Around the World

» In US: Yahoo has officially confirmed its widely-rumored rejection of Microsoft’s bid to acquire the firm. In a statement, Yahoo confirmed its Board of Directors, management, and financial and legal advisors have determined Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer for the ailing firm is “not in the best interests of Yahoo and our stockholders.” The focus is now on Yahoo’s potential deal with News Corp.

» In UK: Government is proposing a “three strikes and you’re out” law to combat illegal downloads (similar to France’s law proposed in November last year). Under the proposal, UK internet users will be monitored by their ISP’s for illegal downloads, and those caught will receive an e-mail warning in the first instance, internet suspension the second time, and then termination of their contract on the third strike.

» In Asia: New ABI Research sees the total number of mobile TV subscribers growing to 462 million by 2012, driven largely by the expansion of 3G networks and flat-rate plans for mobile video. South Korea and Japan will continue to lead subscription rates worldwide. China and India will contribute significantly to the overall total due to very large subscriber populations, even though the overall penetration of video services will remain much lower than in more technologically advanced countries.

Facebook Update

» Facebook has added the ability for users to recommend friends to other friends, a social networking feature that comes straight from LinkedIn.

Also, Facebook is featured in one of two new iPhone ads from Apple. Apparently this is the first time an iPhone app has been featured in the ad, and the voice over states: “If you love Facebook so much that you check it all the time on your computer, just think how great it would be to check it every time… you’re, well, nowhere near your computer.” Hmm, is Apple befriending Facebook?!

Newfangled Things

» The Wall Street Journal is launching a social-network application called SeenThis?. Members of Facebook and eventually various other social networks will be able to receive notifications on content their friends are reading or sharing while logged into those sites or visiting WSJ.com. Who ISN’T launching a social-network app these days?!

» VisualCV wants to replace the conventional resume with a profile page that lives on the Web. Similar to traditional resumes, it’ll be one page, with a summary of your achievements, work history, education and interests. What’s cool is that you can literally highlight parts of the text, add links, upload a video to express your personality, as well as career charts showing how you’ve progressed in the workplace. You can keep the VisualCV private, share it with a select group, or make it public on the Internet. Sounds like a great idea and could possibly turn into a whole new business (of people who make your online CV look better with more tech add-ons).

» Tel Aviv/San Francisco based Nuconomy is aiming to give publishers an in-depth analytic info about what’s happening on their sites (info that’s more comprehensive than Google Analytics’ current offerings). Basically, Nuconomy is approaching analytics in a new way to try and put more meaning into the data that is thrown back at users.

» Fast Company goes social: Today, Fast Company relaunched its Website as a business social network, putting blog posts, comments, and questions from its readers front and center. Readers are now are encouraged to sign up, create a profile, and “join the business conversation.”

» Ad Camo is billed as the first and only background advertising network. Like any ad network, you sign up and display ads, but along with a banner the advertiser also gets to post their image(s) on your sites background as well. Aesthetically speaking though? You have to be the judge. . .

» Firefox released the beta 3 version of Firefox 3. There are apparently quite a number of glitches right now (e.g.– key plugins, site breaks). Maybe wait another month or two before installing.

» New streaming music service JukeFly will let you listen to your music collection on whichever computer you choose. It’s very similar to Anywhere.fm but here’s the key difference: instead of uploading all of your songs to JukeFly, as you would with Anywhere.fm, you download a 1.5mb client (currently only available for Windows) that will turn your computer into a streaming music server. If you leave your computer on and connected to the Internet, you can go over to your friends house or a local internet cafe and play all your songs through the JukeFly website for free. JukeFly supports MP3s, iTunes unencrypted formats (AAC and Apple Lossless/m4a), and Ogg Vorbis. The service should appeal to users with very large music collections since they won’t have to deal with uploading all of their songs.

» Yahoo announced a mobile app called oneConnect that will soon be available as part of the upcoming release of Yahoo Go 3.0. OneConnect will pull together contacts from your mobile phone, Yahoo address book, and social networks, including: Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Hi5, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Myspace, Twitter, etc. Basically, Yahoo is taking a stab at integrating messaging and social apps. Great initiative!