Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
9:25 AM ET, February 24, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Where were you during the great Gmail outage of February 2009?  —  If you live in the United States, chances are, you were asleep.  But for those in other parts of the world, and those of us who are nocturnal, Google's email service, Gmail, was down for several hours on Tuesday morning.
RELATED:
BBC:
Google users hit by mail blackout  —  Business and consumer users of Google's popular e-mail service were hit by a blackout on Tuesday.  —  The service went offline at 0930 GMT and began to return for many users after four hours, one of the longest downtimes ever suffered by Google.
David Pogue / New York Times:
The Kindle: Good Before, Better Now  —  In the high-tech industry, you live for the day when your product name becomes a verb.  “I Googled him.”  “She's been Photo- shopped.”  —  Amazon, however, is hoping that its product name, a verb, becomes a noun.  “Have you bought the new Kindle?”
Discussion: USA Today and Electronic Pulp, Thanks:vindugoel
RELATED:
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Designing the Kindle 2  —  SEATTLE—Amazon wanted to make the …
Discussion: WebProNews
Amazon.com:
Kindle 2 Ships Today
Discussion: Gearlog, InformationWeek and TechFlash
Official google.org Blog:
The Next Chapter for Google.org  —  When Larry and Sergey laid out their vision for Google.org, they hoped that this “experiment in active philanthropy” would one day have an even greater impact on the world than Google itself.  They committed resources from Google's profits …
RELATED:
Clive Thompson / Wired News:
The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time  —  Netbooks prove that we finally know what PCs are actually for.  Which is to say, not all that much.  —  Mary Lou Jepsen didn't set out to invent the netbook and turn the computer industry upside down.  She was just trying to create a supercheap laptop.
Discussion: Liliputing and digg.com, Thanks:atul
Andy Sternberg / netZoo:
To 90,000 Twitter Followers in 30 Days  —  Last month Twitter quietly launched a new feature that generated a list of suggested users to follow.  Most likely as a result of this list, the followers to many Twitter accounts increased exponential over the course of the last month.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Media Mogul Steve Rattner Goes To Washington, Where He Won't Be Car Czar  —  Steve Rattner (pictured here), once one of the the most prominent bankers in the media business, is going to Washington, after all.  Except that the Quandrangle Group founder won't be getting the “Car Czar” …
Discussion: paidContent.org
RELATED:
Stephanie Condon / CNET News:
White House names Internet team
Discussion: Search Engine Journal
PR Newswire:
VISTO to Acquire Good Technology From Motorola  —  Acquisition will extend VISTO's mobility offerings and expand its base of  —  customers to include many of the Fortune 500  —  REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and SCHAUMBURG, Ill. /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — VISTO®, a leading mobile push …
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily and CNET News
RELATED:
Arnold Kim / MacRumors:
New NVIDIA-based iMacs Imminent?  More Hints.  —  Over the past week, there have been an increasing number hints that the long-awaited iMac revisions are indeed imminent.  Resellers have had low stocks of iMacs and educational Apple sales reps have been authorized to give special pricing on the current iMacs.
Discussion: SlashGear and Engadget
Reuters:
Yahoo to offer tools to match users, ads- WSJ  —  Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) is set to unveil several tools on Tuesday to help marketers better target their online adverts, as the Internet company tries to win back business during a recession, the Wall Street Journal said, citing senior company officials.
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
LIVE COVERAGE: Microsoft's Strategic Update Meeting  —  Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, CFO Chris Liddell, and Investor Relations GM Bill Koefoed are presenting a “Strategic Update Meeting” to financial analysts at 8am ET.  —  Listen in here, but refresh this page for LIVE coverage …
Discussion: Microsoft Pri0 and TechFlash
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple releases public beta of Safari 4 browser  —  Apple on Tuesday announced the public beta of Safari 4, which the company has billed “the world's fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac and Windows PCs.”  —  Dubbed “Nitro,” the engine in Safari 4 is said to run JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.
Discussion: Webware.com and CrunchGear
Andrew Chen / Futuristic Play:
Which startup's collapse will end the Web 2.0 era?  —  The Silicon Valley machine is still going, for now  —  Here in Palo Alto, the Silicon Valley machine is still going strong - entrepreneurs are still starting companies, angels and VCs are still investing, and engineers are still coding.
Thanks:atul
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft backtracks on severance issue  —  This story was updated at 3:45 p.m. PST with an official statement from Microsoft.  —  Amid a wave of criticism, Microsoft is backtracking on a decision to require laid off workers to pay back money that the software maker said was in excess of its planned severance, CNET News has learned.
Patrick Wintour / Guardian:
Facebook risks ‘infantilising’ the mind  —  Social network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading neuroscientist.
Discussion: Basement.org and UMBC ebiquity
Darren Murph / Engadget:
