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For MySpace, Making Friends Was Easy. Big Profit Is Tougher. — ALMOST on a lark, Chris DeWolfe bought the Internet address MySpace.com in 2002, figuring that it might be useful someday. At first, he used the site to peddle a motorized contraption, made in China and called an E-scooter, for $99.

Congress readies new digital copyright bill — For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. — Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite.


The Last Page — Well, I think it's time to put this weblog to bed. — Yep, after four years and almost 3,000 posts I've decided to close up the Notebook. There's lots of reasons, but generally this is a continuation of the full-reset I started back in January.
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The Tao of Mac, Smalltalk Tidbits …, The Daily Om, Mobilitee, Damien Mulley, IrishEyes and Matthew Gifford

Intel's Hard-to-Define Viiv Doesn't Live Up to the Hype — In January, Intel told the world that digital media would never be the same again. — During a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, chief executive Paul S. Otellini unveiled Viiv — a combination of hardware …

New Digital Books Offer Better Readability — Step onto a Metro train any given morning and it's easy to find people feeding their appetites for information. Commuters regularly have their faces buried in newspapers, magazines, novels — and sometimes even Web-enabled cellphones — during the ride to and from work.

Unpatched Mac flaws may put users at risk — Apple Computer is investigating several unpatched and potentially serious security flaws in Mac OS X that have been publicly disclosed, the company said Friday. — Tom Ferris, a security researcher in Mission Viejo, Calif. …
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The nano gets bigger — At least where storage capacity is concerned. According to Apple-watchers, 8GB and 10GB versions are on the way. — In the wake of the touchscreen iPod delay, Apple will be launching new 8GB and 10GB iPod nanos in the summer. At least that's what Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is saying.

Warner tackles Chinese piracy with cut-price DVD — Warner Home Video has begun trial sales in China of a movie DVD priced at just Rmb12 ($1.50), a move likely to anger consumers in developed markets such as Europe and the US, who typically pay $20-$30 for a recently released film on DVD.


Is Concentration the New Competitive Advantage? — Technology has been a double edged sword for business. On the one hand, it allows companies to do all kinds of things they could never do before. On the flip side, it has slowly eroded many forms of competitive advantage by making many corporate tactics easy to imitate.
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robhyndman.com

Microsoft hires CEO of Ask.com to head Web unit —Text+SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Software giant Microsoft Corp. said on Friday it hired away Steve Berkowitz, the chief executive of rival Internet company Ask.com, to head Microsoft's own Internet business.

Linux distributors unite on desktop standard — Move aimed at making operating system compete better with Windows — NEW YORK - In a move to make the freely distributed Linux operating system a stronger alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, a group of major Linux distributors announced Friday …


Chinese $150 Linux mini-PC races OLPC to market — A Chinese company is touting an inexpensive Linux-based computer as a way to close the "digital divide." YellowSheepRiver's $150 "Municator" appears to be available now, with a three-month leadtime, suggesting it could reach market well ahead of MIT's $100 …

YouTube: Too rough for advertisers? — A closely guarded secret at video-upload site YouTube is the company's plan to sell advertisements. The strategy is even cloaked in a code name. — Madison Avenue is keeping a close eye on what kind of advertising model the top player in the burgeoning market will adopt.


Google Calendar task list feature — I decided to spend a little time today digging through the Google Calendar javascript source and I found a couple of things I thought were interesting. Sometimes pieces of code get put into the javascript that are simply not called from anywhere …
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