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12:20 PM ET, December 22, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Who Walked, Google or Yelp?  —  One thing is certain about the Google-Yelp courtship: After turning hot as recently as Friday, a bitter chill has spread over the relationship, and for now, the mating dance is definitely off.  —  But why things fell apart after the two sides had virtually agreed …
RELATED:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
As Microsoft Warily Eyes Google Buying Spree, Will It Jump …
Discussion: eWeek and Silicon Alley Insider
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Yelp Is Gone-For Now-But Google Has Plenty of Fish Left to Fry
The Official Google Blog:
The meaning of open  —  Last week I sent an email to Googlers about the meaning of “open” as it relates to the Internet, Google, and our users.  In the spirit of openness, I thought it would be appropriate to share these thoughts with those outside of Google as well.  —  At Google we believe that open systems win.
RELATED:
Matt Asay / CNET News:
Google—not necessarily ‘more open than thou’
Chris / cdixon.org:
Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm
Discussion: Seeking Alpha
Brian Garner / AppleInsider:
Apple's TV subscription plan gains potential partners in CBS, Disney  —  Both CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co. have shown interest in offering content for Apple's TV subscription proposal slated for roll out sometime in 2010.  —  Walt Disney Co. and CBS Corp. are considering participating …
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Apple May Be On The Verge Of Kneecapping The Cable Industry.  Finally.  —  The cable companies suck.  All of them.  Some suck less than others.  But they all suck.  We need someone to whip them into shape.  And that someone may be Apple.  —  Apple may be on the verge of gaining …
Marc Flores / Boy Genius Report:
Israeli programmer hacks Kindle, breaks DRM protection  —  Nothing makes you feel like you truly own your media and content like being able to do almost whatever you want with it.  We're already used to DRM for our MP3s and the limitations it puts on device selection and sharing …
Discussion: Erictric and AppScout
RELATED:
Ed Bayley / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy  —  As we count down to end of 2009, the emerging star of this year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the electronic book reader (or e-reader).  From Amazon's Kindle to Barnes and Noble's forthcoming Nook, e-readers are starting to transform …
Discussion: TeleRead, Boing Boing and PC World
Nielsen Wire:
Top Mobile Phones, Sites and Brands for 2009  —  The iPhone and various Blackberry handhelds dominated the mobile device market, while Google, Yahoo! and YouTube led the way as far as most accessed sites and brands on the mobile web.  —  Top 10 Mobile Phones in Use (U.S.) - January -October 2009 RANK Device Embedded Base of
RELATED:
Dave Rosenberg / CNET News:   LG, RIM top Apple in number of phone users
Macon Phillips / White House.gov Blog Feed:
Introducing the New Cybersecurity Coordinator  —  Today the White House announced the President's new White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, Howard Schmidt.  —  President Barack Obama greets his new White House Cyber Security Chief Howard A. Schmidt in the Cross Hall of the White House.
RELATED:
Clive Thompson / Wired News:
Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem  —  On the last day, they gathered for a group photo.  They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts.  Their team was — finally — giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding.
David Diaz / TechCrunch:
Apple Not Liable For Plagued iMac Screens, Updates Firmware Anyway  —  Apple just dodged a bullet.  —  A New York federal judge dismissed a potential class action lawsuit which alleged that Apple propagated their popular iMac screens without disclosing certain manufacturing defects to its customers …
Jonathan Fildes / BBC:
Firefox for mobile ready to debut  —  The mobile browser has been in development for the last year and a half  —  The first mobile phone version of the popular web browser Firefox is “days away” from launch, the head of the project has told the BBC.  —  The browser, codenamed Fennec …
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Hurry up and download an NES emulator that slipped into the App Store  —  Update: It has been pulled, you'll have to jailbreak to get an NES emulator now.  —  We're not sure how this one slipped through, but Nescaline, a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator is in the App Store as we speak.
