Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Decision Time For Facebook: Term Sheet Received At $2 Billion Valuation — Facebook has been pitching for a new round of funding these last few months to bridge itself to an IPO sometime in the future. We've known that since October, when (former) CFO Gideon Yu was in Dubai.
Thanks:mrinaldesai
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Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Facebook rejects funding at $4 billion valuation, may not raise more — Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg just had a board-level conversation about possibly accepting money at a $4 billion valuation, but decided against doing so. — Facebook isn't commenting directly …
Clay Shirky:
The Failure of #amazonfail — In 1987, a teenage girl in suburban New York was discovered dazed and wrapped in a garbage bag, smeared with feces, with racial epithets scrawled on her torso. She had been attacked by half a dozen white men, then left in that state on the grounds of an apartment building.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
CNN Acquires CNNbrk Twitter Account With Nearly 1 Million Followers — Hard to believe, but the CNN Twitter account racing Ashton Kutcher to 1 million subscribers wasn't even under CNN's (TWX) control until recently. — CNN confirms that it has has taken control of the @cnnbrk account — and its 944,000 followers.
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MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Kutcher/CNN Twitter Fight Day 3: EA Ups The Ante — A couple days ago, actor Ashton Kutcher stated his goal to beat CNN to be the first Twitter user with a million followers. He promised to punk CNN founder Ted Turner if the Internet made it happen. Yesterday, CNN anchor Larry King fired …
Microsoft:
Next Wave of Microsoft Office Products Will Redefine How People Work — Q&A: Chris Capossela, senior vice president of Microsoft's Information Worker Product Management Group, discusses what people and businesses can expect from the upcoming release of Microsoft Exchange Server, Office, SharePoint Server, Visio and Project.
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Rod Liddle / Times of London:
Britain in the dock over secret tracking of internet accounts — Fears that Britain is slipping into a surveillance society have been heightened by Brussels initiating legal action — Fears that Britain is slipping into a surveillance society have been heightened by Brussels initiating legal action …
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The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
SlingPlayer for iPhone rejected at AT&T's request? — Some feared it might happen, others thought it would pass with flying colors, but unfortunately we've got a tip that tries to shed some light on the situation. This was from an anonymous tipster and we're posting it for information sake.
Michael C / Techdirt:
Want To Know Why Newspapers Are Dying? Maureen Dowd Shows Us — In her recent New York Times op-ed, Maureen Dowd takes aim at Google, blaming it for the sorry state of the newspaper industry. Perhaps in hopes of winning people over to the newspapers' side in the argument over how much Google …
John C Abell / Epicenter:
Wall Street Journal iPhone App Sets Content Free — The Wall Street Journal, one of the few newspapers that charges for content online, released an app for the iPhone Wednesday which sets their content free, poking another hole in one of the internet's oldest pay walls.
Plamere / Music Machinery:
Inside the precision hack — There's a scene toward the end of the book Contact by Carl Sagan, where the protagonist Ellie Arroway finds a Message embedded deep in the digits of PI. The Message is perhaps an artifact of an extremely advanced intelligence that apparently manipulated …
John Quinn / Digg the Blog:
(Yet) Another DiggBar Update — Since we launched the DiggBar, we've received valuable feedback from the Digg community, publishers, SEO industry experts and Google. We believe that the DiggBar provides a more seamless way to discover and share content on Digg.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, TECH.BLORGE.com, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, CNET News, Mashable!, Download Squad and TheNextWeb.com, Thanks:atul
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Andrew Lipsman / comScore Voices:
Breaking News (and Making News): Twitter Surges 131% in March to 9.3 Million U.S. Visitors! — Last week, Sarah Radwanick posted to the comScore blog about Twitter's exponential growth curve during the past twelve months, and that the growth appeared to be driven by older Internet users.
Discussion:
the Econsultancy blog, paidContent.org, Silicon Alley Insider, InformationWeek, mocoNews and Between the Lines
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Eyal Sela / ProductiveWise:
Has Twitter Reached its peak? Google Insights Suggests it May Have — I've just run into a tweet by infusecreative with an interesting Google Insights search. It shows that the number of searches for the term “Twitter” has stopped ascending. Since the beginning of 2009, the search for Twitter has been raising constantly.
Discussion:
GigaOM
Yuzo Yamaguchi / Dow Jones Newswires:
NEC Electronics, Renesas Tech In Talks To Merge — TOKYO (Dow Jones)—Renesas Technology Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp. (6723.TO) are in talks to integrate their businesses underscoring that weak market conditions are forcing semiconductor makers to look at ways to survive through consolidation.
Discussion:
Associated Press
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft revives Spitfire pub under compromise arrangement — Microsoft has reached an agreement to move forward with a new campus pub — reversing course after having second thoughts and surprising the bar owner with a lease termination last week. Under the compromise plan …
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Telehouse to Heat Homes at Docklands — Can a data center heat your home or office? It can in London, where excess heat from servers at the new Telehouse West data center in the Docklands will soon be used in nearby houses and businesses. The Greater London Authority has approved a plan …
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Search Prepares for Switching to Ajax — In February, many people noticed that Google tested a new interface for search results. The test didn't include any new feature and Google even loaded the standard search results page to display the results.
Discussion:
CNET News, Google Analytics Blog, Search Engine Watch and Niall Kennedy's Weblog, Thanks:atul
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comScore:
comScore Releases March 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In March 2009, Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches, a 9-percent gain versus February.
Joseph Menn / Financial Times:
Yahoo ready to sell Hot Jobs — Three months into her stint at the head of Yahoo, Carol Bartz is hastening her drive to streamline operations by disposing of ancillary businesses. — The Silicon Valley company is seeking buyers for the HotJobs employment site, people familiar …
Discussion:
Virtual Economics
Fortune:
Is Facebook losing its glow? — It's been a busy couple of months for social networking site Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the cover of Fortune (dressed in a tie, no less) and shared with us his plans to turn Facebook into the next digital communications platform.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Tries To Re-Energize Cashback By Plugging It Into Its Products Engine — Microsoft says that Live Search Products and Live Search Cashback have now been unified into a single experience. You can now access Cashback on Live Search Products page, which is Microsoft's comparison shopping vertical site.
Mark Spoonauer / LAPTOP Mag:
RIM CEO: Storm Just First Touch Product, Our Push Technology Crushes the Competition — The best way to describe RIM's year so far? Very good, but a bit rocky. One the one hand, the company has much to reason to celebrate. It recently shipped the fifty-millionth BlackBerry …
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
TwitPub invents paid Twitter accounts — This was bound to happen: Someone has invented a paid access scheme for Twitter. TwitPub is a marketplace where Twitterers can sell access to their updates, by registering their protected accounts with the service.
