Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
11:55 AM ET, July 25, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Full Text Of AOL Email: XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile And Bluestring To Shut Down  —  Below is the full text of the email AOL EVP Kevin Conroy sent out to staff on July 14, outlining the reorganization of his product groups and announcing the “sunsetting” of XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile and Bluestring.
RELATED:
Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com:
Reports: AOL cuts XDrive, Pictures, some blogs
Discussion: TechCrunch
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
More AOL Cost-Cutting: Dumping Properties; Cutting Back On Blogs (TWX)
Discussion: AppScout
Rafat Ali / paidContent.org:
AOL Trimming Up For Sale; Sun Sets On XDrive, AOL Pictures, Mobile And Others
RELATED:
Lester Haines / The Register:
Inquirer celebrates spammer murder-suicide  —  ‘Yay.  No, YAY!’  —  Comment There's an air of celebration down at The Inquirer at the news that fugitive spammer Eddie Davidson decided to do the decent thing and kill himself.  —  Here's our take on the story, but check out the opposition's view on the whole sorry affair.
Discussion: WebProNews
Charlie Demerjian / Inquirer:
Escaped spammer kills himself  —  Comment Yay.  No, YAY!  —  NOT ALL STORIES have a happy ending, but the tale of escaped spam king Edward “Eddie” Davidson sure does.  After walking away from prison, he got a gun, killed his family, then killed himself.  —  While it is hard not to feel bad …
Margaret Kane / CNET News.com:   Escaped ‘spam king’ allegedly kills self, family
Andru Edwards / Gear Live:
Apple beta testing iPhone 2.1 firmware, adding more GPS features  —  We just got word that Apple has released a beta version of iPhone OS 2.1 to developers.  Along with the 2.1 firmware, a new version of the iPhone SDK has been seeded as well, but the new SDK can't be used for submitting applications to the App Store at the moment.
RELATED:
Chris Foresman / Infinite Loop:
Apple releases iPhone 2.1 beta to registered developers only  —  Apple has posted a beta of iPhone OS 2.1 to its iPhone Dev Center.  The beta firmware also has a new SDK, allowing developers start working with the new functionality.  However, according to several developers …
Charlie Sorrel / Gadget Lab:   IPhone 2.1 Update to Bring Turn-by-Turn GPS?
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple seeds iPhone 2.1 with directional GPS, push notification
Discussion: The iPhone Blog and Apple Gazette
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Android Is For The Masses, iPhone For The Rich  —  Our network blog last100 has an interesting interview with Nicolas Gramlich, founder of anddev.org - an online community for Android developers.  As editor Steve O'Hear notes in his intro, there have been issues with Google's mobile OS of late …
Discussion: TeleRead
RELATED:
Antone Gonsalves / InformationWeek:
Android, Symbian Expected To Become One OS
Discussion: AndroidGuys and Engadget
Steve O'Hear / last100:
Q&A: Nicolas Gramlich of anddev.org talks Android, Google's …
Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com:
Microsoft tries to one-up Google PageRank  —  Though a distant third place to Google, Microsoft thinks it can teach its rival a thing or two about searching the Internet.  —  A big part of Google's rise to search engine leadership was an algorithm called PageRank that assesses …
Chris Morris / Forbes:
Doom'ing The iPhone  —  While he's best known for creating graphics engines that push systems to their limits, game designer John Carmack is spending a lot of time with mobile gaming these days.  —  The co-founder of id Software is considered one of the creators of the first-person shooter genre …
Discussion: Digital Daily and Touch Arcade
Dianne See Morrison / paidContent.org:
Italian Prosecutors To Charge Google Execs Over Third-Party Content  —  Four Google (NSDQ: GOOG) executives may be standing trial over failing to adequately monitor third-party content posted to their Italian language site.  Italian prosecutors are preparing to file charges in a two-year old case …
Discussion: eWeek, Startup Meme and Beyond Search
RELATED:
Alessandra Galloni / Wall Street Journal:   Italy Is to File Charges Against Google Executives
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Bomb Blasts Hit Bangalore, Impact to Be Felt in Silicon Valley  —  Updated at the bottom: Over the past few years, the quaint and sleepy town of Bangalore has been transformed into a highly compressed version of Silicon Valley, only with worse housing and transportation problems.
RELATED:
Neha Singh / Reuters:   Eight small blasts hit Indian IT city of Bangalore
PR Newswire:
Netflix Announces Q2 2008 Financial Results  —  Subscribers - 8.4 million Revenue - $337.6 million GAAP Net Income - $26.6 million GAAP EPS - $0.42 per diluted share  —  Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX - News) today reported results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008.
Daniel AJ Sokolov / heise Security UK:
Speculation over back door in Skype  —  According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged.  The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations.  At a meeting with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception …
Discussion: Memex 1.1, open and Zero Day
Kim Hart / Washington Post:
High-Stakes Race to Unlock a Wider Web  —  Critics Say New Technology May Hinder TV Signals  —  The nation's top technology companies have spent millions of dollars and nearly two years building devices, poring over laptops and working in federal labs trying to come up with a new way of …
Discussion: Digg
Jeff Atwood / Coding Horror:
Coding Without Comments  —  If peppering your code with lots of comments is good, then having zillions of comments in your code must be great, right?  Not quite.  Excess is one way good comments go bad: … I'm constantly running across comments from developers who don't seem to understand …
Discussion: webmonkey
Jim Kerstetter / CNET News.com:
Report: MySpace could work with Amazon on music service  —  Amazon.com could become the e-commerce engine behind the MySpace Music service expected to launch in September, according to a report on TechCrunch.  —  In April, MySpace, which is already used by young acts trying to promote their music …
Discussion: TechCrunch
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
DRM still sucks: Yahoo Music going dark, taking keys with it  —  The bad dream of DRM continues.  Yahoo e-mailed its Yahoo! Music Store customers yesterday, telling them it will be closing for good—and the company will take its DRM license key servers offline on September 30, 2008.
RELATED:
Corynne McSherry / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Here We Go Again: Yahoo! Music Throws Away the DRM Keys
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 11:55 AM ET, July 25, 2008.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Getting things done (GTD): Streamlining productivity  —  Getting Things Done (GTD) is more than just a productivity method; it's a framework designed to help you regain control of your workload, reduce stress, and allow you to focus on what truly matters.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Sponsor Techmeme
 
