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Mashable – In 2011, online advertising has beaten out print and radio as the number two place ad dollars are spent. But how did it come to be that way? Four thousand years ago Ancient Egyptians invented advertising by carving public notices in steel. Fast forward to the present day, and in-text online ads, Facebook Like-driven campaigns and viral commercials, such as the Old Spice Guy, are common form.
This illustrated timeline, created by Infolinks, takes a walk down advertising’s memory lane.

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Reuters – The Obama administration cleared the way for U.S. states to legalize Internet poker and certain other online betting in a switch that may help them reap billions in tax revenue and spur web-based gambling.

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AP – Mitt Romney’s wife gushes about his silly side and devotion to their five sons and 16 grandchildren. Rick Santorum’s college-age daughter opines online about missing the campus coffee shop and chats with friends about their Friday night plans. Jon Huntsman’s daughters generate much-needed buzz for him with a joint Twitter account and online videos, including at least one that went viral.

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AP – Mitt Romney’s wife gushes about his silly side and devotion to their five sons and 16 grandchildren. Rick Santorum’s college-age daughter opines online about missing the campus coffee shop and chats with friends about their Friday night plans. Jon Huntsman’s daughters generate much-needed buzz for him with a joint Twitter account and online videos, including at least one that went viral.

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Reuters – China will try a veteran dissident, Chen Xi, on charges of “inciting subversion” for pro-democracy essays he published online, his wife said on Sunday, days after another dissident was jailed for nine years on similar charges.

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AP – President Barack Obama is wishing a Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all Americans in his weekly radio and Internet address, with a special message of thanks to the troops.

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AP – The Obama administration appears to have softened a U.S. ban on Internet gambling.

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AP – Ten-year-old Angie Vazquez has become an Internet phenom belting out a soulful cover of Brit pop star Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” In an online video seemingly shot at home, her teenage brothers Abelardo and Gustavo play the keyboard, guitar and drums.

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NewsFactor – Google will pay about three times as much as it once did to be the default search engine on Mozilla’s Firefox browser. Although Google and Mozilla are keeping the word mum, news reports are leaking details of the deal.

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Reuters – Yahoo Inc’s board of directors has agreed to keep exploring a plan to split off the Internet company’s Asian assets in a complex deal valued at $17 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

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Reuters – Tom Nenon, a philosophy professor at the University of Memphis, is vexed with his online shopping experience at Best Buy, a sentiment shared by other U.S. Internet shoppers this holiday season.

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NewsFactor – Seeking to expand mobile broadband deployments throughout the United States, the FCC has given AT&T the green light to begin using the 700MHz spectrum licenses the carrier purchased from Qualcomm for $1.925 billion in December 2010.

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Reuters – U.S. companies Facebook, Google and Yahoo, and other internet firms, have been ordered by two Indian courts to remove material considered religiously offensive, the latest skirmish in a growing battle over website content in the world’s largest democracy.

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Reuters – Digital goods are the fastest-growing category online this holiday, led by e-books, suggesting Amazon.com Inc’s strategy of blanketing the world with cheap e-readers and tablet computers may be producing some early gains.

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Mashable – In an interview with Mashable shortly after GoDaddy announced its withdrawal of support for the Stop Online Piracy Act, new company CEO Warren Adelman said that the web hosting and domain registration service was acting purely in the best interest of its customers and would now “let others carry the ball forward” as the fiercely contested piece of legislation continues to make its way through Congress.
“After digesting what was being said online and looking at how we got involved in the process, we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t ready in its current state and that we’d step back and let others provide leadership,” Adelman said.

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Mashable – Thanks to this week’s advertisers and partners for enabling us to bring you the latest social media news and resources. Mashable’s sponsors are as social media savvy as our readers!
Advertise with us and get noticed.
Mashable is seeking site sponsors for our large, diverse audience — social media users, venture capitalists, early adopters, developers, bloggers and many more.

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Mashable – The trailer for Dark Knight Rises, the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, got 12.5 million views through the iTunes Movie Trailers site in 24 hours, breaking the previous record by 2 million.
Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures released the trailer exclusively to iTunes on Monday, surpassing the record set earlier in the month by Marvel’s The Avengers. Though Dark Knight Rises doesn’t open until next summer, it’s already been part of an extensive digital campaign. In July, the studios launched the first trailer for the movie via Facebook.

