Top Items:
Dsifry / Sifry's Alerts:
State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth — It's been 4 months since last October's State of the Blogosphere report, so it's time to update the numbers! For historical perspective, you can see earlier State of the Blogosphere reports from July 2005, from March 2005, and from October 2004.
The Consumerist:
Did Nvidia Hire Online Actors to Promote Their Products? — About a week ago, The Consumerist stumbled upon claims made by various gaming websites (specifically, Elite Bastards and Beyond3D) that graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia, in cooperation with the Arbuthnot Entertainment Group (AEG) …
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Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Did Nvidia hire an army of message-board sock-puppets? — Nvidia stands accused of hiring online actors to create dozens of personae in online forums, where they won gamers' trust by talking about subjects unrelated to Nvidia's products, and then splurged in an orgy of sock-puppet boosterism of Nvidia's stuff.
John Markoff / New York Times:
Venture for Sharing Wi-Fi Draws Big-Name Backers — SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 5 — A telecommunications executive said on Sunday that he had received $21.7 million for what he called "a global network of shared Wi-Fi connections" from backers, including Google, the Internet phone service provider Skype …
Discussion:
Search Engine Lowdown, Daily Wireless, Venture Chronicles, Guardian Unlimited and Mark Evans
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Mylene Mangalindan / Wall Street Journal:
PayPal Prepares For a Challenge From Google — When Jeff Jordan learned last May that Web-search leader Google Inc. was building its own Internet-payment service, he reacted swiftly. — Mr. Jordan, who is president of eBay Inc.'s PayPal online-payments unit, immediately asked employees …
Discussion:
InsideGoogle, Guardian Unlimited, Geeking with Greg, Social Patterns, Geek News Central … and GoogleRumors
BBC:
BMW given Google 'death penalty' — Search giant Google has "blacklisted" German car manufacturer BMW for breaching its guidelines. — Investigations by Google found that BMW's German website influenced search results to ensure top ranking when users searched for "used car".
snyke.net:
AJAX Design Patterns — Snyke wrote this terribly early in the morning: — By now the entire World has heard about AJAX, even those who don't care about Web-Development have seen the potential of this new technology. Everybody is tired of endless introductions on how cool AJAX …
Discussion:
Gadgetopia
Leander Kahney / Wired News:
Vaporware: Better Late Than Never — Ladies and gents, welcome to the 2005 Vaporware Awards — the prize that celebrates the tech products that were promised last year but never delivered. — We have a few surprises this year — wait 'til you find out the winner; you'll never guess what it is.
Michael Bazeley / SiliconBeat:
Catching up with Peerflix — Journalists too often fall into the hit-and-run reporting trap, where we write about a start-up and then rarely, if ever, check back on its progress. So when the Peerflix guys invited us in for a chat last week - nearly a year after our first posting on them - we accepted.
Sarah Lacy / Business Week:
Taking On the Database Giants — Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives — OPEN SOURCE'S NEW FRONTIERS>> … Rick Herman is awash in digital data.
USA Today:
AOL to charge fee as way to cut spam — SAN FRANCISCO — America Online will begin charging businesses to send commercial e-mail to its users in the first wide-scale use of authenticated e-mail to reduce spam. But some marketers affected by the plan, set to start in several weeks …
Discussion:
Shore Communications Inc., Weblogs Work, technology filter, Geek News Central … and OpsanBlog
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Robert Levine / New York Times:
Wave of Video Game Fatigue Afflicts Sales, Not Thumbs — In November, Activision released True Crime: New York City, a video game that seemed to have all the makings of a hit. It was the sequel to a well-received game, it had the violent aesthetic of the popular Grand Theft Auto series …
sonyericsson.com:
M600 slim, compact and stylish UMTS messaging phone puts secure e-mail and Internet at your fingertips — London, 6th Feb 2006 - Sony Ericsson today announces the M600 phone and messaging device. This is a fully-specified email tool and mobile phone rolled into an extremely stylish …
Ars Technica:
Legalization of P2P inches forward in France — In late December the French Assemblée Nationale surprised the world when it voted to essentially legalize P2P usage. While the headlines were indeed unanticipated, a closer look at the situation revealed no small amount of politics.
Discussion:
Alice Hill's Real Tech News
Regine / we make money not art:
LAPD to throw GPS at fleeing cars — The LAPD will outfit cars with a device that propels and sticks a GPS onto a fleeing car. — The department will mount the StarChase LLC device in the grill of some squad cars. "Officers in the car would control a green lazar light …
Steve Gillmor / Steve Gillmor's InfoRouter:
The Dog told me — I wrote this a few weeks ago before a trip to New York. While getting in and out of cabs or walking down the street, I lost or was relieved of my EVDO card, plunging me back into the darkness that preceded it. I sent this post, along with several additional paragraphs designed …
Yoshiko Hara / eetimes.com:
Hitachi advances paper-thin RFID chip — TOKYO — Targeting radio-frequency identification, Hitachi Ltd. has developed what it says is the smallest and thinnest IC in the world for those applications. — Hitachi was due to present details of the 0.15-millimeter by 0.15-millimeter …
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
Can DSL handle success? — After getting piles of mail from Verizon Communications about its new $14.95 DSL service, Barbara Cerney finally decided to ditch dial-up. But when she called Verizon to sign on, she got an unpleasant surprise. — Though her neighbors were using Verizon DSL …
