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7:35 AM ET, January 27, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
IEBlog:
Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate Now Available  —  We're excited to make the IE8 Release Candidate available today for public download today in 25 languages for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server customers.  You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8.  Please download it now and try it out.
RELATED:
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Microsoft steps up browser battle  —  Microsoft has stepped up the battle to win back users with the latest release of its Internet Explorer browser.  —  The US software giant says IE 8 is faster, easier to use and more secure than its competitors.  —  “We have made IE 8 the best browser …
Discussion: TweakTown News and PalmAddicts
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
New Internet Explorer 8 accelerates browsing  —  Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of the most commonly used web browser in the world, has left beta testing and is now available as “Release Candidate 1.”  This isn't the final release version per se, but it's close enough …
Alex Brooks / World of Apple:
Apple Awarded Multi-Touch Patent  —  According to the US Patent Office Apple was awarded patent number 7,479,949 on January 20, 2009.  The patent which was filed on April 11, 2008 covers multi-touch and all associated gestures such as pinch, swipe and rotation.  —  The patent is titled:
RELATED:
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Steve Jobs Reportedly Under the Knife at Stanford Hospital Today  —  Ailing Apple CEO Steve Jobs checked into Stanford Hospital over the weekend and was scheduled for surgery this morning, we hear.  —  At a party in Silicon Valley last night, a Stanford staffer who had just come …
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Report: Steve Jobs Is In The Office Today  —  Perhaps it's because I'm stuck in a Munich hotel with the flu, but this most recent round of rumors about Steve Jobs undergoing surgery today is annoying me more than normal.  The entire report is based on something someone heard someone else say at a party.
Discussion: Gawker, Neowin.net and GPS Obsessed
Christopher Blizzard:
why open video?  —  [ Note: Mike Shaver gives the short version of this post.  I have done a great job of burying the lead here.  There's a post from the Wikimedia Foundation on the topic and a post in the Mozilla Blog as well. ]  —  Everyone agrees that the open web is becoming more important in our shared human experience.
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:   Mozilla Gives $100,000 Grant Towards An Open Video Format For The Web
Michael Calore / Epicenter:   Mozilla Goes to Bat for Open-Source Video on the Web
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Kanye West blames Gmail hijack for bisexual porn hoax  —  Hey, world: Let him be great  —  Kanye West says someone has taken control of his Twitter.  Not to mention his Gmail and MySpace accounts.  —  The rap star says that someone is using all three services to spread false reports …
Discussion: Music Ally
PR Newswire:
Netflix Announces Q4 2008 Financial Results  —  Subscribers - 9.4 million Revenue - $359.6 million GAAP Net Income - $22.7 million GAAP EPS - $0.38 per diluted share  —  Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX - News) today reported results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2008.
RELATED:
securitylabs.websense.com:
Barack Obama's Site Leading to Trojan  —  Change has finally arrived in the United States of America, marking the dawn of a new era.  The US Presidential campaign has shown the world how governments can leverage Web 2.0 to better understand and garner support from their citizens.
Paul Boutin / Industry Standard:
Just how much is Twitter's burn rate?  —  Relentless biz-blogger Kara Swisher is pushing again for Facebook to acquire Twitter.  Twitter will never IPO on its own, she says, and Facebook is Twitter's most natural fit as a parent company.  —  But there's an important number missing …
Discussion: Twitterrati and SarahLacy.com
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
New Bill Asks For Cameraphones To Go Clickety Clack  —  Smile, say cheese and hold that pose till you hear the ‘click’.  A new bill introduced in the Congress by New York Republican Rep. Peter King requires mobile phones with digital cameras “to make a sound” when a photograph is taken.
Discussion: Guardian
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Cheney's Veil Lifted on Vice President's Residence  —  Hope and change has come to Google Maps.  The official residence of the vice president, obscured until Dick Cheney's last days in office and residence, now shines in satellite sunlight.  —  A reader tipped us off that Google Maps …
Emily Steel / Digits:
Layoffs at Fox Interactive Media  —  News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media digital division is laying off about 5% of its work force, or about 100 people, amid continued cost-cutting efforts, according to a person familiar with the situation.  —  The cuts, which started in the last month …
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Notebooks now make up over 70 percent of Mac sales  —  Four years ago, sales of desktop machines made up 60 percent of Apple's computer sales, while notebooks made up 40 percent.  Not only have those numbers now reversed, they've skyrocketed in the direction of the notebook for Apple.
Discussion: TeleRead
Scott Lowe / IGN:
Rumor: PSP 2 Coming Soon  —  Sources suggest that the PSP 2 is real, touch screen-enabled, and coming soon.  —  The evolution of the PSP has been one of small incremental updates rather than drastic aesthetic and hardware reconfigurations.  Since its debut in 2005 the PSP has undergone …
Brandon Schauer / Adaptive Path:
Dopplr's moment of long wow  —  This month Dopplr delightfully surprised me, supplying me with something I didn't know I needed.  The result: I'm now a more loyal Dopplr user.  It's a great example of a long wow moment.  —  Dopplr is “an online service for smarter travel.”
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
Web Series Still Struggle to Hold on to Audiences  —  Survey of 50 Top Web Series Finds Loss Of 64% From First Episode To Second  —  NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — MyDamnChannel's “You Suck at Photoshop” is a near-perfect series for the web: short, funny and low-budget, it both doesn't require viewers …
Discussion: NewTeeVee
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
More Signs of a Google Webdrive  —  The long-awaited and much-delayed GDrive is likely to be released in the near future as more pieces of its integration are revealed.  Cédric Vergé noticed a change in one of the CSS files for Google Apps: there's a class named “webdrive” and an icon for the new service.
Phil Nickinson / WMExperts:
Firefox Mobile may be on Touch Pro next week  —  Despite a previous update from the Mozilla team, it now looks like the Firefox Mobile browser, codenamed Fennec, could be ready for a Windows Mobile beta as soon as next week, and they've chosen a phone to do the honors.  —  From this week's meeting:
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
These Speakers Sound Great.  And They're...Invisible!  —  I had two hands-down favorites at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.  One of them was the one that was everybody's favorite: Palm's upcoming Pre phone.  The other was a little-known technology which I saw demoed in a private preview.
Discussion: Engadget
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
WebbAlert Stops Filming; Impact For Federated Media?  —  Morgan Webb's WebbAlert show has stop filming as of today.  She noted in her farewell post, “When I started WebbAlert, my TV show X-Play only taped three episodes a week so I had the time to dedicate my video blog.
 
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 More Items: 
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Pogue: Google's GrandCentral Not Dead, Just Resting (GOOG)
William M. Bulkeley / Wall Street Journal:
IBM Slashes 2,800 Jobs
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Netflix profit up 45% in Q4, nears 10 million total subscribers
Discussion: Associated Press and CNET News
Robin Goad / Hitwise Intelligence:
Social networks overtake adult websites
 Earlier Items: 
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
IBM Beefs Up Tivoli for the Cloud
Discussion: The Register and eWeek
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Are Online Ads Doing Better Than Expected?  Or Just as Bad as We Thought?
Crayton Harrison / Bloomberg:
U.S. Defense Department Mimics Google, Microsoft in Cloud Computing Effort
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Should Yahoo Buy The New York Times?
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and /Message