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7:55 PM ET, October 14, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
The Anti LumberJack / Gizmodo:
Barnes and Noble's E-Reader Like a Kindle/iPhone Chimera: First Photos and Details  —  Barnes and Noble's late to e-books.  But the company's new gadget—first seen here—should address the weaknesses of all other readers with multiple screens, each playing to tech strengths.
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
Wi-Fi Is About to Get a Whole Lot Easier  —  A consortium that includes Intel, Cisco, and Apple is set to release new technology called Wi-Fi Direct that will turn a slew of gadgets into hotspots  —  Going Wi-Fi is about to get a lot easier.  For many consumers, setting up an in-home Wi-Fi connection point is something of a hassle.
RELATED:
Wi-Fi Alliance:
Wi-Fi Alliance® announces groundbreaking specification to support direct Wi-Fi connections between devices  —  Upcoming Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Wi-Fi Direct program will make it easy to connect devices directly to one another in a new kind of Wi-Fi network
Ben Sillis / Electricpig.co.uk:
Acer Android smartphone hands-on!  —  UPDATE: The Acer Android smartphone is the A1, and it comes with Android version 1.6 - AKA Donut.  Acer's talking about it right now at its London prezzer, so more details to come.  —  UPDATE 2: Acer's dancing to two different tunes here.
RELATED:
New York Times:
BlackBerry, Upgraded, Aims to Suit Every User  —  The Storm was supposed to be the smartphone that would keep Verizon Wireless customers from deserting to Apple's iPhone, which runs on AT&T's network.  —  Research In Motion, the company that created the BlackBerry phones that business users find …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Applause For Finland: First Country To Make Broadband Access A Legal Right  —  Kudos to the Finnish government, which has just introduced laws guaranteeing broadband access to every person living in Finland (5.5 million people, give or take).  —  This is reportedly a first worldwide.
Cade Metz / The Register:
Michael Dell: Netbooks go sour after 36 hours  —  You'll be happier if you give me more money  —  According to Michael Dell, a netbook is a dream purchase - until it's about 36 hours.  —  “If you take a user who's used to a 14- or 15-inch notebook and you say 'Here's a 10-inch netbook,' they're gonna say 'Hey, this is so fantastic.
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
Walmart Offering $45 Unlimited Cellphone Plan Nationwide  —  Walmart has been beta testing their exclusive Straight Talk no-contract wireless service for months, but now the retailer will offer two low-cost wireless plans nationwide starting October 18th, including an unlimited plan for just $45.
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Sneak peek: Family Guy meets Windows 7  —  Microsoft has teamed up with Fox to deliver a 30-minute Family Guy comedy special on November 8.  Yes, you read that right: Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein have been tapped to market Windows 7, and we've got the sneak peek.
Ellen McGirt / Fast Company:
Intel Risks It All (Again)  —  How Sean Maloney and brand guru Deborah Conrad are helping Intel's first carpet-dweller CEO reengineer the company once known as Chipzilla — and free the bong.  —  When Paul Otellini, Intel's famously reserved CEO first heard the news, he got quiet.
Laura June / Engadget:
Acer: we'll overtake Dell as world's number two PC maker... soon  —  Acer's President Gianfranco Lanci is talking some big talk these days, but not completely without reason.  The Taiwan-based computer manufacturer says it does not expect to see a decline in revenue this year over last …
Blogger / Dial-a-Phone:
Motorola Comeback Plan Revealed  —  With all that talk about the Motorola Sholes, Tao, A855 going on, we decided it was time for a little bit of digging.  And look what we've stumbled across, only Motorola's Q4 2009 and Q1 2010 Roadmap!  —  The Roadmap shows Motorola's Medium and Higher Tier Social Smartphones.
Gina Trapani / Lifehacker:
Google Wave's Best Use Cases  —  Last week we asked a simple question: How will you use Google Wave?  Over 600 responses later, we're sending Wave nominations to the people who had the best use cases.  Here are a few.  —  Education: Increasing Interactivity and Collaborative Learning
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
AppleInsider:
Mac sales grow 11.8% as Apple takes 9.4% U.S. market share  —  Mac sales saw double-digit growth in the third quarter of 2009, maintaining Apple's position as the fourth-largest U.S. PC manufacturer, according to new data released Wednesday from IDC.  —  Overall, Apple came in fourth for U.S. vendors …
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
AT&T Attacks Google Voice Again — This Time With Nuns  —  Is this nun praying for Google Voice?  —  AT&T today countered Google's claims that it's blocking Google Voice calls to rural areas because they're directed to free conference call lines and sex hotlines engaged in the dubious practice …
Discussion: TechCrunch
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Want That Early Chrome OS Build?  You Got It.  —  The hits keep on coming from Jonathan Frederickson, the TechCrunch reader who turned our initial revelation of a “chromeos” folder on the Chromium build site into a full-on walk through.  Today, he's doing what Google won't: Making the early Chrome OS build available for download.
