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10:50 AM ET, April 15, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:
AT&T Chief Presses for iPhone  —  When Randall Stephenson became AT&T Inc.'s chief executive, the company had just started offering the iPhone.  The blockbuster device has since reeled in millions of new customers and helped revitalize the telecom giant's brand.
RELATED:
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Piper Jaffray sales count: 22 iPhones, 28 Macs a day  —  One of the things that distinguishes Gene Munster's coverage of Apple (AAPL) from the other analysts who follow the company is that he actually leaves his office, goes into Apple stores, and counts sales.
Ian Paul / PC World:
AT&T Wants to Keep iPhone Exclusivity Until 2011  —  AT&T wants to remain the exclusive U.S. iPhone provider until 2011 and is pressuring Apple to extend their business arrangement that is set to expire in 2010, according to reports.  Apple is tight-lipped about the talks and only will comment it has …
Nathan Eddy / eWeek:
Report: ATandT, Apple in iPhone Contract Talks
Discussion: Epicenter
WMPoweruser.com:
New ZuneHD pictures, details  —  Some more ZuneHD information has trickled into our inbox, and while we do not, in general, cover PMP's, Zune seems inextricably linked with the future of Windows Mobile, so its probably a valid topic of conversation here.  —  From our limited information …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Stop Me If You've Heard This One: Yahoo Management and Staff Set on Shuffle Again  —  Yes, more layoffs are indeed coming to Yahoo, sources confirmed to BoomTown, but perhaps even more than have been reported.  —  But that's not all, as even more top-level managers are either leaving …
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and GMSV, Thanks:sampad
RELATED:
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Is Said to Plan More Layoffs  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo is planning a new round of layoffs, the first since Carol Bartz became chief executive in January, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.  —  The layoffs could affect several hundred employees and may be announced …
Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Get a Vanity URL for your Google Profile Now  —  You may read the full article later but first, head over to this page and claim a vanity URL for your Google Profile before someone else snatches your favorite user name.  This is available to all Google Accounts that don't use a Gmail address.
RELATED:
Chris Messina / FactoryCity:
Google Profiles, namespace lock-in & social search  —  I'd originally intended to respond to Joshua Schacter's post about URL shorteners and how they're merely the tip of the data iceberg, but since I missed that debate, Google has fortuitously plied me with an even better example by releasing custom profile URLs today.
Discussion: Regular Geek
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
ComScore: Facebook is conquering Europe  —  Facebook has become the top social network in a majority of European countries, according to analytics firm ComScore's figures for February.  —  That's most dramatically reflected in Spain, where Facebook's reach has grown tenfold over the course of only a year and is now in the No. 1 spot.
Discussion: All Facebook
RELATED:
comScore:
Facebook Ranks as Top Social Networking Site in the Majority of European Countries
Discussion: Screenwerk, TheNextWeb.com and Profy
Phone Arena:
LG Viewty II is on the way  —  First official information on the Viewty II, now also known as the Viewty Smart, has just been published by LG's official German blog!  LG seems to have hired Motorola's newly announced MOTOROKR W6 as a personal trainer for the Viewty Smart …
RELATED:
Tim Stevens / Engadget:
LG's GC900 Viewty II gets Smart, gets official
Discussion: Gizmodo, Electronista and IntoMobile
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Skype IPO Could Range From $1.6-3.1 Billion  —  Earlier today, online auction giant eBay announced it plans to spin off Skype, its Internet phone company, as a public company next year.  How much could it be worth?  —  In a note, JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan estimates that Skype's 2010 net revenue …
RELATED:
eBay Inc.:
eBay Inc. Announces Plan for 2010 Initial Public Offering of Skype
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
When Google Latitude Stalking Isn't Such A Bad Thing  —  Yesterday, Silicon Valley's local CBS affiliate ran a story (video here) about a woman getting her purse snatched.  But what's interesting is the way she got it back: With an assist from Google Latitude.
Discussion: Digital Inspiration
Darren Waters / BBC:
Amazon blocks Phorm adverts scan  —  Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads.  —  Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads.
Discussion: Virtual Economics and MarketingVOX
Maureen Dowd / New York Times:
Dinosaur at the Gate  —  Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats …
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Apple posts third iPhone OS 3.0 beta with minor API changes  —  The third beta of the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 is now available to official registered members of Apple's iPhone Developer Program.  The biggest change is an improvement to the push notification implementation.
RELATED:
Mr. Besilly / iPhone Savior:
iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 3 Breaks Skype Over 3G
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac
Peter Rip / Business Week:
What Venture Capital Can Learn from Private Equity  —  The venture capital game has changed, yet many VCs are still using an old, outdated playbook  —  Baseball and venture capital always seem to make an effective pairing for analogies.  As in baseball, much of the cachet of venture capital …
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Lead-Gen Provider Pontiflex Raises $6.25 Million Second Round  —  Lead-gen tech company Pontiflex has raised a $6.25 million second round funding.  The round was led by RRE Ventures, with returning investors New Atlantic Ventures and Greenhill SAVP also participating.
Discussion: Beet.TV, VatorNews and CenterNetworks
C.K. Sample III / Obsessable:
Acer Aspire 3935  —  Officially announced on April 15, 2009, the Acer Aspire 3935 is an ultraportable laptop with a 13.3-inch, 1366 x 768 LCD screen and a MSRP of $899.  The extra feature list is impressive but not revolutionary; built-in Wi-Fi/WiMAX, a webcam, optional 3G cellular data network support …
Discussion: Electronista and Gearlog
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Will Ditching The9 Help World Of Warcraft Get Past Chinese Censors?  —  Activision Blizzard (ATVI) is getting a new partner to run its blockbuster hit World of Warcraft in China.  —  Starting in June, NetEase (NTES) will get exclusive operating rights to run the game in mainland China …
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
Time Warner Cable tells FCC to shut up about net neutrality  —  “Now is not the time... to engage in a debate about the need for net neutrality obligations,” Time Warner Cable tells the FCC.  But why not, other than the fact that TWC is taking a beating over bandwidth caps?
Gavin O'Malley / MediaPost:
QuadrantOne Lands Ad Deal With The AP  —  QuadrantOne — the online ad sales network launched last year by Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., The New York Times Co., and Tribune Co. — today is expected to announce a partnership with The Associated Press to handle ad sales across the new service's digital platforms …
Discussion: paidContent.org and mocoNews
Niall Kennedy / Niall Kennedy's Weblog:
Google search referer changes  —  Google will roll out a change to its search results pages later this week designed to better capture outbound clicks.  Google search result pages will link to a gateway URL before delivering the visitor to his final destination.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
AT&T launches FamilyMap service, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere  —  So check this: AT&T just launched a service called FamilyMap.  It basically let's you locate any number on your AT&T account for a monthly fee.  Here's the thing though... besides the first notification text message alerting …
 
