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8:00 AM ET, April 10, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
AT&T uses Twitter during service outage  —  Want to find out why you suddenly don't have Internet access or cell phone service?  You might want to check out the social-networking site Twitter.  —  It seems that Twitter was one of the main ways that phone company AT&T has been communicating …
RELATED:
Barrett Lyon / BitGravity: Blog:
Destroy the Internet with a hacksaw?  —  This morning many people in Silicon Valley woke up without 911 service, Internet, cellular phones, and in some cases TV.  Web sites were impacted and Internet traffic between a few major datacenters stopped flowing.  Several of our employees were cut off from the Internet and phone service.
Discussion: PC World, Neowin.net and ThreatChaos, Thanks:atul
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
AT&T offers $100K reward in fiber optic vandalism; notes second incident  —  updated below:  —  No matter all of the advancements in wireless and mobile technology, at the end of the day, we're all still connected to a big wire somewhere.  Early this morning, we discovered that one of those big wires …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
About Those New CrunchPad Pictures  —  A little background for those of you who haven't heard of the CrunchPad: This is the post that kicked off the project.  I wanted something I couldn't buy, and found people who said it could be built for a lot less than I imagined.
RELATED:
Devin Coldewey / CrunchGear:
TechCrunch Tablet makes an early debut  —  Leaks are always hardest when they hit at home.  Now we know how Apple feels.  The party responsible for the leak has been penalized severely (whipped with wet spaghetti), so believe us when we say this kind of thing won't ever happen again.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
How to Block the DiggBar  —  Last week Digg released something they call the DiggBar, which serves as both a new interface for Digg and doubles as a URL shortening service.  The way it works is that you just add “digg.com/” at the beginning of any URL, and Digg creates a short URL in the form of digg.com/1234.
RELATED:
Greg / 3 Dog Media:
Google and Digg's Secret Backroom Deal  —  Over the last couple of months, I've been getting the urge to get back into blogging a bit.  However, when it's been awhile since you've attempted to construct a thought longer than a 140 character tweet, actually doing it is a bit harder than you regular bloggers might imagine.
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Time for an audit of Microsoft's ‘Apple Tax’  —  Microsoft puts forth a ‘tax return’ showing the cost difference between a Windows PC or Mac purchase.  However, CNET News' Ina Fried suggests auditors take a close look at the itemized deductions.  —  Microsoft is back touting the “Apple Tax” …
RELATED:
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Microsoft Does the Math on the “Apple Tax.” Badly.
Discussion: Macworld, Thanks:marieadomingo
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
New Laptop Hunters ad proves Macs are just for children  —  Microsoft's latest installment in its popular series of ripped-from-the-headlines, “real America” style 'puter-buying adventures follows a mom and son duo — Lisa and Jackson.  We learn during the commercial that the two need a computer which is …
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent.org:
Microsoft Breaks Up Its Live Labs Group  —  Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is downsizing its high-profile Live Labs group, which was created three years ago to speed up innovation in the company's online business, paidContent.org has learned.  —  The group, whose mission has been to hatch new ideas …
RELATED:
Paul Boutin / Industry Standard:
Microsoft cuts Live Labs staff by half, refocuses on search
Discussion: Beyond Search
Austin / Billions With Zero Knowledge:
Why Twitter's Next Fail Whale can be found on their Recruiting Page  —  I love Twitter and am fascinated by the ecosystem that Evan, Biz and the team at Twitter have created around the popular microblogging service.  While many people on the sidelines are obsessed with when Twitter will make money …
Thanks:austinhill
Kaspersky Lab Weblog:
The neverending story  —  Last night the Kido (aka Conficker/ Downadup) botnet kicked into action - what everyone's been on the lookout for since 1st April.  —  The computers infected with Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Kido (aka Conficker.c) contacted each other over P2P, telling infected machines to download new malicious files.
RELATED:
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Time Warner's Unlimited Bandwidth Plan: $150 a Month  —  Time Warner Cable has modestly softened its proposal to impose bandwidth limits on all of its broadband data customers.  Landel Hobbs, the company's chief operating officer, has just published a post with the new price tiers for a test of the plan it will conduct in four cities.
