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5:15 AM ET, August 27, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Apple Changes Leopard's Spots  —  For a company known for breakthrough products with cool features, Apple this week is doing something unusual: It is introducing a key product with very few new features that are visible to its users.  This new release, the latest major version …
RELATED:
James Galbraith / Macworld:
Gauging Snow Leopard's speed boosts  —  Macworld Lab tests Mac OS X 10.6 to see how much faster it truly is  —  Apple describes Snow Leopard as a top-to-bottom refinement of existing features.  One major goal of those refinements: Improved performance.  —  Snow Leopard aims to run leaner …
Gina Trapani / Lifehacker:
Prep Your Mac for Snow Leopard  —  An operating system update like this Friday's release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard is a perfect time to clean up your computer and start fresh.  Let's prepare your Mac for this weekend's 10.6 upgrade.  —  Before You Upgrade, Part 1: Clean Up Your Mac
Discussion: Gadget Lab, MacFixIt and digg.com
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Augmented Traffic Views for Android could be the coolest AR app we've seen yet  —  Augmented Reality is quickly becoming a hot ticket item in the mobile world and we've seen various nifty applications of the technology previewed recently.  The key of course, is finding useful and valuable ways to apply AR concepts to mobile devices.
RELATED:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Is Augmented Reality Garbage or Golden?
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Is Google Entering the Mortgage Quote Business?  —  Google plans to begin offering loan quotes online as early as this month, a lawsuit filed in federal court this week claims.  The suit was filed by LendingTree, which offers consumers mortgage quotes and conditional loan offers online …
Brandon Badger / Google Book Search Blog:
Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format  —  Over the years, we've heard a lot from people who've unearthed hidden treasures in Google Books: a crafter who uncovered a forgotten knitting technique, a family historian who discovered her ancestor once traveled …
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Sources: Apple to unveil new iPod lineup on September 9  —  Apple currently plans to host a media event on Wednesday, Sept. 9 to introduce its 2009 iPod offerings and make a host of other music-related announcements, AppleInsider can independently confirm.  —  People familiar with the matter …
The Sun:
Nessie on Google Earth  —  THIS amazing image on Google Earth could be the elusive proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists.  Sun reader Jason Cooke spotted “Nessie” while browsing the website's satellite photos.  Security guard Jason, 25, of Nottingham, said: “I couldn't believe it.
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
Unchain the Office Computers!  —  Why corporate IT should let us browse any way we want.  —  During a town hall meeting for State Department workers last month, an employee named Jim Finkle asked Hillary Clinton a very important question: “Can you please let the staff use an alternative Web browser called Firefox?”
Barry Collins / PC Pro:
Porn collection put people off upgrading to Firefox 3  —  Mozilla's Security team has disclosed a very interesting piece of research which suggests people refused to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox because they were afraid the browser would expose their, ahem, private collection of websites.
Tameka Kee / paidContent:
Console Price Wars: Microsoft Drops Xbox Elite Down To $299  —  Hoping to boost console sales this holiday season, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has dropped the price of its Elite Xbox 360 to $299.  The $100 price cut comes just about a week after Sony (finally) slashed the price of the PS3, also to $299.
Jnack / John Nack on Adobe:
Information about Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard  —  I've done some more research into the history of Adobe's work with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).  I can't speak for product teams besides Photoshop, and in the interests of time, I'm sharing what I've found out so far.
