Top Items:
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Microsoft may buy Yahoo and AOL if the latter two merge — Microsoft is quietly readying a plan to make a purchase of the combined Yahoo-AOL, should Yahoo pull off its plans to acquire the struggling America Online unit, according to sources close to AOL — via the menage-a-trois with AOL.
Discussion:
Coop's Corner, Wall Street Journal, Valleywag, Entrepreneur Watch, Smalltalk Tidbits … and BoomTown
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Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:AOL Boss Randy Falco Begs Time Warner To Put Him Out Of His Misery (TWX)
Discussion:
Valleywag
Dan Farber / Outside the Lines:
Oracle's Ellison nails cloud computing — Finally, a technology executive willing to tell the truth about cloud computing. Speaking at Oracle OpenWorld, Larry Ellison said that the computer industry is more fashion-driven than women's fashion and cloud computing is simply the latest fashion.
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Ben Worthen / Business Technology:
Larry Ellison's Brilliant Anti-Cloud Computing Rant — Maybe Larry Ellison can do what the Business Technology Blog can't. — Earlier this week, we wrote that the term “cloud computing” now seems to apply to just about anything even loosely associated with the Internet, making it effectively meaningless.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Where Is Microsoft's Smartphone? Everywhere, Says Redmond — The smartphone wars are set for this holiday season: Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 3G versus new BlackBerry gadgets from Research In Motion (RIMM), and now Google's ‘G1’ Android GPhone. Oh — and dozens of gadgets running Microsoft's Windows Mobile.
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Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Wall Street's Blowup Shrinks The Tech Market By Billions. Could Be Worse — The Wall Street collapse is terrible for tech, obviously. But it could be worse. — Forrester Research says the financial sector's troubled firms (Lehman, Merrill, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie) all together equal about 2% of tech spending.
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Thom Weidlich / Bloomberg:
Apple Won't Face Lawsuit Over Limited Life of IPhone Batteries — Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. won't face a lawsuit claiming it didn't immediately tell customers about the limited life of batteries for its iPhone or their $86 replacement cost, including delivery.
Discussion:
PC World, IntoMobile, TG Daily, iLounge, The Toybox, Technology blog, MacRumors, AppleInsider, Gadget Lab, ZDNet Government, MacNN, Macsimum News, GMSV, Gizmodo and textually.org
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Analyst: Fundamentals are deteriorating at Yahoo — An analyst trimmed revenue estimates for Yahoo this morning, noting some of the factors that seems to be bringing the company down with no relief in sight. Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal said in a research note that he believes Yahoo …
Antony Bruno / Billboard.Biz:
UMG Plans Online Music Video Portal — Universal Music Group is in the planning stages of establishing its own online music video portal—similar to NBC's Hulu video streaming site, Billboard.biz has learned. — According to sources with knowledge of UMG's plans, the service would host …
Discussion:
Distorted-Loop.com
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
FeedBurner May Not Be Hearing Your Pings — Blogging is a fast medium, that's one of its advantages over traditional media. There are bloggers who specialize in reporting fast about breaking news on a wide variety of topics. Most of those bloggers use Google's RSS publishing technology FeedBurner …
Stephanie Condon / CNET News:
Senate unanimously passes RIAA-backed bill — This post was updated at 4:25 p.m. PDT with more details. — The U.S. Senate on Friday unanimously passed a bipartisan bill backed by groups like the recording industry and the labor movement that would increase federal protections over intellectual property.
Discussion:
Techdirt
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Ina Fried / CNET News:
Ballmer on search: 'I don't like not being No. 1' — SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his company may be the only one with a chance to rival Google in search over the long term, but acknowledged that it will take several more years and a whole lot of money.
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Tellme for iPhone due by June — SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Microsoft is indeed working on an iPhone application. — As I predicted, it is the company's Tellme unit that is actively developing a program for Apple's iPhone. Tellme offers voice-activated search for a variety of phones, including the BlackBerry.
