Top Items:
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows — SAN FRANCISCO — In a significant step toward vanquishing the local video store and keeping couch potatoes planted firmly in front of their televisions and computers, Amazon.com will introduce a new online store of TV shows and movies on Thursday, called Amazon Video on Demand.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Amazon To Debut Streaming Movie/TV Service Today — Amazon will launch a new streaming video service to select customers on Thursday called Amazon Video on Demand. The service is different from its year-and-a-half old Unbox download service, which offers downloads of movies and TV to rent and buy, but only works on Windows machines.
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
SAI Parent Company Raises Pots Of Money At Mind-Boggling Valuation — Well, okay, not exactly, but plenty of capital to continue to grow the company and SAI, which we're really excited about. We're also honored to now have a handful of honest-to-God media heavyweights as partners.
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Fred / A VC:
Blogging's Dead, Long Live Blogging — Late last year I wrote a blog post suggesting that individual bloggers like me were being replaced by traditional media as the leading voices in the blog world. It caused a bit of a stir and I followed it up the next day by saying that “social media requires real people”.
Discussion:
Furrier.org
Opera:
Mobile browsing gets a makeover — Opera Mobile 9.5 beta is released — Opera Software today released the much-anticipated, first public version of Opera Mobile 9.5 beta. A powerful foreshadowing of what is to come, this beta takes mobile browsing speed and features to a new level, complete with visual effects and a new look.
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Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Opera Mobile 9.5 beta released — Opera Mobile 9.5 beta is out today, and it's already the slickest web browser available for Windows Mobile devices. Opera has always been faster than Pocket Internet Explorer at quickly rendering web pages, but Opera Mobile 9.5 beta does a far better job …
Nik Cubrilovic / TechCrunchIT:
Why Google Slows Down Acquired Companies — In Febuary of this year Google re-launched JotSpot as Google Sites. Google had acquired Jotspot some 16 months earlier, during which time Jot was only available to existing customers and closed to new signups. What happen during those 16 months …
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
BlackBerry Bold vs. iPhone 3G: yeah, we definitely went there — If there's ever been two devices so closely pitted against each other, it would be none other than the BlackBerry Bold and the iPhone 3G. Heck, people we're even putting the original iPhone against the Bold.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Yahoo: Icahn just a short-termer — Yahoo once again delivered another shareholder letter Thursday designed to urge shareholders to vote for its board members at its Aug. 1 annual meeting. Yahoo's message: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn only has short-term interest n the company.
Discussion:
Epicenter, Search Engine Watch Blog, The Register, paidContent.org and Silicon Alley Insider
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Is This The Future Of Search? — The video above shows a user interface being bucket tested by Google to select (probably randomly determined) users. Earlier today we showed a screen shot of the interface and a video of the search history, recorded by Adrian Pike, the CTO of startup Tatango.
Discussion:
Guardian Unlimited, Beyond Search, WebMetricsGuru, MediaFuturist, Shoemoney, metarand and justin hileman dot info
Josh Siegel / Google Mobile Blog:
Rate and Review Businesses from Your Phone — Last Saturday I had dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco's Richmond District. While it didn't look like much from the outside, the inside displayed a variety of Southeast Asian antiques and the walls were adorned with tapestries and bamboo.
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Say goodbye to the computer mouse — Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley — It's nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered. — A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.
Discussion:
CrunchGear
Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny!:
YouTube on TiVo Launches — As I'd suspected, TiVo support for YouTube is indeed hidden within the 9.4 software update. Series 3 and TiVo HD subscribers should start seeing the application show up as early as tomorrow (Thursday), though the rollout will be completed over the next few weeks.
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Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Report: Lionsgate cranks open for YouTube — The common wisdom might be that the film industry loathes Google's YouTube, but that might be changing. — Lions Gate Entertainment, the studio responsible for classics like Dirty Dancing and recent TV hits like Weeds, has signed a revenue-sharing deal with the video hub.
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Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter:YouTube Scores Revenue-Share Agreement With Lionsgate
Discussion:
Hollywood Reporter, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, WebProNews, VentureBeat, HipMojo.com and NewTeeVee
Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Gmail and Google Calendar to Add Offline Support — It seems that this year Google's most popular web applications will work offline. After Google Reader and Google Docs, two other services will integrate with Gears. Andrew Fogg saw a preview of the integration at Google's offices and found …
Discussion:
Lifehacker
Gmail Blog:
Updates to Gmail contact manager — Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager Engineer, Google Contacts Team — We've heard from some of you that Gmail's auto-added contacts can lead to too much address book clutter. One of the advantages of automatically creating contacts …
Discussion:
InfoWorld, WebProNews, TechCrunchIT, Bloggle, Web Analytics World, CyberNet and CNET News.com
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:Gmail Tries to Be Less Creepy, Fails
Discussion:
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life
louisgray.com:
Social Media Experts are the New Webmasters — In the mid to late 1990s, perception had it there was no more exciting a career title than that of Webmaster. It seemed everybody wanted to be one, and some called it the “Job of the Future”. As a Webmaster, your code manipulation could change …
Brian Crecente / Kotaku:
Sega: The iPhone is as Powerful as the Dreamcast — Speaking with SEGA of America president Simon Jeffery earlier today he noted that the iPhone is about as powerful as the publisher's console the Dreamcast. Jeffery said the company is delighted with how their iPhone version of Super Monkey Ball …