RELATED:
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Stern Fans Rejoice: Sirius XM SkyDock for iPhone  —  The rumors were true.  At an invitation-only media event in New York City this morning, Sirius XM (SIRI) debuted the first-ever radio dock for the iPhone and iPod touch.  —  Dubbed SkyDock, the $119.99 peripheral uses iPhone OS 3's support …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple Says Vonage App Delayed By Technical Issues; Vonage Says Fix Made, App Resubmitted (Updated)  —  Approval of a request by Vonage (VG) to distribute a mobile VOIP application through the Apple (AAPL) App Store has been delayed by technical issues with the Vonage software …
MacNN:
Apple nearly ready for Chinese iPhone launch - report  —  Apple is nearly prepared to start selling iPhones in China, the company's largest untapped mobile phone market, says the Wall Street Journal.  A testing center under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed an iPhone prototype …
Austin Modine / The Register:
Judge orders cybersquatter to pay Verizon $33m  —  Massive default damages ruled acceptable  —  A federal court in California has upheld a massive $33.15m penalty against a cybersquatting domain aggregator that registered hundreds of websites mimicking Verizon's name and trademarks.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google To Open The AdSense Gates To Other Ad Networks — That They Approve Of  —  In what looks to be an effort to be the one overall ad network that rules them all, Google sent out an email to AdSense publishers today letting them know that they would soon be opening up their accounts …
Discussion: paidContent, Inside AdSense and silicontap.com, Thanks:atul
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Wants To Own Idea Of Crowdsourced Translations  —  Facebook is the biggest social network in the world, so it may come as a surprise to some that up until early 2008, it didn't offer any localized versions of the site at all.  The company managed to jumpstart its international presence …
ACLU:
ACLU Seeks Records About Laptop Searches At The Border  —  Customs And Border Protection Policy Allows Searches Of Laptops Without Suspicion of Wrongdoing  —  CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org  —  NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit today demanding records …
Discussion: Computerworld
RELATED:
Grant Gross / InfoWorld:
ACLU files lawsuit on border laptop searches
Discussion: PC Magazine
Peter / gdgt:
Qualcomm readying handheld FLO TV Personal Television device  —  You know I like to keep my ear close to the ground when it comes to new gadgets, and I just got the scoop via a very reliable source about a new portable digital TV that Qualcomm is going to be introducing soon.
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life:
The Top 5 Reasons RSS Readers Went Wrong  —  Sam Diaz over at ZDNet wrote the following in a blog entry titled RSS: A good idea at the time but there are better ways now in response to an announcement of a new feature in Google Reader … I take issue with the title of Sam's post since …
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
ACLU chapter flags Facebook app privacy  —  The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has put out a campaign designed to raise awareness of the privacy implications of Facebook's developer platform.  It's focusing specifically on the popular “quiz” applications …
RELATED:
LuAnn LaSalle / Globe and Mail:
Progress seen on Facebook privacy fixes
Discussion: Reuters, GigaOM and Mashable!
Kristina Grifantini / Technology Review:
Formalizing the retweet may change people's behavior.  —  The microblogging and social networking site Twitter took off last year and had more than 44.5 million users worldwide as of June.  In the 140-character limited ecosystem of Twitter, users have evolved a language of their own …
Discussion: Off On A Tangent
Gary Wolf / Epicenter:
The Craigslist Credo: Craigslist vs. eBay  —  In 2005 Fortune magazine published a piece by Adam Lashinsky called Burning Sensation, which described the threat craigslist posed to newspapers.  But it didn't ignore the threat that other tech companies posed to craigslist:
Discussion: Marco.org
Nicholas Kolakowski / eWeek:
Microsoft Downplays Yahoo Upgrades to E-Mail, Search, Messenger Apps  —  Microsoft responds to Yahoo's Aug. 24 announcement of upgrades for users by insisting that it had already integrated many of Yahoo's new features, including search results from social networking sites such as Facebook, into its offerings for Windows Live.
Discussion: LiveSide
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Exclusive: Motorola Confirms It Will Launch Android Devices at Mobilize 09  —  Motorola yesterday sent out an invitation to what many bloggers assumed to be the launch of its hotly anticipated Android handsets, and which Om noted also happened to fall on Sept. 10, the date of our Mobilize 09 mobile Internet conference.
 
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 More Items: 
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Time Warner Cable Online Video Test En Route
Discussion: Wall Street Journal
Niels Provos / Google Online Security Blog:
Malware Statistics Update
Daryl Lang / PDNPulse:
Mystery: Who Asked Flickr to Delete the Obama Joker?
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Isohunt judge says MPAA has yet to prove direct infringment
Feike Hacquebord / TrendLabs:
Investigations on a Cybercrime Hub in Estonia
Discussion: InformationWeek
 Earlier Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Palm Wants To Embrace Google Voice, But It's Not Clear Google Wants To Embrace Palm
Discussion: Gizmodo and Seeking Alpha, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Michael Robertson: Digital music's bad boy was right
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Bing Continues With Fake Referrers: What Part Of Stop Don't They Understand?
FBHive:
Facebook Screenshots Reveal Upcoming Features?
Discussion: Inside Facebook and TechCrunch
Stefan Constantinescu / IntoMobile:
Nokia just became PayPal with the launch of Nokia Money; built on top of Obopay