Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled — About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock. — While rumors of Facebook's interest were brought …
Chris / LiveSide:
Microsoft takes control of Kumo.com domain - watch out for the Live Search rebrand — A few months ago Mary Jo Foley got a tip about some new brand names that were being considered for Live Search. One of these, Kumo, jumped out at us due to the sheer scale of TLDs that had been acquired during 2008 …
Discussion:
Microsoft Watch, GigaOM, All about Microsoft, I4U News, Search Engine Journal, Alley Insider and CNET News
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft To Rebrand Search. Will It Be Kumo? — Microsoft will relaunch Windows Live Search under a new brand sometime early next year, says a source within the company. What we don't know is what that new brand will be, although a few names have been thrown around.
David Carr / New York Times:
Google Seduces With Utility — Not long ago, someone invited me out to the Googleplex, the nickname for Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. — The fact is, I already live there. And it's starting to worry me. — Having grown up in the vapor trail of the '60s …
Stars & Stripes:
Not playing around: Army to invest $50M in combat training games — GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — The Army has created a video game unit and will invest $50 million over five years on games and gaming systems designed to prepare soldiers for combat. — Lt. Col. Gary Stephens …
Alex Dobuzinskis / Reuters:
Sony's Crackle.com set to roll out new Web shows — LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Web site owned by Sony Corp is expected on Monday to unveil a slew of new Internet programs in the latest move by a division of a major media company to bolster online entertainment.
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Did “Lazy Sunday” make YouTube's $1.5 billion sale possible? — How did YouTube turn itself into such an essential worldwide service that Google plunked down $1.5 billion in cash and prizes to acquire the video sharing site? It depends who you ask, of course, but NBC Universal's general counsel …
Discussion:
broadstuff
Seth Godin / Seth's Blog:
Watching the Times struggle (and what you can learn) — Page by page, section by section, the influence of the New York Times is fading away. Great people on an important mission, but their footprint is shrinking and the company is losing stock value and cash and power and the ability to have the impact that they might.
Don Clark / Wall Street Journal:
Start-Up Takes on ‘Patent Trolls’ — Firm Plans to Defensively Buy Patents and Charge Fixed Membership-License Fees — A San Francisco start-up is disclosing details of a new service to address patent risks facing technology companies, and has lined up Cisco Systems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. as initial members.
Discussion:
TechFlash
Jeff / Venture Chronicles:
Small is the New Big on the Way to Hyper-Local — The turmoil in financial markets is revealing an interesting truth, “too big to fail” is fraught with public policy and financial risk. Seriously, is anyone really comfortable with the notion of any bank or insurance company having so much scale …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal
Deborah Gage / San Francisco Chronicle:
Weather Underground seeks to form a community — (11-23) 15:11 PST — What was the weather like the day Pearl Harbor was attacked? — If this type of trivia intrigues you, chances are you'll fit right in with the community at Weather Underground. At www.wunderground.com …
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Symantec says Internet underground economy is organized and rich — Did you know that you can buy a keystroke logger for $23 or pay $10 to have someone host your phishing scam? Having a botnet at your fingertips will cost you $225, and a tool that exploits a vulnerability on a banking site averages $740 and runs as high as $3,000.
