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Yahoo! Maps: drag 'em, search 'em, hack 'em — Today we're giving you a first look at the next generation of Yahoo! Maps which, we think, has a lot of features you're gonna like. We've really worked hard to make the product as intuitive as possible while building in some major upgrades in the interface …
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Yahoo's new pretty maps are doomed (and so are Microsoft's) — Has Google disrupted the businesses of Yahoo and Microsoft? Yes! It got me out of bed to write this post. No, that's not the disruption I'm talking about (I'll hopefully be able to take a couple of days off …

10 ISSUES FACING WEB 2.0 GOING INTO 2006 — Now that industry leaders like Microsoft are not only taking Web 2.0 concepts very seriously, they are apparently intent on banking on them as well, we're certainly living in a slightly different world this week compared to last.
Discussion:
Read/Write Web

New Yahoo Maps Shows Power of Flash — An all new Yahoo Maps launches tonight at 9 pm PST. — I spoke with Paul Levine, the General Manager of Local, Jeremy Kreitler, a Senior Product Manager of Maps and Local, and Diana Vincent, a PR Manager, earlier today about Yahoo Maps.
Discussion:
Solution Watch, Mashable*, Between the Lines, InsideGoogle, Venture Chronicles, WeBreakStuff, The Unofficial Microsoft …, Jeremy Zawodny's blog, Metroblogging DC, The Map Room, Flashpoint, Signal vs. Noise, Lifehacker, BASEMENT.ORG, The Tao of Mac, Toni Schneider's Blog, CrunchNotes, Comments from the … and Metafilter

SonyBMG and First4Internet Release Mysterious Software Update — SonyBMG and First4Internet, the companies caught installing rootkit-like software on the computers of people who bought certain CDs, have taken their first baby steps toward addressing the problem.
Discussion:
Ed Bott's Windows Expertise, Copyfight, Alice Hill's Real Tech News and Spyware Confidential
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Sony CD protection sparks security concerns — Mark Russinovich was doing a routine test this week of computer security software he'd co-written, when he made a surprising discovery: Something new was hiding itself deep inside his PC's guts. — It took some time for Russinovich …
Discussion:
Wired News, www.gulker.com, vnunet.com, Blog Business Summit, F-Secure and Dan Gillmor's blog

World of Warcraft hackers using Sony BMG rootkit — Want to cheat in your online game and not get caught? Just buy a Sony BMG copy protected CD. — World of Warcraft hackers have confirmed that the hiding capabilities of Sony BMG's content protection software can make tools made for cheating …

SOFTWARE UPDATES/ PLUG-INS
Discussion:
Boing Boing, Guardian Unlimited, Washington Post, Gizmodo, Engadget, Things That, F-Secure and Smart Mobs

Reining in Google — You're probably reading the byline above and wondering, "What could these two, from opposite sides of the aisle in Congress, possibly have in common with each other?" — The answer is when it comes to Google's Print Library Project we have much in common …
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Don't Fear Google — NEW YORK - Google wants to scan all the books …
Discussion:
Boing Boing

The new Robert Scoble Services agenda — Oh, Dave, I couldn't say "clone the Google API" in public! But you did. So I'll riff on it. I agree with it. I'll even repeat it. Clone the Google API. Clone the Google API. Clone the Google API. Without the limits. Without the limits.
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Google Patent : Organic Results Ranked by User Profiling — Google Patent : Organic Results Ranked by User Profiling — Google has filed for an organic search patent which is a bit different than what we're used to seeing in Google search, and perhaps something we may expect from their AdWords or AdSense divisions.

Preserving public domain books — The world's libraries are a tremendous source of knowledge, much of which has never been available online. One of our goals for Google Print is to change that, and today we've taken an exciting step toward meeting it: making available a number …

Call Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime for Free(1) — WOODLAND HILLS, Calif., Nov. 3, 2005 — United Online, Inc. (Nasdaq:UNTD), a leading provider of consumer Internet subscription services, has launched NetZero Voice, a Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service that provides local …
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Microsoft Acquires FolderShare, a File-Synchronization Technology Provider — Deal Aligns With Windows Live Goal of Connecting Customers to the People and Information That Matter Most to Them — REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) …
Discussion:
Download Squad, CNET News.com, The Unofficial Microsoft …, Om Malik's Broadband Blog, Andre and OpsanBlog

And the answer is... I guess people have varying definitions for "amazing," and my teaser from last night somehow got people thinking I was talking about VoIP (and several others thought I had landed a mega-bucks job - dream on). I hope no one is let down.

Saving journalism isn't about saving jobs — Every time we hear about another cutback in newspapers — and there are plenty of them these days — we automatically hear the notion that journalism jobs must be saved to save journalism. I'm afraid it's time to challenge that assumption.

Web's never-to-be-repeated revolution — The web is having a birthday. This month, we will have the 15th anniversary of the creation of the first web page. It is the birthday of Tim Berners-Lee's amazing idea that there could be a worldwide web, linked not by spider silk but by hypertext links …
Discussion:
Techdirt