Top Items:
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Facing Free Software, Microsoft Looks to Yahoo — SAN FRANCISCO — Nearly a quarter-century ago, the mantra “information wants to be free” heralded an era in which news, entertainment and personal communications would flow at no charge over the Internet. — Now comes a new rallying cry: software wants to be free.
Wall Street Journal:
Yahoo Considers Google Defense — Yahoo Inc.'s board of directors discussed its options Friday in the face of Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited offer to buy the Internet company, including an advertising-outsourcing pact with Google Inc., people familiar with the matter said.
Discussion:
TeleRead, Daggle, paidContent.org, Silicon Alley Insider, BloggingStocks, BoomTown and Between the Lines
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Elinor Mills / CNET News.com:
Report: Yahoo board talks but makes no decision on Microsoft — One week after Microsoft publicly bid to acquire Yahoo, the takeover target's directors held a conference call and still haven't decided what to do, according to The Wall Street Journal. — The Yahoo directors discussed outsourcing …
Zephoria / apophenia:
a google horror story: what happens when you are disappeared — Earlier this week, an acquaintance of mine found himself trapped in a Kafka-esque nightmare, a nightmare that should make all of us stop and think. He wants to remain anonymous so let's call him Bob. Bob was an early adopter of all things Google.
Discussion:
Insider Chatter, mathewingram.com/work, odd time signatures, Web Worker Daily and The WebGuild Blog
Hiawatha Bray / Boston Globe:
Polaroid shutting 2 Mass. facilities, laying off 150 — As company exits film business, plants will close in Norwood, Waltham — Polaroid Corp., the Massachusetts company that gave the world instant film photography, is shutting down its film manufacturing lines in the state and abandoning …
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Associated Press:
Polaroid shutters the Polaroid — The photography company long known for its self-developing film cameras moves to focus on printers and digital technology. — BOSTON (AP) — Polaroid is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs.
Erica Ogg / CNET News.com:
Nokia turns people into traffic sensors — UNION CITY, Calif.—On a cool, overcast morning in the parking lot of a Lowe's hardware store, 100 UC Berkeley students lined up in rows ready to jump into a bevy of idling vehicles. — With media and VIPs from companies like Nokia, Navteq …
Ken Fisher / Ars Technica:
Microsoft says “sorry” with free Valentine's Zune 80 players — Microsoft's special Valentine's Day edition of the Zune (Red Zune 80) is apparently more popular than the company expected. The Zune Originals creation that was announced just three weeks ago has already been through …
Assetbar:
Twitter-proxy: Any Interest? — The stories of twitter going down frequently don't need repeating here. Instead, I want to ask the community if there is any interest in addressing the problem. — As many are aware, Twitter's problem with scaling is not RoR, it's not [Joyent] NTT, or …
Discussion:
The Last Podcast
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Alistair Croll / GigaOM:
Does the World Need Another Way to Search? — Google's dominance in online search hasn't stopped hundreds of startups from trying to build a better mousetrap. Each is trying a new twist on search: geography, crowdsourcing, tags, user annotations, learned hierarchies and timelines.
Haroon Malik / Gizmodo:
Meizu M8 Goes on Sale to Suppliers — The much hyped Meizu M8 seems to have gone on sale to suppliers via Alibaba. The companies listed to be holding stock are Fujian Huaxia Trade Co., Ltd, Samsin Trade Co., Ltd and Fuzhou ZhongTianLi Trade Co among others.
Jackson West / NewTeeVee:
Politics Driving More Live, Online Video Coverage — How super was Super Tuesday for sites covering the primaries with live video? CNN.com had a banner day, and served 2.7 million video streams and 600,000 live video streams according to Silicon Alley Insider.
Edward Sussman / Fast Company:
The Media is Social — How FastCompany.com will alter the digital landscape. — Fast Company is about to shake things up again. — Back in 1995, in our first issue, we announced on our cover: “Computing is Social.” It became a Fast Company mantra and helped open the eyes of a generation …
Discussion:
One By One Media, Web Strategy, Global Neighbourhoods, chrisbrogan.com, Social Media Explorer, Adam Kalsey, TechCrunch and Mashable!
Patrick Wintour / Guardian:
Ministers plan clampdown on ‘unsuitable’ video games — A legally enforceable cinema-style classification system is to be introduced for video games in an effort to keep children from playing damaging games unsuitable for their age, the Guardian has learned.