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 More Items: 
Eric Lai / LinuxWorld.com:
A faster, sleeker way to do MySQL?
Discussion: eWeek
Bloomberg:
Taiwan Faces Pressure to Abandon Chip Industry Rescue as Lawmakers Balk
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
The StumbleUpon Effect: Which Internet Acquisition Will Blow Up Next?
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog and Digits
Richard Pérez-Peña / New York Times:
Newspaper Ad Revenue Could Fall as Much as 30%
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Algorithms everywhere: Can IBM automate business decisions?
Jordan Robertson / Associated Press:
US mulls stiffer sentences for common Net proxies
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Amazon: Now One-Third Of All U.S. E-Commerce
Discussion: Between the Lines and TechFlash, Thanks:atul
Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
The Fragile Flight of the Twitterlings
 Earlier Items: 
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Single sign-on service OpenID getting more usage
Plamere / Music Machinery:
Precision Hacking  —  I've seen a few examples where recommenders …
Wendy Davis / MediaPost:
Google Sued For Blogger's Criticism Of Skater's Mom
Discussion: WebProNews
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Next Exchange features e-mail ‘mute’ button
Discussion: Microsoft Watch, eWeek and BetaNews
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Late to the iPhone, Trip Hawkins' Digital Chocolate falls in love with it
Eric Lai / Computerworld:
Researchers: Databases still beat Google's MapReduce
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Ryan Grim / Drop Site News:
An investigation finds that OCCRP, which works with major newspapers on scoops like the Panama Papers, is primarily bankrolled by the US and its Western allies

Kat Tenbarge / NBC News:
Some reporters say they are finding more readers and less hate on Bluesky, as Elon Musk turns X into an increasingly difficult place for journalists

John Jurgensen / Wall Street Journal:
Paramount co-CEO Chris McCarthy aims to revitalize Showtime by using successful formulas like Yellowstone from Paramount+ and investing in high-profile projects

 
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