Retweet.com, which put itself up for sale last month, has sold for $250,000 in an online auction on Flippa. The auction saw a fair amount of interest with 45 bids in total, but it appears that the winning party came in with a “buy it now” offer for $48,000 more than the current bid to take ownership of the Tweetmeme competitor.

Like Tweetmeme, the site aggregates the most popular links on Twitter, and also provides third-party websites with buttons that lets their visitors easily retweet articles. Although the service isn’t as popular as Tweetmeme, it has been able to accumulate respectable traffic, and it’s ideal name give it significant branding power. According to the company’s listing on Flippa, there is not yet any revenue.

At this point, we don’t know who the buyer is, though we heard rumblings last month that a major social news site was interested. We’re looking for more information and have contacted the team behind Retweet.com for details. We’ll update if we learn more.

BBC News : A strong earthquake has struck eastern Turkey, killing at least 57 people, officials have said.
The 6.0-magnitude quake, centred on the village of Basyurt in Elazig province, struck at 0432 (0232 GMT). It has been followed by more than 40 aftershocks. Officials said the nearby village of Okcular had been almost destroyed and several others badly damaged. A number of people were trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings, many of which were built of mud-bricks.

“Villages consisting mainly of mud-brick houses have been damaged, but we have minimal damage such as cracks in buildings made of cement or stone,” Elazig Governor Muammer Erol told CNN Turk.

At least 17 of the dead came from the hillside village of Okcular, where up to 30 houses collapsed, rescuers said.
“The village is totally flattened,” Okcular’s administrator, Hasan Demirdag, told NTV. Television footage from Okcular showed rescue workers and soldiers digging among the rubble of collapsed buildings as villagers looked on. Ali Riza Ferhat, a resident, said he had been asleep in his home when the earthquake struck.
“I tried to get out of the door but it wouldn’t open. I came out of the window and started helping my neighbours,” he told NTV. “We removed six bodies.” The nearby villages of Yukari Kanatli, Kayalik, Gocmezler and Yukari Demirci were also badly damaged and each reported several deaths.

“Everything has been knocked down – there is not a stone in place,” Yadin Apaydin, the administrator for Yukari Kanatli, told CNN Turk. At least 50 people have been taken to hospital, officials say. Some were reportedly hurt during the panic after the first earthquake, when they jumped from windows or balconies. Residents of the affected villages have been warned not to return to damaged homes while the area continues to be hit by aftershocks, the strongest of which have so far measured 5.1 and 5.5. The government disaster management centre and Turkish Red Crescent have set up tents to help survivors cope with the harsh winter weather, and are also distributing food and blankets. Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek and three other ministers have travelled to the earthquake zone to provide assistance.

In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lamented the lack of earthquake-safe buildings and said he had ordered the start of a reconstruction project in the area. “Mud-brick construction is undoubtedly a local tradition. But unfortunately, it has proved to have a heavy price,” he said.

A BBC News website reader who visited the village of Basyurt after the earthquake said its residents blamed the government for the destruction and loss of life. “This is a seismic area. We’ve experienced so many earthquakes in the last 20 years, yet no measures have been taken to strengthen the buildings,” Volkan Durkal said.

“Most houses are not made with cement, they are not well-built and the people are not well-educated about what to do and where to take cover during an earthquake.”Turkey is plagued by earthquakes – generally minor – because of its location on the North Anatolian fault line. A 7.4-magnitude tremor which hit the western city of Izmit in August 1999 killed more than 17,000 people. The BBC’s Jonathan Head in Istanbul says poor quality buildings were also blamed for the high death toll then and there is still concern in Turkey’s largest city, where seismologists predict a major earthquake will occur within the next few decades.

A few weeks ago, we noted that the Denver, CO-based design company Aten Design Group was holding a funeral for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), the much-hated browser. The funeral took place last night. It wasn’t without controversy as there were protestors, and even a bouquet of flowers sent by Microsoft. But overall, it looks like it was a classy ceremony.

The blog Nonprofits and Web 2.0 was on hand and has posted several videos (a few of which I’ll embed below). There’s also a huge set of pictures in this Flickr album. As we noted originally, despite the funeral, IE6 is likely to live on for a few years as many sites are likely to still support it for the foreseeable future (though YouTube turns off support next week). And don’t forget all those pour souls in corporate jobs who are forced to use the browser because their IT departments won’t allow them to upgrade.

