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.
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Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Bankers Talked To Facebook About a Deal — Microsoft Corp.'s bankers recently contacted Facebook Inc. to gauge the Internet company's willingness to sell Facebook to the software giant, according to a person familiar with the matter. — There are no active discussions between …
Discussion:
Tech Confidential, Associated Press, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Coop's Corner, The Inquisitr and Lost Remote
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.
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:
Zune Insider, New York Times, MacRumors, Techdirt, Apple Watch, NewTeeVee, Engadget, Gizmodo, Valleywag, Electronista, p2pnet, CrunchGear, Insanely Great Mac, iLounge and MacDailyNews
InfoWorld:
Internet Archive challenges FBI's secret records demand — The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has withdrawn a secret demand that the Internet Archive, an online library, provide the agency with a user's personal information after the Web site challenged the records request in court.
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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:
Not Quite a Blog 2.0
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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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:
Sidecut Reports, Bits, InformationWeek Weblog, Business Wire, DSLreports, mocoNews.net, Wall Street Journal, InformationWeek, CNET News.com, GMSV, WebProNews, I4U News, Search Engine Watch Blog, DealBook, jkOnTheRun, Phone Scoop, Digital Daily, eWeek, New York Times, IntoMobile, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch, Payments News, Reuters, Silicon Alley Insider, VentureBeat, Between the Lines, Business Week and localmobilesearch.net
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Joel Hruska / Ars Technica:
AMD: Intel's misdeeds killing our long-term sustainability — AMD and Intel have been trading shots through the court docket since AMD first filed its antitrust lawsuit against Intel in 2005, so it's not particularly surprising to see a new 108-page filing from Sunnyvale and a prompt and massive reply from Santa Clara.
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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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Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
News Corp. Web Unit Sees Revenue Drop, Admits It Won't Hit FY 08 Goals — It took a while, but Rupert Murdoch has finally acknowledged that News Corp.'s Web business won't hit the goals he laid out for it last August. Actually, he made Peter Chernin say it: “Let me begining by saying yes …
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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.
The Mozilla Blog:
COMPROMISED FILE IN VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE PACK FOR FIREFOX 2 — The Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 contains inserted code to load remote content. This code is the result of a virus infection, but does not contain the virus itself. This usually results in the user seeing unwanted ads …
Discussion:
Threat Level
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Adobe launches Photoshop Express update with Flickr support — Adobe is launching an update to its free Photoshop Express image editing tool today, including support for Yahoo's Flickr online photo service. — The public beta of the tool now includes changes based on feedback from the community.
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 …
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
GamesIndustry.biz:
NVIDIA to “simplify” product range — NVIDIA has revealed plans to simplify its gaming product range in order to appeal to a wider audience. — Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Roy Taylor, VP of Content Business Development, admitted that NVIDIA's current range of products is over complicated and too confusing for many customers.
