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, ben barren, One By One Media, Alex Barnett blog, The Blackfriars Blog, Weblogs Work, a shel of my former self, Connecting the Dots, hyku | blog, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Mark Evans, Boing Boing, Feld Thoughts, Thomas Hawk's Digital … and Susan Mernit's Blog
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 …
RELATED ITEM:
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.
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 …
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 …
Discussion:
Rational rants, Search Engine Lowdown, Daily Wireless, Venture Chronicles, Wi-Fi Networking News, SiliconBeat, Guardian Unlimited, tjacobi.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband, Share Skype, robhyndman.com, mathewingram.com/work, The Mobile Technology Weblog and Mark Evans
RELATED ITEMS:
Glenn Fleishman / Wi-Fi Networking News:Speakeasy Says No Deal with Fon
Discussion:
Mark Evans, Good Morning Silicon Valley, John Cook's Venture Blog and Om Malik on Broadband
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 …
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
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".
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 …
Discussion:
Gadgetopia
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.
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 …
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.
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.
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
Ben / Inside Firefox:
Where Did Firefox Come From? — The story of Mozilla is long and rich in detail. There are many perspectives. This is mine. — Getting Involved — I got involved with Mozilla because I loved the idea of working on something that had the potential to make an impact on millions of people.
Discussion:
AlterSlash
