Top Items:
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Google to Extend Reach With Venture-Capital Arm — Ex-Entrepreneur Hired To Assist in Setup; Brand-Name Advantage — Google Inc. is working on plans to start a venture-capital arm, according to several people briefed on the discussions. — The group will be lead by David Drummond …
Discussion:
GigaOM, VentureBeat, Search Engine Land, PDA, CNET News.com, VC Circle, MediaFile, A VC, WebProNews, AppScout, IDG News Service, paidContent.org and Clickety Clack
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google To Launch Venture Fund — The WSJ is reporting that Google is set to launch a venture fund to give it the option of investing in startups instead of just flat out buying them. The fund will be led by Google's SVP Corporate Development David Drummond and Bill Maris …
Discussion:
The Next Web
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
‘Scrabulous’ gets a nip-tuck, returns as ‘Wordscraper’ — In the high school cafeteria of Facebook apps, Scrabulous is like that girl who gets in trouble for showing too much skin, only to throw on a hoodie and be let back into the principal's good graces. Sort of.
Discussion:
Techdirt, All Facebook, Guardian Unlimited, AppScout, paidContent.org, Media Bullseye and John Cook's Venture Blog
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Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Launches News Feed Filters - First Look — It's been nearly two years since Facebook's News Feed launched. Tonight, Facebook is turning on the first major change to the News Feed user experience: News Feed filters. — News Feed filters are tabs at the top of the News Feed that allow you to view stories of only one type.
Bobbie Johnson / Guardian:
Watchdog clears Google's street cameras — Google's controversial Street View service - which will offer ground-level pictures of every UK street online -can finally be launched in Britain, after a privacy watchdog said it had no complaints about the service.
Discussion:
The Register
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Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Britain Clears The Way For Google Street Views — Watchdog clears Google's street cameras from The Guardian reports Britain's Information Commissioner's Office has officially given their approval over the privacy risks with the Street Views option in Google Maps.
Colin Barr / Technology news:
Motorola ekes out small profit — Motorola (MOT) shares surged in premarket trading Thursday after the struggling tech titan posted a minuscule second-quarter profit in spite of the latest sales decline at its handset unit. The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company made $4 million …
Discussion:
Tech Trader Daily
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Rafat Ali / paidContent.org:
LG's New Blu-Ray Box Includes Netflix Streaming; “Well Under $500” — Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) announced its first direct-to-TV movie partnership with LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) early this year, but was short on details then. Since then, it launched through a low-cost Roku box.
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Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:
LG Electronics Device To Deliver Movies Online — South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. will soon offer a device that plays high definition Blu-ray movies along with video streamed over the Internet from Netflix Inc., the latest move by Netflix to deliver movie rentals online rather than through the mail.
YouTube Blog:
YouTube and Omnisio Join Forces — As you probably guessed, we're big fans of anything that lets people interact with online video and gives the YouTube community the chance to express themselves in creative ways. New features such as Video Annotations, which allow you to insert comments …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:Google Acquires Omnisio To Spice Up YouTube
Discussion:
WebProNews, Google Blogoscoped, ZDNet.com.au, TechNation Australia, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat
Wil Shipley / Call Me Fishmeal:
“The Mojave Experiment:” Bad Science, Bad Marketing — I guess I should first admit I hate the show Punk'd. I mean, here's a guy who is famous for lying about his age so he seems hipper, telling us that his show's purpose it to deflate the big egos on other stars, and show them what truly matters in life.
Andy Space / 9 to 5 Mac:
Firewire speed set to increase four-fold — The group behind development of FireWire, the IEEE, has approved the new IEEE 1394-2008 specification that gives support for better bandwidth of up to 3.2Gbps. — In an attempt to maintain compatibility between different evolutions of FireWire …
Ryan Shrout / PC Perspective:
How NVIDIA will Invade and Change the Apple MacBook Line this Year … Centrino is out, but who is in? — The evidence has been mounting over the past weeks and now I can say with reasonable assuredness that future Apple notebooks, among other products, will likely have NVIDIA chipsets and graphics solutions in them come this fall.
RELATED:
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:Apple warns resellers of Mac and iPod drought, says load up now
Discussion:
Digital Daily, One More Thing, CrunchGear, Gizmodo, Byte of the Apple, TUAW, Infinite Loop, Engadget, SlashGear and Gadget Lab
Chris Anderson / The Long Tail:
HOW BIG IS THE FREE ECONOMY? — Here's a question I get all the time: how big is the free economy? That's harder to answer than you might think, for both definition and measurement reasons. But here's a first past at doing it anyway. — (Note: I'm just using US figures below, unless marked otherwise)
Caterina.net:
Joining Hunch — After hanging up my purple and yellow cleats, dodging some headhunters, taking a brief vacation, hanging out at some very hot board meetings and pondering the future of social software, it was fairly obvious that I was going to have to do another something.
Wall Street Journal:
Newspapers Think Locally for Online Ads — Sales Efforts Increase, But ‘Smaller Dollars’ Prove Hard to Chase — In an effort to make up for their plunging print-ad revenues, newspaper companies have been scrambling to train their sales teams in the intricacies of selling online ads to local marketers.
Mat Balez / Google Mobile Blog:
Transit directions: Now on S60 & Windows Mobile — A few weeks ago we released Google Maps for mobile with Transit directions for BlackBerry and Java-based handsets. Now, with the release of version 2.2 of the application for Symbian S60 (3rd edition or later) and Windows Mobile (2005 or later) …
The Smoking Gun:
Google: “Complete Privacy Does Not Exist” — Defending “Street View” lawsuit, firm says trespasses to be expected — Arguing that technology has ensured that “complete privacy does not exist,” Google contends that a Pennsylvania family has no legal grounds to sue the search giant …
