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John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:
ALEXA (MAKE THAT AMAZON) LOOKS TO CHANGE THE GAME — (This will be updated when the service goes live, I was briefed and the embargo was 9 pm PST...) — Every so often an idea comes along that has the potential to change the game. When it does, you find yourself saying - "Sheesh, of course that was going to happen.
Discussion:
ZDNet.com, Social Patterns, Web 2.0 Explorer, michael parekh on IT, Search Engine Lowdown, Google Blogoscoped, pc4media, The Glass is Too Big, The Stalwart, Conversion Rater, Ho John Lee's Weblog, Incremental Blogger, Between the Lines, Things That, Guardian Unlimited, Marketing Pilgrim, TechBeat, business2blog, Boing Boing, PaidContent.org, Paul Kedrosky's …, Smalltalk Tidbits …, Mashable* and The Voice of Online …
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Geoffrey Mack / Alexa:
Announcing the Alexa Web Search Platform Beta — Today, Alexa is releasing the Alexa Web Search Platform Beta (websearch.alexa.com), effectively opening up the Alexa Web Crawl and ushering in a new era where anybody can create new search services without having to invest millions of dollars in crawl …
Mylene Mangalindan / Wall Street Journal:
Amazon Revs Its Search Engine — Alexa Unit Will Provide — More Specialized Data — For Software Developers — An Amazon.com Inc. unit plans to allow software and Web developers to request customized data searches when it scans the Web to seek new information …
Discussion:
John Cook's Venture Blog
Jeff MacIntyre / Wired News:
Roll Your Own Google — In a move with potentially far-reaching implications for the search market, Alexa Internet is opening up its huge web crawler to any programmer who wants paid access to its rich trove of internet data. — Alexa, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that is best known …
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Alexa turned into web service - Amazon back to its innovative best
Alexa turned into web service - Amazon back to its innovative best
Discussion:
Got Ads?, Techdirt, Search Engine Watch Blog, Internet Outsider, Oliver Thylmann and Toni Schneider's Blog
Business Week:
Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz — Critics say iTunes-only downloads and inflexible pricing are hurting song sales — Once again, Apple's iPod is expected to be the hottest gift of the holiday season. That should be great news for the recording industry, right?
Nick Wilson / Performancing.com:
Exclusive: Google Teaches Bloggers How To Rank — I recently got the chance to grill senior Google engineer and webmaster relations chappy Matt Cutts on some issues specific to bloggers. Matt took his sweet time getting the interview done, but it was well worth the wait.
Kasper Jade / appleinsider.com:
Apple to tackle consumer electronics; iPod "boombox" planned — Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod division is preparing to extend its reach into the consumer electronics market with the release of several iPod-related digital audio products early next year, AppleInsider has learned.
Toronto Star:
Old idea, new media — Are you reading this text on paper, or as pixels? Does it matter? Some think not — As newspapers realize that they sell content, not ink, their future is taking hold — Dec. 12, 2005. — DAVID OLIVE — Not quite as old as the wheel …
Discussion:
PaidContent.org
Mark Landler / New York Times:
Hot Technology for Chilly Streets in Estonia — TALLINN, Estonia, Dec. 8 - Visiting the offices of Skype feels like stumbling on to a secret laboratory in a James Bond movie, where mad scientists are hatching plots for world domination. — The two-year-old company, which offers free calls …
Bloomberg:
Microsoft Sold 28% of Xbox 360s in Japanese Stores (Update1) — Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp., the second-largest maker of video game systems, sold 28 percent of Xbox 360 consoles on store shelves in Japan, according to preliminary figures from market researcher Media Create Co.
Om Malik on Broadband:
Like Yahoo, SIPphone offers Penny A Minute Calling — Yahoo was the first one to launch a salvo at Skype by offering a penny-a-minute calling, betting that its low price offering would help it gain market share and lure users away from Skype. (Service will be available next year... but the press release is already out!)
Doc / Doc Searls' IT Garage:
Opening remarks — The Syndicate conference starts at 8am here in San Francisco. I'm giving the opening remarks. In the spirit of syndication itself, I decided I'd rather blog what I'm going to say, rather than prepare slides about it. — After the opening wisecracks …
Discussion:
Sandhill Trek
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
Vonage to sell Wi-Fi phone — Vonage will announce Tuesday the availability of its long-anticipated portable Wi-Fi phone that will let people use the company's IP telephony when they're connected to any public hot spot. — Vonage already offers a so-dubbed softphone client …
Shankar Gupta / MediaPost Publications:
Marketing Execs Lukewarm On Plan To Pay Searchers — MARKETING EXECUTIVES SAID THEY ARE wary of Microsoft's tentative plan to reimburse online users for using MSN Search to conduct searches, fearing that it will dilute the value of being associated with MSN and attract a lower-value audience.
Discussion:
rexblog.com