Here’s the weekly wrap-up of worthly tech news and a few extra tidbits. Lots of great news and articles this week! By far the biggest news of the week just happened this morning with Microsoft agreeing to buy Yahoo (links below). I’ve been telling people for the last month now that Yahoo was the perfect stock to pickup because it’s fallen so far… I just looked and Yahoo’s stock is up 44% today.  Guess I just blew that lottery pick!

• Open Wireless Access Assured On 700 MHz Spectrum - An anonymous bidder exceeded the reserve price in the nationwide wireless spectrum auction Thursday. This is great news!
• Live from the Higher Ed Blogosphere: New ideas, new blogs & new projects in the higher ed design community - Lots of new things are going on in Higher Ed and instead of listing I’ll just link to CollegeWebEditor’s list.
• Which Technologies Will Shape Education in 2008? - A report that gives us a look into the future of what Technologies will shape the Education field.
• What Would a Combined Microsoft-Yahoo Look Like? - Interesting look at the future of these two companies and their finances
• Microsoft Makes $45 Billion Bid To Buy Yahoo - This is the BIG news of the week, hands down!
• Sociable WordPress plugin take-over - WordPress - Finally a new update for sociable has been released!
• Laptop Stolen With Personal Data On 300,000 Health Insurance Clients - Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey is offering its members free credit monitoring for one year as a result of the security breach.
• Google, Facebook Battle For Computer Science Grads. Salaries Soar. - Good jobs are on the horizon for Computer Science graduates!
• A Marketer in Need Deserves a Student Indeed - Great advice about getting to know your students. Besides being one of the most enjoyable parts of my jobs working with students can teach you a lot!
• The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base - A really LARGE collection of tools.
• Our Tech President Endorsements: Barack Obama and John McCain - Political opinion from the tech front.
• dotCMS: An Introduction - Writeup of dotCMS and it’s value as an enterprise CMS solution.
• Best & Worst Online Companies: The Results - Apple is big on both lists. The findings are interesting but make sense.
• Bill Gates For Senate - Somehow this prediction doesn’t seem that far off.
• Interactive Media for Higher Education: Leverage the Reach of Many Video Sites from One Page - If you post videos to multiple sites here are some tools to greatly simplify your life.
• When’s the Best Time to Send Email to Target Consumers at Work? Test Results - SUMMARY: Don’t take every fact and figure you read as gospel. Marketers need to rely on their own tests to determine important email elements, including when’s the best time to send your blast. An eretailer wondered how much of a difference they could
• Choosing the Right CMS Platform for Your Website (from an SEO perspective) - Great look at choosing an CMS, if you are still looking for one.
• Skyfire browser for Windows Mobile is game changing, does Flash - Skyfire is legit for mobile web browsing according to this article, but online if your phone runs Windows Mobile…
• Facebook Apps On Any Website: Clever Move - The client library allows users to make Facebook API calls from any web site and create Ajax Facebook applications on that website.
• Free (legal) P2P Music Downloads? Told You So. - Free music downloads IS the future
• Top 30 Wordpress Plugins that are actually useful - Nice list of WordPress plugins
• MySpace Private Profiles Aren’t That Private - Recently Ashyley of CyberNet News wrote about how someone else can view a MySpace profile’s picture even if the profile was set to private. Apparently, MySpace has fixed this issue.
• How 20 Words Generate a 220 Percent Lift in Response - Case in point: in a recent test I did with a client, we added a Johnson Box to its e-mail control. It generated a 220 percent lift in response rate! Here’s a brief overview of the results, along with some tips for making a Johnson Box work for you.
• How Search Engines Work - Whiteboard Friday - A nice ten minute video explaining how search engines work. A great video to introduce the beginner to this.
• Wikipedia Joins Academe to Evaluate Itself - Wikipedia is famous for its philosophy that ordinary people, not just scholars, have expertise to offer the public. But when it comes to evaluating the online encyclopedia itself, Wikipedia officials have apparently concluded that academe is best suited…
• Terabyte Memory Chips Expected From Microsoft-Backed Firm In 2010 - The chips from Nanochip Inc., which is also backed by Intel, will combine a DRAM-like interface with internals that function like a multi-head hard drive.

Hopefully the reading above will keep you entertained while I finish up my MySpace survey this weekend! Have a great weekend!