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5:00 PM ET, April 20, 2007

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Karen / Official Google Blog:
Collaborating with Marratech  —  As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration.  So we're excited about acquiring Marratech's video conferencing software, which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection.
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google Acquires Marratech; Gets Into WebEx Territory  —  After reporting a monster fiscal quarter (the company has close to $12 billion in cash sitting around now and has hired nearly 2,000 new employees this year), Google made a quiet announcement on its corporate blog tonight …
Om Malik / GigaOM:   Video reasons for Google-Marratech deal
RELATED:
Owen Thomas / Business 2.0 Beta:
Rupert, the Cowardly Internet Lion  —  What is it about the Web that made Rupert Murdoch lose his taste for synergy?  Offline, his News Corp. (NWS) empire is as self-promoting as always.  But MySpace, Murdoch's Internet jewel, can't even seem to promote its own services.
Kelly Yamanouchi / Denver Post:
Southwest reaching for Wi-Fi in sky  —  Southwest Airlines is exploring how to put Wi-Fi Internet service on its airplanes, as the no-frills carrier seeks to add some frills.  —  Southwest plans to outfit a few planes with in-cabin wireless Internet service that would "allow for e-mail …
RELATED:
BBC:
Users force Dell to resurrect XP  —  Responding to customer demand Dell has restarted selling new PCs with Windows XP installed on them.  —  The decision reverses a policy begun in January that meant Windows Vista was the only operating system available on almost all new home machines.
Discussion: Techdirt and Gadget Lab
RELATED:
George Ou:
Fear and anger erupt over $3 Microsoft Suite
Discussion: Newlaunches.com
Kevin Rose / Digg the Blog:
Digg API, Flash Application Toolkit, and Contest Announced!  —  Many of you have been asking about the Digg API and I'm happy to announce that it is now publicly available at services.digg.com along with a Flash application toolkit.  This will be a great tool for Digg users and partners …
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Digg Releases Public API, San Francisco Tech Crowd Parties Hard
Discussion: Profy.Com and Somewhat Frank
Waxpancake / upcoming.yahoo.com:
The New Upcoming  —  Whew!  The new release of Upcoming is finally out the door.  We're still working out the bugs, so let us know if you find anything broken or weird!  Lots to talk about, and I'm sure you'll have lots of questions, so let's get right into it.  What's new?  —  Upcoming Grows Up
RELATED:
Mark Henderson / Times of London:
Yahoo! sued over torture of Chinese dissident  —  Chinese political prisoner sues Yahoo! in a US federal court in what is believed to be first case of its kind  —  A Chinese political prisoner sued Yahoo! in a US federal court, accusing the internet company of helping the Chinese government torture …
Discussion: IP Democracy
RELATED:
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Chinese Political Prisoner Sues in U.S. Court, Saying Yahoo Helped …
Anil Dash:
Google Web History - Good and Scary  —  Many years ago, when the web was a simpler place, one of the scariest monsters conjured up to describe the privacy threats that lurked on the Internet was the DoubleClick cookie, used for tying your ad-viewing behavior on the web to your real-world identity.
Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
STUMBLEUPON LAUNCHING SITE-SPECIFIC STUMBLING  —  This is weird.  Last night it occurred to me that Webware should have a "StumbleUpon"-like feature: In other words, that there should be a button on the site that links to a random Webware review — because if you don't come to the site frequently …
Winda Benedetti / MSNBC:
Were video games to blame for massacre?  —  Pundits rushed to judge industry, gamers in the wake of shooting  —  Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney and opponent of violent video games, said Va. Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui played 'Counter-Strike,' Valve Software's popular multiplayer game.
Discussion: PE HUB, Neowin.net, Kotaku and digg
Gizmodo:
McCaslin vs Menlow: 45 Nanometers Prove That Size Matters  —  There's been a lot of UMPC talk and action in the latter part of this week.  And it's not stopping today.  Size queens among you will be interested to see a spiffy 2008 Menlow-based UMPC parked up close and personal on the left of the oh-already-so-tired-O-seven McCaslin.
Discussion: DailyTechRag and digg
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Stephen Colbert finally drops a Google bomb  —  Considering he's already pranked Wikipedia and weaseled his way into online polls aplenty, here at News.com we're actually kind of surprised that Comedy Central talk show host Stephen Colbert took this long to instigate a self-promoting "Google bombing" campaign.
RELATED:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:   Google Declares Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
The Wal-Mart $299 HD DVD player on the way  —  Get ready to get your cheap HD on kids.  Wal-Mart just threw down some serious green for a batch of Chinese-made HD DVD players.  Just as they brought DVD players down to near-disposable status, their deal for 2 million HD DVD players produced …
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Big Money in Little Screens  —  Searching the Web on a mobile phone has been a lot like getting online via dial-up modem circa 1995: slow, tedious and not terribly useful.  Typing on tiny buttons, squinting at a list of links and clicking through to a page that won't display properly is enough to test anyone's patience.
 
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 More Items: 
Brian Oberkirch / Like It Matters:
Trimming the attention sails
James Kendrick / jkOnTheRun:
HTC Shift is appearing in the wild
Discussion: Mobility Site
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Fujitsu's FLEPia e-reader features color display, WiFi
Discussion: Gizmodo and TeleRead
Gizmodo:
Oh No: Cell Calling on a Plane Coming...in French
Discussion: silicon.com and CNET News.com
Hardware News:
Microsoft slams iPhone as irrelevant
Loren Baker / Search Engine Journal:
New Google AdWords Dashboard Looks Like Yahoo Panama
Caroline McCarthy / Webware.com:
HAPPY HOUR BY SMS, WITH BUYYOURFRIENDADRINK
 Earlier Items: 
Michael Kanellos / CNET News.com:
The scary math behind Web 2.0
Valleywag:
RUMORMONGER: Blog mogul wooing Don Imus?
Mike / Techdirt:
Google, Wikipedia Sued By Politician Confused About How The Internet Works
Discussion: Globe and Mail
Somasegar / Somasegar's WebLog:
Visual Studio "Orcas" and .NET FX 3.5 Beta1 shipped!
Joshua Porter / Bokardo:
The hidden lives of MySpacers
Discussion: rexduffdixon.com
Sue Polinsky / Download Squad:
10 rules for your small business home page
Kip Kniskern / LiveSide:
Lots of new stuff just added to Spaces
Jeremyliew / Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog:
Most frequently visited websites - not what you'd expect
Discussion: Pronet Advertising
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Sources: NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Bonnie Hammer plans to leave the company at the end of the year; she has been with the company since 2004

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A growing number of podcasters, including Tim Ferriss, are moving away from interviews to monologues or co-hosts, as some well-known guests can be overexposed

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

 
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