Nathan Hodge / Danger Room:
Activist Charged for Inciting ‘Twitter Revolution’ (Updated)  —  A Moldovan activist faces criminal charges for organizing demonstrations that were enabled by social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, the Russian press reports.  —  In an interview with Russian news agency ITAR-TASS …
Adam Frucci / Gizmodo:
Survey: 100% of Teens Want an iPod; 0% of Teens Want Any Other Player  —  News doesn't get much worse than this for the Zunes and Sansas of the world: a whopping 0% of surveyed teens planned on buying their devices, with 100% wanting an iPod in the coming year.
Discussion: CNET News and The Apple Core
Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Inserting images  —  Well, it's about time.  You no longer have to use workarounds to put images into your messages or attach images when you really want to inline them.  Just turn on “Inserting images” from the Labs tab under Settings, and you'll see a new toolbar icon like this:
Tricia Duryee / mocoNews:
Industry Moves: Research In Motion Quietly Hires A Key iPhone Designer  —  BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has scooped up Don Lindsay, who according to one report played a big role in the iPhone user interface.  In his new role, he will be charged with “creating” the VP of user experience, according to his updated LinkedIn profile.
Darren Waters / dot.life blog:
Network storage still not consumer-friendly  —  Network-attached storage (NAS) has been on the verge of breaking through into the mainstream consumer space for quite a few years.  —  The idea is deceptively simple - plug a hard drive into your network (that is, into your router) …
Telegraph:
Pete Waterman: ‘I was exploited by Google’  —  Pete Waterman, the force behind dozens of multi-million selling chart hits, claims he is being “exploited” by internet giant Google.  —  The 62-year-old said the Rick Astley classic Never Gonna Give You Up, which he co-wrote and which was the subject …
Discussion: Search Engine Land
Chris Matyszczyk / CNET News:
Is Shaq trying to seduce Mark Cuban via Twitter?  —  Shaquille O'Neal and Mark Cuban are deeply confirmed Twitterers.  —  They have different styles but their fingers seem rarely to leave their keyboards.  Perhaps one can even blame sore Twitter-finger for Shaq's poor free-throw percentage.
Neil McAllister / Neil McAllister's blog:
What if Oracle bought Sun Microsystems?  —  If Oracle picks up where IBM left off, database, storage, and Java customers could be in for radical changes  —  So much for that.  According to reports, Sun Microsystems has rejected IBM's buyout offer, apparently preferring to stick to the dogma …
Discussion: 451 CAOS Theory
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Is Microsoft Turning Away From Commodity Servers?  —  This week's news of a chip designer leaving Sun to work for Microsoft could be a sign that the Redmond giant is trying to build a closer relationship between its software and others' hardware as a way to boost performance of applications and use the underlying chips more efficiently.
Discussion: EE Times
Christian Zibreg / TG Daily:
Emerging battlefield: Browser installers  —  Chicago (IL) - Mozilla was surprised to discover that, every day, 50,000 people do not install Firefox after a successful software download.  At the same time, Safari and Chrome leverage installers to their own advantage in a very efficient way.
Thanks:atul
Paul Boutin / Industry Standard:
True/Slant fascinates journalists, bores readers  —  Wall Street Journal gadget guru Walt Mossberg surprised me this morning by devoting his hugely influential Personal Technology column not to a smartphone, a desktop app, or an online tax service, but to a news and commentary site called True/Slant.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider, Thanks:ilamont
 
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 More Items: 
Arianna Huffington / The Huffington Post:
The Debate Over Online News: It's the Consumer, Stupid
Discussion: Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard, Thanks:atul
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
BBC Gets Ready for BitTorrent Distribution
iPodNN:
Unibody concept migrating into iPods?
Discussion: Gizmodo and 9 to 5 Mac
Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:
Domain Pigeon now finds open Twitter names
Cecilia Kang / Washington Post:
FCC Developing Plan To Deliver Broadband
Discussion: VentureBeat and Reuters
Fortune:
‘Entrepreneur’ means little in France
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple to disable .Mac website tools in July
Discussion: Apple, MacRumors, TUAW and MacMegasite
 Earlier Items: 
Miguel Helft / Bits:
YouTube in Music Video Deal With Universal