Top Items:
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES — CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the show, we pretty much couldn't help ourselves. We shut off a TV. And then another. And then a wall of TVs. And we just couldn't stop.
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Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
BLOGGERS BEHAVING BADLY: GIZMODO MESSES WITH CES FLAT SCREENS — The Gizmodo kids pulled a good stunt at CES: they fired TV-B-Gone remotes at walls of shiny new monitors on display and during press conferences, much to the displeasure of booth staffers. — The video is funny.
Discussion:
Ewan Spence's All New Musings
Shel / Global Neighbourhoods:
Gizmodo Prank at CES. Victims may be bloggers — The clever hacks at Gizmodo pulled a prank at CES making all those TV screens go blank all at once, then filming and posting it, I assume very much to their own sophomoric satisfaction. As Webware Rafe Needleman put it:
Discussion:
blackrimglasses.com
CBS News:
Facebook Founder Says “Beacon” Needs Work — Also Tells 60 Minutes It's Unlikely Company Will Go Public in 2008 — (CBS) The controversial advertising device many accused of invading the privacy of Facebook users will eventually be a good tool, says Facebook founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg.
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Amanda Natividad / paidContent.org:
Facebook To Add More Privacy Controls, Mass Messaging; Zuckerberg On ‘60 Minutes’ — Facebook plans to release new features giving users more control over their privacy settings and messaging capabilities, according to its “What's New” page. Recently, Facebook added Friend Lists …
Microsoft:
Microsoft Announces Retirement and Transition Plan for Jeff Raikes, President of the Microsoft Business Division — Company announces it has hired Stephen Elop from Juniper Networks; Raikes will continue at Microsoft through September 2008. — Microsoft Corp. today announced that …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Juniper Networks exec to succeed Microsoft Business Division President Raikes — In what I consider surprising timing, Microsoft announced on January 10 that one of its three corporate presidents, Jeff Raikes, is retiring in September 2008. — Raikes will be succeeded by Stephen Elop …
Discussion:
Business Week, Voices, eWeek, Tech Trader Daily, New York Times, The Register, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog and WinBeta
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Believe it or not, Mahalo is Growing — Human-built search engine Mahalo appears to be shooting past the traffic numbers it got when it launched, according to Heather Hopkins at traffic analyst firm Hitwise. — Mahalo pages are collections of the most useful links regarding a wide variety of timely topics in popular niches.
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Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Wikia Launch & Mahalo Growth — This week's launch of Wikia Search is the latest example of a human powered search engine. Mahalo and Cha-Cha are two other recent entrants. This week we've seen a spike in daily visits to Wikia Search, as you'd expect. In my digging the thing that stood as interesting to me is Mahalo's growth.
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Bebo's Platform Now Open for All Developers — Almost a month ago to the day, social network Bebo announced its developer platform. Or rather, a clone of Facebook's developer platform. The idea was to copy Facebook's platform so that developers wouldn't have to relearn a new one and rebuild …
Discussion:
The Social Times, ReadWriteWeb, paidContent, ProgrammableWeb, Mashable!, Lonely CEO Media, All Facebook, Snipperoo and DLD
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Amazon Completes DRM-Free Roster With Sony-BMG — For anyone who was bummed about the hoops they were going to have to jump through to get DRM-free songs from Sony-BMG artists, by the end of the month you will be able to download those songs at Amazon's MP3 store.
Discussion:
Amazon.com, Bloomberg, Associated Press, MacMegasite, Bits, USA Today, Profy.Com, Gizmodo, WebProNews, mathewingram.com/work, paidContent.org, Electronista and Brier Dudley's blog
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Music Industry's Last Stand Will Be A Music Tax — It is becoming more and more difficult for the music industry to ignore the basic economics of the their industry: unenforceable property rights (you can't sue everyone) and zero marginal production costs (file sharing is ridiculously easy).
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Tony Ruscoe / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Checkout Trends — Google Trends allows you to enter keywords and phrases to compare what users have been searching for over a specified time period. Now, the Official Google Checkout Blog has just announced that they've launched their own version which lets you see what people have been buying using Google Checkout:
Discussion:
Googling Google
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Dave Linthicum / InfoWorld:
Budget Cuts and SOA — There seem to a few companies that are cutting their SOA efforts due to the softening of the economy. No matter if you think its oil prices, the mortgage crisis, or other factors, in many organizations capital budgets, including IT, are being reduced. — Thus, what gets cut first?
Robby Stein / Official Gmail Blog:
Create personal mailing lists through contact manager — I have about eight friends from high school I like to keep in touch with frequently. We all email updates or the occasional funny YouTube video to the group, but every once in a while I'd forget to include one of them or I'd accidentally use …
Discussion:
Mashable!
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
CondeNet Reworks Flip.com As Social Net App Starting With Facebook; Site Will Remain — CondeNet is remaking its teen-focused community site Flip.com into an app that will live on other social nets. The first to get the new Flip app is Facebook, with others to follow, CondeNet announced a few minutes ago.
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Trevor / Inside AdWords:
The Conversion Optimizer: Increase profits and save time — Last September, we launched the Conversion Optimizer, a free AdWords feature for managing CPA (cost-per-acquisition) bids. Since then, the Conversion Optimizer has helped many advertisers save time and money, and we're announcing today that it's no longer in beta.
Nicholas Confessore / New York Times:
Intel Gets New York Subpoena in Antitrust Inquiry — ALBANY — Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York issued a wide-ranging subpoena to the Intel Corporation on Thursday as part of an investigation into whether the company violated federal or state antitrust laws in the way it priced and sold microprocessors.
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