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6:30 PM ET, May 18, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Jim / craigslist blog:
An Apology Is In Order  —  Dear South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster,  —  Two days ago you accused craigslist, and me personally, of engaging in criminal acts, reiterating your previous threat to file unwarranted and unconstitutional charges against us that are clearly barred by federal law.
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Stand Firm Craig (and Jim)  —  South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is giving even the normally sleazy Attorney General title a bad name.  This is an office that has little to do with protecting the public and everything to do with making high profile attacks on targets that will generate a lot of positive press.
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Craigslist CEO wants apology from South Carolina AG
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
Cheaper iPhone Plans from AT&T?  —  AT&T may offer lower-cost data plans for iPhones, which would attract new subscribers and force smartphone rivals to cut prices, too  —  Victor Lin wants an iPhone, but he's put off by the price.  The smartphone costs at least $199 up front …
RELATED:
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Launches OpenID Support - Users Can Now Login With Gmail Accounts  —  Last month, Facebook announced that users would soon be able to login to the site via OpenID.  Today, Facebook has officially become an OpenID relying party: users can now register for Facebook using their Gmail accounts …
RELATED:
Luke Shepard / Facebook Developers:
Facebook Supports OpenID for Automatic Login  —  In continuing with our efforts toward greater openness, we are excited to announce that Facebook is now an OpenID relying party.  We've been engaging with the OpenID community for a while now.  We'll be the largest relying party so far …
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and AppScout
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Search Engine Wolfram Alpha Launches With Big Dreams And No Chance  —  Another next-generation search engine launches.  It looks more differentiated than the much-ado-about-nothing known as Cuil, but that's not saying much.  —  Our prediction: Wolfram Alpha (terrible name) …
RELATED:
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Peter Thiel On Valleywag; It's the “Silicon Valley Equivalent of Al Qaeda”  —  Peter Thiel is known for many things, from his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, to his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, to his role as the original CEO of PayPal — whose 2002 sale to eBay famously netted Thiel, then 34, roughly $60 million.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple's Mac Decline Could Be Worse This Quarter  —  Updated with NPD Group estimates for Apple's April Mac shipments.  —  Apple (AAPL) could face its second straight quarter of year-over-year declines in its Mac business.  (And only its second negative quarter since 2003.)
Marcy Gordon / Associated Press:
Supreme Court to decide validity of anti-fraud law  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will rule on the validity of a landmark anti-fraud law that served as Congress' response to the wave of corporate scandals starting with Enron.  —  The justices said Monday they will consider …
Discussion: Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal
RELATED:
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Supreme Court May Kill Sarbanes Oxley And Resurrect IPO Market!
Discussion: Clusterstock, Thanks:atul
Eric Lai / Computerworld:
Buy an app via Windows Marketplace, share with four friends or family members  —  Microsoft readies challenge to rivals in mobile apps market  —  Computerworld - In a potentially market-changing move, Microsoft Corp. plans to let customers of its upcoming Windows Marketplace …
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Mobile Abandons Its Smartphone App To Focus On The iPhone
Discussion: Search Engine Land, mocoNews and AppScout, Thanks:atul
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Napster relaunching, again: $5 per month streaming plus five free downloads  —  Like subscription music services?  You know, like Microsoft's Zune Pass where you pay $14.99 monthly and keep up to 10 tracks each month forever.  Sure, renting music at $180 per year can be a drag for those stuck …
AppleInsider:
Series of YouTube videos show off Apple's Snow Leopard  —  A YouTube user going by the name ‘LeopardOctober’ has recently posted over a half dozen videos taken from recent pre-release builds of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system, showing off everything from QuickLook movie playback to the new QuickTime X interface.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Eric Schmidt's Commencement Address At Carnegie Mellon (Video)  —  Here's Google CEO Eric Schmidt's commencement address at Carnegie Mellon's 112th commencement ceremony, held yesterday.  (Via @CarnegieMellon)  —  Schmidt's talk to the audience, which he refers to as the ‘Facebook and Google generation’ …
Jim Dalrymple / CNET News:
Stanford's free iPhone course hits 1 million downloads  —  Stanford University on Monday said its free iPhone Application Programming course has been downloaded more than 1 million times since being uploaded to Apple's iTunes U—a learning-focused area of iTunes—seven weeks ago.
