Here's the latest action:
As an online publication largely comprised of former newspaper journalists -- It's pretty obvious what we here at VentureBeat think about newspaper leaders demanding payment anytime anyone aggregates any of their content. But we'll stay mum, at this point, out of respect for all the great journalists who work at newspapers. Instead, here's what Gabe Rivera, creator of news aggregator Techmeme, tells CNET:
"It's illuminating to observe that both The Wall Street Journal (a News Corp. property) and The New York Times (a key AP member) are both themselves news aggregators. Both maintain sections which quote headlines from external sites. So, constituents of these organizations already know aggregation is useful and fair. This knowledge just hasn't reached AP's and News Corp.'s leadership."
For more, see Hitwise's data showing how much traffic various aggregators send to news web sites.
Advertising works better in Facebook's latest redesign -- The new interface shows you a "stream" of the most current things your friends are up to, which in turn lets you stay up to date with more friends. This creates more opportunities to mix in advertising. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, has more on the company blog.
Helicopter hotel hoax Hotelicopter turns out to be another travel search engine -- TechCrunch has more.
Adobe and eBook app creator Lexcycle working on new open book-reading technology standard -- ReadWriteWeb has more.
Online video news startup Newsy partners with the Missouri School of Journalism -- The company and the school are aggregating as well as providing videotaped editorial opinions concerning breaking news around the world. Now let's see here, what does aggregating news remind me of...?
Microsoft hires Sun chip engineering leader Marc Tremblay -- More here.
Microsoft gets a rough ride in Rhode Island -- A jury in the state has ordered the company to pay security firm Uniloc $388 million in damages for infringing on an anti-piracy patent.
Swedes flock to Pirate Bay's new identity encryption service -- Wired's Threat Level blog has more.
Online music "store" Amie Street took over music search engine Songza six months ago -- As Robin Wauters has confirmed.
Foreign spies have penetrated the US's electricity grid -- This story has been circulating the internet since at least sometime last year, but now it's in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required, apparently no aggregation allowed -- oops).
[Tremblay photo via Sun, via CNET.]