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2:55 PM ET, March 31, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
Wales giving up on Wikia Search  —  Wikia is announcing on Tuesday that it is closing the Wikia Search product.  The service was intended to be a user-generated search engine, through which users could influence the rankings of results for all other users.  —  Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikia …
RELATED:
Jimbo Wales / Jimmy Wales:
Update on Wikia - doing more of what's working  —  If there is one thing that I've learned in my career, it is to do more of what's working, and less of what's not.  —  In past 24 months, Wikia.com has seen tremendous expansion.  Nielsen recently recognized Wikia.com as the fifth fastest …
Discussion: TechCrunch, Bits, Download Squad, Pulse2 and ITworld.com, Thanks:atul
The Official Google Blog:
Google's newest venture  —  Today we're excited to announce Google Ventures, Google's new venture capital fund.  This is Google's effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies.  By borrowing the best practices of top-tier …
RELATED:
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Google's New VC Fund Lacks Domain Name
Discussion: Google Watch and Mark Evans
Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:   Google forms $100 million venture fund
Chris Davies / Android Community:
Android tethering apps pulled from Market  —  Google has reportedly pulled tethering apps from the Android Market.  According to at least one developer, who contributed to the WiFi Tether for Root Users app, Google are citing their distribution agreements with carriers as the prompt for removal:
RELATED:
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Pirates Board Apple's iPhone App Store  —  The iPhone's App Store is becoming an increasingly juicy target for pirates, who have illegally cracked 20 percent of paid applications for free distribution.  —  Apple's App Store offers about 25,000 paid apps, and iPhone analytics company Medialets estimates …
Discussion: Apple 2.0, Technologizer and iLounge, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
iPhone Pirating App Attacks Rival Pirate App Store
Discussion: The Edge of I-Hacked
Rik Ferguson / Counter Measures:
Poisoned Downad/Conficker Removal Searches...  Reminder: For a FREE tool to remove Conficker (and every other malware in the current pattern file) use Trend Micro's SysClean available here.  —  As soon as the good news breaks that it is possible to use tools such as the network scanning tool nmap …
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
MySpace, Citysearch Partner To Create MySpace Local  —  MySpace and Citysearch are jointly announcing a new MySpace property this morning called MySpace Local.  The site combines Citysearch business listings (including address, photos, menus, videos, maps and hours of location) from a thousand cities with the MySpace community.
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Analyst: 32GB iPhone could debut in June  —  Updated at 9:15 a.m. PDT with comments from analyst Daniel Amir.  —  Apple is expected to begin production on a high-end iPhone with 32GB of flash memory and a low-end 3G version this spring, according to a research report released Tuesday by Lazard Capital Markets analyst.
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Postini: Spam up again following McColo takedown  —  It has taken spammers only four months to get their botnets back up after hosting company McColo Corp. was shut down, according to statistics due to be released on Tuesday from Google's Postini e-mail security provider.
RELATED:
Brad Stone / Bits:
Spam Back to 94% of All E-Mail
Associated Press:
Unpaid bills?  Good luck starting future laptops  —  NEW YORK - As wireless carriers begin to subsidize computers that come with wireless Internet access, they're faced with a quandary: What do they do if the buyer stops paying his bills?  —  The company can cut off the computer's wireless access …
Discussion: Ars Technica
John Koller / PlayStation.Blog:
PlayStation 2 Will Be Available for Under $100  —  Hi everyone, the last time you heard from me, I talked about the huge milestone that PlayStation 2 achieved - reaching 50 million units sold in North America.  Today I'm excited to talk about another milestone in PlayStation 2's lifespan.
Dan Reed / USA Today:
American to add Wi-Fi service to domestic flights  —  Being online while being airborne is fast becoming reality for U.S travelers.  —  American Airlines (AMR) is announcing on Tuesday that it's joining rival Delta Air Lines (DAL) in making Wi-Fi Internet connections available to most domestic passengers.
Cory Doctorow / Guardian:
Authors have lost the plot in Kindle row  —  Amazon's Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature is not so much violating authors' copyright but rather basic consumer rights  —  The Amazon Kindle 2's release in February was attended by much fanfare and controversy: Kindle customers were delighted …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Troubled SeeqPod Files For Bankruptcy Protection  —  SeeqPod, the popular “playable media” search service that many music sites use as the foundation for their core offering, has filed a petition for Chapter 11 yesterday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of California.
Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
Hulu Attracts Crowds but Not Ads  —  News Corp.-NBC joint venture Hulu has surged in viewership, but advertisers are still leery, and content partners are pulling back  —  In the Super Bowl commercial calling Hulu “an evil plot to destroy the world,” 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin intones: “There's nothing you can do to stop it.”
Discussion: MediaPost and ChannelWeb, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Skype works on AT&T's 3G on iPhone 3.0  —  We just found something very interesting.  When you install Skype on a 3.0 developer preview iPhone, you can use AT&T's connection to make and receive calls.  It even works pretty well over EDGE.  Skype treats AT&T's WWAN like a Wifi connection.
Patrick Oppmann / CNN:
Critics slam Microsoft bridge as waste of stimulus money  —  REDMOND, Washington (CNN) — Should a bridge that would connect two campuses at Microsoft's headquarters be funded with $11 million from the federal stimulus package?  —  Critics of using stimulus money for the bridge say it would give …
Discussion: CNET News and ProPublica
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Next up for Microsoft's ‘real life’ Windows star: 7-Eleven ads  —  After setting the tech world abuzz with her criticism of Apple's Mac prices, the star of Microsoft's latest Windows ad will be featured next in promotional videos for 7-Eleven, according to a public Web site where she chronicles her burgeoning acting career.
Joel Hruska / Ars Technica:
New method for detecting Conficker discovered, debuted  —  With Conficker.C slowly counting down towards its April 1 launch date, Team White Hat may have had a breakthrough.  The new scanning tool developed by Dan Kaminsky, Felix Leder, and Tillman Werner may not actually remove the malware …
Heidi N. Moore / Deal Journal:
IBM-Sun: Do They Have a Deal?  Does it Matter?  —  On Monday, the markets started to question whether International Business Machines and Sun Microsystems will really get a deal done.  —  It was on March 19 that The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM was in talks to acquire Sun Micro.
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Disney-Hulu Deal Done  —  A deal to bring Disney into the Hulu fold is “basically done,” a single source familiar with the discussions tells us.  —  PaidContent reported that if Disney were to do a deal, it would take a 30% stake in Hulu and become and equal partner to NBC Universal …
Discussion: Fast Company
Eric Ward / Search Engine Land:
Twitter: Incredibly Valuable Or Utterly Useless As A Link Building Tool?  —  I've read so many articles lately about Twitter, from mainstream press to the sports world to the SEO world, that all seem to focus on the “phenomena” aspect of it.  After the Twittles (Twitter+Skittles) thing happened, it was like a dam bursting.
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
The Worm That Ate the Web  —  The latest version of Conficker isn't the first bot to plague the Internet, but it may be the smartest and most sophisticated.  And it starts phoning home Wednesday.  —  Last week, I pulled out my Internet cable, unplugged my USB drives, and searched …
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
When Digital Media CEOs Lose It: Whose Portfolio Took The Biggest Hit In 2008  —  A couple of weeks ago, we ranked digital-media CEOs by the size of paychecks.  But many of these titans derive most of their wealth not from salary, bonus or options, but from their holdings in the companies they run.
Discussion: PE Hub Blog
 
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 More Items: 
Michael V. Copeland / Fortune:
Microsoft, the cash cow
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
Google Shutters Video AdSense Program
Discussion: NewTeeVee
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Mobile payment company Mogees acquires BerryStore
Discussion: MobileContentToday and mocoNews
Wendy Davis / MediaPost:
Proposed NJ Law Would Require Social Nets To Police Sites
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Online Ad Growth Screeches To A Halt
Discussion: MediaFile
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple almost ready with Nehalem-based Xserves
Discussion: MacRumors
 Earlier Items: 
Om Malik / GigaOM:
In Market Cap, Google Now Bigger Than GE
Thanks:atul
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Forbes Starts a Second Round of Layoffs; Who Else Will Join It?
Jacob Gube / Smashing Magazine:
Breaking: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunchIT:
The Twitting Point  —  Bill O'Reilly has the last word on Twitter for today.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Palm chases biggest mouth (Howard Stern) for Pre word of mouth marketing