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12:40 PM ET, November 18, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Google Phone Is Very Real.  And It's Coming Soon  —  The debate over Droid v. iPhone rages on, but lots more Android surprises are on the way.  Get ready for the Google Phone.  It's no longer a myth, it's real.  —  The next “super” Android device will almost certainly be a HTC phone that's …
RELATED:
David Coursey / PC World:
5 Reasons Why Google Should Not Sell Handsets  —  Rumors are once again swirling around the idea that a Google-branded “Superphone” will hit the market next year.  How stupid do these people think Google is?  —  Well, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington seems to think “pretty stupid,” …
Ben Smith / The Really Mobile Project:
Nokia dropping Symbian from N-Series by 2012  —  This evening, at the official N900 meet-up in London, the Maemo marketing team revealed that Nokia plan to drop Symbian from the entire ‘top end’ N-Series range of handsets in favour of Maemo by 2012.  —  The future for N-Series: Maemo
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
A tale of two Diggs  —  NEW YORK—You had two options if you wanted to hang out with Digg founder Kevin Rose at the Web 2.0 Expo conference this week: head over to the lobby bar of the trendy Standard Hotel on Monday night, where Digg was picking up the tab for several dozen of the city's blogger elite …
RELATED:
Venture Capital Dispatch:
Digg CEO: Profitability Is Not A Problem Anymore  —  Digg.com launched as experiment in 2004 to let people post articles from various news sources, which are then either selected by other users for inclusion on the main page or passed over.  Now with about 40 million users …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Feds: Top e-tailers profitting from billion-dollar Web scam  —  Note 1:09 p.m. PT: This post is being updated as the Senate hearing takes place Tuesday afternoon.  —  Three companies have generated more than $1.4 billion by “misleading” Web shoppers into signing up for so-called loyalty program memberships …
RELATED:
Nokia:
The Nokia N900 is now available to US consumers  —  A computer in your pocket - The Nokia N900 is here!  —  WhitePlains, N.Y., USA — Nokia today announced that the highly anticipated Nokia N900 is now on sale in the United States and shipping to consumers who jumped on the opportunity …
RELATED:
Hannah Bouckley / T3 magazine Online:
Nokia N900 review  —  The Finns leap back into our affections  —  Having released a series of solid, but unexciting handsets in the last couple of years and seen the HTC Hero, Pre and (particularly) the Apple iPhone 3GS, grab market share and the tech lovers' imagination, Nokia needs a big handset success and fast.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Why imeem Really Sold Out  —  This morning news broke that MySpace, the second-largest social network that's currently reinventing itself as a music destination, was buying imeem, a free online music service that has been remixed (and remade) more times that '90s dance anthem “Keep on Moving.”
RELATED:
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive
Discussion: Techdirt
Joe Weisenthal / Silicon Alley Insider:
American Express Acquiring Steve Case's Revolution Money For $300 Million  —  Another big deal in the next-generation consumer financial products space.  —  American Express (AXP) has just announced the acquisition of Steve Case's startup Revolution Money for $300 million.
Discussion: Teds Take, paidContent and GigaOM
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google Holding Chrome OS Event Thursday.  Complete Overview And Launch Plans To Be Revealed.  —  Google is planning to hold a special Chrome OS event at its headquarters in Mountain View, CA this Thursday morning, we've just been notified.  The plan is to give some technical background information …
PR Newswire:
Salesforce.com Unveils Salesforce Chatter - Enterprise Collaboration Meets the Real-Time Social Computing Model Loved by Millions on Facebook and Twitter  —  Salesforce Chatter application allows any company to collaborate in real time with a secure, private social network for their enterprise
Discussion: VentureBeat and TechCrunch
Brad Stone / Bits:
Hulu Steps Into Music With EMI and Norah Jones  —  Hulu, the joint online venture between NBC, Fox and ABC that mostly offers free TV shows and movies, is about to start singing a different tune: music videos.  —  On Wednesday the company plans to announce a somewhat limited deal with EMI …
New York Times:
Library in a Pocket  —  With Amazon's Kindle, readers can squeeze hundreds of books into a device that is smaller than most hardcovers.  For some, that's not small enough.  —  Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can do so on the smartphones that are already …
Discussion: Bits, TeleRead and Smart Mobs
comScore, Inc.:
comScore Releases October 2009 U.S. Search Engine Rankings  —  comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace.  In October 2009, Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches …
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life:
Facebook v Ceop  —  Facebook is under fire this morning, accused of neglecting its responsibility to help to keep young internet users safe.  —  The charge comes from Jim Gamble of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, who wants Facebook (and MySpace) to follow the lead of Bebo …
Mobile Europe:
fring releases 'world's first' free mobile VoIP calls on Android phones  —  fring, a mobile application that lets users communicate and share web-based content from their mobile devices, today announced the world's first full voice over internet support on all Android devices.
