Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
8:40 AM ET, October 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
Apple execs book flight time for mystery product, ‘not iPhone’, bafflement follows  —  We're deciphering Apple executives and their fourth quarter statements right now - but the initial take away at this stage is the company's mysterious admission that “air freight costs” are set to rise “abnormally” in the company's first quarter.
RELATED:
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Apple's Tim Cook scoffs at iPhone competitors  —  The iPhone was the hot new thing a year or two ago, but now it's seeing increasing competition from Google, Palm, and others — for example, my editor Matt Marshall just declared that he's abandoning his iPhone for Droid, the Android phone coming at the end of the month.
Tim Conneally / BetaNews:
The new iPod nano: A flop?  —  The good news in Apple's earnings call this afternoon, according to CFO Peter Oppenheimer, is that the Cupertino company has sold more Macs and iPhones than it ever has in the past, beating previous Mac sales records by 444,000 or 17% year over year …
AppleInsider:
Apple profits surge 46% on record sales of 3M Macs, 7.4M iPhones
Peter Burrows / BusinessWeek:
How Low Will Apple Go On Price?
Discussion: Computerworld
Ross Miller / Engadget:
Barnes & Noble ‘Nook’ e-reader with color touchscreen out Tuesday for $259, says WSJ (update: Best Buy connection?)  —  Looks like the cat's out of the bag.  The Wall Street Journal's had a glimpse at what it says is an upcoming ad for Barnes & Noble's impending announcement …
Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:
First Images: BlackBerry Watch is FOR REAL!  —  * Update - Just to be clear as I've seen some confusion in the commments, but as far as we know at this time the inPulse watch is not being made by/for BlackBerry (it won't feature a BlackBerry logo), but is being made for use with BlackBerry Smartphones.
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
This shouldn't be the image of Hack Day  —  I love hack days.  I was working in the vicinity of Chad Dickerson when he organised the first internal Yahoo! Hack Day back in 2005, and I've since participated in hack day events at Yahoo!, Global Radio and the Guardian.
Daniel Roth / Wired News:
The Answer Factory: Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell  —  If Christian Muñoz-Donoso is going to make this job pay, he's got to move quickly.  He has a list of 10 videos to shoot on this warm June morning, for which he'll earn just $200.  To get anything close to his usual rate, he'll have to do it all in two hours.
Discussion: MediaMemo
Om Malik / GigaOM:
With N900, Nokia Still Not Close to The iPhone  —  The biggest challenge for any touchscreen smartphone, no matter how good or great, is that it will almost always be compared to the iPhone.  Some of them like Verizon's Droid and Blackberry Storm seek that comparison.  Others are just going to have to deal with it.
Discussion: jkOnTheRun and VoIP Watch
Steve / The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs:
Why the Borg's copycat business model no longer works  —  So I had brunch with Larry yesterday and he showed up carrying the Sunday Times and we were talking about the huge and incredibly embarrassing photo (above) of Ballmer that they ran on the front of their business cover.
Ben Parr / Mashable!:
LEAKED: Details of the Facebook Home Page Redesign [Screenshots]  —  A few weeks ago, we caught wind that Facebook was testing a new homepage design.  Screenshots revealed a few interesting changes, such as a decrease in size for the Facebook Publisher box and a new, Friendfeed-like “Top News” filter for the news feed.
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Twitter hits five billion tweets  —  Former Current Media executive Robin Sloan appears to have posted Twitter's five billionth tweet, in the form of a reply to another user that otherwise read only “Oh lord.”  —  The landmark status of Sloan's tweet, which he has nicknamed “The Pentagigatweet …
BBC:
What, you too?  YouTube to stream live U2 concert  —  U2's concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California on Sunday will be streamed live on video-sharing website YouTube, the band have announced.  —  Manager Paul McGuinness said that, as the gig was already being filmed, it was …
Discussion: Reuters
Duncan Graham-Rowe / Technology Review:
Cell Phones to Go 3-D  —  Embedding microlenses in thin films could bring 3-D movies and games to mobile devices.  —  A new thin-film technology developed by 3M could enable mobile devices such as cell phones to show 3-D images without the need for special glasses.
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News:
Internet Archive's BookServer could ‘dominate’ Amazon  —  SAN FRANCISCO—An initiative in the works from the nonprofit Internet Archive to centralize the electronic distribution of commercially viable books could upend the publishing industry and declaw Amazon.com, an industry analyst said.
