The Change your number functionality, as spotted today by Boy Genius Report, is great news for users like me. Unfortunately, it will cost you to change it. There's a one-time $10 fee, which in my mind is well worth it. Best of all, Google Voice will activate your new number right away and still keep your old one active and forwarding to the new one for three months.

What's also nice is that in picking your new number, you can search by area code and by a word that you want your number to contain. So for example if I search for area code 408 and the word tuna, I can get a 408 number that ends in 8862 (T-U-N-A on a keypad).

Here are the details:

There is a $10 one-time fee to change your Google Voice number. Here is how it works:

• Pick a new number in the area codes we have.
• Pay $10 with Google Checkout, using your credit card.
• Your new number becomes active right away.
• Calls to your old number will keep coming to your Google Voice account for three months, so you have time to tell everyone about your new number.

We're still waiting on number portability (the ability to use your existing numbers as Google Voice numbers), but this is a nice start.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

So Cassetica sued in federal court, alleging a number of causes of action, including violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 USC 1030 et seq. (CFAA). CSC moved to dismiss pursuant to FRCP 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. The court granted the motion, finding that Cassetica did not plead either damage or loss as required by the CFAA.

What the CFAA requires

Interpreting the CFAA differently that at least one other judge in the Northern District of Illinois has (cf. Garelli Wong & Assoc. v. Nichols, 551 F.Supp.2d 704 (N.D.Ill. 2008)), Judge Kendall held that Cassetica was required to plead either damage or loss as such terms are defined in the CFAA. (In Garelli Wong, the court held that both damage and loss must be pled.)

Under the CFAA, damage is defined as any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information. Loss is defined as any reasonable cost to any victim, including the cost of responding to an offense, conducting a damage assessment, and restoring the data, program, system, or information to its condition prior to the offense, and any revenue lost, cost incurred, or other consequential damages incurred because of interruption of service.

Insufficient damage allegations

The bare allegations of damage in the complaint were not enough. The court found that Cassetica did not allege any facts that would plausibly suggest that the software downloads authorized or not caused a diminution in the computers or usability of [Cassetica's] computerized data. The court went on to observe that [c]ritically absent from the Complaint are allegations that CSC's downloads resulted in lost data, the inability to offer downloads to its customers, or that the downloads affected the availability of the software.

Insufficient loss allegations

Cassetica's complaint also failed to plead loss. The allegations primarily dealt with the lost fees Cassetica would have received had the alleged unauthorized downloading not taken place. Because Cassetica did not allege that it lost revenues as a result of an interruption in service caused by CSC, its claim for lost revenue fell outside the CFAA's definition of loss.

Download picture courtesy Flickr user soren_nb under this Creative Commons license.

The TOSBack.org site was, in part, an outgrowth of Facebook's change in its service agreement in February that seemingly allowed the company to use its members' content forever. Facebook changed its terms after an internet revolution of sorts.

The new tracker, chronicling 44 internet companies, shows terms of service agreements side by side with older and new versions, and highlights what is new.

The companies include Facebook, Google,Wordpress, Data.gov, YouTube, Apple, GoDaddy and, among others, eBay.

See Also:

• Experts Say MySpace Suicide Indictment Sets Scary' Legal
• AT&T, Comcast Deny RIAA Three-Strikes' Participation
• Comcast Deflects User's Questions - Updated
• AT&T Revokes Right to Disconnect Based on Political Speech
• Does Your ISP Sell Your Internet History? Help 27B Investigate
• Adware Maker Says Facebook Security Warning False and

I've been staring at a project in my backyard for a few weeks. Staring hasn't gotten it done. So I figured I'd see what it would cost to have these guys do it.

I called them. 10 minutes later the guy came by. He was down the street on another job. We walked out back. I told him what I needed done. He looked around for 20 seconds and said $300. I said deal.

That's it. No proposal. No I'll get back to you tomorrow. No Let me see how much the materials will cost and I'll drop an estimate in your mailbox next week.

Just $300. Deal. When can you start? Wednesday. How long will it take? A few hours for a few guys.

He knows his business. I know what my time is worth. End of transaction. It was so damn refreshing.

I know everything can't be done like this, but often it seems like we've slid down a path of formality with so many things that really don't need it. Extensive contracts, delays, red tape, precise cost estimates based on precise amounts of materials, let me think about it and I'll get back to you, etc. Essential? Sometimes yes, but most of the time probably not.

I remember the tail end of our time as a web design company. When we started we did 20 page proposals. I remember pulling all nighters getting a proposal ready. Pages and pages of stuff. What a waste of time.

Towards the end we were doing one page proposals. It didn't seem to matter. We were going to get the job or we weren't. Over six years I never saw a connection between length and detail of proposal and winning a job.

Same thing with contracts. Sometime we hire an outside contractor or specialist to give us a hand on a project. Our contractor agreement used to be 8 pages long. Lawyers wrote it. Our current contractor agreement is one page long. I wrote it then showed it to our lawyers. They said it was fine. Done.

I know it seems like a stretch to compare lessons from a door flyer for a small landscaping job to 10 page legal contracts for 3 month long expensive web design projects. But maybe it isn't.

The legal brouhaha concerns the court's position (.pdf) that drunk drivers have the right to examine the evidence against them. But the company that supplies the state with breath-testing machines, CMI of Kentucky, isn't forking over the code and is declaring it a trade secret threatening thousands of DUI convictions.

Princeton computer science whiz Ed Felten and others point out the conundrum.

The problem is illustrated nicely by a contradiction in the arguments that CMI and the state are making. On the one hand, they argue that the machine's source code contains valuable trade secrets I'll call them the 'secret sauce' and that CMI's business would be substantially harmed if its competitors learned about the secret sauce, Felten writes on the Freedom to Tinker blog. On the other hand, they argue that there is no need to examine the source code because it operates straightforwardly, just reading values from some sensors and doing simple calculations to derive a blood alcohol estimate.

The state and CMI are involved in a separate legal flap about whether the maker of the Intoxilyzer 5000EN should turn over the code to the state.

Still, internet security guru Eric Rescorla points out another problem: that an examination of the source code may not help determine whether the machines are reliable.

Stepping up a level, it's not clear what our policy should be about how to treat evidence from software-based systems; all software contains bugs of one kind or another (and we haven't even gotten to security vulnerabilities yet). If that's going to mean that all software-based systems are useless for evidentiary purposes, the world is going to get odd pretty fast, he writes on Educated Guesswork.

What's more, an analysis of the source code of the Draeger Alcotest used in New Jersey found frightening software errors as well. But that state's high court last year ruled against challenges questioning the machines' veracity.

Despite the clear errors in the machine, Evan Levow, a New Jersey drunken-driving defense attorney said in a telephone interview, the Supreme Court in New Jersey found the Alcotest to be reliable.

Good news. My quibble: "Except where otherwise noted" seems a little vague to cover the fact users already grant a potentially broader license (i.e., if the CC license prohibits commercial use) to Facebook when they sign up.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to visit Zappos and get a tour and talk with some of their executives, including Tony Hsieh, CEO.

Up until now most of what I knew about Zappos was that they had a lot of people on Twitter (434 of their 1,500 employees are on Twitter with more joining every day).

I thought I was going to Zappos to study how Zappos uses social media and get an interview about that for Building43, the community Rocky and I are building for people who are fanatical about the Internet.

But within 10 minutes of walking in the front door I realized that there's a lot more to Zappos than that they get Twitter. More on that later, because Tim O'Reilly demonstrates some of Silicon Valley's worst beliefs about Twitter when his conferences advertise learn the secrets of building 100,000 + followers. Zappos does NOT believe that is the goal of Twitter, more on that later in this post. Aside: if you want to attend a Twitter Conference that focuses on real business value and community engagement, come to 140: The Twitter Conference.

Before we even got to the front door tons of employees said hello. That's weird, doesn't happen at most companies, believe it or not. And the way they greeted each other told me something else was up here.

Then when we got into the front lobby we were warming greeted again, and then as we looked around, we saw this wasn't going to be a normal visit to a normal company. There was a book store with books free for the taking. There was a popcorn machine. A Dance Dance Revolution machine. A hall of fame board for employees who had pushed reply to all too quickly. And a video display that showed off how many sales were made yesterday. I had never been in a corporate lobby like this before.

Then I hooked onto a tour given by Zappos' Mayor, Jerry Tidmor. Oh, yeah, everyone has weird titles. Executives are called monkeys. One employee's title was, simply, fred. Causes him a lot of fun when he tries to get a badge at conferences.

Along the way Jerry showed us office after office that was decked out with some fun weird theme. I had seen some of this at other places like Google and my new employer, Rackspace, but Zappos gets everyone into it. The lawyers' offices even hold the Christmas tree (they have Christmas twice a year at Zappos. Why? Why not?).

In one office they set up a bowling alley. That was a lot of fun for the Rackspace employees who were here for discussions.

They are transparent with all their numbers. All employees know how they are doing and so does the public. The numbers are on a white board on the tour for all to see and take pictures of. This picture is of Jerry standing in front of the board with the up-to-date numbers.

