Top Items:
Adam L. Penenberg / Fast Company:
Ning's Infinite Ambition — Brain Trust: Ning chairman Marc Andreessen (he built Netscape back in the day), with Bianchini, at the company's HQ in Palo Alto. | It isn't just a site where users can build their own social networks — Ning is a model of how to create a perpetual growth machine.
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Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Social network creator Ning raising $70M at $560M valuation — Make-your-own-social-network company Ning is raising a fourth funding round of up to $70 million, and has raised $63.2 million already, VentureBeat has learned. The investment was led by Legg Mason Opportunity Trust.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Launches Beta of New All-in-One Service for Consumers — Q&A: Group Product Manager Bryson Gordon discusses “Albany” — a new service to help consumers be more protected, productive and connected and to stay current with essential software and security updates.
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Andrew Donoghue / CNET News.com:
AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010 — U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010. — Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi …
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louisgray.com:
Most Bloggers Don't Deserve Any Ad Revenue — It's routinely shocking to me that so many bloggers think they should try and make a profit from their Web site. — Urged on by the success of mega blog networks like TechCrunch and spurred forward by stories from ProBlogger …
Discussion:
Mark Evans, WinExtra, Internet Marketing …, The Last Podcast, Webomatica, mathewingram.com/work, Capitol Valley and yardley.ca
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Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:
Google shares capture largest one-day gain — Update at 1:15 p.m. PDT April 18: Google ends trading day up 20 percent, capturing largest one-day gain — Update at 10 a.m. PDT April 18: Google's gains have now reached 21 percent. — Google's shares closed with a 20 percent gain Friday …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Forbes, paidContent.org, comScore Voices, Wall Street Journal, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Valleywag and Googlified
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Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Exclusive: Gillmor Gang joins TechCrunch — Here's some exclusive news: after being offline for over a year in a legal dispute (can't get into details) the Gillmor Gang is back and is part of TechCrunch! Steve Gillmor is one of the most insightful minds in the technology space, and his …
Larry Dignan / Zero Day:
Apple should call PayPal's bluff — PayPal is in another stand-off with Apple over EV SSL (Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, but Steve Jobs & Co. may call the transaction service's bluff. — According to Ryan Naraine, PayPal is about to launch a whitepaper …
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Ebay considers sale of Skype subsidiary — Ebay will consider selling off its Skype internet phone subsidiary at the end of this year if it fails to find ways to use the fast-growing service to support its core e-commerce business, according to the company's chief executive.
InfoWorld:
5 IT skills that won't boost your salary — Technical skills may never die, but areas of expertise wane in importance as technology advances force companies to evolve and IT staff to forsake yesterday's craft in favor of tomorrow's must-have talent. — “There is less need for system-side knowledge.
Discussion:
The Chronicle
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL (TWX) Firing 100+ Platform A-ers Today — AOL's new Platform-A boss Lynda Clarizio is following through on her plan for a streamlined Platform A. The plan makes sense. Unfortunately, it also involves firings. — A source says today is the day, puts the number of layoffs at “less than 500.”
Windows Live Hotmail Technical Support Blog:
Microsoft Announces Changes for Accessing Hotmail with Outlook Express — A change is coming for users that access Hotmail with Outlook Express. Outlook Express uses a protocol called DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol) to access a Windows Live™ Hotmail® e-mail account.
Android Developers Blog:
Android Developers Have Risen to the Challenge — Posted by Azhar Hashem, Product Marketing Manager for Android, Google Developer Products Team on 17 April 2008 at 9:47 PM — I'm thrilled to share the news that developers from over 70 countries submitted 1,788 entries to the Android Developer Challenge!
Discussion:
Google Blogoscoped, Silicon Alley Insider, InfoWorld, dailywireless.org, localmobilesearch.net and IntoMobile
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Five Wrong Ways to Pitch RWW and One Great Way — Here at ReadWriteWeb we get piles and piles of pitches for coverage from companies all day long and they almost always come in by email. You'll notice that only a tiny percentage of those pitches result in write-ups here.
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
Nice “News quote” feature — Google just announced a cool addition to Google News. If you search for a person's name on Google News, you can see statements where that person has been quoted by a news source. For example, search on Google News for [Arnold Schwarzenegger] and you'll see