VUDU first on-demand service to sell HD and HDX movies  —  VUDU made some pretty big waves with its Blu-ray-rivaling HDX downloadable format, and now it's pushing the envelope once again by becoming the first on-demand service to actually sell (as in, for keeps... on your box, anyway) HD and HDX movies.
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks  —  A gallery of screenshots from the latest build of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system showcases a handful of minor design tweaks that have been reported around the web in recent weeks.
Discussion: Softpedia News and digg.com
RELATED:
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
‘I Am Richer’ App Pops Up in Android Marketplace for $200  —  Is it any huge surprise that someone is already charging the maximum Android Marketplace price for a nonsensical, paid app?  Or that the name makes reference to the $1000 “I Am Rich” iPhone app?  No.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Making sense of Mac market share figures  —  Apple's slice of the market share pie continues to grow, even during this economic downturn.  But the numbers from different sources tend to be all over the place.  What do they all mean, and what's the big picture for Apple's market share trajectory?
Discussion: OSNews
Robert L. Mitchell / Computerworld:
When good browsers go bad — and they all do  —  Better browsers.  Better standards.  Better tools.  So why are Web pages still breaking?  —  Computerworld) Jeffrey Zeldman must have thought he'd never live to see the day.  Ten years after he co-founded the Web Standards Project …
Chris Albrecht / NewTeeVee:
Online Video Viewing Up, Impact on TV “Negligible”  —  Television is still king, despite gains being made online.  That's according to two separate research reports released today.  Taken together, the studies from Nielsen and Leichtman Research Group (LRG) also help illustrate how newteeve is impacting oldteevee (hint: it isn't).
Chris Albrecht / NewTeeVee:
Where to Watch Obama's “State of the Union” Online  —  Technically, President Obama's speech tomorrow night isn't a State of the Union.  Give the guy a break, he only started the job a month ago.  Instead, his speech is considered a formal address to Congress.
Soulxtc / Zeropaid File Sharing P2P Technology News:
OneSwarm Turns P2P into F2F  —  New friend-to-friend (F2F) data sharing application allows users complete control over how data is shared, with the public, with friends, with some friends but not others, and so forth.  —  Some of the same researchers at the University of Washington …
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
The Engadget Interview: Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility  —  We had an opportunity to sit down with AT&T's Ralph de la Vega last week — one of the most influential individuals in the wireless world today — at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for a nice little chat covering all the topics …
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
Do you really think Apple's going to take business advice from a bunch of cheapskates?  —  I can't be the only one who's tired of reading the opinions of cheapskates who feel that Apple, for some bizarre and unexplicable reason, owes them a low-cost Mac OS powered computer.  Read my lips: It's not gonna happen!
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 9:25 AM ET, February 24, 2009.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Environmental impact of remote support: Reducing carbon footprints in IT  —  Information technology is essential for powering core business processes and facilitating communication.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
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: 
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Researcher posts homemade patch for critical PDF bug
Discussion: VRT and Slashdot
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
Major Label Acts Get Hip to Music Apps
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Does Cloud Computing Mean More Risks to Privacy?
Founders at Work:
A Note About Sabeer Bhatia's Interview
Discussion: TechCrunch, Thanks:venturehacks
Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:
Hidden Cameras in DTV Converters? YouTube Hoax Fans Conspiracy Fears
Discussion: digg.com
 Earlier Items: 
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
With Chernin Out At News Corp, What Happens To FIM?
Steve O'Hear / last100:
Chumby bets on Internet-connected TVs
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Prosecution Hires Hypocrite Pirate Author for PR
Discussion: digg.com
Dieter Bohn / PreCentral.net:
Celebrities Handle the Pre (Update: with help from Palm)
Discussion: Engadget and WebOS Arena
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Could Wikipedia's Future Be as a Development Platform?
Discussion: The Noisy Channel
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Who's Advising Tom Friedman? I Have a Guess
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Ruth La Ferla / New York Times:
Graydon Carter opens a physical store called Air Mail Newsstand in NYC, as an extension of his digital newsletter Air Mail, selling books, magazines, and more

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Filing: Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's 2023 compensation package was worth $49.7M, up 26.5% from the year prior, with $23.1M in stock awards

Andrew Beaujon / Washingtonian:
Interviews with over a dozen current and former WAMU staffers and contractors show management's contradictory, unclear messaging about its closure of DCist

 
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