During a lunch session with Zappos monkeys we asked how they handled a recent layoff. We noted that the employees who were laid off were incredibly positive. The answer: they did it in open with everyone understanding the reasons for it. They did it fast and didn't drag their feet. So when they did it they had enough cash to give everyone a good severance package. They said if they had waited to see if business conditions would improve they wouldn't have been able to do that.

Anyway, so what can Silicon Valley learn from Zappos?

1. You don't need to be in San Francisco to build a great company. Zappos actually started in the same building as Craig's List. They moved to Las Vegas because it was cheaper and because they saw they could build a better company. The other half of the company is a warehouse in Kentucky. That's there because that's where UPS is, so they can take your order in the evening and have it on your doorstep the next day.

2. Focus on culture and build something for long term. Tony's first company, Link Exchange, was sold because it wasn't fun anymore, he told me. That's why he focused so much on culture when he got involved with Zappos. I see so many companies who focus on growth and get exactly what they want: an unfun fast growing company that falls apart later.

3. Get rid of assholes. Zappos has a filtering system before, during, and after hiring to make sure they get rid of people who don't fit the culture. That is the nice way of saying they get rid of assholes and they get rid of them quickly. They even pay candidates $2,000 after they go through training if they can admit they don't fit into the culture.

4. Get a coach. Zappos has its own coach. His name is Dr. Vic. He meets with every employee. Takes their picture. Learns what they are about and helps them get their career moving. Plus he writes a blog for everyone else's company.

5. Share with others. Zappos gives tours to everyone to share what they've learned. You can take the tour too, I highly recommend it if you are in Las Vegas. tours@zappos.com will get you a date and a time. Oh, did I mention they pick you up from the airport? And that they carry your bags? And that they are, well, um, nice?

6. Train, train and train some more. Zappos has a whole department that puts together classes. Your pay goes up the more classes you complete. Plus they have all those free books in the lobby.

7. Enable all employees to be spokespeople. Every single new hire at Zappos is asked to start a Twitter account and post a few times to it during training. After that they don't care if you keep it up. Why do they do that? They want to rub it in that EVERYONE in the company is a public spokesperson for Zappos, not just the CEO or PR team.

8. Everyone lives by same rules. During the tour we heard of a new hire that was fired during training for not showing up on time and giving some lip. This was a high level technical person that they really could have used. Silicon Valley companies would put up with that kind of behavior. Not at Zappos. Everyone, from executive recruits on down are expected to live to the same rules.

9. The CEO's office isn't sacrosanct. Tony enouraged us to throw peanut shells on his office floor. Why? That happens every day, we learned, as tours come through. But it's a subtle message that Tony isn't above anyone else in the company and that his door isn't just open, but that you can come in and mess up his work space.

10. Create a welcoming culture. Every department, as we walked in, said hi in a different way. Here's the casual department who waved these little clappy hands at us. Other departments had other kinds of noise makers. The Fashion department took pictures of us while they played music.

11. Everyone is a VIP. Both internally and externally everyone gets the VIP treatment. This means all sorts of little things all across the company. Vendors, when they come to Zappos, get their bags carried. That wins them accounts. In our case we had our tripods and cameras carried and our every need catered to.

12. Create an atmosphere for both goofiness and brilliance. Every conference room was decked out with personal touches. It gets you in the mood for creative discussions. Here Rackspace employees are meeting with Zappos employees and learning more about Zappos. Notice all the weird touches on the table, the walls. It's hard to take yourself too seriously there.

13. Root out hubris and kill it. This is mostly a note to myself, but I know lots of San Francisco companies who this could apply to just as well, too.

14. Follow your employee's and customers' passion. How did Zappos get into clothing? Their customers and employees were passionate about it.

15. Don't be religious about what's working. Having 400 employees on Twitter is clearly working for Zappos but Tony, at one point, told his employees to talk to me about friendfeed. They are always looking for the next idea. By the way, here's everyone who is saying something about Zappos on friendfeed. I love this quote from Forrester's CEO, George Colony (Tony is speaking at the Forrester Conference today): When asked why he was on Twitter, Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO said: People relate to people, not companies.

16. Be religious about taking care of customers. Tony loves telling the story about when they got pizza ordered for them by Zappos help desk (they didn't know who was calling). Every employee is empowered to take care of customers and get their problems solved.

17. Reward greatness. Every employee can give a $50 bonus to any other employee. Does it get misused? Not often and when it does it's easy to solve.

18. Remember most policies are to take care of edge cases. They resist writing new policies at Zappos. When they do write a policy, they make sure it really is needed across the company. Usually policies get killed.

Anyway, there is lots of posts like this one about Zappos and why this company is so interesting. I didn't get it until I went on a tour and saw it for myself. I'm a fan for life. I wish there were more companies like Zappos.

The fact that there isn't tells us something about us. And I don't like what I'm learning.

Back to that quote from the O'Reilly Twitter Camp home page: the goal of a good company as they get on Twitter should NOT be to get more followers. It should be to take care of customers and create an emotional attachment to the company through its people. Zappos gets this at a deep level. Boy do I wish more did.

The Los Angeles authorities said John Schiefer, 27, was the nation's first defendant to plead guilty to wiretapping charges (.pdf) in connection to using botnets.

Schiefer, who went by the online handle "acidstorm," faced as many as 60 years in prison and acknowledged using a botnet to remotely control computers across the United States. Once in control of the computers, the authorities said, (.pdf) his spybot malware allowed him to intercept computer communications. He mined usernames and passwords on accounts such as PayPal and made purchases totaling thousands of dollars without consent.

The authorities said he worked by day as an information security consultant with 3G Communications. After his guilty plea, Schiefer was hired at Mahalo, the so-called "human powered search engine." Its founder, Jason Calacanis wrote that the company failed to realize that the Los Angeles company had hired a man who had pleaded guilty to being a hacker.

Calacanis point out that Mahalo users' data was not breached by Schiefer.

Note to Mahalo Users: John's work is well-supervised. Mahalo follows strict security policies and we don't store any sensitive data anyway. (Even if one of our employees did go off the deep end, the most they would have access to would be your questions and answers on Mahalo Answersnot much damage can be done there since they're all public anyway).

The defendant was among eight individuals indicted or successfully prosecuted in a crack down on black hat hackers who use armies of zombie computers to commit financial fraud, attack web sites with floods of traffic and send spam. The crimes at issue involved more than $20 million in losses, according to the FBI.

The FBI dubbed the eight cases "Operation Bot Roast II" -- the second round of its investigations against botnets, one of the most dangerous threats online today. The first FBI crackdown on botnets was announced in June, 2007.

See Also:

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• Miley Cyrus Hacker Raided by FBI
• Pop Superstar Sting Supports Pentagon Hacker, Condemns U.S. ...
• Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy
• Israeli Hacker Says He Contemplated Suicide
• Miley Cyrus Hacker Used Celebrity MySpace Accounts for Spamming ...
• Guilty Plea: Blind Hacker Admits Harassment, Eavesdropping, Fraud ...
• Hardware Hacker Charged With Selling Cable Modems That Get Free ...
• Security Report: Most PCs Run Outdated, Hacker-Friendly Software ...
• Hacker Reportedly Kidnaps and Tortures Informant, Posts Picture as ...
• Valve Tried to Trick Half Life 2 Hacker Into Fake Job Interview ...
• Hacker Launches Botnet Attack via P2P Software

The orange juice brand was in the midst of launching redesigned packaging when a loud bus of vocal fans who liked the old packaging, thank you very much, raised hell. They liked the iconic picture of a large orange with a straw, making the juice easy to find in the crowded OJ aisle. After their protests drew a flurry of unexpected calls, letters and email complaints, Tropicana announced it would revert to the original packaging.

In an apologia, Tropicana president Neil Campbell said the disconnect was research: What we didn't get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn't something that came out in the research.

When traditional marketing research doesn't include input from passionate fans who love the brand and tell others about it, it risks creating a Tropicana effect.

Tropicana's research may have expertly divided its customers into demographics and "heavy users" vs. "light users," but it probably did not account for vocal, connected and passionate customers who know how to create a Facebook protest group in less than a minute or spread buzz via Twitter hashtags. Had Tropicana had a way to reach out to evangelists, this might not have been a story.

So what does Tropicana have now? Actually, it's pretty good: a second chance. A gift to convert that passion into something tangible. But Tropicana has work to do. There's no blog on their website, which still touts the "fresh new package." There's no official Facebook page. There's no Twitter account. (No, a brief Twitter campaign shirt-tailed to the old presidential campaign doesn't count.) It's a great opportunity to start a network or community for that busload of fans.

Of course, customer evangelists needn't decide everything (that's always the straw-man argument), but you can't ask for their opinion and improve the odds of a $35 million bet if you don't know who they are.

It's really interesting to see what people choose to use to represent them online. The simplest thing is a headshot and I suspect that's what the majority of people use when they are asked to upload a profile picture. That's what Kara Swisher chose (she's the top profile, my most recent follow).

