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AP – Three top Yahoo Inc. executives are leaving the slumping Internet company in an exodus that could put CEO Carol Bartz on the hot seat as she approaches the end of her second year trying to engineer a turnaround.

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Reuters – Police in southern China have released on bail the author of a popular Internet novel they deemed pornographic, state media said, following an on-line uproar about official abuse of power.

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AFP – Yahoo! announced that three top executives are leaving the company in the latest management turmoil at the Internet portal.

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The Upshot – Here is our roster of stories that managed to avoid the full-on blog treatment: • News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch testified in favor of comprehensive immigration reform today in front of Congress. Pressed by Rep. Maxine Waters, Murdoch says his network Fox News does not promote anti-immigrant views. (Politico) • Ecuador’s president is holed up [...]

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AP – A San Francisco group that defends online free speech is taking on a Las Vegas company it says is shaking down news-sharing Internet users through more than 140 copyright infringement lawsuits filed this year.

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PC World – Microsoft’s Windows Live Essentials 2011, is ready for prime time. Microsoft announced Thursday it’s consumer focused suite of free applications, has moved from testing mode (beta) to the final release. The productivity suite is Microsoft’s flagship bundle of Web-based productivity apps for managing and sharing images online, editing video, and sharing documents and files between PCs.

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NewsFactor – Research In Motion is planning to transition its BlackBerry smartphones to the Neutrino QNX operating system it acquired last April, according to media reports. Although the BlackBerry maker has not officially confirmed this, RIM Vice President Alan Panezic said it would be a “logical conclusion” and Vice President Alan Brenner said there was no reason “to rule it out,” according to web site Intomobile.

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NewsFactor – You’re walking down the street and your smartphone reminds you of your appointments, notes nearby sales of those shoes you’ve been searching for, and points out that your ex-girlfriend is in the restaurant on the corner. That’s the heavenly — or hellish — vision of the future of computing presented by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this week.

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Macworld – For years, Mariner Software’s MacJournal has offered a unique blend of writing, journaling, and blogging features for the Mac. The iPhone companion can pack your journals in your pocket, but the new MacJournal for iPad offers your mobile wordsmith a more capable writing environment while on-the-go.

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AP – Songwriters and composers will get paid when their videos are seen on YouTube in France, under a deal announced Thursday by the online video sharing site and France’s leading music industry group.

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AFP – The official guardians of the Spanish language launched Thursday a reading on YouTube of the Spanish masterpiece “Don Quixote de la Mancha” in order to promote the use of the language on the Internet.

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PC World – The vision outlined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt for autonomous search that knows what you want to look for before you even think of it seems like pure science fiction. The reality, though, is that the convergence of Web search, location-based services, and social networking mean that the foundation is already there. As the concept evolves, there will be benefits and pitfalls for businesses that want to take advantage of autonomous search.

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PC World – The vision outlined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt for autonomous search that knows what you want to look for before you even think of it seems like pure science fiction. The reality, though, is that the convergence of Web search, location-based services, and social networking mean that the foundation is already there. As the concept evolves, there will be benefits and pitfalls for businesses that want to take advantage of autonomous search.

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AP – The day after Linkin Park’s latest album was released, its lead singer, Chester Bennington, logged on to iTunes to check some of the reviews. Though the responses weren’t all positive, he liked what he read.

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PC World – Fear of cybercrime is preventing as many as 150 million Europeans from using the Internet, according to Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

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Macworld – WordPress for iOS version 2.6 is now available in the App Store. Announced late Wednesday, the new version introduces several much-requested new features to the popular blogging app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

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Reuters – Cubans remain extraordinarily isolated from information technology, with only 2.9 percent reporting regular use of the Internet and 5.8 percent regular use of e-mail, according to a government survey released on Thursday.

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PC Magazine – Google maintained its dominance as the top online video destination last month, thanks to YouTube. But Facebook managed to jump past Yahoo to land at the number two spot, according to Thursday data from comScore.

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Reuters – A former housekeeper to California Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman surfaced on Wednesday to say that the former eBay executive knowingly employed her illegally and treated her poorly.

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AFP – The European Commission said Friday it was taking the British government to court for failing to protect Internet user privacy.

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Reuters – Social networking website Facebook and Internet telephone company Skype are in talks to establish a partnership that is aimed at integrating their communication services, Wall Street Journal said, citing a person familiar with the situation.

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PC World – What does the world’s wealthiest man do when he can’t tweet? For Bill Gates, a trip to China this week has meant a jump to a Chinese micro-blogging platform.

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PC World – Intel and South Korea’s KT Corporation plan to work together to expand WiBro (Wireless Broadband) Internet service to several new areas of South Korea and and have worked to make the network compatible with mobile WiMax.

