1. Web-based toy maker Smith & Tinker lays off 30 percent of staff 1 hour ago   permalink

Web-based toy maker Smith & Tinker lays off 30 percent of staff
Venturebeat.com

Smith & Tinker had a high-profile launch of its Nanovor toy and accompanying game web site this fall. It was billed as a marriage of toys and online games.

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2. What Are The Conversion Rates for Google's "First Click Free"? 5 hours ago   permalink

What Are The Conversion Rates for Google's
Fmpub.net / John Battelle

Google today announced a new policy in its ongoing attempt to reach detente with an increasingly querulous publishing industry. (For background, read Mashable's piece). A key piece of the new policy has to do with changes to Google's "First Click Free" program. From Google's announcement: One way we overcome...

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Google News Blog / Google News Blog
Google and paid content   —  Posted by Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager As newspapers consider charging for access to their online content, some publishers have asked: Should we put up pay walls or keep our articles in Google News and Google Search? In fact, they can do both - the two aren't mutually exclusive. There are a few ways we work with publishers to make ...

News.cnet.com
What Are The Conversion Rates for Google's At last, Google has some parasites   —  While there has been much recent bellowing, whining, and general cat-on-heat griping about Google making money from the fine work of others, now I can report that some are finding ways to make money piggybacking on the broad spine of Google's engineering.

3. Groupon: We're profitable and we just raised $30 million 1 hour ago   permalink

Groupon: We're profitable and we just raised $30 million
News.cnet.com

Wow. There is money out there: a retail deals site called Groupon has raised a whopping $30 million Series B funding round led by Accel Partners, one of Facebook's early backers. Existing Groupon investor NEA, which led the company's $4.8 million Series A round in January 2008, also contributed.

4. Accel Partners 2 hours ago   permalink

Accel Partners
Www.crunchbase.com

Accel Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices located in Silicon Valley, London, and India. They typically make multi-stage investments in internet technology companies.

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5. Really? 2 hours ago   permalink

Really?
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch

Dana Hanna updates his Facebook and Twitter, at the altar. Without his bride Tracy knowing he was going to do it. I'm sure she was thrilled: I surprised not only my guests, but also Tracy by pulling out my phone and posting on Facebook and Twitter from the altar during out wedding. I had her phone ready in my pocket, so when she asked for it I ...

6. NBA Expands Mobile Apps With Customized Versions For Every Team 3 hours ago   permalink

NBA Expands Mobile Apps With Customized Versions For Every Team
Staci D. Kramer / PaidContent

The NBA delivers another triple-double when it comes to mobile apps: a customized NBA Team Game Time app for each NBA team—and on three platforms. For $3.99, fans on any of the 30 teams can download the app for either Android, iPhone or Blackberry. (The apps are available now but the announcement isn’t due until Wednesday.) The ...

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Readwriteweb / ReadWriteWeb
NBA Expands Mobile Apps With Customized Versions For Every Team Microsoft: Office Web Apps for your Mobile - Let the Confusion Begin   —  What exactly from Office Web Apps and Office Mobile 2010 can you use on your mobile right now and what will be available when the product ships next spring? Mary Jo Foley does the best job of outlining what is happening here. Let's take a sky high look and see if we can make sense of things so you know what to do if you really have an interest ...

7. Craigslist Blocks Yahoo Pipes After Dev Shows Craig His New Mashup 4 hours ago   permalink

Craigslist Blocks Yahoo Pipes After Dev Shows Craig His New Mashup
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch

Developers take note: if you've got a mashup built off of Craigslist's data, don't even think about showing it to anyone who works there. At least, that's the lesson learned by developer Romy Maxwell, who says that Craigslist has blocked both his mashup and every single project built on Yahoo Pipes a few days after a friendly Email exchange he ...

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Battellemedia.com
Craigslist Blocks Oodle   —  When I wrote about Oodle a while back, I wondered if the sources of its listings would ever get cranky (Oodle scrapes classified listings all over the web, then creates a vertical search engine). I never thought the first grump would be craigslist - but indeed, the company has asked Oodle to stop scraping its listings. It feels counter to the ...

8. New Twitter AR App Powered by Geotagging API 4 hours ago   permalink

New Twitter AR App Powered by Geotagging API
Readwriteweb / ReadWriteWeb

Some six months ago, we had a small conniption over an augmented reality application for Twitter on the iPhone. With the release of Twitter's geotagging API, however, users were bound to see more and better AR apps for the popular microblogging service. Twitter 360 has just come up on our radar, and it looks like a dream from the outset. But ...

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Sebastian Rupley / GigaOM
New Twitter AR App Powered by Geotagging API SugarSync Rolls Out Android App, Cloud API   —  SugarSync has long been recognized as one of the easiest-to-use synchronization and backup utilities around. Today it rolled out a SugarSync Cloud API for Android developers, as well as a new Android application for local-to-cloud syncing. According to a blog post from SugarSync’s Fuad Rashid: “Now, [...]