But even with the headshot, some people go for the funny picture, adding some character to their profile. Mike Doughty (second profile) has his head on the table and some sort of box between him and the camera. Stuart Ellman (fifth profile) is dressed as the court jester (probably a halloween pic). Both of those profiles tell us a bit more about those two.

Some choose to use a photo of something or someone else. Lauren (fourth profile) seems to have chosen a family photo of some kind. Howie (sixth profile) has a photo of his friend and Springsteen's guitarist Nils Lofgren. We don't get to see these people's faces, but they are telling us something about them nonetheless.

I've been online since the early 90s and I've gone back and forth on what kind of profile I like to use. But for the past couple years, I've settled on the image that I now try to use everywhere online. It's my online brand and I stumbled on to it accidentally. I thought it might be interesting to share with all of you how that came about and what I learned from it.

In the middle of 2006, Howard Lindzon approached me about getting involved in a web video show he was going to produce called Wallstrip. In the initial incarnation of Wallstrip, there was going to be a daily video talking about the stock of the day, and then there was going to be about a dozen bloggers who would do a short post on what they thought of the stock as an investment idea.

Howard asked me to be one of those dozen bloggers. I thought about it for a while and then agreed to do it. Then, unbekownst to me, he asked an artist friend of his in Phoenix to go on the web, find photos of each of the dozen bloggers, and draw up a sketch that he could use as their Wallstrip avatar. This was mine.

From the minute I saw it, I liked it. It uses my favorite color (green) as the backdrop and the eye color (my eyes are sometimes blue and sometimes green and sometimes something else). It looks like me, but not too much.

So I began to use it a bit here and there around the web as I set up new profiles. But by no means was it the only profile picture I used. For corporate oriented services like LinkedIn, I'd use my Union Square Ventures headshot. For social nets like Facebook, I'd use a regular headshot. I used a photo of me taking a photo on Flickr for a long time.

But then I started to realize that the Wallstrip avatar was becoming my online identity. People would comment about it all the time. Around the time we sold Wallstrip, Howard had his artist friend (her name escapes me, pls Howard leave her name and a link in the comments and I'll update this post) do a real painting of it which I now have in my office at Union Square Ventures. It's a real conversation starter.

So sometime last year, I just decided to go with it everywhere. It's at the top of this blog and everywhere else I have an online identity. And I think that decision is having some important effects.

As I said earlier in this post, it's become my online brand. It's simple, small, and very recognizable. By putting it everywhere that I am online, I've used frequency and reach to power home that the avatar is me. It's become my visual handle and it's also a signature and a sign of authenticity.

But there's also a risk in standardizing on an online identity. Someone could grab that image and use it to pretend to be me. That's a concern and probably one reason why many people choose to change their profile picture/avatar on a regular basis. It hasn't happened to me yet, but I am sure it will and then I don't know what I am going to do about it.

Online identity is a big issue and a big opportunity for entrepreneurs on the web. It seems like Facebook is quickly becoming a major provider of online identity authentication and that's a smart move for them and a good thing for the web as a whole. But there is still a ton of opportunity out there to provide services in and around what Facebook and others are doing. Because online identity is powerful and becoming more intertwined with offline identity every day. My avatar is a good representation of that.

The year 2008 saw the emergence of some great pocket video cameras that are no larger than your mobile phone, inexpensive, they shoot good-looking video and are almost as easy to operate as an iPod - no confusing controls, just a single record button. These pocket camcorder attach to the computer via the USB port and record video in a straight-to-web format perfect for YouTube and other video sharing websites.

If you looking to buy one this holiday season, you have three pocket video cameras to choose from - Flip Video Camcorder, Creative Vado and Kodak Zi6.

Creative Vado Pocket Video Camera ($100)

This has a 2" screen with 2x zoom and 2 GB internal memory perfect for recording upto 2 hours of video (resolution 640480, MPEG4 AVI). Creative Vado can be recharged via USB (similar to iPod or Zune) and includes removable battery. You'll have to separately buy the RCA cable that is required to connect your Vado camera to a TV. Supports both Windows and Mac.

Creative Vado HD Video Camera ($200)

This camera has the same dimensions as the previous one (slightly heavier) and lets you shoot video in High Definition format (resolution 1280720, H.264 AVI).

The internal memory is 8 GB and the HDMI cable in included with Vada HD Camcorder. Read detailed reviews of Vado HD at PC World, PC Magazine and CNET.

Kodak Zi6 Pocket Video Camera ($180)

The Kodak Zi6 features a 2.4" LCD, 2x zoom, records both HD (H.264) & standard video but can also capture still photographs at 3MB resolution. Zi6 only has 128MB of internal memory, so you'll need to buy a separate memory SD Card to record longer home movies.

The Kodak Zi6 does include both A/V and HDMI cables for connecting the camcorder to the television screen. Also include 2 Ni-MH rechargeable battery and charger included. Read Kodak Zi6 reviews at MacWorld, PC Magazine and LaptopMag.

Flip Mino HD Camcorder ($230)

FlipMino HD sports a 1.5" screen and can record up to 60 minutes of video (1280 x720 at 30 frames per second) on its 4 GB internal memory (non expandable). The camera has internal rechargeable battery that can be charged via USB port or the power adapter though you'll have to buy it separately. TV connector cable is included to watch videos on television.

The included software program is compatible with both Mac and Windows and includes basic video editing features with the option of extracting still image frames from the video - the camera itself cannot snap still photos though. Read Flip Mino HD reviews and picture samples at Macworld and PC Magazine.

Pure Digital Flip Ultra Video Camera ($150)

The Flip Ultra video camera carries 2GB of built-in flash memory and can record 60 minutes of video at 640480. The camera has a 1.5" LCD and requires 2 AA batteries that last up to 2.5 hours.

It records video in MPEG-4 AVI format at 30 frames per second. NTSC cable is included with Flip Ultra for connecting the unit to TV though there's no way to expand the memory. Watch video review of Flip Ultra at Macworld and CNET.

Conclusion: I think the Zi6 offers best value for money - you get HD quality video, it has the largest LCD screen, the memory is expandable and Kodak Zi6 is the only pocket video camera that can shoot still photographs. Authors who have used the camera seem impressed by the video quality of Zi6 if there's reasonable light and the camera is held with a steady hand.

Related: Camcorder Buying Guide: NTSC vs PAL Cameras

Pocket Video Cameras - Buying Guide - Digital Inspiration

In 1980, a vacationing Rod Blagojevich camped in front of Richard Nixon's home, with a friend, until the pariah ex-president emerged and this picture was taken. What the hell is wrong with this guy?

As Time Out Chicago writes,

In 1980, most twentysomething men probably pined to bump into one of the Beatles or maybe Bo Derek; Blago wanted the autograph of our nation's most notorious politician.

Freak!

At least the disgraced, bribe-hungry Illinois governor was smart enough not to voluntarily tape his incriminating conversations, as far as anyone knows (unlike Nixon).

Just before he was arrested, Blago told reporters, "Those who feel like they want to sneakily and wear taping devices... I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate. He was pretending to be outraged but in reality was totally turned on, because of his massive boy crush, on Nixon.

Blago later fell in love with John McCain, because he wanted to be a Maverick Reformer too, and hilariously he turned out to be not much of a reformer at all, just like his imaginary boyfriend!

Blago has truly followed in his heroes' footsteps. Now he just needs to give this speech, in front of a crowd of jeering racists.

A note on Boxee blog blames the underpowered Apple TV processor, which just can't handle the demands of Microsoft Silverlight (the platform which Netflix uses to stream videos). But Boxee says it's still working on a solution, so there might be hope for Netflix on the Apple TV yet.

Apple TV users aren't the only ones missing out on Boxee. At the moment Boxeee is limited to Mac and Linux users, but that will be changing soon. Along with the new Netflix features, Boxee has announced a Windows version which has been seeded to a few hundred users. So far there's no word on when a Windows version might arrive, but at least you can rest assured that it is indeed in the works.

In the mean time the new Boxee Netflix features will work just fine on a regular Mac and the update has enough other new features to make it well worth the upgrade. Among the standouts in the latest release are much better Hulu.com support -- you can now login to get your Hulu queue, and playback is much faster -- and some improvements to the YouTube portion of Boxee as well.

The new Boxee YouTube plugin supports the new higher quality videos (where available), which reportedly look pretty good even on that 52" plasma you just dropped a paycheck on.

Other new goodies in the latest version of Boxee include improved plugins for content from CNN, Flickr, Picasa and Apple Movie Trailers, which should all be a bit snappier. There's also new support for the Boston Globe's The Big Picture blog, which makes it easy to get the hi-res photos from the The Big Picture onto your TV.

[Update: I spoke with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen about the Windows version of Boxee and he says that Windows Media Center-capable Boxee is definitely on the roadmap and there's a possibility that Boxee might find a home on XBox. Of course in the case of the XBox, the closed platform means that getting Boxee running would either require Microsoft to open up the XBox or a hack of some kind.

