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4:00 PM ET, January 4, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Duff McDonald / Fortune:
Five reasons why I'm not buying Facebook  —  Before you start scrambling to get a piece of the Facebook pie, it's worth looking at a few glaring risk factors.  —  Would you give this guy $2 million?  —  Excuse me for raining on the Facebook parade, but yesterday's news about the $450 million investment …
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 …
Bloomberg:   Facebook Backer Helps Lure Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley to Silicon Valley
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 …
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report Blog:
Who owns your digital downloads?  (Hint: it's not you)  —  Steve Jobs once said, “People want to own their music.”  —  Someone better tell the folks who run the iTunes Store and its competitors.  If you buy a digital music track or album from the iTunes store or one of its competitors, you don't own it.
Discussion: Pulse2, Thanks:paulfallon
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 …
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 …
Douglas Soltys / Inside BlackBerry:
BlackBerry PlayBook Web Fidelity Video (Multimedia, Games and Social Networking)  —  Check out our latest BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet video, just in time for CES 2011!  When we posted the BlackBerry PlayBook vs. iPad comparison video, many Inside BlackBerry readers posted comments suggesting …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
SCVNGR Raises $15 Million At $100MM Valuation  —  Location based game SCVNGR has raised another $15 million in a funding round led by European VC firm Balderton Capital, with participation from previous investors Google Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.
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 …
Avner Ronen / Boxee Blog:
Boxee partners with Iomega, NAS device running Boxee is coming  —  We are happy to announce that Iomega will be bringing out a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device running the Boxee software.  —  Boxee is a software company (even though some people mistake us for a set-top box maker) …
Kevin Marks / Epeus' epigone:
Two faces of Android  —  The most remarkable thing about Android is that it is the first widely adopted Open Source client operating system.  It's long been clear that Open Source is the best way to preserve infrastructural code from the vicissitudes of corporate and governmental volatility …
Thanks:kevinmarks
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Sony's PlayStation Phone finally gets Xperia, PlayStation logos  —  We've heard of the mysterious, still-totally-unofficial PlayStation Phone running Android 2.2 in the past, but we'd also heard it could run 3.0 — thing is, that was back before we knew Gingerbread would be 2.3 …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Netflix' Next Destination: On Your Remote Control  —  Brilliant idea: Netflix and a number of consumer electronics companies have joined in a development effort to put Netflix-branded one-click buttons on remote controls that operate Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray disc players and other devices.
DealBook:
Qualcomm Nears $3.5 Billion Deal for Atheros  —  Qualcomm is near a deal to buy Atheros Communications, a semiconductor manufacturing company, for about $45 per share, or $3.5 billion, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks.  —  A deal could be announced as soon as Wednesday …
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 …
Sarah Rotman Epps / Forrester Blogs:
US Tablet Sales Will More Than Double This Year  —  Today Forrester published its revised US consumer tablet forecast, updating its previous forecast from June 2010.  When Apple's iPad first debuted, we saw the device as a game-changer but were too conservative with our forecast.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
With Fusion, AMD plans to stop being the underdog in chips  —  Making good on plans it laid in 2006, Advanced Micro Devices is finally announcing that its Fusion family of computer chips, which combine graphics functions with general computing power, are ready for prime time.
Andrew Munchbach / BGR:
Garmin announces nüvi 2400 series GPS units, StreetPilot iPhone app  —  Today, via a barrage of press releases, navigation company Garmin announced its nüvi 2400 series of personal GPS devices and its first iPhone navigation application, StreetPilot.
Kat Hannaford / Gizmodo:
Sprint's HTC EVO Shift 4G On Sale January 9th  —  After flurries of leaks, HTC's EVO Shift 4G smartphone has been introduced by exclusive carrier Sprint, which'll have it on shelves January 9th at $150.  As expected, it's a slide-out QWERTY keyboard phone with a 3.6-inch touchscreen.
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
HP holding webOS event February 9th; PalmPad line may be revealed  —  Uh oh, it's definitely going down — in addition to the flood of tablet devices headed to CES and Apple's rumored next event detailing the new iPad around February, HP just sent out invites to a webOS event of its own happening on February 9th.
Rachael King / Business Week:
Ditch Your Wallet and Pay by Phone  —  Using 200 of its San Francisco staff, the bank will test mobile-phone payments for six months—and may launch a commercial service soon after  —  Wells Fargo (WFC) is again trying to make mobile payments at restaurants and retailers mainstream, three years after an earlier attempt lost steam.
Larry Hardesty / MIT 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 …
Jonathan E. Skillings / CNET News:
Motorola's split takes effect  —  The long-planned breakup of Motorola is now a reality.  —  The two new companies both began trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange, Motorola Mobility Holdings under the ticker MMI and Motorola Solutions as MSI.
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 …
Vlad Savov / Engadget:
Amazon promises tablet-specific Kindle app for Android and Windows slates  —  You can read your Amazon-bought ebooks on your Kindle, your PC, your Mac, your mobile, and even on your iPad.  Now, it's time to have them, contained in a tailor-made application, on your Android and Windows tablets as well.
Pew Research Center:
Internet Gains on Television as Public's Main News Source  —  More Young People Cite Internet than TV  —  The internet is slowly closing in on television as Americans' main source of national and international news.  Currently, 41% say they get most of their news about national …
 
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 More Items: 
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
So You Just Bought Sex.com For $13 Million - Now What?
Diane Bartz / Reuters:
Court backs Uniloc in patent fight with Microsoft
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
Saudi Arabia blocks MobileMe?
Reuters:
Skype's partner says it is legal in China
Discussion: TechEye
 Earlier Items: 
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Big Data Giant Joins InfoChimps to Save the World's Structured Information
Charles Ying / satine.org:
The Care and Feeding of the Android GPU
Bill Slawski / SEO by the Sea:
A Google Like Button: Adsense for Social Network Sharers?
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
LimeWire seeks data from Amazon in bid to avoid big payout to RIAA
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Windows 7 breaks 20% share barrier
Discussion: Fast Company and TechEye
Horace Dediu / asymco:
How sticky is Android?  —  There is an assumption floating around …
Electronista:
Study: 40% of iPad owners have Kindles too
Discussion: App Advice, WinRumors and TechCrunch
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles take minority stakes in The Daily Beast; Sherwood will be CEO and publisher, and Coles will be chief creative and content officer

Laurence Peter / BBC:
Russia's Ministry of Justice labels BBC Russian correspondent Ilya Barabanov and science reporter Asya Kazantseva as “foreign agents”; both now live abroad

Sahil Patel / The Information:
Sources: Disney plans old-style TV channels within Disney+, with a continuous, scheduled stream of shows that are focused on certain genres like Star Wars
 
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