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8:00 PM ET, May 12, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Dan Lyons / The Daily Beast:
Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear on Google  —  THE DAILY BEAST ON:  —  The social network secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about the search giant, The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons reveals—a caper that is blowing up in their face, and escalating their war.
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google  —  Facebook secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google, says Dan Lyons in a jaw dropping story at the Daily Beast.  —  For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley.
Beth Krietsch / PRWeek US:   Burson-Marsteller and Facebook part ways
Ben Popper / Betabeat:
Smear Story Source Speaks: Facebook Wanted to Stab Google in the Back
Tonya Garcia / PRNewser:
B-M Says Facebook Assignment “Should Have Been Declined”
Associated Press:
How bin Laden emailed without being detected by US  —  WASHINGTON - Despite having no Internet access in his hideout, Osama bin Laden was a prolific email writer who built a painstaking system that kept him one step ahead of the U.S. government's best eavesdroppers.
Wall Street Journal:
Google Near DOJ Settlement Over Online Drug Ads  —  Google Inc. is close to settling a U.S. criminal investigation into allegations it made hundreds of millions of dollars by accepting ads from online pharmacies that break U.S. laws, according to people familiar with the matter.
RELATED:
Pamela Parker / Search Engine Land:
Report: Google's $500M DOJ Mystery Revealed  —  Earlier this week, Google filed a mysterious report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying it was setting aside $500 million related to a “potential resolution” of an advertising-related probe being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Discussion: The Tech Trade and New York Times
Donald Melanson / Engadget:
Netflix releases Android app for select HTC phones, Samsung Nexus S  —  Well, it looks like the LG Revolution won't be the first Android phone to get Netflix after all.  The app has just hit the Android Market and is apparently available for HTC Incredible, Nexus One, Evo 4G, and G2 …
Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:
Is Google's Chromebook The Death Knell For Antivirus?  —  Updated and corrected below.  —  The antivirus industry likely let out a collective groan when Google first made a familiar-sounding boast Wednesday: that the just-launched laptops it's calling Chromebooks have “security built …
RELATED:
Andrew Song / Facebook:
Introducing Login Approvals  —  Facebook has always been committed to both protecting our users' account and information, as well as giving them more control over their Facebook experience.  From our User Operations team, who work to re-secure compromised accounts, to the Engineering team …
Discussion: Geek.com, All Facebook and WebProNews
RELATED:
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Twitter Updates Mac Client With Multiple Timelines, Cleaner Design, Auto-Complete And More  —  Twitter for Mac, which launched earlier this year with the rollout of Apple's Mac App Store, is getting its first major update today.  —  Besides a design update, you can now see multiple timelines …
Nilay Patel / This is my next:
How Google controls Android: digging deep into the Skyhook filings  —  You might remember that a company called Skyhook Wireless sued Google back in September for business interference and patent infringement — the Skyhook XPS WiFi and cell tower positioning system was all set to ship …
Reuters:
AT&T, T-Mobile USA break-up is $6 billion: sources  —  (Reuters) - AT&T Inc (T.N) has promised to give Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) $6 billion in assets, services and cash as a break-up fee if U.S. regulators reject its proposed $39 billion purchase of the German company's T-Mobile USA, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Nielsen Wire:
Cue the Music: Driven by Digital, Music Sales up in 2011  —  Music sales in the U.S. are up 1.6 percent in 2011, according to The Nielsen Company, as digital album and track sales saw dramatic growth through May 8.  While physical albums saw a decline in year-over-year sales from the same period in 2010 …
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple Introduces us to a Live Chameleon-Like Screen Saver Designed Specifically for iOS Devices & Fashion Accessories  —  Apple filed for the “Apple” trademark in China this week which we noted as carrying a twist.  We noticed that Apple had, for the first time, emphasized fashion accessories …
Jay Yarow / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
RON CONWAY: The Scariest Man In Silicon Valley  —  Legendary Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway is raising a new fund for his investment firm SV Angel, according to an SEC filing.  —  So far, he's raised $12 million out of $40 million planned.  He should have no problem raising the remaining $28 million.