Microsoft itself is trying to get users to upgrade from IE6 (to their updated IE8), and the flowers that they sent to the funeral speak to that. The card sent with the flowers read: “Thanks for the good times, IE6. See you all @ MIX, where we’ll show a little piece of IE heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft“

More than 5,000 people have shed their clothing on the steps of the Sydney Opera House to pose for a photograph by the American artist Spencer Tunick.
The organisers had only expected about half that number to take part.
The installation had been commissioned by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which took place over the weekend.
For once the eye was diverted away from the magnificent white sails of the Sydney Opera House.
It was drawn instead to the tableau of naked flesh assembled on its steps.
“Gay men and women lay naked next to their straight neighbours and this delivered a very strong message to the world that Australians embrace a free and equal society,” Tunick said.
More than 5,000 men and women shed their clothing – people of all ages, shapes and sizes, who were undeterred by the chilly pre-dawn weather on this, the first morning of the southern autumn.
Tunick, famed for his snapshots of mass nudity in public spaces, had been commissioned by the organisers of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which took place over the weekend.
The naked models included a pregnant woman, who went straight to hospital afterwards to give birth, and a television weatherman whose viewers got to see considerably more than his usual Monday morning forecast.

BBC NEWS : Europeans are not getting as wide a choice of browser as they may think, claims a web designer.
From 1 March, European users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer began seeing pop-up screens asking them if they wanted to try a different browser.
They choice was offered to settle an anti-trust case the European Commission brought against Microsoft.
But some say almost half the browsers on offer are clones of IE that only give people an illusion of choice.

Display choice

When the browser choice page popped-up for web designer Richard Quick, he decided to try out some of the lesser known programs on offer.
While installing and using them he noticed that many were based around a core technology, known as a rendering engine, built and maintained by Microsoft. The firm’s Internet Explorer (IE) uses the Trident engine.
IE and four of the other less well-known browsers, Avant, Maxthon, Slim and Green Browser, all use it too. Another, Sleipnir, uses Trident as a default and can also use the Gecko rendering engine.
“The aspect of a browser that decides what bit to put where on the page, that’s the rendering engine,” said Mr Quick.

Microsoft browser ballot criticised for being ‘limited’

By Mark Ward
Technology correspondent, BBC News

Most people are likely to choose from the first five browsers on offer

Europeans are not getting as wide a choice of browser as they may think, claims a web designer.
From 1 March, European users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer began seeing pop-up screens asking them if they wanted to try a different browser.
They choice was offered to settle an anti-trust case the European Commission brought against Microsoft.
But some say almost half the browsers on offer are clones of IE that only give people an illusion of choice.
Display choice
When the browser choice page popped-up for web designer Richard Quick, he decided to try out some of the lesser known programs on offer.
While installing and using them he noticed that many were based around a core technology, known as a rendering engine, built and maintained by Microsoft. The firm’s Internet Explorer (IE) uses the Trident engine.
IE and four of the other less well-known browsers, Avant, Maxthon, Slim and Green Browser, all use it too. Another, Sleipnir, uses Trident as a default and can also use the Gecko rendering engine.
“The aspect of a browser that decides what bit to put where on the page, that’s the rendering engine,” said Mr Quick.

BROWSER ENGINES
Trident: Internet Explorer, Avant, Maxthon, Slim, Green Browser, Sleipnir
Webkit: Chrome, Safari
Gecko: Firefox, Flock, K-meleon, Sleipnir
Presto: Opera
While he acknowledged that most people were likely to pick one of the popular programs shown on the first browser choice page – which include Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and Opera – his complaint is that those who pick a new one were not getting as much choice as they thought.
Of the 12 browsers on offer, five use the Trident rendering engine, three use Mozilla’s Gecko, two use WebKit, and one uses Opera’s Presto. Sleipnir can use either Trident or Gecko.
This meant, he said, that almost half of the browsers being offered were IE or something very similar.
“If you choose IE you will get pages rendered the IE way,” he said. “But if you choose these browsers you will get the pages rendered the IE way too.”
Mr Quick said he had sent a complaint about the choices to the European Commission.
A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on Mr Quick’s findings but directed the BBC towards public documents which set out how the choice of browsers was made.
Clause 10 of this said: “Nothing in the design and implementation of the Choice Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for Internet Explorer.”
Microsoft is also not allowed to feature any browser “which is based on Internet Explorer’s rendering engine and the development or distribution of which is funded in whole or in substantial part by Microsoft.”
The browser choices, it said, is based on the 12 most widely used browsers that run on Windows 7 measured by an agreed methodology.

