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6:20 PM ET, April 28, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Brier Dudley / Seattle Times:
Microsoft debuts Vine in Seattle: Twitter+Facebook on steroids  —  It's been awhile since Microsoft introduced a game-changing social Web application, but Vine — a service that's debuting today with a beta test in Seattle — could be a contender.  —  Vine is a hyperlocal, personalized message and alert system.
RELATED:
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Microsoft Vine: The Zune of Social Networks
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Microsoft and Verizon reportedly cooking up an iPhone competitor  —  Just what the world needs... Another iPhone killer.  If the Wall Street Journal's report is to be believed, it looks like that USA Today story may have omitted a relatively important detail regarding Verizon's “iPhone” offering — it might not be an iPhone at all.
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft Planning iPhone Rival  —  Microsoft (MSFT) can finally stop denying its plans to get into the cellphone business.  The company is working with Verizon Wireless to launch an iPhone rival early next year, the WSJ reports.  —  There's a good chance this will flop …
Ola Rosling / The Official Google Blog:
Adding search power to public data  —  Earthquakes are not the only thing that can shake Silicon Valley.  After the dot-com bubble burst back in 2000 the unemployment rate of Santa Clara county went up to 9.1%.  During the last couple of months, it has gone up again:
RELATED:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google Launches Public Data Search & Charts During Wolfram Alpha Demo  —  During the Wolfram Alpha demonstration today, the Google Blog announced the launch of their own structured data search feature that allows you to find and compare public data.  —  Searches such as [unemployment rate new york] …
Discussion: Guardian and Wolfram
RELATED:
Lee Mathews / Download Squad:
Office 2007 SP2 ships, adds Open Document and PDF support
VentureBeat:
Verizon flirts with Apple, but Android is already girlfriend material  —  There's been lots of speculation that Verizon, the largest U.S. phone network, is flirting with Apple, with the idea of introducing an iPhone on Verizon's network next year.  —  Verizon is building out a new fourth …
RELATED:
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Why We Don't Believe Rumors of an Apple/Verizon Love Child
Rajen Sheth / Google Enterprise Blog:
What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing  —  Recently, McKinsey & Company published a study on cloud computing as part of a symposium for The Uptime Institute, an organization dedicated to supporting the enterprise data center industry.  We share McKinsey's interest in helping …
Security Research & Defense:
AutoRun changes in Windows 7  —  As some of our readers are well aware, Conficker and other malware is taking advantage of the AutoRun functionality as a spreading mechanism.  Furthermore, over the last couple of months, there has been a significant increase of this threat, as more malware is abusing this functionality.
Elise Ackerman / SiliconBeat:
Federal Judge Postpones Google Book Settlement Hearing  —  U.S. District Judge Denny Chin has decided to postpone a hearing, originally scheduled for June 11, on the fairness of the Google Book Settlement.  —  A clerk for the judge said the order would be posted online on Tuesday afternoon.
Discussion: CNET News and Epicenter, Thanks:eliseackerman
RELATED:
Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly:
Google Deadline Delayed Four Months as Steinbeck Motion Granted
Discussion: Search Engine Land
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
BlackBerry Tour hitting Verizon Wireless in July?  —  BlackBerry Tour?  Oh yeah.  Now that that's been confirmed, we're on to bigger and better things — release dates!  The latest information we've heard is that the BlackBerry Tour is shaping up to be released on Verizon in the month of July.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Mint Turns Personal Finance Into A Game.  It's Better Than It Sounds  —  Mint, the popular personal finance site that won 2007's TechCrunch40, is launching a new feature called “Financial Fitness” which, strange as it may sound, adds an element of gaming to the service.
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Apple iPhone Owners Favor Personal Uses, Not Business  —  Do you treat your iPhone as a guilty pleasure?  You're not alone.  —  A new report from Compete surveying the behavior of 600 smartphone users found that 73 percent of iPhone owners used their mobile devices primarily for personal reasons, such as entertainment.
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Palm's Casting a Pre Viral Video Right Now, Hints At Pre Release Date  —  If you're a male in Seattle from the age of 24 to 34, you may have the chance to star in a Palm Pre viral ad.  Update  —  Funny, cool and nerdy.  Is that you?  If so, contact your agent and ask him to get you in.
