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5:30 PM ET, July 1, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Live Search:
Powerset joins Live Search  —  We're excited to announce that we've reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company.  —  Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco.
RELATED:
Mark Johnson / Powerset:
Microsoft to Acquire Powerset 2  —  We're excited to announce officially that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Powerset.  —  Powerset has always been a small company with big dreams, with the ultimate goal of changing the way humans interact with computers through language.
Discussion: CNET News.com
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Ok, Now It's Done.  Microsoft To Acquire Powerset  —  Microsoft will announce today that they have acquired San Francisco based semantic search engine Powerset.  The acquisition price is not being disclosed, but our understanding from sources close to the deal is that the previously rumored $100 million is “roughly accurate.”
Catherine Holahan / Business Week:
Microsoft's Plan B for Search  —  Moving past the Yahoo saga, the software giant is buying semantic search engine Powerset as a way of closing the gap with Google  —  Still smarting from a failed attempt to buy Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) is trying another tactic to gain on Google (GOOG) in Web search.
Discussion: paidContent.org and Beyond Search
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Gnip: Grand Central Station for the Social Web  —  Ping, ping, ping!  That's the sound made day and night by the new social media technologies rapidly proliferating around the web... and the machines are getting tired.  Polling for updates to user data streams, wishing they spoke the same language …
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Gnip Launches To Ease The Strain On Web Services  —  MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier sold his company to Yahoo in January 2007 for an estimated $10 million.  He left Yahoo in July 2007 with the seed of a new idea germinating in his head - “Make data portability suck less.”
Joseph Smarr / Plaxo's Personal Card:
Gnip launches and Plaxo's pulse is racing
Discussion: VentureBeat
The Official Google Blog:
Google learns to crawl Flash  —  Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites.  Recently, we've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology.
RELATED:
Patrick Beeson / Download Squad:
Adobe makes Flash searchable, Flash designers rejoice
Discussion: E-Commerce Times
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
News flash: Flash websites still suck
Discussion: Mashable!, TG Daily and Blogging Pro
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
AT&T announces iPhone 3G pricing plans  —  Finally, a piece of news we can actually do something with.  AT&T today announced its pricing structure for the next iteration of Apple's iPhone.  There's not much that's surprising here — new customers and those eligible for an upgrade will be able …
RELATED:
Peter Svensson / Associated Press:
AT&T offers new option of iPhone without contract
Discussion: TechSpot
Matt Richtel / Bits:
A Cringing Quarter for Venture Capitalists  —  As I reported Saturday, venture capitalists experienced a very poor second quarter.  The industry's trade association said Tuesday that for the first time since 1978, not a single venture-backed company went public in the quarter.
RELATED:
Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed:
The VC Asset Class Crisis Thing
Discussion: PE Hub Blog
techzoom.net:
Understanding the Web browser threat: Examination of vulnerable online Web browser populations and the “insecurity iceberg”  —  Stefan Frei 1, Thomas Dübendorfer 2, Gunter Ollmann 3, Martin May 1  — Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory (CSG), ETH Zurich  — IBM Internet Security Systems, IBM ISS
RELATED:
Robert Vamosi / Defense in Depth:
Researchers: 637 million browser users at risk
Discussion: TG Daily
Joe Sharkey / New York Times:
Bag Helps Laptop Pass Air Security  —  For years at airport security checkpoints, passengers have heard the refrain, almost a dirge: “Laptops must be removed from their cases and placed on the belt.”  —  Get ready for a change.  The Transportation Security Administration has given the go-ahead …
Microsoft:
Microsoft Advances Volume Purchasing With Select Plus Offering  —  Built on customer criteria, Select Plus facilitates centralized and decentralized purchasing of Microsoft software and services with a single, organizationwide agreement.  —  The new Microsoft Select Plus Volume Licensing …
Discussion: One Microsoft Way
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Engadget's Ryan Block and Peter Rojas To Team On New Startup  —  Engadget's editor-in-chief Ryan Block will be leaving parent company AOL shortly, sources say, to launch a new startup.  Partnering with him on the new company will be Peter Rojas, Engadget's former editor-in-chief (pictured left below, next to Block).
Anuj Srivastava / Inside AdSense:
We're retiring AdSense Referrals  —  We're constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers.  Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term.
Michael Learmonth / Silicon Alley Insider:
Hulu: A Consumer Success But Still A Small Business  —  Since Hulu launched three months ago, it has become a consumer success, joining Nielsen's top-10 video sites, and serving more video in May than ABC.com.  —  What does that mean in terms of gross ad sales for the NBC U - News Corp. JV?
Jesusdiaz / Gizmodo:
Crash Bandicoot Comes Racing to iPhone 2.0  —  It looks like the iPhone gaming scene is getting more solid by the day: Crash Bandicoot is the latest famous franchise that is going to appear at the app store in the form of Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart, a racing game that—looking at the demo video …
 
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 More Items: 
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Amazon: Hey Spammers, Get Off My Cloud!
Discussion: CircleID and UMBC ebiquity
Forbes:
China's Baidu in mobile search tieup with Nokia - report
Wayne Schulz / Gear Diary:
AT&T roadmap for 2008 - Blackjack 3, Wi-Fi Blackberry Curve,
Justin Berka / Infinite Loop:
MS's Remote Desktop Connection 2 for Mac finally out of beta
Smashing Magazine:
Should Links Open In New Windows?
Discussion: WinExtra
PC World:
Sonnet Ups Fusion F2 Portable RAID to 1TB
Discussion: Computerworld
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Apple Spurns Intel, For Now
Deborah Gage / San Francisco Chronicle:
McAfee study takes surfers to depths of spam
 Earlier Items: 
Scott Moritz / Fortune:
Howard Stern may have a Sirius dilemma
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Mozilla Releases Weave 0.2: Filling in for Browser Sync
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
RIAA Also Tells Judge That Proof Shouldn't Be Necessary To Sue For Infringement
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
That 3G iPhone Not $199 For Everyone; Bernstein Hikes Apple Estimates
Jeffrey R. Young / Chronicle of Higher Education:
Textbook Piracy Grows Online, Prompting a Counterattack From Publishers
PR Newswire:
TripAdvisor Acquires VirtualTourist and OneTime
Jibi / BlackBerryNews.com:
EXCLUSIVE: BlackBerry Thunder now the BlackBerry 9500, OS 4.7.0
Kevin Carmony / Kevin Carmony's Blog:
Xandros Acquires Linspire Assets in Secret Backroom Deal
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles take minority stakes in The Daily Beast; Sherwood will be CEO and publisher, and Coles will be chief creative and content officer

Sahil Patel / The Information:
Sources: Disney plans old-style TV channels within Disney+, with a continuous, scheduled stream of shows that are focused on certain genres like Star Wars

Laurence Peter / BBC:
Russia's Ministry of Justice labels BBC Russian correspondent Ilya Barabanov and science reporter Asya Kazantseva as “foreign agents”; both now live abroad

 
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