Top Items:
Megan McCarthy / Epicenter:
Rumor: Plaxo Sold to Google for $200M? — We're hearing rumors that online contact management service Plaxo has accepted a sub-$200 million offer and that the purchasing company is most likely search engine Google. — Plaxo has been in the news recently, reportedly hiring a bank to shepherd a sale.
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Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Google to buy Plaxo — and a new pal — for $200 million? — Plaxo, the contact-sharing service trying to reinvent itself as a social network, may have sold itself to Google for something close to $200 million. And if the rumor's true, I think the companies may be doing it out of friendship.
Discussion:
The Open Road
Mike Schramm / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
Rumor: Apple event the last week of February — TUAW has received a tip that the company that does television for Apple's live events and Macworld is apparently hiring for an unannounced Apple event at the end of February. Keep in mind that this is an unconfirmed rumor — while TUAW trusts our source …
Discussion:
9 to 5 Mac, CNET News.com, Incremental Blogger, Cult of Mac, PalmAddicts, thegadgetsite, Ubergizmo and Insanely Great Mac
Google News Blog:
All News is Local — Something you already know about Google News is that we crawl thousands of sources from around the world. This means you get as many different perspectives on a story from many perspectives. A while back, we started thinking about how to bring this same diversity …
Discussion:
Googlified, Digital Daily, Compiler, Download Squad, innonate, TeleRead, Search Engine Watch Blog, BetaNews, Between the Lines, CyberNet, PDA, Google Operating System, WebProNews, Journalistopia, Joe Duck, Google Blogoscoped, Technology Questions, Insider Chatter, AppScout, mathewingram.com/work, Seeking Alpha, Mark Evans, Googling Google and Mashable!
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Tolles / blog.topix.com:
Welcome to the Neighborhood, Google — Gulp. — Silicon Valley CEO nightmare right out of central casting, right? In our case, Google launching a local news product that is targeted down to the ZIP code level, something we've had a lock on since 2004, and one of our clearest differentiators.
Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Google Properties Breakdown - by Pages — I wanted to follow up on a comment I received on my post last week with the Google Properties Breakdown. Gonçalo asks a great question - whether the ranking changes much if we look at page views rather than visits as websites.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Amazon Quietly Launches Product Ads; Secretly Wants to Become a Shopping Search Engine. — Sometimes I think that Amazon secretly wants to get out of the physical retailing business. It gets much higher margins from selling digital goods, or from collecting an affiliate fee from any sales it directs to an third-party Amazon Merchant.
RELATED:
Brian Smith / ComparisonEngines.com:amazon becomes the largest shopping engine
Discussion:
Redeye VC
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Yahoo! Launches Live Video Service and We Cover it...Live — The rumored launch of Yahoo!'s live video service became reality tonight at Live.Yahoo.com. I'm covering it live, in video below. It looks pretty good though early tests are experiencing scaling issues already.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
OpenID Welcomes Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM — As anticipated by TechCrunch UK in early January, OpenID is welcoming some big new partners to the club - Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM (TechCrunch UK anticipated all but Microsoft). — Google has been dabbling with OpenID …
Discussion:
mathewingram.com/work, Silicon Florist, Mashable!, CenterNetworks, Signal vs. Noise and SmoothSpan Blog
RELATED:
The Shared Admin / OpenID:Evolving the OpenID Foundation Board
Discussion:
GigaOM, Market Wire, WebProNews, Compiler, CNET News.com, Good Morning Silicon Valley, ReadWriteWeb, O'Reilly Radar, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, TechCrunch UK, Todd Watson, The Next Web, Identity 2.0, Unit Structures, Between the Lines, The Real McCrea, SEO and Tech Daily and Paul Mooney
AppleInsider:
Apple filing depicts Apple TV with iChat widget interface — A new and discrete patent filing on the part of Apple Inc. portrays previously undisclosed versions of the company's Apple TV set-top-box software and remote control that make extensive use of widgets to facilitate everything …
TVTechnology.com:
Apple Drops Out of NAB Show — Apple has announced that it will not have a booth at The NAB Show this year. — Rumor had been spreading on the Internet in recent days about Apple's presence at the show. Speculation increased after Avid Technology, the company's main competitor at the NAB Show dropped out late last year.
RELATED:
Reuters:
ARM to show Google phone prototype next week: source — FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) - British chip designer ARM (ARM.L: Quote, Profile, Research) will show a prototype mobile phone based on Google's (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Android platform next Monday at the Mobile World Congress wireless show …
Discussion:
Engadget, eWeek, PC World, Reuters, Electronista, IntoMobile, Mashable!, CrunchGear, Gizmodo, localmobilesearch.net and Gadgetell
Alex / Neatorama:
The Evolution of Tech Companies' Logos — You've seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple's original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia's original logo was a fish? — Let's take a look at the origin …
Andrew Orlowski / The Register:
Major labels ‘face DoJ antitrust probe’ — Unlaunched TotalMusic prompts price fixing concern — Two major labels have been served notice of a fresh antitrust investigation, a music business newsletter reports today. MusicAlly's daily Bulletin suggests that the as-yet-unlaunched TotalMusic service …
Ian Grayson / iTWire:
Microsoft urges Nokia to offer Windows Mobile devices — Software giant Microsoft is in discussion with Nokia about plans to have the handset maker add Windows Mobile-powered devices to its portfolio.
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
RIAA boss: Move copyright filtering from ISPs to users' PCs — Filtering sounds so wholesome. As with filtered water, Internet filtering backers suggest that their products simply keep the sludge from passing through, and who wants to drink unfiltered sludge?
Discussion:
Public Knowledge, The Register, Techdirt, DSLreports, Neowin.net, p2pnet, Mashable!, Digital Daily, Gizmodo, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband and Slashdot
Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:
Facebook Launches in Spanish — Facebook has just launched the Spanish language version of their site, a result of the Translations project we learned about a couple months back. To activate the site in Spanish, you can go to your account page, under which you will find a new “language” tab.
