Top Items:
Ed Felten / Freedom to Tinker:
HBO Exec Wants to Rename DRM — People have had lots of objections to Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology — centering mainly on its clumsiness and the futility of its anti-infringement rationale — but until recently nobody had complained that the term "Digital Rights Management" was insufficiently Orwellian.
Discussion:
Ars Technica, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Epicenter, Broadcasting & Cable and Digital Daily
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Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0:
Facebook Classified Ad Offering Deals Another Blow To Newspapers — It's sure rough trying to charge for a service that other businesses are offering for free. Just ask any newspaper exec. With 20/20 hindsight, it seems inevitable that the web would be the perfect platform for free classified ads …
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Business Wire:
MySpace Launches Take Down Stay Down Copyright Protection — Leading Lifestyle Portal Launches Ground-breaking Tool to Prevent Users from Reposting Unauthorized Copyrighted Content — LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)—MySpace, the world's leading lifestyle portal, today announced the launch …
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Jim Dalrymple / Macworld:
Jobs addresses backdating, environment at shareholder meeting — At Apple's annual shareholders meeting in Cupertino on Thursday, Steve Jobs and other company executives heard criticism about the company's stock-options scandal and the recently announced delay of of the forthcoming Leopard version …
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Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:
Vonage Says It May Have Way Around Disputed Patents (Update5) — Vonage Holdings Corp. said it may have technology that could rescue its Internet-phone service, after a jury found the company infringed patents that allow customers to call standard telephones.
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Billboard:
Exclusive: McCartney Goes Digital, Beatles 'Virtually Settled' — Brian Garrity, N.Y. and Paul Sexton, London — Paul McCartney's new album, "Memory Almost Full," will be his first solo release available for download and streaming on PCs and mobile phones.
Discussion:
Apple 2.0, Gizmodo, MacUser, Ars Technica, Byte of the Apple, MacDailyNews and Infinite Loop
Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
Gmail Users are Younger, Richer, Good in Bed — Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the latest stats show that Gmail users skew younger and richer than those on Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. — Gmail opened up to all comers in February, with Gmail's market share of US visits climbing 17% from February 2007 to April 2007.
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Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Out of Chaos, Order. Or So Google Says. — Over the years, Google has carefully cultivated the image of a zany company in which innovation and new products — lots of new products — emerge from a bit of chaos. — Now Google is trying to put some order into that chaos — or at least appear to do so.
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Anne Broache / CNET News.com:
Apple, others draw legal threat over media players — update A California company that makes technology designed to prevent ripping of digital audio streams has accused Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Adobe Systems of violating federal copyright law by "actively avoiding" use of its products.
Discussion:
Smalltalk Tidbits …
Anne Broache / CNET News.com:
Politicos take on YouTube, video's future — update WASHINGTON—It was an atypical start for a Capitol Hill hearing—arguably the first time a politician ever paused his opening remarks to grab a digital video camera and capture the scene around him for a few seconds.
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Debra Sherman / Reuters:
iPods can make pacemakers malfunction - study — iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a study presented by a 17-year-old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
TechCrunch20 Conference: Caterina Fake, MC Hammer & Rajeev Motwani Join Expert Panel — I'm excited to announce the next three experts for the TechCrunch20 Conference in San Francisco this September. Caterina Fake, MC Hammer and Rajeev Motwani join the previously announced experts.
Valleywag:
Exclusive: The unmasking of Fake Steve Jobs — Soon after Valleywag began digging into the identity of Silicon Valley's most mysterious author — the anonymous satirist behind Fake Steve Jobs, a spoof diary of the narcissistic Apple founder — a plaintive email arrived.
Discussion:
Apple 2.0
Kevin Kelleher / GigaOM:
Orbitz, the worst IPO of 2007? — We're not even halfway through 2007 and I'm ready to make a nomination for worst IPO candidate of the year: Orbitz. — You may recall that Orbitz - the online travel site founded by five major airlines in 2000 - went public at $26 a share in 2003.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
From My Inbox: More Defense Of SEO — I spent about a half-hour today defending SEO privately in an email to someone questioning it. Upon reflection, I thought those responses should go into a public post. After all, the discussion involved Stephen Colbert, the great Jason Calacanis mystery project …
Nicole Lee / CNET News.com:
Alltel launches Jump Music — Alltel Wireless has partnered up with frog design and eMusic to offer Jump Music, a free application that lets you transfer music from your PC to your cell phone. Similar to the iTunes Music Store model, consumers can also navigate to eMusic directly …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Slide largest widget maker on the Web? — Slide, the maker of a Web slide show feature, has emerged as a major player, boasting 150 million daily slide show views and more than 200,000 new slide show "widgets" created daily. — These numbers are astonishing, and are enough to make it the largest …
Michelle Thatcher / CNET News.com:
Sony VAIO TZ photos leaked — When we told you about several leaked Sony laptops a few weeks ago, there weren't any photos of the ultraportable VAIO TZ11 to share. But Andrew at NotebookReview.com managed to uncover some images and more detailed specs on a French retailer's Web site.
