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4:05 PM ET, January 15, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Sky Canaves / China Real Time Report:
Clearing Up Confusion on Google and China  —  From Silicon Valley to Zhongguancun, Google's surprise announcement that it may pull out of China has fueled an enormous amount of discussion in recent days, not all of it 100% accurate.  Below are some misstatements and misunderstandings we've seen:
RELATED:
Agence France Presse:
US to formally ask China for explanation on cyber-attacks  —  WASHINGTON — The United States said Friday that it will formally ask the Chinese government in “the coming days” for an explanation of China-based cyberattacks on the Internet giant Google.  —  “We will be issuing a formal demarche …
Discussion: VentureBeat and Associated Press
Bloomberg:
Google Said to Have Tried to Enlist Companies as Allies After Cyber Attack  —  Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc. approached other companies to seek their help drawing attention to a cyber attack from China last month and was frustrated by their reluctance to come forward, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Twitter's Answer To Facebook Connect  —  Twitter is preparing to launch a new set of tools that will let third party websites easily integrate Twitter features directly into their web sites and services, multiple sources have confirmed.  In a nutshell, this is their response to the massively popular Facebook Connect.
RELATED:
Peter Burrows / Business Week:
Is Apple Ready for Merger Mania?  —  The company has hired a banker from Goldman Sachs and looks to be in a more acquisitive mode  —  Historically, Steve Jobs has not been the acquisitive type.  Since he returned to Apple (AAPL) as chief executive in 1997, the company has bought only 11 small companies …
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Verizon Wireless revamps calling plans; Goes for customer grab ahead of 4G  —  Verizon Wireless is going on offense as it tweaks pricing plans, pares its device portfolio and markets heavily with its “there's a map for that” ad campaign.  The grand plan for Verizon Wireless: Grab customers …
RELATED:
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Verizon undercuts AT&T, reduces monthly voice plan by $29  —  Competition in the mobile landscape became more intense Friday, when Verizon Wireless announced it has cut its basic voice plan by $29 per month, to $69.99 for unlimited calling.  —  Verizon also has an unlimited voice and text plan …
Matthew Moore / Telegraph:
Sarcasm punctuation mark aims to put an end to email confusion  —  Expressing sarcasm in the written word can be a dangerous business, as anyone forced to apologise for sending a tongue-in-cheek email will confirm.  —  The SarcMark costs $1.99 to download  —  Now a US firm has come …
John Eggerton / Broadcasting & Cable:
FCC Votes to Prohibit Distribution and Sale of Wireless Mics Using 700 mHz  —  Current users have until June 12 to get off band  —  Wireless microphones using the 700 mHz band will be following the stand-alone analog TV set into the sunset.  —  The FCC has voted to prohibit the distribution …
RELATED:
Todd Shields / Bloomberg:   Broadway Must Vacate Airwaves to Make Room for Verizon, AT&T
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple's Media Players will One Day be Both Portable TV & DVR  —  On January 14, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals one of the next chapters coming to Apple's Media Players.  In Q4 2010, Apple introduced their fifth generation iPod nano …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
The Original Tablet  —  I enjoyed Paul Thurrott's daily coverage of CES last week.  A big trade show is a hard thing to capture in prose, and Thurrott got it.  —  But I chuckled at this piece starting his CES coverage, “Exclusive!  Microsoft to Announce Tablet PC Before Apple!”:
Discussion: Technologizer, Thanks:atul
Sajid Farooq / NBC Bay Area:
Apple Cofounder Confesses: He Loves the Google Phone  —  Steve Wozniak admits he's jumped to Google's ship  —  Steve Wozniak may have once cut in line to get an iPhone.  But now he's moved on to a hotter gadget.  —  The cofounder of Apple — the company that made him millions — told NBC Bay Area a dirty little secret.
Gagan Biyani / MobileCrunch:
Patent Reveals Possible Groundbreaking Multi-Touch Features for Apple's iSlate  —  Now that everyone knows the iSlate is real, the question is: what the hell is this thing going to be like?  How will it work?  What will wow us about the iSlate that we never really expected?
Phil Wainewright / Software as Services:
Why freemium is bad for business  —  I've never been comfortable with free products for business use, even though it's difficult to avoid using them if you're a small or one-person business (web analytics, for example, has been all but wiped out as a low-end paid service by Google's free offering).
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
Nokia 2010 Symbian UI update detailed: built on Qt  —  Remember the concept mockups of what Nokia envisaged its Symbian S^4 UI might look like after it's reworked in 2010?  The company showed off a brief video demo back in early December 2009, and now they're opening up the floodgates …
Taylor Wimberly / Android and Me:
Google changes pricing options for Nexus One: 100 new reasons to purchase the N1  —  Customers who recently paid $379 for the Nexus One will soon be receiving a $100 refund from Google.  The refund does not apply to any other customers who purchased the Nexus One.
RELATED:
BBC:
Music file-sharer ‘Oink’ cleared of fraud  —  A man who ran a music-sharing website with almost 200,000 members has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown Court.  —  Alan Ellis, 26, was the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
OneRiot's Realtime Ad Network RiotWise Now Open To The Masses  —  OneRiot's recently ventured into the advertising world with RiotWise, an ad format which places content in an emphasized position in their realtime feed.  A few weeks ago, the realtime search engine launched a pilot program …
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
Microsoft Exchange Team Fires Back at IBM Ahead of Lotusphere  —  Microsoft Jan. 15 offered training vouchers to the first 500 Lotus Notes professionals who want to learn to use Microsoft's Office productivity suite, Exchange e-mail server, SharePoint collaboration software, and Office Communications Server platform.
Dan Fletcher / Time:
Foursquare's Twist on Facebook: A Reward for Checking In  —  Tweeting was the breakout web term for 2009.  The early favorite for 2010?  “Checking in.”  —  That's the basis of the Foursquare, the gorilla in a new wave of location-based social networking sites.
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Mozilla dumps Firefox 3.7 from schedule, changes dev process  —  Plans to quicken development pace by adding some features via security updates  —  Computerworld - Mozilla has made major changes to how it develops Firefox, and plans to drop Firefox 3.7 from its schedule and instead roll …
Discussion: Download Squad and Mashable!
Electronista:
Justice Dept completes inquiry of text messaging rates  —  The Justice Department has finally completed its investigation over text messaging fees charged by carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Industry and government officials familiar …
Phone Arena:
Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus to cost $150 and $100 respectively  —  Published on: Today by PhoneArena Team  —  It was cool that Palm announced the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus are coming to Verizon at this year's CES; however, it seems that both the manufacturer and the carrier forgot to inform …
 
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 More Items: 
Wayne Friedman / MediaPost:
Magna: DVRs In 44% By 2015  —  In five years, network programmers …
Jeremy Kirk / PC World:
Romanian Faces Five Years in Prison for Phishing Scheme
Eric Pfanner / New York Times:
France, Grudgingly, Imagines Google as a Partner on Digital Media Projects
Discussion: paidContent
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Data Revenues Will Push Mobile Biz Past $1 Trillion
Discussion: Total Telecom and 9 to 5 Mac
Marisa Taylor / Digits:
FTC Not Sure How to Enforce Blogger Disclosure Rules
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
Google, Bing Gain in U.S. Search While Yahoo's Slide Continues
Discussion: TechCrunch
 Earlier Items: 
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Hack to Hacker: Rise of the Journalist-Programmer
Discussion: Guardian, Thanks:atul
Dan Levin / New York Times:
Software Makers See a Market in Censorship
Cade Metz / The Register:
Amazon cloud accused of network slowdown