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7:10 AM ET, February 17, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information  —  A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users.  A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I'd like to address those here.  I'll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people's information.
RELATED:
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Facebook's TOS debacle: Be upset for a better reason  —  There was some Facebook backlash over the long U.S. weekend that has prompted some calls for boycotts over two sentences that were taken out of the company's Terms of Services agreement earlier this month.
Discussion: Neowin.net and ReTweet
Richard Wray / Guardian:
Universal mobile phone charger unveiled  —  The mobile phone industry plans to introduce a universal charger as part of a drive to improve its previously patchy environmental record.  —  The plan from industry body the GSM Association (GSMA) is just one of a raft of “green” announcements at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Discussion: PC World and PR Newswire
RELATED:
Agence France Presse:
Mobile phone makers agree to create standard charger
Discussion: Gizmodo
Kdawson / Slashdot:
Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7  —  from the just-who-did-you-think-owns-your- machine dept. … Read on for more details of this user's findings.  —  Re — Photoshop: That Photoshop stopped functioning after we messed with one of its nag DLLs was not so much a surprise …
Discussion: TechnoLlama and Boing Boing
RELATED:
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
Worst.  Windows 7.  Piece.  EVER!  —  Over on Slashdot is perhaps the worst piece on Windows 7 that I've see so far (I find it hard to believe that this one will be beaten anytime soon ...). … OK, just a few points worth making:  — Someone messes about with Photoshop in order to crack it …
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Windows Mobile 6.5 Hands On: The New Interface Rocks  —  I like the new Windows Mobile 6.5 interface, specially the new home screen, which is brilliantly executed.  Running on the new HTC Touch Diamond 2, everything looked smoother, cleaner, and matched the iPhone's lick factor.
Marguerite Reardon / Webware.com:
Skype strikes deal with Nokia  —  BARCELONA—Skype is racking up deals with mobile handset makers here at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009.  —  On Tuesday, the company, which is owned by eBay, announced a partnership with Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, to put the Skype Internet calling software onto its phones.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Trial - First Day in Court  —  The day started this morning at 08:30, with Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (aka Anakata), Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (aka Brokep) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) arriving at the court with the S23K bus.  The bus will operate as their press-center in the weeks to come.
RELATED:
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Labels want $13 million from Pirate Bay as trial starts
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Court Tweets, Pirate Flags and Free Candy
Discussion: digg.com
Ben Worthen / Wall Street Journal:
Oracle Goes on a Recession Buying Spree  —  While most American corporations pinch pennies, Oracle Corp. is quietly going on a shopping spree.  —  The software giant completed 10 acquisitions in the past year, ranging from a maker of insurance-policy-writing tools, to a designer of …
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life blog:
Game-changers - Google or Apple?  —  Two years ago all the talk at the Mobile World Congress was of the imminent arrival of the Apple iPhone, and how it was going to change the industry.  One year ago, all the talk was of Google's open-source Android operating system, and what a radical impact that might have.
RELATED:
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Justin.tv Is Redirecting Porn Queries Into Cash  —  In the down economy, startups are trying everything they can think of to keep a steady flow of revenue coming in.  For popular live-streaming video site Justin.tv, it looks like one of these measures is to try to capitalize …
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Satellite-hacking boffin sees the unseeable  —  Lady Di gossip plucked from sky  —  White-hat hacker Adam Laurie knows better than to think email, video-on-demand, and other content from Sky Broadcasting and other satellite TV providers is a private matter between him and the company.
Agence France Presse:
Bill Gates grant to extend mobile banking to poor  —  BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) — Microsoft founder Bill Gates has agreed to help fund a massive rollout of projects enabling poor mobile phone users to transfer money using their handsets, an industry body announced Tuesday.
Discussion: PR Newswire
Peter Galli / port25.technet.com:
Microsoft, Red Hat to Offer Joint Technical Support  —  Microsoft and Red Hat announced this morning that they have recently signed agreements to test and validate their server operating systems running on one another's hypervisors.  —  This is deeply significant as it means that customers …
Charles Hudson / Charles Hudson's Weblog:
THE DATABASE OF INTENTIONS IS MORE VALUABLE THAN THE DATABASE OF MUSINGS FOR NOW (GOOGLE AND TWITTER)  —  I've been very curious to read this weekend's stream of people commenting on Twitter's business model and what it will look like.  I read this one in Forbes - it talks about how being able …
Discussion: Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Thanks:atul
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Filtrbox Raises $1.4 Million, Launches Revamped Market Intelligence Tool  —  Filtrbox, a startup for online brand monitoring and market intelligence that was part of the TechStars class of 2007, has announced that it closed a $1.4 million Series A funding round led by Flywheel Ventures and True Ventures at the end of last year.
Discussion: paidContent.org
Sarah Lacy / Business Week:
Local Advertising Isn't Jumping Online  —  As the newspaper industry crumbles, online sites figured they'd cash in on local advertising.  But “local” doesn't mean much online  —  For at least a decade, Web startups have spun visions of conquering local ad markets.
Discussion: Search Engine Land, Thanks:sadkids
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Mobile World Congress: One Day, Sixteen New Phones  —  Phones.  More phones.  Phones that look a lot like iPhones, except for the ones that don't.  Phones that may never show up in the good old US of A. Phones that are full of style, and ones that seem to be devoid of discernible personality.
Discussion: CNET News and infoSync World
Cade Metz / The Register:
Apple's Mac OS X update breaks Perl  —  Never trust a vendor  —  Apple's latest Mac OS X security update has a knack for breaking Perl, according to Mac users from across the web.  —  “I've just done the update using Software update and just about everything I look at is working …
Discussion: perl.org lists
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
TechStars Fills Void Left By Y Combinator With New Incubator In Boston  —  Boulder, Colorado-based startup incubator TechStars has decided to open a second office in Boston where it will run a concurrent mentorship program starting this summer.  —  The Boston program …
 
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 More Items: 
Pavel Alpeyev / Bloomberg:
Toshiba Agrees to Buy Fujitsu's Hard-Disk Drive Unit to Boost Market Share
Joseph Tartakoff / The Microsoft Blog:
CBS Sports picks Microsoft's Silverlight for March Madness
Discussion: SportsBusiness Journal and Pulse2
Jon Healey / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
NAB reaches webcasting deal with SoundExchange
Discussion: nab.org
Bloomberg:
Italian Government's Internet Bill May Limit Free Speech, Tiscali Says
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Cash injection lifts fledgling technologies
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Venture Capitalist Explains How Patents Can Be A Tax On Innovation
Discussion: OnlyOnce, Thanks:atul
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Social Atoms and the Twitter Ecosystem
 Earlier Items: 
Paul Carr:
Can you guess what my column's going to be about this week?
Discussion: The Register
Chris Williams / The Register:
UK.gov to tap BT as data harvester
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Twe2: Free Twitter SMS Updates For Europe and the Rest of the World
Discussion: TheNextWeb.com, Thanks:atul
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
What Went Wrong with Fennec, a.k.a. Firefox Mobile?
Thanks:blogfisher