Top Items:
The Doc Searls Weblog:
A ground-level view of the XM/Sirius merger in the sky — USA Today says Sirius and XM are going to merge. Mel Karmazin, possibly the wisest guy in commercial radio, will be the CEO. Gary Parsons, currrent CEO of XM, will be chairman. — There are a number of problems with this merger …
Discussion:
USA Today
RELATED:
ABCNEWS:
XM and Sirius to Announce Merger Today — ABC News Has Confirmed That Satellite Radio Providers XM and Sirius Will Announce a Merger Today — ABC News has confirmed reports that two satellite radio providers XM and Sirius will announce a long-anticipated merger today.
Discussion:
Scobleizer, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband, PaidContent, Orbitcast, PC World: Techlog, Dvorak Uncensored and New York Post
Seth Sutel / Associated Press:
XM and Sirius to combine; hurdles loom — NEW YORK - XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., rivals in the fledgling satellite radio industry, have agreed to combine in a deal that investors hope will result in lower costs, assuming it overcomes significant regulatory hurdles.
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:Sources: XM Radio, Sirius merger imminent
Discussion:
PaidContent, Doc Searls Weblog, Mark Evans, Orbitcast, Paul Colligan's …, Jeremy Toeman's LIVEdigitally and Graceful Flavor
Obviously:
Looking for Odeo's new home — In the last few months, we here at Obvious have been increasingly focused on Twitter. As a result, our original product, Odeo, has not gotten the attention it deserves. — It does not cost us much to run—in fact, AdSense covers the hosting …
Nick Farrell / Inquirer:
Ballmer blames pirates for poor Vista sales — Will crank up the WGA — THE SHY and retiring, softly-spoken CEO of Microsoft, Steve "Sounds of Silence" Ballmer is blaming software pirates for Vista's poor sales. — Ballmer admitted to financial analysts that the predictions for Vista …
Bob Tedeschi / New York Times:
From Clipouts to the Web, Coupons Transition Slowly — ONLINE coupons have always been a bargain-hunter's diversion, which may be precisely why the market has grown so slowly. Who wants to take time out of the day to track down sites that give away 50-cent discounts, then search for eligible products that they might need?
Discussion:
IT Facts
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
New virtual world coming from Australia — I just had lunch with Randal Leeb-du Toit, CEO of Yoick, and John Wolpert, executive producer of Outback Online, a 3D virtual world that Yoick is working on. — Who said cool stuff has to come from Silicon Valley?
Victoria Shannon / New York Times:
Europe's Plan to Track Phone and Net Use — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people's Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.
Eric / The MyBlogLog Blog:
Weekend spamtacular — what the heck happened and how we're fixing it — Oh. My. Gosh. This weekend sucked. No doubt about it. But we've beaten things back and we have a plan for making things better still. I'm going to tell you all about that in a minute.
Joel Spolsky / Joel on Software:
Seven steps to remarkable customer service — As a bootstrapped software company, Fog Creek couldn't afford to hire customer service people for the first couple of years, so Michael and I did it ourselves. The time we spent helping customers took away from improving our software …
Discussion:
Global Nerdy
Phil Wolff / Skype Journal:
Is 500 million Skype downloads a lot? — Congratulations, Skype! Skype users downloaded the world's leading VoIP program 500 million times today. The current rate is 640 thousand downloads a day, according to Skype data. Adrian Cockcroft observed Skype downloads spike to a million a day during major upgrades.
Discussion:
IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband
Tatum Anderson / BBC:
Mobile phone lifeline for world's poor — While consumers around the world demand sleek black and silver mobile phones, villagers in rural India buy brightly-coloured handsets in gold, reds and pinks. — Mobile phones are as much a fashion statement here as in the trendy bars of Europe.
Steven Levy / Newsweek:
Wal-Mart's Online Movie Premiere — The retail behemoth is going to offer a hefty catalog of films you will be able to download. — Wal-Mart opened an online video store earlier this month, proudly announcing that it was the first legal movie-downloading site to offer flicks from all of six major studios.
Discussion:
NewTeeVee
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
MSN Experimenting With Most Digg Like Service Yet — Last week we saw first Yahoo! and then Dell launch sites that were largely acknowledged to be Digg inspired. Digg may not have invented the vote-on-news motif but it may have been most important in popularizing the paradigm so far.
