Top Items:
Amy Schatz / Wall Street Journal:
FCC Head Pushes Free Web Plan — Outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing for action in December on a plan to offer free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to all Americans, despite objections from the wireless industry and some consumer groups.
Stuart Cohen / Business Week:
Open Source: The Model Is Broken — The open-source business model that relies solely on support and service revenue streams is failing to meet the expectations of investors — For anyone who hasn't been paying attention to the software industry lately, I have some bad news.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Six Apart acquires and shuts down Pownce — Blogging company Six Apart has acquired micro-blogging startup Pownce for undisclosed financial terms. It looks like one of those acquisitions where the buyer was more interested in the people than the product — the Pownce service will shut down in two weeks.
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Twitterrati
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Andrew D. Smith / Dallas Morning News:
Blockbuster, Microsoft team up on mobile services — asmith@dallasnews.com — Blockbuster Inc. caught up to the competition last week by introducing a set-top box that brings rentals from the Internet to the television. — Now, the Dallas-based company hopes to pass the pack by teaming …
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Unwired View, LiveSide, Beyond Binary, SlashPhone, mocoNews.net, Ubergizmo and Digital Home Thoughts.com
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Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:Blockbuster is Planning Video Services on Top of Live Mesh
Discussion:
GottaBeMobile.com
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
The Simpsons mocks (m)Apple — Few have been spared the satire of Matt Groening's long running animated sitcom. Last night, The Simpsons took on Apple, or uh, Mapple for a full 6 minutes of lampoonery — a pretty harsh ride at a two-joke per minute pace. It all starts when the Springfield mall gets …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, TechFlash, CNET News, Mashable!, Gadget Lab, Microsoft Pri0, Hardware 2.0, Apple 2.0, The iPhone Blog, Global Nerdy, TheNextWeb.com and techeblog.com
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Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
The End Of Online Anonymity — It seems we're approaching a new age here on the Internet. Instead being anonymous, faceless IP addresses, social computing and changing technologies have allowed the lines between the “real” world and the “virtual” world to blur.
Discussion:
broadstuff
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Chris Soghoian / CNET News:MySpace ruling could lead to jail for lying online daters
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Homotron.net
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Huffington Post Nabs $25 Million in Funding-Here's a BoomTown Interview With Oak Investment's Fred Harman — The Huffington Post will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners. — The large round by Oak, which was led by Palo Alto …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, TechFlash, The Social, Epicenter, Media Bullseye, Tech Ticker, BloggingStocks, Alley Insider, TechCrunch, Beet.TV, Xconomy and Mashable!
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Sinead Carew / Reuters:
Clearwire to use “Clear” brand instead of “Xohm” — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Clearwire Corp said on Monday that it would call its high-speed wireless WiMax service “Clear” instead of the “Xohm” brand its venture partner Sprint Nextel has been using. — The new name was announced after Clearwire closed …
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Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Nokia's touchiest week — We've arrived in Barcelona, Spain for Nokia World, a week where Nokia talks to its top customers. — When we got here a Nokia executive met me and bragged that the Internet has no clue what they will announce this week. I asked “what about the touch screen cell phone that I've seen rumors about?”
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Mac Internet share hits record 8.87%; Windows drops below 90% — Apple's (AAPL) slice of the Internet pie grew measurably in November as both the Mac and the iPhone hit record numbers in a Net Applications Web survey issued overnight Monday. — At the same time, Microsoft's (MSFT) …
Ryan Stewart / The Universal Desktop:
The widget conundrum — There's a pretty good article in Advertising Age about the benefits of widgets and the fact that not a lot of people are using it. AdAge says that “entire segment” will amount to around $100 million. That sounds like a chunk of money, and especially one for an industry …
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Bob Garfield / AdAge:Widgets Are Made for Marketing, So Why Aren't More Advertisers Using Them?
Discussion:
Adrants
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
FCC leaks tiny VAIO with WWAN — Sony's first netbook? — They might not like it, but Sony looks ripe to enter the netbook market in the US. Unveiled today is the backside of this tiny “notebook PC” as described by the FCC under the model numbers PCG-1P1L and PCG-1P2L (PCG synonymous with Sony's VAIO laptop brand).
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web — PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet's largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.
Discussion:
Webware.com, eWeek, Contentinople, Tech Confidential, Google Watch, Inside Facebook, Todd Watson, Guardian, PSFK, Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life, ChannelWeb, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, WebProNews, All Facebook, Between the Lines, Enterprise 2.0 Blog, GigaOM, WinBeta, TechCrunch, Paying Attention, Tech Beat and Mashable!
Fortune:
Now hiring in Silicon Valley — High-profile openings at Microsoft, Yahoo, and ... Google? — (Fortune Magazine) — Nature abhors a vacuum, but apparently not in Silicon Valley, where it may not be easy to fill some very prominent vacancies. Right now you've got Jerry Yang abdicating at Yahoo …
MSDN Blogs:
You asked for it: instant cashback! — When we asked users about the improvements they'd like us make to Live Search cashback, many said they want to receive cashback instantly instead of waiting for 60 days. Well, I'm happy to announce that we've just released the Instant cashback feature with eBay.
Richard Bennett / The Register:
Bittorrent declares war on VoIP, gamers — The next internet meltdown — Gamers, VoIP and video conference users beware. The leading BitTorrent software authors have declared war on you - and any users wanting to wring high performance out of their networks.
Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny!:
Blockbuster OnDemand Unboxing & Setup — So much for a day of vacation recovery... UPS just arrived with the new Blockbuster OnDemand movie rental box, by 2Wire. If you recall, $99 gets you the box and 25 video rental credits. Once those have been consumed, content begins at $1.99 a pop.
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Online-only outlets see Black Friday boost over 2007 — The numbers from Black Friday are in, and traffic measurement firms have released their initial 2008 holiday shopping studies. Brick-and-mortar stores saw an unfortunate (though unsurprising) drop in online visitors and spending dollars …
New York Times:
CNN Pitches a Cheaper Wire Service to Newspapers — CNN, in the afterglow of an election season of record ratings for cable news, is elbowing in on a new line of business: catering to financially strained newspapers looking for an alternative to The Associated Press.
Discussion:
Epicenter, Beyond Search, Recovering Journalist, Alley Insider, paidContent.org and BuzzMachine
