Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
2:10 PM ET, August 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
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  —  Some extraordinary communications have leaked to Bloomberg, showing Steve Jobs threatening his counterpart at Palm.  It seems the Apple CEO — and supposed empowerer of creative workers everywhere — wanted to keep his workers locked down like so much chattel.
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.
Discussion: All Facebook, CloudAve and broadstuff
RELATED:
Alex Salkever / DailyFinance:   Why Facebook's IPO could be disappointingly weak
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.
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.
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.
Danny Allen / Gizmodo:
10 Things You Need to Know About the PS3 Slim  —  Sony's slimmed-down PS3 is a cute little ugly duckling, and not without its concessions.  From fewer USB ports to an over-priced vertical stand, and its removed “Install Other OS” feature, here's what you should know before picking one up.
RELATED:
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
Gmail Blog:
Mail and contact import for everyone  —  A few months ago, we added the ability to import your old mail and contacts to Gmail.  We made this feature available for all newly-created Gmail accounts first, since people new to Gmail benefit most from being able to move their stuff with them.
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 …
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.
RELATED:
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:   Yahoo Quietly Rolls Out Yahoo Meme In Spanish
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 …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Snow Leopard Box Set Briefly Appears in Apple Online Store [Updated]  —  MacRumors has received word that a listing for the Mac Box Set version of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard briefly appeared in Apple's online store earlier today.  While the page, which listed the box set as shipping within 24 hours …
Evan Hessel / Forbes:
Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg  —  Forbes Magazine dated September 07, 2009  —  She has overhauled Facebook and helped make it the most popular social network in cyberspace.  Can she and her 25-year-old boss turn it into the Web's most lucrative data broker?  —  To outsiders, it looked …
Discussion: Gawker and Guardian, Thanks:mrinaldesai
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
Lars-Göran Nilsson / Pocket-lint.com:
Garmin Asus M20 heading to AT&T hints exec  —  EXCLUSIVE: Officially launched in Taiwan and Hong Kong today  —  The Garmin Asus M20 in likely to come to AT&T in the US later this year Pocket-lint has learnt following an informal chat with executives at the launch of the new handset come GPS in Taipei.
Discussion: I4U News, Engadget Mobile and Gizmodo
RELATED:
Daniel Shen / DigiTimes:
Garmin-Asus to enter China market by end of 2009; aims to sell …
Discussion: CrunchGear and DVICE
Michael Sragow / Baltimore Sun:
Twitter Effect rattles Hollywood  —  Avalanche of raves or pans can be set off before credits stop rolling  —  While word of mouth could always make or break a movie, it usually took days to affect the box office.  But the rise of social networking tools like Twitter may be narrowing that time frame to mere hours.
Discussion: Fast Company and Open The Dialogue
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
Beatles: “Discussions regarding digital distribution will continue”  —  The Beatles may be the most successful band in history and may have captured and inspired the minds of a generation, but when it comes to the online music world, they remain a few steps away from “Revolution Number 9”, or so it appears.
Discussion: Technologizer and TechCrunch
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Posterous Finally Has An iPhone App, Could Have Been Way Better  —  We're big fans (and users) of übersimple microblogging service Posterous here at TechCrunch, and I've been eagerly awaiting the day that the young upstart would finally come out with an iPhone app.
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and TheNextWeb.com
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 …
Peter Nowak / CBC News:
Scrap the CRTC, petition urges  —  An online petition to dissolve the CRTC has attracted hundreds of signatures in the wake of the regulator's ruling against independent internet providers last week.  —  The petition, at dissolvethecrtc.ca and on Facebook and Twitter, had more than 440 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon.
Discussion: DSLreports
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom  —  A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better …
Brad Stone / Bits:
Hacking Suspect's Lawyer Criticizes Federal Prosecutors  —  Albert Gonzalez, a suspect in several hacking cases, was close to reaching a comprehensive plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Massachusetts and New York when federal prosecutors in New Jersey indicted him on Monday on a new raft …
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
Paulbradshaw / Online Journalism Blog:
The Guardian kicks off the local data landgrab  —  Tonight I've been speaking at a Guardian-sponsored event in Birmingham: a special meetup of the Birmingham Social Media Cafe doubling as a sort-of-build-up-to-a-Hack Day.  —  And I think it's a very significant event indeed.
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 2:10 PM ET, August 20, 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: 
Joe Mandese / MediaPost:
Bigger Isn't Necessarily Better When It Comes To Online Ad Formats
John C. Dvorak / PC Magazine:
The Idealism of Net Neutrality
Camille Ricketts / VentureBeat:
Open-source textbook co. Flat World goes back to school with 40,000 new customers
Discussion: OStatic blogs and ReadWriteWeb
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life:
The watchphone: Gadget or gimmick?
Discussion: Orange Newsroom
 Earlier Items: 
Rafat Ali / paidContent:
Death by Discovery: The Interminable Churn of Music Startups
NetChoice:
Misguided Marketing Restriction and Online Travel Tax Top List …
Discussion: The Register and Slashdot
John Resig:
Eulogy to _why  —  Unfortunately I'm short on time at the moment …
Discussion: Daring Fireball and rc3.org
Ryan Singel / Epicenter:
Defunct Airport Fast-Pass Company Banned From Selling Customer Biometrics
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Confirmed: Facebook Expanding Gift Shop to Include Virtual …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Crimespotting: Crime Has Never Looked So Good
 

 
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

 
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