Top Items:
Megan McCarthy / Epicenter:
Rumor: Plaxo Sold to Google for $200M? — We're hearing rumors that online contact management service Plaxo has accepted a sub-$200 million offer and that the purchasing company is most likely search engine Google. — Plaxo has been in the news recently, reportedly hiring a bank to shepherd a sale.
Discussion:
The Boy Genius Report, Webware.com, TechCrunch, VoIP Blog, One By One Media, Valleywag, VentureBeat, PE HUB, /Message and Googlified
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Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Google to buy Plaxo — and a new pal — for $200 million? — Plaxo, the contact-sharing service trying to reinvent itself as a social network, may have sold itself to Google for something close to $200 million. And if the rumor's true, I think the companies may be doing it out of friendship.
Discussion:
The Open Road
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Yahoo! Launches Live Video Service and We Cover it...Live...Sort of — The rumored launch of Yahoo!'s live video service became reality tonight at Live.Yahoo.com. I'm covering it live, in video below. It looks pretty good though early tests are experiencing scaling issues already.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Launches Live - A Live Streaming Video Service — Given all the chaos this week surrounding Microsoft's bid to take over Yahoo, it's not surprising that a new Yahoo product launch wouldn't have an abundance of exuberance attached to it. Still, the only word anyone got that Yahoo Live …
Discussion:
CenterNetworks
Mike Schramm / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
Rumor: Apple event the last week of February — TUAW has received a tip that the company that does television for Apple's live events and Macworld is apparently hiring for an unannounced Apple event at the end of February. Keep in mind that this is an unconfirmed rumor — while TUAW trusts our source …
Discussion:
9 to 5 Mac, CNET News.com, Cult of Mac, PalmAddicts, Ubergizmo, Incremental Blogger, Insanely Great Mac and thegadgetsite
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Amazon Quietly Launches Product Ads; Secretly Wants to Become a Shopping Search Engine. — Sometimes I think that Amazon secretly wants to get out of the physical retailing business. It gets much higher margins from selling digital goods, or from collecting an affiliate fee from any sales it directs to an third-party Amazon Merchant.
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Tolles / blog.topix.com:
Welcome to the Neighborhood, Google — Gulp. — Silicon Valley CEO nightmare right out of central casting, right? In our case, Google launching a local news product that is targeted down to the ZIP code level, something we've had a lock on since 2004, and one of our clearest differentiators.
Discussion:
Official Google Blog, Best Engaging Communities, Screenwerk, Mashable! and Online News Squared
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Google News Blog:All News is Local — Something you already know about Google News …
Discussion:
Valleywag, TechCrunch, Googlified, Download Squad, innonate, Skrentablog, BetaNews, TeleRead, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Compiler, CyberNet, Digital Daily, PDA, VentureBeat, Marksonland, Search Engine Watch Blog, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, Google Operating System, Joe Duck, Between the Lines, WebProNews, Technology Questions, Google Blogoscoped, Journalistopia, Insider Chatter, AppScout, mathewingram.com/work, MarketingShift and Mark Evans
Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Google Properties Breakdown - by Pages — I wanted to follow up on a comment I received on my post last week with the Google Properties Breakdown. Gonçalo asks a great question - whether the ranking changes much if we look at page views rather than visits as websites.
Andrew Orlowski / The Register:
Major labels ‘face DoJ antitrust probe’ — Unlaunched TotalMusic prompts price fixing concern — Two major labels have been served notice of a fresh antitrust investigation, a music business newsletter reports today. MusicAlly's daily Bulletin suggests that the as-yet-unlaunched TotalMusic service …
Reuters:
ARM to show Google phone prototype next week: source — FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) - British chip designer ARM (ARM.L: Quote, Profile, Research) will show a prototype mobile phone based on Google's (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Android platform next Monday at the Mobile World Congress wireless show …
Discussion:
Engadget, Reuters, eWeek, PC World, IntoMobile, Electronista, Gizmodo, CrunchGear, Mashable!, localmobilesearch.net and Gadgetell
AppleInsider:
Apple filing depicts Apple TV with iChat widget interface — A new and discrete patent filing on the part of Apple Inc. portrays previously undisclosed versions of the company's Apple TV set-top-box software and remote control that make extensive use of widgets to facilitate everything …
Wall Street Journal:
Probe May Derail Music Venture — The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into Universal Music's proposal to its three main competitors that they develop a service to compete with Apple's iTunes.
TVTechnology.com:
Apple Drops Out of NAB Show — Apple has announced that it will not have a booth at The NAB Show this year. — Rumor had been spreading on the Internet in recent days about Apple's presence at the show. Speculation increased after Avid Technology, the company's main competitor at the NAB Show dropped out late last year.
Discussion:
MacRumors, Macworld, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, The Mac Observer and Insanely Great Mac
Alex / Neatorama:
The Evolution of Tech Companies' Logos — You've seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple's original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia's original logo was a fish? — Let's take a look at the origin …
Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:
Facebook Launches in Spanish — Facebook has just launched the Spanish language version of their site, a result of the Translations project we learned about a couple months back. To activate the site in Spanish, you can go to your account page, under which you will find a new “language” tab.
