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9:45 PM ET, November 30, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The End Of The CrunchPad  —  It was so close I could taste it.  Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad.  The device was stable enough for a demo.  It went hours without crashing.  We could even let people play with the device themselves - the user interface …
RELATED:
Brad / Liliputing:
The CrunchPad tablet is dead, is anybody surprised?  —  For much of the past year, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has been working with a small group on a pet project called the CrunchPad.  It was designed to be a 12 inch tablet style device for surfing the web from a couch.
Discussion: PC World and eSarcasm
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
LEAK: The Google Phone “Is a Certainty”  —  According to a trusted source who's seen it with their own eyes, the Google Phone “is a certainty.”  —  And by “Google Phone” we don't simply mean another Android handset.  We're talking about Google-branded hardware running a version of Android we haven't yet seen.
Scott Moritz / TheStreet.com:
Apple iPhone May Go to T-Mobile Next  —  Stock quotes in this article: AAPL , VZ , MOT , T  —  NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Apple's (AAPL Quote) path to U.S. smartphone dominance may take an abrupt detour as the iPhone's next destination may be Deutsche Telekom's (DT Quote) T-Mobile and not Verizon (VZ Quote).
Jeremy Kirk / PC World:
Latest Microsoft Patches Cause Black Screen of Death  —  Microsoft's latest round of security patches appears to be causing some PCs to seize up and display a black screen, rending the computer useless.  —  The problem affects Microsoft products including Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems …
RELATED:
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:   Microsoft looking into Windows ‘black screen of death’ problem
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Droid Nears Its Million-Device Target  —  Motorola and Verizon's $100 million marketing push seems to be paying off: The much-ballyhooed Droid smartphone made by Motorola and powered by Google's Android 2.0 OS is inching toward its goal of a million devices sold during the fourth quarter of 2009.
RELATED:
Stewart / Alsop-Louie Partners:
Droid Doesn't: It's Not Ready For Prime Time  —  The Motorola Droid is truly terrible, in part because it has such promise (and has been amazingly well reviewed — I worry I'm missing something).  Ironically, most of the blame for the cruddiness of the phone really should be laid at Google's feet, not Motorola's.
Kim Yoo-chul / The Korea Times:
Apple, Chip Bully?  —  Chipmakers Claim iPhone Maker Disrupts Flash Market  —  There are growing complaints in the semiconductor industry that Apple, the “smart” phone maker extraordinaire and major chip buyer, is manipulating NAND flash memory prices through its “questionable” purchasing strategies, industry sources said Sunday.
John Herrman / Gizmodo:
Kindle Outsells Every Other Product On Amazon (And What This Really Means)  —  According to a breathless press release, the Kindle ereader is the “#1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon.”  That means it sold more than the iPod Touch.  More than the Wii.  More than Going Rogue.
Discussion: Digits and ReadWriteWeb
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Takes Control of ‘TabletMac’ Trademark  —  A couple of years ago, a company called Axiotron announced an aftermarket modification for the MacBook that converted the Apple laptop into a tablet.  The modification remains for sale at $699 and takes a stock MacBook, removes the keyboard and screen …
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
What's powering Web apps: Google waving goodbye to Gears, hello to HTML5  —  Of all the things Google is really good at, patience isn't necessarily one of them.  —  To prove Web applications like Gmail and Google Docs could be as sophisticated as desktop apps, Google created its own desktop software …
RELATED:
Alaska Miller / Silicon Alley Insider:
Check Out Google's Favorite Android Apps  —  Google named the winners today in its second annual mobile apps contest.  —  The top prizes for this year's Android Developer Challenge went to:  — Sweet Dreams, which lets you avoid late-night phone calls and save battery power
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
M.I.T., Google, And Umberto Eco Want To Erect a Realtime Cloud Over The 2012 London Olympics  —  What is it with architects that they feel the need to glom onto the latest buzzwords to justify their projects?  A group from M.I.T.'s Senseable City Lab is looking for funding …
Discussion: Erictric
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple Online Sales Huge On Black Friday, Apple Retail Mac Down  —  Update: Munster has issued a new Black Friday report that includes e-commerce information.  —  It looks like Apple's Web business was huge: Sales were up 39% year-over-year on Black Friday, according to comScore …
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
Bit.ly Partners with Security Firms to Block Spams, Scams from Twitter  —  Bit.ly, the service Twitter uses to shorten URLs to keep them under the service's 140-character limit, announced partnerships on Monday with Verisign, Websense and Sophos that are designed to keep spam and malicious software off of the network.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Exclusive: Digg Steals A Google Exec As New VP Product  —  Digg has poached Keval Desai away from Google as their new Vice President of Product, we've confirmed from the company.  Desai's last day at Google is today.  —  Desai is a long time Google employee, first joining the company in 2003.
Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft Has No Plans To Fund A Google Boycott  —  All that hoopla about Microsoft subsidizing News Corp's boycott of Google?  Just noise, says the Michael Liedtke of the AP.  —  He spoke with three Microsoft sources who all say Microsoft is not going to pay publishers to pull their content from Google.
Discussion: The Microsoft Blog
Gregg Pollack / Riding Rails:
Ruby on Rails 2.3.5 Released  —  Rails 2.3.5 was released over the weekend which provides several bug-fixes and one security fix.  It should be fully compatible with all prior 2.3.x releases and can be easily upgraded to with “gem update rails”.  The most interesting bits can be summarized in three points.
Discussion: LinuxWorld.com and eWeek
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Open Source as a Model for Business Is Elusive  —  SAN FRANCISCO — In many ways, MySQL embodies the ideals of the populist software movement known as open source, in which a program's creator releases it to the world free of charge, and legions of volunteers contribute improvements that are also freely shared.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Broadcom To Buy Dune Networks For $178 Million  —  Broadcom (BRCM) this afternoon said it has agreed to acquire privately held Dune Networks for $178 million in cash.  The company said Dune has developed “a scalable chipset that supports bandwidth speeds of up to 100 Gbps per port” …
DealBook:
G.E. Pact With Vivendi Clears Way for Sale of NBC  —  But much remains to be negotiated, these people warned.  The Vivendi agreement values NBC Universal at $29 billion, less than the $30 billion or so that G.E. and Comcast had agreed to last month.  —  Harmonizing the two values …
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Location start-up SimpleGeo maps out funding  —  Venture firm First Round Capital has led the Series A funding round for start-up SimpleGeo, a buzzed-about new company that has built a product for easy integration of “location” features into Web and mobile apps, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal.
Discussion: VentureBeat, TechCrunch and paidContent
Kim-Mai Cutler / VentureBeat:
Twitter takes down Lists temporarily as site buckles  —  Twitter has suspended its Lists feature temporarily after the site experienced a flood of errors.  $155 million in venture capital later, and the site still goes down?  C'mon people!  —  The company posted this message this afternoon:
Discussion: CNET News and The Next Web
Carmi Levy / BetaNews:
Not-so-mobile battery life: Time to force the issue  —  I was having a lovely conversation last week with a woman who had just upgraded to a Palm Pre.  She's been an avid user of Palm products since the company's first-generation PalmPilots defined the PDA market, and was thrilled …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
hi5 recruits a beastly gaming veteran as its president  —  Social network hi5 has hired a pioneer in the video game industry to kick its social gaming strategy into high gear.  It remains to be seen if hi5 truly realizes what it's getting in the hiring of Alex St. John.
Discussion: TechFlash and paidContent
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
The New TweetDeck Goes List Crazy And Adds Maps To GeoTweets  —  Streamreaders just keep getting better and better.  A new version of TweetDeck is rolling out today with some major improvements, including support for Lists, Retweets, maps for geo-tagged messages, and LinkedIn streams.
James Hamilton / Perspectives:
2010 the Year of MicroSlice Servers  —  Very low-power scale-out servers — it's an idea whose time has come.  A few weeks ago Intel announced it was doing Microslice servers: Intel Seeks new ‘microserver’ standard.  Rackable Systems (I may never manage to start calling them ‘SGI’ …
Discussion: OakLeaf Systems
 
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 More Items: 
Ramu Nagappan / Macworld:
Apple opens up iTunes LP and Extras to developers
Discussion: CrunchGear and TechStartups.com
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Allen's Charter exits Ch. 11
Discussion: Thomson IR
Sara Kleinberg / Google Retail Blog:
Black Friday Searches Rise 20%
Graham Cluley / Graham Cluley's blog:
Man arrested for robbing RuneScape virtual characters
Discussion: Times of London
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
Google Wave Users Want More of Their Friends on Wave
Discussion: Download Squad
Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
Chat with Roku on hurdles to online video market
Geoff Duncan / Digital Trends:
Best Buy Rocketfish WirelessHD Adapter Unplugs HDMI
Discussion: DVICE
 Earlier Items: 
Filip Truta / Softpedia News:
VirtualBox 3.1.0 Final Released
Discussion: The Register
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Twidroid 3.0 Launches with Plugin Support
Discussion: VatorNews and Gizmodo, Thanks:atul
Royal Pingdom:
Study: Males vs. females in social networks