Techmeme: FlowPlay launches ourWorld virtual world for tweens (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat)

10:50 AM ET, April 6, 2008

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In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop — SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

Marc Andreessen / blog.pmarca.com:

The New York Times covers blogging — Actual New York Times headline for Sunday, April 6, 2008: … Reworded for brevity: … Future New York Times headline submissions from yours truly: … And of course, the inevitable, perennial favorite: … p.s. The Judy Miller memorial New York Times blogging story headline:

Discussion: Howard Lindzon

Microsoft:

Microsoft Sends Letter to Yahoo! Board of Directors — Microsoft Sends Letter to Yahoo! Board of Directors — REDMOND, Wash. — April 5, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today sent the following letter to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) Board of Directors: — Board of Directors

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:

Microsoft Gives Yahoo Ultimatum: Sign Deal In 3 Weeks Or We Cut Bid — ANALYSIS: In this ultimatum Microsoft makes a compelling case that Yahoo's board is violating its fiduciary duty to shareholders by not even engaging with Microsoft. This, combined with the threat of a bid cut …

Discussion: PC World, Electronista, Los Angeles Times, The Register, Forbes, RyanSpoon.com and Mashable!

Verne Kopytoff / San Francisco Chronicle:
Microsoft gives Yahoo deadline for merger deal

Discussion: Venture Chronicles

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft (Pretends To) Force Yahoo's Hand

Discussion: CNET News.com

Dan Farber / Outside the Lines:
Microhoo: Ballmer takes off his gloves

Discussion: Coop's Corner, All about Microsoft and Forbes

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Why modular Windows will suck for Microsoft and suck for you — Modules and the next version of Windows — There is a growing consensus of opinion forming that Windows “Seven” will be “modular,” the concept being that you buy the core OS first and then add to it individual “modules” with logically distinct units of functionality.

Simon Kerbel / Download Squad:

YemuZip: Free zip utility for Mac creates Windows friendly Zip files — YemuZip is a free Mac application for creating zip files for use on a Mac or PC. — But wait, doesn't the Finder have its own built-in Archive (zip) function? — Yes, it does — but oftentimes …

Addy Dugdale / Gizmodo:

Man Sells Pizza.com Domain Name for Serious Dough — A 43-year-old man from Maryland has sold the domain name pizza.com for almost 10,000 times the price he paid for it. Chris Clark registered the name pizza.com in 1994 for just $20, and continued to pay the annual registration fee until January …

Discussion: Gadgetell and SEO BlackHat

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Possibly The Most Ridiculous DMCA Take Down Yet — If you don't like something on the Internet, it seems that sending a DMCA notice is a nearly sure-fire way to get it taken down. We've seen some people fight back against fake notices, particularly the EFF.

Discussion: Life On the Wicked Stage and mikhail panchenko

Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:

Walt Mossberg loves AppleTV...and 3G iPhone in 2 months! — Walt Mossberg talks about how the US cable companies and DSL providers are screwing the US over with tricks and slow speeds.... (Yah, you know you can get 100Mb Fiber in France for €50/month?)

Discussion: The Mobile Gadgeteer, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, IntoMobile, The Boy Genius Report, Insanely Great Mac, MacRumors, Engadget, Tech Blog, Electronista and Computerworld Blogs

Haroon Malik / Gizmodo:
Walt Says 3G iPhone Coming in 60 Days

Discussion: Life On the Wicked Stage, CrunchGear, The Boy Genius Report, jkOnTheRun and Digg

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

FlowPlay launches ourWorld virtual world for tweens — Tweens are getting into the online gaming world at younger ages and FlowPlay is launching yet another virtual world to target them. There is a lot of competition, including rival start-ups that I wrote about in the past week or so.

Discussion: Mashable!

Jonathan Leake / Times of London:

Coming soon: superfast internet — THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. — At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection …

Discussion: CrunchGear and Digg

Jeremiah Owyang / Web Strategy:

My Essential Twitter Tools — Many conversations are shifting to Twitter, this post proves it (network with others, by adding those in the comments). Twitter is extensible, and many third-party developers are creating tools around the simple data being exported for a variety of unique applications.

Discussion: Profy.Com, The Real McCrea and Ewan Spence's All New Musings

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