Ronen was also optimistic about getting more content into a Boxee. For instance, the oft-requested HBO integration isn't possible right now because HBO doesn't offer its shows online. But Ronen believes that the HBOs and other holdouts from the world of online video will eventually give in. "User are hungry for content, Rosen says, "and they're going to get that content whether its from Pirate Bay or the (legitimate) source." Eventually, he believes, the content producers will wake up and tap into the online market.]

See Also:

• Hack Your Apple TV With Boxee - Wired How
• Hack Apple TV With a Thumb Drive, Set It Free
• YouTube Tests Out High Quality, Stereo Surround Videos

A baby monitor iPhone app:

Monitor your sleeping baby with this iPhone app. Simply place the iPhone near your sleeping baby, if it detects noise, it places a phone call to the number of your choice, you can then listen in for activity from your baby. Great for when you are on the go or traveling, no need to pack your regular baby monitor. One feature that makes this application exceptional is that the monitor has unlimited range!

Even use it to monitor when older kids arrive home from school, etc. The applications are unlimited. It also will detect if your baby picks up the phone. Great for curious toddlers that wake up from their nap without making noise. A fantastic value at only 99 cents.

When you put this scan up on a website, search engines haven't been able to index any of the content of your documents because it didn't recognize the text as text until now.

Google has a new system that scans Acrobat PDFs on the web for words using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Similar to its process for using OCR to detect words in PDFs that have already been OCR processed, the new system will do the same for scanned documents posted online that haven't yet undergone OCR.

If you have scanned PDFs and are interested in having them converted into text, you can upload the images to your website and take advantage of this service.

Simply follow the instructions for how to use Google OCR from the Digital Inspiration website:

Create a folder in your website (say abc.com/pdf) and upload all the PDF images to that folder. Now create a public web page that links to all the PDF files. Wait for the Google bots to spider your stuff.

Once done, type the query site:abc.com/pdf filetype:pdf [into Google] to see the PDF documents as HTML.

Lifehacker recommends using Google's Webmaster Tools to reign in what gets scanned and indexed on your site, although you should assume anything you put online can be found by those looking for it.

This is a really terrific way to get rid of paper clutter in your work space and in your home since you can now see the words in your scanned documents.

But a lot of what Thomson said didn't quite add up, and I still reckon that wsj.com is going to go free eventually -- although not nearly as quickly as I anticipated when Murdoch first bought it.

For instance: Thomson tried to paint a picture of non-subscribing visitors to the WSJ's website being so attracted by the headlines on premium stories that they end up subscribing. He said that the website is up to 30 million uniques -- "a doubling of the audience from last year, and a great free funnel of the readers to premium content". (If you think that number is high, so do I, and so does Thomson: he admitted that web metrics are "problematic".)

Thomson admitted that the website's ad revenue is growing much more slowly than its visitor count, and he didn't even mention what the growth rates are in paid subscriptions on the website.

And later on, Thomson talked about "how promiscuous web readers are" -- implicitly admitting that just because someone is reading a free story about the yen, to use his example, they're not going to jump through all the hoops needed to pay money to read a premium story on the recapitalization of Japanese banks.

Thomson also talked about how his decision to allow Dow Jones's newswire content to appear for free on his Chinese-language website has sparked 400% growth rates there.

Thomson's most interesting datapoint, for me, was when he was asked about the impact of consolidation in the financial-services industry on subcription revenues. He replied that there's no doubt that if you're a Dow Jones sales person phoning up banks and trying to get them to subscribe to products, you're not in a great place right now. At the same time, he said, people who got fired from a place like Dow Jones haven't disappeared, and are likely to strike out on their own in one form or another. They won't necessarily be reached by a human salesperson, but if and when they find their own way to Dow Jones, they will still subscribe to content.

But aren't individual subscription rates much lower than corporate rates? No, said Thomson, not on a per-person basis. If you can get a company's worth of people to subscribe at individual rates, you'll make more money than if you just sell a single corporate subscription. The question, of course, is how many individuals, after being fired from a big bank, will still do that.

My feeling is that Thomson was entirely right when he said that commentary had become commoditized, and that therefore you couldn't charge for it; he also said the same thing about most news. But what he calls "specialized content" is to a large degree just taking commoditized news, and adding the kind of value that comes from informed commentators. Yes, there are things which Dow Jones the WSJ can do and no one else can do in quite the same way -- Thomson was interesting when he started talking about selling content on the subject of India to Japan, for instance. And in a world where Dow Jones is looking to individual subscriptions to make up the losses from corporate subscriptions, it's going to be very difficult for them to start slashing those individual subscription rates to zero.

But I suspect that eventually the WSJ will do the math and work out that the best way to monetize and grow its large number of unique visitors is to maximize the time they spend on the site. And the best way to do that is to go free.

MP4 / Subscribe for Free

Xignite uses an on-demand model to serve clients like ING, Goodyear, and McDonald's and provide market quotes, news, corporate data, industry information, analytics, tools and more. Until recently, much of the data that Xignite collects and organizes was otherwise scattered, raw or only available in bulk form. With their services, Xignite is leading the way for service-oriented business applications.

I had the opportunity to meet with Stephane Dubois, the CEO and Founder of Xignite, and discuss Xignite's goals, special features and Splice, their new platform for creating web services mashups. (And, I don't need to remind you how excited I get about mashups). Using the Splice visual designer, developers can create a mashup in just 60 seconds by dragging and dropping objects without ever having to write code.

A special thanks to Sony for letting me use their amazing TG1 HD camcorder, without which none of the Web 2.0 Expo videos would have been possible. You can watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4 directly.

The Brainstorm

Save The Date

The Invitation

Pre-Press

Finished Product

Custom Stamps

The Event

The Photobooth

The Gifts

The Ring

Finally, Something Cool From Noby

Phew

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Why? I asked.

Well, my current company isnt allowing me to do what I want to do, and there are lots of people telling me that there is opportunity out there.

Sounds a lot like the advice so many people got before heading out to California to mine gold.

We continued to talk, and I began to get a picture of what her current job situation sounded like. Tell me if this sounds familiar:

• In order to get all your work done you eat at your desk;
• In order to finish your work you take work home, and spend hours at home working;
• You love what you do; you just often feel unappreciated at work (because they just take for granted how hard you work);
• You think that if you quit they will be in a bind, and realize how valuable you really are;
• and so on.

On the other hand, so many people that I talk to say to me, Micah you never work. You are always on IM, twitter, and the like. When do you get stuff done?

And, I always respond the same way:

Why are you so interested in how much I work rather than how much I produce?

Isnt that really what matters?

Being busy doesnt make one more effective. Working constantly doesnt make someone a better employee.

Only production does.

For some, that means extra time on projects. For others, that working in spurts of high productivity.

But, at the end of the day, production is all that matters.

The statement Time is Money, is one of my least favorites. Time is not money. Production is.

As a startup or new business owner your focus should be solely on production.

Hire people that produce, not people that work.

Spend your time on efforts that lead to production rather than work.

At the end of the day, investment doesnt come to those that are busy.

Success only comes to those that can produce.

So what did my friend decide? I dunno. I know she will make the right decision, but I am unsure what that decision will be. I am excited to hear though

In dim light, your brain tells the muscles to open your pupils up wide, and you can see better in the dark (although it takes the rest of your optical system a few minutes to adjust its sensitivity to compensate, and human night vision is pretty lousy compared to that of many other animals). When you get your eyes checked, the ophthalmologist's annoying eyedrops trick your eye muscles into opening the pupils all the way, so that the coloured part of your irises almost vanish around the edges. You might notice then that even with glasses on, you can't focus properly, or read a book or computer screen.

Building lenses to work like the human eye

Camera lens designers take many cues from eyes, and one of the main ones is having an iris (the lens diaphragm) inside the lens that can open or close to let more or less light through. Instead of using muscles and tissues, camera lens diaphragms have a set of thin, overlapping pieces of metal known as aperture blades, and instead of the pupil, the opening in the middle is the aperture:

There are seven metal diaphragm blades in this lens, which open and close the central aperture. Other lenses may have more or (rarely) fewer blades, and in some designs the edges of the blades might be curved so the aperture is more like a circle than a straight-edged polygon.

As in the human eye, the aperture lets the photographer (or the camera's exposure computer) increase or reduce the amount of the light that gets through to the film or sensor at the back of the camera body. But why would you want to do that? Why not let in as much light as possible all the time?

Depth of field, speed, and sensitivity

There are three main reasons to vary the lens aperture:

• To control the depth of field (also known as the depth of focus) of the image.
• To permit shooting at either a faster or slower shutter speed.
• To use greater or lesser sensitivity (often called "ISO") for your film or digital sensor.

Depth of field refers to how much of a photograph is in focus, like this:

On the bottom left, an image with little (shallow) depth of field, using a wide aperture (see the lens on top left). On the bottom right, the same shot with greater (deep) depth of field, using a small aperture (see the lens on top right).

