Top Items:
InfoWorld:
Microsoft, Yahoo agree on buyout price — After much internal debate and industry speculation, Yahoo today agreed to be acquired by Microsoft, adding $2.6 billion to Redmond's original offer of $44.6 billion on Jan. 31. — The agreement was reached near midnight last night …
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Matthew Karnitschnig / Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Unlikely to Raise Yahoo Offer — Microsoft Corp. is preparing to lay a long siege. — Two months after Microsoft made its $44.6 billion offer to acquire Yahoo Inc., the software maker has no plans to raise its bid, people close to the company say.
Discussion:
Money Out Blog, Beyond Binary, Tech Trader Daily, Digital Daily, HipMojo.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, Between the Lines, paidContent.org, Silicon Alley Insider, The Mac Observer, Seeking Alpha, ClickZ News Blog, BoomTown, CNET News.com, BloggingStocks, BloggingBuyouts, Tech Beat and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
More on MicroHoo: Irritated Investors! Angry Arbs! Zen Microsoft? — So, I was making the rounds again of my sources at Yahoo's major institutional investors yesterday and here's the overall 411: Frustration. Confusion. Impatience. — And the bottom line from several of them-if Yahoo does …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Gmail April Fools Not Very Funny. On the Upside, They Started A Wikipedia War — Right on schedule: Google is releasing their April Fools jokes onto us as the calendars hit April 1 on the east coast (here's last year's efforts). Google Australia got a head start earlier today with the very funny Future Search.
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Sir Richard Branson / Official Google Blog:
Announcing Project Virgle — In my life, I've had a lot of exciting adventures and launched a lot of ambitious business ventures. I'm delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google which qualifies on both counts.
Discussion:
Google Watch, Ed Burnette's Dev Connection, p2pnet, TechConsumer, PSFK, I4U News, TechCrunch, WebProNews, Google Maps Mania, broadstuff, MediaFile, Mashable! and Digg
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InfoWorld:
Source: Windows XP to get reprieve for low-cost laptops — San Francisco - Microsoft plans to extend the availability of Windows XP for low-cost laptops beyond June 30, with an announcement expected later this week, according to a source familiar with the situation.
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Ars Technica
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Richard Koman / ZDNet Government:
OOXML: Unofficially yes, formal announcement Wed. — PCWorld reports that the ISO has been telling member countries that OOXML will be approved, official announcement to be distributed Wednesday. … Oliver Bell has a great post (though perhaps not for the reasons he espouses) …
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Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Analyst: Apple's U.S. consumer market share now 21 percent — The iPhone gets the most press and the iPod sells in the largest quantities, but it's the Macintosh that really drives Apple's growth, says Gene Munster. — In the second installment of a multipart report on Apple's …
Jimmy Hsu / DigiTimes:
Lite-On developing BD-ROM drives for Xbox 360, sources say — Lite-On IT is developing built-in Blu-ray Disc-(BD) ROM drives for the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console, according to industry sources. Lite-On declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.
Discussion:
Ubergizmo, I4U News, Blocks & Files headlines, Engadget, The Tech Report and Dan's Tech-n-Stuff Weblog
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Scribd now offering free document scanning — We know it's April 1st, but this is 100 percent real. I made James Yu, Senior Product Developer at Scribd swear on his unborn first child that this isn't an April fool's gag. Starting today the document hosting company will take any of your real documents …
Paul Boutin / Valleywag:
YouTube kills rickrolling once and for all — April 1, 2008: The day a meme died. Go to YouTube. Click on any of the Featured Videos entries. Every one of them redirects to the same Rick Astley clip. The gag is called “rickrolling,” a variant of duckrolling.
Discussion:
theory.isthereason
Richard Thurston / The Register:
Google lets users take Apps files offline — Hard drive autosaving to save you grief — $10,000 Panda Challenge - are you really protected? — Google is to give users access to Google Apps offline, meaning they'll be able to continue working if their internet connection falls down.
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Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Live, from New York, it's...Mark Zuckerberg? — In a surprise move that has shocked Silicon Valley, young Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will guest host an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live, according to multiple sources. — The mild-mannered Zuckerberg, best-known …
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Blog Comments Still Matter — Over the weekend, this post on Paul Graham's blog got a lot of attention. The title was “How to Disagree,” and it focused on the different types of negative, or disagreeing, blog comments. As Matthew Greensmith of Geek News Central called it, it was “a true geek masterpiece.”
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Search Engine ChaCha Expands Mobile Service To Include Voice Input — Human-powered search engine ChaCha launched in late 2006 to somewhat mixed reviews. It sought to entice users to search with expert guides in real time via IM chat windows. It also offered algorithmic search but the human-guided search was the hook.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Filter Google Reader by Item Popularity With New AideRSS Plug-in — Overwhelmed with all the content coming through your Google Reader? Want to skim just the top stories from any feed you're looking at? Canadian RSS filtering service AideRSS today launched a new Firefox plug-in that lays …