Feedburner, one of the most useful and valuable free Web services in my experience, is now part of the big Goog, where, one can only hope they dedicate at least as much energy to the service side of this product as they naturally would to innovating it.

Feedburner launched in Chicago in 2004 and quickly became the premier RSS feed-burner for blogs and even newspaper Web sites. I’ve published dozens of feeds for a variety of projects using their tool and have also used Feedburner to publish media-rich RSS podcast feeds.

This deal is all-but officially announced, and is rumored to be an all-cash acquisition.

Google may be able to boost Feedburner’s struggling publisher’s ad network, but my main concern again here is Google’s imperfect track record in keeping acquired startups alive (of course, Dodgeball wasn’t nearly as established as Feedburner is when it was purchased).

Technorati put it’s recent funding to good use revealing a whole new layout today, a move that is taking them away from being just blogs.

First, they’ve eliminated search silos on Technorati. In the past, you had to know the difference between keyword search, tag search and blog directory search in order to make use of the full power of the site. They now provide you a simplified experience. Simply indicate what’s of interest to you and Technorati’s engine will assemble the freshest, hottest, most current social media from across the Live Web - Blogs, posts, photos, videos, podcasts, events, and more.

They’ve also worked really hard at making their user interface simpler, and more intuitive. They seemed to have pulled it off although I’m not sold on the ‘ticker’ floating at the top of the site. Smells a little ‘99..

Read the full review over at the crunch

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Christen da Costa

Yahoo is rumoured to be working on an attempted takeover of Bebo, Britain’s most popular social networking site, which could turn its British-born founder into the next internet billionaire.

Yahoo, one of the first big online portals, is thought to be willing to pay as much as $1bn for the site, according to Silicon Valley gossip.

NewsCorp paid $580m for MySpace in 2005, in a deal that first drew the market’s attention to the phenomenon. Google paid $1.76bn for YouTube, the internet home video site, last November.

Bebo has around 25m users worldwide, compared with MySpace’s 100m or so registered users. Birch is rumoured to have turned down an offer from BT worth about £300m last summer. Viacom, the US media giant which was outbid for MySpace, is also believed to have made an offer last year. Bebo is backed by Benchmark Capital, the private equity firm.

Yahoo made a $1bn bid for Facebook, another fast-growing social networking site, last year. The offer was rejected by the site’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

Friendster, one of the first social networking sites, turned down an all-share offer from Google in 2003, which would have been worth about $1bn to its founders today. It has since drifted out of favour with internet consumers, with the monthly traffic on its site dwarfed by newer sites - such as Bebo. (Ouch!!)

Reported last week that Microsoft was in talks to buy Yahoo for a rumored $50 Billion, if this deal goes through Microsoft would significantly increase its online advertising market share which is now dominated by Google. The Redmond giant would own two of the biggest social networking properties on the web, Bebo and their very own Live Spaces.

MyBlogLog, the “Whos been reading your blog” widget provider, was acquired by Yahoo late last year. As with many startups acquired by big corporations it seemed MyBlogLog was set for the dead pool with many months passing without any upgrades from their new owner. Although finally, Yahoo has stepped up and announced a sweep of upgrades and changes for the blog community.

The new features include a filter for offensive photos and the ability to sign off so you don’t show up on blogs you don’t want to. The improvements are an obvious since MyBlogLog was suffering from serious spamming. After it’s initial buzz, MyBlogLog’s growth failed to catch on because of spam and scaling issues. What this new announcement means is that an effort by Yahoo to escape the PR hit that Google suffered in its handling of the Dodgeball acquisition.

We, like many other blogs, display the MyBlogLog widget (right top sidebar), which shows recent visitors, along with their photo, to the site. This has resulted in serious spamming and ultimately bloggers removing the widget.

What spam?

Michael Jensen has discovered a way to place your ‘ads’ on top ranking blogs who use the MBL widget. He created a new account with the advertising he wanted included as the profile image. He then opened TechCrunch (the blog he used as an example) in his Firefox browser and set it to autorefresh every minute or so. The result was that the “user” kept coming back to TechCrunch and popping to the top of the widget. Some of the traffic that clicked through to the user page on MyBlogLog made its way back to the destination site.
Here’s what it looked like

This issue will surely be fixed with the announced round of upgrades.

More MyBlogLog hacks can be found here and here which got the ‘author’ temporarily banned.

A few weeks back we reported that “Photobucket was out of space” which was a play on the fact that Myspace had blocked the photosharing/widget site. Ironically, this led to acquisition talks and now its been confirmed Myspace has bought Photobucket for $250 million in cash with another $50 mil in the pipeline.

Photobucket generated $6.3 million in revenue last year and planned on hitting $25 million or more this year. They have 40 million registered users and add another 85,000 per day.

Some bloggers have called it:

a parasite fusing with its host

Photobucket is the most important site on the Internet that hardly anybody understands. Unpretentiously, it has built an essential service that didn’t need to shout out for attention, the way MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, or other related sites have.

The risk to Photobucket would be if the next hot social network were able to become popular while prohibiting linking from the outset. But now with the News Corporation social network under the same roof they can continue to develope and innovate exclusively to Myspace’s 170 Mil + users. Does this mean Slide.com, who recently closed a round of funding, could be blocked from Myspace?

