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6:35 PM ET, October 15, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Matt Mullenweg:
PollDaddy Goes Automattic  —  It's another exciting day here at Automattic.  Today we finally get to announce that we've acquired the market-leading poll and survey service PollDaddy.  —  For a year or two now, I've been minorly obsessed with polls and surveys as a method of lightweight interaction …
RELATED:
Lenny / PollDaddy Blog:
Automattic Acquires PollDaddy!
Discussion: Webware.com
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
WordPress Acquires Irish Startup Polldaddy
Discussion: VentureBeat
Business Wire:
eBay Inc. Reports Third Quarter 2008 Results  —  SAN JOSE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - News) today reported financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2008.  The ecommerce company posted third quarter revenue of $2.12 billion, up $228 million from the same period last year.
RELATED:
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:   ebay beats Q3, adjusts guidance for Q4, FY08
Elon Musk / All Tesla Motors Blogs:
Extraordinary times require focus  —  Chairman of the Board, Product Architect and CEO  —  These are extraordinary times.  The global financial system has gone through the worst crisis since the Great Depression, and the effects are only beginning to wind their way through every facet of the economy.
Peter Glaskowsky / Speeds and feeds:
The new MacBooks: Beauty more than skin deep  —  I couldn't be at the Tuesday morning Apple launch event for the new MacBook and MacBook Pro systems, but I've had a chance to review the announcements.  —  Normally I focus on the technology in new products, but this time …
RELATED:
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Finally, a VC Firm With The Balls To Tell It Like It Is  —  We apologize to the poor pr person who just pitched us yet another memo from either an investor or an entrepreneur about how to survive the meltdown.  We told them we were burnt out on this stuff, but here we are publishing another one.
Discussion: broadstuff
Business Technology:
More Gloom in Venture-Capital Land  —  Silicon Valley venture capitalists last week declared that the financial downturn had reached tech's shores.  Now their gloomy outlook is even more official.  —  In a study released Wednesday by the University of San Francisco, Mark Cannice …
RELATED:
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan / HipMojo.com:
Despite Gloom and Doom: Investors Still Investing - I've Got Proof
Discussion: VC Ratings
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Adobe Adds Dynamic Streaming and More to Flash Player  —  Adobe on Wednesday will launch Flash Player 10, the latest in its ubiquitous 13-year-old line of multimedia plug-ins.  For online video watchers, one big improvement is dynamic streaming, which will automatically shift bitrates as media …
RELATED:
Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
Adobe fends off rivals with Flash Player 10
Discussion: Crave, InsideRIA and Gizmodo
Adam Lovallo / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Announces 25 New fbFund Recipients  —  Today, Facebook named the 25 new recipients of the latest fbFund funding cycle.  From a pool of over 600 applicants, fbFund awarded 25 $25,000 no-strings attached grants.  Each first round submission was reviewed by an investment commitment comprised …
Andrew Wallenstein / Hollywood Reporter:
Another Google content play  —  Internet titan hopes to make a splash with ‘Poptub’  —  Google is mounting another experiment in content distribution that might be even more ambitious than its recent launch of original animation from “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane.
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
HTC G1 already shipping, many to be delivered by Friday  —  T-Mobile customers, we hope you're ready for some solid Android love.  Word on the street is that Santa will be showing up a bit early for many people who pre-ordered the HTC G1.  In fact, several people have reported their handsets …
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
YouTube rejects McCain request for DMCA takedown fix  —  YouTube has rejected a request from John McCain's presidential campaign for a legal review of political videos that are the subject of deletion requests.  —  The Google-owned company said Tuesday evening in a response to McCain's organization …
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Microsoft survey hints at Instant On OS concept  —  Hmm, what have we here?  A recent Microsoft survey sent out to select users has us wondering what on Earth the mega-corp is planning to do next, and judging by the looks of things, it has everything to do with Instant On.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
Firefox 3.1 raises the browser bar ... again  —  Competition is a good thing, and the way that Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome have re-invigorated browser development will mean good a better web experience all round.  —  Let's be honest, Internet Explorer never really offered Firefox much of a challenge.
