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Sheryl Sandberg Will Become COO of Facebook — Facebook will announce that it will hire top Google executive Sheryl Sandberg as COO this afternoon, in a major hire that is sure to shake up the company and also deliver a blow to rival Google. — At Google (GOOG), Sandberg is the vice president …
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Google Tests Additional Search Box Within Search Results — Tamar tipped me off to people seeing secondary search boxes in the Google search results. I see them myself now. For example a search on amazon returns this search box directly under the snippet but above the URL, here is a picture:
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Google Offers Secondary Search Boxes — Google has started offering search boxes within their search results. In the example above, a search box is offered for Amazon. The new service seems to be restricted to larger sites with a slant towards retails sites.

Navigational Site Search Boxes
Discussion:
Google Blogoscoped


The trouble with Steve Jobs — Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer. The same traits that make him a great CEO drive him to put his company, and his investors, at risk. — (Fortune Magazine) — In October 2003 …
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Highlights from Apple's Shareholder Meeting — Details are starting to emerge from Apple's meeting with shareholders, taking place in Cupertino today. Among the tasty bits: — The iPhone will launch in China Asia this year. (We knew that. When? And in what countries?!?)


Office Live Workspace vs Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison — Today, Microsoft announced that the Office Live Workspace beta is publicly available for everyone to access. The site, a free web-based extension of Microsoft Office, lets you access your documents online and share your work with others.

Microsoft Develops New Operating System From Scratch — Microsoft Research unveiled the new operating system, Singularity, as a prototype aimed at academics and researchers. — Microsoft showed off a new operating system on Tuesday, but don't get too excited.
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Backing BuddyPress — Some of you may remember when I wrote about Chickspeak, a WordPress MU-based social network. Andy Peatling, the fellow behind it, later decided to recreate the work he had done as an Open Source effort he called BuddyPress. And it was good.
Discussion:
mathewingram.com/work, Blaze New Media, Podcasting News, TechCrunch, GigaOM, Maple Leaf 2.0, Changing Way and Mashable!
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1,000 True Fans — The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches. — But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators.
Discussion:
BUZZYEAH


Demand Media Buys Pluck for $75 million — Demand Media, a big buyer and operator of Internet domain name companies, completed negotiations to acquire Austin-based Pluck last night after about two months of negotiations. The price is not being disclosed but is rumored to be in the $50 million range.
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Will 2008 be the Year of Micro Deals?
Discussion:
Howard Lindzon

IAC's Ask.com to Cut 8% of Staff — Ask.com announced an internal restructuring that eliminates 40 jobs as well as plans to turn back the search engine's focus to better answering search queries posed as questions. — The job cuts, which amount to roughly 8% of the company's existing work force …
Discussion:
ResourceShelf, Search Engine Watch Blog, WebProNews, Reuters, Silicon Alley Insider and paidContent.org
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Gary Gygax, Dungeons & Dragons creator, dies — MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) — Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69. — He had been suffering from health problems …
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When the music costs nothing, why do freetards prefer to leech? — As we reported yesterday, Nine Inch Nails has followed the Radiohead example and is giving the music away for free. Not all of it, but nine of the thirty six tracks from Trent Reznor's instrumental LP Ghosts I-IV are available for free, with a PDF thrown in.


Firebrand Burns Out — The fire has been banked in an experiment to transform advertising into entertainment. — Firebrand, a television and online service that since October has been presenting commercials as content, is being shut down as its major investors decided to stop providing more money.


Windows-based cash machines ‘easily hacked’ — Security experts have hacked ATMs to show how easy it is to steal money and bank account details from modern cash machines. — ATMs, or automated teller machines, today face the Internet-born threat of worms and denial-of-service attacks …

The New Workplace Rules: No Video-Watching — Carriage Services Inc., a Houston funeral-services company, recently discovered that 70% of the workers in its 125-person headquarters watched videos on Web sites like Google Inc.'s YouTube and News Corp.'s MySpace for about an hour a day.