Top Items:
New York Times:
Google Resists U.S. Subpoena of Search Data — SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 19 - The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to compel Google, the Internet search giant, to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries as part of the government's effort to uphold an online pornography law.
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Ryan Singel / Wired News:
How to Foil Search Engine Snoops — On Thursday, The Mercury News reported that the Justice Department has subpoenaed search-engine records in its defense of the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA. Google, whose corporate credo famously includes the admonishment "Don't Be Evil," …
Erick Schonfeld / B2Day:Big Brother Wants Your Clickstream
Discussion:
Good Morning Silicon Valley, Rough Type, Search Engine Journal, Mashable* and SearchViews
Jim Brady / washingtonpost.blog:
Comments Turned Off — As of 4:15 p.m. ET today, we have shut off comments on this blog indefinitely. — At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues.
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Account Hijackings Force LiveJournal Changes — LiveJournal, an online community that boasts nearly 2 million active members, on Thursday announced sitewide changes for users logging into their accounts — changes prompted by a hacker group's successful hijacking of potentially hundreds of thousands of user accounts.
Discussion:
Niall Kennedy's Weblog
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Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0:
Who Are the New Media Gatekeepers? — Who decides what's worthy of your attention — a Web 2.0 application, a newspaper columnist, a talk show host, an editorial staff, an influential blogger, a community of thousands, a community of millions? — I've been thinking about this question …
Discussion:
mathewingram.com/work, Matt McAlister, loose wire, Geeking with Greg and Naked Conversations
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John Leyden / The Register:
PC virus celebrates 20th birthday — Analysis Today, 19 January is the 20th anniversary for the appearance of the first PC virus. Brain, a boot sector virus, was let loose in January 1986. Brain spread via infected floppy disks and was a relatively innocuous nuisance in contrast with modern Trojan, rootkits and other malware.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Ning - R.I.P.? — What happened to Ning? — It was the perfect service at the perfect time. — Mashups are hot right now. Really hot. David Berlind oversold his MashUp Camp in a week and now has an impressive waiting list forming. And John Musser's list of mashups continues to grow (see Richard MacManus' post on this too).
John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:
WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? — ...in the Google v. DOJ case? Well, I've argued it's the slippery slope. But reading through the subpoena, it's clear that from where Google stands, there's something else at stake. — Remember this whole goat rodeo (on the size of indexes)?
Ed Felten / Freedom to Tinker:
Google Video and Privacy — Last week Google introduced its video service, which lets users download free or paid-for videos. The service's design is distinctive in many ways, not all of them desirable. One of the distinctive features is a DRM (anti-infringement) mechanism which is applied if the copyright owner asks for it.
Discussion:
Techdirt
Stephen Totilo / MTV:
Finally, You Can Buy Something Real With Play Money — Virtual money earned playing 'Second Life' can now be used to buy computer hardware. — Tim "FlipperPA Peregrine" Allen — At the online store Second Life Boutique, trees, cigarettes and new body parts are for sale. And that's not the weird part.
Kevin Newcomb / ClickZ:
Search Ad Auction Models Flawed, Economists Say — Paid search advertisers who bid what they're actually willing to pay end up paying more than they need to, according to research by economics scholars at Stanford Business School. — The research paper by Michael Ostrovsky …
Mr Blog:
Two cents on Net Neutrality debate — We have Mark Cuban, Jeff Pulver, PhoneBoy and many others posting on the subject of Net Neutrality. — In some sense, they are all right (correct), but fail to get to the root of the problem. The problem isn't a question of Net Neutrality or Tiered Services.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Watch Blog:
The Day After: Points In The Search Trust Sweepstakes — Since Google first started growing in stature, people have wondered if (or when) they might start passing along private information to governments or misusing it for their own gain. The company has faced hyperactive attention in this space …
Discussion:
Datamation IT News Blog
Om Malik / Om Malik on Broadband:
Angel Funded In A Loo — Po Bronson, a writer, before he found commercial success used to chronicle the geek lives and the social fabric of Silicon Valley. The late night trips through Fry's, soccer games in Marina and The Nudist On The Late Shift. Sadly, his bitter sweet tales are not part of our modern Silicon Valley life.
Discussion:
FuzzyBlog
Matt Moore / Associated Press:
German Wikipedia back up amid lawsuit — JAN. 20 9:48 A.M. ET The German version of Wikipedia returned to the Internet on Friday after three days offline, a blackout prompted by a lawsuit in which the parents of a dead hacker objected to the site's use of his real name.
Fred Wilson / Union Square Ventures:
Rich Media Realities — I wrote a post on my personal weblog several months ago called The Future of Media where I invited anyone to take my content (actually my RSS feed) and do anything they want with it. I suggested that there were four things that content owners needed to do to maximize the value of their content.
