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Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams — After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams. — On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:

Could Newspaper Owners Really Be This Clueless? — Just as stories are hitting the press about slow-to-innovate newspapers finally embracing the internet comes the news that a bunch of newspapers are quite upset that Google drives more traffic to their websites. This isn't a first.
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Politicos attack tech firms over China … WASHINGTON—Politicians on Wednesday attacked Google, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Yahoo for declining to appear at a briefing about China's Internet censorship and called for a new law to outlaw compliance with such requirements.
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Subscriber credit data distributed by mistake — Globe, Worcester paper affected — Credit and bank card numbers of as many as 240,000 subscribers of The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette were inadvertently distributed with bundles of T&G newspapers on Sunday, officials of the newspapers said yesterday.

Turning Limitations into Innovation — When "balanced with a healthy disregard for the impossible," constraints can shape and focus problems, leading to truly creative solutions — As vice-president for search products and user experience at Google (GOOG), I work with a team that defines the features …

Taking Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 preview through install and uninstall, step-by-step, with screenshots — Bittorrent and private beta testers aside, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but yesterday's release of the IE7 beta 2 for the general public is the very first opportunity to download …
Discussion:
Scobleizer, InsideGoogle, Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life, InsideMicrosoft and Download Squad

Interview: Josh Robinson — Josh Robinson's review of PS3 development cost him his job at Sony. We caught up with him to talk about life after his few minutes of gaming fame. — FULL STORY: — We had a chance to chat with Josh Robinson, the former Sony 3D artist who shook up the gaming media …

Silicon Valley Shrugs Off Google Hiccup — Silicon Valley is leaving knee jerk reactions to Google's lukewarm quarter to the Wall Street crowd. That was the finding of my reporting yesterday after the search giant reported its earnings. I filed this report for CNN Money, that went live this morning.
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Imagining the Google Future — Top experts help us plot four scenarios that show where the company's geniuses may be leading it—and, perhaps, all of us. — (Business 2.0) - We all know that the company Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded a mere eight years ago is one of the new century's most cunning enterprises.

IE7 Beta 2 Available — Microsoft released a public preview of Windows Internet Explorer 7 (previous versions were only available to subscribers of MSDN, as far as I know). New features in version 7 include tabbed browsing, a direct search box, phishing protection capabilities, and more.

Pandora and Last.fm: Nature vs. Nurture in Music Recommenders — Over the past week, there has been some blog talk (Fred Wilson, TechCrunch, David Porter) comparing music-recommendation services Pandora and Last.fm. I've been using both for the past couple months, making notes along …

AT&T chief says that people are only paying for half the Internet — AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre has made a name for himself by making loud and repeated pronouncements about how people and companies are not paying enough for Internet access. First, there was the infamous "our pipes" comment, made last year as a warning to VoIP providers.
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Survey: Advertisers Say Search Ads On Google Better Than Yahoo, MSN — MARKETERS BELIEVE THAT SEARCH ADS on Google will yield better results than search ads on Yahoo, MSN, or other engines, according to a new study released Tuesday by research company Outsell.

IE7 beta: Read the fine print — Now, we're all used to just clicking "next" when we install new software. — That's a bad idea in general. First, many software programs today have incredibly invasive default settings that give the software permission to do everything short of audit your tax returns.
Discussion:
Web 2.0 Explorer, SearchViews, Search Engine Journal, Mark Evans, InsideMicrosoft and BetaNews

Take a stand against DRM? Get fired from your day job. — On January 10th 2006, the Village Voice ran an article called Code Warriors, detailing the efforts of the Free Culture movement, and those of the NYU chapter in particular. The reporter, Carla Blumenkranz, quoted FC co-founder …

LEADING SPANISH PROVIDER, AWA, SELECTS MERU'S WLAN SYSTEM FOR FIXED MOBILE CONVERGENCE NETWORK IN EUROPE — Provider Will Offer Wireless Voice and Data Services to Business and Government Users in Spain — Meru Networks, the global leader in wireless VoIP infrastructure, today announced that AWA …
Discussion:
thevoipdigest.com

Pheedo, PRWeb Put the News in RSS Ads — Download this press release as an Adobe PDF document. — Pheedo and PRWeb are working together to deliver content in an innovative new advertising format, expanding reach and exposure for PRWeb customers. — Emeryville, CA (PRWEB) February 1 …

Google Releases Q4 2005 Earnings — Google has released their Q4 2005 earnings as covered in this news release. — From the news release: … From CNNMoney.com: … From the Google Q4 Earnings News Release (also includes 2005 financial highlights): — + GAAP net income …

Are Salesforce's outages sullying the reputation of the SaaS model? — Now that Salesforce has experienced two public outtages in as many months (see yesterday's coverage and then the coverage from last month), the very fair question of whether or not the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) …

Has AOL Just Endorsed Paid Spam? — I've been deeply involved in the email business for the past decade through investments in companies like Postini, Return Path, Critical Path, MessageMedia, and Email Publishing and have been involved in the challenges of separating spam from legitimate email for a long time.

Rival trashes Google's growth prospects — A Yahoo programmers says Google's numbers won't be enough to help it meet its revenue growth forecast of 30 percent. — SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.) - Granted, he works for the competition, but Amr Awadallah's post about Google's earnings announcement earlier …
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