9. Reuters Doubles Up On Opinion With Breakingviews Buy, Hires 4 hours ago   permalink

Staci D. Kramer / PaidContent

Updated : It’s hard not to see the symmetry: two deals announced within 24 hours of each other, closed on the same day. McGraw-Hill ( NYSE: MHP ) claims a pre-tax gain of $9 million from selling 80-year-old BusinessWeek to Bloomberg , while financial commentary start-up Breakingviews sells to Thomson Reuters ( NYSE: TRI ) for just under $ ...

10. Jack Dorsey on Square, How it Works & Why it Disrupts 4 hours ago   permalink

Jack Dorsey on Square, How it Works & Why it Disrupts
Om Malik / GigaOM

In February 2009, Jim McKelvey, who’d left the technology business and became a glass blower, lost an order because he couldn’t accept a credit card from a customer who wanted to buy his creation. He called his friend and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The two talked [...]

11. Black Tuesday For Greenspun Media 4 hours ago   permalink

Black Tuesday For Greenspun Media
Thestrippodcast.blogspot.com

I don't know all the details yet, but when I learn from sources today that some of my favorite Vegas writers -- Richard Abowitz, Jeff German, Abigail Goldman, Jeff Simpson (right) and Melissa Arsenuik -- have lost their jobs, I shudder for Las Vegas journalism.

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12. What emerging tech do baby boomers like and demand? 5 hours ago   permalink

What emerging tech do baby boomers like and demand?
Blog.seattlepi.com

They represent a huge market. They'll soon make up one-third of the U.S. population. And they're not the first group you might think of when you think about technology innovation.

13. Help Grok Pivot, A Novel Approach to Search Interface 6 hours ago   permalink

Help Grok Pivot, A Novel Approach to Search Interface
Fmpub.net / John Battelle

Microsoft has been kind enough to give me a limited number of invitations for readers of Searchblog to grok Pivot, which I wrote about here last week. In that post I promised to grok Pivot, then report back more here. Alas, Pivot is currently Windows only, and - alas...

14. Ballmer portait in 'blue screen of death' mosaic 7 hours ago   permalink

Ballmer portait in 'blue screen of death' mosaic
Blog.seattlepi.com

Spotted this on Fake Steve Jobs as I was headed out of the office. Had to post for all to enjoy. It's a portrait of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, but it's a mosaic of a bunch of computers showing the infamous "blue screen of death."

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Www.fakesteve.net
Ballmer portait in 'blue screen of death' mosaic Ballmer portrait done in Windows fail screens   —  This is actually quite astounding. Dear Reader Fraser has created a mosaic using 80 random Windows crash shots to portray Uncle Fester. Below is a detail of the tongue. Click on both to see them in greater detail. The full file is really amazing — we hope to make it available as a download soon so that you can print it out, frame it, give ...

15. Positively Social: Blogging & Tweeting with AIDS/HIV 6 hours ago   permalink

Positively Social: Blogging & Tweeting with AIDS/HIV
Readwriteweb / ReadWriteWeb

Through the bravery and efforts of people such as our good friend Drew Olanoff and the LIVESTRONG campaign, many social media users are much more aware of cancer and what this disease does to the body, mind, soul and community. Today, on World AIDS Day, we'd like to direct your attention to a few folks on the social web who are facing lives with ...

16. How Startup Companies Can Change the World 7 hours ago   permalink

How Startup Companies Can Change the World
Readwriteweb / ReadWriteWeb

While startup companies are often asked about their monetization and member strategies, it's rare that they're asked how they plan on changing the world. At today's Supernova Conference in San Francisco, speakers attacked the subject of social chance and how it applies to business models, technological expertise and mass distribution. Sponsor ...

17. John Byrne to Navigate the Stormy Media Seas 8 hours ago   permalink

John Byrne to Navigate the Stormy Media Seas
Www.foliomag.com

It’s been only a week since BusinessWeek executive editor/BusinessWeek.com editor John Byrne confirmed the rumors and announced his resignation from the magazine, but already has revealed details about his new media venture, called C-Change Media. Byrne [pictured] has launched a Blogspot account about it, for which he conducted an interview ...

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18. Michael Jackson tops Web's search charts in 2009 9 hours ago   permalink

Blog.seattlepi.com

The Associated Press reports: SAN FRANCISCO – Michael Jackson's stunning death made him the Internet's biggest star this year. The quest to find out what happened to Jackson in his final hours on June 25 and celebrate his legacy elevated the late entertainer to the top of the Internet's search charts for 2009. On Yahoo, it ended singer ...

19. Kid-friendly headphones 10 hours ago   permalink

Kid-friendly headphones
Reviews.cnet.com

As MP3 players become more popular, the age at which a child is introduced to them continually decreases. And finding appropriate headphones for youngsters presents a few unique challenges.

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20. Congrats to Ushahidi TED Fellows! 11 hours ago   permalink

Justinmassa / NetSquared

Today, TED announced their 2010 Senior Fellows - and to our surprise and delight two representatives from N2Y3 winner Ushahidi are on the list. Congratulations to Erik Hersman and Juliana Rotich (and the entire Ushahidi team) on this honor. Below are links to the places where you'll find Ushahidi on the N2 site: -Ushahidi's original Project ...