In both photographs, the laptop closest to the camera is in focus. With little depth of field (on the left), everything in the background is blurry. With more depth of field (on the right), not only can you see the laptop in focus, you can also see my sock, a book on the bed, and the bedroom dressers in the background, also largely in focus. If you closely, you can even see that the reflections in the screen of the laptop are blurry on the left, but sharper on the right.

The physics of light rays, and the way they refract and diffract inside lenses and apertures, means that when the aperture is really small, the resulting image has greater depth of fieldjust like your eyes on a sunny day. (A pinhole camera, which has an extremely tiny aperture, offers such great depth of field that it doesn't need a lens at all.)

And when the aperture is really large, the depth of field is shallower, just like when you get eyedrops at the ophthalmologist's officeand can't even read a newspaper because it's so blurry. So depending on how much of your image you want in focus, you're going to set the aperture differently. For a portrait with a nice soft background, you'll choose a large aperture. For an image where both nearby and distant objects need to be in focus, you'll choose a small aperture:

Left, large aperture, shallow focus. Right, small aperture, deep focus.

Of course there's a tradeoff. The smaller the aperture of the lens, the less light gets through, and so either:

• You'll have to expose the film or sensor longer to get the same amount of light on it, or...
• You'll have to increase the sensor sensitivity (or use faster film) to collect the light more efficiently.

But that can work to your advantage too, even ignoring depth of field:

• If you're photographing fast-moving things (sports, cars, kids, aircraft, birds in flight) or otherwise want to freeze the action, use a large aperture so you can use a fast shutter speed, since you're letting in more light.
• If you want to minimize film grain or sensor noise, use a large aperture with lower sensor sensitivity or slower, more fine-grained film.
• If you want a long exposure (to make the water in a waterfall look soft, or to blur motion so it looks like motion, or to get streaks of light from cars driving at night), use a small aperture to let in less light so you can use a slower shutter speed.
• If it's really, really bright out (a sunny day on a snowy ski hill or sandy beach), use a small aperture to avoid overloading the sensor or film.

Small and large apertures now make sense, because they give you a lot of creative control over your images, and let you adjust your picture-taking to your subject, the light, and your photographic conditions. But why are the numbers that photographers use for them, like f/1.8 and f/5.6 and f/22, so strange? What do those numbers mean, and why do the larger numbers represent smaller apertures?

What is an f-stop?

The specific setting of a lens aperture at any time is called its f-stop. (We'll see why below.) On almost all modern cameras, including big single-lens reflex (SLR) models, you adjust the f-stop with buttons or control dials, but for most of the 20th century, photographers did so by adjusting the aperture ring on the body of the lens. Many lenses still include an aperture ring for compatibility with older cameras:

The aperture ring on my 50 mm lens here is set to f/8 (the "8" below the white dot), about midway through its range.

The f-stops available range from small numbers (like 1.8 or 2.8 or 3.5) to large (like 16 or 22 or 32). Counterintuitively, the small numbers represent large apertures (on this lens, f/1.8 is wide open and lets in the most light, for instance), while the large numbers are small apertures (f/22 is the smallest aperture, letting in the least light).

To show why, we'll do some really simple math. First, here's a diagram of where the aperture might be in a typical camera lens with multiple glass elements in it:

A lens looked at two ways: On the left, looking straight into the front, with the aperture open to a width of 25 mm. On the right, a cross-section of the side (with its multiple glass lens elements), with the lens attached to the camera, again with the aperture open to 25 mm, and showing this lens's focal length of 50 mm.

The f-stop setting of a lens is the ratio between the diameter of the aperture and the focal length of the lens:

Another way to write that is aperture diameter : focal length. In this example, we have 25 mm aperture : 50 mm focal length, which is 1 : 2. Another way to say it is that the aperture is (in this case) half the focal length, or f/2. A photographer would pronounce that "eff-two." Since the widest aperture of a lens is important to know, lenses are usually specified that way, so you could buy a lens labelled as a 50 mm f/2 or 50 mm 1:2 lens.

Yet another way to think of it is that it would take two apertures of that width to equal the focal length of the lens.

Let's look at a bunch of other f-stops for my lens:

My 50 mm lens set to apertures of (from left to right) f/1.8, f/4, f/8, and f/16.

At f/1.8, the aperture is about 27.8 mm across, and it would take 1.8 of them to equal the focal length of the lens. At f/4, you'd need four of the 12¹/₂ mm apertures to equal the focal length. At f/8, you'd need eight 6¹/₄ mm apertures to equal the focal length. At f/16, you'd need 16, since the aperture is only 3¹/₈ mm across.

But why isn't the lens aperture ring simply marked with those diameters? Why doesn't it read 27.78, 17.86, 12.5, 8.93, 6.25, 4.55, 3.125, 2.27 instead of 1.8, 2.8, 4, 8, 11, 16, 22? There's a good reason, and it's the clever part.

F-numbers work for any lens, however you measure it

The cool thing is when you start to use different lenses, or different cameras. For a given amount of light entering a lens, a particular f-stop always lets the same amount of light through to the sensor or filmand it doesn't matter what focal length the lens is or what kind of camera you're using!

Here's why that's important. We already know that when a 50 mm lens is set at f/2, the aperture is open 25 mm (see my diagram above). But what about a 200 mm telephoto lens (four times the focal length)? To be open to f/2, that lens's aperture would have to be open half that lens's focal length, an opening 100 mm in diameter (four times as wide). And a 24 mm wide-angle lens? At f/2, its aperture is open only 12 mm, or half its focal length.

So if the apertures of every lens were labeled with their actual widths, every lens would be different. The aperture ring on a 200 mm lens might read:

100.00, 71.42, 50.00, 35.71, 25.00, 18.18...

But a 24 mm lens would be:

12.00, 8.57, 6.00, 4.29, 3.00, 2.18...

Even worse, to take a photo of the same scene under the same lighting conditions, you'd set the 200 mm lens to aperture 35.71, but set the 24 mm lens to aperture 4.29both to get exactly the same amount of light to your film or sensor. If you think f-stops are confusing now, imagine how confusing that would get.

Instead, I know that a 200 mm lens set to f/5.6 lets through the same amount of light as a 24 mm lens set to f/5.6, and the same as a 50 mm lens set to f/5.6. I even know that if I could get myself an 8 mm fisheye lens, or a 600 mm super-telephoto, those lenses would also let through the same amount of light at f/5.6. For a given brightness of a scene, any lens set to the same f-stop can use the same shutter speed and sensitivity to get a proper exposure.

That's why f-stops are a good way to measure aperture, and why we put up with having big numbers mean small openings. But there's one last thing.

Why those particular aperture and shutter stops?

Okay, so if we're going to use f-numbers, why aren't they a more sensible sequence, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... or at least 2, 4, 8, 16, 32...? Why those weird ones in the middle, like 2.8 and 5.6 and 11?

That's because each stop on the aperture ring doubles the amount of light hitting the focal plane, if you're opening it wider, or cuts it in half, if you're closing it down. (Most of the time, anywaysometimes the widest aperture doesn't exactly double the light from the next-widest, just because the lens isn't designed to open any wider. So my lens opens to f/1.8 instead of f/1.4.)

Imagine your lens is set to f/5.6 and the light meter says a proper exposure is 1/250th of a second. You can open the lens up one stop, to f/4, and twice as much light gets through. So you can make the shutter speed twice as fast, 1/500th of a second, and still get the right exposure.

This explains why the shutter settings are the way they are too, as shown on the shutter speed dials of older cameras. Click your lens aperture ring one stop wider (f/5.6 to f/4), and you can click the shutter speed ring one stop too, to the next faster speed (from 1/250th of a second to 1/500th).

Click the shutter speed four stops slower (say, from 1/1000th of a second to 1/60th of a second), and you need to close the aperture of the lens four stops narrower (from f/4 to f/16) to get the same exposure.

There's a little bit of convention and standardization in all those numbers. Each f-stop, letting in twice the light, represents an increase in diameter of a factor of the square root of 2 (written as ), which is about 1.4142. Multiply 1.4142 by itself and you get 2. Multiply that by 1.4142 again and you get 2.8284. Multiply that by 1.4142 and you get 4. Multiply that by 1.4142 and you get 5.6568. Round that series out and you get:

1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22...

Look familiar?

The same for shutter speed numbers, but there it's even simpler. Take a one second exposure. To get half the light, make it 1/2 second. Half that is 1/4, then 1/8th of a second, then 1/16 (conventionally abbreviated to 1/15), then 1/32 (or 1/30, which is close enough for photographic tolerances), 1/64 (or 1/60), 1/128 (close to 1/125th), and so on. So your shutter speed dial reads:

1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000...

My guess is, if history were skewed and photography had been invented after digital computers, things would be different. We've all gotten used to powers of two (like 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc.), so we'd have those kinds of numbers on the shutter speed dial and on our digital camera LCD screens instead of the rounder numbers we see now.

