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The Small Fry Sour On Search Ads — Priced out by brand giants, the outfits that pioneered the medium are looking elsewhere — For years, running those little four-line text advertisements on Web search engines brought in a profitable stream of new customers to BabyAge.com.
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Maturation of Paid Search Means the End of the Free Lunch — There's certainly been a lot of noise being generated by medium-sized companies, complaining they're no longer getting the same ROI from paid search - especially from Google AdWords. — I've been taking a look at the trends …

Search advertising and the little guys — Search-based advertisements, like the ones distributed through Google's AdWords service, were supposed to be a boon for small businesses. Cheap and precisely targeted, they would, for the first time, put the little guys on equal footing with the big guys in the ad market.
Discussion:
Tech Beat


How Apple could fight Cisco — news analysis A cell phone is to an Internet phone as an airplane is to a faucet? — That analogy isn't likely to appear on the SATs next year. But that's precisely the question at the heart of the legal dispute over whether Apple will be allowed to use the iPhone name …
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Apple vs. Cisco over iPhone — I was just on the phone with Garvin Thomas, a reporter from NBC11 News who wanted my take on the iPhone lawsuit between Apple and Cisco and to discuss what he learned. First, when you search the US Patent and Trademark Office database for iPhone …


No Porn On Sony HD-DVD Blu-ray? — Has Sony gone mad? Prominent adult movie producer Digital Playground (site) says it is forced to use HD DVD instead of Blu-ray, because Sony does not allow XXX-rated movies to be released on Blu-ray. — It does not matter how you stand to porn.
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CES 2007: HD DVD versus Blu-ray - The porn industry says HD DVD
Discussion:
NewTeeVee, Things That, Gadget Lab, Monkey Bites, Neowin.net, Joystiq, UNEASYsilence and Slashdot

Will Sony's Apparent Anti-Porn Stance Doom Blu-Ray?
Discussion:
Celebs & Tech Gossips!


Microsoft takes email design back 5 years — As I type this post I still can't believe it. I'm literally stunned. If you haven't already heard, I'm talking about the recent news that Outlook 2007, released next month, will stop using Internet Explorer to render HTML emails and instead use …


Exclusive - Yahoo Using Dirty Tactics to Switch Google & Firefox Users? — The power struggle between Yahoo and Google for your desktop just took an evil turn, with evidence that suggests Yahoo is covertly trying to switch Google search users without their explicit permission.

AT&T Prepares to 'De-Brand' the Cingular Wireless Name — One of the biggest "de-brandings" in advertising history is to begin Monday when AT&T, now the sole owner of Cingular Wireless, starts changing all Cingular marketing to adopt the AT&T name. — AT&T will not disclose the budget for the campaign …


DirecTV not looking after its customers: DirecTiVo problems, faulty HR20s, HD Lite, and home networking issues — Despite some good news and announcements coming out of DirecTV CES camp this week including 100 new HD channels, the possibility of cheaper PVRs due to improved satellite receiver chips …


Exclusive: Inside The Venice Project, Built On Mozilla — The Venice Project is not just another online video start-up. The Luxembourg-based company is the latest co-production of the two-person hit factory of Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. The founders of Kazaa and Skype are hoping …


Google Security Hole Allows Account Hijacking — It's your worst nightmare - someone reads parts of your Google emails, views your docs, modifies your spreadsheets, checks out your reading habits on the Google personalized homepage or Google Reader, and goes through your search history.
Discussion:
CyberNet Technology News


THE LONDON CULTURALLY-DEPRIVED GEEK DAY OUT: SUNDAY 21ST JANUARY — Having spent most of the last few years in front of a computer screen, immersed in a tangled web of blogging, business and cartooning, I'm starting to feel a bit deprived of culture. And I'm sure a lot of techie/geek/entrepreneurs types out there feel the same.

CBS/Google: Analysts Say Radio Ad Deal Is Imminent, Has Sticking Points — CITING EXPECTATIONS THAT A MAJOR ad sales agreement with Google is imminent, securities firm Merrill Lynch reaffirmed its "buy" rating for CBS stock. In a report issued by lead broadcast analyst Jessica Reif Cohen …
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PayPal to offer password key fobs to users — eBay is getting ready to offer its PayPal users a password-generating key fob that promises to increase the security of the online payment service. — The device displays a new one-time password in the form of a six-digit code about every 30 seconds.

Jobs on the iPhone being a closed system — Steven Levy points to his writeup on the iPhone and talks to Steve Jobs about the iPhone being a closed platform. According to Steven, Jobs said the following on the subject. … Really? What about other smartphones that run on Cingular's network …

Real-time quotes for free — At Google, we get excited about making all kinds of information accessible to everyone. The more up-to-date the information, the more valuable it is. This is particularly true in the world of finance; information, and timing of that information, is money.

Report: Vista's business sales stronger than expected — update Sales of Windows Vista to businesses were stronger than expected during the operating system's debut month, according to a report from NPD Group. — The sales outpaced the first month's tally for Windows 2000 and only slightly trailed …

The Ultimate iPhone Frequently Asked Questions — Wow. Predictably, the torrent — and I do mean torrent — of iPhone commentary from the citizens of the Web is practically outflooding spam this week. Most of it comes from people whose shirt fronts are practically drenched in drool.
Discussion:
Fractals of Change, PalmAddicts, 43 Folders, Mark Evans, Kevin Maney and The Unofficial Apple Weblog