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1:05 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
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 …
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:
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:
Chris / cdixon.org:
Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm
Discussion: Seeking Alpha
Matt Asay / CNET News:   Google—not necessarily ‘more open than thou’
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 and Boing Boing
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.
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 …
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 …
Clifford J. Levy / New York Times:
Russians Wary 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 Gadgetopia
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Vaporware 2009: Inhale the Fail  —  Take a deep breath and savor the sweet stench of disappointment.  It's time for another installment of Wired.com's Vaporware Awards.  —  This is the 12th year we've offered our annual roundup of the tech industry's biggest, brashest and most baffling unfulfilled promises.
Discussion: Technologizer
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 …
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.
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 …
Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:
Epic Demonstrates Unreal Engine 3 for the iPod Touch/iPhone 3GS  —  Buy the Apple MC011LL/A iPod Touch 64GB Screen  —  I got together with Mark Rein last week and he showed me an Unreal Engine 3 tech demo running on a 3rd generation iPod Touch.  The same Unreal Engine 3 that powers Gears of War 2, running on an iPod Touch.
Jamie Lendino / Gearlog:
Garmin, Mio, Navigon to Add Mobile TV to GPS Devices  —  This may not be a U.S. story just yet, but it's worth noting: the Israeli-based Siano Mobile Silicon announced that Garmin, Mio, and Navigon will be sourcing its latest MDTV receiver chips for upcoming mobile TV-capable GPS devices.
Discussion: PR Newswire and MobileBurn.com
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: Ars Technica and Fudzilla
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.
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.
Lance Whitney / CNET News:
WSJ: FBI investigating Citibank cyberattack  —  Citigroup denies it, but its Citibank unit was reportedly robbed of tens of millions of dollars, the victim of a cyberattack by members of a Russian criminal gang, says Tuesday's Wall Steet Journal (subscription required).
David Coursey / PC World:
Texting While Driving 6X More Dangerous than Talking  —  A University of Utah study tells us something we should already know: That texting while driving is six times more dangerous than talking on a handset while driving.This is a message that has eluded many, but we can help.
Discussion: CNET News, Macworld and eWeek
 
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 More Items: 
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Amazon.com moves to settle lawsuit over cracked Kindles
Discussion: Amazon.com, Thanks:toddbishop
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The best and worst thing Twitter did in 2009: RT
Thanks:atul
Ed Oswald / Technologizer:
China Requiring Websites to Register or Face Blocking
Discussion: Reuters
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Language learning site Livemocha keeps growing — gets $8M boost
Discussion: TechFlash, Xconomy and TechCrunch
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
 Earlier Items: 
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
IBM Preps for Cloud Computing War vs. Google, Microsoft in 2010
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
iPhone price wars begin - massive discounts hit France...
Discussion: TMCnet
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
Lars Backstrom / Facebook Blog:
Facebook Memology: Top Status Trends of 2009