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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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.
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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 …
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
TiVo to Offer Tighter Rein on Children's Viewing — In a new twist on helping parents control what children watch on television, TiVo will announce today a service that lets its video recorders limit children to watching shows approved by one of two groups promoting family programming.
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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:
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
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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.
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.
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 …
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, InsideMicrosoft, PalmAddicts and GottaBeMobile.com
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.
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 …
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 …
wikimediafoundation.org:
English Wikipedia Publishes Millionth Article — The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia. The article is about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland, and it was started by Wikipedia contributor Ewan Macdonald.
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.
