Top Items:
Tim Arango / New York Times:
Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable — CBS, home to “60 Minutes,” the “CSI” franchise, “Two and a Half Men” and the new hit crime drama “The Mentalist,” is having a better year in prime time than any other network. — And yet, as at the other networks, profits have declined sharply at CBS.
Brad Stone / Bits:
Amazon Backs Off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle — Amazon announced today it will let publishers decide whether they want the new Kindle e-book device to read their books aloud. — The text-to-speech feature allows Kindle owners to have books read to them in a male or female computerized voice.
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Amazon.com:
Statement from Amazon.com Regarding Kindle 2's Experimental Text-to-Speech Feature — Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant …
Discussion:
Forbes, Pulse2, TECH.BLORGE.com, I4U News, Tech-Ex, TeleRead, Digital Daily, TechFlash, GottaBeMobile.com and Engadget
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Teams With Newspapers to Sell Ads — Terry Widener has been selling newspaper ads for 35 years. But until last fall, Ms. Widener, a 53-year-old saleswoman at The Knoxville News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn., had never sold an Internet ad. — Then in a two-week sales “blitz” …
Matt Rosoff / Digital Noise:
Mufin Player organizes songs by sound — Earlier on Friday, Mufin launched its music player, which analyzes the songs in your music collection based on their audio content, rather than on human analysis or genre. — Human analysis, naturally, is subjective, and genre labeling is totally arbitrary …
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News:
Arrington: I'll go to Demo 'if we're invited' … It looks like Michael Arrington has changed his mind about the value of the Demo conference in the wake of the announcement that VentureBeat CEO and editor-in-chief Matt Marshall will be taking over the tech conference after this year.
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Yahoo's Microsoft tab totaled $79 million — Yahoo's tab in its efforts to fight off Microsoft last year ran $79 million, according to the company's filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. — Yahoo spent much of that bill on outside advisers who helped it weigh Microsoft's proposals …
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Here's Hoping Google Does Kill the Newspapers — The news that Google is placing ads on Google News has sent a renewed wave of handwringing through the newspaper industry. How dare those Googlers make online news a profitable business! — Of course, Google is planning to keep most of that profit.
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
CEO's $500,000 Salary Burns Startup Into Fire Sale — 8020 Media hoped to revolutionize the magazine business. Instead, it has circled down the drain, ending up in the hands of shadowy investors after a new CEO with a Condé Nast résumé looted the startup.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
ToysRUs Buys Toys.com At Auction For $5.1 Million — In a heated bidding war, ToysRUs bought the domain name Toys.com at auction for $5.1 million. ToysRus really wanted the domain, for obvious reasons. Everyone except ToysRUs and domain holding company National A-1 (owner of domains such as free.com …
Patrick Smith / paidContent:
Newspaper Sites' Traffic Up Again, Now Show Us The Money — The monthly ABCe figures don't give much away about the absolute worth or success of newspaper websites—they only show relative growth over time. On that basis the national newspapers are all doing well, with Guardian.co.uk …
Jamie Pyatt / The Sun:
Fisherman found my lost phone in the belly of a 25lb cod ...and it still works after a week in a fish — A BUSINESSMAN who lost his mobile phone on a beach was amazed when it turned up — in the belly of a massive cod. — Andrew Cheatle thought his Nokia handset had been lost at sea after it slipped from his pocket.