Mark Guim / The Nokia Blog:
Nokia N97 For North America Arriving June 2nd  —  I told you a couple days ago the Nokia N97 NAM was coming soon, but I wasn't sure of the exact date.  Well, Nokia just notified one of their major North American distributors of the estimated shipping date: June 2nd, 2009!  How accurate are we?
Amazon Web Services Blog:
New Features for Amazon EC2: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch  —  We are working to make it even easier for you to build sophisticated, scalable, and robust web applications using AWS.  As soon as you launch some EC2 instances, you want visibility into resource utilization and overall performance.
Joseph Galante / Bloomberg:
Mint.com May Begin Selling Access to Anonymous Consumer Data  —  Mint Software Inc., an online service that helps consumers track every dime they spend, has a goal for its own pocketbook: boosting sales as much as 10-fold this year.  —  To fuel revenue, the company may start charging …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Harvard prof tells judge that P2P filesharing is “fair use”  —  Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson is headed to federal court this summer to defend an accused file-swapper, and he plans to mount a novel defense: P2P sharing is simply “fair use.”  —  Wholesale copying of music on P2P networks is fair use.
Discussion: digg.com
Leander Kahney / Cult of Mac:
Exclusive: Apple Is Building a New Helpdesk Operation: New Product, Or Growing Popularity?  —  Apple appears to be building a large, distributed helpdesk operation, either in anticipation of a major new product, or simply to sustain the company's growing popularity.
Discussion: TheAppleBlog and Softpedia News
CNET News:
HTC Magic vs. Samsung I7500  —  Here're the HTC Magic (left) and the Samsung I7500 (right) side by side.  The I7500 looks slightly larger than the Magic, but that's because my hand was slightly closer to the camera.  Also, the screen on the I7500 appears dimmer due to an early firmware issue …
Ian Deitch / Associated Press:
Israeli intelligence issues Facebook warning  —  Israel's internal intelligence service urged the public Monday to exercise caution when using Facebook, saying Arabs are trying to recruit spies on the popular social networking site.  —  The Shin Bet security agency warned Israelis …
Howard Lindzon:
Stocktwits Closes and A Round of Financing  —  We are happy to announce that True Ventures has invested in Stocktwits to help us build and Grow faster.  —  It is fun to be an entrepreneur and an investor in the web space and with True Ventures we get a partner with the same philosophies.
Discussion: VentureBeat, MediaMemo and Dealscape
Teddy Wayne / New York Times:
Social Networks Eclipse E-Mail  —  Alongside the explosive growth of online video over the last six years, time spent on social networks surpassed that for e-mail for the first time in February, signaling a paradigm shift in consumer engagement with the Internet.
Discussion: Internet Evolution
Kris Graft / Gamasutra:
Walmart Testing “Video Game Buyback” Kiosks  —  stumble it!  —  Walmart has leased store space to third-party automated kiosk company E-play, which has released 77 “Video Game Buyback” stations at select locations, Walmart corporate told Gamasutra on Monday.
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
Leaked: Nokia Bringing Maemo To Phones, Could Be Ad-Supported  —  If your carrier offered to take a hefty chunk of change off the cost of a mobile handset be it that you let them put advertisements on the home screen, would you take the deal?  Nokia thinks you might.
Billy Bragg / Guardian:
Do we want ISPs to penalise our fans?  —  The record industry wants ISPs to take action against unauthorised downloaders - but fans are the wrong target  —  Having failed miserably in previous attempts to stamp out illicit filesharing, the record industry has now joined forces …
 
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 More Items: 
Electronista:
Bookeen to offer pocketable e-book reader
Discussion: Gizmodo and SlashGear
Nick Gonzalez / TechCrunch:
The IAB Sets Some Standards For Social Ads
Orlando Sentinel:
Who are top Tweeters? UCF grads' site tells
Discussion: Etan on Tech
Jim Finkle / Reuters:
AT&T to offer cloud-based storage as a service
Discussion: Between the Lines and TechSpot
 Earlier Items: 
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
Why E-Books Look So Ugly
Discussion: TeleRead and digg.com
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
Sims 3 leaked to torrent sites weeks before retail release
Discussion: TechSpot, Techgeist and CrunchGear
Stephanie Clifford / New York Times:
For Wired, a Revival Lacks Ads
Discussion: Gawker, Thanks:atul
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Will OpenTable Be Just What Silicon Valley Ordered This Week?
Discussion: Dealscape
Abbey Klaassen / AdAge:
Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses