Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
6:55 PM ET, February 6, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
A Microsoft smartphone: No. A Microsoft phone chassis: Yes  —  Microsoft is not going to introduce a Microsoft-branded phone at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona later this month.  Not a Microsoft-branded Zune phone.  Not any kind of Microsoft-branded phone.  Period.
RELATED:
Chris Ziegler / Engadget Mobile:
Microsoft's SkyBox site live, branded My Phone?  —  It appears that Microsoft may have its SkyBox beta sign-up site up and running in preparation for a Mobile World Congress unveiling — except that it's not called SkyBox, it's called “My Phone” (even though the domain is getskybox.com — go figure).
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones  —  SAN FRANCISCO — More electronic books are coming to mobile phones.  —  In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free …
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Amazon Announcing Kindle iPhone App Monday? (AMZN, AAPL)
Discussion: Crave, Macworld and Gizmodo
Fast Company:
Are Google Books a Threat to the Kindle?
Discussion: Open Sources
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
Marten Mickos to leave Sun in reorg  —  Marten Mickos, former MySQL chief executive and current senior vice president of Sun Microsystems' database group, is transitioning out of the company in a planned reorganization.  —  I reached Mickos this morning for confirmation: he is definitely leaving.
Kim Zetter / Epicenter:
TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense — Video  —  LONG BEACH, California — Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen.  The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will …
Dean Jackson / Surfin' Safari:
CSS Animation  —  WebKit now supports explicit animations in CSS.  As a counterpart to transitions, animations provide a way to declare repeating animated effects, with keyframes, completely in CSS.  —  With a recent nightly build, you can see the above animation in action.
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
CSS Animation Coming to Safari, Already in iPhone.  Less Dependence on Flash?
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac
Darryl K. Taft / eWeek:
Trouble at Salesforce.com?  —  Resource Library:  —  Steve Cakebread, president and chief strategy officer at Salesforce.com, has resigned, and reports say two top vice presidents have also left the company.  —  Is there trouble in the house that Benioff built?
Discussion: The Register and Digits
RELATED:
The Official Google Blog:
Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye  —  Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie.  So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box.  Which of these results would you choose?  —  Where did your eyes go first when you saw the results page?
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
ESPN to ISPs: Pay for Your Customers to Play Video  —  For some sports fans, ESPN360, the online version of ESPN's television channel, is a cornucopia of more than 3,500 sporting events each year, viewable from the convenience of a computer.  For others, it's a total bust.  The only difference: their ISP.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple has NOT banned Facebook  —  How do these rumors get started?  Or, more to the point, how do they get perpetuated?  —  Late Thursday, a site called tinycomb ("Hand-Picked Tech News") reported that Facebook had been banned “for life” from every Apple (AAPL) store in the United States …
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Job Losses: The Silicon Valley Perspective  —  Today's headlines trumpet the loss of 598,000 jobs last month — the worst in 34 years — but what does that mean for Silicon Valley, the home of technology?  In order to get a sense of what's happening with venture-backed startups …
Discussion: PE Hub Blog, Thanks:eldon
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
StumbleUpon Hits 7 Million Users, Quietly 50% Bigger Than Twitter  —  What's got a button to push, knows how to make money while changing the world and is read all over?  StumbleUpon!  The social discovery network, like Pandora for webpages and videos, just passed 7 million users according to the site.
Discussion: Pulse2, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Chris Albrecht / GigaOM:
Why Does Everyone Heart Boxee?  —  The buzz has been building for Boxee lately.  Mainstream news outlets like The New York Times, BusinessWeek and NPR are getting hip to the little open-source media center that could quite possibly change the way you experience TV.
Discussion: NewTeeVee, OStatic blogs and Webomatica
Jeremy Laird / bit-tech.net:
The Dark Side of Overdrive  —  Faster is always better.  Thanks to that simple philosophy, LCD pixel response times have been driven down to puny proportions in recent years.  —  Today, even the slowest panels are rated at 16ms or better and deliver adequate response for all but the most fanatical PC gamers.
Discussion: Engadget, Thanks:sifter
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Facebook's “next steps in openness” raises questions  —  Facebook's wildly popular “Facebook Connect” service may be the polar opposite of OpenID's stumbling approach to providing online identity management with single sign-on convenience.  The former is criticized for being a “walled garden …
Discussion: eWeek, AppScout and The Blog Herald
Venture Capital Dispatch:
Vinod Khosla Moves Beyond Personal Wealth  —  It just might be official: Vinod Khosla isn't heading back to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers after all.  —  When Khosla started up his own venture capital firm in 2004 to invest his personal wealth in information technology and clean technology companies …
Thanks:atul
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
Obama names Doerr, Phillips to economic board  —  Two Silicon Valley leaders have been appointed by President Obama to a 16-person committee that's charged with offering economic advice during what has become an unusually sharp and deep recession.  —  John Doerr, the billionaire venture capitalist …
Discussion: eWeek, Jobwire and VentureBeat
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Why Microsoft, labels cling to music subscriptions  —  LOS ANGELES—For anybody wondering why Microsoft and the top music labels continue to promote subscription music services, the answer was revealed Thursday.  —  David Ring, executive vice president of business development …
Discussion: Technologizer and TomsTechBlog.com
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
News Corp: We Spent $2.8 Billion Too Much on Dow Jones  —  A little more detail, via a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, on the $8.4 billion write-down announced by News Corp. yesterday: $2.8 billion of that charge is getting assigned to the company's $5.7 billion purchase of Dow Jones …
Benjamin J. Romano / Microsoft Pri0:
Microsoft digital ad shop Razorfish lays off 70 in Seattle, Portland, SF and LA  —  Razorfish, the digital advertising agency that Microsoft gained when it acquired aQuantive in 2007, is going through another round of layoffs.  A spokeswoman confirmed that the company laid off about 70 people …
Discussion: AdAge
Judd Legum / Legum's New Line:
Maryland General Assembly Bans Facebook  —  The New Line has learned that the Maryland General Assembly, citing security concerns, has blocked Facebook and MySpace from the computers of state legislators and their staffs.  —  Here is the full text of the memo from Office …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Plans to Sue IFPI  —  The decision to block The Pirate Bay has once again ignited a debate on Internet filtering, the responsibilities of Internet providers and the legal status of BitTorrent sites.  The IFPI - the RIAA's global partner - has chalked up a small victory this week, but the fight is far from over.
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Apple's Not So Quiet Rally And Why It Will Continue  —  On Wednesday, January 14, the day Apple [AAPL Loading...  () ] CEO Steve Jobs announced he would be taking a 6-month medical leave of absence, Apple shares closed at $85.33.  From the moment that news hit the tape, shares began to slide …
Discussion: The Mac Observer and The After Mac
Matthew Moore / Telegraph:
Police create wanted poster on Nintendo Wii  —  Japanese police have used a Nintendo Wii to generate a wanted poster of a hit-and-run suspect.  —  Rather than commissioning an artist or employing photofit software, officers put together a caricature of the man they want to trace using …
Discussion: Switched and Obsessable
Reed Hastings / New York Times:
Please Raise My Taxes  —  I'M the chief executive of a publicly traded company and, like my peers, I'm very highly paid.  The difference between salaries like mine and those of average Americans creates a lot of tension, and I'd like to offer a suggestion.  President Obama should celebrate our success …
Discussion: Coop's Corner and SiliconBeat, Thanks:atul
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
New York Times Nuts Not To Charge Subscription Fee (NYT)  —  On the News Corp conference call last night, Murdoch hammered home our point about why the New York Times (NYT) should charge an online subscription fee.  —  Murdoch noted that the Wall Street Journal, which charges a subscription fee …
Discussion: Industry Standard
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 6:55 PM ET, February 6, 2009.