Brian Crecente / Kotaku:
Sony Price Dropping 40GB PS3 Model This Weekend — Ho Ho Ho, it looks like Christmas is coming early for fans of the Playstation 3 system. — According to a Blockbusters' memo leaked to us today Sony is permanently dropping the price of the discontinued 40GB model of the Playstation 3 starting Sunday.
Discussion:
Boy Genius Report, Gizmodo, Crave, TechSpot, Lockergnome Blog Network, PS3 Fanboy and videogaming247
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
The RIAA's Playbook: No New Business Models Without RIAA Ownership — Mathew Ingram covers the details of Muxtape's run-in with the RIAA. As you may recall, last month the rather useful site that let people create online “mix tapes” that could be streamed to others was shut down thanks to the RIAA.
Charlie Sorrel / Gadget Lab:
IPhone 2.2: Safari Redesign, Possible Cut and Paste — With the iPhone v2.1 software out of the door, Apple is hard at work on v2.2. From this first glimpse it looks like Apple, now that the major bugs have been squashed, is adding some new features. — The screenshot, unearthed by iPhone Atlas, shows a new Safari interface.
Peter Suciu / VentureBeat:
Q&A with Sony Online Entertainment's John Smedley on making online games — [Editor's note: This is a debut piece by VentureBeat contributor Peter Suciu, a longtime video game writer in New York.] — New York — John Smedley grew up playing the “Dungeons & Dragons” fantasy-role playing board game during lunch.
Maciej Stachowiak / Surfin' Safari:
Full Pass of Acid3 — Today we would like to announce that WebKit is the first browser engine to fully pass Acid3. A while back, we posted that we scored 100/100 and matched the reference rendering. Now, thanks to recent speedups in JavaScript, DOM and rendering, we have passed the third condition …
Discussion:
BetaNews, webmonkey, TG Daily, Infinite Loop, MacDailyNews, Macsimum News and AppleInsider
Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:
The Future of Videogames, According to Activision CEO — Beverly Hills, Calif. — Robert Kotick has just pulled off one of the biggest mergers ever in the videogames industry. Now he has to show that the company that emerged from the deal, Activision Blizzard Inc., can continue to crank …
Discussion:
The Cut Scene, WOW Insider, Idolator, Kotaku, Game|Life, Edge Online and Opposable Thumbs
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Wario Land: Shake It Busts Up YouTube — by Greg Kumparak on September 26, 2008 — Wow. Whoever came up with this new ad for Wario Land: Shake it deserves a raise and a paid vacation to Cancun or something. They've taken a basic concept of the game and managed to make it into creative …
Andrea Larrumbide / coneinc.com:
Cone Finds That Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Harder-to-reach audiences are ripe for social media interaction — Almost 60 percent of Americans interact with companies on a social media Web site, and one in four interact more than once per week.
Jennifer Leggio / Feeds:
A call to arms for radio fans: Pandora needs you now — When I spoke to Pandora founder Tim Westergren last week he told me that there would be a time when the Internet radio site would need to issue a call to arms to its listeners — that time is now. — Westergren sent a pleading message …
Discussion:
Techdirt
Jay Alabaster / Associated Press:
Japan's online social scene isn't so social — TOKYO - Like a lot of 20-year-olds, Kae Takahashi has a page on U.S.-based MySpace, and there is no mistaking it for anyone else's. — It's got pictures of the funky Tokyoite modeling the clothes she designs in her spare time, along with her name …
Discussion:
Pulse 2.0
Ian Lesnet / Hack a Day:
How-To: Web server on a business card (Part 2) — This mini web server is slightly smaller than a business card. There are a lot of tiny one-board servers out there, but this is probably the smallest you can etch and solder at home. Unlike many embedded web servers …
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Intel Atom rival ships; larger Netbooks coming? — Are Netbooks ripe to be resized? Via Technologies thinks so. The Intel-compatible chipmaker says larger Netbooks are on the way. — In an interview, Glenn Henry, the head of Via Technologies subsidiary Centaur Technology …
Discussion:
Liliputing
