Top Items:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
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:
Discussion:
Google Operating System, CNET News.com, CenterNetworks, Search Engine Journal and Google Blogoscoped
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Nancy Gohring / PC World:
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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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Love Him or Hate Him, Fortune Cannot Make Up Its Mind About Steve Jobs — Once again, Steve Jobs is on the cover of Fortune magazine. He is there because Apple is the most admired company in America. No, wait. He is there because investigative reporter Peter Elkind wrote a 12-page takedown of his Steveness.
RELATED:
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:Apple Shareholders' Meeting: Surprises, But Faithful Not Swayed
Discussion:
Reuters, Byte of the Apple, Investor Relations Blog, CrunchGear, MacDailyNews and MacUser
Matt / Photo Matt:
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:
ben barren, Blaze New Media, Maple Leaf 2.0, GigaOM, Changing Way, Podcasting News, Aral Balkan, TechCrunch and Mashable!
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
WordPress: The Social Network — Can WordPress become the basis of a social network? Automattic founder and WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg hinted today on his blog that WordPress might go in a more social direction. He announced a new hire, Andy Peatling, the developer behind BuddyPress …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:
Yahoo Looks at New Way to Survive — As it scrambles to avoid defeat in its battle with Microsoft, Yahoo may try to put a little more time on the clock. — Microsoft, whose offer for Yahoo is now worth $41.2 billion, was preparing to escalate its takeover fight by starting a proxy contest next week.
Discussion:
paidContent.org
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Wall Street Journal:
Yahoo Searches for Options — Yahoo and Time Warner stepped up talks on creating an alternative to Microsoft's bid for Yahoo. A possible deal would fold AOL into Yahoo.
The Technium:
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
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
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 …
Discussion:
Facebook Press Releases, Wall Street Journal, Search Engine Watch Blog, GigaOM, Bits, Outside the Lines, Valleywag, The 463, Webware.com, The Social, New York Times, Techmamas, VentureBeat, Tech Ticker, Los Angeles Times, Network World, Silicon Alley Insider, WebProNews, Epicenter, Mark Evans, HipMojo.com, paidContent.org, Between the Lines, All Facebook, TechCrunch, Mashable!, Master of 500 Hats and TGDaily.com
RELATED:
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Q&A with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, on hiring, growth, and its platform — Facebook has just hired a new COO, Sheryl Sandberg of Google (our coverage). So I talked with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg today, to get some more context on her hire and how it fits in with the company's larger plans.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
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.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
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.
Discussion:
Pluck, VentureBeat, Texas Startup Blog, Epicenter, Money Out Blog, Mashable!, CNET News.com and Todd Watson
RELATED:
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com:Will 2008 be the Year of Micro Deals?
Discussion:
Howard Lindzon
Brian Bergstein / Associated Press:
Did IPods Cause a Crime Wave? — It's easy to see why iPods would be alluring targets for criminals: The music players are valuable and easy to resell, and people absorbed in their personal soundtracks can be vulnerably oblivious to their surroundings. — But could the temptation …
Discussion:
Techdirt
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Steven Hodson / WinExtra:
The economy of Friending — Just about every part of the Web 2.0 evolution that has occurred over the last while has all been based on the success of one thing - the likelihood of people willing to mark some-one that they may or may not know from either mutual reputation or mutual interests as a friend.
Stuart Elliott / TV Decoder:
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.
Discussion:
Podcasting News, HipMojo.com, paidContent.org, Silicon Alley Insider, Adrants, Reel Pop, NewTeeVee and Gawker
Andrew Orlowski / The Register:
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.
