Top Items:
Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:
Amazon Buys Zappos; The Price is $920m., not $847m. — News has just broken that Amazon.com has purchased hot ecommerce up-and-comer Zappos for 10 million Amazon shares or $880 million. (The Amazon release said it was $807 million, but that was based on a trailing 45-day estimate of its share price.
Discussion:
i-boy, 901am, Guardian, Softpedia News, Gawker, BetaNews, internetnews.com, Mashable!, TheNextWeb.com and digg.com, Thanks:gsharma
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Tony Hsieh / Zappos.com:
CEO Letter — Please set aside 20 minutes to carefully read this entire email. (My apologies for the occasional use of formal-sounding language, as parts of it are written in a particular way for legal reasons.) — Today is a big day in Zappos history. — This morning …
Discussion:
Fast Company, New York Times, the Econsultancy blog, Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com, WebProNews, SOMEWHAT FRANK, Doc Searls Weblog, Webbyist, The Social, Techdirt, Financial Times, Search Engine Watch, Lockergnome Blog Network, Mashable!, ClickZ, CenterNetworks, AgencySpy, Gear Live, AppScout, Between the Lines, TechFlash, Traffick and Inc.com, Thanks:gsharma
Alexander Haislip / PE Hub Blog:
Zappos CEO Wanted To Stay Independent, Sequoia Wanted Liquidity—Sources — The decision to sell hot online shoe retailer Zappos to Amazon.com was more in line with the interests of Sequoia Capital than the company's CEO, according to two sources close to the company.
Amazon.com:
Amazon.com to Acquire Zappos.com — Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Zappos.com, Inc. a leader in online apparel and footwear sales that strives to provide shoppers with the best possible service and selection.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:Getting the Goods: The New Amazon/Zappos Supply Chain Story
Thanks:phclouin
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Windows 7 Has Been Released to Manufacturing — I am pleased to announce that Windows 7 has RTM'd! — As I mentioned previously, RTM officially happens only after sign-off occurs. What happens is a build gets designated as a RTM contender after going through significant testing and meeting our quality bar for RTM.
Discussion:
Digital Daily, Engineering Windows 7, Windows Server Division WebLog, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, Geek In Disguise, ithinkdifferent, Windows Live Community, The Seattle Times, Redmond Pie, BrandonLive, Windows 7 Center, geeksmack.net, Global Nerdy, Neowin.net, Technologizer, blogs.ft.com, blogs.chron.com, The Microsoft Blog, Microsoft News Tracker, IDG News Service, Seeking Alpha, TechLifeWeb, Download Squad, Pocket-lint.com, TechFlash, The Tech Report, Lockergnome Blog Network, Maximum PC all, Engadget, PC World, DailyTech, virtualization.info, GottaBeMobile.com, ChannelWeb, TechSpot and All about Microsoft
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Sarahintampa / Channel 10:
An Easy Way to Create a Bootable USB Drive for Windows 7 — Earlier this year, Dennis Chung posted a video on TechNet Edge explaining how you could install Windows 7 using a bootable USB drive - a necessary step needed to install Windows 7 on a netbook PC. But for some people, those instructions were a bit too technical.
Discussion:
MobileContentToday
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
For Some, Move To Windows 7 Will Be Tough — On October 22, Microsoft will finally release a new version of Windows that will be as good as the deeply disappointing Windows Vista should have been when it came out in January 2007. The new edition, called Windows 7, is a big improvement …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:They're soup: Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 released to manufacturing
Discussion:
The Windows Blog, AustralianIT.com.au, Softpedia News, Electronista, Ars Technica, Bits, Tech Broiler, IDG News Service, eWeek, WinBeta and ithinkdifferent
Bryan Lamkin / Yodel Anecdotal:
Xoopit + Yahoo! Mail = Moving beyond that massive digital shoebox — If your email inbox is anything like mine, it's turned into a “digital shoebox” over the years. It's full of hundreds or maybe thousands of special photos that have been shared by close friends and family members, but they're not organized in any particular way.
Discussion:
ChannelWeb, BoomTown, The Register, Softpedia News, paidContent, VentureBeat, Search Engine Journal, CNET News, WebProNews, MYBLOG by Ouriel, TechCrunch, loose wire blog and GigaOM
AT&T:
Strong Wireless Growth, Continued Cost Discipline, Solid Free Cash Flow Highlight AT&T's Second-Quarter Results — * $.54 diluted EPS compared with $.63 for the year-earlier second quarter and $.53 in the first quarter of 2009; incremental noncash pension/retiree benefit costs reduced second-quarter 2009 EPS …
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Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Mobile Internet Use Shrinks Digital Divide — Quick: Picture an Internet aficionado, circa 1995. — The first image that comes to my mind is Dennis Nedry, the embryo thief in “Jurassic Park,” who met his untimely end facing down a dinosaur in a soggy mud pit.
