Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Twitter Starts Blacklisting Spammers  —  You know you’ve made it as a communications medium when you start attracting spammers.  On Twitter, the problem is getting bad enough that the service is starting to blacklist people who spam other members.  There is already an unofficial site called …

Alertbox:
How Little Do Users Read? … We’ve known since our first studies of how users read on the Web that they typically don’t read very much.  Scanning text is an extremely common behavior for higher-literacy users; our recent eyetracking studies further validate this finding.

Allan Leinwand / GigaOM:
Web 2.0, Please Meet Your Host, the Internet  —  I have a major problem with many of the Web 2.0 companies that I meet in my job as a venture capitalist: They lack even the most basic understanding of Internet operations.  —  I realize that the Web 2. community generally views […]

Saul Hansell / Bits:
Microsoft May Build A Copyright Cop Into Every Zune  —  If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.  —  A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well […]

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
FORA.tv Raises $4 Million Round from Hearst, Adobe, Others  —  FORA.tv, referred by TechCrunch as the “C-SPAN of the Web,” has closed a Series A round of venture funding with $4 million from William Randolph Hearst III, Adobe Ventures and other investors.  Hearst and Adobe were investors in the original $2 […]

Business Wire:
Sprint and Clearwire to Combine WiMAX Businesses, Creating a New Mobile Broadband Company  —  Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks to Invest $3.2 Billion in Combined Company, at Target Price of $20.00 per Share  —  Formation of New Company Brings Together …

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft’s Project Granola-Facebook Tastier Than Yahoo?  —  Project Granola?  —  Apparently, that’s the jokey nickname that’s been given by some in the company to Microsoft’s (MSFT) new online strategy, in the wake of its failed efforts to acquire Yahoo (YHOO) that ended in a big heap of mess this past weekend.

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Test: Does Your ISP Slow Down BitTorrent Traffic?  —  A while back we posted about the plugin Azureus had developed, which allowed people to check whether their ISP is interfering with their traffic.  The results showed that indeed quite a few ISPs were, but the plugin didn’t provide the user with direct […]

Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
Apple’s Board: Still Room for Schmidt?  —  The Google CEO’s spot on Apple’s board could go from awkward to untenable as the search giant’s mobile push brushes up against the iPhone  —  Until now, having Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt sit on Apple’s (AAPL) board of directors has made a […]

Larry Alder / Official Google Blog:
Investing in the future of the open Internet  —  As you may have read, Google, Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners have entered into an agreement to invest $3.2 billion in a new wireless broadband company.