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11:00 AM ET, July 25, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Full Text Of AOL Email: XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile And Bluestring To Shut Down  —  Below is the full text of the email AOL EVP Kevin Conroy sent out to staff on July 14, outlining the reorganization of his product groups and announcing the “sunsetting” of XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile and Bluestring.
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
AOL gussies up for potential sale, but who's buying?  —  AOL is shutting down XDrive, AOL Pictures and other properties in a belt tightening move that may indicate the company is setting itself up to be sold.  The larger question: Who will buy AOL from Time Warner?
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
More AOL Cost-Cutting: Dumping Properties; Cutting Back On Blogs (TWX)
Discussion: AppScout
Denver Post:
Missing ‘spam king’ kills self, family  —  BENNETT — Just four days after escaping a federal minimum-security work camp, “Spam King” Eddie Davidson shot his wife and child and wounded a teen-age girl before turning the gun on himself.  —  Sheriff's deputies responded to a report of gunfire …
RELATED:
Charlie Demerjian / Inquirer:
Escaped spammer kills himself  —  Comment Yay.  No, YAY!  —  NOT ALL STORIES have a happy ending, but the tale of escaped spam king Edward “Eddie” Davidson sure does.  After walking away from prison, he got a gun, killed his family, then killed himself.  —  While it is hard not to feel bad …
Lester Haines / The Register:
Inquirer celebrates spammer murder-suicide
Discussion: CNET News.com
Andru Edwards / Gear Live:
Apple beta testing iPhone 2.1 firmware, adding more GPS features  —  We just got word that Apple has released a beta version of iPhone OS 2.1 to developers.  Along with the 2.1 firmware, a new version of the iPhone SDK has been seeded as well, but the new SDK can't be used for submitting applications to the App Store at the moment.
RELATED:
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple seeds iPhone 2.1 with directional GPS, push notification
Discussion: Apple Gazette
PR Newswire:
Netflix Announces Q2 2008 Financial Results  —  Subscribers - 8.4 million Revenue - $337.6 million GAAP Net Income - $26.6 million GAAP EPS - $0.42 per diluted share  —  Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX - News) today reported results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008.
RELATED:
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Android Is For The Masses, iPhone For The Rich  —  Our network blog last100 has an interesting interview with Nicolas Gramlich, founder of anddev.org - an online community for Android developers.  As editor Steve O'Hear notes in his intro, there have been issues with Google's mobile OS of late …
Daniel AJ Sokolov / heise Security UK:
Speculation over back door in Skype  —  According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged.  The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations.  At a meeting with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception …
Discussion: Memex 1.1, open and Zero Day
Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com:
Microsoft tries to one-up Google PageRank  —  Though a distant third place to Google, Microsoft thinks it can teach its rival a thing or two about searching the Internet.  —  A big part of Google's rise to search engine leadership was an algorithm called PageRank that assesses …
RELATED:
Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Believe In Superstitions?  Avoid The Word “me” In Product Names  —  If you are superstitious and believe that names can bring (or deny) good luck, avoid giving your products a name that ends with “me”.  —  This is not a recommendation of any soothsayer but just a personal observation …
Discussion: MacBlogz
RELATED:
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it  —  The bad dream of DRM continues.  Yahoo e-mailed its Yahoo! Music Store customers yesterday, telling them it will be closing for good—and the company will take its DRM license key servers offline on September 30, 2008.
RELATED:
Corynne McSherry / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Here We Go Again: Yahoo! Music Throws Away the DRM Keys
Kim Hart / Washington Post:
High-Stakes Race to Unlock a Wider Web  —  Critics Say New Technology May Hinder TV Signals  —  The nation's top technology companies have spent millions of dollars and nearly two years building devices, poring over laptops and working in federal labs trying to come up with a new way of …
Discussion: Digg
Svetlana Gladkova / Profy.Com:
Google's Begun Growing Very Fast  —  I have just seen a press release (in Russian) issued by Begun, the Russian contextual advertising company recently acquired by Google from Rambler.  The ad company reports on the revenue it has received in the first 6 months of 2008 …
Discussion: Mashable!
Dianne See Morrison / paidContent.org:
Italian Prosecutors To Charge Google Execs Over Third-Party Content  —  Four Google (NSDQ: GOOG) executives may be standing trial over failing to adequately monitor third-party content posted to their Italian language site.  Italian prosecutors are preparing to file charges in a two-year old case …
Discussion: eWeek and Wall Street Journal
Chris Morris / Forbes:
Doom'ing The iPhone  —  While he's best known for creating graphics engines that push systems to their limits, game designer John Carmack is spending a lot of time with mobile gaming these days.  —  The co-founder of id Software is considered one of the creators of the first-person shooter genre …
Discussion: Touch Arcade
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Loopt strikes a deal to make massive use of GPS data cost effective  —  Loopt, the location-based social network, uses GPS technology in cellphones to figure out where you are.  Because of this it can tell you things such as which of your friends are around you, or what restaurants you are near.
Discussion: Startup Meme and All Points Blog
 
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 More Items: 
New York Times:
Microsoft Seeks an Ad Friend in Facebook
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
Golden Shellback Hands-on: Phones Can Make Calls While Underwater
comScore:
Are We There Yet? comScore M:Metrics Reports Mobile Map Use Grows …
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute:
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH CANCER INSTITUTE
Darryl K. Taft / eWeek:
Open Web Foundation to Keep Data ‘Open’
Web 2.0 Asia:
A discouraging news for Korean open web movement
Discussion: open
Media Molecule hits little big time / BBC:
Game On  —  Sony has very high hopes for LittleBigPlanet
Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats:
Second Age of Aquarius: Facebook Connect + Facebook Payments …
Discussion: Identity 2.0, Wikinomics and GigaOM
 Earlier Items: 
Robert Vamosi / CNET News.com:
Vulnerable to a DNS cache poisoning at home?
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Toshiba working on a netbook / UMPC that's actually interesting
Joe McDonald / Associated Press:
China says has more people surfing the Web than US
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
Big Cable: FCC Internet policy should apply to colleges too
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Source: Facebook's internal valuation is $4 billion. But so what.
Discussion: The PE Data Center
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
Griping Online? Comcast Hears and Talks Back
Discussion: Gizmodo
Computerworld:
Forrester: Windows Vista rejected like ‘new Coke’ by enterprises
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft to show off spherical Surface next week
 

 
From Mediagazer:

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”

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

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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