Laura M. Holson / New York Times:
Putting a Bolder Face on Google  —  IN late December, Marissa Mayer was vacationing in Africa when her boss, Jonathan Rosenberg, e-mailed her asking if she was leaving Google.  —  It wasn’t a routine query.  As the gatekeeper of Google’s home page, and one of the company’s most […]

Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Teams With Newspapers to Sell Ads  —  Terry Widener has been selling newspaper ads for 35 years.  But until last fall, Ms. Widener, a 53-year-old saleswoman at The Knoxville News Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn., had never sold an Internet ad.  —  Then in a two-week sales “blitz” … […]

Lessig Blog:
Caving into bullies (aka, here we go again)  —  Amazon has caved into demands from the Authors Guild that it disable the ability of the Kindle to read a book aloud.  This is very bad news.  —  We had this battle before.  In 2001, Adobe released e-book technology that gave rights holders … […]

Tim Arango / New York Times:
Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable  —  CBS, home to “60 Minutes,” the “CSI” franchise, “Two and a Half Men” and the new hit crime drama “The Mentalist,” is having a better year in prime time than any other network.  —  And yet, as at the other networks, […]

Amazon.com:
Statement from Amazon.com Regarding Kindle 2’s Experimental Text-to-Speech Feature  —  Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.  Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant …

Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Why Are Book Publishers Making The Same Mistake The Record Labels Made With Apple?  —  from the we’ve-seen-this-movie-before,-and-it- doesn’t-end-well dept  —  Back in 2005, we noted that Apple’s dominance over the online music space, which upset the record labels tremendously …

Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Cellular providers want Nokia to drop Skype from cell phones  —  Two cell service providers in the UK are supposedly up in arms over Nokia’s inclusion of Skype software on its N97 handset, and are threatening not to carry the device unless the software is ditched.

Brad Stone / Bits:
Amazon Backs off Text-to-Speech Feature in Kindle  —  Amazon announced today it will let publishers decide whether they want the new Kindle e-book device to read their books aloud.  —  The text-to-speech feature allows Kindle owners to have books read to them in a male or female computerized voice.

Erica Sadun / Ars Technica:
Apple issues App Store-wide Emoji take-down order  —  Apple has issued an App Store-wide take-down of all Emoji-enabling iPhone applications.  There may be a few reasons for this decision, ranging from the gray area of how developers are switching on Emoji support to possible licensing issues.

Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Microsoft App-V Support for the Windows 7 Beta  —  Our MDOP customers have told us that they want to see Windows 7 Support for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) so that they can move ahead with their application testing for enterprise deployments of Windows 7 early on.  We heard you […]