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12:20 PM ET, August 23, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
New York Times:
The Sofa Wars: Plenty to Watch Online, but Viewers Prefer to Pay for Cable  —  It is a fantasy shared by many Americans: dropping cable television and its fat monthly bills and turning instead to the wide-open frontier of Internet video.  —  Some are finding that the reality is not that simple.
RELATED:
Jenna Wortham / New York Times:
Crowded Field for Bringing Web Video to TVs
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Fraudsters Drain PayPal Accounts Through iTunes  —  Reports are appearing this morning about a major security hole in iTunes accounts linked to PayPal.  At least one group of scammers has found a way to charge thousands of dollars to iTunes accounts through PayPal.
RELATED:
John Oates / The Register:   eCrime cops charge 12 over iTunes royalty ‘fraud’
Taylor Buley / Buleyean String:
Free of Freemium, Things Are Starting To Look Up At Ning  —  Ning, provider of on-demand social communities, has recently been one of Silicon Valley's most interesting companies.  Five months ago the company announced the sudden exit of chief executive Gina Bianchini, eventually gave …
Electronista:
Samsung Galaxy Tab seen in the wild [video]  —  Electronista today had the opportunity to spy a Samsung Galaxy Tab in live testing in Sydney, Australia.  The device, spotted in the hands of an anonymous telco worker at a train station, matches up with the official description of a seven-inch, 3G-capable Android tablet.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Mac enterprise sales surged in June  —  Apple scored its biggest gains in government, big business and the European home market  —  Click to enlarge.  Source: Needham, IDC  —  Given the Mac's tiny share of the worldwide PC market — roughly 3.5% as of June — Apple (AAPL) has a lot of room to grow.
Jason Hiner / Tech Sanity Check:
The dirty little secret about Google Android  —  Google Android began with the greatest of intentions — freedom, openness, and quality software for all.  However, freedom always comes with price, and often results in unintended consequences.  With Android, one of the most important …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunchIT:
The Fight For 3PAR: HP Outbids Dell, Offers $1.6 Billion In Cash  —  HP has proposed to acquire data storage company 3PAR for $24 per share in cash, or roughly $1.6 billion.  Thus, it trumps Dell's offer to buy out the company for $18 per share or $1.13 billion.
Guy Grimland / Haaretz:
HTC taps Israeli technology for its iPad-slayer  —  N-trig's screen software to go into Google's new tablet computer  —  The Kfar Sava-based startup N-trig will provide the touch-screen technology for the tablet computer that Taiwanese manufacturer HTC is developing as direct competition for Apple's iPad.
Panayiotis Mavrommatis / SecBrowsing blog:
Chrome's bundled Flash results in much faster update  —  Chrome's bundling of Flash resulted in a dramatic drop of out-of-date users after the latest update, according to our stats.  —  On Aug 10, 2010, Adobe released a security update for Flash.  On the same day, Chrome shipped …
Discussion: Download Squad and The Next Web, Thanks:rawmeet
Paul Carr / TechCrunch:
Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: The Rise Of Microblogging, The Death Of Posterity  —  A little over a week ago, I closed down all of my social media accounts, with the exception of Twitter, which I locked.  The explanation I gave was that, in an age when everyone and their dog is sharing every aspect of their life …
Surur / WMPoweruser.com:
LG E900 Windows Phone 7 smartphone caught on camera  —  The oddest things show up on youtube, such as this video of the LG E900, the keyboard-less version of the LG C900, likely destined for Europe.  —  The handset looks relatively sleek, but still could do with a bit more dazzle (possibly a less blurry video would help).
Jack McKenna / TechCrunch:
You Can Block Any Facebook User Except Mark Zuckerberg  —  The title of this post kind of says it all.  As pointed out by blockzuck.com, you can block anyone on Facebook except CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  If you try to do it (we did), you'll get a message saying “General Block failed error: Block failed.”
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Celebrating A Year Of Apple Pondering Google Voice  —  My, how quickly things change.  It wasn't much more than a year ago that Apple and Google were happy partners — at least from the public's perspective — working in tandem to push technology forward at a clipping pace.
Discussion: Technologizer and TiPb
Ben Kepes / GigaOM:
Nimbula Raises Another $15 Million in Funding  —  Nimbula, one of the LaunchPad finalists in this year's Structure conference, today said that it has secured $15 million in funding from Accel Partners.  The funding is set to continue Nimbula's investment in hybrid cloud computing technologies …
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Thanks:om
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Analyst: Verizon iPhone Deal Still Not Sealed  —  Apple (AAPL) will likely bring the iPhone to another U.S. carrier in the next year — but it may not be Verizon (VZ).  While the company is said to be a front-runner for the device, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu says it hasn't yet finalized …
Discussion: AppleInsider, Fortune and I4U News
Paul Lamkin / Pocket-lint:
ViewSonic to unleash Android and dual-boot Android and Windows tablets at IFA  —  ViewSonic has put the feelers out ahead of IFA next month by giving the assembled hacks the heads up to what it will be showing off at the massive tech expo.  —  And amongst all-in-one PCs (VMP74) …
Taylor Buley / Buleyean String:
North Korea Tells Forbes That It Is Not Using Twitter, Facebook Or YouTube  —  For the last two weeks, North Korean propaganda has flooded the Internet-courtesy of the Internet, interestingly enough, and not North Korea.  —  A North Korea government official tells Forbes …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
AngelPad: Seven Ex-Googlers Are About To Launch A New Incubator  —  The problem is obvious: it's hard to launch a startup.  But one potential solution, great mentorship and support, isn't so easy to come by.  With their own startup of sorts, seven ex-Googlers are going to attempt to solve that.
Discussion: Xconomy, Thanks:bobcaswell
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Reinventing E-mail, One Message at a Time  —  My e-mail inbox is a dejected, endless morass.  It's a desolate wasteland of unanswered messages that continue to appear like a never ending game of Tetris.  I can confidently say I hate my inbox and I know I'm not alone.
Scott Rosenberg / Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard:
Why trust Facebook with the future's past?  —  An odd moment during the Facebook Places rollout last week has been bugging me ever since.  —  From Caroline McCarthy's account at CNet: … From Chris O'Brien's post: … Yeah, that's dope all right.  Doper still would be for Facebook …
Discussion: Faster Forward and CNET News
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Chatroulette Taken Down.  Get Ready For Chatroulette V.2  —  Chatroulette, the service that lets strangers meet over video, has been taken down.  A message reads “The experiment #1 is over for now.  Thanks for participating - Redesigned and updated version of the website will be launched tomorrow.”
 
