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10:45 AM ET, August 21, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Enlists Jerry Seinfeld In Its Ad Battle Against Apple  —  Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.'s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld.  —  The software giant's new $300 million advertising campaign, devised by a newly hired ad agency, has been closely guarded.
RELATED:
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Microsoft enlists Seinfeld, Gates to battle “Get a Mac” ads  —  Those Apple “Get a Mac” ads have long been an annoyance to Microsoft and to Bill Gates in particular.  No surprise as an emboldened Apple with rising market share has continued to ratchet up the venom with quips like …
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Seinfeld to host the Microsoft Makeover
Discussion: MacUser
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Amazon: Persistent storage open for EC2  —  Amazon said Thursday that its Elastic Block Store feature is now available to all of its EC2 Web service customers.  The move gives Amazon Web Services a full storage suite delivered as a service.  —  EC2 is Amazon's storage service …
Discussion: RightScale Blog and Business Wire
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Microsoft launches 3D wonder Photosynth for consumers  —  On Wednesday night, Photosynth, a technology demo from Microsoft Live Labs, is graduating from its “ooh, that's pretty” status to being a viable Web service for consumers.  —  The technology, which takes a grouping of photographs …
RELATED:
Brady Forrest / O'Reilly Radar:
Photosynth is Released and Moves to Virtual Earth
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
LinkedIn launches an iPhone app, it's simple but it means business  —  If the iPhone wants to be taken serious as a business device it's going to have to have applications other than More Cowbell (the app that lets you simulate playing a cowbell).  A definite must-have for business users is LinkedIn, the professional online network.
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
RELATED:
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Facebook's forthcoming iPhone app to be more like its web site …
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Preview of Facebook for iPhone 2.0: More Like Real Facebook
Discussion: iPhone Savior and All Facebook
Fred / A VC:
Ten Things I Want On My Mobile Phone  —  1) Shazam for places - I blogged about this when I was in Scotland earlier this month.  I met a company at TechStars yesterday that might be able to build it.  I hope they do.  —  2) Shazam for people - same idea. even more possibilities for this one.
Discussion: Mobile Industry News
Jonathan D. Glater / New York Times:
Welcome, Freshmen.  Have an iPod.  —  Taking a step that professors may view as a bit counterproductive, some universities are doling out Apple iPhones and Internet-capable iPods to students.  —  The always-on Internet devices raise some novel possibilities, like tracking where students congregate.
Discussion: TeleRead
David Kravets / Threat Level:
Judge: Copyright Owners Must Consider ‘Fair Use’ Before Sending Takedown Notice  —  In the nation's first such ruling, a federal judge on Wednesday said copyright owners must consider “fair use” of their works before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites.
RELATED:
Jon Healey / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
A victory for fair use?
Discussion: Guardian Unlimited and Web Scout
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Apple hit with class-action lawsuit over iPhone 3G flakiness  —  We all knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time.  A lawsuit has been filed against Apple over what the plaintiff is referring to as the “Defective iPhone 3G,” which she hopes will become a class-action complaint.
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
10 Promising Web Platforms  —  In this post we review 10 promising developer platforms for the Web.  We're not talking about the obvious ones either, like Facebook, iPhone, OpenSocial or even Twitter.  Those have been covered extensively already.  The list below features some of our favorite ‘lesser known’ web developer platforms.
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Microsoft demands Xbox LIVE iPhone app to be set free  —  People seem to really like this App Store thing we keep hearing about, and apps are selling for the iPhone and iPod touch like hot cakes.  One too-descriptively-named app, 1337pwn XBOX Live Friends Application (iTunes link) …
Discussion: WebProNews and CrunchGear
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Facebook developers to factor in age, location  —  Facebook has announced modifications to its developer application programming interface so that the creators of third-party applications can restrict their reach by demographic—more specifically, by age or location.
Dana Blankenhorn / Open Source:
The new Intel gets open source mojo with SpikeSource  —  The biggest business story of the year may be the transformation of Intel from a tech-driven chipmaker to a marketing-driven products-and-services company.  —  I have talked about this with regard to health care but the transformation is more far-ranging than that.
Discussion: Business Wire and TechCrunchIT
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Spotted: FriendFeed Beta — coming soon  —  A new version of FriendFeed, which may or may not be called “FriendFeed Beta” is in the works, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor just confirmed to me.  —  Earlier tonight I was going through my Flickr traffic logs of all things when I noticed the mysterious beta.friendfeed.com domain.
Discussion: WinExtra and The Blog Herald
BBC:
Web browser to get ‘privacy mode’  —  Microsoft is planning a “privacy mode” for the next release of its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser.  —  By clicking a button, users of IE8 will be able to limit how much information is recorded about where they go online and what they do.
Discussion: Technology Live and Slashdot
InfoWorld:
Asustek turns to Celerons amid Atom shortage  —  Asustek Computer has turned back the clock to use Intel microprocessors first launched in 2004 in its latest Eee PC netbooks, in part due to a shortage of Intel's Atom chips.  —  Asustek also turned to Intel's older Celeron M 353 chip …
Discussion: PC World
RELATED:
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
If You're Looking To Learn Basic Economics, Here's A Free Textbook  —  Against Monopoly points us to an LA Times story about an economics professor from Caltech, R. Preston McAfee, who has written what he calls an “open source” economics textbook.  You can download the textbook for free …
Discussion: The Equity Kicker
 
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 More Items: 
Chrisbrogan Com / chrisbrogan.com:
Social Media Events Are Fragmenting
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
iPhone of Home Phones Coming Next Year
Discussion: OhGizmo!, Engadget and SlashGear
Stefanie Olsen / CNET News.com:
Widget makers get a makeover
Software Freedom Law Center:
A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance
Daniel Terdiman / Geek Gestalt:
Will Wright on the origins of ‘Spore’
Discussion: Technology Live
Jott.com:
There are new Jott Plans  —  There's something for everyone!
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Dell bets on Salesforce.com's platform as a service
Ryan Grove / wonko.com:
Yahoo! Search brings Search Assist, SearchMonkey, and more to the iPhone
 Earlier Items: 
Abbey Klaassen / AdAge:
Quantcast Nabs Yahoo Exec for Its Chief Revenue Officer
Discussion: paidContent.org
Robert Andrews / paidContent.org:
Microsoft Rejigs For Commercial Search, Multimap Leads The Way
Discussion: Search Engine Land
Dave Rubert / NaviGadget:
tomtom PRO 4000 and 8000  —  TomTom just introduced what they call …
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Intel unites the internet with TV
Eliot Van Buskirk / Listening Post:
SoundExchange Head Likes Pandora But Says It Needs Audio Ads
Discussion: Technovia and WinExtra
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Verisign's Personal Identity Portal Is Half Way To Password Bliss
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Retail sources say its closing time for current iPod line
Erica Sadun / TUAW:
The Rumor Room: iTunes Unlimited
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Liam Scott / Voice of America:
RSF says 23 journalists were jailed in Syria and 10 others were missing as of December 9; press freedom groups call for accountability for Assad's government

Katie Robertson / New York Times:
Sources: Patrick Soon-Shiong told LA Times opinion leaders not to publish an editorial critical of Trump's cabinet picks without publishing an opposing view

Katie Kilkenny / The Hollywood Reporter:
The WGA demands studios take “immediate legal action” against companies that used writers' work to train AI, in a letter to CEOs of Disney, Netflix, and others

 
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