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9:05 PM ET, February 19, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
AppleInsider:
Photo of next-gen Apple Mac mini in the wild [u]  —  A photo making the rounds on the Internet appears to conform to descriptions of a next-generation Mac mini published by AppleInsider earlier in the year.  —  The photo shows the rear of a Mac mini that includes five USB ports instead of 4 …
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
Leaked Photo of the Next-Generation Mac Mini?  —  A possible image of the next generation Mac Mini was first posted to a MacRumors forum discussion thread.  The image depicts what could be the next Mac mini.  —  The original leaker also claimed the following specs:  — Intel Core 2 Duo
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Testers get SP2 Release Candidate for Vista and Server 2008  —  Microsoft has released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to the public.  The build can be downloaded by anyone willing to test it.  —  Microsoft today released …
RELATED:
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Expect Windows 7 This Year Come Hell Or High Water  —  Is Microsoft (MSFT) rushing Windows 7 out the door?  —  So far, Microsoft still isn't committing to a release date for Windows 7, under the idea that if any bugs are found the company wants to be able to fix them without the black eye of …
Discussion: Hardware 2.0
Randall C. Kennedy / Enterprise Desktop:
Windows 7: Cutting corners in the rush to market?
Discussion: TechSpot
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
HP CEO Mark Hurd's Memo to the Troops on Pay Cuts  —  Here is the letter Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Mark Hurd broadcast to employees Wednesday explaining the company's disappointing reversal in outlook for the fiscal year and its plans to reduce pay and benefits across the board.
RELATED:
Bloomberg:
Hewlett-Packard's Hurd Cuts Employees' Pay as Silicon Valley Retrenches
Discussion: CNN and BloggingStocks
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Discontinues 20" Cinema Display, Product Refreshes Coming?  —  Apple has removed the 20" Cinema Display from the online Apple Store and has notified resellers that the product has been “end of life'd” and can no longer be ordered.  —  While it may be possible that Apple has simply chosen …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Gmail With Custom Colors  —  You can now make Gmail as ugly or pretty as you want - by choosing your own colors.  Go to Gmail -> Settings -> Themes, and click “Choose your own colors”.  This opens a window where you can configure a template with instant preview.  Hit Save & Close, and Gmail will appear in your custom colors.
RELATED:
Manu Cornet / Gmail Blog:
Choose your own theme colors
Discussion: WebProNews and Google Operating System, Thanks:sinkercat
CNBC.com:
Sprint Shares Skyrocket 20% on Palm Pre Deal  —  Sprint [PALM Loading...  () ], which also reported a narrower-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday, saw its shares rise leap almost 20 percent to $3.25 Thursday.  —  The person, who asked not to be named, said the exclusivity period …
RELATED:
Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Single Google Query uses 1000 Machines in 0.2 seconds  —  Google is normally quite secretive about their search infrastructure but, in a break from tradition, they have revealed that a single search query on Google can consume the processing power of 1000 machines.
Thanks:atul
Mhtaylor Mhtaylor / Digits:
Pirate Bay Jokes With the Prosecution, Dissuades Hackers  —  By Marisa Taylor  —  On day four of the tumultuous Pirate Bay trial, the proceedings were focused on one defendant, Fredrik Neij, according to BitTorrent-news blog TorrentFreak. … It reported that on Thursday, Monique Wadsted …
RELATED:
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Day 4 - Pirate Bay Defense Calls Foul Over Evidence
Discussion: p2pnet and Gizmodo
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Upcoming Verizon news: BlackBerry Niagara, Hub updates, Netbooks, Apex  —  One of our trusty ninjas just hit us up with a couple details on some of Verizon's upcoming products and product offerings.  First off.. Netbooks.  We've been told that Verizon Wireless will 100% start selling Netbooks in stores around May of this year.
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Jack Dorsey on the Twitter ecosystem, journalism and how to reduce reply spam.  Part II  —  Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.  (Credit: Joi Ito via Flickr)  —  On Wednesday we posted the first half of an interview with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack), in which he talked about the conceptual roots of the site.
Discussion: ReTweet and WebProNews, Thanks:atul
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Pinch Media Data Shows The Average Shelf Life Of An iPhone App Is Less Than 30 Days  —  There may be more than 20,000 iPhone apps out there that have been downloaded more than 500 million times, but what is the average shelf life of each app?  Greg Yardley, CEO of Pinch Media …
Discussion: Russell Beattie's Weblog, Thanks:atul
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Twitter gets half the press coverage of Facebook, but a fraction of its traffic  —  Ever heard the phrase “why is everyone always talking about Twitter?”  Well, here's the reason, maybe.  The micro-messaging service is getting half of social network Facebook's press coverage …
Discussion: Gawker, Thanks:atul
Kathleen Richards / East Bay Express:
Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0  —  Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site ... for a price.  —  Send a letter  —  The phone calls came almost daily.  It started to get creepy.  —  “Hi, this is Mike from Yelp,” the voice would say.