Smart browsers

Another web designer Paul Boag said few web designers were fans of the Trident rendering engine.
“From a web designers point of view, its all to do with support for the World Wide Web Consortium specifications,” he said.
These specifications dictate how the different elements of a webpage should be displayed. Mr Boag said Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera did the best job of adhering to the W3C specifications.
“Internet Explorer is somewhere down the list,” he said.
This meant, he said, that many of the things it was easy to do in other browsers, such as create shadows on the page, required far more lines of code or workarounds in IE.
There is currently a vocal campaign to extinguish the older IE version 6. Mr Boag said this had largely come about because its rendering engine was so out of date and hard to use.
Many web designers were now pushing a technology called “progressive enhancement” said Mr Boag.
This tunes a webpage to the software that people use to view it, he said.
“It gives the less intelligent browser something much more basic and gives the better browser something better on top,” he said.
If it was widely adopted, he said, it could mean that users of IE or browsers that use the same rendering engine see only the most basic elements of a page. Others with more sophisticated browsers will get the full experience.

Two million people have been affected by the massive earthquake that struck central Chile on Saturday, President Michelle Bachelet has said. In a TV address, she said the forces of nature were testing the nation.
So far at least 300 people have been confirmed killed in the earthquake that struck in the early hours of Saturday.
The 8.8 quake – one of the biggest ever – triggered a tsunami that has been sweeping across the Pacific, although waves were not as high as predicted.
“The forces of nature have badly affected our country,” Ms Bachelet said.
“And once again they’ve put to the test our ability to deal with adversity and get back on our feet. And we are examining every way to restore all the basic services in the country. But there’s still a lot to do.
Ms Bachelet added that she had declared a state of catastrophe in six regions.
Chile is vulnerable to earthquakes, being situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where the Pacific and South American plates meet.
The earthquake struck at 0634 GMT, 115km (70 miles) north-east of the city of Concepcion and 325km south-west of the capital Santiago at a depth of about 35km. It is the biggest to hit Chile in 50 years.
Widespread damage to roads and buildings has been reported in many areas, including the capital where a chemical plant caught fire.
Electricity, water and phone lines have been cut.
At least 85 people died in the region of Maule alone, journalists there reported.
Many deaths were also reported in the regions of Santiago, O’Higgins, Biobio, Araucania and Valparaiso.
TV pictures showed a major bridge at Concepcion had collapsed into the Biobio river.
Rescue teams are struggling to reach Concepcion because of damage to infrastructure, national media reported.
In Santiago, where at least 13 people were killed, several buildings collapsed – including a car park.
A fire at a chemical plant in the outskirts of the capital forced the evacuation of the neighbourhood.
Santiago international airport’s terminal was damaged and will be closed for at least 72 hours, officials said. Flights are being diverted to Mendoza in Argentina.
A tsunami triggered by the earthquake struck the Juan Fernandez island group off the Chilean coast and local media say five people died there with several others missing.
As the tsunami radiated across the Pacific, Japan warned that a wave of 3m (10ft) or higher could hit the Pacific coast of its northernmost island of Hokkaido at about 1300 local time (0400 GMT).
In French Polynesia, waves 6ft (1.8m) high swept ashore, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
Hawaii later lifted its tsunami warning after waves measuring just under 1m (3ft) high struck but caused no damage.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said tsunami effects had been observed at Valparaiso, west of Santiago, with a wave height of 1.69m above normal sea level.
The USGS also recorded at least eight aftershocks, the largest of 6.9 magnitude at 0801 GMT.

While Google Buzz tries to make itself a competitor of Facebook and Twitter, there has been a poll by the Mashable users which results in the lead of Facebook.

Last week we saw free beat out premium in our online dating services head-to-head, and this week we wanted to check in on how you good readers were ranking Buzz in its still early days against popular contenders Facebook and Twitter. The results are now in…

…and Facebook wins the day, with 47% of the vote out of a healthy 7130 votes cast. Twitter came in a respectable second place at 26% of the vote, with Google Buzz coming in not terribly far behind at 18% of the vote. A good 9% of you thought it was too close to call, with the tie vote snagging 651 votes.

What do you think of the results? Check below for the results listing from the past editions of this series, and tune in next week for another edition of the Web Faceoff!

