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6:45 PM ET, August 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Biz / Twitter Blog:
Location, Location, Location  —  Twitter platform developers have been doing innovative work with location for some time despite having access to only a rudimentary level of API support.  Most of the location-based projects we see are built using the simple, account-level location field folks can fill out as part of their profile.
Connie Guglielmo / Bloomberg:
Palm's Colligan Said to Reject Steve Jobs Proposal to Stop Employee Hiring  —  Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) — Former Palm Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan rejected a proposal from Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs to refrain from hiring each other's employees two years ago, calling it wrong and “likely illegal,” according to their communications.
RELATED:
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
How Palm Faced Down a Tyrannical Control Freak
Discussion: ChannelWeb
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Munster: An Apple TV set by 2011  —  Gene Munster has seen the future of television and it has an Apple (AAPL) logo on it.  —  In a note to clients Thursday, Piper Jaffray's senior analyst offered a scenario by which Apple would enter the cut-throat TV market by 2011 with an Apple-branded television set …
Sarah Lacy / Business Week:
The Mercenaries in Facebook's Midst  —  A $100 million share buyback at the social networking site has been oversubscribed as employees stampede to cash out  —  In 2007, when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was pressed about when his company would sell shares to the public, he said he was in no rush.
RELATED:
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Why ‘Joe Facebook’ wants to cash out  —  Was there an unexpected rush of Facebook employees looking to cash out their stock?  Yes, says BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy, who said that the $100 million buyback orchestrated by investor Digital Sky Technologies has been oversubscribed.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
MySpace to Hire Media Link (and Millard) to Take Over Ad Sales; Berman Out  —  UPDATE: In an internal memo, MySpace is now telling employees that current ad sales head Jeff Berman is leaving the company.  —  In a move that will surely have Madison Avenue talking, well-known online advertising …
RELATED:
Gavin O'Malley / MediaPost:   Wenda Harris Millard: 'I'm Not Going To MySpace'
Claudine Beaumont / Telegraph:
Bloggers beware?  Google forced to identify anonymous blogger  —  A US court has ordered Google to hand over the identity of a blogger who used her website to defame Liskula Cohen, a former Vogue cover girl.  What does the ruling mean for the blogosphere?  —  Liskula Cohen, a Vogue covergirl …
RELATED:
Richard Koman / ZDNet Government:   The First Amendment rights of anonymous defamers
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Torrented Pirate Bay Copy Comes To Life  —  Four days ago TorrentFreak broke the news that a copy of The Pirate Bay's entire site was being shared, somewhat appropriately, on The Pirate Bay.  —  The 21.3 Gigabyte torrent was created by anonymous reader who told us: “I suppose I want us to have assurances.
Jon Fortt / Brainstorm Tech:
The end of the phone as we know it  —  Startups and disruptors (yes, Google) seek to rethink voice calling.  —  Andy Jagoe is zigging while the rest of the mobile world zags.  Let everyone else chase the next hot iPhone app.  He's betting the next big thing is a twist on the same old thing: making calls.
Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog
Gregg Keizer / PC World:
Windows 7 Will Run 120 Days for Free  —  Like its predecessor, Windows 7 can be used for up to 120 days without providing a product activation key, Microsoft confirmed today.  —  Although Microsoft generally touts a 30-day time limit for users to activate their copies of the company's operating system …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Recommends Firefox Users To Switch To The “New, Safer IE8″  —  Not sure when this started occurring exactly, but Yahoo is apparently now letting Firefox users know that they'd be better off switching to the “new, safer Internet Explorer 8″.
Discussion: Gawker and Seeking Alpha
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Internet slowly wakes up to PayPal's quiet fee hike  —  PayPal made some policy changes in June, but it's likely that you haven't heard much about them until very recently.  That's because the company quietly slid in extra fees that will affect nearly all users but failed to be transparent about the changes.
Discussion: I4U News and Between the Lines
Brett Winterford / iTnews.com.au:
Stress tests rain on Amazon's cloud  —  Availability an issue for Amazon EC2, Google AppLogic and Microsoft Azure.  —  Stress tests conducted by Sydney-based researchers have revealed that the infrastructure-on-demand services offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft suffer from regular performance and availability issues.
Saul Hansell / Bits:
How Hackers Snatch Real-Time Security ID Numbers  —  The world's savviest hackers are on to the “real-time Web” and using it to devilish effect.  The real-time Web is the fire hose of information coming from services like Twitter.  The latest generation of Trojans—nasty little programs …
Discussion: threatpost and New York Times, Thanks:atul
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Usain Bolt Breaks Another World Record, and Footage Speeds Online  —  Usain Bolt ran 200 meters in 19.19 seconds today, breaking his own world record set last year in the Olympics.  Earlier this week he broke his own world record in the 100 meters.  But I would venture to say that the sprinter …
Ina Fried / CNET News:
DOJ approves Oracle's Sun Micro buy  —  Oracle said on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice has approved its plan to buy Sun Microsystems.  —  With Sun's shareholders having given the $9.50 per share deal the nod last month, the remaining major hurdle is approval from European antitrust regulators.
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo's Social Plan: Twitter, Twitter, & More Twitter?  —  Is it just me, or does Yahoo have a thing for Twitter?  Watching Yahoo's moves this year is like watching a kid in class fall head-over-heels for the prettiest girl in class.  He scribbles her initials inside his notebook and tries to impress her at every turn.
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Flickr says ‘Obama Joker’ image removal complied with takedown request  —  The now-infamous “Obama Joker” picture.  Credit: Firas Alkhateeb  —  After a Chicago student gained national fame for editing a picture of President Obama in the image of the Joker villain from “The Dark Knight” …
Christopher Breen / Macworld:
The end of free lyrics?  —  Something interesting happened to albums in the mid-60s.  (No, not double-album covers and their utilitarian use.)  With artists such as Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and Leonard Cohen singing about something other than teen angst, words began to matter.
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Besieged by attacks, AT&T dumps celebrity hacker  —  The perils of being Kevin Mitnick  —  Over the years, Kevin Mitnick has gotten used to the attacks on his website and cell phone account that routinely result from being a convicted hacker turned security expert.
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Digits:
Avoiding Van Halen Fatigue on YouTube  —  More than 100 million U.S. users watch an average of 68 videos each on YouTube every month, according to comScore.  How can YouTube get them to watch just a few more?  —  Google  —  Hunter Walk, a YouTube director of product management
Lionel Laurent / Forbes:
Li Ka-shing Confirms Spotify Stake  —  The billionaire's charitable foundation tells Forbes about its latest online investment.  —  LONDON — Will free music go mobile?  One of the world's most powerful telecommunications moguls, billionaire Li Ka-shing—who sits atop the Hong Kong …
Discussion: GigaOM and paidContent
Jared Newman / Technologizer:
Yes, Sony, You Are Competing With the iPhone  —  Sony continues to insist that it's not competing with the iPhone on gaming, even though the opposite is increasingly becoming true.  —  Tucked into Sony's impressively newsworthy GamesCom press conference yesterday was an announcement for …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Salesforce delivers strong second quarter, ups outlook  —  Salesforce.com delivered strong second quarter results and upped its financial targets for fiscal 2010.  —  The company on Thursday reported net income of $21.2 million, or 17 cents a share, on revenue of $316 million, up 20 percent from a year ago.
Joachim Bean / TUAW:
Want a 1st generation iPod?  They're still available from the Apple Store  —  In 2001, the same year the Game Boy Advance was introduced, Apple brought the iPod to us (and not to universal enthusiasm, either).  When I was doing some Google searching last night on Apple model numbers, I found something quite strange.
BBC:
Paper magazine to carry video adverts  —  The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September.  —  The video-in-print ads will appear in select copies of the US show business title Entertainment Weekly.  —  The slim-line screens …
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Sirius Building iPhone Dock?  —  Long-suffering Sirius XM investors who've held onto the stock despite its troubles are being rewarded for their perseverance.  Sirius (SIRI) shares are up over 13 percent today at 68 cents.  And they're up about 26 percent for the week.  —  Why?  A few reasons.
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily
New York Times:
Leagues See Bloggers in the Bleachers as a Threat  —  Camera phones, hand-held video cameras and social networking sites like Twitter have turned sports fans with Web sites into instant reporters and broadcasters.  But one of the nation's leading college leagues is drawing a line in the turf.
 
