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6:30 AM ET, April 30, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Forget The Pre, Palm's Got A Second Device Coming Out This Year.  We're Calling It The Mini-Pre  —  I came across some very interesting news today.  I was mostly minding my own business, hammering away at our various sources in the hardware industry and trying to dig up some sort of information …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Flickr Hit Hard By Yahoo Layoffs  —  Yahoo layoffs have started and seem to have hit the Flickr team.  Many engineers from the service have been either laid off or are leaving on their own.  Rev Dan Catt, Ashot Petrosian and Neil Kandalgaonkar were amongst those who tweeted about their exits.
RELATED:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Flickr Co-Founder Butterfield and Chief Architect Henderson Working on Stealth Start-Up  —  Yesterday, several Flickr engineers posted news of their layoffs from the Yahoo photo-sharing unit on Twitter, which caused GigaOm's Om Malik to notice that Flickr architect Cal Henderson (pictured here) was also no longer on its About page.
Sean Percival / lalawag:
Yahoo! Layoffs Begin  —  Our sources reveal that the anticipated 700 layoffs have already started at Yahoo.  After posting falling results for Q1 a week ago, shiny new CEO Carol Bartz indicated this round of layoffs was on the way.  Expected to be around 700 employees, we are told the actual number is around 600.
Alexis Madrigal / Wired Science:
Google Could Have Caught Swine Flu Early  —  Google's search data may have been able to provide an early warning of the swine flu outbreak — if the company had been looking in the right place.  —  Last week, at the request of the Centers for Disease Control, Google took a retroactive look at its search data from Mexico.
RELATED:
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Flip Video Ultra HD video review  —  What better way to give you a look at Flip Video's new Ultra HD camcorder than by reviewing it on video... shot with the Ultra HD.  The specs are simple: 720p / 30 FPS, 8GB of storage on-board, HDMI out, and pretty much nothing else.
Eric Rabe / Verizon:
Some Thoughts on Cablevision's 101 Mbps Speed  —  Verizon first demonstrated the ability to deliver 100 Mbps to the home over our FiOS system nearly two years ago.  Now Cablevision is offering that speed - oh, yeah, 101 Mbps — over its DOCSIS cable system, it claims, to customers across its footprint in the New York area.
Discussion: Techdirt and GigaOM
RELATED:
Karl Bode / DSLreports:   Verizon Calls Cablevision's 101Mbps ‘A Parlor Trick’ …
Steven Hodson / Shooting at Bubbles:
FeedDemon does Google Reader - Rock On!  —  I have been a FeedDemon fan for almost as long as Nick Bradbury has been coding it.  For me it is one of the best RSS readers out there bar none.  Today though it got even better.  —  FeedDemon now supports Google Reader synchronization and Google Reader Shared Items.
Discussion: The SiliconANGLE
James Kendrick / jkOnTheRun:
Peewee PC Launches Today- Convertible Netbook for Kids  —  I thoroughly enjoyed the time I had to play with the Intel Classmate Convertible, and that was timely as the folks at Peewee PC today are launching their commercial version of this netbook.  The Peewee PC looks to be the same …
Jason Palmer / BBC:
Debut for world's fastest camera  —  The fastest imaging system ever devised has been demonstrated by researchers reporting in the journal Nature.  —  Their camera snaps images less than a half a billionth of a second long, capturing over six million of them in a second continuously.
Adam Smith / Google Public Policy Blog:
Google Book Search settlement will expand access  —  Over the last few weeks we've heard a number of questions about the Google Book Search settlement and what it means for readers.  Over the coming days, we'll attempt to answer some of those questions on this blog, but first …
RELATED:
Scott Cleland / The Precursor Blog:
The Broader Implications of DOJ's Book Settlement Investigation
Bret Taylor / FriendFeed Blog:
A whole new FriendFeed  —  You might have noticed that FriendFeed looks pretty different today.  We've just launched a whole new design, and a host of features and improvements that comes along with it.  —  We unveiled this look three weeks ago in beta and have been busy gathering feedback and making improvements.
Eric Savitz / Barron's Online:
IACI: Diller Would “Love” To Buy Yahoo Personals  —  IAC/Interactive (IACI) CEO Barry Diller said on a conference call with analysts today that the company would be interested in acquiring Yahoo (YHOO) Personals, and that the two companies have talked about a possible deal.
Tony Peric / prethinking.com:
Become a Palm Reviewer and get a Palm Pre for Free! (confirmed)  —  Palm is is now taking applications for their new “Real Palm Phone Reviewer” promotional campaign.  Well, you get to become a “Real Reviewer” and in return you will get a new phone courtesy of Palm and data-plan service for 6 months.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
SplashCast Figures Out That To Make Online TV Social, It Is All About The Chatter  —  One of the most social video experiences I've ever had on the Web was watching the Obama Inauguration speech on CNN.com alongside a live chat stream of commentary from all of my Facebook friends.
Discussion: SplashCast Blog and Mashable!
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Is It Time To Send Google Maps Back To The Drawing Board?  —  Google Maps and its Local Business Center continue to be the ugly warts on Google's otherwise smooth surface.  But rather than the long-running problems with mapspam and hijacked listings, the latest sore spot appears …
Thanks:atul
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Motorola's “IRONMAN” Android handset says hello  —  Wait, what?  Motorola possibly doing a cross-marketing campaign with a blockbuster movie?  We kid, we kid, but hey, we wouldn't put it past them... We just got hit with some really interesting information — it's about this Motorola smartphone either called or code-named “IRONMAN”.
New York Times:
In Europe, Intel Faces a Large Antitrust Fine  —  BRUSSELS — European antitrust regulators, which have been aggressively pursuing what they see as anticompetitive practices among technology companies, could impose their largest fine ever in a market-dominance case against the chip maker Intel.
Bloomberg:
Ericsson's First-Quarter Profit Declines 35 Percent on Costs to Cut Jobs  —  Ericsson AB, the world's largest maker of wireless phone networks, said first-quarter profit fell 35 percent as it took costs to eliminate jobs.  —  Net income fell to 1.72 billion kronor ($214 million) …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Spock And Intelius?  Uh Oh.  —  People search engine Spock is about to be sold, say multiple sources.  Spock was a hot startup back when it launched in 2007, but after an initial spike in traffic, the company has gone sideways and faded into obscurity.  People search, it seems …
Michael Orey / Business Week:
Google's PR Campaign  —  The search giant hopes to counter charges of monopoly abuse with a charm offensive  —  Google (GOOG) is facing a rising tide of discontent about its market dominance.  Take the ongoing lawsuit over its effort to digitize millions of books.
New York Times:
Panel Advises Clarifying U.S. Plans on Cyberwar  —  The United States has no clear military policy about how the nation might respond to a cyberattack on its communications, financial or power networks, a panel of scientists and policy advisers warned Wednesday, and the country needs to clarify …
Discussion: The Register and threatpost
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Get Facebook on Your Desktop with New Official App  —  At the same time as Facebook announced their Open Stream API technology, the company also released a desktop application built with Adobe AIR as a way to demonstrate the sorts of things that the new technology makes possible.
Discussion: Laughing Squid
Yahoo! Developer Network Blog:
With YQL Execute, the Internet becomes your database  —  The Yahoo! Query Language lets you query, filter, and join data across any web data source or service on the web.  Using our YQL web service, apps run faster with fewer lines of code and a smaller network footprint.
Discussion: ProgrammableWeb, CIO.com and eWeek, Thanks:atul
Anupreeta Das / MediaFile:
Tech M&A: Going down, down, down  —  Investment bank Jefferies recently released a report on technology M&A in the first quarter of 2009.  As one can imagine, there are few surprises.  We may as well give you the highlights here, which point to some signs of recovery compared to the end of last year …
iSuppli:
Palm Pre Aims at the iPhone, iSuppli Preliminary Cost Analysis Reveals  —  Palm Inc. is aiming high with its new Pre, a smart phone that rival's Apple Inc.'s iPhone in terms of slickness—and in terms of hardware features—according to a virtual teardown conducted by iSuppli Corp.
Discussion: ITworld.com and Tech Trader Daily
 