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:
Authy killed their desktop apps.  Time to switch to a reliable authenticator.  Time to switch to Zoho OneAuth.  —  Twilio's Authy recently announced end of life (EOL) for their desktop apps on March 19, 2024—five months ahead of schedule.
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: 
Sramana Mitra / Forbes:
Open Source Means Business
Discussion: Linux-Watch.com
Chris Duckett / ZDNET.com.au:
Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? …
Discussion: Gizmodo, Download Squad and CrunchGear
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
The Parent Company Auctions Off Assets, Sells Toys.com Domain For $1.25 Million
Discussion: Domain Name Wire
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Venture Capitalist Pleads Guilty to Securities Fraud
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Backup And Share Your iPhone Contacts For Free With IDrive Lite
James Sherwood / The Register:
HP UK pulls Linux from all new netbooks
Discussion: Electricpig.co.uk and Engadget
 Earlier Items: 
Roy Mark / eWeek:
Geeks.com Settles FTC Charges
Discussion: The Register and PC World
DigiTimes:
Acer shipping 10.1-inch Aspire one netbooks
Discussion: I4U News, TG Daily and The Tech Report, Thanks:dreamsketcher
Josh Quittner / Time:
The Race for a Better Read
Discussion: TeleRead
Tony Smith / The Register:
Third-gen iPhone to run on Nvidia chippery?
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac
Paul Schwartzman / Washington Post:
Apple Store Design Hits a Glass Wall Again
 

 
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

 
Sister Sites:

Mediagazer
 Top news and commentary for media professionals from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page