Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Confirmed: Comcast Bought Plaxo, Deal Closed Today — The rumors were accurate: Comcast will announce their acquisition of social contact list Plaxo today. Financial terms are not being disclosed, but the purchase price is between $150 and $170 million. Plaxo, which was founded in 2002 …
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John / Plaxo's Personal Card:
Comcast to Acquire Plaxo; Pulse to Become Central to Creating Unified “Social Media” Experience Across the Web, the TV (and more) — Big doings at Plaxo today! We are really excited to announce some of the biggest news in the history of Plaxo: We have just signed an agreement** to be acquired by Comcast …
Discussion:
GigaOM, Reuters, Associated Press, VentureBeat, Bits, The Inquisitr, Silicon Alley Insider, WebGuild, paidContent.org, Valleywag and The Real McCrea
Dan Farber / Outside the Lines:Comcast goes social with Plaxo acquisition
Discussion:
Enterprise Alley
Wall Street Journal:
Icahn Will Launch Proxy Contest To Unseat Yahoo's Entire Board — Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is launching a proxy contest to unseat Yahoo Inc.'s board of directors, according to a person close to the matter — a move aimed at pressuring the Internet company to reach out to Microsoft Corp. to re-start sale discussions.
Discussion:
Guardian Unlimited, Epicenter, Data Center Knowledge, Tech Beat and Silicon Alley Insider
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Reuters:
Financier Icahn to run board slate for Yahoo: sources — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has elected to move ahead with plans to run a dissident board slate at Yahoo Inc (NasdaqGS:YHOO - News), sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:Yahoo: Can Icahn Get MSFT Back To The Table?
Discussion:
New York Times, Coop's Corner, BoomTown, CNET News.com, Deal Journal, paidContent.org and Silicon Alley Insider
Arn / MacRumors:
Intel Confirms Atom-based Larger iPhone (Mini-Tablet)? — According to ZDNet.de, Intel Germany CEO Hannes Schwaderer confirmed that Apple would be using the Intel Atom processor in a future version of the iPhone. The new model will reportedly be a larger model with a larger display …
Discussion:
Electronista, Crave, Valleywag, 9 to 5 Mac, Boing Boing Gadgets, Gizmodo, CrunchGear, Ubergizmo and Byte of the Apple
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Mark Cuban / Blog Maverick:
Beating Google ? — Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ? — Better search ? Too subjective. Better monetization ? After the fact.
Discussion:
The Gong Show
Mike Ricciuti / Webware.com:
Adobe set to test new Flash Player — Adobe on Thursday is expected to launch a beta test program for the latest version of its Flash Player software. — Flash Player 10, developed under the code name Astro, includes better support for 3D animation and video hardware acceleration, among other improvements.
Discussion:
Computerworld
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Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Spreadsheets Become Wikis — Google Spreadsheets added an option in the sharing dialog that allows anyone to view or edit the spreadsheet just by knowing the URL. Until now, you had to send an invitation URL that contained a secret code and the people you invited had to login using a Google account.
Discussion:
Google Blogoscoped, diversity.net.nz, Smallbiztechnology.com, VentureBeat, Webware.com, Web Worker Daily and Mashable!
eMarketer:
Social Networking Ad Spending Update — eMarketer has revised its US social network ad spending projections, estimating that advertisers will spend $1.4 billion to place ads on online social networks this year, down from the previous projection of $1.6 billion.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Stealth Search Engine Blekko Gets Money From Marc Andreessen, SoftTech — 2008 is the year of the search engine startup. Hot on the heels of Powerset's partial launch earlier this week, stealth search engine Blekko (no logo, no website, just this and, apparently, some technology) raised a second round of financing.
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Cellphone Headsets With Less Bulk, Background Noise — Wireless cellphone earpieces can make people look faintly ridiculous as they stroll down the street or around the office, seemingly talking to themselves with ugly appendages sprouting from their heads. The pulsing blue lights on these things can make people look like robots.
The Boy Genius Report:
AT&T limits iPhone purchases to one per customer — A “breaking news” bulletin was just sent out to all AT&T Retail employees today stating that they have started limiting iPhone purchases to one per customer. The email isn't exciting, but the inventory is definitely starting to dry up.
Discussion:
CrunchGear, AppleInsider, Unwired View, Just Another iPhone Blog, The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Electronista
Richard Wray / Guardian:
O2 hints at 3G iPhone launch date — The 3G version of the iPhone will be unveiled “in the coming weeks”, the boss of Apple's exclusive mobile phone partner in the UK and Ireland hinted today. — Speculation is rife that Apple will reveal the 3G version of the phone at its Worldwide Developers' Conference …
Discussion:
Crave, Unwired View, Electronista, Just Another Mobile Phone Blog, 9 to 5 Mac and Engadget
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Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
AT&T to boost 3G speeds more than fivefold by 2009 — AT&T said Wednesday it plans to boost the speed of its 3G wireless network to speeds of 20 megabits per second in 2009, paving the way for over-the-air downloads that are more than five times faster than what customers can achieve today.
Discussion:
Apple 2.0, VentureBeat, IntoMobile, Unwired View, TECH.BLORGE.com, dailywireless.org, DSLreports, Gizmodo, Sidecut Reports and MuniWireless
Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner:
If Gates is right, how much longer for keyboards & mice? — It wasn't exactly Minority Report but Bill Gates' technology demonstration at the company's CEO Summit earlier Wednesday may be remembered years from now as a harbinger of the end for the keyboard and mouse era. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow.
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
Founder Video Demo: Firefly Live Chat Application — Firefly founder (?) Billy Chasen presented his application last night at the NY Tech Meetup. Firefly is part of Betaworks which looks like half-startup incubator, half-vc. Firefly is a real-time online chat application that doesn't require an installation.
