Top Items:

Yahoo 4Q Profit Misses Views; Shares Fall — Yahoo Fourth-Quarter Profit Falls Short of Analysts' Expectations; Shares Decline 13.5 Percent — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo Inc.'s fourth-quarter profit nearly doubled as advertisers continued to shift their spending to the Internet …
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Yahoo, Google & Web 2.0 Reality Check — Not such a good day for Yahoo and other search engine stocks. Yahoo's modest financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2005 prompted a quick sell-off, and already the second largest search engine is down 10% for the day.
Discussion:
Signal vs. Noise, Mark Evans, The Stalwart, Micro Persuasion, A View from the Isle and Darwinian Web

Two Abandon Google Bandwagon — Sizzling Google (GOOG:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) is getting too hot for some analysts to handle. — Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt and Scott Kessler of Standard & Poor's cut the search engine giant to sell.

Google Takes to the Airwaves — The deal, which may top more than $1 billion, comes on the heels of Google's $1 billion investment in America Online — A transcript follows . — David A. Vise: Hi everybody and welcome to a chat about a seminal moment in evolution of Google …
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That old copyright song — My cable connection started working without problems yesterday, just in time for me to attempt to connect using DSL later today. I've also been attempting to take photos of the bald eagles wintering in our area, but have run into interesting complications, which I'll write about later.
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John Palfrey explains the issues of RSS copyright — John Palfrey has responded to the questioning of Top10Sources' use of RSS feeds exactly the way a law professor should, by turning it into an opportunity to educate the blogosphere on the finer points of copyright law in relation to RSS and blogs.

Police fight crime with games — Police in Edinburgh have found a new way of keeping naughty kids off the streets, out of trouble and in the library - but they're not going there to read boring old books, obviously. — According to the Daily Record, a new scheme was recently launched …

I've been meaning to blog about a new web platform feature that we've added to trunk builds of Firefox. It is now possible to define a ping attribute on anchor and area tags. When a user follows a link via one of these tags, the browser will send notification pings to the specified URLs after following the link.

A Ringtone That Really Gets Under Your Skin? — Make of it what you will, but a new site has popped up devoted to the promotion of Pherotones, which are presented as a sort of oddball, audible cousin of pheromones, which naturally you'll be able to use as ring tones on your cell phone.

Consumer groups push for net neutrality rules — Organizations react to telcos plans to slow access to some content — Three consumer groups repeated their calls for a U.S. law to prevent broadband providers from blocking or slowing customer access to some Internet content by saying the public wants government protection.
Discussion:
robhyndman.com

Service Choice — What is "service choice" and how does Google Talk enable it? — Whom are you federating with? — Do service providers need explicit approval to federate with the Google Talk service? — Do you plan to support other industry standards for communications interoperability?

Apple changes iTunes, now obtains consent before collecting info — Apple has changed the way iTunes works so that users are given the chance to decline the iTunes Ministore, a service that gathers detailed information about your listening habits and transmits it to Apple along with a number that uniquely identifies you.
Discussion:
Matt McAlister, What's New, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Silver Mac, TechBlog, plasticbag.org and Download Squad

The Proof is in the People — Forecasting the next big thing on the web seems to be the sport of the season these days. Each quarter, new companies launch and put themselves at the mercy of the blogosphere and the press with the hopes of being the next media darling.

Where can you find good images? — A lot of people ask me where they can get good-quality images, so I thought it would be good to have one post that I could bookmark and send out to people. I mentioned before that I use iStockphoto.com the most (as well as more expensive sites …
Discussion:
Duct Tape Marketing Blog

Blackmailers target $1m website — The site of a UK student who had the idea of selling pixels as advertising space has been hit by a web attack. — Alex Tew, 21, hit the headlines at the start of the year when he revealed his Million Dollar Homepage had made him a million dollars in four months.
Discussion:
Guardian Unlimited

Are you listening? Tools to analyse blogosphere buzz — Niall Cook, Director, UK Netcoms, ncook@hillandknowlton.com — In almost every presentation about blogging, you will hear experts telling you to join the conversation. That is the same 'conversation' made famous by The Cluetrain Manifesto …