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8:00 AM ET, January 4, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Steven M. Davidoff / DealBook:
Facebook and the 500-Person Threshold  —  Goldman Sachs's investment in Facebook once again raises the issue of whether the Securities and Exchange Commission will force the social networking company into an initial public offering.  In particular, this issue arises because of the special purpose vehicle …
RELATED:
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
Facebook, Twitter, & startup valuations - The best properties always look too expensive  —  The best properties always look too expensive.  Market leaders command the highest prices.  It is only a year or two later that they look like great deals.  The experts thought Microsoft was crazy …
Discussion: TechCrunch, EngageDigital, DealBook and SAI, Thanks:denimsmith
Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs Investment in Facebook May Draw SEC Scrutiny
David Kirkpatrick / The Daily Beast:
Facebook's $50 Billion Goldman Goldmine: Don't Expect an IPO
Discussion: GigaOM, Mediaite, SAI and DealBook
Brier Dudley / Seattle Times:
Consumer Electronics Show comes to Las Vegas this week  —  At CES, more than 2,500 companies are presenting new electronics and tech products.  At least 120,000 attendees from 130 countries are expected to peruse the show floor.  —  You'd think people would have enough gadgets …
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft Supposedly Showing Off Its Answer To Apple TV And Google TV At CES  —  Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been a big hit for entertainment and online video, and we've heard that Microsoft is trying to court more media companies to the Xbox.  —  But it looks like the company is also going to unveil …
Lydia Dishmantoday / Fast Company:
Q&A Site Quora Builds Buzz With A-List Answerers  —  It's not just what gets answered here, but who's doing the answering.  No matter what your question, Charlie Cheever, Adam D'Angelo, and the Quora team are confident you'll find an expert answer on their site.
Discussion: Twittercism and TechCrunch
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Quora Fact-Checks Quora On User Milestone
Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:
Honeycomb to Require Powerful Processor, Screen: OEM  —  Google's new Android Honeycomb tablet OS will require a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor to run properly, said Bobby Cha, managing director of Korean consumer electronics firm Enspert.  —  That means that many existing Android tablets …
Donya Blaze / WebNewser:
Marissa Mayer on Google's Failed Groupon Bid  —  After incessant buzz that Google was looking to buy Groupon, word finally came that the fast-growing “deal of the day” company had turned the tech giant down.  So, does that mean Google might launch its own coupon-type service instead?
Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:
New iTunes Features Aim To Outdo DVD  —  Some of the coolest so-called “extras” embedded only on the iTunes' version of several recent film releases from Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures aren't even mentioned in their promotional materials.  That's because Sony Pictures Home Entertainment …
Andrew Munchbach / BGR:
Best Buy's new ‘Buy Back’ program to launch January 5th for phones, laptops, tablets, and TVs  —  One of our trusted Best Buy sources has come through with several documents that provide additional details on the retailer's new Buy Back program.  The new protection plan …
Bill Slawski / SEO by the Sea:
A Google Like Button: Adsense for Social Network Sharers?  —  A Google patent application published last week describes how Google might enable visitors to websites to share information that they've found with others on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites.
Jeff Atwood / Coding Horror:
Trouble In the House of Google  —  Let's look at where stackoverflow.com traffic came from for the year of 2010.  —  When 88.2% of all traffic for your website comes from a single source, criticizing that single source feels ... risky.  And perhaps a bit churlish, like looking a gift horse in the mouth …
Discussion: Guardian, Anil Dash and Felix Salmon
Jessi Hempel / Fortune:
What the hell is going on with TV?  —  Google TV.  Xbox.  Apple TV.  Roku.  All these gadgets promise to make television more like the web.  There's just one hitch: None of them are ready for primetime.  —  By Jessi Hempel, senior writer  —  You don't have to wait for Thursday nights to watch The Office these days.
StatCounter Global Stats:
Firefox overtakes Internet Explorer in Europe in browser wars  — Internet Explorer loses crown in major market for first time  —  Boston, USA and Dublin, Ireland; Tuesday 4th January, 2011: Firefox overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to become the number one browser in Europe …
Discussion: The Next Web
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
In the Works: A Google Mobile Payment Service?  —  “You'll be able to walk in a store and do commerce,” says Google's Eric Schmidt.  “You'd bump for everything and eventually replace credit cards”  —  Google (GOOG) is considering building a payment and advertising service that would let users buy milk …
Paul Buchheit:
Angel investing, my first three years  —  I started investing in startups with the assumption that I don't know what I'm doing (which is always true), but that the only way to actually learn anything is through experience.  Therefore, my goal was to invest in a variety of startups …
Discussion: TechCrunch and VentureBeat, Thanks:louisgray
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Reddit Has Banner Year, Boasts 232% Traffic Growth  —  Social news site Reddit has just posted some interesting statistics on a remarkable 2010 filled with traffic spikes and user engagement growth.  Most notable?  The jump in pageviews from 250 million in January of 2010 to 829 million in December of 2010, a 232% growth.
Charles Ying / satine.org:
The Care and Feeding of the Android GPU  —  Android has two major technical UX problems: animation performance and touch responsiveness.  —  Android's UX architecture needs work.  UI compositing and the view system are both primarily done in software.  Garbage collection and async operations frequently block UI rendering.
Nick Farrell / Inquirer:
Intel's Sandy Bridge sucks up to Hollywood with DRM  —  CHIPMAKER Intel has cut a deal with Hollywood in its Sandy Bridge chips to put digital restrictions management (DRM) in them.  —  Intel's sellout to the big media companies makes it ‘safer’ for Hollywood studios to offer premium movies …
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Windows 7 breaks 20% share barrier  —  But XP projected to still account for 13% when it's retired in 2014  —  Computerworld - Windows 7 cracked the 20% share mark last month, a milestone the problem-plagued Vista never reached, a Web measurement vendor said over the weekend.
Discussion: TechEye and Electronista
Horace Dediu / asymco:
How sticky is Android?  —  There is an assumption floating around the debates in this and other forums that the “battle” between mobile platforms is a land grab.  The unspoken implication of this assumption is that once a user is captured she is permanently locked into the chosen platform never …
Electronista:
Study: 40% of iPad owners have Kindles too  —  Despite stereotypes, almost half of iPad owners also have a Kindle at the same time, JPMorgan found in a new study.  About 40 percent have Amazon's e-reader, and another 23 percent still plan to buy one in the next year.
Discussion: TechCrunch, ThinkMobile and SAI
News Office:
The surprising usefulness of sloppy arithmetic  —  Ask a computer to add 100 and 100, and its answer will be 200.  But what if it sometimes answered 202, and sometimes 199, or any other number within about 1 percent of the correct answer?  —  Arithmetic circuits that returned such imprecise answers …
Discussion: Softpedia News
Adam DuVander / ProgrammableWeb:
API Growth Doubles in 2010, Social and Mobile Are Trends  —  Was 2010 the year of the API?  Some have claimed this each of the last five years, with the next always eclipsing the previous.  There were 1,019 new APIs added to our API directory in 2010, two times the number added in 2009.
Hugo Miller / Bloomberg:
Motorola's Jha Seeks to Defy History After Phone-Unit Spinoff  —  Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) — Motorola Mobility Inc., the mobile- phone maker that's being spun off from Motorola Inc. today, won't just need to challenge Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. to succeed.  It also needs to defy history.
Discussion: BetaNews
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
HTC EVO Shift 4G in the wild!  —  QWERTY fans, rejoice: at this point, we're pretty sure this thing's getting announced this week, seeing how it's out and about in retail packaging.  Here's Sprint's EVO Shift 4G in all its in-the-wild glory — and yes, it turns out it's definitely called the EVO Shift 4G …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter And Facebook Really Are Killing RSS (At Least For TechCrunch Visitors)  —  Earlier today, we ran a “TechCrunch 2010 In Review” post featuring some key data WordPress.com sent our way for 2010.  Interesting stuff all around.  However, as some people have noticed, in our top referrers for the year …
 
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 More Items: 
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
LimeWire seeks data from Amazon in bid to avoid big payout to RIAA
Wall Street Journal:
Myspace Prepares Downsizing, Layoffs
Discussion: Company Town, CNBC and Variety
Tomio Geron / Venture Capital Dispatch:
New Investment Fund Values Twitter At $4.1 Billion
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
J.P. Morgan: Global E-Commerce Revenue To Grow By 19 Percent In 2011 To $680B
Discussion: AdExchanger.com
Byron Acohido / The Last Watchdog:
Google discloses IE ‘cross fuzz’ flaw before Microsoft can issue patch
Discussion: Darknet, Computerworld and The Register
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Steve Case's New Soapbox for Defending AOL: Quora
Discussion: Steve Case on Quora, Thanks:mathewi
Greg Bensinger / Bloomberg:
Sprint Declines to Buy Clearwire Debt Before Deadline
Discussion: FierceWireless and IntoMobile
 Earlier Items: 
Andy Kessler / Wall Street Journal:
How Videogames Are Changing the Economy
Discussion: Techdirt
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Did StumbleUpon just pass Facebook for social media traffic?
Discussion: SelectStart, Soshable and WebProNews, Thanks:martinsfp
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Time For Google To Leave Italy? …
Discussion: Engadget and Search Engine Land
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft: Missing Hotmail e-mails are back
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Apple's market cap tops $300 billion
Nielsen Wire:
Apple Leads Smartphone Race, while Android Attracts Most Recent Customers