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Still Hoping to Sell Music by the Month  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The idea of selling monthly subscriptions to a vast catalog of online music has met with only limited success.  That isn't stopping a new batch of entrepreneurs from trying to make it work.  —  The latest and perhaps …
Dan Nosowitz / Gizmodo:
Next-Generation Flip MinoHD: Sleeker Design, Double the Memory  —  The newest Flip MinoHD was just announced, and it's a lot like the first-gen, but with upgrades all around.  You've got double the memory, a much sleeker aluminum design, bigger screen and HDMI port.  Sweet!
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Is Steve Jobs more popular than Jesus?  —  Apple's CEO tops two polls in one week.  Will no one rid us of these meddlesome lists?  —  Photo: Apple Inc.  —  Last Thursday, Oct. 8, an Agenda Setters panel named Steve Jobs the most influential individual in the global technology industry …
Chris O'Brien / Mercury News:
After 32 years, Ellison just getting started  —  I could trot out all sorts of metrics to make the case that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has reached a new pinnacle of power and influence.  —  But in truth, there's no better testament to Ellison's ascent than the 37,000 people …
Jeff Weiner / The LinkedIn Blog:
LinkedIn: 50 million professionals worldwide  —  As of early this morning, LinkedIn has 50 million users worldwide and we're growing that figure at roughly one new member per second.  When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days — almost a year and four months — to reach our first million members.
Theo Valich / Bright Side Of News:
nVidia Tegra wins contract for next-gen Nintendo DS  —  When Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of nVidia announced that he expects to see Tegra capturing 50% of nVidia's revenue within the next couple of years, a lot of people thought that this is a smoke screen to sway the attention from its battles against AMD and Intel.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The New Technorati  —  Technorati relaunched its site tonight, changing and adding key features.  Most notable is an expanded and fresher top 100 blogs list, and a new feature that lets authors post their content directly to the site.  —  In 2007 Technorati redesigned the look and functionality of its home page three times.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Virtual goods sales to hit $1 billion in 2009 as social games pay off big  —  Thanks to the astonishing growth of games on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, the U.S. virtual goods market is poised to clear $1 billion in revenues in 2009, more than doubling from a year earlier, according to a new report.
Kim-Mai Cutler / VentureBeat:
TheFind launches “buying engine,” product search from 500,000 stores  —  TheFind, a Mountain View, Calif-based startup that applies machine learning and semantic search to shopping, says comparison buying sites only skim the surface of all the millions of products out there on the web.
Chad / That Smith:
Google Wave Add-on for Firefox  —  Google probably isn't going to be happy about this, but I present to you the first ever Google Wave Notifier... for Firefox.  —  This add-on reuses code from my other add-on, the Google Voice Add-on for Firefox (I'm great with names).
Jeff Atwood / Coding Horror:
The State of Solid State Hard Drives  —  I've seen a lot of people play The Computer Performance Shell Game poorly.  They overinvest in a fancy CPU, while pairing it with limited memory, a plain jane hard drive, or a generic video card.  For most users, that fire-breathing quad-core CPU …
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Digg's Vote-for-Ads Experiment Is Raising Revenue  —  When the social news site Digg introduced sponsored links into its main news flow this summer, the company knew it was taking a gamble.  Would the notoriously rambunctious community revolt or boycott the site for cluttering up its news feed with advertisements?
Danny Allen / Gizmodo:
Rumor: HTC HD2 Arriving on T-Mobile in the U.S?  —  HTC's HD2 is probably the most interesting WinMo 6.5 phone out there, but won't hit the U.S until early next year.  Now a leaked image may indicate that the 4.3-inch multi-touch screen handset could arrive on T-Mobile.  Take a look:
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Recent Cloud Outages May Give Opera Unite a Second Chance  —  Back in June of this year, Opera revealed their ambitious plan to “reinvent the web” with the release of Opera Unite, a new feature of their desktop web browser that effectively turns your computer into a server.
 
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 More Items: 
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Layar Brings Augmented Reality Browser To The iPhone (Screenshots)
Richard Perez-Pena / New York Times:
New York Times Decides Not to Sell Boston Globe
Discussion: Boston Globe, Thanks:atul
Jessica Ghastin / Facebook Blog:
Responding to Abuse Reports More Effectively
Discussion: Search Engine Watch and AppScout
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
AT&T: Tethering is probably going to be a 2010 thing
Discussion: MacRumors and TUAW
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Time Warner Cable Announces Wireless Broadband …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
TC50 Winner RedBeacon Is Now Live In The Bay Area
 Earlier Items: 
Jonathan Goldman / The Official Google Blog:
One-stop shop: Buy Promoted Videos in AdWords
Discussion: TechCrunch and Search Engine Land, Thanks:atul
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Dropbox Acquires The Domain Everyone Thought It Had: Dropbox.com
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Exclusive: Skype Founders Keep on Punching-File Injunction Against Volpi and Index
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and GigaOM, Thanks:atul
Max Colchester / Wall Street Journal:
The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
The Internet is about to die. Literally die!
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
US city to start giant ‘mapathon’
Discussion: Fast Company and dailywireless.org