Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
doubleTwist makes DRM-stripping, sharing easy as pie  —  DVD Jon is growing up.  He’s no longer helping geeks free their media from DRM—he wants to make it easy enough for our parents to use, too.  Through a new venture called doubleTwist, DVD Jon (Jon Lech Johansen) and partner Monique Farantzos […]

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Owen Van Natta to Leave Facebook  —  One of the earliest executives at Facebook, Owen Van Natta (pictured here), will be transitioning out of the social-networking company in the next few weeks.  —  Van Natta played a key role in important negotiations related to Facebook’s early lucrative ad deal …

Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple taps Linkin Park to perform at “secret” NYC event  —  Apple has enlisted the services of popular alternative rock band Linkin Park to perform at an unannounced company event due to take place in New York City, AppleInsider has been informed.  —  Mike Shinoda, front-man …

Alertbox:
Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes … It’s hard to write a general article about application design mistakes because the very worst mistakes are domain-specific and idiosyncratic.  Usually, applications fail because they (a) solve the wrong problem, (b) have the wrong features for the right problem …

Ryan Block / Engadget:
Top ten things to do with your now-defunct HD DVD player  —  Finally, HD DVD users now have the empirical evidence they’ve been looking for to prove that the universe really is conspiring against them.  We figured we’d make ourselves useful over here and give you a list of things you […]

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
CNET Changes Quarterbacks: Dan Farber Takes Over As Editor In Chief  —  Big news at CNET today - editor in chief Jai Singh is out, and Dan Farber, most recently the editor in chief of CNET-owned ZDNet, is taking over.  In his new role, Dan will oversee the editorial content and […]

Dan Farber / Between the Lines:
Transition time at ZDNet  —  This will be my last post on Between the Lines and ZDNet for a while.  I am moving over to head up our sister CNET Networks site News.com starting today.  My talented, experienced, incisive and prolific BTL partner Larry Dignan will become Editor […]

Joel Spolsky / Joel on Software:
Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated?  (And some workarounds)  —  Last week, Microsoft published the binary file formats for Office.  These formats appear to be almost completely insane.  The Excel 97-2003 file format is a 349 page PDF file.  But wait, that’s not all there is […]

DealBook:
Microsoft to Authorize Proxy Fight at Yahoo  —  In an escalation of its fight for Yahoo, Microsoft will authorize a proxy fight at the Internet company this week, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.  —  The move, expected to cost about $20 million to $30 million …

david ascher:
Mozilla Messaging  —  Today we’ve announced the launch of Mozilla Messaging, the new name for the entity I’ve been calling MailCo on this blog.  As promised, it’s a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, focused on email and internet communications.  We’ve put up the essential information …