Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Day 59: Yahoo Buys BuzzTracker — Now, we're cooking with some gas over at Yahoo, closing in on the two-thirds point of Jerry Yang's declared 100-day March to Happiness. — Today, the Internet giant will announce the purchase of a clever Web site called BuzzTracker, which uses a combination …
Discussion:
Participate Media, Things That, WebProNews, Epicenter, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, A VC and Howard Lindzon
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Makes Tiny Acquisition: BuzzTracker — There are rumors that Yahoo may have acquired news site BuzzTracker, a tiny news aggregation site, for $5 million. Alan Warms, CEO of parent company Participate Media, will join Yahoo as Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo News (a job with a bit of a revolving door, apparently).
Inquirer:
Google readies PowerPoint killer — Slideshow program will be with you, Presently — SURE AS EGGS ARE EGGS, it's been known for a long while that Google will at some point take on PowerPoint with a web-based presentations package. The breaking news is that the coming-out party for the software is any day now.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, HipMojo.com, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Mark Evans and 24/7 Wall St.
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Marshall Kirkpatrick Joins Read/WriteWeb — I'm very pleased to announce that Marshall Kirkpatrick is joining Read/WriteWeb as a Lead Writer, starting this Monday. Marshall teams up with Josh Catone in this role, meaning that Read/WriteWeb now has three daily writers (including myself).
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Marshall Kirkpatrick:
I've left my day job to blog at Read/WriteWeb — I'm excited to announce that my work life is changing; I've resigned as Director of Content at SplashCast and joined the team at the excellent web 2.0 industry news blog Read/WriteWeb. I'll also be putting a new level of time and energy …
Charles Starrett / iLounge:
Apple reveals details of $100 Apple Store iPhone credit — Apple has posted details of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' promised $100 Apple Store credit for early iPhone owners. The program is for customers who own a qualifying iPhone purchased prior to August 22, 2007, and who haven't yet received …
Discussion:
Infinite Loop, Engadget, CrunchGear, The Boy Genius Report, Gizmodo, jkOnTheRun and technabob
Richard Siklos / Fortune:
Viacom's plan to be cool again — Left behind in the social media scene, the owner of MTV has some new stealth projects it hopes will allow it to catch up. Fortune's Richard Siklos divulges the media giant's plan. — NEW YORK (Fortune) — Will Sumner Redstone ever get over being bested …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, Daily Feed, paidContent.org, mediabistro.com, Reuters Blogs, MediaBytes with Shelly …, 901am, The Social and Mashable!
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CNET News.com:
Web ad blocking may not be (entirely) legal — Advertising-supported companies have long turned to the courts to squelch products that let consumers block or skip ads: it happened in the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979 and again with ReplayTV in 2001.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Salesforce.com: It's all about the UI — Salesforce.com on Friday announced a new offering dubbed Force.com, an on-demand platform that gives companies the backend infrastructure as well as the tools to design their applications. — The Force.com platform, which is headlined by Visualforce …
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
An iPod touch ships without OS X — hints at disabled Bluetooth — You can argue that the iPod touch is an iPhone without the phone. So what's an iPod touch without OS X? You're looking at it. That's Dave's swanky new iPod touch, fresh off the boat and out of the box with nothing more than a diagnostic utility.
Spencer Reiss / Wired News:
Google Offers $20 Million X Prize to Put Robot on Moon — Editor's Note: Google will award $20 million to the first private team to put a robot on the moon, the company and the X Prize Foundation announced at Wired NextFest in Los Angeles Thursday. Members of the public will also get the chance to send digital mementos to the moon.
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Bloomberg:
Verizon Wireless Suing Over Auction Rules — WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 (Bloomberg News) — Verizon Wireless has sued the Federal Communications Commission, seeking to overturn auction rules requiring the buyers of some airwaves to make their networks compatible with any device.
Discussion:
Gizmodo
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Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
Counting Clicks — Given that most of Google's $13 billion in revenue comes from clicks on ads, you would think the words "click fraud" would inspire fear in Shuman Ghosemajumder, the company's senior product manager and resident click-fraud czar. But the problem—publishers …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Google calls for international privacy standards — Google will call for universal privacy standards today at a UNESCO conference in France. Google believes that the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework could serve as the basis for harmonizing regulatory frameworks used by countries around the world.
Discussion:
Associated Press
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Peggy O'Crowley / NJ.com:
What do we think of Wii? — We received responses to our Question of the Week about the new gun-like remote wand that Wii is planning to unveil for its first-person shooter games. — Most people think it's a bone-headed idea. — "Great, this is what we need. Children with guns learning how to aim and shoot.
Eliot Van Buskirk / Listening Post:
Winamp's 10th Anniversary Version Edition Will Challenge ITunes — Winamp will be 10 years old next month. The application once ruled desktops everywhere as the world's default MP3 media player. However, when Justin Frankel sold Winamp's parent company Nullsoft to internet giant AOL in 1999 …
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
Microsoft dodging the real stealth update issues — I've taken some time to properly digest Microsoft's response to the stealth update issue that I've been discussing here for the last few days and I've come to the conclusion that Microsoft is dodging the real issues about the stealth updates.
Discussion:
Ed Bott's Windows Expertise
BBC:
BT set to study internet novices — BT is setting up an initiative to find out why some people resist using the internet. — The project will employ psychologists to closely study a small group of people to reveal what stops them joining the net-using majority.
Discussion:
Inquirer
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
The Ringtones Racket — Steve Jobs, introducing iTunes 7.4 during last week's Apple special event: "We're going to ship a new version of iTunes tonight, to support some of the new products you're going to hear about shortly. And the biggest new feature is going to be ringtones.
Discussion:
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Compiler, Roughly Drafted, Roland Tanglao's Weblog and Infinite Loop
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