Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
You've Got Arianna: AOL Buys Huffington Post for $315 Million in Cash and Stock, Appoints Huffington Editor in Chief — In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web's most prominent news and opinion sites.
Discussion:
Business Week, Between the Lines Blog, The Huffington Post, Local Onliner, SAI, alarm:clock, GigaOM, Inquirer, Computerworld, AdAge, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, PE Hub Blog, DealBook, TechCrunch, DealBook, ReadWriteWeb, Between the Lines Blog, Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard, MediaMemo, Softpedia News, @om, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Neowin.net, Geekosystem, @ischafer, The Awl, SAI, Geek Gestalt, virtualeconomics, paidContent, Epicenter, @megan, Howard Lindzon, AdExchanger.com, Mashable!, Gizmodo and Venture Capital Dispatch, more at Mediagazer »
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
AOL+HuffPo! Why It is Not Really a Good Deal — Just when you thought you could finally put Superbowl commercials behind you and go to bed in a beer-induced slumber, AOL dropped a late-night bomb: it bought The Huffington Post for $315 million, of which $300 million is in cash. My first reaction — wow!
Discussion:
PC World, DealBook and SAI, more at Mediagazer »
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Armstrong's Internal Memo To AOLers About The HuffPo Deal — At midnight, AOL announced that it will buy the Huffington Post for $315 million. Below is the internal memo AOL CEO Tim Armstrong sent to all AOL employees (except us, they don't trust us with anything) about the transaction.
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Guardian, TechCrunch, p2pnet, Lost Remote and TechEye, more at Mediagazer »
Dan Lyons / The Daily Beast:
Huffington Post and AOL: You've Got a Mess — AOL's pseudo journalism, Huffington Post's minuscule ad rates, and editors with big egos and a tough boss will doom the just-created media company. Dan Lyons on the disastrous deal. — It is no surprise that AOL is buying Huffington Post.
Discussion:
Felix Salmon, CNET News and SAI, more at Mediagazer »
Keith Rabois / @rabois:
Interestingly, Aol has now become a substantially more attractive acquirer for startups/entrepreneurs than yahoo.
New York Times:
Betting on News, AOL Is Buying The Huffington Post
Discussion:
Twist Image, Reflections of a Newsosaur, SAI, Media Decoder, Geek.com, TechCrunch, The Awl, Mark Evans Tech, Felix Salmon, Network World, Mashable!, PSFK, @espiers, @agahran, @rabois, @ariannahuff and @turoczy, more at Mediagazer »
Arianna Huffington / The Huffington Post:
When HuffPost Met AOL: “A Merger of Visions”
Discussion:
Mediactive, L.A. Times Tech Blog, BuzzMachine, Hillicon Valley, Tech Trader Daily, The Atlantic Online, FT Alphaville, CNNMoney.com, GMSV, Guardian, blogs.chron.com, BBC, The Business Insider, The Register, Tech Trader Daily, TechCrunch, The Startup Foundry, MediaMemo and L.A. Times Tech Blog, more at Mediagazer », Thanks:vrdabomb5717
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
HP unveils a cool reclining touchscreen PC straight out of Star Trek — It seems like there's no end of uses for the touchscreen. Hewlett-Packard is showing off a cool new touchscreen computer today that can recline at a 60-degree angle so that it can be used as a kind of control console for a lot of different applications.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, eWeek, Inquirer, Engadget, HP, Crave, Between the Lines Blog, I4U News, Softpedia News, Electronista, VentureBeat, CrunchGear and SlashGear
Wael Ghonim / @ghonim:
Discussion:
NewEnterprise, ReadWriteWeb, SAI, TechCrunch, @google, The Huffington Post, Hillicon Valley, @ontveg and Search Engine Land
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Keith Johnson / Dispatch:
Google Executive Released by Egypt Government
Discussion:
Digital Trends, Fortune, TechCrunch and Reuters
Matthew Hawn / Last.fm:
Last.fm Radio becomes a premium feature on mobile and home entertainment devices — On February 15, the radio service built into Last.fm mobile apps and on home entertainment devices will become an ad-free, subscriber-only feature. — Last.fm Radio will remain free on the Last.fm website in the US …
Stuart Miles / Pocket-lint:
Android 2.4 coming April, leaving 2.3 dead on arrival - not Ice Cream — EXCLUSIVE: Viewsonic to be first out of the gate — Viewsonic has exclusively told Pocket-lint that its recently announced ViewPad 4 smartphone will be packing Android 2.4 when it launches in April.
