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5:00 PM ET, February 4, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Vic Gundotra / The Official Google Blog:
See where your friends are with Google Latitude  —  How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to?  It's a pretty central question to our daily social lives, and it's precisely the question you can now answer using Google Latitude.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Google Asks Time Warner for a $250 Million AOL Refund-Or Something Else?  —  Here's another eye-poke delivered to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes (pictured) from Google CEO Eric Schmidt: The search company has asked the media giant to refund the money it invested in AOL three years ago.
RELATED:
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:   Google Demands Time Warner Buy Back AOL Stake (GOOG)
Yahoo! Search Blog:
Search Pad: Making Online Research Easier  —  If you've ever used a search engine as a tool to help plan a vacation, research a purchase, or find health information on an illness, you know how difficult it is to keep track of the relevant websites and notes you find.
RELATED:
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo Starting To Roll Out “Search Pad” Feature  —  Formerly known as “Research Assistant” Yahoo is starting to introduce (to selected users) what it's now calling “Search Pad,” an application that automatically collects sites and content as users conduct online research.
Ed Oswald / Technologizer:
AT&T Eyes Verizon Wireless Assets  —  On one hand, AT&T is fighting paying its employees more.  On the other, its hoping to snag up assets that Verizon Wireless must divest as part of its merger agreement with Alltel Wireless.  —  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T is likely …
Discussion: Gearlog
RELATED:
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Sprint EOL list reveals target Palm Pre launch, plenty more  —  Sprint customers, have you found yourself wondering what Hesse & Co. have in store for you this year beyond the illustrious Palm Pre?  Don't worry, you're not alone.  While we can't post the list itself, one of our ninjas came through …
Rafael / Within Windows:
Windows 7 auto-elevation mistake lets malware elevate freely, easily  —  As you probably know by now, Windows 7 introduces some new in-between modes for User Account Control (UAC).  By default, Windows 7 (beta thus far) ships with UAC configured at the “Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer.” level.
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft's worst nightmare: Windows 7 deemed less secure than Vista
Discussion: Gizmodo
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
How Harvard Law threw down the gauntlet to the RIAA  —  Inside one Harvard Law professor's bid to turn his students into cyberactivists and to force the music industry to face the future in the process.  —  In retrospect, Harvard's eventual involvement was obvious.
comScore:
U.S. Online Video Viewing Surges 13 Percent in Record-Setting December  —  Americans View 14.3 Billion Videos during the Month as YouTube Paces Growth  —  comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released December 2008 data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Google & The Big Ideas  —  Sometimes, a tweet is just a tweet.  Occasionally it is just a start of a healthy debate!  —  Earlier today, when I read about Google launching a mobile version of Tasks, I was amazed by the attention being focused on what is essentially a to-do list web site.
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Cisco Q2 Sales $9.1B, $.32 EPS Beat, Shares Rising  —  Computer networking titan Cisco Systems (CSCO) this evening reported sales and profit for its fiscal Q2 ending in January that beat analysts' expectations on both counts.  Sales of $9.1 billion fell 7.5%, year-over-year …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Maps Out its Tracker Connections  —  In the past few weeks The Pirate Bay has been struggling with an increase in visitors, and a corresponding load on their servers.  Luckily, with a recent upgrade of the site's tracker servers, there is some room to breathe again.
Discussion: AppScout
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Christians Bailing on GoDaddy Due to ‘Immoral’ Advertising  —  GoDaddy's famously risque Super Bowl ads always pull lots of eyeballs, but the company's latest spots may have resulted in a little too much attention of the wrong kind.  —  Entrepreneur Brian Harrell, who manages hosting services …
Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
The ‘Twitter Effect’: Possibilities and limits  —  Is there a “Twitter Effect,” by which the rapid spread of information through the microblogging service can crush a Web site with traffic?  As I see it, the answer is yes, but it's not as simple as it might appear at first blush.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
LIVE: Akamai Beats Q4, Waiting On Guidance (AKAM)  —  Big fourth quarter for content delivery network Akamai: The company reported Q4 sales of $212.6 million, beating the Street's $205.46 consensus.  EPS came in at $0.44, beating the Street's $0.40 consensus.  —  Akamai got a boost from its acquisition of ad targeting firm Acerno.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
One of Acer's Mobile World Congress' handsets gets pictured  —  So, here's the deal... One of our infamous ninjas just sent us a shot of an unreleased and unseen Acer handset.  They told us it would be announced by Acer at MWC in a couple weeks, and that it is “pretty awkward.”  We agreed.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Facebook at 5: Remembering the Early Years, and Measuring Up Against Google  —  Happy Birthday, Facebook!  You're 5 years old today, and that's pretty cool.  But the party you're throwing yourself?  Not much fun.  —  How about this instead: Some brief reminiscing, via …
Derek Gottfrid / Open:
Announcing the Article Search API  —  Finally!  We are pleased to announce the initial release of the New York Times Article Search API.  Articles are the basic building blocks of The New York Times.  As a child, I was often reprimanded for (among other things) not sharing my blocks — well, today, I am happy to share.
Thanks:atul
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
The great iPod migration  —  How will Apple (AAPL) persuade 100 million iPod users to trade up to an iPhone?  That's the problem Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi tackles in a report to clients Wednesday.  —  His answer: Make an iPhone that comes without a data plan — currently $30 a month in the United States.
Agence France Presse:
Mobile phone sales down 12.6 pct in 4th qtr: IDC  —  WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mobile phone sales fell by 12.6 percent to 289 million units in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the same quarter a year ago, market research firm IDC said Wednesday.  —  For the full year, mobile phone vendors shipped …
Discussion: CNET News
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Pandora Sees iPhone Gold in the Palm Pre  —  Pandora founder Tim Westergren thinks being broad isn't necessarily the best strategy for development in the smartphone industry and that betting on a single (what he calls a “hero") platform could be the way to go.  Hint: it's not a Blackberry or Google's Android.
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Report: Most Spam Sites Tied to Just 10 Registrars  —  Nearly 83 percent of all Web sites advertised through spam can be traced back to just 10 domain name registrars, according to a study to be released this week.  —  The data come from millions of junk messages collected over the past year by Knujon …
Chris Pendleton / Virtual Earth, An Evangelist's Blog:
Virtual Earth Imagery Release, January 2009  —  The engine has been churning for a few months and we've finally pumped out another imagery release - a massive 37TB of data [100TB worth of data ](initial calculations have been corrected, but seriously who cares?  The coverage is expansive, regardless).
Discussion: WebProNews and LiveSide
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
HP releases netbook interface for Ubuntu  —  Hewlett Packard has released a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed for netbooks.  For the HP Mini 1000 Mi Edition, to be exact.  Under the hood, the operating system is based on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.  That means it can run pretty …
Discussion: jkOnTheRun and Liliputing
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
iLife suite quietly going Intel-only, PowerPC owners cry  —  iLife '09 contains plenty of new features to convince current Mac owners to upgrade from iLife '08, but there is one unfortunate deterrent for those still on PowerPC-based machines.  GarageBand '09 is the first iLife component …
Discussion: TheAppleBlog and Technologizer
Scott Duke Harris / Mercury News:
Sons of migrant farmworkers co-found promising Silicon Valley tech startup  —  His parents were migrant farmworkers who worked the harvests of California and Washington state before wintering in their small hometown in rural Mexico.  Bismarck Lepe, now 29, remembers how at age 5 he helped out in the strawberry fields.
Thanks:wesmax27
PC Magazine:
Want a 240-Gbyte iPod?  Here's How to Get It  — I'm a music junkie, I admit it.  But honestly, I thought that I would have appeased all of my pocket music library needs when I upgraded my iPod from 20 to 80GB.  It helped for a while, but every so often I find myself deleting yet another …
Discussion: Gizmodo, Electronista and Gearlog
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Electronic Arts: We're Focusing On The Wii (ERTS)  —  Electronic Arts' (ERTS) earnings yesterday disappointed again: The company posted earnings of only 56 cents a share against an analyst consensus estimate of $0.88 EPS.  —  So what's the plan to recover?  For one, cut expenses, to the tune of 12 studio closings and 1100 layoffs.
Ryan Kairer / PalmInfocenter:
Donna Dubinsky Resigning from Palm's Board  —  Donna Dubinsky, former Palm CEO and one of the original founders, is planning to resign from her seat on Palm's board of directors.  Elevations recent additional $100 million equity deal also included the right for the investment group to appoint …
Discussion: Digital Daily and FierceWireless
Times of India:
$10-laptop proves to be a damp squib  —  Text:  —  TIRUPATI: The much-touted laptop for the masses said to have been built by students of Vellore Institute of Technology that would cost a mere Rs 500 actually turned out to be only a computing device.  —  Making this clear at the inauguration …
Arn / MacRumors:
New Snow Leopard Build (10A261) Seeded to Some Developers  —  Macitynet.it reports that Apple has seeded some developers with a new version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.  The latest build is said to be 10A261.  The prior version of Snow Leopard delivered to developers was in December (build 10A222).
Discussion: AppleInsider, MacBlogz and Neowin.net
 