Discussion: @eghosao
Peter Delevett / Mercury News:
Cloud computing pioneer Martin Odersky takes wraps off his new company Typesafe  —  Eight years ago, German programmer Martin Odersky developed a new computer language he hoped would be an alternative to the venerable Java — one that would let applications scale easily to handle huge workloads.
Discussion: typesafe's blog
RELATED:
Brad Stone / Business Week:
Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg  —  Mark Zuckerberg's No. 2 provides “adult supervision” at the company, trying to keep growth at an optimum level  —  On a Tuesday afternoon in late April, 30 managers of Facebook's various business units come together to discuss a matter that preoccupies …
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Intel working on new Atom chip architecture  —  Intel is working on a new Atom chip architecture that goes beyond the 3D transistors announced last week as the chip giant accelerates development of its most power-efficient chip design.  —  The new Atom-based “micro-architecture,” codenamed …
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Remember that iPad Wi-Fi Bug?  It's Back...And Affecting iPhones, Too  —  A little over a year ago, some new iPad owners found they were having issues with the device's Wi-Fi connection.  Signals were weak, or worse, dropped altogether.  The only solution at the time, before Apple released a fix …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Comcast Offers Help to The Pirate Bay, Problems Fixed  —  Starting 24 hours ago, nearly all Comcast subscribers were unable to access The Pirate Bay.  Although Comcast is not the only ISP affected by the connectivity issue, the problems appear to be most widespread in their network.
Jillian York / Aljazeera:
Africa's cascade of Internet censorship  —  As governments fear popular protest movements, filtering has been initiated in Ethiopia, Uganda, Ivory Coast and beyond.  —  Despite much attention paid to Egypt and Libya's Internet shutdowns, Tunisia's pervasive Internet filtering …
Kashmir Hill / The Not-So Private Parts:
The White House Offers Up A National Data Breach Law  —  Earlier this week, I asked, “how do we deal with data breaches?”  The White House has a response: legislation.  It's taken note of the rash of data breaches of late (Perhaps President Obama owns a Sony Playstation?) …
RELATED:
Howard A. Schmidt / White House.gov Blog:
The Administration Unveils its Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal
Discussion: Network World and SC Magazine US
Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:
Blogger Goes Down, Taking 30 Hours of Posts and Comments With It  —  Google's Blogger service has been offline or unreliable for much of the day, with Blogger-hosted blogs changed to read-only mode, and posts and comments made after 7:37 a.m. PDT on May 11, 2011, removed.
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and The Next Web
 
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 More Items: 
Mikael Ricknäs / Network World:
35 percent use mobile apps before getting out of bed
Discussion: Ericsson News Center and TUAW
Dan Goodin / The Register:
FBI fights to protect ISPs that snoop on their customers
Discussion: @qthrul and Blog of Rights
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Lime Wire to pay record labels $105 million, ends suit
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft to accelerate its CRM release schedule
Discussion: MSDN Blogs and The Next Web
Brian Caulfield / Shiny Objects:
Nvidia Beats EPS, Revenue Estimates [Updated]
Joelle Tessler / Associated Press:
Disney-owned company to pay $3M to settle FTC case
 Earlier Items: 
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Could BitTorrent Be The Distributed Social Network People Have Been Clamoring For?
Discussion: GigaOM, L.A. Times Tech Blog and @xamat, Thanks:alliewag
Peter Delevett / Mercury News:
Wiretap: Google's Eric Schmidt chooses Palo Alto penthouse for his venture capital operation
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Social media ad network Technorati names a new CEO
Discussion: paidContent and Pulse2
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
How Amazon Controls Ecommerce (Slides)
Nat Ives / AdAge:
New York Times' Share of Newspaper Sites' Traffic Hits 12-Month Low
Discussion: Techland, Pulse2 and NYConvergence.com