Read more

Some useful resources:

• Wikipedia: The Science of Photography
• Wikipedia: F-number
• Understanding Camera Lenses
• Controlling Light

www.emergenow.com

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, Emerging Solutions was recently named to Microsoft's crme de la crme group of partners the 2008 Microsoft Dynamics Presidents Club! My best congratulations to all of my fellow colleagues in the Microsoft Consulting Group.

If you're looking for a reliable partner to help you with your business and technology needs, please visit the Emerging Solutions Contact Us page.

For more details about this prestigious status, see the press release below.

Microsoft Honors Emerging Solutions for Outstanding Customer Commitment and Sales Achievement

Chicago, IL - July 10, 2008 - Emerging Solutions has been named to the 2008 Microsoft Dynamics President's Club receiving recognition from Microsoft Corp. for its dedicated commitment to customers. This honor reflects the company's success in extending the Microsoft Dynamics platform to drive business advantages in companies worldwide.

This recognition came during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 in Houston. The elite club recognizes the top 5 percent of Microsoft Business Solutions partners worldwide and their constant dedication to delivering solutions that meet their customers' unique needs, active pursuit of product and technological advancement, and impressive sales performance.

Microsoft is proud to congratulate Emerging Solutions on being named to this year's Microsoft Dynamics President's Club, said Doug Kennedy, vice president, Microsoft Dynamics Partners. Emerging Solutions not only has demonstrated a high level of product expertise, but also has provided a superior level of service and commitment to our Microsoft Dynamics customers, ultimately contributing to the overall success of Microsoft Dynamics and companies worldwide.

We draw on a unique combination of competencies in Microsoft Dynamics. Our comprehensive coverage of these solutions and unique processes allow our consultants to better understand customer business needs and how technologies fit into the big picture of an organization. We will continue to work closely with Microsoft and the Dynamics suite of products to provide leading-edge solutions for our customers, said Don Sweeney, Emerging Solutions Co-Founder and Microsoft Practice Lead.

With applications experts focused in Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX, CRM and SL, Emerging Solutions' consultants provide the necessary guidance not only in individual application strategy and deployment, but also in complete rollout and integration of these diverse solutions.

About Emerging Solutions
Emerging Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is an established professional services firm that helps global and mid-market firms maximize the benefits of business applications through leading technology. We provide strategic guidance, implementation and innovative integration solutions for business and technology applications from leading software vendors. For more information visit Emerging Solutions at www.emergenow.com.

Why would Facebook be deploying secure connections? Perhaps it just wants to secure the transmission of user passwords. But as Nick O'Neill speculates, the social network is probably prepping for the release of its upcoming payments system for developers who want to collect money from their applications' users.

In late March, Dave Morin confirmed at a Snap Summit that the system would be rolled out within 180 days. And with the F8 developer conference just one and a half weeks away, it's a safe bet that the payments system will be formally released then (probably in conjunction with Facebook Connect). Just how it will change the landscape of Facebook applications, which rely primarily on advertising revenue, has yet to be seen.

Photo credit: Joshua Backer

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Kodak has introduced Theatre HD Player, a WiFi-enabled black box that connects to your HDTV, displays images and other multimedia content, and links directly to Kodak Gallery, the company's online photo-sharing service.

This isn't an Apple TV-killer, but it's another sign that companies are waking up to Internet TV.

Features:

• View your pictures and video on your HDTV
• Access photos from your PC, camera, and online photo sharing sites
• Wirelessly send and receive pictures with Kodak's Picture Mail feature
• Create slideshows to your favorite songs
• Access Internet Radio, podcasts and other web content on your HDTV

The Theatre HD Player will retail for $299.99 and is scheduled to launch in September.

1. get excited
2. have an epiphany of sorts
3. can explain the value of your product to others easily
   

• "The Windows Moment" happened for me in the 80s when I realized I could cut and paste information from one program into another, and that I could leave one application open all the time.
  
• "The Blackberry Moment" happened for me when I realized that email was actually pushed--rather than pulled--to the device AND that I could simply forward my email to the device.
• "The GMAIL Moment" happened for me when I realized that I would never have to delete or archive email again, and that a search index was built on the fly (as opposed to say Eudora which I used for years and which had VERY slow search).
  
• "The Linkedin Moment" happened for me when I realized that I could search for people with PHP skill, in Los Angeles, and that worked at Shopzilla or Yahoo (i.e. local companies). I never liked headhunters, and I had realized LinkedIn's value: you could hire folks quickly and easily.
  
• "The Silicon Alley Reporter Moment" happened for me when we created the Silicon Alley 100 list. At that moment we realized people would have no choice but pay attention to us.
  
• "The blog/Weblogs, Inc. Moment" happened for me when I realized you could remove 70% of the cost of traditional publishing by NOT having editors, office space, a printer, or stamps. Before this I ran a magazine (Silicon Alley Reporter--wish it had a better wikipedia page) and so I couldn't understand a publishing business without editors. Really glad I had that moment. :-)

So I choose to ignore and be an optimist. Eddie is an optimist as well , but has been linking to some great stuff the last week so go check it out.

I rarely get negative on this blog for the opportunity train is just too vast. That said, there have been fewer and fewer new ideas since late January, when I took many trend lumps and went light on stocks.

Now we are in June and there are even fewer exciting trend ideas than January and the market mood is getting angrier, more agitated and restless.

I am not smart enough to describe all the events that are creating what Todd thinks is a meltdown possibility , but once in a while it's good to remind yourself that

Since Tiger is not golfing anymore this year, I am in as negative a mood as I have been in a while, so deal with it.

It's a good read too. Todd is a great writer.

Here is one of our first Wallstrip interviews and it's with Toddo':

StickerGiant has just announced that they are hosting a laptop stickers contest.

The contest is simple. Take a picture of your laptop with stickers, (it should have stickers on it) upload it to Flickr, tag it stickergiant The contest will be judged by Micah Baldwin our celebrity judge. Entrants will be judged on the diversity and authenticity of the sticker cloud on the laptop.

The winner gets a custom sticker job for free from StickerGiant, we'll print your stickers, gratis! The contest ends when we get 25 entries.

photo by Josh Bancroft

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Continue reading Mac Automation: take and sync pictures to Apple TV

UPDATE: The Google News example is reproduced here instead. You're reading this in RSS or email a day after I posted it because this post was so large it broke my Feedburner feed. Too much content breaks the web there you have it. Keep reading for my original argument.

If you've made it this far, you may have noticed the absence of blogs from the sources. So this is far from a representative sample of all of the websites that published a version of this news story.

Let's check out Techmeme, again reproduced in its entirety, because seeing is disbelieving:

Yahoo!:

Yahoo! Issues Statement in Response to Microsoft SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 03, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company issued the following statement today in response to Microsoft Corporation's announcement that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo!:

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: TechCrunch, StepForth SEO News Blog, BBC NEWS, Forbes, I4U News, VoIP Blog, Geek News Central, Furrier.org, Tech Trader Daily, LiveSide, Paul Kedrosky's and Geek Speaker

Discussion:

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Yahoo Responds: The distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us

Ross Dunn / StepForth SEO News Blog: Microsoft Backs Down from Yahoo

Darren Waters / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Walking away

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: What Microsoft Will Buy Now Expect to hear more from Steve Ballmer.

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Bid Withdrawal

VoIP Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Proposal

Todd Cochrane / Geek News Central: Yahoo is Toast and Yang needs to be Fired

John Furrier / Furrier.org: Victory for Silicon Valley; The Silicon Valley Poison Pill Worked - As Predicted

Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily: Ballmer Calls Yang's Bluff: Microsoft Walks

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: Yahoo! responds to withdrawal - issues statement

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Response to Yahoo

Geek Speaker: Why Yahoo is worth more than 50 billion & why Yahoo! For Good

All Related Discussion

Hide All Related Discussion

RELATED:

Microsoft:

Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo! Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Search Engine Land, Googling Google, Between the Lines, CNET News.com, Web Worker Daily, TechCrunch, WeBreakStuff, Simon's Blog, I4U News, Microsoft News Tracker, TechBlog, DealBook, Paul Mooney, Pocket PC Thoughts.com, TechSpot, Joe Duck, TechBays, Epicenter, All about Microsoft, Digital Trends, SEO and Tech Daily, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Mark Evans, Los Angeles Times, WebGuild, Mashable!, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Valleywag, Quick Online Tips, GigaOM, Profy.Com, AppScout, ClickZ News Blog, The Register and Scobleizer

Discussion:

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land: Leaving Las Yahoo: Microsoft's $5 Billion Mistake?

Garett Rogers / Googling Google: Microsoft withrawls bid for Yahoo, Google wins

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo: Assessing winners, losers and Plan Bs

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo-Google ad deal could be announced next week

Mike Gunderloy / Web Worker Daily: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Web Workers

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Microsoft/Yahoo: Summary Of Today's News & Bonus Gillmor Gang

Fred Oliveira / WeBreakStuff: MSFT and YHOO: It's finally over

Simon Brocklehurst / Simon's Blog: YAHOO! BLOWS IT - HOW LOW WILL THEY GO?