Ellen Messmer / Network World:
America's 10 most wanted botnets — Botnet attacks are increasing, as cybercrime gangs use compromised computers to send spam, steal personal data, perpetrate click fraud and clobber Web sites in denial-of-service attacks. Here's a list of America's 10 most wanted botnets …
Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC:
Voice technology firm under fire — A UK firm that turns mobile messages into text faces questions over its privacy standards, technology and finances following a BBC investigation. — Spinvox's service aims to convert voice messages into text messages using advanced speech recognition software.
David Berlind / InformationWeek:
Matt Mullenweg And Dries Buytaert Probably Separated At Birth — When it comes to open sourced content management platforms and their creators, there's no question about the celebrity status that WordPress and its young founder Matt Mullenweg have ascended to.
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
eBay's Q2: PayPal, Skype growth offset by declines at marketplace sites — eBay today reported solid second quarter financial results that were slightly better than Wall Street's expectations but revenue growth of PayPal and Skype was offset, in part, by declines in the Marketplaces business.
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Gavin Clarke / The Register:
Microsoft opened Linux-driver code after ‘violating’ GPL — Traded credibility for kudos? — Microsoft was in violation of the GPL (General Public License) on the Hyper-V code it released to open source this week. — After Redmond covered itself in glory by opening up the code …
Ben Fritz / Company Town:
Video game publishers Microsoft, Ubisoft invading Hollywood's turf — For decades, Hollywood's relationship with video games has come down to one word: licensing. Game publishers have been licensing and adapting movies all the way back to 1984's “E.T.”, while studios started doing the opposite with 1993's “Super Mario Bros.”
Jonathan Fildes / BBC:
Artificial brain ‘10 years away’ — Professor Markram said he would send a hologram to talk at TED in 10 years — A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. — Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already built elements of a rat brain.
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
Daring to Dream of a Resurgent AOL — Shortly after Tim Armstrong took over as chief executive of AOL, he asked to see the list of business deals that were being negotiated. He saw 900 of them. — It was too many by far. “If you looked through the deal sheet, would you have been able …
Adam Pash / Lifehacker:
Gmail Offers to Automatically Unsubscribe You from Mailing Lists — Ever get an email from a legit mailing list but went ahead and marked it as spam anyway because you just don't want it? Gmail has smartened up to this common behavior, offering to automatically unsubscribe you from certain messages.
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Friendster founder on social networking: I invented this stuff [UPDATED] — Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams poses in front of the logo for his start-up company, Socializr, at a Lunch 2.0 event in 2007. Credit: Terry Chay … The millions of high school and college kids on Facebook probably …
Globe and Mail:
Ericsson joins bidding war for Nortel — Another of the world's telecommunications giants has entered what has suddenly become a pitched global battle for the spoils of Nortel Networks Corp. NT-T — Sweden's Ericsson has tabled a $730-million (U.S.) bid for Nortel's wireless network division …
Google Mobile Blog:
Layers of fun in Google Maps for mobile 3.2 — Just as the world itself can be viewed through many lenses, the latest version of Google Maps for mobile allows you to view many layers of information on your map at the same time. Layers make it easier and more useful to find and interact …
Discussion:
Google LatLong, IntoMobile, VentureBeat, MobileContentToday and Google Maps Mania, Thanks:sinkercat
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Zivity Splits Employees, Execs, Venture Funding Into Two Companies — In a highly unusual transaction, Zivity, a venture funded adult content startup, has spun off the majority of its assets, employees and venture funding into a new company called Top Fans.
Scott Austin / Venture Capital Dispatch:
Europe Falls Behind Silicon Valley In VC Deal Flow — Just how bad is the venture capital situation in Europe? — The San Francisco Bay area, which encompasses Silicon Valley, actually saw more venture funding deals in the second quarter than in all of Europe, the first time that has happened …
Sameer Moidu / Facebook Blog:
Share Photos and Videos Anywhere You Have Email — After you snap a great photo of friends or shoot a fun video on vacation, you want to be able to share it immediately. We've been working on providing more ways to publish those photos and videos whether you're on Facebook.com or not.
J. Nicholas Hoover / InformationWeek:
NSA Using Cloud Model For Intelligence Sharing — New system will run the Hadoop file system on commodity servers and include search, discovery, and analysis tools. — The National Security Agency is taking a cloud computing approach in developing a new collaborative intelligence gathering system …
