Top Items:
Annys Shin / Washington Post:
FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing — The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships. — In a staff opinion issued yesterday …
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Nicole Simon / cruel to be kind:
Loic Lemeur: Betraying 1000 attendees for his own political ambitions? — Last year at Leblogs we had the problem of being promised a high profile event, like *the* major event in this regard and got took by surprise how the audience was not really even. A lot of more geeky people …
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Shane Richmond / Telegraph Blogs:
Why are they here? — "I don't mean to be rude," my wife said to me over the phone earlier, "but why have all these people come to talk to you?" — Politicians such as Sarkozy have muscled in on 'leweb3' — It's a good question. Why did we have an address from a former Israeli prime minister …
David Weinberger / Joho the Blog:
[leweb] Sarkozy - Conservative candidate lectures us — The conservative candidate for the presidency and Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, comes to address the conference. He talks quickly and I'm taking notes on the simultaneous translation, and not keeping up. — He begins by saying the Internet is important.
Discussion:
Oliver Thylmann's Thoughts
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Skype's Free Phone Call Plan Will Soon Have Annual Fee — Skype, the Internet calling service owned by eBay, said Tuesday that as of Jan. 1 it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones within the United States and Canada. Those calls had been free since last spring.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Wi-Fi Networking News, 21talks, VoIP Blog, Technically Speaking and New Media Musings
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Andy Abramson / VoIP Watch:Skype 3.0 Goes Live, New Cheaper Disruptive Calling Plans Announced for USA
Discussion:
Roam4free
Valleywag:
SECOND LIFE: A story too good to check — CLAY SHIRKY — Second Life, the much-hyped virtual world backed by Benchmark Capital, is heading towards two million users. Except it isn't, really. We all know how this game works, and has since the earliest days of the web:
Discussion:
Trial By Fire, Ben Metcalfe Blog, Second Life Herald, reBang weblog, Boing Boing and PSFK Trend: PSFK
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Clay Shirky / Many-to-Many:
Second Life: What are the real numbers? — Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn't, really. We all know how this game works, and has since the earliest days of the web: — Member of the Business Press: "How many users do you have?"
Scott Martin / Red Herring:
Yahoo Dethroned By MySpace — Fox Interactive Media, largely thanks to MySpace, has edged into No. 1 for Internet page views. — Yahoo is getting good at being No. 2. News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media has now edged the search giant out of its long-held perch at the top position for Internet page views.
Discussion:
Technically Speaking
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Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Apple ITunes Sales Slid in First Half, Forrester Says (Update4) — Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music store suffered a 65 percent slump in sales during the first six months of the year, reversing almost two years of gains, according to a Forrester Research Inc. report.
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Sprint:
Sprint Powers Up Faster Mobile Broadband Network in 10 More Markets, Upgraded Coverage Reaches 60 Million People — Users in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Detroit, Denver, Baltimore, Providence and New Jersey now have the power of significantly faster upload speeds …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
The Iniquities of the Selfish — On Monday, MacHeist1 released the software bundle at the heart of their promotion, under the guise of "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer": … First, there's something silly about calling these apps "hidden gems" in one paragraph …
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta to drop this friday — Exclusive: Adobe Systems Inc. on friday will make available for download an early public beta of its next-generation graphics editor, Photoshop CS3, but will otherwise abstain from delivering pre-release copies of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications.
Official Google Blog:
About Transferable Stock Options — We work hard to attract and retain the world's best talent in a number of ways, and a part of that is offering competitive compensation packages. We offer standard things such as competitive salary, cash incentives, restricted stock units and stock options.
Discussion:
Infothought, Venture Chronicles, Paul Kedrosky's …, InsideGoogle, ben barren and Googlified
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News.com:
Laser etching coming to a laptop near you — If you can't stand the idea of a cookie cutter laptop and you live in New York, there's a new option: laser etching. — Phil Torrone, an editor at Make magazine, and Limor Fried, a former fellow at the tech-focused art studio Eyebeam R&D …
newsroom.ucla.edu:
UCLA Warns of Unauthorized Access to Restricted Database — UCLA is alerting approximately 800,000 people that their names and certain personal information are contained in a restricted database that was illegally and fraudulently accessed by a sophisticated computer hacker.
