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This Day in Tech: YouTube adds editing tools; Microsoft asks for Mango apps

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET and elsewhere for Wednesday, September 14.

Boonsri Dickinson
Boonsri Dickinson is a multimedia journalist who covers science, technology, and start-ups. She is a contributing editor at CBS SmartPlanet, and her work has appeared in Wired, New Scientist, Technology Review, and Discover magazine. E-mail Boonsri.
Boonsri Dickinson
2 min read

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET and elsewhere for Wednesday, September 14.

• Venture capitalist John Doerr introduces a new social network called Erly, which is built around "experiences." Hulu's founder, Eric Feng, is behind the new service.

• Marc Andreessen's venture capital firm and others are interested in buying Yahoo. "Sources familiar with the situation said the pair (Andreessen and Ben Horowitz) have become increasingly intrigued by the situation at Yahoo and believe that its assets and brand are still strong, despite its management turmoil in recent years," All Things D reports.

• YouTube adds video-editing tools that let users make quick fixes, even after videos are added to the site.

• PayPal wants to be a "one-stop shop" for merchants with its new payments platform for businesses. "PayPal is re-imagining money and making it work better for merchants and consumers--whatever device you're on, wherever you are in the world, and however you prefer to pay (whether that's cash, credit, or installments)," PayPal President Scott Thompson said in a blog post.

• At its Build developer conference, Microsoft tells programmers that it is rethinking, rebuilding, and reimagining the company. The company tells app developers to submit Mango apps to its Marketplace--like ASAP. There have been 500,000 downloads of Windows 8 since last night.

• Discounted Missoni clothing causes Target's Web site to crash.

• Turns out only 4 percent of the top million Web sites are porn sites.

• Facebook is becoming more Twitter-like. The social network adds a subscribe feature so users can follow others who choose to share their feed publicly.

• Google goes on a patent-shopping spree. The search giant buys 1K IBM patents for Android defense in smartphone lawsuits.

• AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo are teaming up on ad deals in a competitive play on Google and Facebook. Forbes' media reporter Jeff Bercovici writes: "Facebook and Google are hoarding it all to themselves. Any why shouldn't they, when you consider that internet users now spend more than four times as much time on social networks as they do on portal sites? Joining forces won't reverse any of these trends, but it just might buy them a little time to find a strategy that will work."

• Best Buy is getting into energy management with new grid technologies that will improve home energy efficiency and give customers the option of having more control over their energy usage at home.

• If you're allergic to Wi-Fi, you might want to consider relocating to Green Bank, W. Va. People who have electromagnetic hypersensitivity to cellular and Wi-Fi signals are going to this small town to get some relief from their symptoms. CNET reports: "Green Bank may sound like geek hell, but it's heaven for people who believe electromagnetic radiation makes them sick. The BBC chatted with a couple of these refugees from technology and they described symptoms ranging from physical pain to fatigue."