Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Sources: Microsoft Signs Letter Of Intent To Acquire Xobni  —  Two independent sources tell us that the Microsoft/Xobni deal is moving along and that Microsoft signed an acquisition LOI in the last week.  I have not yet been able to track down the price, but a previous offer of sub-$20 million […]

Charles Hudson / Charles Hudson’s Weblog:
Social Networking Advertising - It Will Be Even Harder than we Think  —  I’ve had a few experiences in the past few weeks that continue to bolster my belief that monetizing social networks and communities will continue to be a lot harder than people think.  —  1. I posted […]

Henry Work / TechCrunch:
Who Are The Top Tech Bloggers?  —  We’ve been analyzing historical TechMeme data to dig a little deeper than the leaderboard information on the site that shows top blogs over the trailing 30 days.  We’re slicing the data in a number of ways and will publish in shortly on CrunchBase.

Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0:
Join The Web Content Conservation Movement  —  The other day Erick Schonfeld wrote a post about how he’s feeling even more overwhelmed by new web content steams like Twitter and FriendFeed, and how he’s desperately in need of a better filter.  I certainly agree with Erick’s clarion call …

Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Search for Mapped Web Pages in Google Maps  —  Google Maps added the map view available at Google Experimental Search.  Google extracts the most important locations from web pages and lets you see the search results on a map.  To restrict your search to web pages, you need […]

GigaOM:
The Social Map Is All About Me  —  Written by Mark Sigal, a digital media and Internet platform entrepreneur who has done eight startups, four of them as a co-founder.  —  Call me a cynic, but there has to be more to the Web 2.0 story than accessorizing my Facebook page with one-dimensional pseudo […]

Richard Swinburne / bit-tech.net:
Inside the Eee PC 900  —  I know, we’ve probably been all Eee’d out for a few months; well, at least until Atom gets here.  But there was this niggling itch to break stuff, and it was sitting there, and this is bit-tech after all…  Where can we find that extra […]

Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
When Monetizing ISP Traffic Goes Horribly Wrong  —  In seeking to further monetize Web site traffic on their networks, a number of major Internet service providers may be inadvertently exposing their customers to a greater risk of online attack from identity thieves, according to research released today.

MG Siegler / ParisLemon:
If Twitter Breaks in the Woods and No One Can Tweet About It, Is It Really Broken?  —  I noticed a few people thinking the same thing as me today: is everyone taking a break from Twitter?  People do get burnt out from the web after all and it was a […]

Randall Stross / New York Times:
Struggling to Evade the E-Mail Tsunami  —  E-MAIL has become the bane of some people’s professional lives.  Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering new Internet companies, last month stared balefully at his inbox, with 2,433 unread e-mail messages, not counting 721 messages awaiting his attention in […]