Live online video streams of Tiger Woods’ public apology caused a stir on the Internet on Friday, but online viewership fell far short of expectations.
Before the press briefing at 11 a.m. ET, some online writers had speculated that Woods’ talk would break records for video watched live online.
The thinking was that, with many people stuck in front of computers at office jobs, the Web would be a more convenient way to watch the speech than TV.
But initial reports from sites like Ustream, which publishes live video streams, and Trendrr, which tracks online buzz, show Woods’ apology for his marital indiscretions did not get as much attention from Internet audiences as President Obama’s inauguration, Michael Jackson’s funeral or even the red carpet preview for the Twilight movie sequel “New Moon.”
More than 680,000 people watched the 15-minute event on Ustream, according to that site’s spokeswoman, Shari Foldes, who said viewership would have been higher had Woods’ statement not been so brief. By comparison, 4.6 million Ustream viewers watched last summer’s live memorial service for pop star Michael Jackson, which lasted about an hour and a half.
Tech blog: Obama, MJ, ‘Twilight’ top Tiger’s Ustream audience
More than 1,000 Twitter posts per minute contained the word “Tiger” during the speech, according to the Web site Trendrr. In total, nearly 94,000 tweets were posted about Tiger Woods during the 11 a.m. ET hour, according to data from a Trendrr spokesman.

But that pales in comparison to some other online news events Trendrr has watched. When rapper Kanye West stole the microphone from singer Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards in September 2009, Twitter users posted 293,024 times on the subject in one hour, Trendrr spokesman Chris Thonis wrote in an e-mail to CNN. In July, when President Obama met with Russian leaders, the rate of Twitter posts on that subject was 175,000 per hour, he said.
“It will be hard to determine total daily Twitter numbers until the end of the day, but by looking at the hourly data you can see that buzz around Tiger is not nearly as heavy as some other events last year,” Thonis wrote on Friday afternoon.
Woods’ 15-minute apology was broadcast live on sites like CNN.com, YouTube, Hulu and Ustream. No Internet-wide numbers for Woods’ speech were immediately available.
Obama’s inauguration holds the apparent record for live online video views. Some 7.7 million people watched that event live on the Internet in January 2009, according to Akamai, which handles Web services for several major companies.
Live video on the Web poses a number of technical challenges, as it eats up monster amounts of Internet bandwidth. Only in recent years has live online video consumption started to take off.
Tiger Woods: ‘I am so sorry’
Online reaction to Woods’ speech was mixed.
Some people found Woods’ apology to be sincere, while others mocked the world’s most famous golfer.
On microblogs like Twitter, comments about Woods were mostly neutral; positive and negative reactions to his speech balanced each other out with a 1 to 1 ratio, according to socialmention.com, a Web site that tracks online opinion. Blogs responded more positively to Woods’ statements, at least immediately after the speech, the site said.
Some online pundits were indifferent, mocking Woods’ demeanor during the talk or making fun of the news media for putting so much significance on the story.
“This is hilarious. ESPN is building this Tiger Woods statement up like it’s the State of the Union address,” wrote Twitter user @jasoncercone.
On Facebook, a user named Jordan wrote: “Yeah, he is a celebrity but the rumors and carrying one mistake in his life is just rediculous (sic). Move on to something else to talk about and make jokes about.”
Others wrote that Woods’ presentation on Friday seemed stiff.
“Tiger Woods needs a teleprompter. At least he did not write notes on his hand!” wrote Twitter user @igobydoc, an apparent reference to a recent speech by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Twitter user @Mike_White_ wrote: “Tiger Woods needs to apologize for that outfit he has on right now.”
“I thought somebody died or something! Michael Jackson’s family was more lively at his funeral than this pitiful press conference. Am I the only one LOL at this?” wrote a Facebook user named Tamera.
Some microbloggers jumped to Woods’ defense:
Fellow pro golfer John Daly, who has had his own troubles off the course, posted this on Twitter after Woods finished speaking: “THE BIGGEST “MAJOR” TIGER IS GOING TO WIN NOW—IS GOING TO KEEP HIS FAMILY & I HOPE HE SUCCEEDS! I WISH HIM ALL THE BEST! JD.”
Earlier, however, Daly posted, “Tiger–where is your wedding ring? Most Important I would think …”
Submissions to CNN.com’s iReport were almost universally supportive of Woods.
iReporter Melissa Fazli of Yorba Linda, California, had a camera rolling as Woods spoke and shared some of her reactions.
“It’s great to know he’s going to work on things with [wife] Elin,” Fazli said. “Nike is the big answer. It’s business, people. … He employs a lot of people, so if he doesn’t get his credibility back, a lot of people are gonna be out of work.”
iReporter Hao Li, a Californian studying abroad in London, England, thinks those who are angry with the golfer may be hypocrites.
“Have you gone out and apologized to your loved ones? Have you gone on TV and apologized to the world? Do you have the courage? Because if you don’t, then I don’t think that gives you the right to sit on the pedestal of righteousness,” he said.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Microsoft and Yahoo said Thursday that their online search deal has received approval from U.S. and European Union regulators, paving the way for the two companies to combine much of their Internet search business.