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Microsoft officially withdraws Yahoo Bid

David Hunter / Microsoft News Tracker: Microsoft withdraws offer for Yahoo

Dwight / TechBlog: Microsoft to Yahoo: Never mind

DealBook: Will Microsoft Really Walk?

Paul Mooney: Yahoo Prevails Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!

Darius Wey / Pocket PC Thoughts.com: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo!

Julio Franco / TechSpot: Weekend tech reading (5.04)

Joe Duck: Ballmer has left the Building

Carlo Maglinao / TechBays: Microsoft Yahoo! Deal: the NO votes win

Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter: Microsoft Walks! Says Yahoo Demands Don't Make Sense

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft: Microsoft takes its ball and leaves Yahoo on the Web 2.0 playground

Geoff Duncan / Digital Trends: Microsoft Abandons Yahoo Takeover

Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily: Microsoft pulls the plug on Yahoo!

Michael Santo / Alice Hill's Real Tech News: No Microhoo: Microsoft Walks Away from Yahoo! Deal

Mark Evans: Let's Get the (Yahoo-Microsoft Blogging Party) Started

Los Angeles Times: Microsoft drops bid to acquire Yahoo

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Ballmer's Letter to Jerry Yang Withdrawing Microsoft's Offer

Paul Glazowski / Mashable!: Breaking: Microsoft Corporation Rescinds Offer For Yahoo Inc

Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog: Ballmer's internal e-mail on Yahoo decision

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Ballmer to Yang: How stupid are you?

Quick Online Tips: Microsoft Unable to Buy Yahoo!

Om Malik / GigaOM: Microsoft To Yahoo: Take a Hike!

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira / Profy.Com: Steve Stands Jerry Up for the Internet Prom

Brian Heater / AppScout: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo! Bid

Anna Maria Virzi / ClickZ News Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Bid for Yahoo

Drew Cullen / The Register: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo!

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

MicroHoo: The Odd Couple Meetings Led Nowhere After today's events, I guess you could say Yahoo and Microsoft tried, holding a series of meetings about a possible takeover that ended up proving exactly how incompatible the companies were. Kind of like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but not funny in any way at all.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Between the Lines, Valleywag and Paul Kedrosky's

Discussion:

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks: Five reasons why it's a good move

Jackson West / Valleywag: YAHOO'S $37 DEMAND TALKS, MICROSOFT'S $33 OFFER WALKS Microsoft

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: First Tick-Tock of Da Deal Gone Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:

OK, so what's Microsoft's plan B? With Yahoo apparently off the table, it's time to see what Microsoft's back-up plan looks like. Microsoft has said for some time that it has a strategy with or without Yahoo, but it's a strategy clearly in need of a jump-start.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs and About Mobility Weblog

Discussion:

Steve / The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Ballmer now looking for other companies to not buy

Ceo / About Mobility Weblog: Steve Ballmer as The Creature

DealBook:

Guessing Yahoo's Opening Stock Price Well, Yahoo seems to have gotten what it wanted. The company managed to fend off Microsoft's unwanted advances, even after the software giant sweetened its bid by $5 billion an amount Yahoo felt still wasn't enough.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Discussion:

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider: Why Yahoo (YHOO) Should Go Ahead With Google Outsourcing Deal (GOOG)

Terry Heaton / Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog: Ack! Microsoft walks away. Winner? Google.

Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price Microsoft Corp. said it abandoned its offer for Yahoo Inc., as the two companies failed to bridge a gap between them on price. Microsoft Saturday released a letter from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check and Tech Beat

Discussion:

Peter / Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price - WSJ.com

Rob Hof / Tech Beat: Microsoft Drops Yahoo BidAt Least For Now

Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:

Report: A peek behind the Yahoo-Microsoft meltdown Curious how Microsoft's multi-multi-multi-billion dollar buyout bid for Yahoo sputtered, then crashed? Kara Swisher's BoomTown column in All Things Digital has an interesting account of the missteps, sidesteps

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo's Nightmare Scenario: I'm From Google and I'm Here to Help! Here's what a top-notch source at Yahoo joked to me tonight, after Microsoft walked away from its unsolicited takeover bid to acquire the long-troubled Internet giant. Google is now officially our best friend. Oh no.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Groundswell

Discussion:

Charlene Li / Groundswell: What's next for Microsoft and Yahoo!

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Yahoo's Tough Week Ahead At around 4:30 California time today news broke that Microsoft has formally withdrawn its offer to acquire Yahoo (see Ballmer's email to Microsoft employees here). Among other things, that ends a three month stock party where the market value of Yahoo jumped

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Guardian Unlimited, Microsoft Watch, MediaShift and Paul Mooney

Discussion:

Jack Schofield / Guardian Unlimited: Microsoft walks out of Yahoo deal (updated)

Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch: The Microsoft-Yahoo Blame Game

Mark Glaser / MediaShift: Yahoo-Microsoft Drama::Takeover Tiff Best Thing to Happen to Yahoo

Paul Mooney: A YAHOO RUN, OR A RUN ON YHOO?

Yi-Wyn Yen / Fortune:

Blame it on Google Microsoft CEO Ballmer said the software giant decided to walk away from a bid because Yahoo would become undesirable' if it formed an alliance with Google. (Fortune) Google proved to be the final straw that broke Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's back.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: MacDailyNews and CNNMoney.com

Discussion:

MacDailyNews: Ballmer's Folly ends: Microsoft abandons Yahoo bid because of Google

Mark M. Meinero / CNNMoney.com: Microsoft withdraws bid for Yahoo

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:

Analysis of the Microsoft Decision, Plus Yahoo's Hari-Kari Here is my first-cut analysis of what has happened here: On the friendly front, Yahoo drew a hard line at $37 per share, well above the $33 that Microsoft now says it told Yahoo this week it was willing to go

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: broadstuff

Discussion:

Alan Patrick / broadstuff: MICROHOO NO MORE.. So the deal is off - though whether

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Email From Steve Ballmer To All Microsoft Employees The following email was sent to all Microsoft employees from CEO Steve Ballmer at 5:17 pm PDT (see Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal): To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: InsideMicrosoft, WebProNews, VentureBeat and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Discussion:

Nathan Weinberg / InsideMicrosoft: Microsoft Drops Plans To Buy Yahoo

Nathan Weinberg / WebProNews: Microsoft Is Done Pursuing Yahoo!

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Microsoft now has $50 billion burning a hole in its pocket

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Steve Ballmer's Email to Microsoft Employees

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal (Updated)

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: BoomTown, Beyond Binary, Reuters, The Next Web, BBC NEWS, Coop's Corner, Voices, LiveSide, Electronista, Valleywag, mathewingram.com/work, Business Technology, SarahLacy.com, Master of 500 Hats, Thomas Hawk's Digital , Search Engine Journal and WinExtra

Discussion:

Kara Swisher / BoomTown: BoomTown Decodes Microsoft's Steve Ballmer's Letter to Yahoo (The Kiss-Off Edition)

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary: Ballmer's e-mail to staff on Yahoo

Reuters: Microsoft says it withdraws offer for Yahoo

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten / The Next Web: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo deal

Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Microsoft v Yahoo - post-match analysis

Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner: Post-Microhoo: Winners and losers

Ina Fried / Voices: Microsoft's Move: Is It Just a Feint?

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: No MSFT-YHOO deal; now what? Microsoft just walked away

Electronista: Microsoft backs out of Yahoo bid

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Is Ballmer on his way out and if so, who's the next CEO?

Mathew / mathewingram.com/work: YHOO and MSFT: Jerry Yang should be fired

Ben Worthen / Business Technology: The Most Famous Non-Deal in Tech History

Sarah Lacy: Or Maybe I Won't Be Working for the Evil Empire

Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats: MicroHooFreude! (Memo to Jerry: Prepare to be Sued)

Thomas Hawk / Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Remember When Thomas Hawk Said If He Were Microsoft He'd Lower His Bid for Yahoo?

Arnold Zafra / Search Engine Journal: Microsoft Cancels the Yahoo Acquisition Deal, Finally!

Steven Hodson / WinExtra: Please tell me it's so

New York Times:
Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: CNET News.com, The Big Picture, deal architect, Slashdot, HipMojo.com and Digg

Discussion:

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo: Microsoft's price just wasn't right

Ritholtz / The Big Picture: Ballmer, Yang Agree to See Other People

deal architect: Back to customer focus So the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal appears finally off.

Timothy / Slashdot: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Takeover Offer

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Should Investors Sue or Back Yang?

Digg: Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: DSLreports, Forbes, CNET News.com, Business Week, Smalltalk Tidbits , Scobleizer, Techlog, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, InformationWeek, HipMojo.com, Search Engine Watch Blog, paidContent.org, CenterNetworks, Search Engine Land, John Battelle's Searchblog, WebGuild, MacRumors, Engadget, VentureBeat and Digital Daily

Discussion:

KathrynV / DSLreports: Microsoft Rescinds Yahoo Offer - No agreement could be reached in talks yesterday

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: Forget It, Ballmer Says To Yahoo!

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Is Google ad deal really Yahoo's best option?