Photobucket’s deal should be cause for celebration for Alex Welch (founder) and his partners, and for Trinity Ventures, which invested $10.5m in the company last year. But, for other widget makers, it marks something of a ceiling on their likely exit.

Canon Photo Printer Introduction
The SELPHY DS810 Compact Photo Printer changes everything about how and where to print them. It’s much smaller than typical printers and it doesn’t have to be connected to your computer, so you can keep it in almost any room and print beautiful photos from there.

Canon Photo Printer Design
It has a 2.5” color LCD screen that comes in handy when you print directly from a flash memory card. Its top surface is dotted with 12 well-labeled buttons and switches, plus a four-way directional pad used to navigate menus and select print quantities via the flip-up LCD screen. The memory card slots are located on the front just above the photo paper tray. It’s only about 9″ x 9″ x 4,” and weighs 4.2-pounds.

Canon Photo Printer Features
It is compatible with SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Secure Digital (SD), Multimedia Card, xD Picture Card, MicroDrive, MiniSD, Memory Stick Pro, and Memory Stick DUO. There is a USB 1.1 port on the left of the photo paper tray. There is a USB 1.1 port on the left of the photo paper tray. You can even print photos from an infrared-enabled mobile phone: just shoot, point your phone and print! And for Bluetooth equipped mobile phones, PCs and PDAs, this versatile printer is Bluetooth compatible with the optional Bluetooth adapter (sold separately).

Canon Photo Printer Performance
It features Canon Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE), which uses an innovative print head with nozzles that eject consistent, precise ink droplets as small as two picoliters. This patented technology produces an outstanding resolution of up to 4,800 x 1,200 dpi, for exceptional detail and photo realism. You won’t have to wait long; it can print a beautiful photo lab quality 4″ x 6″ photograph in about 63 seconds–directly from your PictBridge enabled camera.

Whats included in the package
SELPHY DS810 Compact Photo Printer, FINE cartridges: BCI-16CL color, power cord, document kit.

Conclusion
Digital cameras and mobile phones have changed the rules about taking photos. Now, the SELPHY DS810 Compact Photo Printer changes everything about how and where to print them. It has a USB port to connect to your computer, a PictBridge USB port for connecting a compatible digital camera, and card slots that fit many types of digital camera memory cards. The buttons and menus on the front are easy to follow and use. Quickly and easily print pictures. Its screen makes it easy to adjust how the printer prints your images.

On February 17, 2009 Analog T.V. will be no more. Due to an FCC mandate on that date all Television stations must be switched over to a digital signal only. This could mean the end of free over the air Television. The legislation for this was passed in 1996, and is now that the due date is getting nearer people are wondering what it means. For the 85% of Americans that receive there signal through a cable or satellite provider there is nothing to worry about, but for the Americans that still receive there signal over the air, there televisions will be obsolete. The FCC has stated that there will be converter boxes for people to purchase so that they can still use their Analog only TVs, but so far very few companies have announced plans to make these and the estimated price is at least $100 for one receiver. Homes can receive up to two $40 coupons from the government to cut on costs for the converters, but only limited contact information has been released so far on how to receive the coupons. Broadcasting channels are being offered tax incentive and grants to help ease the transition in becoming all digital.

Microsoft to acquire Yahoo in the biggest acquisition in IT history! Full story over at Mashable

This deal will be huge if it goes ahead: Microsoft has reacted to Google’s purchase of DoubleClick by stepping up talks with Yahoo about a possible acquisition/merger. Estimated pricetag for Yahoo? $50 billion. Microsoft and Yahoo have spoken in the past, but Google has piled on the pressure with the DoubleClick deal and now Microsoft has asked Yahoo to re-enter talks about the acquisition, says the NYPost. The price estimate, meanwhile, comes from Wall Street analysts.

Apparently the Yahoo stock is rising because of the buy out talk.

Shares of Yahoo Inc. surged more than 17% on Friday after reports that Microsoft may try to buy the Internet-search firm after being beaten to other deals by Google Inc. A Yahoo-Microsoft combo would make for a stronger foil to Google, the Internet search engine and advertising giant. Shares of Yahoo (YHOO) rallied sharply in early Friday action after the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft may want to buy the firm in what could be a $50 billion deal. Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) slipped more than 1%.

Yahoo teaming up with the Redmond giant would surely lead to a world class contextual advertising system to rival Adsense. International publishers have been at the mercy of Google’s Adsense as the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and MS Adcentre is still in US beta.

[Update] Forbes also has the story, good read.

This is crazy, if Google can afford to spend this much on eloborate employee benefits how much are they making of us? (Adwords, Adsense)

Time features an article about life in the Googleplex. What googlers do when they don’t code great applications? They swim, create graffiti, play volleyball, eat three free gourmet meals a day that can be eaten in a cafeteria adorned by artwork created by Google employees and unwind with a professional massage.

The article is a wonderful insight of what it’s like inside Google headquarters in Silicon Valley. I wonder if the employees ever do any work. But that’s because I’m jealous.

Photos after the jump

Super geek engineer at peace in his natural habitat.

24hr Tech Support.. mmmm

Swim against the current

Geek Pool Changes

[Via More photies]