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9:40 AM ET, August 21, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Enlists Jerry Seinfeld In Its Ad Battle Against Apple  —  Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.'s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld.  —  The software giant's new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded.
RELATED:
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Microsoft enlists Seinfeld, Gates to battle “Get a Mac” ads  —  Those Apple “Get a Mac” ads have long been an annoyance to Microsoft and to Bill Gates in particular.  No surprise as an emboldened Apple with rising market share has continued to ratchet up the venom with quips like …
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Seinfeld to host the Microsoft Makeover
Discussion: MacUser
Amazon Web Services Blog:
Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) - Bring Us Your Data  —  A few months ago I talked about our plans to offer a persistent storage feature for Amazon EC2.  At that time I indicated that the service was in a limited alpha release with a small number of customers.
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Amazon: Persistent storage open for EC2  —  Amazon said Thursday that its Elastic Block Store feature is now available to all of its EC2 Web service customers.  The move gives Amazon Web Services a full storage suite delivered as a service.  —  EC2 is Amazon's storage service …
Discussion: RightScale Blog and Business Wire
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Microsoft launches 3D wonder Photosynth for consumers  —  On Wednesday night, Photosynth, a technology demo from Microsoft Live Labs, is graduating from its “ooh, that's pretty” status to being a viable Web service for consumers.  —  The technology, which takes a grouping of photographs …
RELATED:
Brady Forrest / O'Reilly Radar:
Photosynth is Released and Moves to Virtual Earth  —  Live Labs has released Photosynth, the 3D-esque photo collection viewer that it first tech-previewed in 2006 (Radar post).  With this release any Vista or XP user running FireFox or IE can create, view, and share Synths (Mac support is planned).
David Kravets / Threat Level:
Judge: Copyright Owners Must Consider ‘Fair Use’ Before Sending Takedown Notice  —  In the nation's first such ruling, a federal judge on Wednesday said copyright owners must consider “fair use” of their works before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites.
RELATED:
Jon Healey / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
A victory for fair use?
Discussion: Guardian Unlimited and Web Scout
Fred / A VC:
Ten Things I Want On My Mobile Phone  —  1) Shazam for places - I blogged about this when I was in Scotland earlier this month.  I met a company at TechStars yesterday that might be able to build it.  I hope they do.  —  2) Shazam for people - same idea. even more possibilities for this one.
Discussion: Mobile Industry News
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
10 Promising Web Platforms  —  In this post we review 10 promising developer platforms for the Web.  We're not talking about the obvious ones either, like Facebook, iPhone, OpenSocial or even Twitter.  Those have been covered extensively already.  The list below features some of our favorite ‘lesser known’ web developer platforms.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Apple hit with class-action lawsuit over iPhone 3G flakiness  —  We all knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time.  A lawsuit has been filed against Apple over what the plaintiff is referring to as the “Defective iPhone 3G,” which she hopes will become a class-action complaint.
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Facebook's forthcoming iPhone app to be more like its web site; that site redesign was no coincidence  —  Facebook is planning to launch a new version of its iPhone application in September that will make the app more like the newly-redesigned web site.  So, the deeper rationale for the web site redesign …
RELATED:
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Preview of Facebook for iPhone 2.0: More Like Real Facebook
Jonathan D. Glater / New York Times:
Welcome, Freshmen.  Have an iPod.  —  Taking a step that professors may view as a bit counterproductive, some universities are doling out Apple iPhones and Internet-capable iPods to students.  —  The always-on Internet devices raise some novel possibilities, like tracking where students congregate.
Dana Blankenhorn / Open Source:
The new Intel gets open source mojo with SpikeSource  —  The biggest business story of the year may be the transformation of Intel from a tech-driven chipmaker to a marketing-driven products-and-services company.  —  I have talked about this with regard to health care but the transformation is more far-ranging than that.
Discussion: TechCrunchIT
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Dell bets on Salesforce.com's platform as a service  —  Amid a quarter that Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff called “spectacular,” but spooked analysts worried about future growth was an interesting nugget: Dell has jumped on the platform as a service bandwagon.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
If You're Looking To Learn Basic Economics, Here's A Free Textbook  —  Against Monopoly points us to an LA Times story about an economics professor from Caltech, R. Preston McAfee, who has written what he calls an “open source” economics textbook.  You can download the textbook for free …
Discussion: The Equity Kicker
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Verisign's Personal Identity Portal Is Half Way To Password Bliss  —  Verisign's new Personal Identity Portal (PIP from now on) isn't the sexiest application out there to help you manage passwords.  But it has Verisign's strong reputation for security behind it, and it is a surprisingly easy way to manage website credentials.
InfoWorld:
Asustek turns to Celerons amid Atom shortage  —  Asustek Computer has turned back the clock to use Intel microprocessors first launched in 2004 in its latest Eee PC netbooks, in part due to a shortage of Intel's Atom chips.  —  Asustek also turned to Intel's older Celeron M 353 chip …
Discussion: PC World and Liliputing
 
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 More Items: 
Ryan Grove / wonko.com:
Yahoo! Search brings Search Assist, SearchMonkey, and more to the iPhone
Abbey Klaassen / AdAge:
Quantcast Nabs Yahoo Exec for Its Chief Revenue Officer
Discussion: paidContent.org
GamesIndustry.biz:
PC manufacturers view piracy as “hidden benefit” for consumers - Hollenshead
Discussion: Destructoid
Robert Andrews / paidContent.org:
Microsoft Rejigs For Commercial Search, Multimap Leads The Way
Discussion: Search Engine Land
Dave Rubert / NaviGadget:
tomtom PRO 4000 and 8000  —  TomTom just introduced what they call …
Discussion: Gadgetell, Gizmodo and CrunchGear
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Intel unites the internet with TV
Eileen Sullivan / Associated Press:
FEMA phones hacked; calls made to Mideast, Asia
Discussion: Zero Day
Bill Ray / The Register:
Nokia admits major Series 40 security problems
 Earlier Items: 
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Spotted: FriendFeed Beta — coming soon
Discussion: WinExtra and The Blog Herald
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch UK:
TechCrunch UK named best Web 2.0 and business blog
Discussion: broadstuff and BlogMS
NEWS.com.au:
Australians switch on to Apple Macs
Eliot Van Buskirk / Listening Post:
SoundExchange Head Likes Pandora But Says It Needs Audio Ads
Discussion: Technovia and WinExtra
Joel Hruska / Ars Technica:
Intel announces dual-core Atom, chains it to 945C chipset
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Retail sources say its closing time for current iPod line
Erica Sadun / TUAW:
The Rumor Room: iTunes Unlimited
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
OpenSocial Now Reaches 350 Million Users, And Growing
 

 
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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