• There were two Google news of the week. First its investment into MySpace securing the search business and with that step also validating the business model of this social network site. The other news was its announcement to invest $1 bln in India. Already half a dozen tech companies have now announced (according to Shailaja Neelakantan) single investments of $1 bln or higher.
• WiMAX got its single biggest approval this week when Sprint Nextel announced that it would partner with Motorola, Samsung and of course Intel to invest up to $3bln into a US-wide WiMAX network. Also Nokia published a press release congratulating Sprint Nextel on this move. I assume it also fits well (even if they were not selected by Sprint Nextel) with Nokia's legal steps in the US and Europe against Qualcomm who -Nokia claims- uses its CDMA patents in an unfair way to keep away competition. Probably Nokia is saying: "If you guys don't act rational then we will also go to WiMAX and that will mean the end of 3G (and Qualcomm's CDMA cash cow) before it has even started to fully take off."
• How much people can get things wrong when they are desperately looking for a cover story could be seen with Business Week showing Digg's founder on the cover with the title: How this Kid Made $60 million in 18 months". The real story can be listened to in this podcast where Kevin Rose talks about how BW interviewed him. (guys I guess I am not extending my subscription which for sure will really hurt you since I might be one of the last Business Week subscribers left in Europe)
• David Hornik was in Europe (hey we missed you!) and wrote a blog comment about the terrible species in Europe called "Entrepreneur". Of course he was in the country where the word Entrepreneur originated (funnily) in France. Then David made it to Amsterdam too and that was his Europe trip. Wow, we like this view of "Europe" as it shows how much US VCs know about it and do to change that lack of know-how...
• The hottest rumour of the week says that Apple is working on a cell phone: "One person familiar with the ongoings believes the Apple cofounder has commissioned the release of cell phone prototypes to at least two potential OEM manufacturing partners in recent months. Current designs are said to conform to Apple's integrated model and leverage its tightly-knit digital media franchises, that person added."

When reading recent articles in e.g. Business Week ("How this kid made $60 million in 18 months"), FAZ ("Internet zum Mitmachen") or The Financial Times Germany ("$300 for a virtual living room") one could think that this time the traditional media guys don't want to miss the next Internet wave. At least it seems they want to be at the forefront of reporting about it. It is obvious that they are onto something or why would this thing be called Web 2.0, they might think?

While in Europe people read those articles from FAZ or The Financial Times Germany, nod and mostly move on, in the US Business Week is stepping on some other guys' turf and being critized heavily for covering things in the new Web 2.0 in quite a sloppy way. Not that FAZ is not mixing up things too, but just noone seems to care (or maybe know?). Of course as usual Business Week is also trying to attract their readers with catchy stories, and what is better than taking some Web 2.0 star kid, putting him onto their cover and making him a millionaire (although that is still only true on paper)?

Here a taste of the stuff that is being thrown at BW:


Good Morning Silicon Valley:

That $60 million figure is utter BS. It's tossed out in mid-article with virtually no explanation along with another suspect figure that values Digg at $200 million. Quite a fairy tale, no? Reminds me of the days when a black-and-white sock puppet interviewed fellow canines, the Garden.com billboard over 101 was still lush and everything was bubblicious.

Techdirt:

Suffice to say, BusinessWeek has written the ultimate Web2.0 hype piece without the slightest hint of skepticism about the numbers that it throws around. Digg very well may be sold at some point, and Kevin and the other Digg staff may make out very well. However, to suggest that they already have is pure bubble logic. Yeah, we've got some serious deja vu.

The CIO Blogs started about a week ago adding a list of Blog organization tools at the bottom of each of their Blog posts. While we will not do the same on our Blog site we still liked the list and want to mention it here too in case you have not seen it yet:

del.icio.us: Sort and share your favorite links, then search for content submitted by other del.icio.us users.

Digg: User-submitted, edited and moderated technology news service. Add your own stories and rate the value of pieces submitted by other readers.

Reddit: Submit and vote on stories, then receive personalized lists of pieces Reddit thinks you'll like.

Mag.nolia: Save your favorite sites as bookmarks and tag them with your own search terms for easy recall, sorting and sharing.

Newsvine: Read, write and discuss hot news stories.

Furl: Rather than just saving bookmarks to pages, Furl lets you save the entire page in a personal storage area for later retrieval and sharing. Even if the page changes, your Furled copy stays the same.

Technorati: The grandaddy of blog-specific tagging and search tools.