Top News

Yahoo! News: Entertainment News: AFP - A San Francisco-based writer who first published his novel on Twitter -- all 95,000 words of it -- was celebrating Bastille Day on Wednesday with the launch of a print version of his book. (more)

Yahoo! News: Entertainment News: AP - For the visually savvy filmmaker, there's a new frontier with as much cinematic appeal as the old West held for moviemakers half a century ago. (more)

Mashable!: Mashable’s Spark of Genius series highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, see details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.Name: Togetherville.com… (more)

Mashable!: On Wednesday, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg will sit across from ABC News’ Diane Sawyer in his most high-profile interview since 2008, when Leslie Stahl interviewed him on 60 Minutes.Facebook’s well-known CEO doesn’t give many public interviews, and for good… (more)

Yahoo! News: Entertainment News: AP - "The Hills," the landmark reality soap that cemented Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag and their pals as tabloid superstarlets, died Tuesday at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. It was 4. (more)

NYT > Home Page: The three-year blockade by Israel and Egypt — and the bitter rivalry between Palestinian factions — has turned the Gazans’ difficult life into a new torment. (more)

Mashable!: On-demand subscription music service MOG has just launched its official mobile app for the iPhone, iPod touch and Android devices. MOG originally unveiled its mobile app at SXSW earlier this year, but it’s just now becoming available.While… (more)

NYT > Music: Mr. Fuqua, who began his career with the doo-wop group the Moonglows, also worked closely with Marvin Gaye. (more)

NYT > Music: Ms. Sherrill was also one of the first African-American performers to host a children’s television show. (more)

NYT > Music: The Latin Alternative Music Conference, which runs through Saturday, strives to bring its loosely defined music to a wider audience. (more)

NYT > Music: With James Levine recuperating from surgery, other conductors have a chance to shape his programs at Tanglewood this summer. (more)

NYT > Music: Jimmy Buffett and other performers play a benefit concert to help Gulf Shores, Ala., endure the ill effects of the BP oil spill. (more)

NYT > Music: In his first season at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert stakes out a place among a group of young conductors. (more)

NYT > Music: Michael Tilson Thomas led Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony in the opening concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer season at Tanglewood. (more)

NYT > Arts: A facelift at the Israel Museum should enhance its links across cultures and their histories. (more)

NYT > Music: Harry Connick Jr. gave his first Broadway concert in 20 years on Thursday evening at the Neil Simon Theater. (more)

TechCrunch: A couple of weeks ago, game developer and Zynga rival Playdom continued its shopping spree just after raising $33 million in funding, acquiring social gaming startup Hive7. What Playdom spent to buy the True Ventures-backed company wasn't disclosed, but thanks to an SEC filing we now know that it concerned a mixture of cash and stock. The exact amount Playdom paid for Hive7 in cash remains unknown, but the SE... (more)

TechCrunch: Amazon's looking to hook 'em while they're young. The online retailer has launched a program for college students — appropriately called Amazon Students — that offers a free one-year subscription to its premium Amazon Prime service, which normally runs $79 a year. The program also promises exclusive deals and promotions. To join, you'll need to have an .edu email address and be enrolled in at least one college c... (more)

TechCrunch: By now you've probably heard of Google's App Inventor for Android, a web-based development environment that's meant to make it possible for non-developers to build their own Android applications. The technology has been in testing for a year, primarily with educational organizations, and may well be a boon for the Android ecosystem as students are introduced to the platform in the classroom. A report in the New Y... (more)

TechCrunch: Amazon Web Services has announced the availability of Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, which is a new instance type specifically designed for high-performance computing (HPC) applications and other demanding applications. The new offering is designing for EC2 clients that have complex computation workloads with large amounts of data, such as financial services. The benefit of Cluster Compute Instances i... (more)

TechCrunch: Boku has carved out quite a name for itself in the fast-expanding world of mobile payments for virtual goods. The startup, which has raised more than $40 million since its launch last year, is now in 61 countries and has deals with some 200 carriers. However, while the realm of gaming remains rich (see our latest numbers on Zynga), Boku is ready to expand beyond virtual goods and step into real world transactions-... (more)

TechCrunch: Echo, the real-time comment engine formerly known as JS-Kit, has launched a new real-time recent comments widget that allows publishers to embed a stream of their users' latest comments and tweets on their homepage and alongside articles. The widget can display comments left anywhere on the publisher's site, or they can elect to only show comments from a certain subsection. Likewise, publishers can elect to displ... (more)

Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Celebrity News | TMZ.com: Filed under: Kelsey Grammer, Camille Grammer, Dirty Divorces, Celebrity Justice Kelsey Grammer has just filed court docs in his divorce case, asking the judge to acknowledge he has sole financial interest in the television series, "Frasier."� Grammer is claiming various other separate property assets, but "Frasier" is the big… ... (more)

Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Celebrity News | TMZ.com: Filed under: Mel Gibson, Oksana Grigorieva, Dr. Ross Shelden, Celebrity Justice TMZ has learned ... the dentist who treated Oksana Grigorieva the day after the explosive January 6 blowup with Mel Gibson wrote a sworn declaration in which he says Oksana not only told him Mel had hit her ... but he was so concerned for her safety he… Read more (more)

Mashable!: After collectively losing nearly a quarter of their ad pages in 2009, fashion magazines are poised to make a big comeback in ad sales in 2010 — but the recovered revenue may not come from print sales.Instead,… (more)