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2:50 PM ET, January 24, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Chris DannenFri / Fast Company:
Does the White House Have Wi-Fi?  —  Is the White House more of a museum than a working office?  Does it even have WiFi?  —  MSNBC has reported that on their first day on the job, Obama's White House staffers suffered from downgrades on every front.  During the campaign and the transition …
Discussion: The Mac Observer
RELATED:
John Resig:
OCR and Neural Nets in JavaScript  —  A pretty amazing piece of JavaScript dropped yesterday and it's going to take a little bit to digest it all.  It's a GreaseMonkey script, written by ‘Shaun Friedle’, that automatically solves captchas provided by the site Megaupload.
Discussion: Ajaxian
Loïc Le Meur / Loic Le Meur Blog:
The New Twhirl (preview release) for Team Seesmic-Twhirl  —  We are as excited as you are about Twhirl and are happy to announce a new version today which we will be circulating as a preview to get your help and feedback.  We are gathering a “circle of friends” for Twhirl and Seesmic …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Why Twitter's New Security Solution Could Pave the Way to a Future Web of Mashups  —  Microblogging service Twitter's habit of playing fast and loose with user passwords may be coming to an end, if a technical trial started today can be successfully implemented by its development team.
Discussion: Twitterrati
RELATED:
Chris Messina / FactoryCity:
Twitter can has OAuth?  —  Twitter API lead Alex Payne announced today that Twitter is now accepting applications to its OAuth private beta, making good on the promises he made on the Twitter API mailing list and had repeated on the January 8 Citizen Garden podcast (transcript by stilist).
Discussion: CenterNetworks
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
General availability for the Windows 7 Beta to end  —  First off: thank you for your interest in beta testing Windows 7!  As we near January 24th, we wanted to update everyone again on the next steps for the Windows 7 Beta.  The amount of feedback we have received has been amazing and continues to pour in.
Chris O'Brien / Mercury News:
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs still thinking big  —  Over the course of the past 40 years, Silicon Valley has experienced regular cycles of economic ups and downs that come with being one of the world's leading centers of innovation.  And during those down cycles, it's become routine for folks …
Jeff Jedras / PC World:
IBM Confirms Layoffs  —  Despite releasing stronger than expected earnings on Tuesday and at the time expressing optimism for 2009, a round of job cuts is underway at IBM Corp.  —  The week has already seen heavy layoffs in the IT sector, including 5,000 at Microsoft and another 5,000 to 6,000 at Intel.
Discussion: Computerworld
Digital Music News:
ASCAP Targets “Copy Left / Free Culture” Enemy...  Performance rights organization (PRO) ASCAP is now pondering ways to defuse the influence of non-traditional copyright thinkers, according to correspondence shared Thursday with Digital Music News.  According to an invitation mailed …
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Surprise!  VC Funding Fell Off a Cliff in Q4  —  As expected, the venture industry is seeing the fallout from the economic crisis, with fourth-quarter investments dropping to a total of $5.4 billion invested in 818 companies, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers …
Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Others could follow Google's move to reset options  —  SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc. is showing its love for its employees by giving them a second chance to profit from their wilting stock options.  But the move irked shareholders still stuck with agonizing losses on their investments.
Noam Cohen / Bits:
Wikipedia May Restrict Public's Ability to Change Entries  —  Stung by criticism after vandals changed Wikipedia entries to erroneously report that Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd had died, Wikipedia appears ready to introduce a system that prevents new and anonymous users …
 
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 More Items: 
Randi Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
Just the Beginning  —  The inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama …
Devin Coldewey / CrunchGear:
YouTube officially enables HQ in embedded videos
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Why We're Desperately Awaiting Feedsqueezer
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
Palm Pre: The Definitive FAQ
Discussion: IntoMobile and John Tokash
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / Computerworld:
Building a better spam-blocking CAPTCHA
Discussion: TechSpot and Slashdot
 Earlier Items: 
Benjamin J. Romano / Microsoft Pri0:
Senator wants Microsoft to preserve American jobs over those of …
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
10-inch Acer Aspire One officially launches
Discussion: Liliputing and GottaBeMobile.com
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Skype Sees a Bright Future; Will It Be Spun Off?
Discussion: Pat Phelan
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Sara Fischer / Axios:
The Knight and MacArthur foundations and Press Forward invest in the new Local News Impact Investment Fund, launched by Social Finance with $21M in commitments

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Norwegian news organizations ask an Oslo court to stop Meta's new commercial terms, which they say let Meta scrape any publisher content, even paywalled

Dan Kennedy / Media Nation:
Bob Woodward naming anonymous sources in a new book, including some who've died, raises questions about whether a promise of anonymity extends after death

 
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