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6:50 PM ET, December 8, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
PayPal VP On Blocking WikiLeaks: State Department Said It Was Illegal  —  Milo Yannopoulos' very first question on stage to PayPal's VP of Platform Osama Bedier was about why PayPal blocked WikiLeaks payments and froze its account.  The question was met with boos from the mostly European audience.
RELATED:
Guardian:
WikiLeaks: Who are the hackers behind Operation Payback?  —  The MasterCard website was forced offline for several hours today, following an online assault led by a shadowy group of hackers protesting against the card issuer's decision to block payments made to the WikiLeaks website.
John Battelle / John Battelle's Searchblog:
Why Wouldn't Google Mirror Wikileaks?
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Media Comes To The Defense Of WikiLeaks At LeWeb: “The Leakers Will Win”
Mike Isaac / Social Medium:
Facebook and Twitter Suspend Operation Payback Accounts
DigiTimes:
Inventec ships 60,000 Chrome OS netbooks to Google  —  Alongside Google's announcement of its new Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system as well as Chrome OS on December 7, Inventec confirmed that it has already shipped about 60,000 Chrome OS-based netbooks to Google, which are expected to be used for testing.
RELATED:
Bill Rigby / Reuters:   Google says shut out of USDA cloud computing deal
Joanna Stern / Engadget:
Google: Chrome OS laptops won't dual boot with Windows, live …
Bloomberg:
Apple, Google Asked to Pay Up as European Operators Inundated by Data  —  Google Inc., Apple Inc., and Facebook Inc. need to pitch in to help pay for the billions of dollars of network investments needed for their bandwidth-hogging services, European phone operators say.
Rose Yao / Facebook Blog:
More Control on Mobile  —  Over 200 million people use Facebook on their mobile phones to share photos, access applications and stay connected with friends.  In October, we added a dashboard to give you a way to clearly see and control the ways applications use your information.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Salesforce.com Buys Heroku For $212 Million In Cash  —  Salesforce.com has just announced that it is acquiring Heroku, which provides a Ruby application platform-as-a-service, for approximately $212 million in cash.  —  That's one hell of an exit for the startup, which was founded in 2007 and has raised only $13 million in funding.
RELATED:
James Lindenbaum / Heroku:
The Next Level  —  What if enterprise apps were built the way you'd build an agile Ruby app?  What if they were a pleasure to work with, deploy, and manage?  What if big companies could adopt the philosophies of Heroku and the Ruby community?  What if your company actually preferred you use Heroku to build apps?
Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:
Movies at Home, for $20,000  —  A proposed service aims to bring movies to homes the same day they hit theaters, a milestone that Hollywood has long anticipated with a mixture of fear and fascination.  —  But there's a catch: At the prices currently being discussed by Prima Cinema Inc. …
Nicholas Carlson / SAI:
Why Groupon Said No To Google's $6 Billion  —  Each and every Groupon board member stood to gain millions, hundreds of millions, or even more than a billion dollars by accepting Google's $6 billion offer to acquire the company.  —  Groupon cofounders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky might …
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Intellectual Ventures sues nine tech firms for patent infringement  —  Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm that's amassed a huge trove of technology patents over the years, has sued nine technology companies for patent infringement.  It's the first time Intellectual Ventures …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
CBS Interactive Head Neil Ashe Stepping Down  —  Neil Ashe (pictured here), president of CBS Interactive, is stepping down from his post.  —  CBS confirmed the move after BoomTown made inquiries recently, after hearing of various executives who had been contacted by the media giant about the position.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Marissa Mayer's Next Big Thing: “Contextual Discovery” — Google Results Without Search  —  Today at LeWeb '10 in Paris, France, our own Michael Arrington took the stage to talk with Google's Marissa Mayer.  Mayer recently took a new job within Google.  Technically, she's now the head of consumer products for the company.
Jason Roberts / Codus Operandi:
How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition  —  I began building a web-based version of PowerPoint called Preezo back in the Spring of 2005 after switching the direction of my angel-funded startup for the third time in less than a year.  Prior to that I had been working on a web collaboration concept akin …
Kevin May / Tnooz:
Google Places blocked from using TripAdvisor reviews  —  Now here is an interesting development - Google is no longer able to stream in reviews from TripAdvisor to Places pages after the user review giant blocked it.  —  TripAdvisor confirmed the move today in an email …
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Google Android phones biggest network hogs: study  —  (Reuters) - Users of Google's Android phones, such as Samsung's Galaxy S, use more data services than those with other smartphones, threatening to choke wireless network capacity, an industry study showed.
Andrew Sinkov / Evernote Blogcast:
Sponsored Accounts: A way to get Evernote Premium for groups of any size  —  Now you can give an Evernote Premium account to everyone in your company, school, organization, or family.  We've been getting frequent requests for this ever since launching Evernote.
Discussion: SiliconANGLE, GottaBeMobile and Xconomy, Thanks:keithdsouza
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Intel Girds For Netbook and Tablet Wars  —  Intel has formalized its interest in the new crop of computing devices that have the caught the attention of consumers and even office workers.  —  The chip giant has created a new business unit that it calls the netbook and tablet group.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Tracked Down: Google Just Quietly Launched An Official Latitude iPhone App  —  I guess Google really is in a feisty mood tonight.  After the Chrome Web Store, Chrome OS, some leaked Google +1 information, and a Google Groups re-launch, we've just gotten word that Google has launched an official Latitude app for the iPhone.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
(Not so) Crazy Microsoft Rumors: Microsoft store for NYC coming in 2011  —  As part of my job as a full-time Microsoft watcher, I get a lot of tips about Microsoft from customers, competitors, partners and even Softies themselves.  However, ever since I worked for PCWeek more than 15 years ago …
Discussion: The Next Web, GeekSmack and WinRumors
The Smoking Gun:
Porn Site Gave Federal Agents Free Rein  —  Investigators secretly monitored Free6.com users for 16 months … The operators of a notorious pornography web site granted federal agents administrative access to the site, giving investigators the ability to monitor traffic and public …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
SimpleGeo Launches, Aims to Make All Apps Geo-Aware  —  Are you ready to learn a whole lot more about the world around you, every time you launch a location-aware application?  Countless apps are likely to get a lot of real-world data dumped into their databases thanks to two new data sources available for free as of today.
Discussion: SimpleGeo and The Next Web
 
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 More Items: 
Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:
ViKi Raises $4.3 Million from VC All-Stars to Translate the World's Video
Andrea James / Boing Boing:
Facebook Community Council quietly closes
Ryan Kim / GigaOM:
Twitter Adds More Ways to Say Where You Are
 Earlier Items: 
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
250 Million People Now Using Facebook Connect Every Month
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
4Chan's Moot Joins Lerer Ventures As An Advisor
Discussion: Pulse2 and SAI
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Netflix inks Disney, ABC streaming deal, CFO departs
Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
Yahoo CEO: Don't Judge Me Until 2012
Electronista:
AT&T on iPhone: ‘exclusive arrangements end’
Discussion: eMoney and The Huffington Post