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ALEXA (MAKE THAT AMAZON) LOOKS TO CHANGE THE GAME — (This will be updated when the service goes live, I was briefed and the embargo was 9 pm PST...) — Every so often an idea comes along that has the potential to change the game. When it does, you find yourself saying - "Sheesh, of course that was going to happen.
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Alexa Offers Fee-Based Vertical Search Services — I guess I get to be the underwhelmed one about Alexa announcing a new Alexa Web Search Platform that's available to anyone willing to pay a fee. — Pay a fee for what? You can create your own search engine by tapping into the 4 billion web pages Alexa has indexed over time.
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Social Patterns

Roll Your Own Google — In a move with potentially far-reaching implications for the search market, Alexa Internet is opening up its huge web crawler to any programmer who wants paid access to its rich trove of internet data. — Alexa, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that is best known …
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Internet Outsider

Announcing the Alexa Web Search Platform Beta
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Software Only, IP Democracy, Got Ads?, Techdirt, Geeking with Greg, stevenberlinjohnson.com and SearchViews

No Feed is an Island: Introducing FeedFlare — We started with a cookie recipe and a dream, but we don't bake well, so we restarted with the notion that publishers should be able to tether interesting services to their content anywhere it travels. In a recent Feed for Thought post …
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Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz — Critics say iTunes-only downloads and inflexible pricing are hurting song sales — Once again, Apple's iPod is expected to be the hottest gift of the holiday season. That should be great news for the recording industry, right?

Microsoft Xbox 360 sales start slow in Japan-study — TOKYO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) sold less than half of the estimated 159,000 Xbox 360 consoles that were available in stores in Japan in its first weekend of sales, a survey showed on Tuesday.
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Telecoms want their products to travel on a faster Internet — Major site owners oppose 2-tier system — AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own Internet services would be transmitted faster …

Can Wi-Fi make it in Manhattan? — If Wi-Fi can make it in New York, it can make it anywhere. — New York City lawmakers are taking a long, hard look at using 802.11-based Wi-Fi or some other technology to get the city's roughly 8 million citizens access to broadband.
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Daily Wireless
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Vonage to sell Wi-Fi phone
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IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband, Daily Wireless, Gizmodo, IP Democracy, VoIP & Gadgets Blog and Shiwej

Hot Technology for Chilly Streets in Estonia — TALLINN, Estonia, Dec. 8 - Visiting the offices of Skype feels like stumbling on to a secret laboratory in a James Bond movie, where mad scientists are hatching plots for world domination. — The two-year-old company, which offers free calls …
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Fresh Inc.

Opening remarks — The Syndicate conference starts at 8am here in San Francisco. I'm giving the opening remarks. In the spirit of syndication itself, I decided I'd rather blog what I'm going to say, rather than prepare slides about it. — After the opening wisecracks …
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Between the Lines, down the avenue, PaidContent.org, The Doc Searls Weblog, Software Only and Sandhill Trek

HarperCollins to begin digitizing books — U.S. publisher HarperCollins said Monday that it plans to convert some 20,000 books in its catalog into digital form in a bid to rein in potential copyright violations on the Internet. — The move comes as the U.S. publishing industry …
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business2blog, Techdirt, Shore Communications Inc., The Technology Liberation …, ResourceShelf and larry borsato

Apple to tackle consumer electronics; iPod "boombox" planned — Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod division is preparing to extend its reach into the consumer electronics market with the release of several iPod-related digital audio products early next year, AppleInsider has learned.

Exclusive: Google Teaches Bloggers How To Rank — I recently got the chance to grill senior Google engineer and webmaster relations chappy Matt Cutts on some issues specific to bloggers. Matt took his sweet time getting the interview done, but it was well worth the wait.

Java? It's So Nineties — Sun's groundbreaking programming language vaulted to popularity with Web developers. But now it's losing ground to a raft of upstarts — Peter Yared, CEO of software maker ActiveGrid, spent a critical chapter of his career steeped in Java, the programming language developed by Sun Microsystems (SUNW).

The Pocket Guide to the 2005 Blogosphere — Type the word "blog" into Google's search box, and you'll receive a whopping 515 million search results, nearly twice as many as you receive for "sex." — Love 'em or hate 'em, blogs are the real deal. Even if we deflate the hype and ignore …

Old idea, new media — Are you reading this text on paper, or as pixels? Does it matter? Some think not — As newspapers realize that they sell content, not ink, their future is taking hold — Dec. 12, 2005. — DAVID OLIVE — Not quite as old as the wheel …
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PaidContent.org