Discussion: PreCentral.net and Palm WebOS
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Android Backward Compatibility Talk Begins.  This Is Starting To Sound Complicated.  —  Love the iPhone or hate the iPhone, at least you know what you're getting out of the box is a device that will work with all the apps in the App Store.  That's been the case so far with Google's Android platform …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
The Pirate Bay verdict goes English, and we dish the dirt  —  The Pirate Bay ruling has been translated into English, and it's full of little surprises.  Ars dives in to answer the big questions: who possessed those Klomifen tablets, how much did the state pay to defend The Pirate Bay admins …
Raju Vegesna / Zoho Blogs:
Introducing Zoho Mobile  —  Over the past year or two we have had some initiatives on mobile capabilities for selected Zoho applications.  With Zoho Mobile, we are aggregating all our previous initiatives with consistent user interface and extending it to multiple applications and mobile platforms.
Amol Sharma / Digits:
Report: iPhone Users Spend 9.6 Minutes per App  —  Greystripe, an ad network for mobile applications and games, has a new report showing how consumers are using free iPhone applications.  —  Associated Press  —  A Macworld poster touting iPhone apps  —  Among the interesting findings:
Thanks:atul
Robert / Wakoopa blog:
The State of Apps - Q1 2009  —  I'm happy to announce the release of the inaugural edition of our quarterly software trends report, named The State of Apps.  —  Since we started with Wakoopa, we've acquired over 525 million hours of software usage data from 75,000 members.
Discussion: TechCrunch, GigaOM and VentureBeat
Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Facebook Has Enough Money to Survive Web Advertising Slump, Sandberg Says  —  Facebook Inc. has plenty of money to overcome the economic slump and is adding new forms of interactive advertising that will boost sales 70 percent this year, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said.
comScore:
Hulu Continues Ascent in U.S. Online Video Market, Breaking Into Top 3 Properties by Videos Viewed for First Time in March  —  Average U.S. Viewer Watched 5.5 Hours of Online Video During the Month,  —  According to comScore Video Metrix  —  comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring …
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Dell Studio 19 Multitouch All-in-One Arrives in US of A for $699, No Signs of Swine Flu  —  Six weeks after Dell's multitouch Studio 19 all-in-one hit Japan, it's finally coming to the US.  Despite my penchant for mocking Dell's designers, if you're looking for a non-iMac all-in-one, it's worth a shot.
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
Upcoming Averatec 10-inch netbook may use Android  —  Averatec are developing a new netbook that is “a merger of cellphone and PC technology”, prompting speculation that the company will use Android as the budget ultraportable's OS.  Company CEO Tae-Hyun “Tiger” Cho has described the OS as …
Discussion: Crave and Electronista
Mike Musgrove / Washington Post:
Mixx Looks to Go Beyond the News  —  New Service ‘Sifter’ to Pair Companies With Online Users  —  The McLean-based news site Mixx.com is hoping to persuade consumer product developers to draw on the wisdom of the Web as it launches a service today that pairs its online community of news junkies …
Discussion: TechCrunch and VentureBeat
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
OnlineBootyCall is great for hooking up, but can it be more?  —  Website OnlineBootycall.com offers no-strings-attached introductions for sexual encounters, tasteless as that might be for some of you.  It's not filled with porn.  It just gets to the point: It asks you to fill out a form …
Softpedia News:
Windows 7 Pirates Will Be Kept Safe and Cozy by Microsoft  —  Just as pirates of previous Windows releases  —  Pirated copies of Windows 7 will be kept just as safe as non-genuine variants of previous Windows releases, by Microsoft via security updates.  Responding to questions related …
Discussion: The Windows Blog
 
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 More Items: 
Reuters:
IBM raises dividend, to buy back more shares
Sarah Rabil / Bloomberg:
Time Warner May Say It's Nearing AOL Resolution, Unwinding Failed Merger
Electronista:
Nokia to shrink online services, cut 450 jobs
Discussion: BetaNews and Agence France Presse
New York Times:
U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses
Discussion: Danger Room
 Earlier Items: 
David Barboza / New York Times:
In China, Knockoff Cellphones Are a Hit
Discussion: PMP Today, Gizmodo and mocoNews
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
RapidShare hands over user info in Germany, users panic
Discussion: p2pnet
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Socialthing Starts Spreading Across 75 AOL Sites
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Mashable!
Randall C. Kennedy / Randall C. Kennedy's blog:
Windows 7's ‘XP mode’: Right idea, wrong technology
Discussion: Hardware 2.0
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Quub: A Micromessaging Service That Asks “What Are You Doing?”  And Means It
Camille Ricketts / VentureBeat:
Coming soon: A new, smarter Google News?
Jason Scott / ASCII:
Geocities: Lessons So Far
Discussion: hughstimson.org