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
T-Mobile Tap coming November 11, Samsung Behold II on November 18?  —  The CLIQ might be getting the lion's share of the Android spotlight on T-Mobile at the moment, but it's not the only Google-equipped gear in the carrier's pipeline — the other big news there would be the Behold II from Samsung …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
The New Twitter Hole That Probably Isn't  —  Earlier this evening the LA Times Tech Blog ran a post claming that Google has unrestricted access to Twitter's protected tweets, or, as the Times put it, the “key to the city”.  And you can apparently search those tweets with a not-too-difficult advanced Google search.
Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog and Mashable!
Steven Levy / Wired News:
Mob Rule!  How Users Took Over Twitter  —  Last August, the people who putatively run Twitter — the small crew that three years ago launched the world's fastest-growing communications medium — announced a relatively minor change in the way the site functions.
Dan Bricklin:
VisiCalc turns 30 and SocialCalc turns 1.0  —  According to my notebook from 1979, 30 years ago today Dan Fylstra, head of Personal Software, our Bay Area publisher, told me that he had the first production VisiCalc packages in hand.  I received mine the next day (Saturday delivery).
Noah Shachtman / Danger Room:
Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets  —  America's spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.  —  In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community …
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
Net neutrality pitting Web giants against state AGs, mayors  —  Most of the key online players came out for net neutrality on Monday.  They wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission cheering the agency's impending Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on “policies to preserve the open Internet …
Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:
Jelli's crowd-sourced radio opens up to the U.S., Australia  —  Jelli.net, a Total Request Live-esq Internet radio station, is coming out of beta on Monday night and is expected to announce that it's inked a syndication deal with Triton Digital Media that will get it played …
Discussion: ReadWriteStart
Laura DiDio / ITIC:
ITIC/Sunbelt Software survey: 80% of Users Give Windows 7 High Marks for Compatibility  —  A new independent ITIC/Sunbelt Software survey of nearly 1,500 companies worldwide indicates 60% of respondents will deploy Windows 7.  Nearly one-third of respondents — 30% — say they will migrate …
Jim Reilly / IGN:
EA: Core Business Model a ‘Burning Platform’  —  EA Sports President Peter Moore gives a look at the future of digital gaming.  —  EA Sports president Peter Moore has painted a grim picture for the future of disc-based videogames.  —  Speaking at the 5th annual PLAY Digital Media Conference during …
Knot Pipatsrisawat / Facebook Blog:
Giving Groups a Stronger Voice  —  Facebook Groups have long been a part of the Facebook experience as a way for people to organize and discuss particular issues of interest.  However, until now, Group activities have been isolated to the group page and it was often difficult to find out what currently was going on within a group.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Photobucket To Be Valued At $60 Million In Sale To Ontela  —  Lots more details are coming in on the Photobucket fire sale by MySpace/News Corp. The sale is all but complete, say new sources.  And the buyer is definitely Washington state based Ontela.  —  Ontela, a mobile photo upload …
Discussion: The Seattle Times, TechFlash and mocoNews, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Apm / alarm:clock:
Tweet Ad Network Ad.ly Funded  —  LA-based Ad.ly, which has developed in-stream advertising on Twitter, has raised $500K.  The round came from GRP Partners.  Ad.ly monetizes Twitter feeds from people who have 7 figure followers, as well as those we have fewer.
Discussion: TechCrunch
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 8:40 AM ET, October 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:
All new Zoho Workerly 2024  —  Staffing businesses around the world face a unique set of challenges when it comes to managing their temporary workforce.  With a constantly shifting job market and changing staffing needs …
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: 
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Scoreloop will help iPhone developers make their games social
Tom Abate / San Francisco Chronicle:
Tech exports down this year - bottom unclear
Diane Bartz / Reuters:
Fake security software in millions of computers: Symantec
Discussion: Computerworld and Neowin.net
Chris Kanaracus / Computerworld:
BMC buys Tideway for component tracking tools
 Earlier Items: 
Jacqueline Emigh / Computerworld:
Apple Restores Banned 3G TV iPhone App
Discussion: PC World and Digits
Craig Newmark / The Huffington Post:
A Nerd's Take On The Future Of News Media
Discussion: broadstuff and Podcasting News, Thanks:atul
Jeff Aguero / The Official Google Blog:
Flying in a WiFi wonderland: Free Internet from Google on Virgin America flights