Jason Hiner / Between the Lines:
Backupify drops paywall; backs up your data from Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail  —  One of the best parts of keeping your data in the cloud is that you don't have to worry quite as much about doing your own backups.  If your computer crashes or your hard drive dies, you won't lose all of the messages …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Voice May Join Google's Enterprise Lineup  —  GrandCentral, which Google acquired in 2007, relaunched as Google Voice way back in March.  It's still technically in private beta, but invitations aren't all that hard to find.  —  From what we've heard, Google is very seriously planning to add …
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Our 2009 12-City 3G Data Mega Test: AT&T Won  —  Given carrier reputation and our own iPhone call drops, we were pretty surprised to discover, through careful testing in 12 markets, that AT&T's has pretty consistently the fastest 3G network nationwide, followed closely—in downloads at least—by Verizon Wireless.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter Captures A Nexus One Unboxing And Another Video  —  A number of pictures have hit the web now showing the Nexus One, aka the Google Phone, in the flesh.  But there haven't been too many showing its packaging, and it getting unboxed.  Today, some Twitpics shared by one user show those.
Clifford J. Levy / New York Times:
Russia Is Torn Over Push for Use of Cyrillic Web Domains  —  MOSCOW — The Kremlin has long been irritated by the way the United States dominates the Internet, all the way down to the ban on using Cyrillic for Web addresses — even kremlin.ru has to be demeaningly rendered in English.
Discussion: Domain Name Wire and Media Decoder
Ed Oswald / Technologizer:
China Requiring Websites to Register or Face Blocking  —  New regulations handed down by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over the weekend seem to suggest China may be creating a “whitelist” of approved websites.  The Ministry said it is now requiring all websites to register …
Discussion: Reuters
Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:
Digsby to Add In-Stream Ads Based on Twitter Trending Topics [IMAGES]  —  Twitter has yet to pull the trigger on their purported advertising initiatives (though they are profitable), and today OneRiot is beating them to the punch and releasing RiotWise Trending Ads as part of their API and Mobile Ad Unit.
Discussion: TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb
Tricia Duryee / mocoNews:
The U.S. Can Look To Europe To See What The iPhone's Future Will Be Here  —  Fed up with only having AT&T (NYSE: T) to choose from if you want the iPhone in the U.S., many consumers can't wait until Verizon or another carrier gets a hold of the device.  But if you look at the UK …
Thanks:atul
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Flurry and Pinch Media to create mobile analytics powerhouse  —  Two analytics startups, Flurry and Pinch Media, are announcing a merger today as they try to create a mobile data analytics leader.  While Flurry has been focused on e-commerce, Pinch Media was focused on ad optimization.
Dennis Fisher:
Attackers Buying Own Data Centers for Botnets, Spam  —  The malware writers and criminals who run botnets for years have been using shared hosting platforms and so-called bulletproof hosting providers as bases of operations for their online crimes.  But, as law enforcement agencies …
Discussion: Fudzilla and Slashdot
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Language learning site Livemocha keeps growing — gets $8M boost  —  Livemocha, the fast-growing site that lets people learn other languages for free — by matching them up with other native speakers online — has raised $8 million more in a second round of funding.
Discussion: TechFlash, Xconomy and TechCrunch
Lars Backstrom / Facebook Blog:
Facebook Memology: Top Status Trends of 2009  —  Status updates on Facebook help people understand their friends and the people around them—how they're feeling, what they're doing and what they're thinking.  In the United States alone, people on Facebook are sharing hundreds of millions of words every day …
 
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 More Items: 
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The best and worst thing Twitter did in 2009: RT
Thanks:atul
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Vaporware 2009: Inhale the Fail
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life:
Some Thoughts on the Twitter API as a “standard API” for microblogging
Discussion: Scripting News and Webmonkey, Thanks:atul
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Backed By Google Ventures, EnglishCentral Raises $3.5 Million …
Discussion: Xconomy and paidContent
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
gWallet Reveals Secret Weapon For Virtual Currency Platform: gLTV
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
IBM Preps for Cloud Computing War vs. Google, Microsoft in 2010
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Swoon: Flocking.me Allows You To Search Just Your Friend's Tweets
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
iPhone price wars begin - massive discounts hit France...
Discussion: TMCnet
 Earlier Items: 
Om Malik / GigaOM:
November 2009: State of Location Apps
Softpedia News:
Windows Live Wave 4 Leaks: Mail, Photo Gallery, Writer Build 15.0.2403.826
Discussion: GeekSmack and LiveSide
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
80legs sets its web crawler free