Top Items:

Google AdSense begins rich media beta test — Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting publishers last week to be involved in the rich media limited beta test.
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AdSense silently adds a 90-day time limit on AdSense referrals — A thread over at DigitalPoint points out that Google AdSense has quietly added a new term to all AdSense referrals generated by a publisher. They have now instituted a 90-day time limit on that referral …

No booze or jokes for Googlers in China — Google's new China search engine not only censors many Web sites that question the Chinese government, but it goes further than similar services from Microsoft and Yahoo by targeting teen pregnancy, homosexuality, dating, beer and jokes.
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch Blog, Financial Times, Google Blogoscoped, ...My heart's in Accra and CNN
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Change is good! — We have some great changes in MSN Spaces. — Have a picture that has a great story around it...you can now add a description to your photos. Your viewers can now add comment to photos as well as blogs. So make sure to go to someone's photo album and leave a comment on your favorite photo as well.
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Microsoft Search Champs: Non-NDA Stuff — Today I was at the Redmond office of Microsoft and it was an interesting day of discussions about... well I'm not allowed to say due to NDA. But most of the last hour of presentations was bloggable. TechCrunch has a good summary post, to which I'll add a few more details.
Discussion:
Bokardo, ProgrammableWeb.com, James Governor's MonkChips, InfoWorld, sanaz's space, Search Engine Watch Blog and LiveSide
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Venture Capital Blogs? They're About Anything But — BILLBURNHAM was having lunch with a fellow venture capitalist at a restaurant in Mountain View, Calif., two weeks ago when the topic turned to secrecy. His lunch mate had been describing a new Internet search start-up company he was investing in …
Discussion:
Mark Evans

THE STORY DOESN'T CARE: AN INTERVIEW WITH SEAN STEWART — As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'm interested in alternate reality games, not just as an advertising journalist, but as a writer. While working on a recent story for Creativity, I did a long phone interview with sci-fi novelist …

MICROSOFT FISCAL 2006 Q2 RESULTS — This afternoon, Microsoft announced results for its fiscal 2006 second quarter, ended December 31. While the company's seven business units report separate P&Ls, the units are now contained within three larger business groups.

An OPML Answer to "Where are the Women in Tech Blogging?" — BlogHer's getting ready for the Monday launch of a new surfing guide. As one of two contributing editors in the Technology & Web domain, I'll be covering women blogging about tech. — misbehaving.net has one of the best blogrolls around listing women tech bloggers.

Digg & Yahoo! — Yesterday, I saw a couple digg stories reporting rumors about Yahoo! acquiring digg - I posted a small comment on digg dispelling the rumors and thought that was the end of it. Then, I woke up this morning to see TechCrunch (great site btw), CNN, CNET, and a few others fueling the rumors.
Discussion:
Thomas Hawk's Digital …, A View from the Isle, the j. botter weblog, B2Day and ben barren
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In Case About Google's Secrets, Yours Are Safe — The Justice Department went to court last week to try to force Google, by far the world's largest Internet search engine, to turn over an entire week's worth of searches. The move, which Google is fighting, has alarmed its users …

Mobile phone boom set to continue in 2006: survey — LONDON (Reuters) - Global shipments of mobile phones soared in 2005 and will continue to grow in 2006 on the back of strong demand from emerging economies, which snapped up half of all handsets last year, a survey showed on Thursday.

Should Bloggers Write for Humans or Computers? — I've been toying with writing this post for a number of weeks now after reading a number of posts on the death of Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers. — Nick over at Performancing kicked it off (at least it was the first one I'd read for a while) …

Yahoo, Linksys offer link for digital music — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet media company Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and wireless equipment maker Linksys on Thursday unveiled a new product to help consumers move digital music from computers to stereo sound systems in the home.
Discussion:
Engadget

JAPAN'S ROBO-COPTER BUST — What does a company with close ties to the Chinese military want with a robotic, crop-dusting, mini-helicopter? And why was Yamaha willing to sell nine of the things, in violation of export control laws? — Those are some of the questions being asked in Asia this week …

Torvalds: No GPL 3 for Linux — update Linus Torvalds said Wednesday that he won't convert Linux to version 3 of the General Public License, as he objects to digital rights management provisions in the proposed update. — The position is a significant—though not entirely unexpected …

The Art of Bootstrapping — Someone once told me that the probability of an entrepreneur getting venture capital is the same as getting struck by lightning while standing at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. This may be too optimistic. — Let's say that you can't raise money …

Ringtone sales ring up music profits — Chris Brown's Run It!, the Black Eyed Peas' My Humps and Young Jeezy's Trap Star are alerting cellphone users to incoming calls, but the sound ringing in the ears of the music business is "ka-ching." — Ringtone sales are off the hook.