Techmeme: To Stanch Layoffs, Yahoo Has Been Shopping Its Ad Technology Platforms to Google, Microsoft and Others (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)

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March 14, 2012, 8:25 PM

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Britannica Blog:

Change: It's Okay. Really. — That big print set will pass into history, but the future it gives way to will be bright. — For 244 years, the thick volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica have stood on the shelves of homes, libraries, and businesses everywhere, a source of enlightenment …

Room for Debate:

Britannica: Define Outdated — For generations the Encyclopaedia Britannica was a wonder — the world's knowledge on a single bookshelf. Now the touch of a finger can bring even more information instantaneously. That's why Britannica will no longer be publishing a print edition.

More: New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times and Media Decoder. See also Mediagazer

Andrew Chen / @andrewchen:

Why I doubted Facebook could build a billion dollar business, and what I learned from being horribly wrong — Facebook, early 2006 — Sometimes, you need to be horribly, embarrassingly wrong to remind yourself to keep an open mind. This is my story of my failure to understand Facebook's potential.

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Yahoo-Facebook patent fight: more than meets the eye — It has been an interesting day to say the least. The news of Yahoo suing Facebook for infringing its patents has drawn sharp reactions from some of the more measured voices in our industry. Here is a small sampling of reactions:

More: Business Insider, PandoDaily, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, Jason Hirschhorn, the Econsultancy blog, InfoWorld, Washington Post, The Huffington Post, TechFlash and TechCrunch

Tweets: @karaswisher and @dannysullivan

Paul Sloan / CNET:

Yahoo-Facebook: First fisticuffs, then flowers?

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Kevin Rose's Milk shutters its first app Oink after just over 4 months — After just over four months, Oink, the first app from Digg founder Kevin Rose's new company Milk, will close its doors. The app was described as a ‘way to rate and rank the things around you,’ and billed itself …

More: The Verge, PC Magazine, Business Insider, VentureBeat, CNET, TechCrunch and AllThingsD

Tweets: @dondodge, @ourielohayon, @aaronmcdonald, @rafat, @oinkapp, @fromedome, @kn0thing and @spolsky

Patrick Thibodeau / Computerworld:

White House CIO's first 40 days included ‘worst day’ ever — Colangelo started his job the same day as President Obama, found IT assets ‘in pretty bad shape’ — PHOENIX - Here are two facts about Brook Colangelo's job as the CIO of the Executive Office of President.

More: Hillicon Valley, CNET, Ars Technica and TechEye

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:

SEC Announces Charges from Investigation of Secondary Market Trading of Private Company Shares — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two managers of private investment funds established solely to acquire the shares of Facebook and other Silicon Valley firms with misleading investors …

More: AllThingsD, Venture Capital Dispatch, Reuters, Social Markets and Business Insider

Mario Aguilar / Gizmodo:

Aereo Hands-On: Watch Broadcast TV Wherever and Whenever You Want — The new cloud-based, broadcast TV recording service Aereo just went live in New York City. It was sued by major broadcasters even before it was available, and with good reason: We took the service for a spin and it's …

More: VatorNews, paidContent, Digital Trends, Internet Evolution and VentureBeat. See also Mediagazer

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

Samsung suffers second and even more important FRAND defeat to Apple in the Netherlands — Dutch website Webwereld.nl reports that the Rechtbank 's-Gravenhage (the District Court of The Hague, Netherlands) just handed Apple — and the concept of FRAND standards, which is more important …

More: AllThingsD, WebProNews, iClarified, MacNN and PC Magazine

Andreas Udo de Haes / Computerworld:

Dutch court rules iPhone 4S does not infringe Samsung 3G patents

More: The Verge and BGR

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

Verizon Will Double LTE Footprint by Year's End — Verizon currently operates the largest 4G LTE network in the United States, and it has no plans to relinquish that title any time soon. — The carrier said today that it plans to double its 4G LTE footprint in 2012, extending it to some 400 markets by year's end.

More: TechCrunch, Welcome To Verizon Wireless, DSLreports, Macworld, AndroidGuys and Gotta Be Mobile

Greg Bensinger / Dow Jones Newswires:

Verizon Plans Broader 4G Rollout, Only LTE-Capable Phones

More: CNET, BGR, Computerworld, Engadget, The Verge, Smartphones …, Android Community, WebProNews, IntoMobile, VentureBeat, BGR, Internet Evolution, Ubergizmo, CNET, PhoneArena, Gotta Be Mobile, Android Phone Fans and Android Community

Christopher Soghoian / slight paranoia:

FBI seeks warrant to force Google to unlock Android phone — Today, I stumbled across a recent FBI application and accompanying affidavit for a search warrant ordering Google to unlock a screen-locked Android phone. The application asks Google to: “provide law enforcement with any and all means …

More: Dennis Fisher, VentureBeat, Ars Technica, Wired and Slashdot

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

New iPad apps up to five times larger than their predecessors — Apple's iPad versions of its iLife and iWork apps will be up to five times as large as their predecessors due to the ultra-high resolution of the new iPad. Vietnamese site Tinhte has spent some time with the new iPad and made an interesting observation on app sizes:

More: CNET, MacRumors, I4U News, Gizmodo, Gotta Be Mobile, VentureBeat, Business Insider and everythingiCafe

BBC:

Cyber-attack on BBC leads to suspicion of Iran's involvement — The BBC is not providing detail of the timing or nature of the cyber-attack — A “sophisticated cyber-attack” on the BBC has been linked to Iran's efforts to disrupt the BBC Persian Service.

