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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, The Glass is Too Big, IP Democracy, Google Blogoscoped, pc4media, The Stalwart, Conversion Rater, Ho John Lee's Weblog, Between the Lines, Things That, Marketing Pilgrim, Guardian Unlimited, TechBeat, business2blog, Boing Boing, PaidContent.org, The Voice of Online …, Smalltalk Tidbits …, Mashable* and Paul Kedrosky's …
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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
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 …
Discussion:
stevenberlinjohnson.com
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Alexa turned into web service - Amazon back to its innovative best — John Battelle just posted that Amazon is opening up its Alexa search data and tools to the world! According to John, Alexa has about 5 billion documents in its index, which is about 100 terabytes of data.
Nick Wilson / Performancing.com:
Exclusive: Google Talks About Splogs, Ranking & More — 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.
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?
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.
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.
Claudia Parsons / Reuters:
HarperCollins to create digital warehouse of books — NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. publisher HarperCollins said on Monday it plans to convert some 20,000 books in its catalog into digital form in a bid to rein in potential copyright violations on the Internet.
Discussion:
Shore Communications Inc.
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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 …
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