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 More Items: 
Lawrence Lessig / Lessig Blog:
Announcing the hibernation of lessig.org/blog (from the blogs-deserve …
Discussion: Sample the Web and madisonian.net
Rich Jaroslovsky / Bloomberg:
Baseball for a Buck Pushes Online Frontier: Rich Jaroslovsky
Discussion: paidContent and NewTeeVee
Thomson IR:
GameStop Reports Second Quarter 2009 Results
Discussion: paidContent and MediaMemo
Electronista:
Apple now has 10% of Canadian PC market
Discussion: The Mac Observer
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Go Ahead, Embed This Post!
Discussion: Felix Salmon
Taylor Buley / Forbes:
A Scheme For Protecting Content
Bloomberg:
Apple Sued by Colorado Man Claiming IPhone App Used His Copyrighted Image
 Earlier Items: 
Michael Sragow / Baltimore Sun:
Twitter Effect rattles Hollywood
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Posterous Finally Has An iPhone App, Could Have Been Way Better
Evan Hessel / Forbes:
Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg
Discussion: Gawker, Thanks:mrinaldesai
 

 
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”

Sam Wolfson / The Guardian:
A look at the rise of celebrity-hosted interview podcasts, whose long running times mean guests delve into deep and personal topics, resembling therapy sessions

 
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