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12:50 PM ET, August 21, 2006

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The elephant in the kitchen  —  Dare Obasanjo, of Microsoft, just pulled the ad hominem card.  In debate class in high school the teacher would instantly award the other side a win if you ever pulled that card.  Why?  Because it demonstrated you lost your cool and couldn't win through sheer logic …
RELATED ITEMS:
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Is Microsoft really the largest blog vendor?  —  Microsofties take it on face value that they host the most blogs.  They even love shoving it in your face.  Yesterday someone who works on the Windows Live team was taunting me with "influentials don't matter, we got to be #1 and we don't care …
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
"Where's the blog?" in Windows Live Spaces?  —  Remember those old Wendy's commercials where an old lady yelled "where's the beef?"  —  Well, let's play "where's the blog?"  —  First, let's pull up a list of the most recently posted Windows Live Spaces.  I did at 8:29 p.m., which is where this list came from.
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Why my ego never gets out of control...  Cause if it does get out of control everyone jumps on it and kicks it in the groin.  Like this:  —  Jeff Sandquist: "Seriously Robert, get over yourself already.  A blog that is private is still a blog."  Well, that might be true …
Discussion: Digital Common Sense
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Scoble says half of all Live Spaces aren't blogs*
Discussion: Message
Jeff Sandquist:   A Private Blog Is Still a Blog
Torres Talking:   What defines a blog?  —  Scoble is trying hard to convince people …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
FeedCrier, another way to act fast with RSS and IM  —  Adam Kalsey, a founder and former CTO of RSS vendor Pheedo, released a new service last night called FeedCrier that makes it easy to receive rapid notification of new items in an RSS feed by IM.  The service currently supports only AIM but Kalsey says that will change soon.
RELATED ITEMS:
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
A Quantum Leap for Cell Phones  —  A new no-buttons handset by Pilotfish and Synaptics signals that mobiles as we know them may soon be a thing of the past  —  It's likely to evoke the children's song inquiring, "Where's the button?"  On Aug. 21, designer Pilotfish and sensor maker Synaptics …
Tanya Palta / MobileWhack.com:
The Sony Pink PSP  —  My apologies to all the macho men out there, for inflicting another pink gadget on them, but hey this one is too good to be ignored!  Girls (and some guys), we have for you the pink PSP, which should hit the streets of UK soon!  Even the most pinkest loyalist may feel …
Discussion: Darla Mack and Tech Digest
Nathan Weinberg / InsideGoogle:
THE ADSENSE GAME  —  Joel Comm has created a pretty nifty AdSense game, a colorful Flash game that asks you to create, market, and optimize a website to earn money off AdSense ads.  While I like the game, which is reminiscint of Lemonade Tycoon, I feel like I must be missing something …
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Google launches free, kick-ass word-processor  —  Google has re-lauched Writely, the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta.  Writely does everything Word does, for free — and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!).
Discussion: Scobleizer
RELATED ITEMS:
Garett Rogers / Googling Google:
Need a Writely invitation? No you don't
Discussion: Semantic@BlogMatrix
Bob Tedeschi / New York Times:
Now the Music Industry Wants Guitarists to Stop Sharing  —  The Internet put the music industry and many of its listeners at odds thanks to the popularity of services like Napster and Grokster.  Now the industry is squaring off against a surprising new opponent: musicians.
Discussion: Coolfer
Associated Press:
Holdout Bands Give In to iTunes  —  DETROIT — Bob Seger turned the page, and Metallica finally found justice for online fans.  Now, only a few remaining big-name musical acts refuse to make their songs available on Apple Computer's popular iTunes Music Store.
Discussion: Smalltalk Tidbits … and Slashdot
Gizmodo:
Box Pics, Specs of Sprint's Treo 700wx Leaked, August 31 Release Date  —  The world is holding its breath waiting for more details on Sprint's version of the Palm Treo 700w, and, lo and behold, we've got some more info on the little wundergadget.  Due to arrive on August 31 …
Discussion: broadbandreports.com
Jeff Smykil / Infinite Loop:
Finally a practical use for a thumb drive!  —  Whatever your opinion on Classic Mac OS is, chances are you hold a certain bit of nostalgia for the days of yore when a grayscale display and 128k of memory was all you really needed.  I already know that some of you are going to argue …
Discussion: MacUser and MacSlash
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Farecast Goes Coast to Coast  —  Farecast, the plane ticket price predictor site, is now live in 55 U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Atlanta.  —  The company is building a direct competitor to travel-oriented vertical search engines Kayak …
Mark Wallace / 3pointD.com:
Mitch Kapor on the Power of Second Life  —  The Second Life Community Convention, the second annual gathering of residents of the virtual world of Second Life, kicked off on Saturday with a fascinating speech by Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus spreadsheet application (often credited with helping …
Gizmodo:
Textable iBall, the Big Ball That Displays Text Messages  —  Spacewriter's Textable iBall is poised to change the way you read text messages, since, apparently, reading text messages on a cellphone is passé.  Once you've inserted the proper SIM card, the 11-inch iBall can display text messages …
Discussion: Coolest Gadgets and Gearlog
comScore:
Yahoo! Sites Register a Moderate Share Gain for the Second Consecutive Month  —  comScore Releases July U.S. Search Engine Rankings  —  comScore Networks today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines.  In July 2006, Yahoo! Sites posted modest market share gains …
David N. Goodman / Associated Press:
Recycled cell phones help drive Third World wireless boom  —  DEXTER, Mich. - With the number of cell phones in use worldwide hitting 2 billion and rising, recycled phones are playing a crucial role in the spread of wireless communications across the developing world, where land lines can be costly or unavailable.
David Hornik / VentureBlog:
TechCrunch August Capital Party  —  Like a canary in the coal mine breathing its final breath, some are insisting that the gigantic, buzz-engorged TechCrunch August Capital Party that I hosted this past Friday is a sure harbinger of Bubble 2.0.  One the one hand, it was a big event.
 
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 More Items: 
Jan Kabili / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
Apple customer to walk for his cause
Discussion: Infinite Loop and digg
Paul Miller / Engadget:
i-mate sheds HTC for Pocket PC Q-killer?
Discussion: MobileWhack.com
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Get Ready For Online Video Price Wars
Discussion: B2Day
Zephoria / apophenia:
Research on Social Network Sites
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Cingular 8525 (HTC Hermes) renderings leaked?
Discussion: Gizmodo and CrunchGear
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
AmateurIllustrator nails niche social networking
Discussion: Mashable!
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The Mojito Show (Saturday at 2 p.m. is next taping)
 Earlier Items: 
Luke / Terminally Incoherent:
What does your browser reveal about you?
Discussion: digg
Seth Finkelstein / Infothought:
Bogospheric Calvinism, or Unread != Unworthy
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Google's $7.4 Billion Booty
Discussion: Texas Startup Blog
Evan Blass / Engadget:
Archos officially announces all five Generation 4 devices
Discussion: Anything But iPod
Evan / Popgadget:
MP3 toilet  —  Boy, this just shows how far we are behind the Japanese.
Discussion: Ubergizmo and Things That
Rachel / cre8d design blog:
Wordpress Quickstart Screencast Tutorial (1)