadsheets designer — Today we're asking you to do something new: stop sharing spreadsheets. — Well... only sometimes, and only in certain situations.
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Local News — Google News has a new feature: custom localized news. Just visit the Google News homepage and scroll down to the “Local News” input box. Enter your location, click Add, and you'll find a new navigation entry in the top left. — I entered “stuttgart, germany,” …
Discussion:
Mashable!
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Google News Blog:
All News is Local — Something you already know about Google News is that we crawl thousands of sources from around the world. This means you get as many different perspectives on a story from many perspectives. A while back, we started thinking about how to bring this same diversity …
Elinor Mills / CNET News.com:
Google Apps aims to move companies to the cloud — Just like rogue employees in the 1990s forced instant messaging into corporations, the new Google Apps Team Edition being launched on Thursday offers a way for workers to slip a hosted apps service into the enterprise.
Ryan Singel / Threat Level:
Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web — Are underseas telecom cable cuts the new IEDs? — After two underwater cable cuts in the Middle East last week severely impacted countries from Dubai to India, alert netizens voiced suspicions that someone — most likely Al Qaeda — intentionally severed …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Interrogations — During the two year investigation into The Pirate Bay, several people connected to the site were questioned. The Swedish police allegedly used some of the harshest (Jack Bauer like) interrogation tactics to get them to talk, with surprising results.
Discussion:
Digg
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Josh Catone / ReadWriteWeb:
A Guide to Billionaire Bloggers - And Some We'd Like to See — With the news today that billionaire investor Carl Icahn is getting ready to start blogging, we started to wonder what other billionaires blog. Sadly (or perhaps not so sadly), not many of them blog. Why should we care if a billionaire blogs?
Ina Fried / CNET News.com:
Whatever happened: DirecTV-Microsoft — It happens all the time. — Company X and Company Y get together and announce a broad partnership to do a whole bunch of things. Executives smile, shake hands, and talk about all the great things they are going to do together.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Megan McCarthy / Epicenter:
Show Me the Money! Dealipedia Wants to Unveil Secretive Business Deals — Michael Robertson, who made $115 million when he sold his startup MP3.com to Vivendi in 2001, wants every other entrepreneur to tell the world how much, or little, they pocketed during their business deals.
Stefanie Olsen / CNET News.com:
Israeli upstarts follow money to Silicon Valley — MOUNTAIN VIEW—Israel is brimming with technology upstarts that want what Silicon Valley has—venture money, partnerships, and a bridge to the rest of the world. — On Wednesday, 15 Israeli companies showed off their technology to a group …
Geraldine Fabrikant / New York Times:
Time Warner Plans to Split Off AOL's Dial-Up Service — Time Warner, seeking to cut costs and streamline operations, plans to split off AOL's Internet access business from its Web site and online advertising business and cut 100 jobs at its corporate unit, its new chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, said Wednesday.
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:AOL To Split Off Dying Access Subscription Business. When's That Advertising IPO?
Discussion:
BoomTown, Widgets Lab, Los Angeles Times, DSLreports, Seeking Alpha and The Jason Calacanis Weblog
Steven Johnson / Guardian:
Dawn of the digital natives — If you believe a scary US report, reading is on the decline. But, says Steven Johnson, it completely fails to consider the amount that we do every day on our computers — The NEA makes a convincing case that young people are reading less, but it completely excludes reading done on computers
Discussion:
HeyJude
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Modu Cellphone Changes Function with Jackets — Modu's tiny cellphone could be inserted into multiple “jackets” to change its function. Or better said, the Modu phone carries your data, giving your personality to whatever gadget you insert it into, GameBoy cartridge style.
GigaOM:
Is BT Fusion Dead in the Water? — Written by Ken Young, whose own blog is called The UK Mobile Report. — BT has stopped marketing its Fusion handsets to consumers and is now testing a service that uses the same technology but would allow BT broadband users to access the web …
Discussion:
VoIP Blog
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