Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled — About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock. — While rumors of Facebook's interest were brought …
Discussion:
Profy, Data Center Knowledge, Microblink, Regular Geek, mocoNews.net, Distorted-Loop.com, Pat Phelan and broadstuff
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Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Acquisition Dance Between Facebook And Twitter Over For Now? — It's not the first time we've heard rumors about Facebook looking to acquire Twitter or about an impending deal breaking down. But this time, Kara Swisher over at BoomTown offers a bit of insight about the deal size.
Chris / LiveSide:
Microsoft takes control of Kumo.com domain - watch out for the Live Search rebrand — A few months ago Mary Jo Foley got a tip about some new brand names that were being considered for Live Search. One of these, Kumo, jumped out at us due to the sheer scale of TLDs that had been acquired during 2008 …
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft To Rebrand Search. Will It Be Kumo? — Microsoft will relaunch Windows Live Search under a new brand sometime early next year, says a source within the company. What we don't know is what that new brand will be, although a few names have been thrown around.
Arn / Touch Arcade:
2nd Generation iPod Touch Faster than iPhone — While we had generally considered the iPhone and iPod Touch to be one cohesive platform, as games have started to push the boundaries of these devices, it has become apparent that there are differences in performance between the different models.
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Erica Ogg / CNET News:
For Black Friday, shades of gray — Usually Black Friday is a good time of year for consumers and retailers. It's when retailers get “in the black” by getting rid of a lot of excess inventory through offering drastic discounts. — This year is different.
Andrew Wallenstein / Reuters:
Triple “Guild” play for Microsoft — LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Microsoft will be filled to the gills with “The Guild.” — The software giant has an exclusive lock on the long-awaited second season of the Internet cult hit, which will be the first to be distributed worldwide …
Discussion:
Alley Insider
Stars & Stripes:
Not playing around: Army to invest $50M in combat training games — GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — The Army has created a video game unit and will invest $50 million over five years on games and gaming systems designed to prepare soldiers for combat. — Lt. Col. Gary Stephens …
David Carr / New York Times:
Google Seduces With Utility — Not long ago, someone invited me out to the Googleplex, the nickname for Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. — The fact is, I already live there. And it's starting to worry me. — Having grown up in the vapor trail of the '60s …
Jenna Wortham / New York Times:
For Laid-Off Journalists, Free Blog Accounts — It's a long way from $700 billion, but the media start-up Six Apart is introducing its own economic bailout plan. — The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program offers recently terminated bloggers and journalists a free pro account (worth $150 annually) …
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Symantec says Internet underground economy is organized and rich — Did you know that you can buy a keystroke logger for $23 or pay $10 to have someone host your phishing scam? Having a botnet at your fingertips will cost you $225, and a tool that exploits a vulnerability on a banking site averages $740 and runs as high as $3,000.
Discussion:
TECH.BLORGE.com
Don Clark / Wall Street Journal:
Start-Up Takes on ‘Patent Trolls’ — Firm Plans to Defensively Buy Patents and Charge Fixed Membership-License Fees — A San Francisco start-up is disclosing details of a new service to address patent risks facing technology companies, and has lined up Cisco Systems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. as initial members.
