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5:55 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: Beyond Search and 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 …
Discussion: Webmetricsguru
Business Wire:   The New York Times Company Reports November Revenues
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
The Rise of Cloud Agents  —  It was only this morning that we were lamenting about the lack of the perfect social tool when what did we stumble across but Twitchboard?  No, no, it's not the perfect tool, silly, it's a Twitter app.  Yet what it does is something that no other Twitter apps have done before …
Discussion: PSFK
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
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.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Is Time Warner Having Second Thoughts About Bebo?  —  Most would agree that Time Warner overpaid when it bought social network Bebo back in March.  Given the challenges faced by the company's online businesses since then, among them declining ad sales and the difficulty of monetizing social networks …
Discussion: Wall Street Journal
Karen Gullo / Bloomberg:
Research In Motion Sues Motorola Over Employment Deal  —  Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) — BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. sued Motorola Inc. claiming the mobile-phone maker is improperly blocking it from offering jobs to laid-off Motorola workers.  —  Research In Motion …
Discussion: internetnews.com and 24/7 Wall St.
RELATED:
Reuters:   RIM sues Motorola for blocking job offers
internetnews.com:
Acer, Best Buy Slash XP Netbook Price to $299  —  At ever-cheaper prices, netbooks are looking like a big holiday seller.  But can it last?  —  Experts and PC industry insiders have long wondered whether bare-bones netbooks were too cheap for manufacturers' own good.  —  But don't tell that to Acer.
Kevin Kingsbury / Wall Street Journal:
Verizon Wins ‘Cybersquatting’ Case  —  Verizon Communications Inc. said it has been awarded $33.2 million in a “cybersquatting” case against a San Francisco firm that registered Internet domain names purposely similar to the telecommunications giant's trademarks.
Discussion: Law Blog and CircleID
InfoWorld:
Microsoft kicks fake security software off 400,000 PCs  —  In the second month of a campaign against fake security software, Microsoft has booted the rogue application “Antivirus 2009” from almost 400,000 PCs, the company recently claimed.  —  December's version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool …
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Future Bits: Google's Machiavellianism  —  Defining Moment of 2008: Google's offer to help Yahoo fend off Microsoft's hostile takeover bid.  —  Google's response to Microsoft's bid for Yahoo may represent one of the most brilliant acts of corporate Machiavellianism in recent history.
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.
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:
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Wireless Built the Notebook Boom  —  Yesterday's news that notebooks had overtaken PCs in the number of units sold last quarter owes a huge debt to Wi-Fi and a smaller one to 3G cellular networks.  Without those Intel unwired commercials and images of folks surfing the web at Starbucks or sitting in parks …
Discussion: VoIP Watch
Richard Behar / Fox News:
World Bank Admits Top Tech Vendor Debarred for 8 Years  —  For months, the World Bank has been stonewalling and denying a series of FOX News reports on a variety of in-house scandals, ranging from the hacking of its most sensitive financial data to its own sanctions against suppliers found guilty of wrongdoing.
Discussion: The Register and ThreatChaos
internetnews.com:
Sun's Unwired Motherboard Plans  —  Cutting the wires doesn't just work on networking, it could also greatly increase CPU-to-memory communications.  That's if Sun has its way.  —  Sun Microsystems is researching ways to make massive supercomputers even faster, including wireless connections between CPU and memory.
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
OMG, We're Not BFFs Anymore?  Getting ‘Unfriended’ Online Stings  —  Users of Social-Networking Sites Delete Friends Who Don't Keep in Touch, Misbehave  —  JoAna Swan recently purged her profile on social-networking site Facebook Inc. of friends she hadn't spoken to for a while.
Discussion: Gawker
Rochelle Garner / Bloomberg:
Silicon Valley Braces for Firings as Technology Outlook Worsens  —  A A A  —  Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — Silicon Valley, the technology mecca once considered immune to fallout from the global financial meltdown, now faces the biggest cutbacks since the dot-com crash.
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Lafayette Unveils FTTH Pricing - Symmetrical 10Mbps for $29, 30Mbps for $45, or 50Mbps for $58  —  The other day we noted that Lafayette, Louisiana was finally getting close to offering municipal fiber to the home, after years of opposition from local incumbents.
Discussion: WBRZ-TV and Electronista
 
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 More Items: 
BBC:
Vietnam tightens rules on blogs
Discussion: Techdirt
Robert McMillan / PC World:
Fake Antivirus Peddlers Helped by Microsoft, IRS
Discussion: Ars Technica
Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
Online Journalism: Donations Accepted
Discussion: BuzzMachine
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
8 Santa Trackers For Christmas Eve 2008, From NORAD Santa To Twitter
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
RIAA Apparently Unable To Stop Lawsuits In Motion
Discussion: TG Daily
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Micron posts $706 million loss on memory woes
Discussion: DailyTech and Maximum PC all
Alan Patrick / broadstuff:
FUTURE OF MEDIA PART 1 - WILL USER GENERATED CONTENT DROWN IN ITS OWN OUTPUT?
 Earlier Items: 
AMP / Gravitational Pull:
New York Times killing Times File - How to move your library
Discussion: Smart Mobs
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