 See Also: 
Techmeme: site main
Techmeme River: reverse chronological Techmeme
Techmeme Mobile: for phones
Techmeme Leaderboard: Techmeme's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Techmeme RSS feed
Techmeme on X
Techmeme on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
Users can automatically encrypt Gmail traffic
Discussion: Google Blogoscoped and Bloggle
Holly Jackson / CNET News.com:
Software makers threaten to sue eBay over counterfeits
Discussion: Tech Daily Dose
Tom Magrino / ZDNet:
Scrabble-Scrabulous standoff spells L-A-W-S-U-I-T
James Quinn / Telegraph:
Thomson Reuters to venture into television
New York Times:
Microsoft Seeks an Ad Friend in Facebook
comScore:
Are We There Yet? comScore M:Metrics Reports Mobile Map Use Grows …
Svetlana Gladkova / Profy.Com:
Google's Begun Growing Very Fast
Discussion: Mashable!
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute:
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH CANCER INSTITUTE
 Earlier Items: 
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Loopt strikes a deal to make massive use of GPS data cost effective
Web 2.0 Asia:
A discouraging news for Korean open web movement
Discussion: open
Media Molecule hits little big time / BBC:
Game On  —  Sony has very high hopes for LittleBigPlanet
Dave McClure / Master of 500 Hats:
Second Age of Aquarius: Facebook Connect + Facebook Payments …
Discussion: Identity 2.0, Wikinomics and GigaOM
Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Believe In Superstitions? Avoid The Word “me” In Product Names
Discussion: New York Times and MacBlogz
Joe McDonald / Associated Press:
China says has more people surfing the Web than US
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
Griping Online? Comcast Hears and Talks Back
Discussion: Gizmodo
Computerworld:
Forrester: Windows Vista rejected like ‘new Coke’ by enterprises
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Ryan Grim / Drop Site News:
An investigation finds that OCCRP, which works with major newspapers on scoops like the Panama Papers, is primarily bankrolled by the US and its Western allies

Kat Tenbarge / NBC News:
Some reporters say they are finding more readers and less hate on Bluesky, as Elon Musk turns X into an increasingly difficult place for journalists

John Jurgensen / Wall Street Journal:
Paramount co-CEO Chris McCarthy aims to revitalize Showtime by using successful formulas like Yellowstone from Paramount+ and investing in high-profile projects

 
Sister Sites:

Mediagazer
 Top news and commentary for media professionals from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page