Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
11:20 AM ET, November 1, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
AOL Mail Blog:
An Open Letter to Gmail: Happy Halloween!  We love your costume!  —  Happy Halloween Gmail!  We knew you would have the best costume at the party, and who can blame you?  We think it's great that you're using this holiday to pay homage to the one who started it all, who got 35 million people online …
Discussion: Google Blogoscoped
RELATED:
Gmail Blog:
Almost new in Labs: SMS Text Messaging for chat  —  Oh snap.  Last night, we started rolling out a new feature to Gmail Labs that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail.  It combines the best parts of IM and texting: you chat from your computer and reach your friends no matter where they are.
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
America CTO's infomercial for Obama  —  In exchange for his late-to-the-party endorsement of Barack Obama, Google CEO Eric Schmidt got a spot on Obama's prime-time infomercial last night.  Note how Schmidt explains his decision, made only after Obama took a substantial lead in the polls …
Discussion: Beyond Search
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Should Facebook be tapping users for cash?  —  It hasn't even been a month since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a German blog that growth, not monetization, was the priority for the social networking site.  In fact, he even went so far as to say that he didn't see a revenue plan coming into play for three more years.
Discussion: Webware.com and VentureBeat
RELATED:
Dong Ngo / CNET News:
No more pirated DVDs from China...maybe  —  The MPAA doesn't want to make it easy for you to copy DVDs; DVD Shrink does.  —  If you've been copying DVDs using some made-in-China DVD player, think about taking good care of the device, as you might not be able to buy a replacement.
Jaime Forman-Lau / The Official Google Blog:
Feed me!  Google Alerts not just for email anymore  —  This week, our Trondheim-based Google Alerts team launched support for feeds, a highly requested feature you can use to receive alerts via the feed reader of your choice.  (Of course, we think the best places to view your updates are iGoogle and Google Reader.)
Discussion: Lifehacker and Mashable!
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
BBC's Magic TV Detector Vans Kept Secret  —  As many of you probably know (especially if you live in the UK), you have to buy a license to have a TV (or even a TV tuner card for a computer).  The license fees go to pay the BBC to operate.  Apparently, the BBC has some secret “TV detector” …
Discussion: Boing Boing Gadgets
David Hill / Medialets:
Android Market, Unleashed  —  Here we are a little over a week since the launch of the first Android-powered phone, the G1.  As of Monday, Android Market has been open to developers to distribute their applications as they wish.  We've made some more observations on how the Android Market is evolving …
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life:
Russell Beattie was Right, the Mobile Web is Dead  —  A couple of months ago, Russell Beattie wrote a post about the end of his startup entitled The end of Mowser which is excerpted below … I filed away Russell's post as interesting at the time but hadn't really experienced it first hand until recently.
Mike Elgan / PC World:
Why Netbooks Will Soon Cost $99  —  Subnotebooks like the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Mini 9 and the HP 2133 Mini-note will soon cost as little as $99.  The catch?  You'll need to commit to a two-year mobile broadband contract.  The low cost will come courtesy of a subsidy identical to the one you already get with your cell phone.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
The real reason the BlackBerry Storm doesn't have Wi-Fi or tri-band HSDPA  —  You might have guessed it, but the reason is Verizon!  We confirmed this a little while back with one of our really top-level sources (you know who you are!) and they did, in fact, confirm our suspicions …
Discussion: CrunchGear, larry borsato and Gizmodo
John Mahoney / Gizmodo:
Confirmed: New MacBooks Support 6GB RAM  —  While we've officially confirmed that the Nvidia chipset in the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros can theoretically support up to 8GB of RAM, Apple says the capacities for each top out at 4GB.  Turns out, the actual number is right there in the middle …
Discussion: Mobilewhack.com, MacUser and Gadget Lab
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 11:20 AM ET, November 1, 2008.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Zoho WorkDrive named a Leader in the Nucleus Research CSC Technology Value Matrix 2026  —  Enterprise content management is evolving rapidly with about 80% of the data unstructured.  The growing challenge is not about storing information anymore.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
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: 
Doug Beaver / Facebook Blog:
Click or Treat: Halloween Photo Bonanza
Discussion: All Facebook
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Can iPhone Sales Grow In The December Quarter?
Discussion: Digital Daily
 Earlier Items: 
Chris Matyszczyk / Technically Incorrect:
Apple fanboys vs. Microsofties: A scientist's verdict
Discussion: broadstuff and digg.com
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Tweaks AdWords To Reward “Quality” (And Juice Revenues)
Discussion: Google Watch, Bits and Inside AdWords
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Dan Shanoff / The Athletic:
Nielsen: the World Cup final drew 38.9M viewers on Fox, and 22M+ on Telemundo; taken together, the US audience size rivaled that of NFL playoff games

Andrew Marchand / The Athletic:
Memo: ESPN's Jimmy Pitaro announces layoffs, mostly due to the NFL Network acquisition; sources: on-air personalities Karl Ravech and Ryan Clark are affected

MJ Franklin / New York Times:
How publishers are cashing in on surging public interest in The Odyssey through splashy reissues; Circana BookScan says sales of The Odyssey rose by 76% YoY

 
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