Robert Hof / Business Week: Microsoft Drops Bid for Yahoo

James A. Robertson / Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: Reality 1, Scoble 0

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: How will Yahoo heal after Microsoft walked away?

Harry McCracken / Techlog: No MicroHoo? Hallelujah!

David Snyder / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Microsoft Retreats or Withdrawls, Depends on Your View

Alexander Wolfe / InformationWeek: Microsoft Yanks Yahoo Bid

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com: Latest Chess Move: MSFT Withdraws Offer

Kevin Heisler / Search Engine Watch Blog: Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer; Yahoo Responds

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org: Microsoft-Yahoo: Yang's Response: With Distraction Behind Us

Allen Stern / CenterNetworks: What's Next for Yahoo? Merging With AOL Still My Pick

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land: Microsoft Yanks Its Offer For Yahoo

John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog: MICROSOFT BAILS, YAHOO'S GOOGLE THREAT APPEARS TO HAVE WORKED

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo

Arn / MacRumors: Microsoft Walking Away from Yahoo Acquisition

Ryan Block / Engadget: Microsoft pulls bid for Yahoo!, Microhoo will never be

MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Yahoo breaks the wrist, Microsoft walks away

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily: Ballmer to Yang: Dear Jerry, Drop Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it

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Discussion: BloggingStocks

Discussion:

Peter Cohan / BloggingStocks: It's off. Microsoft withdraws its offer for Yahoo for now

BBC:
Microsoft walks away from Yahoo

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Gizmodo and TECH.BLORGE.com

Discussion:

Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo: Microsoft Retires Yahoo Offer, Won't Try Hostile Takeover

Erna Mahyuni / TECH.BLORGE.com: No Microhoo - Microsoft terminates bid on Yahoo

Kara Swisher / BoomTo

Tags: microsoft yahoo news google discussion ]]>Microsoft withdrawing its offer to buy Yahoo is a sufficiently large story to demonstrate the problem of redundant news content on the web. Google News is currently tracking about 2,000 versions of this story. To get a better sense of why it's a problem to have 2,000 stories about the SAME THING, I've reproduced about ten percent of them below just the headlines and ledes. If you have the stomach to scroll through them all to see what else I have to say about it, check out the sources as you scroll:

UPDATE: The Google News example is reproduced here instead. You're reading this in RSS or email a day after I posted it because this post was so large it broke my Feedburner feed. Too much content breaks the web there you have it. Keep reading for my original argument.

If you've made it this far, you may have noticed the absence of blogs from the sources. So this is far from a representative sample of all of the websites that published a version of this news story.

Let's check out Techmeme, again reproduced in its entirety, because seeing is disbelieving:

Yahoo!:

Yahoo! Issues Statement in Response to Microsoft SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 03, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company issued the following statement today in response to Microsoft Corporation's announcement that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo!:

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: TechCrunch, StepForth SEO News Blog, BBC NEWS, Forbes, I4U News, VoIP Blog, Geek News Central, Furrier.org, Tech Trader Daily, LiveSide, Paul Kedrosky's and Geek Speaker

Discussion:

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Yahoo Responds: The distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us

Ross Dunn / StepForth SEO News Blog: Microsoft Backs Down from Yahoo

Darren Waters / BBC NEWS | dot.life: Walking away

Elizabeth Corcoran / Forbes: What Microsoft Will Buy Now Expect to hear more from Steve Ballmer.

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Bid Withdrawal

VoIP Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Proposal

Todd Cochrane / Geek News Central: Yahoo is Toast and Yang needs to be Fired

John Furrier / Furrier.org: Victory for Silicon Valley; The Silicon Valley Poison Pill Worked - As Predicted

Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily: Ballmer Calls Yang's Bluff: Microsoft Walks

Kip Kniskern / LiveSide: Yahoo! responds to withdrawal - issues statement

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Yahoo's Response to Microsoft's Response to Yahoo

Geek Speaker: Why Yahoo is worth more than 50 billion & why Yahoo! For Good

All Related Discussion

Hide All Related Discussion

RELATED:

Microsoft:

Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo! Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Search Engine Land, Googling Google, Between the Lines, CNET News.com, Web Worker Daily, TechCrunch, WeBreakStuff, Simon's Blog, I4U News, Microsoft News Tracker, TechBlog, DealBook, Paul Mooney, Pocket PC Thoughts.com, TechSpot, Joe Duck, TechBays, Epicenter, All about Microsoft, Digital Trends, SEO and Tech Daily, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Mark Evans, Los Angeles Times, WebGuild, Mashable!, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Valleywag, Quick Online Tips, GigaOM, Profy.Com, AppScout, ClickZ News Blog, The Register and Scobleizer

Discussion:

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land: Leaving Las Yahoo: Microsoft's $5 Billion Mistake?

Garett Rogers / Googling Google: Microsoft withrawls bid for Yahoo, Google wins

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo: Assessing winners, losers and Plan Bs

Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com: Yahoo-Google ad deal could be announced next week

Mike Gunderloy / Web Worker Daily: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Web Workers

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Microsoft/Yahoo: Summary Of Today's News & Bonus Gillmor Gang

Fred Oliveira / WeBreakStuff: MSFT and YHOO: It's finally over

Simon Brocklehurst / Simon's Blog: YAHOO! BLOWS IT - HOW LOW WILL THEY GO?

Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Microsoft officially withdraws Yahoo Bid

David Hunter / Microsoft News Tracker: Microsoft withdraws offer for Yahoo

Dwight / TechBlog: Microsoft to Yahoo: Never mind

DealBook: Will Microsoft Really Walk?

Paul Mooney: Yahoo Prevails Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!

Darius Wey / Pocket PC Thoughts.com: Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo!

Julio Franco / TechSpot: Weekend tech reading (5.04)

Joe Duck: Ballmer has left the Building

Carlo Maglinao / TechBays: Microsoft Yahoo! Deal: the NO votes win

Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter: Microsoft Walks! Says Yahoo Demands Don't Make Sense

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft: Microsoft takes its ball and leaves Yahoo on the Web 2.0 playground

Geoff Duncan / Digital Trends: Microsoft Abandons Yahoo Takeover

Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily: Microsoft pulls the plug on Yahoo!

Michael Santo / Alice Hill's Real Tech News: No Microhoo: Microsoft Walks Away from Yahoo! Deal

Mark Evans: Let's Get the (Yahoo-Microsoft Blogging Party) Started

Los Angeles Times: Microsoft drops bid to acquire Yahoo

Joseph Hunkins / WebGuild: Ballmer's Letter to Jerry Yang Withdrawing Microsoft's Offer

Paul Glazowski / Mashable!: Breaking: Microsoft Corporation Rescinds Offer For Yahoo Inc

Todd Bishop / Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog: Ballmer's internal e-mail on Yahoo decision

Owen Thomas / Valleywag: Ballmer to Yang: How stupid are you?

Quick Online Tips: Microsoft Unable to Buy Yahoo!

Om Malik / GigaOM: Microsoft To Yahoo: Take a Hike!

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira / Profy.Com: Steve Stands Jerry Up for the Internet Prom

Brian Heater / AppScout: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo! Bid

Anna Maria Virzi / ClickZ News Blog: Microsoft Withdraws Bid for Yahoo

Drew Cullen / The Register: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo!

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: The First FriendFeed Event: MSFT and YHOO

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

MicroHoo: The Odd Couple Meetings Led Nowhere After today's events, I guess you could say Yahoo and Microsoft tried, holding a series of meetings about a possible takeover that ended up proving exactly how incompatible the companies were. Kind of like Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but not funny in any way at all.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Between the Lines, Valleywag and Paul Kedrosky's

Discussion:

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: Microsoft walks: Five reasons why it's a good move

Jackson West / Valleywag: YAHOO'S $37 DEMAND TALKS, MICROSOFT'S $33 OFFER WALKS Microsoft

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: First Tick-Tock of Da Deal Gone Dead

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:

OK, so what's Microsoft's plan B? With Yahoo apparently off the table, it's time to see what Microsoft's back-up plan looks like. Microsoft has said for some time that it has a strategy with or without Yahoo, but it's a strategy clearly in need of a jump-start.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs and About Mobility Weblog

Discussion:

Steve / The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Ballmer now looking for other companies to not buy

Ceo / About Mobility Weblog: Steve Ballmer as The Creature

DealBook:

Guessing Yahoo's Opening Stock Price Well, Yahoo seems to have gotten what it wanted. The company managed to fend off Microsoft's unwanted advances, even after the software giant sweetened its bid by $5 billion an amount Yahoo felt still wasn't enough.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Discussion:

Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider: Why Yahoo (YHOO) Should Go Ahead With Google Outsourcing Deal (GOOG)

Terry Heaton / Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog: Ack! Microsoft walks away. Winner? Google.

Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price Microsoft Corp. said it abandoned its offer for Yahoo Inc., as the two companies failed to bridge a gap between them on price. Microsoft Saturday released a letter from Chief Executive Steve Ballmer

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

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Discussion: Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check and