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Eyeing the iTunes MiniStore — (Update, 1/11/06, 10:30 ET: After this story was posted, an Apple official told Macworld that the iTunes MiniStore feature does not collect any information from users. This story has been updated to make that clear, while still covering larger privacy and transparency concerns.
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Sorry, no Apple for you: Microsoft's bid fruitless — SAN FRANCISCO — It's not every day that Microsoft Corp. asks to put a competitor's logo on one of its own products. And the kicker is, the answer was "No." — In a first for Microsoft's hardware group, the company is developing a keyboard designed just for the Mac.
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The Media's Crush on Apple — Jobs & Co. spark something bordering on a lovefest among the press. But as the good times roll, are reporters asking the hard questions? — The historical record will show that the era of Apple (AAPL) computers bearing microprocessors from Intel (INTC) …

Google Tests Local Ads on Maps — Google is experimenting with plotting local advertisers' locations on its Maps product, giving marketers a visual and spatial accompaniment to their locally targeted ads. — A search on "hotels" in New York City returns an organic list of local hotels …
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Sprint Refuses To Reveal Location Of Cell Phone In Carjacked SUV — EASTVALE, Calif. — A stolen car that had a kidnapped baby and a cell phone inside has become the center of a new controversy. — The parents of the kidnapped baby are outraged that the phone that could have been used to find the baby was not.
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Yahoo Exec Exits For Automattic CEO Gig — Exclusive: Start-ups are once again cool, enough for senior executives to leave the safe confines of large companies to take a flier on tiny tots. A couple of days I had reported that Jeff Graham, former CEO of Peribit and a senior executive …
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Moving On From Yahoo -> Automattic — I wasn't going to write about this until my last day at Yahoo, but then Om Malik (the best informed man in Silicon Valley?) found out about 10 seconds after I started telling people at Yahoo, so here it goes: — After a great time at Yahoo working …
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Niall Kennedy's Weblog

Google Looks to Patent Mobile Click-to-call Ads — Google appears to be setting its sights on the mobile advertising market, given its latest patent application. The company is seeking protection for a kind of ad that would trigger a phone call instead of rendering a new page when clicked.

Digg vs. Slashdot (or, traffic vs. influence) — There's been lots of talk on the web lately about Digg being the new Slashdot. Two months ago, a Digg reader noted that according to Alexa, Digg's traffic was catching up to that of Slashdot, even though Slashdot has been around for several years and Digg is just over a year old.

When Will Yahoo Acquire Technorati? — Yahoo's recent acquisition binge is the topic of a Red Herring print article this week called "Hungry Hungry Yahoo". Liz Gannes, who wrote the article, discusses Yahoo's recent acquisitions and speculates on a few likely candidates for future Yahoo shopping sprees.

Interview Exclusive: Revolution Report Talks with ATI about Hollywood — Following the Consumer Electronics Show 2006 held in Las Vegas, Nevada last week, Revolution Report had the opportunity to discuss Nintendo and its next-generation console, code-named the Nintendo Revolution …

No XP on Intel Macs, but Vista is good to go — If you've been counting on being able to run Windows on those new Intel-based Macs, Apple's not about tomake it easy for you — at least not if you're attached to Windows XP. According to Apple SVP Phil Schiller, the newMacs announced yesterday …
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Andre, Clickety Clack, The Blackfriars Blog, Slashdot, Alice Hill's Real Tech News and Microsoft Watch

Silos Are For Grain, Not VoIP — Wall Street Journal has a long piece about new VoIP phones, but misses the point about lack of interoperability between various issues. I wrote about this last week, here and also for CNN Money. Its appropriate that we address the issue one more time …

A Million to One — Chances Are Imitators Can't Match This Student's By-the-Pixel Web Sales Success — Look what Alex Tew did, and you get one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" flashes. It's so simple, so cheap, so mind-bogglingly lucrative that it took the 21-year-old student …
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Netcraft, Zoli's Blog, a shel of my former self, Copyfight, VoIP & Gadgets Blog and Boing Boing