More: ReadWriteWeb, WebProNews, Washington Post, The Register, Naked Security, Inquirer and Slashdot. See also Mediagazer

Brittany Darwell / Inside Facebook:

Facebook adds recommendations box to Timeline pages associated with locations — Pages that switch to the new Timeline format will now display user recommendations in a box beneath friend activity and include a prompt for people to write their own recommendations.

Nitasha Tiku / Betabeat:

As ‘Why I Left’ Letters Reach Meme Proportions, Startups Hope Goldman's Moral Loss Is Their Gain — If there were a more visual element (perhaps a honey badger or LOLcat) attached to the “Why I Left Company X” genre, the meme would already be cresting to the top of BuzzFeed.

More: Beyond Search, kottke.org and MSDN Blogs. Tweets: @ldignan

Joe Pollicino / Engadget:

Google+ updated with photo album organizer, batch delete and sorting functionality in tow — Suffice it to say, if you're still using Google+ you've probably noticed that it hasn't exactly had an expansive feature set for organizing photo albums. According to Isaac Sparrow, a self-described …

More: Google+ and 9to5Google

Damaster / LiveSide.net:

Windows Phone “Tango” officially launches in China on March 21 — Microsoft China has recently sent out invitations to media outlets for their Windows Phone 7.5 launch event. This will mark the official entrance of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system into the mainland Chinese market.

More: The Verge, WMPoweruser, IntoMobile, PhoneArena, Techie Buzz and TechCrunch

Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:

Congress still not satisfied with Apple's privacy protections, requests briefing — Despite a detailed response from Apple CEO Tim Cook and the introduction of new privacy policies, U.S. government officials aren't yet satisfied that Apple is doing enough to protect the information of its customers.

More: Los Angeles Times, Gizmodo, Forbes, iDownloadBlog.com, AllThingsD, democrats.energycommerce.house … and MacNN. Thanks:@jbruin

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Walmart's Disc-to-Digital Hard Sell Will Be a Hard Sell — Earlier today, I described Walmart's new “disc to digital” program as DOA. Maybe I was too harsh. — Let's assume that some of you are interested in taking your old DVDs to Walmart, and paying up to $5 a disc so you can access …

More: Techland, TechSpot, internetretailer.com, ITworld.com, Pulse2 Technology …, VatorNews, Mashable! and Ars Technica. See also Mediagazer

Greg Finn / Marketing Land:

Google Hangouts Builds Feature Set With Google Docs Integration — The star feature of Google+, Google Hangouts, is now integrating fully with Google's online suite of document, presentation and spreadsheet editing software, Google Docs. This is a very interesting combination …

More: Google+, The Verge, 9to5Google and MarketingVox News & Trends

Ari Levy / Bloomberg:

Twitter Backer Sacca Raising Second Fund for Internet Startups — Chris Sacca, the former Google Inc. executive turned Twitter Inc. investor and venture capitalist, is seeking investors for a new fund focused on startups, two years after creating his debut fund.

Kelly Hodgkins / TUAW:

Official announcement: new iPad to go on sale in 10 countries on Friday at 8 am — Apple announced today that the new iPad will go sale this Friday starting at 8:00 am local time. It will debut in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK …

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

New iPad Will Be Available at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sam's Club, Target, and Walmart on Friday

More: NBC Bay Area and VentureBeat

Chris O'Brien / SiliconBeat:

Mark Pincus of Zynga received threats in 2011 that led company to spend $1 million on additional security — As expected, Zynga filed today to raise an additional $400 million in a secondary stock offering. One thing that caught my eye was a reference to founder and CEO Mark Pincus under the section of employee benefits:

More: Business Insider. Thanks:@rgkeith

BBC:

Project Barcelona to see BBC open archive for downloads — Mark Thompson said the service would be a “digital shop” for archived shows — BBC director general Mark Thompson has announced proposals allowing viewers to permanently download copies of their favourite shows from the archives.

More: The Verge, The Next Web and Guardian. See also Mediagazer

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

To Stanch Layoffs, Yahoo Has Been Shopping Its Ad Technology Platforms to Google, Microsoft and Others — In an effort to minimize the impact of massive layoffs that Yahoo's top management has been planning, according to sources close to the situation, one of the latest ideas to save costs …

More: Tech Trader Daily, Dice Blog Network, Business Insider, paidContent, TechSpot and ReadWriteWeb

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