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12:05 PM ET, August 21, 2006

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The elephant in the kitchen  —  Dare Obasanjo, of Microsoft, just pulled the ad hominem card.  In debate class in high school the teacher would instantly award the other side a win if you ever pulled that card.  Why?  Because it demonstrated you lost your cool and couldn't win through sheer logic …
RELATED ITEMS:
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Is Microsoft really the largest blog vendor?  —  Microsofties take it on face value that they host the most blogs.  They even love shoving it in your face.  Yesterday someone who works on the Windows Live team was taunting me with "influentials don't matter, we got to be #1 and we don't care …
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:   "Where's the blog?" in Windows Live Spaces?
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Scoble says half of all Live Spaces aren't blogs*
Discussion: Message and Jeff Sandquist
Torres Talking:   What defines a blog?  —  Scoble is trying hard to convince people …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
FeedCrier, another way to act fast with RSS and IM  —  Adam Kalsey, a founder and former CTO of RSS vendor Pheedo, released a new service last night called FeedCrier that makes it easy to receive rapid notification of new items in an RSS feed by IM.  The service currently supports only AIM but Kalsey says that will change soon.
RELATED ITEMS:
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
A Quantum Leap for Cell Phones  —  A new no-buttons handset by Pilotfish and Synaptics signals that mobiles as we know them may soon be a thing of the past  —  It's likely to evoke the children's song inquiring, "Where's the button?"  On Aug. 21, designer Pilotfish and sensor maker Synaptics …
Nathan Weinberg / InsideGoogle:
THE ADSENSE GAME  —  Joel Comm has created a pretty nifty AdSense game, a colorful Flash game that asks you to create, market, and optimize a website to earn money off AdSense ads.  While I like the game, which is reminiscint of Lemonade Tycoon, I feel like I must be missing something …
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
Google launches free, kick-ass word-processor  —  Google has re-lauched Writely, the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta.  Writely does everything Word does, for free — and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!).
Discussion: Scobleizer
RELATED ITEMS:
Garett Rogers / Googling Google:
Need a Writely invitation? No you don't
Discussion: Semantic@BlogMatrix
Associated Press:
Holdout Bands Give In to iTunes  —  DETROIT — Bob Seger turned the page, and Metallica finally found justice for online fans.  Now, only a few remaining big-name musical acts refuse to make their songs available on Apple Computer's popular iTunes Music Store.
Discussion: Smalltalk Tidbits … and Slashdot
Gizmodo:
Box Pics, Specs of Sprint's Treo 700wx Leaked, August 31 Release Date  —  The world is holding its breath waiting for more details on Sprint's version of the Palm Treo 700w, and, lo and behold, we've got some more info on the little wundergadget.  Due to arrive on August 31 …
Discussion: broadbandreports.com
Gizmodo:
Textable iBall, the Big Ball That Displays Text Messages  —  Spacewriter's Textable iBall is poised to change the way you read text messages, since, apparently, reading text messages on a cellphone is passé.  Once you've inserted the proper SIM card, the 11-inch iBall can display text messages …
Discussion: Gearlog
comScore:
Yahoo! Sites Register a Moderate Share Gain for the Second Consecutive Month  —  comScore Releases July U.S. Search Engine Rankings  —  comScore Networks today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines.  In July 2006, Yahoo! Sites posted modest market share gains …
David Hornik / VentureBlog:
TechCrunch August Capital Party  —  Like a canary in the coal mine breathing its final breath, some are insisting that the gigantic, buzz-engorged TechCrunch August Capital Party that I hosted this past Friday is a sure harbinger of Bubble 2.0.  One the one hand, it was a big event.
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Farecast Goes Coast to Coast  —  Farecast, the plane ticket price predictor site, is now live in 55 U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Atlanta.  —  The company is building a direct competitor to travel-oriented vertical search engines Kayak …
David N. Goodman / Associated Press:
Recycled cell phones help drive Third World wireless boom  —  DEXTER, Mich. - With the number of cell phones in use worldwide hitting 2 billion and rising, recycled phones are playing a crucial role in the spread of wireless communications across the developing world, where land lines can be costly or unavailable.
Evan Blass / Engadget:
Archos officially announces all five Generation 4 devices  —  Not too many surprises here — after all, we've already seen a full review of one of these new models — but now PMP pioneer Archos has officially taken the wraps off of all the so-called Generation 4 devices we initially spotted over two months ago.
Discussion: Anything But iPod
Luke / Terminally Incoherent:
What does your browser reveal about you?  —  I often tend to judge people based on the type of browser they use.  Believe it or not, the choice of your favorite browser reveals a lot about your personality.  —  IE 5.0:  —  You only use your computer for IM, email and Myspace.
Discussion: digg
 
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 More Items: 
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Get Ready For Online Video Price Wars
Discussion: B2Day
Zephoria / apophenia:
Research on Social Network Sites
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Cingular 8525 (HTC Hermes) renderings leaked?
Discussion: Gizmodo and CrunchGear
Marshall Kirkpatrick / TechCrunch:
AmateurIllustrator nails niche social networking
Discussion: Mashable!
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The Mojito Show (Saturday at 2 p.m. is next taping)
 Earlier Items: 
Seth Finkelstein / Infothought:
Bogospheric Calvinism, or Unread != Unworthy
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Google's $7.4 Billion Booty
Discussion: Texas Startup Blog
Evan / Popgadget:
MP3 toilet  —  Boy, this just shows how far we are behind the Japanese.
Discussion: Ubergizmo and Things That
Rachel / cre8d design blog:
Wordpress Quickstart Screencast Tutorial (1)