Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Bebo: By the (Not So Big) Numbers — What's AOL getting for its $850 million in cash to purchase of social-networking site, Bebo? — A very attractive social-networking service and a very experienced exec who has been running it. — But, perhaps more importantly for those who focus on pesky numbers …
Discussion:
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Ellen Lee / San Francisco Chronicle:
AOL to acquire social networking site Bebo — Started three years ago by a husband-and-wife team, social networking site Bebo said Thursday that it will be acquired by AOL for $850 million. — The San Francisco startup is known as a distant third behind social networking sites MySpace …
Discussion:
Lost Remote
David Pogue / Pogue's Posts:
Hello BlackBerry, Meet the iPhone — Before you start reading this, a word of warning: this column is about the iPhone. If you're one of those people who are sick and tired of hearing about the iPhone, then scroll on while you still can. — Then again, if you're one of those people …
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David Chartier / Infinite Loop:Apple may have delayed iPhone SDK for dramatic effect
Discussion:
Byte of the Apple
Marius Oiaga / Softpedia News:
Microsoft Confirms Windows 7 for 2010 - No Word on Windows 7 M2 — Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 is right on track for release in 2010. Concomitantly with the leaked details associated with Windows 7 Milestone 1 dropped by the Redmond company to select partners in January 2008 …
Discussion:
Christopher Null, TechBlog, Download Squad, DailyTech, The Tech Report, Gadgetell and WinBeta
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Embraces The Semantic Web - Expect The Internet To Organize Itself In A Hurry — Yahoo's embrace of all things open continues today - expect an announcement in an hour or so that they are expanding their Open Search Platform that we wrote about last month.
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Yahoo! Search Blog:
The Yahoo! Search Open Ecosystem — A few weeks ago, we began talking about the new Yahoo! Search open platform. Today, we're releasing more details about two important components of the initiative — the developer platform as well as our support of a number of semantic web standards.
Michael Weiss-Malik / Google LatLong:
Organizing more than one world's information — We like to think big. Vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big (to paraphrase one of my favorite authors). And thanks to the flexibility of Google Maps technology and the world wide web, we've been able to work at a universal scale (literally).
Discussion:
Download Squad, Google Blogoscoped, TechCrunch, The Last Podcast, Ogle Earth, Geek Madness and Mashable!
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Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog:
MSN exec Bradford leaving for ad company — Microsoft executive Joanne Bradford, who has been a key player in the company's MSN and online advertising units, is leaving to join Spot Runner Inc., according to a news release issued this morning by the Los Angeles-based advertising technology company: PDF, 2 pages.
Discussion:
Bits, Silicon Alley Insider, BoomTown, WebProNews, paidContent.org, Valleywag, LiveSide, Screenwerk, Microsoft News Tracker, Mashable! and Beyond Binary
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Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Where Have the YouTube Watermarks Gone? — You know how YouTube has its little logo overlaid in white in the bottom right corner of all its videos? Well, it seems to have gone missing. On both videos on and off the site, the files are playing free of any YouTube branding on top of the videos themselves.
Discussion:
Beet.TV
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Cade Metz / The Register:
Google claims ‘Non-existent’ Android beats everything but the Jesus Phone — $10,000 Panda Challenge - are you really protected? — eComm One day, Google believes, software developers will love its “non-existent” Android handset just as much as they love the iPhone - and maybe more.
Discussion:
Slashdot
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Hummer Winblad Partner Will Price Resigns To Head WidgetBox — It's not often a partner at a successful venture capital fund leaves to do anything except retire. But Will Price, a general partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, has resigned from his firm and, as of today, is the CEO of widget startup Widgetbox.
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Reznor: Radiohead offering was insincere, industry is inept — Major musicians are exploring the market potential for directly interacting with their fans and releasing music independently. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead both made headlines recently for experimenting with Internet-based releases …
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AppleInsider:
Apple TV DVR interface revealed in patent filings — A series of Apple patent filings published this week reveal a version of the Apple TV media device capable of browsing and recording live television programming in addition to serving up pre-aired content from the company's iTunes Store.
Brad Stone / Bits:
Breaking Google Captchas for $3 a Day — In the last two months, several Internet security firms have suggested that spammers had devised a way to bust the “captcha” that is protecting Gmail. This would allow them to use the popular e-mail service to drown the rest of the Internet …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
The Lost Features of Google — Google created tons of products in the past. And some of them, they removed again after finding that they didn't work, required too many resources, didn't take off, or were overshadowed by legal concerns. Here are some of the “lost” Google services and features.
Discussion:
Forever Geek
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:
Source: Yahoo in informal talks with Microsoft — Microsoft and Yahoo are holding informal merger discussions, marking a shift from the “radio silence” that previously existed between the two companies, according to a source familiar with the talks. — A lot has changed over the past two weeks …
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Google's Trojan Horse: Let the Free Ad Serving Begin — One of the biggest misunderstandings in much of the discussion about Google's deal to buy DoubleClick is the perception that DoubleClick actually is involved in selling advertising. — It's not. It sells software that advertisers …
afp.com:
DVD failure to cost Toshiba nearly a billion dollars: report — TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's Toshiba expects to post nearly one billion dollars in losses this year as it shuts down its HD DVD business after losing to rival Sony's Blu-ray format, a newspaper said Thursday.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
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