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12:25 PM ET, March 21, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Sony hates you, offers $50 “Fresh Start” option to build your laptop crapware-free  —  Sony has quite the history of crippling excellent, beautiful hardware with horrible, useless software.  The company's UX UMPC bluescreened on us the first time we turned it on, and crashed the first time we tried …
RELATED:
Dan Ackerman / Crave: The gadget blog:
Sony charges fifty bucks for a crapware-free system  —  Holy crap(ware), Batman!  If you've ever gotten a new laptop or desktop, only to turn it on and had time to make a sandwich while it slowly boots up, you know that PC makers can shovel a lot of bloated software onto their systems.
Farhad Manjoo / Salon:
The Wall Street Journal's Web site is already (secretly) free  —  Late in January, Rupert Murdoch put an end to speculation that he would set free the Wall Street Journal's subscription-only Web site.  —  While he planned to “expand” the site's free offerings, “the really special things …
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn, Now For Companies  —  LinkedIn, the boring social network that won't find you a date but may land you a job, is expanding beyond people profiles.  —  On Friday morning they will launch company profile pages that partly serve as fact sheets for about 160,000 companies and partly serve …
RELATED:
Danis Dayanov / The LinkedIn Blog:
The Engineering component | LinkedIn Company Profiles
Discussion: Contentinople and Web Strategy
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
LinkedIn's business directory goes live
Discussion: The Social Times and Coop's Corner
Maisy Samuelson / The LinkedIn Blog:
Now Companies too have profiles on LinkedIn!
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple pushing Safari downloads on Windows users  —  In an apparent bid to rapidly gain share of the online browser market dominated by rival Microsoft, Apple is leveraging its vast iTunes install base to recommend that Windows users also download and install the latest version of its Safari web browser.
RELATED:
Mike Schramm / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
Is Apple pushing Safari 3.1 on Windows users?
Discussion: Apple Gazette and CyberNet
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Gibson turns volume up to 11 with new ‘Guitar Hero’ lawsuit  —  Legendary guitar manufacturer Gibson Guitar has sued six major retailers—Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, Gamestop, and Toys-R-Us—for selling Activision's Guitar Hero video game series, MarketWatch reported Friday.
Discussion: Gearlog, Engadget, Geek Gestalt and Kotaku
RELATED:
Associated Press:
Gibson Guitar sues retailers over ‘Guitar Hero’ game
Discussion: CrunchGear
Stefanie Olsen / CNET News.com:
Q&A: Battelle talks blog roll-ups, Google, and Federated Media's future  —  John Battelle knows tech booms and busts.  He's been at the forefront of them for nearly two decades.  —  In 1993, he co-founded Wired, a print magazine that set a standard in technology coverage and spawned popular sites …
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:   Federated Media's Battelle Slams Rival, Hints At Investing In Publishers
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Breaking: FCC Confirms that Big Winner in Spectrum Auction is Verizon.  So Why Is Google Smiling?  —  The big winner of the FCC's $19.6 billion auction of wireless spectrum that ended yesterday is Verizon.  That was pretty much everyone's guess.  —  At a press conference today …
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Do you have to be in every conversation?  —  Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb has a good post about how the conversation is leaving blogs and going to Twitter, FriendFeed and other services.  More importantly, she touches on a big question: How do you keep up?  —  Perez then dutifully notes …
RELATED:
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere
Sarah Lai Stirland / Threat Level:
Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig Bets ‘Wikipedia’ Approach Will Transform Congress  —  Stanford law professor Larry Lessig plans to use collaborative software to change Congress.  —  Courtesy Larry Lessig  —  A prominent Stanford law professor on Thursday launched an ambitious project …
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Little old lady suing Sony, Samsung, Nokia and everyone else for infringing on her laser patents  —  Oh sure, she looks friendly enough.  But don't let her matronly, argyle looks fool you.  Retired Columbia University Professor, Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, is looking to extract some cold …
Discussion: Reuters, eWeek, Inquirer and Electronista
RELATED:
Dianne See Morrison / paidContent.org:
Dish Network To Offer Mobile TV Service?  —  Analysts have been abuzz with speculation over Dish Network Corp's surprise win at the government auction for wireless airwaves that ended this week, speculating that the satellite television company formerly known as Echostar (NSDQ: DISH) …
RELATED:
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Facebook Toast?  Hot Today, Dead Tomorrow—Like AOL?  —  For now, Facebook continues to take over the world.  Its global traffic is about to blow past MySpace's, its image (and Mark Zuckerberg's) has recovered from the Beacon fiasco, and it has raised a big enough cash pile that it should be able to power through any downturn.
Discussion: Economist
Nivi / Venture Hacks:
Getting Recommended … On April 1st, we started publishing the best damn term sheet hacks we could find.  Why?  Because a lot of entrepreneurs ask the same question: … We're trying to make everything we've learned—from other entrepreneurs, investors, and lawyers—readily available.
Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner:
Twitter's political coming of age?  —  First YouTube, now Twitter.  —  In 2006, George Allen destroyed his political future after his infamous “Macaca” crack on the campaign trail made the rounds on YouTube.  —  Now it turns out that John McCain's campaign has suspended …
 
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 More Items: 
Steve O'Hear / last100:
Don't turn off the life support just yet: Joost coming to the browser
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Report: 95% of Internet video stuck looking longingly at TV
Discussion: WebProNews
Doug Aamoth / CrunchGear:
Firefox 3: So easy a caveman could do it
Associated Press:
AT&T to pay FCC $1.3B down payment
Dave Winer / Scripting News:
What's wrong with Wikipedia
Phil McKenna / New Scientist:
Climbing robot throws its weight around
Discussion: Switched, Engadget and Digg
Business Wire:
SplashCast Closes Over-Subscribed Series A Funding and Appoints …
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
DirecTV DVR clampdown: a sober reminder of DRM suckitude
 Earlier Items: 
Andrew Schotz / Herald-Mail:
Proposed Md. bill would make intentional theft of wireless Internet access a crime
Discussion: Techdirt and DSLreports
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Publisher Posts Mac Books on The Pirate Bay
Discussion: MacUser, CrunchGear and Digg
Paul Boutin / New York Times:
So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?
Discussion: Valleywag
Steven Clift / MediaShift Idea Lab:
Is Citizen Media Skipping Small Town America?
Discussion: MediaVidea
Zach Epstein / The Boy Genius Report:
FliXee and YouTube Integration Added to Flixwagon
Glenn Derene / Popular Mechanics:
The 10 Video Formats HD DVD Will Meet in Heaven: Buzzword
Discussion: Digg
Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google's Broken Bookmarking Systems
Discussion: louisgray.com
David Pogue / New York Times:
Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Authentic Brands licenses Sports Illustrated's publishing rights to The Players' Tribune owner Minute Media for 10 years, with plans to keep the print edition

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Ofcom rules that five GB News programs presented by Conservative politicians have broken its due impartiality rules and puts the channel “on notice”

Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTuber MrBeast announces a deal with Prime Video for Beast Games, a reality-competition show with 1,000 contestants, promising the winner a $5M cash prize

 
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