Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
12:30 PM ET, May 27, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Apple quietly updates $999 MacBook, again — goes back to school with free iPod touch  —  Shh, don't tell the press but Apple just bumped the specs on its entry-level white MacBook again.  The bump measures in at just 0.13GHz on the processor, 133MHz more oomph from the DDR2 SDRAM, and an extra 40GB of disk space.
Discussion: TUAW, Edible Apple and digg.com
RELATED:
Slash Lane / AppleInsider:
Apple updates white MacBook with faster processor and memory  —  Apple alongside its 2009 Back-to-School promotion on Wednesday also updated its entry-level white MacBook with a faster Intel processor, memory architecture and more hard disk space.  —  The update was announced quietly on the company's online store.
AppleInsider:
Apple's Back-to-School promo offers free 8GB iPod touch
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft confirms Zune HD coming this fall  —  Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed its plans to take on the iPod Touch with a new, touch-screen Zune that will be able to surf the Web, play high-definition movies, and tune in to digital radio.  —  The Zune HD, which will be available in the U.S …
RELATED:
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Seven Questions About the Zune HD  —  Back on April 10th, our own Ed Oswald reported that he'd confirmed that the rumored Zune HD was real and would ship in the fall.  He spoke the truth-as Cnet's Ina Fried is reporting, Microsoft confirmed today that it plans to release an iPod Touch-like Zune then.
Zune.net:
ZUNE SPOTLIGHT  —  Media contact: For media inquiries only, e-mail zunepress@edelman.com.
RELATED:
John Paczkowski / D7 Highlights:
D7 Interview: AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson  —  Randall Stephenson is just two years into his tenure as CEO of AT&T but faces challenges that have been decades in the making.  Among them: remaking AT&T amid the steady decline of its landline business, future-proofing its business as our appetites …
Discussion: CNET News
Peter Kafka / D7 Highlights:
Twitter Guys: We'll Still Be Running This Company in 5 Years  —  Meet the Internet's It Boys: Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.  A year ago their “micromessaging” platform was unknown outside of a small circle of digerati.  Now the service has broken through to the mainstream …
RELATED:
Brad Stone / Bits:
Twitter Founders Say They're In for the Long Haul
Discussion: Digits, Beet.TV and D7 Highlights
Jordan Golson / GigaOM:
Android, iPhone Dominate Mobile Browsing in April 2009  —  Google's Android and Apple's iPhone together accounted for almost three-quarters of web browsing on mobile devices in April, yet not even 10 percent of device sales, according to the most recent Mobile Metrics Report from AdMob.
RELATED:
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
The iPhone casts a giant shadow on the Web
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Topsy Search Launches: ReTweets Are The New Currency Of The Web  —  New search engine Topsy, which has been in stealth development for three years, launches, well, now.  —  Before Google, search engines like AltaVista determined relevance based on how well a web page matched the query.
Alan Duke / CNN:
Kutcher threatens to stop Twittering  —  LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Ashton Kutcher — Twitter's top tweeter — warned he may pull the plug on his tweeting if the micro-blogging service partners on a reality TV show.  —  “It's all fun and games until somebody gets stalked,” Kutcher wrote in a Twitter posting late Monday.
Inside Sprint Now:
Sprint Palm Pre Activation  —  Since there are quite a few in the wild already, and we're just over a week away from launch, I figured it'd be as good a time as any to give a preview of what activation/first use will look like on the Pre, and field any questions that may come up in the process.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Weebly Launches Free WYSIWYG Virtual Storefronts  —  Weebly, a popular WYSIWYG webpage maker, is launching a new feature today that will allow users to quickly make fully customized web stores using the Weebly interface they're already familiar with.  —  Using the new feature is simple.
Discussion: VentureBeat
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Rich mobile browser Skyfire launches version 1.0  —  Skyfire, a mobile browser that wants to bring the full desktop web experience to mobile phones, is taking its product out of beta testing today and launching version 1.0.  Sometimes, that's a signal that a service is ready for mass usage …
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft's Ballmer whoops it up as Ford CEO delivers his new car  —  Too bad Ford doesn't have more customers as loyal and enthusiastic as Steve Ballmer.  Then again, the Microsoft CEO is an easy sell, as a Detroit native whose father worked for the automaker.
David Coursey / BizFeed:
Microsoft to Netbooks: Stay Tiny Or Pay the Price  —  Microsoft appears to have decided that any netbook with more than 10.2-inch screen isn't really a netbook at all, and should pay more for a copy of Windows 7.  This is Redmond's version of the question facing the hardware companies themselves …
Discussion: CNET News, AppScout and digg.com
Lance Whitney / CNET News:
