Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Google, Zen Master of the Market  —  Bill Gates, who walked away from full-time work at Microsoft last month, was perhaps the foremost applied economist of the second half of the 20th century.  —  Mr. Gates and Microsoft fundamentally shaped how people think about the behavior of modern markets […]

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The “Participation Premium”  —  Data: Mike Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, said in an article yesterday that he has 10177 people subscribed to him on FriendFeed, about half of the number of followers he has on Twitter.  —  Data: Allen Stern, founder of Centernetworks …

Ross Mayfield / Ross Mayfield’s Weblog:
Service and the Fifty Percent Rule  —  Next time you go into an Apple store, notice that 50% of the space is for retail sales and 50% for service and support.  I overheard this weekend that it is the most profitable arrangement in the history of retail.  —  True […]

Charles Jade / Infinite Loop:
The disruptive potential of GPS on the iPhone 3G  —  A recent survey showed nearly half of respondents rated GPS as a deciding factor in favoring an iPhone 3G, which should be good news for makers of GPS software and services.  Or not.  Forbes has an interesting article that suggests […]

Phone Arena:
LG Chocolate 3 to be released July 14th  —  Beginning on July 14th, Verizon will introduce its new music-centric device, the Chocolate 3.  Unlike the first two LG Chocolate phones that were sliders (VX8500, VX8550), the new VX8560 model will be a clamshell avaliable initially in Black and Light Blue.

Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Twitter’s milkshake meet FriendFeed’s straw  —  For the past two weeks or so I’ve focused the majority of my “short messaging/blogging” from Twitter to a new service called FriendFeed.  FriendFeed is very similar in relation to twitter in that both systems are designed to help you share quick […]

Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
FriendFeed Follower Patterns Exposed: How Jason, Mike, Loic & Robert Get So Many Followers So Quickly (video)  —  Over the past 24 hours, Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble, Loic Lemeur and Michael Arrington have all asked essentially the same question.  They are all wondering how they got so many followers on FriendFeed […]

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Friendfeed v. Twitter: Half The Followers In Five Months  —  Twitter is still far larger than its much younger competitor Friendfeed in aggregate terms.  But an interesting trend is developing - many longtime Twitter users are noticing that the number of followers they have on Friendfeed is growing far more rapidly […]

Anne Eisenberg / New York Times:
Novelties: Electronic Papyrus: The Digital Book, Unfurled  —  New technologies are developing that make displays flexible, foldable or even as rollable as papyrus, so that large screens can be unfurled from small containers.

Brad Stone / New York Times:
As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Alex Payne, a 24-year-old Internet engineer here, has devised a way to answer a commonly asked question of the digital age: Is my favorite Web site working today?  —  In March, Mr. Payne created downforeveryoneorjustme.com, as in, […]