Under the 10-year deal, which was announced in July, Yahoo.com and Bing.com will maintain their own branding but search results on Yahoo.com will say “powered by Bing.” Yahoo, in turn, will be responsible for getting premium advertisers.

Microsoft will pay Yahoo 88% of the revenue it gains from searches on Yahoo’s sites. Microsoft will also have the rights to integrate Yahoo’s search technology into its own existing Web search platforms.

With the final hurdle out of the way, the companies said Thursday that they will start implementing their partnership in the coming days. Yahoo and Microsoft have set a goal to complete all aspects of the deal in the United States by the end of 2010 and globally by the end of 2012. The companies previously said that U.S. users will start to see the change three months after regulators approved the deal.

“This breakthrough search alliance means Yahoo! can focus even more on our own innovative search experience,” said Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz in a statement.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer called the regulatory approval “an exciting milestone,” noting that the companies are “just at the beginning of this process.”

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) remains the clear dominant search engine, controlling more than 65% of the market, according to online data tracker comScore. But Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) Bing and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) control nearly 30% of the market combined, which analysts say will help the companies attract better advertising partners.

Let’s get right to it, though I really don’t know what “it” is yet, but we will find out together. So, Sayid came back to life but as who or what? When Jack examined Sayid he told him the wound was almost completely closed. It seems the pool at the temple was healing him, but he died before the process was complete. How did Dogen’s exam and torture test determine he was “claimed”? I must have missed something was it because he didn’t pass out from the pain? If you remember Danielle tested Sayid in the same way when she captured him in the jungle. Danielle had become paranoid and traumatized after having to kill her team, claiming they had become infected. She said the sickness was caused by the smoke monster.

So with that in mind, are we to believe that because of Jacob’s death, the smoke monster or the darkness was able to inhabit and turn the temple water murky, making it possible for something dark to “claim” Sayid at the exact moment of his death? If he really isn’t alive except by the means of something dark why couldn’t Miles sense it? Or does he?

When Claire was knocked unconscious in the explosion of her house in New Otherton she said “Charlie”?, as Sawyer awoke her, as if she had been talking to him. We know Charlie was already dead. Could it be that Claire actually died in the explosion and was talking to Charlie? Remember Sawyer said to Locke, “she got her bell rung but I think she’ll be alright”, to which Miles said, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that”. Then as Miles, Sawyer and Claire were heading back to the beach, Miles kept watching Claire like he knew something was wrong or different. Later Claire walked off into the jungle with her dead father, Christian, leaving Aaron behind. So it seems Dogen was right when he told Jack, he’s sure about the darkness that’s growing in Sayid, “because it happened to your sister”. We now know that Claire did die in the explosion and she too is infected. That explains why we recently saw her looking all ratty living in the jungle like Danielle use too.

We also know to become infected you have to die, but why didn’t that happen to all the people that died on the island? Maybe it did, could that be what the whispering is that we hear in the jungle?

Back to Sayid. What do you think will happen if he takes the pill willingly from Jack, will the poison kill just the “darkness” or also Sayid?

Let’s flash back to when Ben was shot as a child and Richard took him inside the temple, Richard said, “Ben will lose his innocence and would never be the same”. Ben was healed somehow, possibly by the same pool as Sayid. If this is true does that mean Ben has spent his life infected with this “darkness”? Don’t you think it strange how Ben has never showed any empathy or that in all the years of leading the others that he never met nor spoke with Jacob? Maybe that’s why Jacob said, “What about you?” Jacob didn’t know Ben because he had been “claimed” all those years ago! Furthermore I remember, when Ben slipped into Widmore’s bedroom and in conversation Widmore told Ben, “I know who and what you are boy”! Those words have always haunted me.