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Once-Mighty Myspace Acquired for Measly $35 Million

myspace acquired by specific mediaAfter months in search of a buyer, Myspace has finally been acquired. In an email to employees late Wednesday morning, CEO Mike Jones broke the news to employees in an email late Wednesday morning, according to TechCrunch.

Specific Media will acquire the fledgling social network turned social entertainment site for $35 million according to All Things D.

“Today, we are announcing that Myspace will be acquired by Specific Media, one of the world’s leading online media and advertising platforms,” Jones wrote in the email addressed to Myspacers. “Over the next few days you will be hearing from the team at Specific, including their CEO, Tim Vanderhook, regarding their exciting plans for Myspace and how it fits in with the overall vision of their company.”

Jones indicated in the email that a significant reduction in staff was imminent, adding that he would be stepping down as CEO of Myspace after assisting with the transition to Specific Media over the next two months.

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Amazon.com Terminates Contracts of California-Based Associates in Light of New Tax

And I never got a dime after all these years…. Amazon just sent this notice indicating that they’ll terminate my contract as a long-time associate/affiliate in light of the passage of the Internet sales tax clause of the state budget approved by the California legislature, requiring Internet-based businesses to pay sales tax on all items sold to state residents. The bill is on Gov. Jerry Brown’s awaiting his signature. C’mon, Jerry… don’t do it!

UPDATE: He signed it. We done been terminated.

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Google Updates Web Fonts Site, Adds Hundreds of Fonts

Google Web Fonts v2

One of my favorite Google features got a facelift and a major upgrade this week. Google Web Fonts makes it easy to stretch your typographic design far beyond the limitations of the basic, old school, web-friendly fonts of the world wide web.

Today the Web Fonts kit graduates from the Google codebase to the big G at google.com/webfonts/v2 and adds a suitcase for you to collect and easily reference your favorite fonts. And there are now 180 font families to choose from.

As I ecstatically posted last year:

Now we’ve got the quickest shortcut to open-licensed, cross-platform fonts since… well it’s only been a few months since a bunch of designers and typographers got together to develop the Web Open Font Format, a soon-to-be-standardized font specification that wraps core web fonts (including Apple’s TrueType and Microsoft’s OpenType) into an encoded, embeddable file. Google also partnered with TypeKit to offer the Web Font Loader, offering more flexibility.

That’s not all Google updated today — the new homepage top nav bar gives it a slick Android 3.0 look and feel. On top of that — the announcement of Google+, currently in closed beta.

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Tiziano Project Wins Knight News Challenge Grant

tizianoproject.jpg
Photo from an in-class exercise at a Tiziano Project workshop on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona this week.

A Los Angeles-based startup with a mission to enable multimedia storytelling in communities worldwide that otherwise lack necessary resources and training was awarded a $200,000 grant by the Knight Foundation on Wednesday.

The Tiziano Project‘s Tiziano 360 project was one of 16 ideas to win a prestigious Knight News Challenge grant awarded to fund internationally relevant innovative media and digital news concepts.

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