Top Items:
Lessig Blog:
Caving into bullies (aka, here we go again) — Amazon has caved into demands from the Authors Guild that it disable the ability of the Kindle to read a book aloud. This is very bad news. — We had this battle before. In 2001, Adobe released e-book technology that gave rights holders …
RELATED:
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Teams With Newspapers to Sell Ads — Terry Widener has been selling newspaper ads for 35 years. But until last fall, Ms. Widener, a 53-year-old saleswoman at The Knoxville News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn., had never sold an Internet ad. — Then in a two-week sales “blitz” …
Paul Graham:
Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe. — A lot of cities look at Silicon Valley and ask “How could we make something like that happen here?” The organic way to do it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where rich people want to live. That's how Silicon Valley happened.
Matt Rosoff / Digital Noise:
Mufin Player organizes songs by sound — Earlier on Friday, Mufin launched its music player, which analyzes the songs in your music collection based on their audio content, rather than on human analysis or genre. — Human analysis, naturally, is subjective, and genre labeling is totally arbitrary …
Tim Arango / New York Times:
Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable — CBS, home to “60 Minutes,” the “CSI” franchise, “Two and a Half Men” and the new hit crime drama “The Mentalist,” is having a better year in prime time than any other network. — And yet, as at the other networks, profits have declined sharply at CBS.
Jesse Stay / The SocialToo Blog:
Time to Take a Stand - Yes, We're Ending the DMs … I created SocialToo to solve problems. I discover things I can't find on the Social Networks I belong to, and I create them. I then add them into our service to provide one complete companion to all your Social Network needs.
Owen Thomas / Valleywag - Gawker:
The New York Times Battles a Googler for New Jersey — Why is the Gray Lady building websites for the obscure suburbs of South Orange, Maplewood, and Milburn? Perhaps because those are the exact same towns Google executive Tim Armstrong picked for Patch, his local-news startup.
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News:
Arrington: I'll go to Demo 'if we're invited' … It looks like Michael Arrington has changed his mind about the value of the Demo conference in the wake of the announcement that VentureBeat CEO and editor-in-chief Matt Marshall will be taking over the tech conference after this year.
Discussion:
The Mind of Alex
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
ToysRUs Buys Toys.com At Auction For $5.1 Million — In a heated bidding war, ToysRUs bought the domain name Toys.com at auction for $5.1 million. ToysRus really wanted the domain, for obvious reasons. Everyone except ToysRUs and domain holding company National A-1 (owner of domains such as free.com …
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Yahoo's Microsoft tab totaled $79 million — Yahoo's tab in its efforts to fight off Microsoft last year ran $79 million, according to the company's filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. — Yahoo spent much of that bill on outside advisers who helped it weigh Microsoft's proposals …
Jamie Pyatt / The Sun:
Fisherman found my lost phone in the belly of a 25lb cod ...and it still works after a week in a fish — A BUSINESSMAN who lost his mobile phone on a beach was amazed when it turned up — in the belly of a massive cod. — Andrew Cheatle thought his Nokia handset had been lost at sea after it slipped from his pocket.
Patrick Smith / paidContent:
Newspaper Sites' Traffic Up Again, Now Show Us The Money — The monthly ABCe figures don't give much away about the absolute worth or success of newspaper websites—they only show relative growth over time. On that basis the national newspapers are all doing well, with Guardian.co.uk …
