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6:00 PM ET, January 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
The White House:
Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov  —  Welcome to the new WhiteHouse.gov. I'm Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog.  —  A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States …
RELATED:
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Obama Renovates WhiteHouse.gov  —  To the keys to the nuclear arsenal, we now add one more technological weapon that is handed over to the incoming president at exactly noon every Inauguration Day: the root password to WhiteHouse.gov.  —  Before Barack Obama even finished taking the oath of office …
Spencer Spinnell / Traditional Media:
Turning the page on Print Ads  —  Labels: Announcements, Google Print Ads  —  In the last few months, we've been taking a long, hard look at all the things we are doing to ensure we are investing our resources in the projects that will have the biggest impact for our users and partners.
Adam O'Donnell / Zero Day:
It's a good day to disclose the largest credit card data breach ever  —  While the majority of American media is glued to the quadrennial spectacle that is the Presidential inauguration, Heartland Payment Systems has uncovered a piece of malware hidden in their payment processing system.
RELATED:
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever  —  A data breach last year at Princeton, N.J., payment processor Heartland Payment Systems may have led to the theft of more than 100 million credit and debit card accounts, the company said today.  —  If accurate, such figures may make the Heartland incident …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple sales data: Half empty, half full  —  It continues to amaze me that analysts who specialize in Apple (AAPL) can look at the same data and come to such different conclusions.  —  Case in point: Reports issued Tuesday morning by Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi and Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster.
Discussion: The Apple Core and GPS Obsessed
RELATED:
IBM:
Quarterly earnings  —  Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results Announcement … Full-Year 2008:  — Record revenue of $103.6 billion;  — Record pre-tax profit of $16.7 billion;  — Record earnings per share of $8.93;  — Record free cash flow of $14.3 billion, up $1.9 billion, excluding Global Financing receivables.
RELATED:
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Big Blue Kicks Off Big Week In Tech Earnings  —  Did Big Blue see big green or big red during the holiday shopping quarter?  —  Only its accountants know for sure, but that will change at the market close tonight when the company releases its fourth quarter numbers.  —  And by doing so, IBM [IBM Loading...
Heather Dougherty / Hitwise Intelligence:
Twitter catches up to Digg  —  Twitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activates, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets.  Last week, the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time since launch and was ranked #84 …
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch
RELATED:
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:   On the mainstream: Twitter's U.S. web market share passes Digg
Eric Lempel / PlayStation.Blog:
Upcoming PS3 Firmware (v2.60) Update  —  Hi, everyone, we have a system software updates for PS3 coming soon, and I wanted to provide you with a sneak peak at the details.  —  The PS3 firmware update (v2.60) is designed primarily to enhance the system's media capabilities.
Wired News:
The Plot to Kill Google  —  When Google's lawyers entered the smooth marble hallways of the Department of Justice on the morning of October 17, they had reason to feel confident.  Sure, they were about to face the antitrust division—an experience most companies dread—to defend a proposed deal with Yahoo.
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Inauguration Day, by the numbers  —  From what early numbers are indicating, the historic swearing-in of President Barack Obama was not the biggest traffic day for the Internet.  But for many social networks and digital-media sites, Inauguration Day shattered traffic and usage records regardless.
Discussion: NewTeeVee, Bits, CBS News and AppScout
RELATED:
Andy M. Zaky / Bullish Cross:
How the iPhone and Poor Apple Management have contributed to the Downfall of Apple  —  In April of 2007, Peter Oppenheimer (Apple's CFO) announced that Apple will be using what is commonly referred to as the “subscription method of accounting” for sales of the iPhone where the sales revenue …
Discussion: Apple 2.0
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Word Cloud Analysis of Obama's Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln's  —  Barack Obama was just sworn in as President of the US and though he stumbled in repeating his oath, the speech that followed was delivered flawlessly and was widely praised around the web.
Discussion: Susan Mernit's Blog
Joseph Tartakoff / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Microsoft expansion to take a hit to cut costs  —  Still unclear whether layoffs part of plan  —  When Microsoft Corp. reports its second-quarter earnings Thursday, the company is expected to outline a series of cost-cutting measures, which will include postponing most of its plans …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Microsoft Sells Entire Comcast Stake  —  Microsoft (MSFT) disclosed in an SEC filing on Friday that it has sold its entire 7.3% stake in Comcast (CMCSA) Class A common stock.  Microsoft had owned 150,935,575 shares.  —  In a research note this morning, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett notes …
Discussion: Beyond Binary and Electronista
Apple:
iWork '09: Serial number not required for installation of retail boxes  —  iWork '09 retail boxes no longer come with a serial number.  Install iWork '09 from the enclosed disc and you're ready to go.  —  Products Affected  —  iWork '09  —  Though retail versions of iWork '09 no longer come …
Discussion: MacRumors, Infinite Loop and Macworld
iSpazio - The iPhone Blog:
Clippy - iSpazio Exclusive: Finally the real Copy & Paste for iPhone and iPod Touch is here!  —  Everyone was missing it!  Finally we got the real Copy and Paste application for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch!  It's Clippy, avaiable from the iSpazio Repository in Cydia:  —  It's very easy to use this app.
BIZ / Twitter Blog:
Inauguration Day on Twitter  —  It was a big day at Twitter HQ today and it's not even noon yet.  We saw 5x normal tweets-per-second and about 4x tweets-per-minute as this chart illustrates.  Overall, Twitter sailed smoothly through the inauguration but at the peak, some folks did experience a 2-5 minute delay receiving updates.
Discussion: VentureBeat and AppScout
mediadonis.net:
The Hyves Hype!  —  It really sounds strange, but mysteriously it just works...  At the moment, it's possible to check if a domain got penalized for selling links (or lost pagerank due any other kind of malicious activity).  —  The only thing you gotta do is put “hyves” as a subdomain in front of the domain to be checked.
InfoWorld:
Eclipse PHP upgrade tackles object-oriented programming  —  The Eclipse Foundation is releasing on Wednesday version 2.0 of its Eclipse PDT (PHP Development Tools) project, which adds object-oriented programming and usability features.  —  PDT is an open-source development tool offering …
Discussion: The Register
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Did You Just Click on a Fake Hyundai Ad?  —  The Web is the future of advertising, but we're not there yet.  And getting there will be an interesting journey.  For instance, I find it hard to believe that traditional media buyers have ever had to worry about impostors buying ad space using their client's name before.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
An Outsider Gets A Peek Behind The Scenes Of The Music Industry's Mindset: Optimism Into Denial  —  I'm writing this on the way back from MidemNet, where I had the chance to present a case study on why Trent Reznor's various experiments with business models represents the future of music.
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
FCC wants big fines for cable giants over channel switching  —  Outgoing Federal Communications Commission chair Kevin Martin got his last licks in on the cable industry on Monday, proposing a slew of fines against companies that the agency says migrate analog channels to digital tiers …
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
CBS Best Inauguration Video Quality, Hulu, C-SPAN The Worst, Others Not Loading  —  I've now watched over a dozen live feeds of the inauguration from most of the major news portals and hands down, CBS has the best quality and most reliable stream.  Others like MSNBC, C-SPAN and Hulu …
Tony Ruscoe / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Web Drive and “Cosmo” Discussed in Deleted Document  —  During my research for my last post about Google Web Drive, various search engine results kept returning a document that had been deleted from the online document publishing website, Scribd.  The site displays the following message explaining its removal:
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Download Squad
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Mozilla's Test Pilot: A Global Usability Lab for Firefox  —  Doing extensive usability studies has always been a problem for open source projects.  Mozilla has decided to implement a new way of tackling this problem for its projects and is moving ahead with the Test Pilot project, which was first announced last year.
Discussion: Download Squad and Mozilla Labs
 
