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BOL 1038: Microsoft: It's a change

So at one time before February 2008, you could get a domain name for life if you signed up for Microsoft's Office Live. Today Microsoft says it's no longer free. Even though they said it was free for life. But they did acknowledge that "It's a change." You think? Also you can now deposit your checks via iPhone. Wow.

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Microsoft backtracks on free Office Live domains http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10305510-56.html

GM, eBay to team up … Read more

URL shortener Trim gets cut off

With so many URL shortening services out there, this was bound to happen to at least one of them: Trim is shutting down. According to a blog post by parent company Nambu Networks, it was an expensive and fruitless effort.

"We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it, or pay its network costs, which are not inconsequential," the post read.

Those expenses may have been particularly encumbering recently, when the service, found at Tr.im, was hit by a denial-of-service attack last week that knocked it offline.

The blog post was tinged with … Read more

URL shortening is hot--but look before you leap

Twitter's dramatic rise has helped ignite an industry to shorten Web addresses to fit within 140-character messages. With the technology, though, comes a new handful of challenges.

Among the challenges are reliably connecting people to the Web sites they want to reach, keeping spam and phishing attacks at bay, and maintaining the service into the future.

Joshua Schacter, founder of Yahoo's Delicious site for storing and sharing Web bookmarks and now a Google programmer, summarized the issues in an April rant about short-URL problems. "I feel that shorteners are bad for the ecosystem as a whole," … Read more

Daily Tidbits: Last.fm makes its way to Android

Last.fm announced Friday that it has launched a mobile version of its social radio platform for Google Android-based phones. The Last.fm app, which is already available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, allows users to listen to the company's streaming radio stations and plays in the background while users perform other functions on the device. Last.fm's Android app is free and available now in the Android Market.

URL shortening service, Bit.ly, announced Thursday that it has updated its Twitter plug-in for Firefox. The update now provides users with the context of a Twitter conversation … Read more