Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Isn't A Social Network. And Stop Trying to Make New Friends There — A controversy is brewing over a popular Facebook application called PackRat, where users collect sets of illustrated cards for points and levels. The company behind the application, Alamofire …
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Steve O'Hear / The Social Web:
Facebook: no social networking here — One of the delightful things about creating a new web application or service is the way in which end users find unintended ways of utilizing said service. That's a common story we hear from those who've created cutting-edge and disruptive products …
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
The Next Chapter: Best Buy To Acquire Napster For $121 Million — Napster (NSDQ: NAPS) has fallen into the arms of a surprise buyer: Best Buy. The big-box electronics giant will pay $121 million or $2.65 per share. Shares of Napster closed at $1.36 on Friday, so this is nearly a double …
Discussion:
Bits, mathewingram.com/work, TechCrunch, AppleInsider, PC World, Tech Trader Daily, CenterNetworks, GigaOM, Profy, p2pnet, Gizmodo, Mashable!, Valleywag, WebProNews, Electronista, The Inquisitr and TG Daily
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Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Sold! Best Buy Swallows Napster For $121 Million (BBY) — Looks like Chris Gorog really was serious about selling off perenially troubled Napster (NAPS), after all. He's selling the company to Best Buy (BBY) for $121 million. That's $2.65 per share, which works out to be $54 million net of cash.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Wall Street's meltdown and the potential technology hit — Folks are waking up Monday to a Wall Street meltdown as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch and companies ranging from Washington Mutual to AIG are on the ropes.
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Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:WSJ.com Relaunches During Financial News Meltdown; Glossy New Look …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Everyone but Apple joins new “buy once, play anywhere” group — Buying a movie online is simple; it's watching it on the device you want that's hard. The movie studios have been reluctant to allow DVD burning from online stores (and when they do, it doesn't always work) …
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Cliff Edwards / Business Week:
Digital Content Wherever You Want It — A digital entertainment consortium plans to develop a new standard so consumers can play purchased content on any type of device and stream it freely — How do you make digital entertainment more entertaining? A sprawling consortium …
Robert Andrews / paidContent.org:
Newspapers Around World Oppose Yahoo-Google Ad Deal — The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) this morning asked the US Department of Justice, the European Commission and the Competition Bureau of Canada to block the deal under which Google will supply some advertising to Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO).
Discussion:
Digital Destiny, WebProNews, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, UMBC ebiquity, Startup Meme, Mashable! and AppScout
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Pallab Ghosh / BBC:
Web ‘must separate rumour’ from science — The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web. — Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.
Discussion:
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Mashable!, broadstuff, Smalltalk Tidbits …, The Inquisitr and WebGuild
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Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
VMware (and Citrix) get cloud friendly — Updated: VMware said Monday that it will launch a cloud computing initiative to bring enterprise class service to customers with more than 100 partners. — The effort, called vCloud Initiative, will be launched at VMworld in Las Vegas (statement, Techmeme).
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Noam Cohen / New York Times:
Link by Link: Don't Buy That Textbook, Download It Free — SQUINT hard, and textbook publishers can look a lot like drug makers. They both make money from doing obvious good — healing, educating — and they both have customers who may be willing to sacrifice their last pennies to buy what these companies are selling.
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Chrome Q&A — Via email, I've asked Google group product manager Brian Rakowski a couple of questions in regards to Google's web browser. Chrome has been in development for 2 years... did the initial designs resemble what has been released now, or were there a lot of interface …
Yukari Iwatani Kane / Wall Street Journal:
Apple's Latest iPhone Sees Slow Japan Sales — Two months after its launch, the latest version of Apple Inc.'s iPhone is showing strong sales around the world — except in Japan. — Apple's partnership with Japan's third-largest mobile operator, Softbank Corp., to sell the iPhone 3G certainly created a buzz.
Fred / A VC:
Zemanta — I wrote this post for the Union Square Ventures blog and it will go up there today, but in the meantime I'll post the news here. — Union Square Ventures has invested in a number of blogging related applications and services; Adaptive Blue, Delicious, Disqus, FeedBurner, Outside.in, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Discussion:
TechCrunch UK, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Zemanta ltd., Silicon Alley Insider and The Next Web
Paul Miller / Engadget:
HTC's Touch HD unveiled in very much official glory — We're still sans a press release, but a friendly tipster found this quite official page at HTC's very own site, depicting the sexy Touch HD from every angle, with every spec exposed. The rumors were naturally spot on …
