Top Items:
Eli Shimoni / Ynetnews:
Exclusive: Metacafe to be sold for USD 200 million — Owners of Metacafe, from Tel Aviv, in advanced stages of negotiations for selling company. Estimated price tag: USD 200 million. Company runs one of largest video-sharing sites on Web, directly competes with YouTube
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Mashable!, alarm:clock, VC Ratings, The Blogging Times and InfoWorld Tech Watch
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Natali Del Conte / TechCrunch:
Metacafe May Be Sold For $200 Million — Metacafe, the video sharing site, is reportedly being sold for between $200-300 million. The buyer is currently unknown but there is speculation that it may be Yahoo. — In July, Metacafe recieved $15 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners.
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson / Financial Times:
BSkyB in Google link-up — The partnership will at first see Google provide its user-generated video, e-mail, search and targeted advertising tools to customers of BSkyB's five-month-old broadband internet service - the first licensing of the video tools Google bought when it acquired YouTube for $1.65bn in October.
Discussion:
IP Democracy, Mashable!, Digital Micro-Markets, Mark Evans, Blogging Stocks and 24/7 Wall St.
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Reuters:
Google, BSkyB get connected — First of its kind global partnership will give British satellite broadcaster use of Google's search, video and ad functions. — LONDON (Reuters) — Satellite broadcaster BSkyB said Wednesday it would tie up with Google Inc. to deploy the leading Internet …
Richard Wray / Guardian:Google moves into TV ads with BSkyB deal
Discussion:
Good Morning Silicon Valley
StraussBlog:
Amen, Terry! — So, I'm probably breaking a ton of rules by doing this. But, f@$k it! Here is the transcript, verbatim (I rewound the webcast several times just to get it right), of Terry's closing comments at today's re-org all-hands: — "At the next all-hands. Just as a reminder.
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Om Malik / GigaOM:
Yahoo Reorg, The Inside Story — The widespread criticism of the Yahoo reorganization announced on Tuesday has been a one sided affair - outsiders looking in. Much of the criticism while warranted, has become to personal. Was getting rid of CEO Terry Semel, the quick fix the erstwhile Internet leader needs?
Discussion:
i-boy
Michael Kanellos / CNET News.com:
Perspective: The Apple phone flop — perspective I just looked at the calendar and realized that: — (a) It's only a few weeks to Macworld, where Apple Computer is expected to release a smart phone similar to the BlackBerry, and: — (b) I haven't antagonized Apple fans in a while.
Discussion:
Techdirt, TechCrunch, TechEffect, 21talks, Jarrett House North, NewTeeVee, Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check and O'Grady's PowerPage
Scott Gilbertson / Monkey Bites:
BitTorrent Inc. Acquires µTorrent — BitTorrent, Inc., will announce later today that it has acquired µTorrent, a lightweight and efficient implementation of the BitTorrent protocol. The official announcement will come this afternoon, but there are already some posts from Bram Cohen …
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Testing DRM-free waters: EMI selling a few MP3s through Yahoo Music — Yahoo Music is selling the latest single from piano-playing songstress Norah Jones, along with a pair of tracks from Christian rockers Reliant K, in the MP3 format. Priced at 99¢ like the rest of the songs available …
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Charlie Demerjian / Inquirer:
iPhone runs into trademark problems — Those pesky Canucks — APPLE MIGHT have some serious problems with the iPhone. No, not the product, I am sure it will be reassuringly expensive and the fashion equivalent of what Paris Hilton wore last night, but who really cares?
Drivl.com | Front page:
What code DOESN'T do in real life (that it does in the movies) — Following up our article: Top 20 Hackers in Film History and Vibrant's Top 10 Servers in the movies, I felt obligated to dispel some of the notions about programming that these movies endorse.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Pluggd "perfects" audio and video search, raises $1.65M — Declaring it has "perfected the user experience" for audio and visual search, Seattle start-up Pluggd has raised $1.65 million from Intel and angel investors to help it start distributing its technology. — If you haven't played with Pluggd, you should.
Discussion:
Between the Lines, NewTeeVee, PaidContent, John Cook's Venture Blog, 21talks, Lost Remote, PE HUB and John Furrier
Andres Guadamuz / TechnoLlama:
Spanish café loses case on "free music" — A Spanish court in Pontevedra has ruled in favour of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE) against a café named Direccion000. SGAE initiated action against the cafe to claim royalties for de public performance of music in the locale …
Richard Siklos / New York Times:
News Corp. to Buy Out Malone's Shares — Rupert Murdoch and John C. Malone have settled their long-running corporate feud, as Mr. Murdoch's News Corporation agreed to buy out Mr. Malone's big stake in the company in exchange for a controlling stake in DirecTV, cash and other assets valued at $11 billion …
Rick Broida / Lifehacker:
Use Adobe Reader 8 as an RSS reader — Adobe Reader 8 is barely a day old, and already savvy Lifehacker readers have started hacking it. Turns out you can use the PDF viewer as a fairly capable RSS reader. — To do so, click the View menu and then choose Review Tracker (a tool intended for managing document reviews).
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Hakia - First Meaning-based Search Engine — Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. — There has been a lot of talk lately about 2007 being the year when we will see companies roll out Semantic Web technologies. The wave started with John Markoff's article in NY Times …
