Virtual theft results in real-life arrest

A Dutch teenager has been arrested and five others have been questioned for allegedly stealing $5800 worth of virtual furniture from virtual rooms in the Habbo Hotel.

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YouTube HD Coming Soon

Speaking at the NewTeeVee conference yesterday, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen confirmed that YouTube was testing HD video but qualified the statement by stating that YouTube is primarily focused on providing content to everyone, which doesn’t necessarily facilitate a HD product.Chen spoke on the difficulties on providing a watchable HD product to many, including buffering times that don’t drive viewers away. Chen told CNet that the first HD content on YouTube should be available within 3 months.

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Google: Half-trillion dollar company by 2010?

Google’s (GOOG) stock has taken a hit in the past week along with other hot momentum stocks in the wake of renewed credit fears on Wall Street. But even though shares have fallen nearly 10 percent since Google hit a new all-time closing high of $741.79 on November 6, investors can’t be too upset.

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Taboola Lands $1.5 Million, Powers Video Discovery

Search has been one of the most powerful tools on the internet, but its next of kin “discovery” is coming up fast. Many new sites are serving up recommendations alongside search to help visitors discover new content they didn’t even know they wanted. But implementing a discovery engine yourself can take time and money away from your core product. Isral-based Taboola will solve that rather complex problem, for video sites at least.

Taboola’s made integrating their system a breeze. All it takes is a single javascript tag added to your player’s code for them to start recommending videos in your site’s player (or ads, as seen right). You can currently see their service live on 5min. Taboola says that 5min has seen a 23% increase in watched videos and 53% increase in session length.

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