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 More Items: 
Staska / Unwired View:
T-Mobile Samsung Memoir detailed specifications and press pic
Discussion: Mobile Roar, TmoNews and SlashGear
Lenny Zeltser / SANS Internet Storm Center, InfoCON:
Malware infection that began with windshield fliers
Discussion: CNET News
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
NetworkedBlogs App on Facebook Adding 500 New Blogs a Day
Discussion: Webware.com
DSLreports:
Time Warner Cable To Expand Metered Billing …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Did AOL Just Write Down Its Bebo Acquisition?
 Earlier Items: 
Philip Greenspun / Philip Greenspun:
Verizon FiOS Versus Comcast
*Shacknews* Games:
GameFly Acquires Shacknews
Discussion: paidContent.org and Kotaku
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Mag:
ASUS Eee PC 1000HE Arrives Boasting a New Keyboard and Intel Atom N280 Processor
Discussion: Liliputing, SlashGear and CrunchGear
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
How to Launch Your Web Show on Facebook
Discussion: SarahLacy.com
Tim O'Reilly / Forbes:
Where Real Innovation Happens
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
NYT's Keller: We're Looking For Ways To Charge For Online Content Again
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Jeff Smykil / Ars Technica:
Apple adding to its “vintage and obsolete” list
 

 
From Mediagazer:

John Ourand / Puck:
Sources: Netflix is nearing a deal to stream two NFL games on December 25

Nicholas Fandos / New York Times:
Talk radio station WABC suspends Rudy Giuliani and cancels his daily show, saying he broke rules by trying to discuss discredited claims about 2020's election

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Ahead of YouTube's Brandcast, three top creators talk about producing polished content to be viewed on TVs and how YouTube connects them with audiences at scale

 
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