Top Items:
John Markoff / New York Times:
Venture for Sharing Wi-Fi Draws Big-Name Backers — SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 5 — A telecommunications executive said on Sunday that he had received $21.7 million for what he called "a global network of shared Wi-Fi connections" from backers, including Google, the Internet phone service provider Skype …
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Peter Svensson / Associated Press:
Google, Skype in Startup to Link Hotspots — NEW YORK - Google Inc. and eBay Inc.'s Skype are investing in a startup that plans to help hotspot owners charge for Wi-Fi access, a plan that could face significant opposition from Internet service providers. — The Internet heavyweights …
Om Malik / Om Malik on Broadband:
Google, Skype Fund FON — [Updated with comments from Martin Varsavsky and Glenn Fleishman]. FON a wireless services company started by maverick entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky has just raised $21.7 million from Google, Skype, and Sequoia Capital. The cash infusion has been led by Index Ventures …
Discussion:
B2Day, FON Blog, Daily Wireless, Search Engine Journal, robhyndman.com, tjacobi.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, IP Democracy, mathewingram.com/work, Tom Raftery's I.T. views, Mark Evans, Gizmodo, The Mobile Technology Weblog, John Battelle's Searchblog, isen.blog, VoIP Watch, Feld Thoughts, Scobleizer and Paul Kedrosky's …
Dsifry / Sifry's Alerts:
State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth — It's been 4 months since last October's State of the Blogosphere report, so it's time to update the numbers! For historical perspective, you can see earlier State of the Blogosphere reports from July 2005, from March 2005, and from October 2004.
Discussion:
Alex Barnett blog, ben barren, The Blackfriars Blog, hyku | blog, Boing Boing, Feld Thoughts and Thomas Hawk's Digital …
Mylene Mangalindan / Wall Street Journal:
PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google — When Jeff Jordan learned last May that Web-search leader Google Inc. was building its own Internet-payment service, he reacted swiftly. — Mr. Jordan, who is president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal online-payments unit, immediately asked employees …
Steve Gillmor / Steve Gillmor's InfoRouter:
The Dog told me — I wrote this a few weeks ago before a trip to New York. While getting in and out of cabs or walking down the street, I lost or was relieved of my EVDO card, plunging me back into the darkness that preceded it. I sent this post, along with several additional paragraphs designed …
Discussion:
Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check
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Leander Kahney / Wired News:
Vaporware: Better Late Than Never — Ladies and gents, welcome to the 2005 Vaporware Awards — the prize that celebrates the tech products that were promised last year but never delivered. — We have a few surprises this year — wait 'til you find out the winner; you'll never guess what it is.
USA Today:
AOL to charge fee as way to cut spam — SAN FRANCISCO — America Online will begin charging businesses to send commercial e-mail to its users in the first wide-scale use of authenticated e-mail to reduce spam. But some marketers affected by the plan, set to start in several weeks …
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Michael Bazeley / SiliconBeat:
Catching up with Peerflix — Journalists too often fall into the hit-and-run reporting trap, where we write about a start-up and then rarely, if ever, check back on its progress. So when the Peerflix guys invited us in for a chat last week - nearly a year after our first posting on them - we accepted.
Bob Tedeschi / New York Times:
Now for Sale Online, the Art of the Vacation — DONALD J. TRUMP, bargain hunter? — That's the idea behind the latest venture from the real estate mogul, reality series star and failed airline executive, who recently re-entered the travel industry with GoTrump.com, an agency that promises bargains …
Regine / we make money not art:
LAPD to throw GPS at fleeing cars — The LAPD will outfit cars with a device that propels and sticks a GPS onto a fleeing car. — The department will mount the StarChase LLC device in the grill of some squad cars. "Officers in the car would control a green lazar light …
Mike / Techdirt:
AOL, Yahoo To Charge Marketers Due To Own Spam Filter Failings — from the uh.—but-why? dept. — There was some buzz about this last week, but some more details have now come out about Yahoo and AOL's plans to charge marketers to email their users. Contrary to some blogs' commentary …
Om Malik / Om Malik on Broadband:
Two Dot Roundup — Poor Paul Allen — always the bridesmaid, never the bride. The Steelers won by exploiting the vulnerabilities in the Seahawks operating system with a defensive denial of service attack. Though the 'Hawks often crashed on their own, with their executables throwing exceptions like offensive pass interference.
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Did Nvidia hire an army of message-board sock-puppets? — Nvidia stands accused of hiring online actors to create dozens of personae in online forums, where they won gamers' trust by talking about subjects unrelated to Nvidia's products, and then splurged in an orgy of sock-puppet boosterism of Nvidia's stuff.
Joe Pilotta / imediaconnection.com:
Cultural Choices of Video Game Platforms — Results from BIGresearch's Simultaneous Media Study show who's using which platforms, and how that affects video game marketing. — The following results are from BIGresearch's Simultaneous Media Study VII, with over 15,000 participants, conducted during December 2005.
Discussion:
Joystiq
blogs.sun.com:
The Death of the Cold Call — I started my technology career at a startup, running sales. Now "running" is probably generous, given that I was the only sales guy (my partners were busy creating products). But every morning, I'd get up, roll out of bed to my desk (which was in my bedroom …
Discussion:
Smalltalk Tidbits …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
CoComment Screen Shots and Clarifications — The CoComment guys were nice enough to send me an invitation to try the service after my post yesterday. I am now able to answer some of the questions I had in that post. — They support six big blogging platforms currently: Blogger, MSN Spaces, MySpace, TypePad, Wordpress and Xanga.
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