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 More Items: 
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Nokia says new mobile email offer doing well
Discussion: Unwired View and Boy Genius Report
Randall C. Kennedy / PC World:
What Will Become of Windows Vista?
Discussion: Smalltalk Tidbits …
Rachel Donadio / New York Times:
On Facebook, Sicilian Mafia Is a Hot Topic
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Tom Espiner / CNET News:
IBM to buy Chinese e-mail company
Robert Andrews / paidContent.org:
Yahoo Cutting 20 Percent Of French Staff, Developers Bear The Brunt
Discussion: CNET News
Suzanne Choney / MSNBC:
Wireless networks crushed with traffic
Discussion: Computerworld Blogs and Gear Live
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Mobile Firefox demonstrated on Linux-powered E-Ink display
Discussion: OStatic blogs
 Earlier Items: 
PR Newswire:
Friendster Expands Its Team, Offices and Partners in Asia
Discussion: Jobwire, paidContent.org and WebProNews
Tom Espiner / CNET News:
McKinnon extradition on hold until February
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
Why Microsoft should forget about Yahoo and buy Palm.
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Chaos Reigns in the PC Industry
Discussion: 451 CAOS Theory
Emily Steel / Wall Street Journal:
Marketers Look Beyond Search Engines
 

 
From Mediagazer:

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

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”

Sam Wolfson / The Guardian:
A look at the rise of celebrity-hosted interview podcasts, whose long running times mean guests delve into deep and personal topics, resembling therapy sessions

 
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