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Attack of the Clones — So the latest ruckus in tech.blogosphere is about Dave Winer's call to Clone the Google API (note the URL name). Robert Scoble wrote an enthusiastic post entitled Yahoo's new pretty maps are doomed (and so are Microsoft's), which understandably got up the nostrils of Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny.
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Maps: Let me play — Scoble writes about map and APIs: … The tag line is always: Make it easy for me to spend my money. Or in the case of a content owner: Make it easy for me to implement your service. — Google ads? Piece of cake. Little generator to do them, one applying, usable every where I like.

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 …
Discussion:
Google Blogoscoped, Peer Pressure, Things That, OpsanBlog, Scripting News, The Map Room, Metafilter and Lifehacker

Yahoo Maps: a Flash-y interface and a better API
Discussion:
Social Patterns, Read/Write Web, business2blog, Mashable*, The Map Room, Solution Watch, JD on MX and Search Engine Journal

Alleged Pop-Up Hacker Busted — In the first U.S. prosecution of its kind, FBI agents arrested a 20-year-old Los Angeles man Thursday on charges that he cracked some 400,000 Windows machines and covertly installed pop-up-generating adware on them, in a scheme that allegedly brought in $60,000 in ill-gotten profits.

GeoCool! … There is of course the fancy new maps.yahoo.com/beta site which is fun, but as far as I am concerned the killer app here is the geocoding platform that drives this. And it is completely accessible for anyone to use. It's also a sane API that anybody can figure out in minutes.

Want 'War and Peace' Online? How About 20 Pages at a Time? — In a race to become the iTunes of the publishing world, Amazon.com and Google are both developing systems to allow consumers to purchase online access to any page, section or chapter of a book.
Discussion:
David Card

SBC Head Ignites Access Debate — The head of a major telecommunications company stirred up a hornets' nest this week by suggesting that he wants to charge companies like Google and Yahoo a fee for bringing them into consumers' homes. — SBC Communications Inc. Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr.'s comments …
Discussion:
IP Democracy

U.S. Patent Office Publishes the First Patent Application to Claim a Fictional Storyline; Inventor Asserts Provisional Rights Against Hollywood — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will publish history's first "storyline patent" application today from an application filed in November, 2003.

Podcasters, meet Fruitcast — Fruitcast is a new service that is not only great for advertisers, but podcasters as well. The founder of Fruitcast, James Archer of Forty Media, saw a problem when it comes to making money with podcasting. You cannot simply connect Google AdSense to a podcast …

Silicon Insider: Forbes Fumbles the Blogosphere — Does an Attack on Bloggers Signal the Dawn of Blogosphere-Dominant Media? — Nov. 3, 2005 — It's déjà vu all over again. — I was halfway through the blogosphere summit in Manhattan last week, running back and forth …

AdSense Policies update time again! — When AdSense is down or there are login problems, it often means there is something new and shiny to keep us publishers amused with. And sure enough, we have a brand new Google AdSense Policies available. — So, it is updated Google AdSense Policies time …
Discussion:
Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Creative-Weblogging: What a bunch of thieves — People are frequently inspired by Weblogs, Inc., and we love that. Heck, we were inspired by folks like Ted Leonsis at the AOL Greenhouse and Scott Kurnit at About.com. However, once and a while someone will cross the line between inspiration and outright theft.
Discussion:
The Blog Herald

Exclusive: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates talks to Computing — Bill Gates reflects on Microsoft's past and future plans, in an exclusive two-part interview looking back on Microsoft's 30 years — Thirty years after founding the world's biggest software company, and despite being the richest man …

The Weblog Ad Directory (+ Weblogs, Inc. v. Gawker stats!) — My pal Nick has been asking me to expose our stats forever (in fact, trying to bait me by saying that I was afraid). I never wanted to put them out there because the stats really layout the WIN business plan in many ways.
Discussion:
The Blog Herald