Discussion: TechCrunch, fring and AndroidOS.in
BBC:
T-Mobile staff sold personal data  —  Staff at mobile phone company T-Mobile passed on millions of records from thousands of customers to third party brokers, the firm has confirmed.  —  Details emerged after the firm alerted the information commissioner, who said his office was preparing a prosecution.
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
iPhone you control my car - if it is a Mercedes-Benz  —  There's an App for that, at least if you drive a Mercedes-Benz (like a certain handicap-parking, barcode license plate having CEO we know), which has teamed up with Hughes Telematics to offer a new system that lets drivers of the luxury cars enable …
Discussion: App Advice
Michael Calore / Webmonkey:
A Brave New Web Will Be Here Soon, But Browsers Must Improve  —  The great promise of HTML5 is that it will turn the web into a full-fledged computing platform awash with video, animation and real-time interactions, yet free of the hacks and plug-ins common today.
Warren Rumak / Ars Technica:
Inside “MinWin:” the Windows 7 kernel slims down  —  As Windows 2000 was being developed in the second half of the 1990s, Microsoft was firmly focused on building in as much functionality as possible, in a play to push Novell Netware aside and establish Windows NT as the operating system for the business world.
Stephen E. Arnold / Beyond Search:
Google Squeezes LexisNexis and Westlaw Hard  —  Google's Uncle Sam service is arguably a more effective way to find information from various US government entities.  I heard a couple of years ago that Google was indexing the content on various state servers.
Dave Parrack / TECH.BLORGE.com:
Stephen Fry talks Twitter - “human shaped, not business shaped”  —  Twitter is a massively popular social networking and micro-blogging site that has gained an inordinate amount of headlines and copy over the past year or so.  But what is the nature of Twitter?
Discussion: Telegraph and broadstuff
Don Reisinger / CNET News:
Modern Warfare 2 tops entertainment industry, not just games  —  If you think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has had a major impact on just the video game industry, you may need to adjust your expectations.  —  According to Activision Blizzard, the game's publisher, Modern Warfare 2 …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
IBM moves closer to creating chips based on the brain  —  IBM said today that it has made significant progress toward making a computer that simulates and emulates the brain's abilities to sense, perceive, interact, and recognize.  —  It can also do so using the brain's low-power energy consumption …
Discussion: Between the Lines, GMSV and CNET News
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
Phishing scam hits Mac users - stay safe online  —  We received word this morning of what could be a brand new phishing attack that's in circulation at present - an email which purports to relate to a recent Apple retail transaction and asks for details of any recent orders.
Discussion: SC Magazine US and Technology Live
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Location Is The Missing Link Between Social Networks And The Real World  —  Imagine a world where you sit at your computer and you never go outside.  Where you never see another human being.  This is the world that sites like Google and Facebook want you to live in.
Matt Peckham / PC World:
PS3 Firmware 3.10 Released, Adds Facebook Support  —  Before you ask, no, the PS3 isn't getting an Xbox 360-equivalent Facebook interface in today's version 3.10 Facebook-angled firmware release.  That's the bad news.  The good news, if you're PS3-do-or-die, is that it actually adds …
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Sony Ericsson closing four facilities, laying off 2,000 employees worldwide  —  Sony Ericsson has yet to make this public, but we've learned that the flagging handset maker has caved once more to the pressures of the modern phone market place.  If you'll recall, 450 employees were nixed …
Patrick Smith / paidContent:
Mag Publisher Burda Buying A Quarter Of Xing; $287 Million Valuation  —  German mag publisher Burda Media is buying a 25.1 percent stake in the business-focused social networking site Xing.com for a total of €48.29 million (£42.7 million, $71.9 million), making it Xing's biggest single shareholder.
Discussion: vwd.de
 
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 More Items: 
Simon Dumenco / AdAge:
What Do Murdoch's Customers Think About His Pay-Wall Plans and Google-bashing?
Discussion: Gawker and Internet Evolution
Manav Tanneeru / CNN:
Can you be liable for your tweets?
Sumner Lemon / InfoWorld:
Antitrust battle will go on despite AMD-Intel settlement
Discussion: Reuters and The Hill
Timothy Prickett Morgan / The Register:
Microsoft feeds Excel to supercomputer
 Earlier Items: 
Ben Worthen / Digits:
Microsoft and SAP Again Team Up Against Oracle
Discussion: Seeking Alpha
NPR Blogs: The Two-Way:
NSA Is Giving Microsoft Some Help On Windows 7 Security
Discussion: Maximum PC and InformationWeek
Om Malik / GigaOM:
How Much Money Did Joyent Really Raise?
Discussion: CNET News and TechCrunch