Top Items:

The New Boom … Be careful what you wish for, all of you with the "Please, God, just one more bubble!" bumper stickers. It's getting wild again in Silicon Valley. In recent months, the breathtaking ascent of Google has lit a fire under its competitors, which include practically everyone in the online world.

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.

The 5 Problems with Videogame Journalism — In the last year, a lot has been said about videogame journalism and the problems of the field. There is a belief that gaming reviewers play into the hands of the marketing machine instead of being actual critics who can help to improve the quality …
Discussion:
The Game Chair

Richmedia - An Adsense Format Too Far? — I was shocked and disappointed this morning when I saw the news reported by JenSense that Google are going to try "Rich Media" advertising formats through their network … OK, apparently they are more likely to be site targeted rather than contextual …
Discussion:
Publishing 2.0, AdMoolah News and Views, Somewhat Frank, The Kelsey Group and Search Engine Watch Blog

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.

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

Crecente: Schlock wave — Director's juggernaut of atrocious video game films mystifies critics, players — Uwe Boll makes movies everyone hates. — And he won't stop. — While the German-born director's ability to turn a mediocre video game into a truly reviled film is notorious …

How Not To Deal With Blogs: A Case Study — From time to time, I get asked by people at various companies "about blogs and stuff", in particular how companies can best deal with blogs from a PR and marketing perspective. Two things I stress are sincerity and honesty.

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 …

NEWS 2.0 IS NOT JOURNALISM — Om's right. He says that the news 2.0 startups aren't doing journalism. But News 2.0 isn't about journalism. It's about news. — The key to understanding what is working in "Citizen Journalism" is that they're first-person accounts.

SuitSat — Using a simple police scanner or ham radio, you can listen to a disembodied spacesuit circling Earth. — January 26, 2006: One of the strangest satellites in the history of the space age is about to go into orbit. Launch date: Feb. 3rd. That's when astronauts onboard …

Royal Bank of Scotland opts for open source intranet — From Apache and Perl, to Python and Zope... The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has revealed it is working on a large content management system (CMS) based on the open source application server Zope. — At the end of last year …
Discussion:
Datamation IT News Blog

When It comes to DSL, Speed Sells — As the parade of earnings of phone companies continues, interesting trends emerge. And some proof, that Bells don't need to muck around with the net much to make money. — BellSouth and SBC/AT&T reported weaker than expected DSL additions.

VNU Business Media Europe buys the INQUIRER — VNU Business Publications Ltd, the London-based publishing arm of VNU Business Media Europe (BME), has purchased The Inquirer, www.theinquirer.net, one of the leading technology news sites. The investment is part of VNU's ongoing strategy …

The Coming Irrelevance Of My.Yahoo For Me — After reading Fooled By Randomness, I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed by the information on My.Yahoo page. I've had My.Yahoo as my default home page since 1997 or so and probably have it refresh (deliberately or otherwise) …

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 …
Discussion:
Open Source, Shore Communications Inc., technology filter, tecosystems, GROKLAW and Between the Lines

Homebrew games and Emulation on PSP 2.50! — Fanjita Releases 2.0 eLoader for v2.00, v2.01 and v2.50 PSP's — PSP Updates forum moderator and hacker guru Fanjita has completed his first release of a new loader for 2.01+ PSP's called eLoader. While 2.60 is not currently supported …
Discussion:
Engadget

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.