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Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration — New Real-Time Messaging Services Overwhelm — Some Users With Mundane Updates From Friends — Though she already has a blog, a podcast and a character in the virtual world of Second Life, Kera Richard has recently become obsessed with a new online tool for connecting with friends.
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Newbie's guide to Twitter — If you're not using Twitter yet, you may feel as if you've missed out. Twitter has not only tipped the tuna (begun to peak in popularity), but by some estimations, it has already jumped the shark (devolved into inanity). Don't let massive overuse by SXSW geeks …

Twits Twittering for the sake of Tweets: or that's not why I twitter
Discussion:
Sam Harrelson, michael parekh on IT, EXCELER8ion, broadstuff, Alfred Thompson …, Scobleizer and Adnans Sysadmin/Dev Blog


Get a more complete picture about how other sites link to you — For quite a while, you've been able to see a list of the most common words used in anchor text to your site. This information is useful, because it helps you know what others think your site is about.
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Google Now Reporting Anchor Text Phrases — Hurray! Finally, you can get a report from Google of the top anchor text phrases used when people link to your site. Google Webmaster Central has just announced the new feature. But didn't Google already report anchor text data?
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Official Google Blog

Microsoft: "We're in it to win!" — We can't disclose a lot of what we saw [or even if we saw anything at all] at the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Global Summit [isn't that a typical Microsoft name?]. However, consistently we heard that Microsoft at all levels are committed to win.
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Europe exec confirms Google Phone — The head of Google in Spain and Portugal has confirmed that Google is working on a mobile phone. "Some of the time the engineers are dedicated to developing a mobile phone," Isabel Aguilera is quoted as saying on the Spanish news Web site Noticias.com.
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Google exec confirms phone in the labs
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The Browser, Download Squad, TechBuzz, Neowin.net, Search Engine Land, WebProNews, Forever Geek, Google Operating System, broadbandreports.com and digg

Cingular, Qwest blocking 'Free' Calls — Looks like the empire is finding new ways to fight back — according to FreeConference.com, another rural-ISP free-calling operator, major carriers Cingular, Qwest and Sprint are actively blocking users trying to call FreeConference.com …
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media blog
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AT&T/Cingular, Sprint and Qwest Collude to Kill FreeConference
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Roam4free

Microsoft CEO meets with Stanford students — Microsoft, according to Stanford business school Dean Robert Joss, has reached a plateau. In January, it released new versions of its Windows Vista computer operating system and Office productivity software, and faces threats …
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Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video... SXSW Interactive had more attendees than ever before. A lot more. But here's the confusing part: the people attending are the same people who create and evangelize the tools that make attending totally unnecessary.


Summize: Enhancing Search With Heatmaps — We wrote about Abdur Chowdhury in our recent coverage of the Open Data 2007 Workshop. Until recently he was running AOL Search, but left to start a new venture. Abdur is an impressive thinker and articulate speaker, with a great track record in the industry.
Discussion:
franticindustries

Superdistribution — I remember the first time I heard this term, it was 1997 and someone was explaining a complicated digital rights management scheme to me. I invested in that complex digital rights management scheme and lost everything and have been dubious of DRM ever since.
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Werblog


MICROSOFT DEAL FOR LARGE CUSTOMERS: USE LIVE SEARCH, GET FREE MSFT PRODUCTS — A loyal reader sent me this tidbit: Microsoft is offering its large enterprise customers free service and product credits if those customers push Live search inside their enterprises.

Venture Capital: New virtual world revolves around play — Second life is a super-popular virtual world where hundreds of thousands of people gather to manage their fictional lives, using 3-D graphic characters known as avatars. — But what is not widely known is that San Francisco- based Linden Lab …

Plugin Directory — One of the greatest things about WordPress has always been the amazing number of high-quality plugins available for the platform. I believe that there aren't any more "killer features" in software, there are 10,000 killer features and everyone has a different 20.
Discussion:
Mashable!

The $7 TV Network — The architects of TCP/IP, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, knew exactly how they'd bring television to the Internet. They would use multicasting, a particular IP service that allows many hosts to share a multicast address and, through that address, receive the same content …


Adobe Remix on Photobucket — Adobe recently announced they are to bring out online versions of some of their desktop software suite, including Photoshop, within the next 6 months. The first place we can get a glimpse of these offerings is on the popular photo and video sharing site Photobucket.


Streakr Search Makes Social Networks Bare All — Vivek, over at Startup Squad, recently discovered a new social network and social networking meta search engine, Streakr. The main URL still says the site is coming soon. The new engine lets you search the profiles on the major networks …
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Twitter + Google Maps = TwitterMap — + =TwitterMap — Heard of Twitter yet? Check it out.. Twitter is a cool new (read it: addictive) social networking service that allows members of the service let others know what they're up to in very brief fashion. users send messages via SMS or IM …
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