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2:45 PM ET, December 22, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Bill Rigby / Reuters:
Microsoft loses Word patent appeal  —  SEATTLE (Reuters) - A U.S. court of appeals on Tuesday upheld a $290 million jury verdict against Microsoft Corp for infringing a patent held by a small Canadian software firm, and affirmed an injunction that prevents Microsoft from selling versions …
RELATED:
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
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, GeekTonic 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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
Chris / cdixon.org:
Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm  —  Websites live or die based on how a small group of programmers at Google decide their sites should rank in Google's main search results.  As the “router” of the vast majority of traffic on the internet …
Discussion: Seeking Alpha
RELATED:
Matt Asay / CNET News:   Google—not necessarily ‘more open than thou’
The Official Google Blog:
The meaning of open  —  Last week I sent an email to Googlers …
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 …
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, VatorNews, Xconomy and TechCrunch
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Backed By Google Ventures, EnglishCentral Raises $3.5 Million …
Discussion: Xconomy and paidContent
David Diaz / TechCrunch:
Apple Not Liable For Plagued iMac Screens, Updates Firmware Anyway  —  Apple just dodged a bullet.  —  A California 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 …
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
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
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 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
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 …
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
iPhone price wars begin - massive discounts hit France...  France is Europe's healthiest iPhone market because the device has been sold there by multiple carriers, driving sales higher - now carriers there are slashing prices on the product, applying steep discounts against the regular price.
Discussion: TMCnet and Boy Genius Report
The Typekit Blog:
Customize your WordPress blog with Typekit fonts  —  Got a blog at WordPress.com?  Now you can use Typekit!  We've just rolled out a way to easily use fonts on the world's largest blogging platform.  With Typekit and WordPress working together, customizing the look of the nearly 10 million blogs they host now takes just a few clicks.
Thanks:atul
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
Online Marketing Firm ReachLocal Files For $100 Million IPO  —  ReachLocal, which helps small businesses advertise online, wants to go public.  The company plans to raise about $100 milllion in a stock offering, according to a filing with the SEC. ReachLocal offers a suite of services …
Discussion: alarm:clock
Nick Spence / Computerworld:
Autodesk launches Smoke 2010 for Mac OS X (Updated)  —  Autodesk has brought Smoke, its video editing, 3D and finishing effects software, to the Mac, the first version of Smoke to support Apple ProRes natively.  —  Autodesk has brought Smoke, its video editing, 3D and finishing effects software, to the Mac.
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.
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.
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 …
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Thanks:atul
 
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 More Items: 
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Broadcom, Nvidia bring HD video to new Netbooks
Discussion: Neowin.net
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Accused ‘Wolverine’ pirate calls charges ‘ridiculous’
Discussion: p2pnet
Mark Gibbs / Network World:
Tynt, a whole new set of Web metrics
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Amazon.com moves to settle lawsuit over cracked Kindles
Discussion: Amazon.com, Thanks:toddbishop
Jamie Lendino / Gearlog:
Garmin, Mio, Navigon to Add Mobile TV to GPS Devices
Discussion: PR Newswire and MobileBurn.com
 Earlier Items: 
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The best and worst thing Twitter did in 2009: RT
Thanks:atul
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life:
Some Thoughts on the Twitter API as a “standard API” for microblogging
Discussion: Scripting News, Thanks:atul
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
IBM Preps for Cloud Computing War vs. Google, Microsoft in 2010
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