Report: Spam now 90 percent of all e-mail  —  Spam now accounts for 90.4 percent of all e-mail, according to a report released Monday from security vendor Symantec.  This means that 1 out of every 1.1 e-mails is junk.  The report also notes that spam shot up 5.1 percent just from April to May.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
‘Cashmere’: Another (possible) destination on Microsoft's embedded roadmap  —  Microsoft is considering releasing this year a new version of the core embedded operating system that powers Windows Mobile phones and other devices.  That new Windows Embedded Compact release, codenamed “Cashmere …
Discussion: Gizmodo and WMExperts
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Acrobat.com challenges PowerPoint with collaborative presentations  —  Acrobat.com, Adobe's website of free office software, is unveiling a new tool today that marks the early steps towards competing with PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation-making software in Microsoft Office.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Will It Cut 8GB iPhone Price To $99?  —  Is Apple (AAPL) going to attack the low end of the smartphone market with a big price cut in the 8 GB version of the iPhone?  —  RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky thinks they might.  In a research note this morning, he notes that the company …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Time Warner To Decide On AOL Spinoff At Thursday Board Meeting (It's A Done Deal, Supposedly)  —  Last month Time Warner announced that it would likely spin off its AOL assets into a new company, followed by an IPO (10Q SEC filing is here).  Little detail was given about the transaction …
Reuters:
Intel sees netbook cannibalisation at about 20 pct  —  * Netbook cannibalisation of notebook market at 20 pct  —  * Inventories now seen in balance with demand  —  Cannibalisation of laptop computer sales by lower-priced netbooks is currently about 20 percent, “less than speculation” …
Discussion: GigaOM, The Register and SlashGear
Dieter Bohn / PreCentral.net:
Palm Pre Gmail and IMAP: Pushes with IMAP IDLE  —  We've just confirmed via an anonymous tipster with an emulator that the Palm Pre does, in fact, fully support IMAP IDLE on Gmail.  What on earth does that mean?  It means that if you're using Gmail, your email gets pushed out to your Pre nearly instantly.
Mark Potts / Recovering Journalist:
The Future is ChicagoNow  —  It's been eminently fashionable to bash Sam Zell for his gutting of Tribune Co., and with good reason—a copy of the Baltimore Sun I saw recently looked about as substantial as a cocktail napkin, and that was before the Sun's latest newsroom layoffs.
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Crosses 60 Million Monthly US Users, But Fewer People Over 55 Coming Back  —  Two months ago, we reported that the number of US Facebook users over 35 had almost doubled over the previous 60 days from 9.8 million at the beginning of February to 17.1 million at the end of March.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Head of Yahoo Video Division to Leave  —  Satish Menon, VP of the Consumer Platforms Group at Yahoo (aka the video platform division, with responsibility for video infrastructure, software and advertising), will soon leave the company, he told us over the weekend.
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 12:30 PM ET, May 27, 2009.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Tribe AI:
Is AI just hype?  —  Find out how top enterprises use Tribe to get real business results.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Zoho:
Authy killed their desktop apps.  Time to switch to a reliable authenticator.  Time to switch to Zoho OneAuth.  —  Twilio's Authy recently announced end of life (EOL) for their desktop apps on March 19, 2024—five months ahead of schedule.
Comprehensive.io:
Browse salary data from 3,000 startups for free  —  Click for FREE, immediate access to real-time compensation benchmarking data.  Paid version helps HR automate comp reviews and communicate total compensation to employees.
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: 
Alexandros Roussos / SiliconRumors:
New Apple MacBook Air family with 3G and cheaper model - sources
Discussion: MacRumors and MacDailyNews
David Hatch / National Journal Online:
Obama Adviser Eyes Government-Built Broadband System
Discussion: CircleID and Tech Daily Dose
Wall Street Journal:
Cable Industry Weighs Its Approach to Targeted Ads
Discussion: DSLreports, Epicenter and FierceIPTV
Matt Richtel / Bits:
A Nintendo Phone? Not Our Thing, Executive Says
Discussion: mocoNews
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
SanDisk Signs New Cross-License Deal With Samsung
Jeffrey Burt / eWeek:
HP Expands Thin-Client Offerings
Dan Nystedt / PC World:
Asus EeeNAS 1TB Backup Device Joins Atom Family
Georgina Prodhan / Reuters:
IBM earmarks $3 billion for Europe and Asia stimulus
 Earlier Items: 
Jane Wakefield / BBC:
UK broadband ‘notspots’ revealed
Discussion: Guardian
Chris Forrester / Rapid TV News:
BSkyB link with Microsoft on X-Box
Tameka Kee / paidContent.org:
More Mags Jump On The Premium App Bandwagon
Discussion: dailywireless.org
Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:
Can eBay rebrand itself as the Web's Wal-Mart?
Discussion: Wall Street Journal
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Hints of a Tech Gold Mine in the Stimulus Package
Discussion: ZDNet Government
 

 
From Mediagazer:

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

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”

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

 
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