Top Items:
Facebook:
What's on your mind? — People use status updates to share what's on their minds, to tell others what they're doing, and to gather feedback from friends. The different ways people use status updates form some interesting patterns. In this study, we looked at the usage of words in different “word categories” in status updates.
Discussion:
VatorNews and FlowingData
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Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
On Facebook, Angry People Are More Popular (Plus Other Fascinating Statistical Correlations) — Facebook's data team proved once again today that when you analyze a large set of anonymous user data from the world's biggest social network, you can learn some very interesting things about the state of humanity.
Tony Bates / The Big Blog:
Another update: Skype stabilized — I wanted to continue to update you on the status of the outage. We've been able to successfully stabilize Skype due to the dedicated supernodes deployed by Skype's engineering team. We're at roughly 90 percent of normal user volumes. — Audio, video and IM are running normally.
Discussion:
GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, Computerworld, Erictric, VentureBeat, Skype Journal, USA Today, Pocket-lint, Techi.com and Faster Forward
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Abby Sewell / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Skype CEO says company may offer credit vouchers to paying customers — Skype CEO Tony Bates told users in a video message posted on the company's website Thursday that the online calling service is considering giving credit vouchers to paying customers who have been affected by the major service outage that began Wednesday morning.
Discussion:
The Big Blog, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Business Wire, Electronista and Disruptive Telephony
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Google And NORAD Team Up Once Again To Track Santa — Needed any more sign that Christmas is upon us? The annual Google and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) partnership to track Jolly Saint Nick is back in action, starting tomorrow at 2:00 am EST despite the fact …
Discussion:
Google LatLong, PC World, WebProNews, Erictric, Network World, Lifehacker and SocialTimes.com
Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:
Ex-Google exec's venture firm to raise $100 million: source — (Reuters) - Merus Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by Google Inc's former head of mergers and acquisitions, is preparing to raise a new $100 million fund, according to a limited partner of the fund.
Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
FCC chair to approve Comcast-NBC merger with conditions for program sharing — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission issued a draft order approving Comcast's proposed merger with NBC Universal on Thursday, putting the deal up for vote before the agency's other members.
Discussion:
AdAge, VentureBeat, IEEE Spectrum and Between the Lines Blog, more at Mediagazer »
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Karl Bode / DSLreports:
FCC Releases Full Neutrality Rules …
Discussion:
NewEnterprise, TechCrunch, Electronista and Gadgetsteria
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Apple Trademarks ‘VoicePass’, And I Just Nicknamed My iPhone For Them — In the spirit of my trademark watch this morning: — Earlier this week, Apple filed a U.S. trademark for ‘VOICEPASS’, in the ‘Construction and Repair Services’ category. Bloomberg casually mentioned …
Discussion:
Bloomberg, Patently Apple, iSmashPhone, MacNN and TUAW
Bradford Cross / Measuring Measures:
Why is Groupon so Important? — The Economics of AdWords, AdSense, and Groupon — Google understands the importance because of AdWords and AdSense - a model in which ads are priced at auction relative to the present value of the cash flow streams resulting from new customer acquisition.
Adam Lashinsky / Fortune:
New evidence raises questions about how long Mark Hurd knew of Jodie Fisher — Former HP CEO Mark Hurd's assistant has said she alone discovered and hired the former actress as an HP contractor in 2007. But it turns out Hurd asked about Fisher years earlier.
Discussion:
SAI
Kit Dotson / SiliconANGLE:
Kinect Hacked to Aid Learning American Sign Language — Didn't I just predict this? Although, I see the merit for a computer being capable of reading American Sign Language simply for interface purposes, as a somatic and tactile language, it can be quite difficult for some people to pick …
Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:
What Tech Companies Are Spending in Washington — It's no big surprise that big companies spend a lot of money in Washington to try to influence the outcome of pending legislation and to try to talk lawmakers and agency officials out of regulating one thing or another.
Discussion:
SAI, MediaPost, Electronista and The Atlantic Online
Joe Mullin / paidContent:
Firefox Designer: New Feature Will Expose Sites With Weak Privacy Policies — Another sign that browser companies are toying with new ideas for beefing up privacy protection: Mozilla has released a set of icons that are intended to communicate to users, in a simple and straightforward way, how their data can be used.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Webmonkey and Aza on Design
Rebecca Harper / Hulu Blog:
Introducing Playlists and a New Way to Browse — Just in time for the holidays, we've unwrapped some new goodies to share with our users on Hulu.com: playlists and a new way to browse the site. — We're always looking for new ways to make watching TV on Hulu more fun …
Discussion:
VentureBeat
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
An iPhone Lover's Take On Windows Phone — Back in October, after the official launch of Windows Phone 7, I wrote up some initial thoughts after having played with a few prototype devices in the months leading up to the launch. Many seemed surprised by my mostly positive reactions.
Jackie Cohen / All Facebook:
Facebook Drives More Video Traffic Than All But Google — Facebook has surpassed Yahoo in the amount of traffic sent to video destinations, although Google still has the lead in this regard. — This comes from a report by Brightcove and TubeMogul based on data what the two call aggregate media sites …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, MediaPost and Fast Company
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Christian Kaiser / The Netflix Tech Blog:
HTML5 and Video Streaming — This is Christian Kaiser, VP of Engineering here at Netflix. — My colleague John Ciancutti recently posted about our use of HTML5 for user interfaces; I thought I'd add a perspective on HTML5 and video streaming. — Since HTML5 includes a facility to embed video playback …
Discussion:
PC Magazine, ReadWriteWeb and GigaOM
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Facebook Appears To Be Blocking All (Bit.ly Operated) j.mp Links — William Albano checks in to tell us that Facebook is blocking all j.mp links in status and page updates (but not profiles). Sure enough, I tried to post a j.mp link in a status update just now, and I got an error notice saying:
Discussion:
Soshable, All Facebook, Techland and Inside Facebook
Ann Zimmerman / Wall Street Journal:
Gift Shoppers Flocked to the Web — Online Christmas Sales Rose 15.4% as Retailers Offered Free Shipping and Internet-Only Bargains — Web retailers rang up a very merry Christmas this year, with Americans going online to buy electronics, jewelry and even clothing in record amounts this season, according to several new reports.
Discussion:
New York Times
Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:
Google Woos Local Advertisers — Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete in the hot market for local business advertising. — The Internet-search giant this year …
