Top Items:
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:
Anne 2.0, The Social Software Weblog, Alex Barnett blog, ben barren, The Blackfriars Blog, Weblogs Work, a shel of my former self, Somewhat Frank, Connecting the Dots, One By One Media, hyku | blog, Good Morning Silicon Valley, @rgumente, Mark Evans, Boing Boing, Feld Thoughts, Thomas Hawk's Digital … and Susan Mernit's Blog
BBC:
BMW given Google 'death penalty' — Search giant Google has "blacklisted" German car manufacturer BMW for breaching its guidelines. — Investigations by Google found that BMW's German website influenced search results to ensure top ranking when users searched for "used car".
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Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0:
Google Orwellian — Google is powerful — and we all learned from Orwell that power corrupts. As to search, Google has near total power — will total power totally corrupt Google? — Ask BMW, whose SEO strategy violated Google's "orthodoxy," leading Google to unceremoniously excommunicate …
The Consumerist:
Did Nvidia Hire Online Actors to Promote Their Products? — About a week ago, The Consumerist stumbled upon claims made by various gaming websites (specifically, Elite Bastards and [Update: a poster on the forums at] Beyond3D) that graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia, in cooperation …
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Glenn Fleishman / Wi-Fi Networking News:
Speakeasy Says No Deal with Fon — Speakeasy says that Fon claims a deal where none exists: I just received this missive and permission to share it from Lynn Brackpool, a spokesperson for Speakeasy Networks. Fon said in reports to some outlets yesterday that Speakeasy Networks was a partner …
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Robert Levine / New York Times:
Wave of Video Game Fatigue Afflicts Sales, Not Thumbs — In November, Activision released True Crime: New York City, a video game that seemed to have all the makings of a hit. It was the sequel to a well-received game, it had the violent aesthetic of the popular Grand Theft Auto series …
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 …
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.
Discussion:
Kotaku, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Joystiq, Alice Hill's Real Tech News and Zatz Not Funny
snyke.net:
AJAX Design Patterns — Snyke wrote this terribly early in the morning: — By now the entire World has heard about AJAX, even those who don't care about Web-Development have seen the potential of this new technology. Everybody is tired of endless introductions on how cool AJAX …
sonyericsson.com:
M600 slim, compact and stylish UMTS messaging phone puts secure e-mail and Internet at your fingertips — London, 6th Feb 2006 - Sony Ericsson today announces the M600 phone and messaging device. This is a fully-specified email tool and mobile phone rolled into an extremely stylish …
Peter Coffee / eWEEK.com:
'Exotic' Programming Tools Go Mainstream — The January release of Franz's Allegro Common LISP 8.0 puts developers on notice that "exotic" programming tools, long relegated to research environments, are becoming more viable options for mainstream applications.
Discussion:
Between the Lines
Sarah Lacy / Business Week:
Taking On the Database Giants — Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives — OPEN SOURCE'S NEW FRONTIERS>> … Rick Herman is awash in digital data.
Ars Technica:
Legalization of P2P inches forward in France — In late December the French Assemblée Nationale surprised the world when it voted to essentially legalize P2P usage. While the headlines were indeed unanticipated, a closer look at the situation revealed no small amount of politics.
Discussion:
Alice Hill's Real Tech News
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Dozens of Web 2.0 companies' logos — Andre Torrez Ludwig Gatzke has collected the logos of dozens and dozens of "Web 2.0" companies and laid out them out in a grid in a gigantic image-file he's posted to Flickr. It's pretty amazing — like seeing the thousand swooshes of the companies …
Discussion:
Valleywag
