Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Sweeping Changes At Live.com: It's A Social Network! — Microsoft's Live.com portal will change significantly this evening. No longer will it be a simple search engine with a few other services bolted on. It's now a social network, too, pulling in activity information and content from around the web.
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Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Windows Live Gets More Lively — Microsoft is building on principles first articulated in 2005. In Washington, D.C., I remember meeting several MSN product managers who laid out a simple but profound approach: Connect people to whom they know. Recognizing that most blogs and photo shares …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Techland, Microsoft Pri0 and Beyond Binary
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Extremely literal boss demotes editor to columnist — In the wake of his apocalyptic predictions for the online-advertising market, Nick Denton, the owner of Valleywag publisher Gawker Media, read my offhand quip about how I would soon be writing Valleywag as a column for Gizmodo or Gawker …
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Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Valleywag To Become Section of Gawker.com — Rumors are flying that Valleywag will be “shuttered.” It won't. It will be consolidated into Gawker. — Gawker CEO Nick Denton foreshadowed this move in this sky-is-falling post this morning. Valleywag's 1 million uniques will be worth …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
The VC model is broken — These days, the more you talk to folks about Silicon Valley's venture capital industry, the more negative the message is becoming. — And for good reason. There's no more patience. Last time, circa 2001, the entire VC industry got a “get-out-jail-free card” after the Internet bubble burst.
Brian Krebs / Washington Post:
Spam Volumes Drop by Two-Thirds After Firm Goes Offline — The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted on Tuesday after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity was taken offline.
Discussion:
Webware.com, Computerworld, Zero Day, Pulse2, Digital Daily, GMSV, CircleID and Data Center Knowledge
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Brian Krebs / Washington Post:
Host of Internet Spam Groups is Cut Off — Spam Drops After Internet Providers Disconnect a California Hosting Firm — The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide dropped drastically today after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host …
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:Washington Post Story Convinces Service Providers To Pull The Plug …
Discussion:
Security and the Net
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple may launch most aggressive Black Friday sale yet — With Black Friday sale information from rival PC vendors beginning to leak online, experts at Barclays Capital say they expect Apple to counter the promotions with a more aggressive than usual one-day sale, offering deep discounts on a number of Mac models.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Gadget Lab, Infinite Loop, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, The Toybox and Macsimum News
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
LG, Sharp, Chunghwa admit to LCD price fixing — Updated at 11:51 a.m. with more information on the case. — LG Display, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for participating in a liquid crystal display price-fixing conspiracy and pay $585 million in fines …
Brandon Falls / Google Webmaster Central Blog:
Google's SEO Starter Guide — Webmasters often ask us at conferences or in the Webmaster Help Group, “What are some simple ways that I can improve my website's performance in Google?” There are lots of possible answers to this question, and a wealth of search engine optimization information on the web …
Jon Fortt / Big Tech:
Intel's dire warning — In a surprise announcement, Intel (INTC) said Wednesday that its gloomy fourth quarter forecast wasn't nearly gloomy enough. Instead of pulling in between $10.1 billion and $10.9 billion in sales, the chip giant expects closer to a dreadful $9 billion.
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Nick Denton:
A 2009 Internet Media Plan — To judge from a hysterical press, one might think the apocalypse was already upon the media industry: rolling cuts this month at Time Inc., the hallowed magazine group; a new catchphrase among advertising pundits, flat is the new up; and revisions …
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Nokia's half QWERTY device, Wahoo, headed for AT&T gets pictured; Sorry Charlie! — Well, what do we have here? It seems as if it's a never before seen Nokia handset! We don't have a name to call it other than the internal codename, “Wahoo”, but what we can do is recap some of the specs of the device for you...
Discussion:
The Toybox, Cell Phones etc., Unwired View, InformationWeek, MobileCrunch and Engadget Mobile
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
AMD introduces 45nm quad-core “Shanghai” Opteron processors — Today AMD announces 45nm quad-core Opteron processors, codenamed “Shanghai” designed to deliver superior virtualization experience, performance and power efficiency. — The touted highlights of these new pieces of silicon are many and varied:
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
YouTube Formally Introduces ‘Sponsored Videos’ — YouTube is formally announcing “sponsored videos.” This is an evolution and expansion of what was has been informally running under the heading “promoted videos.” The effort seeks to marry Google AdWords bidding and targeting with YouTube video content.
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Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Apple iPhone Gets The Business From Citrix — Just last week, JD Power made headlines when it released a study showing that Apple's iPhone was the top mobile device among business users. It was a surprise since Apple[AAPL Loading... () ] was clearly trying to create …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Microsoft-backed Sabi launches cool drawing game for kids — Kids educational programs haven't been the most exciting market for game makers. But Microsoft is announcing today that it has backed Sabi, a spin-out with an educational game dubbed Itza Bitza that features a novel drawing technology.
Ryan Kim / The Technology Chronicles:
Electronic Arts wants women in the game — EA tries to take its sports formula to women — Electronic Arts has built up a mighty brand in EA Sports, which is known around the world for its Madden NFL, FIFA and Tiger Woods franchises. The only problem: it's almost entirely a guy thing.
Discussion:
Reuters
Oliver Marks / Collaboration 2.0:
Gullible Twitter users hand over their usernames and passwords - did you get your Twitterank yet?! — Mana from the heavens for cloud sceptics - on a day a lot of professional photographers lost all their images due to the failure of photo hosting site Digital Railroad which went under …
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Google Site Search lets you index pages faster — Google Site Search is giving site owners even more control with a new feature called On-Demand Indexing. Now you can add pages to your site's search index with literally the push of a button. — As the name implies, Site Search is Google's search tool for individual web sites.
Daily Mail:
Pictured: The robot that can pull faces just like a human being … Scientists have created the first ‘humanoid’ robot that can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being. — ‘Jules’ - a disembodied androgynous robotic head - is controlled only by his own software …
Belkin News:
New Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable Makes the Move from a PC to a Mac Computer Easy … (Compton, CA) - November 12, 2008 - The new Belkin Switch-to-Mac Cable provides a simple way to transfer files, settings, preferences, and more from your PC to a new Mac computer.
Bruce Polderman / Google LatLong:
Roman history comes to life in Google Earth — Were you someone who struggled to stay awake in ancient history class? If so, perhaps this was due to those uninspiring “artist renditions” in your textbook. Reading countless pages that described how a monument, building or city may have appeared …
Nick Breckon / *Shacknews* Games:
Microsoft Confirms Plans to Challenge Steam with Digital Distribution of Full PC Titles — Speaking in an interview with Shacknews, Games for Windows Live general manager Chris Early confirmed that Microsoft has definite plans to distribute full PC titles through its Marketplace application in the future.
Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
There, there, Ron — I am the honoree of an attempted hatchet job by Ron Rosenbaum in - what's the name of that site? Salon? no, Slate (I always get them confused). I'll spare you his three pages of bluster (O, for the days of scarce space on paper) and get to his point …
Discussion:
Slate
Sascha Segan / Gearlog:
BlackBerry Curve 8900 Coming to US In Early 2009 — Tags: — The BlackBerry Curve 8900 launched in Germany today, but the great news for us is that according to RIM, it's expected to launch in “most other countries, including the United States, during the first quarter of 2009.”
James Falconer / IntoMobile:
Visual Voicemail Coming to the T-Mobile G1 via PhoneFusion's Fusion Voicemail Plus App — PhoneFusion announced today an upcoming Fusion Voicemail Plus app that will bring visual voicemail to the T-Mobile G1 handset. The app will let G1 users centralize their voicemail boxes in one place …