Steven Poole / 3 Quarks Daily:
Against chrome: a manifesto — Please tear your eyes away from this elegant and curiously seductive prose for a few seconds and look at what surrounds this webpage on your display. Unless you are browsing in full-screen “kiosk” mode or kicking it old-school with Lynx …
Discussion:
Daring Fireball
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
White iPhone 4 starts to get Best Buy, The Source shelf space — This shelf tag was apparently spotted this weekend at a Best Buy in Houston, and it speaks for itself: white iPhone 4, AT&T, $599.99 off contract (the same price as the black). Of course, we all know this thing is coming within …
Discussion:
Ars Technica, App Advice, The Toybox Blog, TiPb, Techland, MacNN, OS X Daily, SlashGear, GottaBeMobile, iPhone Buzz, Electronista, Know Your Cell, NBC Bay Area, MacStories and Gizmodo
Peter Sayer / PC World:
Inside Secure Offers Alternative Android NFC Software Stack — Inside Secure hopes to make it easier for Android phone designers to use its NFC chips — or those of its competitors — with the release of a version of its Open NFC software stack for Android.
Discussion:
VentureBeat and The Register
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
HTC Invests In Multimedia Delivery Platform Company Saffron Digital — Smartphone maker HTC this morning announced that it has made a ‘strategic investment’ of undisclosed size in London, UK-based Saffron Digital, which specializes in the delivery of digital multimedia.
Discussion:
Electronista, Business Wire, mocoNews, Android Phone Fans and Softpedia News
Carrie Coolidge / Luxist:
The Plaza in New York Offers iPads in all Guest Rooms and Suites (with Video) — The Plaza is offering iPads in each of its guest rooms and suites. The program, which launched in January, makes the landmark hotel on Central Park South the first hotel in the world to provide guests services …
Discussion:
Digital Trends, TiPb, Gearlog and MacStories
Evelyn M. Rusli / New York Times:
Yahoo Is Said to Move Toward Personalized Content — For Yahoo, it is getting personal. — Confronted by declining revenue and a steady stream of prominent departures, Yahoo plans to announce that it is developing a publishing platform for applications that would let users get personalized content …
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Mobile Marketing Watch, VatorNews, Wall Street Journal, Softpedia News, FierceMobileContent and SAI
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
lightRadio: hideous cell towers to get smaller, lose the “hut” — Alcatel-Lucent is making a bold claim today: its new line of lightRadio cellular hardware can double the bits flying through the air to your smartphone, and it can do so at half the cost. Oh, and cell towers might be able …
Discussion:
Guardian, PC World, IntoMobile, GigaOM, FierceBroadbandWireless, Reuters and Gizmodo
Jameshritz / The Quora Review:
Why Quora & Social Media Experts Don't Mix — As the Quora user base has grown, along with much praise, has come some criticism. Specifically, many critics view Quora as a snobby, clubby, and intellectually elitist place. It seems much of the loudest criticism about Quora and it's community …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
MPAA Snags Google Downloading Torrents, Threatens to Disconnect — Check out TorrentFreak's new News Bits feed! . — Every year, the major movie studios and record labels send out tens of thousands of warnings to Internet users who are suspected of sharing their content using BitTorrent.
Bonnie Cha / Crave: The gadget blog:
WSJ: Sprint to reveal dual-screen Kyocera Echo at Feb. 7 event — Will the dual-screen Kyocera Echo be revealed tonight? — Sprint's New York event is today and the carrier promises to reveal another “industry first.” For weeks, the tech community has tried to guess what that industry …
