Top Items:
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
Yahoo Says It Is Backing Away From TV-Style Web Shows — After proclaiming grand plans to bring elaborately produced sitcoms, talk shows and other television-style programs to the Internet, the head of Yahoo's Media Group said yesterday that he was sharply scaling back those efforts.
Reuters:
Viacom to enter social networking market in '06 — NEW YORK (Reuters) - MTV owner Viacom Inc. plans to enter the business of connecting youth viewers on the Internet this year, a top Viacom executive said on Wednesday, amid threats of losing its cool cachet to News Corp.
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Mike / Techdirt:
Google's Moves Chinese Search Records So They Can Be Subpoenaed By The US — from the out-of-the-frying-pan... dept. — If you were Google, where would you store your Chinese search data these days? As just about everyone knows, Google made the move into China recently with a somewhat scaled down …
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Robert McMillan / InfoWorld:
Google moving search records out of China — The company is seeking prevent China's government accessing the data without Google's consent — In an effort to protect users of its Google (Profile, Products, Articles).cn Web site, Google is moving search records out of China and into the U.S., a company executive said this week.
Andru Edwards / gearlive.com:
TiVo's To Announce "KidZone" Parental Control Service — It seems people are wondering what is up with TiVo booking the Museum of Television and Radio for a big announcement tomorrow. Luckily, we have some peeps on the inside who have given us the good stuff.
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Ken Belson / New York Times:
Senate Bill to Address Fears of Blocked Access to Net — Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, will introduce new legislation today that would prohibit Internet network operators from charging companies for faster delivery of their content to consumers or favoring some content providers over others.
The Doc Searls Weblog:
So I've been asked, since posting my unflattering take on the iPod Hi-Fi yesterday, what, if anything, I think it's good for. — The answer is two things. — First, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday (warning: that link may go behind a paywall), conventional component stereo listening is down:
Howard Parnell / Washington Post:
Downloading Empathy to Your iPod — Online Playlist Creators Search for Catharsis, Discover a Marketplace — Justine Saylors is an accidental DJ on a mission. — Six months ago, she was a grieving mom spending hour after hour on Apple's iTunes online music service, downloading songs to match her sorrow.
Bloomberg:
Google Is Reportedly Switching to AMD — Google Inc. is switching its servers to run on Advanced Micro Devices Inc. chips instead of those made by Intel Corp., according to a Morgan Stanley report. — Google, which has more than 200,000 servers, has started to buy Advanced Micro's Opteron processors …
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Origami and UMPC one and the same? — So we've all heard the Origami spin by now, right? Today brought us a bit more info with "find out 3.9.06..." on the project website (and it looks like that maybe all we see from Microsoft today). Of interest though, is that Intel has wheeled …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun, TechBlog, Good Morning Silicon Valley, PalmAddicts, InsideMicrosoft and GottaBeMobile.com
Lester Haines / The Register:
MS in geek sex hard sell shocker — There was a time when Microsoft ads were a bit more entertaining than the current "dinosaur head" offerings which have of late been baffling adults and scaring small children worldwide. — The proof comes in this hitherto-unseen-in-the-civilised- world shocker …
Discussion:
Things That
Seán Captain / New York Times:
From Blogger to Published Author, for $30 and Up — Though not all blogs may aspire to literary permanence, they can achieve it through the new Book-Smart software from Blurb, a publish-your-own-book service. The software, which is expected to be available free later this month at www.blurb.com …
Asher Moses / ZDNet:
HP: Pen-based PDA market on death bed — The traditional pen-based PDA market will evaporate within the next four years without significant product innovation, according to Hewlett-Packard (HP). The company will therefore continue to focus the majority of its handheld efforts …
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple researching iTunes feature film movie service? — Exclusive: Apple Computer may be in the intermediate stages of developing an iTunes movie download service that would serve up full length feature films to iTunes customers with a broadband Internet connection, AppleInsider has learned.
David Lawsky / Reuters:
Microsoft says better than Google soon — PARIS (Reuters) - Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) will introduce a search engine better than Google (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday.
Discussion:
Conversion Rater, Digital Inspiration, Microsoft News Tracker and John Battelle's Searchblog
Darren Rowse / Make Money Online …:
New AdSense Reporting Features Added — In addition to the facelift at AdSense today there is also news that there are new reporting features. The AdSense 'what's new page' explains that there are two new features - firstly the ability to see how much of your traffic is viewing ads …
Russell Shaw / IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband:
Some Vonage users are frustrated about Comcast connection quality — Over the last couple of years, when I've wanted to take the temperature of the Vonage user community, I've often stopped at the Vonage Forum. This is a privately run enterprise, totally independent of Vonage.
Richard MacManus / Web 2.0 Explorer:
Mashups: who's really in control? — In the mashup ecosystem, let's get one thing straight. The data owner is ultimately in control, because a mashup developer is reliant on data owners to keep the supply of data flowing. — Sometimes data services that were open to begin with, then have restrictions imposed on them.
