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4:50 PM ET, March 25, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple close to unveiling guarded Snow Leopard UI overhaul  —  While developers have been privy to pre-releases of Apple's Snow Leopard operating system for quite some time, those distributions have been stripped of several features including a major UI overhaul that the company is now preparing …
Discussion: VentureBeat, I4U News and Edible Apple
Luca Zanolin / Google Mobile Blog:
Look Ma, No Hands - Google Mobile App for Blackberry now with Search by voice and My Location  —  Remember the last time you tried to search for “Marks & Spencers London SW1W” on your Blackberry and ended up with 10 extra characters in the spelling of “Spencers” before you gave up on the “London” bit?
Chris Nuttall / blogs.ft.com:
Nokia sends $70m mobile payment to Obopay  —  There are signs the mobile payments market is really taking off at last with Nokia announcing a substantial investment in service provider Obopay today.  —  The amount, understood to be in the region of $70m, is being put in by Nokia itself rather …
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Firms Seek Profit in Twitter's Chatter  —  In the three years since its launch, the messaging service Twitter has attracted millions of users, but its fast growth hasn't translated into significant revenue.  —  Now, other companies are trying to profit from Twitter's popularity by experimenting …
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Twitter Confirms Paid Pro Accounts On The Way
Thanks:agaton
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
FTC: We'll “come calling” about deceptive DRM  —  The Federal Trade Commission held its long-awaited Seattle conference on DRM.  As expected, agreement was hard to come by, but the agency made clear that it has had enough of hidden DRM schemes and companies that pull the plug on authentication servers …
Discussion: Pulse2
Wikileaks:
Police raid home of Wikileaks.de domain owner over censorship lists  —  Shortly after 9pm on Tuesday the 24th of March 2009, seven police officers in Dresden and four in Jena searched the homes of Theodor Reppe, who holds the domain registration for “wikileaks.de”, the German name for wikileaks.org.
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Sprint Highlights ‘4G’ Launch Plans - Launch will largely mirror Clearwire deployment...  Not too surprisingly, Sprint's 4G phone buildout is largely going to mirror that of their spun-off Clearwire mobile WiMax venture, according to a press release issued by the company this morning.
William M. Bulkeley / Wall Street Journal:
IBM Set to Cut More U.S. Jobs  —  International Business Machines Corp. is expected to inform a large number of U.S. employees in its global-business services unit that their jobs are being eliminated, with the work of many of them being transferred to IBM employees in India, according to people familiar with the situation.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Shuttering Travel Bargains Site FareChase Today  —  Yahoo is cutting more fat today by closing its travel bargains website FareChase, which it originally acquired back in July 2004 and re-launched two years later.  The company will be announcing the shut-down later today …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
AT&T first to test RIAA antipiracy plan  —  Update: Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. PDT: To include quotes from AT&T and information about Comcast and Cox.  —  AT&T, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers, confirmed on Tuesday the company is working with the recording industry to combat illegal file sharing.
Mark Walsh / MediaPost:
Palm Pre: Out of Sight, Not Mind  —  Is there still enthusiasm for the forthcoming Palm Pre, facing a growing field of rival smartphones and stingy consumer budgets?  Yes, according to a new analysis by Web measurement service Compete.  —  Despite the weak economy, little advertising …
Discussion: The Toybox, Gearlog and Compete Blog
MSDN Blogs:
Touching Windows 7  —  We've come a long way in engineering Windows 7 since we first provided an engineering preview of Windows 7 and the work we are doing to support the touch interface paradigm back at the D: All Things Digital conference.  We chose to kick-off the discussion …
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
A Win for Project Playlist: EMI Drops Suit, Signs On  —  EMI Music Group, which sued Web music start-up Project Playlist nearly a year ago, has dropped its suit and will start providing its catalog to the start-up, which offers free streaming music.  —  No terms were disclosed.
Discussion: The Social and GigaOM
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
EMI Drops Lawsuit Against Project Playlist, Licenses Catalog Instead
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
Spark Capital To Offer Seed Funding For Digital-Media Companies  —  VC fund Spark Capital today announced a new program called Start@Spark that will provide entrepreneurs with up to $250,000 in seed financing to get their companies through the development stage.
InfoWorld:
Red Hat CEO questions desktop's relevance in Linux debate  —  Linux has achieved success on servers, but can it make a go of it on the desktop?  Panelists at a technical conference Tuesday evening debated the question, with a Red Hat official wondering whether the issue is even relevant anymore.