RELATED:
Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog:
Your Ads, Richer  —  Yahoo! adds video, images and custom links to search ads  —  Ever since we launched pay-per-click advertising, the ads have looked more or less the same: A headline, a line of ad copy, a link.  They haven't changed because, frankly, the combination works pretty well.
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
How Much Data Fits On A Pin?  —  Researchers invent a technique that could cram 10 trillion bits onto a surface the size of a quarter.  —  For decades, hard-disk makers have been shrinking the electromagnetic media that store data to cram more information into a tinier footprint.
James Sherwood / The Register:
Cameraphone with physical shutter spied  —  Eliminates ghosting and blurring, it's claimed  —  MWC Camera firm Jabil has showcased an 8Mp camera module with a physical shutter.  The firm hopes it could soon make its way into smartphones.  —  The module measures 10 x 10 x 8mm …
Discussion: Gizmodo
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
The Presidents of the United States of America Unleash Multiple-Album iPhone App  —  Dave Dederer, former singer and guitarist for nineties hitmakers The Presidents of the United States of America, has fashioned quite a second career for himself as the vice president of business development for Melodeo …
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
The Windows Empire Strikes Back  —  Since Vista's launch, Mac enthusiasts and Microsoft critics have successfully mounted a rebel campaign against the Windows PC.  Apple's brand was resurgent, and Macs were the cooler computers.  Mac sales growth blew away Windows PCs, while Apple computers rapidly gained market share.
Discussion: Guardian
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Valve Exec Explains How To Compete With Piracy  —  Last month, an exec at Valve Software noted that “Pirates are underserved customers” and said when someone realizes that, they also discover: “I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.”
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Stantum's mind-blowing multitouch interface on video!  —  We just got a look at some amazing touchscreen interaction, running on a humble resistive touchscreen with some OMAP hardware backing it up.  Stantum's technology is a software-based refinement to resistive touchscreens that allows …
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
YouTube looks out for content owners, disables video ripping  —  When YouTube announced last week that select videos would be available to download, it meant little to the savvy YouTube surfer.  After all, they've been able to do that for years thanks to Firefox scripts and tools provided by various websites.
Julie Steenhuysen / Reuters:
Scientists make advances on “nano” electronics  —  CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics as current semiconductor technology begins to reach the limits of miniaturization.
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Haier shows off mysterious “NetBooks,” Android phones  —  Haier's offerings are always an adventure, and this year at MWC they didn't disappoint.  They were showing off an interesting assortment of MIDs, confusingly dubbed “NetBooks,” including a mini-laptop of sorts (left) that falls somewhere in the middle.
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Norwegian Websites Declare War on IE6  —  Several large websites in Norway have launched an advocacy campaign urging Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade their outdated web browsers.  —  Leading the charge is Finn.no, an eBay-like site which is apparently the largest site for buying …
Discussion: Download Squad and The Register
Chris Soghoian / CNET News:
Recovery.gov blocked search engine tracking  —  Update: As of 8 a.m. PST, within three hours of this story first going live, it appears that President Obama's Web team has (silently) pulled the robots.txt file from the Recovery.gov Web site.  The site is now open to Web crawlers of all kinds.
Discussion: eWeek and techPresident
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
DocStoc Does Its Part To Rid The Web Of Download Links  —  Document sharing site DocStoc has launched DocShots, a free service that allows publishers to convert any document on a website into a hoverable link that provides an instant online document preview.
 
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 More Items: 
Verity Burns / Pocket-lint.co.uk:
Philips unveils GoGear Ariaz media player
Discussion: Crave and Engadget
Julian Sanchez / Ars Technica:
New bill would force ISPs to retain user data for two years
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
Sun's CEO Claims JavaFX As The Fastest Growing RIA Platform: Completely Untrue
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Comcast: 50Mbps speeds to 65% of territory by end of 2009
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Disney Acquires Kerpoof's Kid-Friendly Creative Suite
Discussion: Virtual Worlds News
Sydney Morning Herald:
Telstra executive sparks Microsoft security scare
 Earlier Items: 
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits
Saul Hansell / Bits:
I.B.M. Delivers Rural Broadband Over Power Lines
Arn / MacRumors:
Turn-By-Turn iPhone GPS App Already Available in iTunes
Discussion: iPhone Buzz
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Apple buying up available flash RAM supplies for next iPhone