Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft's Project Granola-Facebook Tastier Than Yahoo? — Project Granola? — Apparently, that's the jokey nickname that's been given by some in the company to Microsoft's (MSFT) new online strategy, in the wake of its failed efforts to acquire Yahoo (YHOO) that ended in a big heap of mess this past weekend.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, CNET News.com, paidContent.org, Search Engine Watch Blog, Mashable!, WebGuild, Deal Journal, All Facebook, The Inquisitr and Valleywag
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Microsoft still shopping; Approached Facebook — Microsoft, just a few days removed from walking away from its Yahoo bid, is reportedly sniffing around Facebook. — According to Kara Swisher, Microsoft's bankers contacted Facebook to see if Mark Zuckerberg and company would be interested in selling the company.
Yuri Kageyama / Associated Press:Bill Gates says Microsoft going ‘independent’ way
Discussion:
Digital Daily, TechSpot, BetaNews, CyberNet, Mashable!, Geek.com, SarahLacy.com and Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune — If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn't buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on. — A future update of the software for Microsoft's portable media player may well include …
Discussion:
NewTeeVee, Apple Watch, Techdirt, Electronista, p2pnet, MacDailyNews, Slashdot and VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Larry Alder / Official Google Blog:
Investing in the future of the open Internet — As you may have read, Google, Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners have entered into an agreement to invest $3.2 billion in a new wireless broadband company.
Discussion:
InformationWeek, InformationWeek Weblog, Wall Street Journal, mocoNews.net, DSLreports, TechCrunch, WebProNews, I4U News, Search Engine Watch Blog, DealBook, Digital Daily, eWeek, Search Engine Land, jkOnTheRun, Phone Scoop, Reuters, Between the Lines, New York Times, IntoMobile, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, Business Week, Payments News, localmobilesearch.net, PhoneNews.com, Google Watch, Paul Mooney and dailywireless.org
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PC World:
OpenOffice 3.0 Beta Released — Carrie-Ann Skinner, PC Advisor — A beta version of OpenOffice.org 3.0 has been released for evaluation by the public. — This version of the popular software suite will support the forthcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard as well as being able …
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Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Twitter Starts Blacklisting Spammers — You know you've made it as a communications medium when you start attracting spammers. On Twitter, the problem is getting bad enough that the service is starting to blacklist people who spam other members. There is already an unofficial site called …
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Farhad Manjoo / Salon:
“Grand Theft Auto IV” sales top $500 million in a week — Take-Two Interactive, the publishers of “Grand Theft Auto IV,” announced today that sales of the game topped $500 million in the first week, more than what many analysts had expected. On its first day on the shelves — April 29 …
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Jon Healey / Bit Player:
Defunct TorrentSpy kicked while down — U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper has handed BitTorrent index site TorrentSpy a bill it couldn't possibly pay. Having ruled in favor of the major Hollywood studios' lawsuit in December, Cooper awarded the studios damages of $30,000 per movie …
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Alertbox:
How Little Do Users Read? … We've known since our first studies of how users read on the Web that they typically don't read very much. Scanning text is an extremely common behavior for higher-literacy users; our recent eyetracking studies further validate this finding.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb
Allan Leinwand / GigaOM:
Web 2.0, Please Meet Your Host, the Internet — I have a major problem with many of the Web 2.0 companies that I meet in my job as a venture capitalist: They lack even the most basic understanding of Internet operations. — I realize that the Web 2. community generally views Internet operations …
Discussion:
MarketingShift
Karl / DSLreports:
Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees — Insider provides details of new ‘protocol agnostic’ solution — A Comcast insider tells me the company is considering implementing very clear monthly caps, and may begin charging overage fees for customers who cross them.
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
Sprint Spending $100 Million to Kick iPhone in the Nuts (iPhone Wearing Cup) — Starting May 9th, Sprint will begin a massive, $100 million marketing campaign aimed straight at the iPhone's nether regions. Stacking its 3G Instinct against the iPhone, Sprint hopes to show that EVDO and GPS …
Discussion:
Infinite Loop
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
Apple's Board: Still Room for Schmidt? — The Google CEO's spot on Apple's board could go from awkward to untenable as the search giant's mobile push brushes up against the iPhone — Until now, having Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt sit on Apple's (AAPL) board of directors has made a lot of sense.
Chris Albrecht / NewTeeVee:
DVD-by-Mail Users Stuck in the Past — Movies-by-mail rental services like Netflix and Blockbuster seem to have ripped open a hole in the movie-watching time/space continuum. Subscribers are stuck somewhere between the years 2004 and 2006, unaware that movies like Juno and No Country for Old Men are out on DVD.
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Customer service via Twitter works for unpopular people too — Yesterday I was in Internet purgatory. Today I'm back in the land of the living. — The occasion? Cable installation—an activity on par with going to get fillings at the dentist. It's time consuming …
Discussion:
mathewingram.com/work
Ryan Singel / Threat Level:
FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret ‘National Security Letter’, Loses — The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public …
Discussion:
Slashdot
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Test: Does Your ISP Slow Down BitTorrent Traffic? — A while back we posted about the plugin Azureus had developed, which allowed people to check whether their ISP is interfering with their traffic. The results showed that indeed quite a few ISPs were, but the plugin didn't provide the user with direct feedback.
