Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
12:00 PM ET, December 24, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
New York Times: November Was So Terrible, Even Our Internet Ads Were Down  —  Earlier this month, executives at the New York Times (NYT) warned investors that they had a miserable November.  They weren't kidding.  —  The grim details are here, but I'll save you some time:
Discussion: paidContent.org
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Canary In The Coalmine: NYT Sees First Decline In Online Ad Revenues  —  In what may be an early indicator of broader Web advertising trends, the New York Times announced today that it saw total Internet advertising revenues decline 3.8 percent in November.  This compares to a total decrease …
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
iPhone fart app pulls in nearly $10,000 a day  —  Apple's App Store is currently experiencing a plague of fart applications.  Last week, I detailed one day in which at least 14 new fart apps were accepted into the store.  And now, just in a quick search, it looks like there are about 50 apps …
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
FriendFinder isn't likely to find any pals on Wall Street; Needs IPO to pay debt  —  FriendFinder Networks, the company formerly known as Penthouse Media Group, is filing to go public to pay off almost a half a billion in debt in an equity market that stinks.  Simply put, FriendFinder is launching an IPO Hail Mary to stay alive.
RELATED:
David / weblog.rubyonrails.org:
Merb gets merged into Rails 3!  —  It's christmas, baby, and do we have a present for you.  We're ending the bickering between Merb and Rails with a this bombshell: Merb is being merged into Rails 3!  —  We all realized that working together for a common good would be much more productive …
Discussion: Loud Thinking and rc3.org
RELATED:
Ezra Klein / American Prospect:
THERE IS NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO ABOUT IT.  —  Over at BoingBoing, Clay Shirky engages in a bit of self-congratulatory schadenfreude for predicting the collapse of the newspaper business model back in 1993.  And no doubt: He was prescient.  But like a lot of folks (many of them named Jeff Jarvis) …
RELATED:
Timothy Lee / Techdirt:
The Death Of Online Advertising Is Greatly Exaggerated
Discussion: HipMojo.com
Monica Chen / DigiTimes:
Intel insists Atom only for Intel chipsets, does not want to share Nvidia's Ion  —  Nvidia's recent move to try to extend Intel's Atom ecosystem to its recently announced Ion platform appears to have been knocked back by Intel, according to a response primarily directed at PC manufacturers as seen by Digitimes.
Serkan Toto / CrunchGear:
Sony Japan follows Sony New Zealand with mysterious new Vaio mobile ad  —  Following Sony New Zealand, Sony Japan today updated its dedicated Vaio website with a mysterious announcement.  If you click here [JP], you can see a woman getting out a small UMPC-like object out of her hand bag.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Facebook Bails on Project Playlist, Too  —  Four days after MySpace cut the legs out from under Project Playlist by disabling the music streaming service's app, Facebook is following suit.  Here's the official statement from Facebook PR: … The only surprise here is that it took Facebook …
RELATED:
David / TmoNews:
Blackberry 8900 release date...  We've previewed this highly anticipated follow up to the uber popular blackberry curve.  We've been gifted with a hands on video from our friends at crackberry.com who gave us a great walkthrough.  Now, we have a HOPEFUL release date...February 18th.
Sean Fallon / Gizmodo:
9 Year Old Girl Becomes the Youngest Microsoft Certified Professional  —  Today's crushing blow to our self confidence comes to us from India, where a 9 year old girl has become the youngest person to ever pass a Microsoft Certified Professional examination.
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Dell's MacBook Air Rival Confirmed by . . . Dell  —  CLARIFICATION 5:55 p.m. - The story below references a Dell ad placed in UptownLife magazine.  The online version of that ad, which has since been removed, appeared to include both an image from Dell and text.
Ajay Kamalakaran / Reuters:
RIM accuses Motorola of blocking job offers: report  —  (Reuters) - BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd sued Motorola Inc over claims the mobile-phone maker is improperly blocking it from offering jobs to laid-off Motorola workers, Bloomberg said.  —  RIM, in a complaint filed in state court …
James Kendrick / jkOnTheRun:
Netbook enthusiast web sites getting C & D using term “netbook”  —  This is very preliminary but we are hearing that some netbook enthusiast sites are getting “cease & desist” letters from a firm in the UK ordering the sites to stop using the term “netbook”.
Brian McClendon / The Official Google Blog:
Tracking Santa: the backstory  —  When I look back on four years of tracking Old St. Nick on Christmas Eve, I can't help but smile.  The Santa tracker has really come a long way.  I always thought NORAD's Santa Tracker was a great holiday tradition, but I felt like it could have been even better …
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 12:00 PM ET, December 24, 2008.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Tribe AI:
Is AI just hype?  —  Find out how top enterprises use Tribe to get real business results.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Zoho:
All new Zoho Workerly 2024  —  Staffing businesses around the world face a unique set of challenges when it comes to managing their temporary workforce.  With a constantly shifting job market and changing staffing needs …
Comprehensive.io:
Browse salary data from 3,000 startups for free  —  Click for FREE, immediate access to real-time compensation benchmarking data.  Paid version helps HR automate comp reviews and communicate total compensation to employees.
Sponsor Techmeme
 
 See Also: 
Techmeme: site main
Techmeme River: reverse chronological Techmeme
Techmeme Mobile: for phones
Techmeme Leaderboard: Techmeme's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Techmeme RSS feed
Techmeme on X
Techmeme on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
AMP / Gravitational Pull:
New York Times killing Times File - How to move your library
Marc Flores / Boy Genius Report:
AT&T acquires Unicel and Vermont finally gets the iPhone
Discussion: Phone Arena, TUAW and The iPhone Blog
Ilinca Nita / Unwired View:
Nokia 6208 Classic has a touchscreen and an alphanumeric keypad
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Telecom Giant Vodafone Gets Into Location Based Social Networking With Pocket Life
Keith Rabois / VentureBeat:
The plight of branded apps and the future of social marketing
Chris DannenTue / Fast Company:
What Ever Happened To Garmin's NuviFone? [video]
Discussion: GigaOM and Ars Technica
Sam Baltrusis / Contentinople:
Quantcast Bulks Up, ComScore Speaks Up
 Earlier Items: 
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Will Microsoft throw in the towels?
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Tweet A Last-Minute Gift To Charity
Discussion: bub.blicio.us and Beth's Blog
Matt / Burning Questions:
Our 210th variation on the theme, “Thank you for using FeedBurner.”
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and rizzn's socnets