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 More Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Exclusive: Platform-A Head Coleman Out at AOL, as Well as CFO (and More to Come?)
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Google Gets Patent for Data Center Barges
Discussion: SEO by the Sea
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
NVIDIA prepping GeForce GTX 285 for Mac Pro
Discussion: Engadget, Pulse2 and Electronista
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Five Things You Can Do With This New Facebook RSS App
Gavin Clarke / The Register:
OpenOfficers pitch Oracle on life after Sun
Discussion: TechSpot and Computerworld
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Twitter Aggregator Sawhorse Media Raises Seed Round, Launches Pets, Celeb Sites
 Earlier Items: 
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Venture capitalists: “Roll over, Goldman, and tell Morgan Stanley the news”
Discussion: MagnetMail and PE Hub Blog
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
US cyber-security ‘embarrassing’
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
Your Facebook Profile Makes Marketers' Dreams Come True
Fred / A VC:
The Venture Capital Math Problem
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Ofcom rules that five GB News programs presented by Conservative politicians have broken its due impartiality rules and puts the channel “on notice”

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Authentic Brands licenses Sports Illustrated's publishing rights to The Players' Tribune owner Minute Media for 10 years, with plans to keep the print edition

Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTuber MrBeast announces a deal with Prime Video for Beast Games, a reality-competition show with 1,000 contestants, promising the winner a $5M cash prize

 
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