Discussion: TechSpot and OSNews
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
Guy Kawasaki Can Handle Being Called a Spammer  —  To kick off his keynote speech at SES, a marketing conference in New York, Guy Kawasaki asked how many people in the audience were on Twitter at that moment.  Hands shot up across the packed ballroom.  —  Thomas Hawk/Flickr  —  Guy Kawasaki
Discussion: AuctionBytes Blog and Search Engine Watch, Thanks:atul
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i now official  —  Yep, Canon just went live with that Rebel T1i DSLR that leaked a bit earlier, and it's looking like a hell of a response to the Nikon D90: an XSi body jacked with a sensor matching the 50Ds 15.1 megapixels, 1080p HD video recording, and a $900 price tag.
CBC News:
Criminals love the BlackBerry's wiretap-proof ways: police  —  MP wants wireless devices to be intercept-ready  —  Wireless messages sent on a BlackBerry are so hard to intercept that the smartphones have become the device of choice for both criminals and law enforcement, police say.
John Herrman / Gizmodo:
Last.fm Silences Third-Party Mobile Apps  —  Hot off an announcement that they'd be charging for radio access outside the US, UK and Germany, Last.fm has said that all non-official mobile clients will be banned.  This isn't going over well.  —  The change comes with a new developer API …
Aaron Wall / Learn. Rank. Dominate.:
Danny Sullivan Highlights Google's 2 Tier Justice System (it is only ‘spam’ if you are poor!)  —  Danny highlighted how many aggregators of aggregators and content cesspools are bogusly clogging up Google's search results with sites that would be viewed as spam if the owner was not socially well connected:
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Thanks:atul
Erik Sherman / BNET Technology:
Tech Layoffs on Big Q1 Upswing, Far Outpacing Average  —  When outsourcing consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas released its figures on job cuts in January and February, the numbers were depressing, with the two months figure almost double the same period in 2008 and close to the number …
Tim Stevens / Engadget:
Is Netflix PS3-bound, too?  —  Rumors of Netflix content streaming to the PS3 date back to, well, the first rumors of it hitting the Xbox 360.  We all know which of those two platforms got some red envelope love last year, and now, soon after hearing the service may be heading to the Wii …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
“Lancing the f***ing boil”: how digital killed Big Music  —  Steve Knopper takes a close look at the music business in his new book, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.  Ars digs into the book, which argues that the major labels' collapse wasn't caused (mostly) by P2P.
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
A Dell Smartphone Would Face Big Hurdles  —  Instead of rushing to compete with the entrenched iPhone and BlackBerry, Dell should consider making larger mobile Internet devices, or buying Palm  —  Dell CEO Michael Dell has done little to dispel rumors that his company is working on a mobile computing device.
Discussion: Guardian and FierceWireless
The White House:
Open for Questions: President Obama to Answer Your Questions on Thursday  —  Today, the President invited everyone to use a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov called “Open for Questions” to ask a question about the economy and rate other questions up or down.  Then, on Thursday morning …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Spare Change On Track To Process $30 Million In Micropayments On Social Apps This Year  —  While advertising revenues have been disappointingly low for most applications on Facebook and other social networks, another option app developers are increasingly turning towards is micropayments for virtual goods or premium features.
Discussion: The Mind of Alex
internetnews.com:
BackWeb Sues Microsoft Over Auto Update  —  Israeli firm claims every time customers use Microsoft's auto update features, they're violating the smaller company's patents.  —  The ink was barely dry in the suit and countersuit passion play of Microsoft versus TomTom, when another tech firm sued Microsoft …
 
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 More Items: 
Jon Swartz / USA Today:
Leaving PCs on overnight costs companies $2.8B a year
Discussion: Switched
Peter Cohen / Macworld:
GDC: EA Mobile reveals 2009 iPhone game lineup
Discussion: Mashable! and Touch Arcade
N. Evan Van Zelfden / VentureBeat:
How Curt Schilling started a game company
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
Don't call it DRM: Microsoft explains new gaming piracy tech
Nathan Eddy / eWeek:
Microsoft: SMBs Moving to Virtualization, SaaS in 2009
Discussion: Softpedia News
 Earlier Items: 
Taylor Buley / Forbes:
Life After Google  —  Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists …
Discussion: Venture Capital Dispatch, Thanks:mrinaldesai
 

 
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

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Warner Bros. Discovery has decided not to renew its deal for new episodes of Sesame Street, though it will continue licensing library episodes through 2027

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway seek up to eight figures from new partners, possibly CNN, for Pivot and other podcasts; their Vox deal ends in 2025

 
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