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 More Items: 
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Antivirus vendor Avast Software raises $100M in private equity
Discussion: TechCrunch
Sean Hollister / Engadget:
Pay no attention to that playful UI behind the Google Maps curtain (video)
Discussion: TAT, Geek.com and Fone Arena
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
Dish Network Is Joining Other Carriers in Offering Its Content for Online Viewing
Discussion: NewTeeVee, FierceIPTV and Engadget
JD Rucker / Soshable:
Tumblr's Biggest Strength is its Biggest Weakness to Google
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Most Popular Torrent Sites Of The Last Five Years
 Earlier Items: 
Jack Neff / AdAge:
Facebook, Apple's ‘Walled Gardens’ Make Analytics That Much Harder for Brands
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Thanks:steverubel
Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:
Kindle Outselling iBooks 60 To 1
Fred / A VC:
The Expanding Birthrate Of Web Startups
Discussion: Venture Capital Dispatch, Thanks:atul
Jeff Rivera / GalleyCat:
New York Times Bestseller Seth Godin to No Longer Publish Books Traditionally
Discussion: GigaOM, Seth's Blog and TeleRead
Mike Swift / Mercury News:
When you google, think Ben Gomes
Thanks:mattcutts
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Matthew Keys / The Desk:
C-SPAN's own business choices keep the network from being offered on streaming TV platforms like YouTube TV, as it stays reliant on cable and satellite funding

Christi Carras / Los Angeles Times:
LAist initiates a voluntary buyout program for staff to avoid layoffs as it faces a “significant budget shortfall” ranging from $4M-$5M in the next two years

Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
AMC Networks reports Q1 net revenue fell 17% YoY to $596M, operating income fell 36% YoY to $110M, streaming revenue grew 3% YoY to $145M, and 11.5M subscribers

 
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