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AP – House Democrats have shelved a last-ditch effort to broker a compromise between phone, cable and Internet companies on rules that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or degrading online traffic flowing over their networks.

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AFP – US lawmakers lamented their inability to shutter Internet websites set up by violent Islamist groups such as Al-Qaeda that aim to inspire, recruit and train would-be extremists.

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PC World – The search engine wars are back as Bing goes head-to-head with Google. With Microsoft’s Bing jumping into second place in market share and assuming control of Yahoo’s back-end search, the stage is set for a Google-Bing showdown.

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Reuters – A temporary legislative fix to regulate broadband traffic failed to garner Republican support, killing the chance of a remedy from the Congress before the mid-term elections, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman said on Wednesday.

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PC World – Google’s Instant, a new feature that predicts search queries as people type them and refreshes results and ads accordingly on the fly, will be extended to 12 new countries, bringing the total to 19 countries.

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AP – Just because Yahoo Inc.’s U.S. website and Microsoft Corp.’s Bing are using the same technological ingredients for searching the Internet doesn’t mean they’re slicing and dicing the results the same way, too.

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AFP – IAC chief executive Barry Diller said Wednesday he does not expect Ask.com, the Internet search engine bought for 1.85 billion dollars five years ago, to ever be more than a “niche” service.

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Reuters – A former housekeeper to California Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman surfaced on Wednesday to say that the former eBay executive knowingly employed her illegally and treated her poorly.

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PC World – Google recently launched Google Instant–providing streaming search results as you type. However, Google has blacklisted certain terms from the Google Instant results to protect minors or those with more delicate sensibilities. The problem, though, is that some of the terms have dual meaning or are borderline offensive, excluding potentially legitimate search results from the Google Instant queries.

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The Upshot – You’d think the Internet and digital revolution in entertainment would be a boon to music preservationists. You’d be wrong. According to an AP story on a new report from the Library of Congress, the nation’s audio heritage is now at risk. On the one hand is the expected disintegration and decay of old master tapes [...]

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AP – Some of the country’s most prominent newspaper companies are investing in a Silicon Valley online news venture called Ongo Inc., but are offering few details about the company.

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PC World – Amazon Web Services has its roots in the needs of Amazon.com, the retailer, but that doesn’t mean that all of the book seller’s operations run on Web Services.

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PC World – A top Microsoft official dismissed as conceptually misguided the new Instant feature that lets Google’s search engine refresh search results on the fly while people type queries.

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PC Magazine – AVG’s immensely popular free antivirus is now better than ever. This year it has every bit as much antivirus protection as the company’s full, commercial internet security suite.

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PC Magazine – The same Internet controls that keep your kids away from inappropriate sites in Net Nanny can protect your business from misuse of company time and company computers.

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Mashable – Google has added a new layer of functionality to their Instant search: keyboard navigation.

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AP – Hulu Plus, the $10-per-month online TV subscription service, will soon be available for users of Roku Inc. set-top boxes and TiVo Inc. subscribers who purchase its newest Premiere digital video recorders.

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Reuters – AOL Inc said it agreed to acquire the popular technology blog and network TechCrunch as it tries to remake itself into a Web entertainment and news powerhouse.

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PC World – This year, a smaller percentage of U.S. Internet users are contributing to social media sites — uploading videos, writing blog entries, posting comments to news articles and writing online product reviews — than in 2009, according to Forrester Research.

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Reuters – British cable operator Virgin Media is to offer business customers Internet access with unlimited bandwidth in response to customer frustrations over slow and disrupted connections.

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Reuters – The United States could run out of unique Internet addresses to assign to new devices by the end of next year, a telecommunications official said on Tuesday.

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The Upshot – Here is our roster of stories that managed to evade the full-on blog treatment: • With its final debt payment to be made this coming Sunday, Germany will officially end World War I, 92 years after its last shot was fired. (UK Telegraph) • Former President Jimmy Carter is resting peacefully after following a health [...]

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Reuters – Google Inc expects mobile searches to generate most of its revenue eventually, but it could take a long time despite growing at a rapid clip, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday.

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PC World – Grab the nearest box of tissues and get ready to mourn: Another online service is biting the dust.

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Reuters – The fees paid by Yahoo Inc and RealNetworks Inc for licenses to play music on the Internet should be recalculated, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday in the first case over music usage involving so-called new media.

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AFP – AOL, the once high-flying Internet group which is seeking a revival as an online content company, announced Tuesday it had acquired TechCrunch, a leading Silicon Valley technology blog.

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AP – Hulu Plus, the $10-per-month online TV subscription service, will soon be available for users of Roku Inc. set-top boxes and Tivo Inc. subscribers who purchase its newest Premiere digital video recorders.

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