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Mashable – Following a maelstrom of Internet backlash, GoDaddy has withdrawn its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the company announced on Friday.
“As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy,” GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman said in a statement.

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Mashable – Facebook still has a long way to go when it comes to instilling trust in consumers, according to a new study that shows only 26% believe storefronts on the social network are safe against fraud.
The online survey, conducted by ThreatMetrix and The Ponemon Institute of a pool of 800 consumers this fall, revealed that 53% of consumers do not believe Facebook storefronts are committed to protecting them against fraudsters. Another 23% were unsure.

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Reuters – China’s state news agency Xinhua plans to list its online portal in a 1 billion yuan ($157.8 million) stock market offering in Shanghai with China International Capital Corp underwriting the deal, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.

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Mashable – For Amazon, it’s going to be hard to top 2011. After all, this was the year the gargantuan online retailer launched a cloud storage service, opened the doors on its own Appstore, and released a tablet, the Kindle Fire, that happens to be selling like crazy.
Looking at the bigger picture, this was the year Amazon moved to unify its several disparate services into a full-fledged platform in its own right. The site — though it’s not just a site anymore, is it? — already has a massive user base, and now its services are slowly turning more and more of them into something resembling loyal customers, or if Amazon’s lucky, “members.”

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Reuters – Soletron, a start-up backed by former Adobe Systems Inc Chief Executive Bruce Chizen, is building an online marketplace for streetwear and sneakers, a market that is worth almost $60 billion by one estimate.

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Reuters – Yahoo Inc is considering a plan to unload most of its prized Asian assets in a complex deal valued at roughly $17 billion, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, winning nods of approval from Wall Street and driving its shares higher.

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Mashable – [brightcove video="1342910470001 " /]
Pinterest, a social networking site with an “online pinboard” interface, has made great strides this year. According to Experian Hitwise, this invitation-only site now has 40 times the number of total visits it had six months ago, now finding its way into the top 10 websites in the category of social networking and forums.

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Mashable – Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy. She was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of WOMMA.
Online presentation website SlideShare is an important business network that ranks in the top 300 websites, with 30 million monthly viewers, and 80 million pageviews. Users upload presentations, Word and PDF files, tag them, and share them on other social media sites, or embed them in their blogs and company websites.

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NewsFactor – Even as Yahoo looks for a successor to fired CEO Carol Bartz, the ailing search prince may be looking to shed more corporate assets: Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan.

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Appolicious – A whole lot of people use Fandango, the online movie ticket purchasing service, from their mobile devices. Already the app was highly convenient, allowing you to purchase your tickets from anywhere you could establish a 3G Internet connection just by using a credit card number. Then you can have tickets emailed to you to print out, and at some theaters, you can even just scan a barcode on your device and you’re on your way.

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Mashable – Social media users had no shortage of things to discuss in 2011 as big news — good or bad — got even bigger online.
Hot topics that revolved around major tech companies or products such as Facebook, Netflix, YouTube, iPhone, Xbox 360 or Kindle Fire incited a flurry of online reactions.

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Mashable – The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is a hotly debated bill in the U.S. Congress. Some say it’s a necessary law to ensure protection of America’s intellectual property, others claim it will destroy the infrastructure of the Internet as we know it.

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Mashable РRen̩ Pinnell is the CEO of Foreca.st, a free mobile app that lets friends share where they are going and what they are doing. Foreca.st is the latest app from Hurricane Party.
Often, there is an ironic disconnect between your online and offline social networks. In other words, we’re “friends” with strangers on Facebook, and we “hangout” when we’re actually apart on Google+.

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Reuters – EBay Inc said on Thursday it bought BillSafe, a purchase and invoicing technology provider with clients in Germany, and will combine it with its PayPal online payments service, in a move to strengthen its e-commerce capabilities in Northern Europe.

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Appolicious – The iTunes App Store is about to go into its holiday freeze, which will mean no new apps until the New Year. Fortunately, you’ll still be able to download some great titles, and we’ve got a crop of this weeks’ freshest games to take you through the holidays. A 3-D arcade flyer with some great graphics called Sleepy Jack leads the charge, followed by a new third-person shooter called M.U.S.E. with lots of stuff to blow up in it. …

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Reuters – Chinese writer Chen Wei faces trial on Friday accused of “inciting subversion” for online essays advocating democracy, in the latest aftershock of a drive against dissent earlier this year, his wife and defense lawyer said.