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Dark times for Web ads: Analysts cut forecasts  —  Given the day-to-day changes in the world's economic fortunes, it's surprising that analysts are willing to make any forecasts at all, but among those who do, the news isn't sunny.  —  In the Internet sector, nobody is backing away …
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Google Earnings Preview: Still A Long Term Play?  —  Google reports its third quarter earnings Thursday and despite the economic morass on Wall Street, the company seems immune to the issues.  The question now is whether its head is in the sand, or if it is truly weathering the blistering, stock market sandstorm.
Discussion: Portfolio
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
All Eyes On Google This Week
Jason Hiner / Between the Lines:
Gartner: Top 10 technologies to watch over the next three years  —  On Tuesday, Gartner analysts Carl Claunch and Dave Cearley gave a crowd of IT leaders at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 a list of the top 10 technologies that will provide important strategic advantages to IT over the next three years.
Popular Mechanics:
Top 10 Most Brilliant Gadgets of the Year (With Videos!)  —  2008 Breakthrough Awards /// The Innovators  —  The early 20th century produced a breathtaking succession of innovations—the Wright Flyer, the Model T, the Panama Canal.  It was a golden age of engineering.
Business Technology:
SAP's Big Freeze  —  Business-software giant SAP is freezing costs.  —  SAP announced last week that its revenue for the quarter would fall short of its guidance due to a sudden drop in orders at the end of September.  That sent the company into cost-cutting mode, as outlined …
Charles Arthur / Guardian:
Vint Cerf, internet's “father”, says Obama best for net  —  “My Name is Vint Cerf, I'm a Scientist and I am Voting for Barack Obama”.  Why?  Principally because of net neutrality.  —  Vint Cerf, who can fairly be described as one of the godfathers (but not in a Tony Soprano way) …
Discussion: CircleID
Brian Wilson / devOpera:
MAMA  —  MAMA: What is the Web made of?  —  The Web has search engines—many of them.  However, they are typically concerned only with the text content of a Web page.  What about a search engine for a Web page's structure?  Say you want to find a sampling of Web pages that have more than 100 hyperlinks …
Discussion: InfoWorld, GigaOM and eWeek
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Searching For Small Businesses, Coming Up Frustrated  —  Having written about search for years, it's often easy for me to mistakenly assume that everyone gets it.  Search is where the customers are.  Surely every business owner, large or small, understands by now the importance of appearing before these customers in search.
Discussion: Valleywag and Kelsey Group Blogs
Richard Jalichandra / The Technorati Weblog:
We've Acquired AdEngage and We're Launching a Self-Service Advertising Network  —  I guess you could say we're on a bit of a roll.  In June, we launched Technorati Media, our ad network.  At the end of August, we acquired BlogCritics, a great site and community of blog authors.
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Facebook hosts 10 billion photos  —  Facebook might not be a photo-sharing site, per se, but there are a heck of a lot of pictures uploaded to it.  —  On Tuesday night, engineer Doug Beaver wrote a blog post announcing that the total count of photos on the site now stands at about 10 billion.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Three Years Later, Buying MySpace Looks Like One Of Murdoch's Smartest Bets  —  Three years ago today, Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace and its parent company Intermix for $580 million.  That turned out to be money well spent.  The last time we ran the numbers, we figured that MySpace alone …
Kip Kniskern / LiveSide:
MSN Groups to Close: Windows Live Groups to begin Nov. 17  —  We've been hearing rumors of the closure of MSN Groups and its replacement by Windows Live Groups for years now, last having written about it almost exactly a year ago.  Now, however, in an email from Technical Support posted …
Discussion: The Social
 
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 More Items: 
Sunbelt Blog:
Another useless test grabs headlines
Bernard Lunn / ReadWriteWeb:
Help Twitter Find a Revenue Model
BBC:
Giant database plan ‘Orwellian’
Discussion: open
Kim Hart / Washington Post:
FCC Chair Wants to Go Forward With Use of White Spaces
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Atom chip demand redefining Intel
Discussion: Liliputing
Steven Rosenberg / BBC:
‘Paperless’ paper
Discussion: PSFK
 Earlier Items: 
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Hands on: Mint.com vs. Quicken Online
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Paramount's Shari Redstone backs CBS co-host Tony Dokoupil after execs criticized his work and says she lacks editorial control but “something needs to be done”

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Filing: the FT reports 2023 revenue up 5% YoY to £444M, operating profit down 33% YoY to £9M, and 1.4M paid subscribers, of which 1.3M were digital subscribers

Tovia Smith / NPR:
A look at the bidding war for Alex Jones' Infowars and its parent company Free Speech Systems, where some would-be-buyers just want to bury it

 
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