Top Items:
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.
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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 …
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 …
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.
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TechConsumer, Google Operating System, PSFK, p2pnet, I4U News, Google Maps Mania, MediaFile and Digg
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Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:Google And Virgin Team For Human Settlement On Mars
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The Social, Ed Burnette's Dev Connection, Search Engine Watch Blog, AppScout, broadstuff and Mashable!
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Why We're Suing Facebook For $25 Million In Statutory Damages — When I started TechCrunch nearly three years ago it was meant to be little more than a hobby. I love startups, and writing about them was fun, not work. But since then this hobby has grown into a real business.
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Philip Tucker / Official Google Docs Blog:
Bringing the cloud with you — We know that many of you have been waiting for offline access to Google Docs, and I'm happy to tell you we'll be rolling it out over the next few weeks, starting today with a small percentage of users. — Here's why I'm excited about this development.
Discussion:
Search Engine Land, Google Operating System, Ajaxian, The Blog Herald, The Last Podcast, WebProNews, Ars Technica, ReadWriteWeb, Zoho Blogs, TechCrunch, Lifehacker, mathewingram.com/work, Dan's Tech-n-Stuff Weblog, BetaNews, STARTUP CHATTER, Web Worker Daily, TECH.BLORGE.com, VentureBeat, Googlified, FastCompany.TV, HighTouch and Mashable!
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Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Windows: A Monopoly Shakes — [Editor's Note: This is the first of two posts pulling data from Forrester report, “Enterprise Desktop And Web 2.0/SaaS Platform Trends, 2007”.] — Forrester Research published the data on Thursday, but only released it publicly today.
Discussion:
Brandon Live!, All about Microsoft, Voices, Howard Lindzon, Smalltalk Tidbits … and Digital Daily
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Scribd now offering free document scanning — We know it's April 1st, but this is 100% 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 …
Discussion:
Mashable!
Chris Williams / The Register:
BT and Phorm secretly tracked 18,000 customers in 2006 — Spied on, profiled, and targeted for credit cards — $10,000 Panda Challenge - are you really protected? — Exclusive BT secretly intercepted and profiled the web browsing of 18,000 of its broadband customers …
Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats:
Web 3.0 isn't the Semantic Web, it's Hailstorm 2.0. Why it Matters & How Microsoft-Yahoo can beat Google. — note: this isn't an April Fool's post, at least not intentionally... Semantic Web, WTF? — Nigga please, tell me something i give a s**t about.
Discussion:
Outside the Lines
Adam Sherwin / Times of London:
The Facebook tool which turns your mobile into a snoop — Husbands who are not where they are supposed to be could soon be in danger of being “sniffed” out by a mobile phone service that gives suspicious partners an electronic map showing the location of their spouse.
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Sony BMG's hypocrisy: company busted for using warez — Sony BMG is no stranger to piracy. As one of the most vocal supporters of the RIAA and IFPI antipiracy efforts, the company has some experience hunting down and punishing consumers who don't pay for its products.
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Linux Foundation Announcements:
Linux Foundation Publishes Study on Linux Development Statistics: Who Writes Linux and Who Supports It — A close look at Linux kernel development process reveals the number of Linux kernel developers has tripled over the last three years — SAN FRANCISCO - April 1, 2008 — The Linux Foundation …
Austin Modine / The Register:
Dell axes 900 jobs in Austin plant shutdown — But hey, $3bn in savings! — Round Rock's Sword of Dell-ocles has once again dropped on employees of the world's number two PC manufacturer. — Dell today said it will close its Austin, Texas desktop PC manufacturing plant and lay-off 800-900 workers.
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Dibya Sarkar / Associated Press:
IBM Hit With Temporary Contract Ban — US Attorneys Probe IBM-EPA Interaction; Company Temporarily Banned From New Federal Contracts — WASHINGTON (AP) — IBM Corp. has been temporarily banned from new federal contracts as prosecutors examine interactions between employees of the company and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
YouTube RickRolls Users — If you aren't familiar with RickRolling - it's when someone puts a link on website to something, but it actually takes you to a music video of Rick Astley's “hit” song Never Gonna Give You Up. — YouTube is RickRolling its own users on April 1.
InfoWorld:
Norway asks to suspend its ‘Yes’ vote on OOXML — Members of the Norwegian technical committee that voted to ratify Microsoft's OOXML document format as an ISO standard are protesting that decision even before the full results of the standards body's vote on the technology have been announced.
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