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Reuters – It was a Cinderella story: a pig-rearing and vegetable-growing hamlet in China’s eastern Jiangsu province that transformed itself into a village boasting millionaires and expensive cars, all through plywood, ingenuity and the Internet.

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AP – Yahoo appears to be getting closer to giving its frustrated shareholders something they’ve long wanted: a sale of the Internet company’s holdings in China and Japan.

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Reuters – The Vatican said on Wednesday an unknown buyer had snapped up the internet address vatican.xxx, a domain combining its name with an extension reserved for pornographic content.

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Reuters – Activist investment fund Starboard Value has taken a 4.5 percent stake in AOL Inc and is pushing for a meeting with the Internet company’s chief executive and the board to address what it sees as strategic failings.

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Reuters – Kevin Ryan, chief executive of online retailer Gilt Groupe, is keeping close tabs on congressional legislation that might enable him to have more shareholders in his young company.

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Reuters – Wal-Mart Stores Inc has turned to a small group of technology entrepreneurs to help the world’s largest retailer improve its online fortunes.

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Mashable – Amazon Kindle Fire is, at least by Amazon’s estimation, selling like hotcakes. But the road to tablet success has not been without its bumps. Many customers have complained about sluggish or jumpy screen interaction, an out-of-control carousel and no way of stopping children from freely shopping and surfing to some of the darkest corners of the web. Kindle Fire 6.2.1 software update is supposed to solve all that, and in our tests, it does a fairly good job.
Getting the update can be quite easy. If you’re on a Wi-Fi network, it should show up in your Kindle Fire automatically. If not, you need to connect your Fire to your computer. I’ve been testing the Kindle Fire for a while, but for some reason, even though it was on the network, it did not automatically find the update. Then it decided to lock me out completely. The screen became unresponsive and I couldn’t shut down or unlock the device. A friend on Twitter offered a solution: Press and hold the Kindle Fire power button (its only button) for 20 seconds. That worked and the tablet finally rebooted.

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Reuters – Spanish police arrested a 31-year-old man Wednesday and charged him with illegally leaking an early recording of a new Madonna song on the internet.

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Mashable – In the latest act of online political sabotage, individuals who type newtgingrich.com into their browsers will be directed to one of a number of sites that are embarrassing to Republican primary candidate Newt Gingrich.
Instead of finding a homepage for Gingrich’s campaign, which is hosted at newt.org, visitors are redirected to sites like Tiffany & Co. (where Gingrich has a six-figure tab) or Freddie Mac (where Gingrich’s role as “historian” has been called into question), or to news articles and YouTube videos that make conservative voters cringe, like this ad for former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. In the ad, Gingrich appears cozying up next to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to talk about climate change.

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Appolicious – Every year, as the Christmas holiday approaches, the iTunes App Store sees a whole lot of games sales. After a fast one pulled by Electronic Arts last year, just about every developer on the iOS platform has slashed the prices of their games ahead of Christmas.

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Mashable – [brightcove video="1340508244001" /]
A recent study found that during the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, Twitter users were more likely to get information from journalists, bloggers and activists than from news organizations.

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Reuters – Auctions of Elizabeth Taylor’s collection of jewels, gowns, art and memorabilia broke records last week on their way to totaling more than $150 million worth of live and online sales, Christie’s said on Monday.

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Mashable – Microsoft is ending its years-long run as the Consumer Electronics Show keynote kick-off event. Its 2012 keynote, which should highlight Windows 8 will be its last and next year will also mark the software giant’s last trade show booth at the event.
Microsoft made the surprise announcement Wednesday in a brief blog post by Corporate Vice President for Corporate Communications Frank X. Shaw:

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Mashable – Amazon updated its Kindle app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch Wednesday, giving users access to their periodical subscriptions and cloud-stored documents for the first time. Previously, users could only use the Kindle app to read — and, before Apple changed its guidelines, buy — ebooks on those devices.
Having access to documents stored on Amazon is handy, but iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch owners will find little reason to begin reading their newspapers and magazines through the Kindle app [iTunes link]. That’s because:

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AP – Yahoo is deepening its connections with Facebook’s online social network.

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Reuters – The United States has removed Baidu Inc, China’s largest search engine, from its list of notorious markets for piracy in a nod to the firm’s efforts to clean up its music offerings.

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Reuters – A former computer hacker testified on Tuesday that he led authorities to the suspected source of the biggest leak of classified documents in U.S. history after several days of online chats with Bradass87, an alias for Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.

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