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Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For “Around $200 Million” — Google's on and off negotiations with Digg have been back on in a big way for the last six weeks, we've heard from multiple sources inside of Google, and the two companies are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, CNET News.com, mathewingram.com/work, Incremental Blogger, Electronista, ZDNet.com.au, The Blog Herald and Marksonland
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Third Time The Charm? Google Reportedly Buying Digg, Again (GOOG)
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The Inquisitr

GigaOM Acquires jkOnTheRun — In the life of every company, there comes a time when it is faced with the choice of how to extend its reach: Either build a new product or service, or acquire the one that's already established itself as the best in its class.
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Giga Omni Media acquires jkOnTheRun! — jkOnTheRun joins the ranks of GigaOM — Today Kevin and I are incredibly excited to bring you some great news about jkOnTheRun! Our little tech blog has been acquired by the great Giga Omni Media group, home of GigaOm blog among others.


GigaOm Buys A Mobile Blog - One Less Independent Blog In The World — Blogging network GigaOm will announce the acquisition of the small but excellent mobile-focused blog jkOnTheRun this evening. Founders James Kendrick and Kevin Tofel will remain in Houston and continue doing their thing.

Leaving Yahoo! — I've thought a lot about how to begin this post, but it's best to get right to the point (especially in light of the speed of Techcrunch). I'm leaving Yahoo! to pursue another very exciting opportunity: joining the Etsy team as CTO. I'll save my thoughts on Etsy for later …
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Maybe Blogging Is Just a Loss-Leader? — I keep thinking about this blogging crossroads and the beauty of small. Then today came Robert Scoble's post about how tech blogging has let you down. It's not hugely applicable to me since I am a business reporter, and he takes pains to separate business blogging from tech blogging.
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Bloggers' Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence — Guest post by Hutch Carpenter of I'm Not Actually a Geek (FriendFeed/Twitter). — I had an interesting discussion with Robert Seidman on FriendFeed about whether bloggers need to actually interact with their readers.

Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you
Discussion:
/Message, SheGeeks, Techland, Technology Questions, ben barren, WinExtra, Alfred Thompson …, GigaOM, Smalltalk Tidbits … and Sidecut Reports

The Real Issue About Steve's Health — After the earnings call last night I talked with a source who is close to Apple and who who has in the past proven very well informed on the concerns of Apple senior management. This source told me with near-certainty that Jobs' cancer has not returned.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, MacUser, One More Thing and Hardware 2.0
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Talk of Chief's Health Weighs on Apple's Share Price — PALO ALTO, Calif. — Rumors of Steven P. Jobs's ill health have been greatly exaggerated. — That is what Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has been telling a number of his associates, even as concerns about his health have weighed on the company's stock price.

RUMOR: Apple's secret product is ‘MacBook touch’ — Get ready for Newton 2.0 MacBook touch?! — So says our source — the same one who tipped us to wireless iTunes Store sales direct to iPod, iPhone a week before Apple debuted it — in staccato fashion: … MacDailyNews Note: This is a rumor.
Discussion:
TeleRead, Geekologie, GMSV, Computerworld Blogs, CrunchGear, Simon's Blog, Boing Boing Gadgets, CyberNet, The iPhone Blog and Between the Lines
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Rumor: MacBook touch Coming in October
Discussion:
Coolest Gadgets, Cult of Mac, PalmAddicts, InformationWeek, The Tech Report and dailywireless.org


Pound the pavement — It's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and when it's not too hot, it feels like a waste of gorgeous weather to get behind the wheel or hop in a cab. Doubly so when you're traveling to a city you'd love to explore, and you're pretty sure that you could walk from your hotel …
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Google Maps Walking Directions Now Live
Discussion:
Lifehacker, CyberNet, Gizmodo, CNET News.com, /Message, SitePoint Blogs, Kelsey Group Blogs, Google Blogoscoped, AppScout, UMBC ebiquity, Bloggle and Screenwerk

VMWare looks ahead at Microsoft, year-end financials and morale — updated: VMWare, whose recent headlines have included an ousted CEO and a re-pricing of its employee stock options, reported second-quarter earnings of $92 million, or 23 cents per share, up from $52 million, or 16 cents per share, for the same quarter a year ago.
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Glimpse of big Vista campaign? Microsoft says no — The big tech sites are abuzz today with news of a Windows Vista promotion spotted on Microsoft.com by Ed Bott, the eagle-eyed Windows author and blogger. The banner showed an early sailing ship on the open seas, with the sentence …
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Some Facebook Apps Are Actually More Equal Than Others — Tomorrow, when it rolls out its new platform, one of the more interesting pieces of news from Facebook will be its initiative to dub certain of its third-party app developers more special than others.

Is social media becoming a vast wasteland? — Gautam Ghosh, one of my favorite Indian bloggers recently posted how much he and other fans enjoyed talking with popular Indian Ramayana series author Ashok Banker via the author's blog, Twitter and FriendFeed.
Discussion:
The Marketing Technology Blog


YouTube Exec: We're Selling Ads Against ‘Less Than 3%’ Of Our Videos — We know Google's (GOOG) YouTube is a tough sell for advertisers. But video site's sales team may be having an even tougher time than recent reports suggest. — YouTube sales manager Brian Cusack says YouTube is able …

New upload rules — New Features — The Vimeo staff has decided that we are no longer going to allow gaming videos on Vimeo. Specifically, we are no longer going to allow game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps …
Discussion:
Podcasting News, Industry Standard, SitePoint Blogs, Kotaku, Pulse 2.0, GoNintendo, CenterNetworks and Valleywag