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Exclusive: Yahoo's Bartz and Microsoft's Ballmer Finally Talking About Search and Advertising Partnership — In early discussions that began in the last several weeks that apparently included a face-to-face meeting last week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are finally talking …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Reuters, PC World, TechFlash, Bits, Microsoft Pri0, Silicon Alley Insider, VentureBeat, Digital Daily, Electronista, tinyComb, CNET News, Search Engine Land, paidContent.org, Between the Lines, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, ChannelWeb, Tech Trader Daily, ClickZ, Epicenter, Dealscape, WinBeta, Slashdot, Technologizer and Beyond Search


Ditched by potential parents, Digg grows up on its own — When it comes to web 2.0 startups, the social news site Digg is like an old man. Launched in 2004, it quickly exploded on to the scene and became both a web and media darling in relatively short order.
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Save the Internet with rev="canonical" — There's a new proposal ("URL shortening that doesn't hurt the Internet") floating around for using rev="canonical" to help put a stop to the URL-shortening madness. It sounds like a pretty good idea, and based on some discussions on IRC this morning …
Discussion:
PC World

How to Block the DiggBar — Last week Digg released something …
Discussion:
CNET News, CenterNetworks, webmonkey, The Blog Herald, TheNextWeb.com, Search Engine Watch, Leah Culver and Silicon Alley Insider, Thanks:atul


CompUSA Comes Back From the Dead — About three months ago, Loretta Alkalay, a retired Florida resident, wanted to get a new HDTV. So she decided to give the CompUSA near her home a try. — Yes, CompUSA. The once-bankrupt electronics retailer is making a comeback …
Discussion:
PC World, Electronista, Silicon Alley Insider, Gizmodo, SlashGear, Technologizer, Smalltalk Tidbits … and digg.com, Thanks:mrinaldesai


Sprint Employees now training on the Palm Pre, Pre's Launch is Near — All the rumors and speculations of a mid-April/late April/May launch of the Palm Pre doesn't appear to be too far of a stretch. Stated in an email from Sprint, “Employees can expect training to start in April …
Discussion:
Gadget Lab, Unwired View, Palm WebOS, MobileCrunch, Boy Genius Report, SlashGear, Gearlog, IntoMobile, WebOS Arena, PreCentral.net and Gizmodo


Apple stores to ditch Windows EasyPay systems for iPhone tech — Apple retail stores are looking to move away from Windows Mobile-based handheld checkout devices in favor of iPod touches with custom accessory add-ons, with a transition expected to follow the release of iPhone 3.0 later this year.


Is this the Zune HD? — Uh. Looks like something is happening — big time — in Zune land. We present what might possibly be your first look at, yes... the Zune HD. In the gallery below, you can see images from what appears to be a forthcoming marketing campaign for Microsoft's new PMP.

New in Labs: Inserting images — Well, it's about time. You no longer have to use workarounds to put images into your messages or attach images when you really want to inline them. Just turn on “Inserting images” from the Labs tab under Settings, and you'll see a new toolbar icon like this:
Discussion:
TechPulse 360, CNET News, webmonkey, TechSpot, ChannelWeb, InformationWeek, Lifehacker, Download Squad, geeksugar, Mashable!, TheNextWeb.com, Google Blogoscoped, AppScout, Digital Inspiration, RotorBlog.com and Google Operating System, Thanks:atul

AT&T boosts reward to $250K in phone service sabotage — AT&T has increased its reward to $250,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for cutting fiber-optics lines at four locations early Thursday morning in South San Jose and San Carlos.
Discussion:
DSLreports
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AP Exec: “To the Untrained Eye It Looks Like We're Stupid” — Rough week for the Associated Press, at least if you measure it by headlines: First, the venerable news organization/aggregator confused the likes of me by announcing a vague plan to fight the Internet.

IPhone Needs A New Brain — Will Apple's wonder gadget get more memory? Will it come in different colors? Who cares. A new processor is what it really needs. — Will the iPhone get more flash memory? Will it get new features, like a compass? — Who cares. What the iPhone really needs is a new processor.


About Those New CrunchPad Pictures — A little background for those of you who haven't heard of the CrunchPad: This is the post that kicked off the project. I wanted something I couldn't buy, and found people who said it could be built for a lot less than I imagined.
Discussion:
Brier Dudley's blog, Crave, Gizmodo, Internet Tablet Talk, Electronista, Technologizer, jkOnTheRun, last100, Zatz Not Funny!, GPS Obsessed, Gearlog, Liliputing, CloudAve, GottaBeMobile.com, Narcissistic Infarction, The Toybox, ArabCrunch, Sean Percival's Blog and CrunchGear, Thanks:atul

Current TV Cans IPO — Current Media Inc. (a.k.a. Current TV), a San Francisco-based television news and information network for young adults, has withdrawn registration for a $100 million IPO. It cited “current market conditions.” — The company had planned to trade on the Nasdaq …


Yelp Will Let Businesses Respond to Web Reviews — Small businesses will soon feel a little more love in their love-hate relationship with Yelp, the Web site whose users post reviews of restaurants, dry cleaners and other local businesses. — Starting next week, Yelp will let small-business owners publicly respond to reviews.
Discussion:
Screenwerk, DailyTech, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Search Engine Watch, Gothamist, Traffick, VentureBeat and Bits

Mike Arrington and I disagree on the future — Last Saturday on the Gillmor Gang Mike Arrington wondered aloud whether Twitter had won a “winners take all” game and whether that meant that friendfeed was toast. He then wrote a blog post titled “FriendFeed is in danger of becoming the coolest app no one uses.”


At CHI Meeting, Microsoft Turns Computing Interfaces on Their Head, and Side, and Back — Wade Roush wrote: — I spent a couple of days this week at CHI, the big annual meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI).
Discussion:
WinBeta

Should Colleges Continue to Host Email for Their Students? — In the earliest days of the Internet, getting an .edu email address and signing in to Pine for the first time was a rite of passage for many college freshmen. Now, however, virtually every new college student got an email address before even graduating from primary school.
Discussion:
Chronicle of Higher Education

Media Insiders Say Internet Hurts Journalism — In a poll of prominent members of the national news media, nearly two-thirds say the Internet is hurting journalism more than it is helping. The poll, conducted by The Atlantic and National Journal, asked 43 media insiders whether, on balance …

Dwindling public companies means big changes in the valley — Tucked into the annual Mercury News data-palooza known as the Silicon Valley 150, there's one nugget of information that I think tells us more than all the other lists and numbers about the profound changes in store for this region:
Thanks:atul

Technology and music sectors call a truce — After a decade of discord between the music and technology industries, this week brought some rare notes of harmony. — Apple, whose iTunes store dominates the legal digital music market, agreed that labels could charge more for hits …

Prepare for Automatic Update distribution of IE8 — In January we blogged about our plan to distribute IE8 via Automatic Update/Windows Update (for simplicity, we'll refer to this as Automatic Update for the rest of this blog post). This post provides some additional information about how users …


Daily Beast Inks Monthlong Deal With Luxury Handbag Maker — Tina Brown's Web Operation Partners With Bottega Veneta for Customized Ad Units, Sponsored Content — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The Daily Beast, Tina Brown's 6-month-old web venture, has had just a sprinkling of advertising partners thus far.


Hands on: OS 5.0 on the Bold — Way back in September we gave the world its first glimpse at the upcoming BlackBerry OS 5.0 running on a Curve 8310, but since that time RIM has continued to keep mum on the subject so we thought that we'd conduct a brief overview of BlackBerry OS 5.0 running on a Bold.